Hello Commanders
As a supporter of President Hudson I feel it is about time FDev fix the ethos of Hudson his strong against dose not fit what a Federation President should be it is costing us time and a lot of effort in fortification not being able to flip systems to the necessary Government that fit the federation. Please FDev take a look at it this can not be what you intended for Hudson to have.
Agreed. I posted this concern in the bug report section and received a response from Sandro:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170461
Unfortunately it seems FD is not interested in making any changes at this time. While I see where Sandro is coming from with regards to Hudson being the "warhawk" arm of the Federation, and that this ethos might make sense for expansion and preparation purposes, the problem as I see it is the
control ethos preference. From my response to the above-linked report:
"Humor me for a moment and consider the following hypothetical: Say for example, Hudson's interventionist ambitions of spreading Democracy and Free-Market Capitalism at the point of a laser cannon are successful, and he "liberates" a system from the Empire. Now let's say this system contains two minor factions currently engaged in a War/Civil War - one of them a Democratic Federation faction (yay!) and the other an Imperial Patronage (boo!) Which faction should Zachary Hudson, President of the Federation, favor in this scenario? Common-sense would say "the Federation, of course!" But if the faction wants to maximize their control system bonus potential, they would actually have to support the
Imperial faction! Bottom line: it just seems a bit silly that it's easier for Hudson to fortify a hostile Empire-faction controlled system, or an independent Feudal Warlord, than a friendly Federation one."
It's also worth pointing out that the current ethos puts us at a significant disadvantage over our competitors, who's systems synnergize with their ethos much better than ours. Hudson's average fortification requirement is one of the highest (if not THE highest) of any faction as a result. This wasn't a big deal for the first couple of weeks, but the situation has become a lot more precarious since the fortification rate hike (and our gradually slipping rank position reflects this clearly). Worse, the scarcity of minor factions that synnergize with our ethos means that it's virtually impossible for us to remedy the situation within the constraints of the background system (ie: by flipping systems). Our only recourse seems to be to expand aggressively into Empire space... but then we open ourselves up to CC problems stemming from the large distance modifier (not to mention the stiff resistance we will inevitably encounter). So the result is that we are forced to spend more time and effort fortifying our systems than anyone else, while our enemies' resources are freed up to undermine our systems, worsening the situation even further.
So considering all this, I think the ideal solution would be to have one ethos for expansion/preparation, and another for control. In this case, keep the "Feudal/Patronage" preference for expansion/prep, and change the control ethos to "Democracy" and/or "Corporate". That way Hudson can be the conflict-stirring faction that was originally envisioned, without putting the faction at a competitive disadvantage or forcing faction members to make eyebrow-raising meta-game decisions (ie: supporting Feudal/Patron factions over Federation ones). Hudson players would then have an incentive to aggressively seize Feudal/Patronage systems by force, and then "flip" them to Democratic/Corporate control (ala: spreading democracy and free-enterprise) as I think was envisioned.
Other people have reported that some of the independent factions are having similar issues that might benefit from a similar change as well.
