Questions regarding factions and canon/story

Were factions ever going to be a thing early in development? Did the devs ever look into making different factions? I always thought the idea of only one faction really took away from the variety of the game and just detracted from the replayability and overall features. It's just cool to have a bunch of factions and different styles of play for each faction. It adds a ton of character and maybe a tad bit more replayability.

Oh one more thing: does this game have canon or is it just ancient AI trying to conquer the galaxy because that's just how they were programmed? Legitimate question. I'm clueless.

http://www.uberent.com/pa/2014/03/26/lore-summary-past-present-future/

Basically the Commanders are ancient war machines that rebelled against their creators, but were mysteriously deactivated and are now starting to reactivate.

Also, factions could have different unit skins, but for gameplay, one unit set is better for balance.

When I first started playing the game I definitely thought that one faction would be better for balance and competitive play but the game is barely competitive and the cons of factions don't really outweight the benefits. It's a decent point, I guess but I still don't see the point in not having multiple factions. Starcraft has three factions and manages to be one of the most competitive and balanced RTS games to date.
Ah well, when I put funding into perspective the devs don't really have time for that.

If you put all of the units in starcraft into one single faction, what you have is what PA is essentially doing.

Word on the street is that the Foundation prefers planes.

You know they could add an archetype feature (Similar to say CoH commanders/ Civilisation's Civs)

So you could have say bonii or boosts to certain units while others get a malus to further reinforce the playstyle. Of course people could forgo it altogether.

Just a suggestion.

what benefit do factions have other than inforcing a playstyle? and please dont tell me about variety that is just a stats thing ...

All factions do is hurt unit variety as you're limited to which faction you chose. It also takes TONS of dev time, like I mean A LOT modeling units, buildings, etc... AND finding roles? That's a lot of work... Definitely not worth it.

There's already been a lot of competitive matches with PA, we've hosted many, many tourneys.

There are factions though (each commander type represents a faction), they just share a common unit set....

If you really want mote units, try the statera balance mid

No, there simply was not enough budget to make additional factions with distinct units and Uber made it clear to everyone even at the time of the Kickstarter campaign.

PA was made with a fraction of the budget that other AAA games have. For example, Supreme Commander was done with an estimated $10M budget. In comparison, PA raised only $2.2M in its Kickstarter campaign plus post-KS sales. It's a testament to Uber's skill and dedication that PA is as awesome as it is.

If I remmebr right the core idea is that everyone has the exact same technology: "Technology has been captured, assimilated and transformed..." it was said in the kickstarter trailer.
Even the commanders are only optical changes.

However part of the modding support for the server/offline mode will afaik include the option to make different unit set's for factions.
So you could make a 40k Setting with imperium, Dark Eldar and everything else.

Umodded game:
Only one set of units.

Modded game:
Propably as many factions with different unit sets as you want to make.

Actually we can already make faction mods with separate unit sets through server modding.

The server is not released, so how exactly does that work?
Do you have to rent a server and then can say wich mod you want?
Or can you just say "make a a server (shard) with server mod X" when creating the game?

Factions can be a mod.

Oh, and the question above me. Basically, in your username/appdata/local/uber entertainment/planetary annihilation folder, you have a /server_mods/ folder. The create game puts you in a lobby as host, that lobby's server machine will pull that folder in. That server then uses that folder as a "shadow" of the game's file.

So, the server_mods/Xmod folder acts like planetary annihilation/media folder. If you have your mod folder with a pa/units/orbital/orbital_drop_factory and a properly designed unit which you can borrow the existing orbital factory model for, you can add a factory to the game that builds terrestial/air units that float down to the planet correct surface. Mind, you would also need a pa/units/unitlist.json, a ui/main/shared/buildlist.json to make the unit load and have a build button.

Isn't that cool? Some mods exist in PAMM that take advantage of server mods and adds and change tons of stuff, like Statera and Realm Community Balance Mod. I personally want to make a faction mod, divided up tech amongst commanders each build their own tech, and an overall commander that only builds other commanders. That way, you could play hybrid tech slowly unlocked, or dedicated single tech.