That dynamic spreading of a faction is a cool thing. Especially combined with all the things that specifically the Dark Faction causes to its conquered worlds and how the Dark Pillars affect this dynamic. Good stuff. However, one of the core game mechanics and indeed one of the major things that lots of players like in the game and why they were attracted to it in the first place, was the *building*. It's simply fun. You can use your creativity and build all kind of things. You can end up spending hours of game time to build things, and you enjoy doing it. Except in the Dark Faction scenario you can't. You are on a timer. You can't spend any time building things. If you do, you lose. Which is a shame because building stuff is a big thing in the game. Now, the consensus probably is that the current spreading speed is too fast, and based on that feedback the devs are probably going to address it. Which is fine. However, even downgrading it a bit, that still won't solve that "I miss my building time!!" problem. Therefore, a suggestion: Add "resting intervals" to the scenario. I think, you could do this in a nice and balanced way by adding two very simple and basic rules: 1) You destroy a Dark Pillar freeing a world --> timer stops 2) You do any warp jump, long or short --> timer resumes And that's it. After freeing a world, you can take a breather. Recover, re-equip, and rebuild. Spend all the time you need to build your ship, and enjoy that part of the game you like. *PROVIDED* you stay within that planetary system. You have the resources of that world and its orbit, and if it has moons, then those also *but* the moment you do a warp jump, even a short-rage SV warp jump, the spreading timer starts ticking again, and it will continue to tick until you destroy your next Dark Pillar. Doing it this way will give the player the control of how long he wants to spend building things, while still forcing him to eventually move forward, because without a warp jump he will be stuck there. That gives him the incentive to proceed after he's done his building. Then the scenario just alternates between "building" and "fighting" phases. This mechanic would even give you a very nice way to add the Dark Faction (if the player has the DLC) to the normal survival game: In that game start the spreading timer simply will initially start as "stopped". The Dark Faction would have an initial core space with some number of star systems under their occupation but since the timer would be stopped, it would not spread. Initially. Then, simply start the timer when the player arrives to any of these worlds, and after that proceed with the two stop/resume rules above. Additionally, you could also have a mission in the story line that takes the player to a Dark Faction world which then starts the counter. This way you can have the early game and the vanilla game story as they are now, and then simply continue with the Dark Faction story line.
Actually you don't lose. I let it reach 100% the game didn't tell me I lost. I just let them take the whole galaxy playing at my own pace. Then I started retaking planets from the dark faction when I was ready from 100% full on the red box. Even at 100% take over from the dark faction doesn't mean you lost the war with them. I was in the same mind set when the DLC came out thinking you will lose if they took over 100%. It isn't the case. You can still push them back and take over planets even at 100% take over. The strategy is making a base on a moon not a planet since dark faction don't attack moons. Perhaps later they will but for now they don't. And when you can do asteroid mining for resources it is a lot faster to get ore then planet or moon mining. If you can get a CV mining drill unlocked. You can play at your own pace if you got a moon base preferably around a gas giant planet. Since the dark field fog doesn't touch moons around gas giants you can have space base there not having to be concerned about infected controlled ships. Only threats might be pirate drones in space but those could be taken out easily with cannon and rocket turrets. You can also have a base in a asteroid field. There is systems with a asteroid field that the Dark Faction isn't currently interested in as well. This will allow you breathing time since your not getting attacked by Dark Faction there. Dark Faction currently is only interested in planets you got some breathing room with moon bases and asteroid field bases. Though it isn't much but it will allow you building time and prep time without worry of getting attacked by infected ships. However my only suggestion is spread speed be a game setting option. Or if you down a pillar they will be in remission for awhile as if they try to recover with a loss of a dark pillar. The clock could stop for a bit giving you more time to build or gather resources. Say 30-40 real time minutes then it resumes again. A small pillar could stop it for 20-25 minutes since there is pillars without the big base. If you choose to play in a time crunch play style. Though even if they took over every single planet you can still fight the dark faction and start retaking planets though it will be more time consuming since you have to liberate every single planet in the galaxy from 100% take over. This could easily take a week or two to do.
