I'm going to agree here. I don't think the "pay a fine" approach works particularly well - what I'd like to see Xeno Ethics do is to just freeze your current alignment.

Hannibal Lecter doesn't become Mother Teresa by paying off his overdue parking tickets.

I agree 100% It would be better if your choices directly affected your alignement.

I actually like the way it is now, since you have more tangible benefits of each alignment.

I like the new ethics system, although neutral might be a bit too powerful. At least, on paper.

im kindof disappointed by it because as a good guy i always pick evil choices and can still choose the good alignment costlessly.

the alignment armor and weapons are extremely costy and make the ships they are put on very very costy not making them very very much better then their weaker but cheaper counterparts combined. 2 laser is not 2 times as good as 1 damage to, because the 1 damage almost always does 1 damage but the 2 damage has a chance to do only 1 damage even though it has 2 damage.

It would be nice if one would still have moral decisions after picking the alignment. I do NOT mean that you can switch to another alignment for its bonus. Rather, if you choose to be good through xeno ethics and you deviate from good by selecting choices that are evil, you would temporarily lose the bonus you have acquired through your alignment. You will regain the bonus once you have accomplished enough to get you back to the range of 'good.'

It would be rather easy to shift alignment while there are still planets around. When you run out of planets to colonize, however, it might take 10 turns or 20 turns for a moral-decision to come around. Even then, you aren't guaranteed to get the alignment back to good.



If moral choices will stay fixed after alignment is chosen, the 'evil' decision shouldn't be the only beneficial choice. Good and neutral should also get some sort of benefit, in a different way. This is largely because there is none of those "instant bonus for evil and late bonus for good" and thus good should get benefit just like the evil alignment. I suspect the system is the way it is because the Devs decided on the current xeno ethics system but just directly imported the rest from galciv I instead of revising it.. oh well

Well, think of it like this. You've discovered that your natural tendencies are viewed as quite evil in the galaxy (XENO ethics). You say to yourself, "Crap. Well, how do I act more like a responsible galactic civ?" The easy answer is to make life better for everyone. So, remember that +20% production bonus you got when you enslaved those neanderthals? Remember the 20 million people who died when you zapped them with solar energy in the name of science? Remember those microscopic space farers whose ship you dismantled to figure out how they got it so small? Well, now it's going to cost you 20,000 BILLION CREDITS in reparations. In the eyes of the other aliens, that's a very good step in becoming "good".

I guess the problem is that the penalty is too small. If it cost you 20,000 BC/week, that'd be more like it.

Besides, just paying reparations doesn't make you instantly a better person, even in terms of public opinion. It just makes you a little less evil.

I guess the problem is that the penalty is too small. If it cost you 20,000 BC/week, that'd be more like it.

For how long? I'll just say that the example I provided was from my current game. At the time, 20,000BC was about 4500 more BC than I had in my treasurary. It would've required a significant change to my game had I made the choice. I just wonder if it scales.

I agree, however, that the long term benefits of being "good" are comparatively intangible when compared to evil. I prolly haven't played the game enough to see any moral choices that really favour the good choice, other than that feeling of moral superiority.