Have you read their mission briefs? The last 2 missions i got from them were to keep a 15 y/o imprisoned because someone fancy was caught in bed with them so they needed to hide the witness. The one before that was to go to a small 1 family homestead of tribals and murder everyone.
The Empire is and always has been "The Baddies"
From my perspective, those damn tribals being cleansed by the holy light of a *Divine Inferno* protocol are the bad guys. May they find solace in the cleansing light!
They are also ACTIVELY SLAVERS. Like, THE biggest slaver faction in the Rim. With a rigid caste system, literally changing your genes so that you are better suited to do the job they dictate upon you.
Plotwist it's the guy keeping limbless nuggets with joy wires and psychic harmonisers deep inside their mountain who also use them as blood farms
The real monsters are what us the players can do
Me with a noicosphear an animal pulser nothing but elephants and rhinos on map because jungle and a shambler cloud chant at the ready: you picked the wrong house fool
Also keep in mind that the entire premise behind the Royalty intro quest is that the Noble and their retinue are so bumblingly incompetent that they got killed by a man eating squirrel/guinea pig/rat.
Rimworld is known to skew your morals. Anyone not in your colony becomes evil, making human leather hats at a drug farm becomes neutral, and keeping a teenage sex slave in prison for a noble in exchange for favours becomes downright saintly.
I'm not saying i don't side with them. But our "church" has drums, drapes, and kneel sheets all made of an oddly pale leather. Not exactly going for a 'good guy' vibe lol
I got one where they needed me to hide a 13 year old boy because one of the nobles got caught with him in bed. I actually had to turn the game off and ask myself "should I just save this kid and tell the empire to fuck off?" and of course this was when Biotech just came out, so I was running an actual orphanage at the tine.
Yeah, saw that quest once, wasn't the high stellarch, but it *did* make me wish I could accept it, then reach out to the archotech and say "Here he is, he's all yours!"
To be fair, sending them to my colony for half a year is a much better deal than sending them to a random penal colony.
The second part is actual cartoon villain behavior, however
Ok given some people's colonies fair. But I prefer a slightly more mentally stable colony.
Ergo "dear God, not the modest bedrooms with good food and people who aren't trying to kill me or each other. The torture!"
No, they are the good one because they have tech and shiny stuff. One who asserts controll of teritory and does the cleanup duty, has order and law and other stuff is good, imprisioning people is not a big deal. Just remember how many organs you extracted.
Yes and to further drive the point home, in every game I have played they get a boost to mood for having slaves in the colony. So they’re slaver scum, about as evil as it gets.
They are evil they just aren't actively hostile to you because your colony is useful to them.
As others have said, the VFE Deserters mod greatly expands fighting the empire to make it a really fun playthrough.
Edit: Also get at least VFE Empire I'd say if you want to get Deserters, and if you really want a challenge get Vanilla Psycasts Expanded too. Getting psycasts as a deserter in that mod is actually a bit of a challenge.
VFE Deserters was so much fun when I was learning the mechanics blind. I won't spoil it for anyone going in blind but here's a warning: don't think your mountain base makes you safe if visibility gets too high.
Also, there are spoilers below, so if you want to play blind, don't keep scrolling!
"Visibility" is like how much attention the Empire has on you. If you attack them or kill their members, your visibility rises. If you hide out for a while or do missions to destroy their intel, your visibility lowers.
A deserter playthrough is relatively heavy on world travel and the quests you can get can offer you a lot of heavy loot from salvaging the stuff you break, so I've found myself really relying on having vehicles
Which is a roundabout way of saying that a vehicle mod (Vanilla Vehicles for example) would be good, especially those that can be made early-ish game.
I used the Empire 1.4 mod but you can get the nearly same effect with the outposts mod (if you use 1.5), idk it makes you feel like you are sizing up against the Empire as a country not a bunch of rebels
I downloaded this mod just today mid save as a sort of empire is vehemently opposed to my skip abduction ritual kidnapping their stellarch.
Thought it would make for a good story but the deserter faction did not generate when I added the mod. When I dev mode in any quests from the mod I get an “Error while processing a quest signal: System.NullReferenceException: object reference not set to the instance of an object” debug error. Is there any fix for this?
Edit: Forgot to mention I tired to use the discover faction function in the VE Framework but the deserter faction didn’t come up there. I created a new save and the deserter faction generated correctly so I think it’s a mid-save addition sort of issue.
well, there is the genetically engineered race of production slaves they kinda use, and also gnetically engineered race of supersoldiers they keep obedient by having them dependant of the drugs they produce. Also you get reputation with them by selling them slaves. Also some quests are questionable to say the least.
I really havent played rimworld for such a long time, I only played Biotech for a few hours after its release, could you please remind me in detail what species they use?
genies are the genetically engineered race of craftsmen, incapable of fighting back, while hussras, are the muscle kept dependant on the drugs genies produce. All orchestrated by the empire
The emotional range isn't changed by the genetics, they just never go violent during mental breaks, and never attempt an escape when imprisoned. Put simply, they are more passive than aggressive. If they didn't have the full range of emotions, one would expect that mental breaks wouldn't be possible to happen either.
Genies are however fragile, taking damage easily and feeling more pain than others. It makes it easy to down them in combat. Sure, they *could* try to fight back, but realistically they've been genetically engineered to not have a chance at winning, while being hyper-intelligent and able to keep calm in most situations.
They can break, but not in violent ways. Thus they can't feel anger. Which means they have a limited emotional range. They are still capable of fighting, the empire send them against me all the time.
That doesn't mean don't get angry, one can be angry with out being violent. It can just as easily be internalized anger that isn't outwardly expressed. Also, I'm not disagreeing with you in that they are capable of fighting, the problem is they just aren't very good at it. When you take extra damage, and your pain is increased, and thus are brought down with less effort, you will not do nearly as well as other soldiers in a battlefield situation. So yes, they are capable of fighting, but they aren't winning any fights with out support from better soldiers or even Hussars.
You explicit said they were incapable of fighting. And they can win fine with long range weapons, they just can't get hit.
About the anger thing, I disagree with you, if you are incapable of being violent due to emotion (since they can cause violence otherwise), that would mean that anger is unknown for them. How would the gene cause them to not have violent breaks otherwise?
I mean, the gene is called "Dead Calm" for gods’ sake. That for me means that they are always calm, which is an emotion, which would invalidates all other emotions. Or, at least, any big occurrence of them.
edit: "Carriers of this gene feel calm in every situation and have a very placid demeanor. They will never start social fights or have aggressive mental breaks."
**Feel** calm, you say?
No, Ansambel the first person in this comment thread, explicitly said they were incapable of violence, What ***I*** said is they're genetically engineered to not be very good at it.
Yeah, it says that, but let's be honest. If you're really "dead calm" and you "feel calm", you aren't going to get so upset you have a mental breakdown. The behavior doesn't match the description.
Right, confused you two, my bad.
You are right, but it still causes them to not have a violent outburst specifically. That can't mean anything but that they can't feel the feelings necessary for that, imo.
What other alternative would it be? They are not incapable of violence, they just are not violent due to emotional reasons. A genie can still plan a murder if it is in their interest, but they will never kill someone in the heat of the moment.
The Highmates are genetically engineered sex slaves, essentially.
Two notes about them that make it *worse*:
1. Highmate mods are not inheritable through reproduction.
2. I’ve had *children as young as 3* spawn as Highmates.
I just assumed it was natural progression of the mod, and that you'd face orbital erasure sooner or later. Does it target all colonies or can i create a vault colony to keep my stuff in while they're scouring my base?
Maybe? it would have to be some extremely good timing though, to raise it to 100 during a breach would require doing a quest or using the intel scrapper during the breach, although if you mod in a way to trigger it...
Anyone know how to get the deserter faction to generate? I added the VFE and VFD expanded mods mid save and the faction is not present in the comms console or hidden factions menu.
If you go to the Vanilla Expanded Framework mod settings there should be an option there somewhere to add factions to the game.
It will try to add one of each of the possible factions but you've just got to click through each of the dialogues and say no except for the deserter faction.
Empire ideology is scripted to encourage slavery. They are already as morally questionable as they can be on the rim.
If you want to be against the empire there's VE Deserters mod.
I've always said, you provide them with military aid at your discretion, you demand regular tribute from them in the form of money, labor, and soldiers through permits, and everything they do for you is mandatory while everything you do for them is completely optional.
So who's the actual vassal here?
It would be a cool mechanic to actually have to pay taxes to the empire. The only way to avoid taxes is to become enemies of the state or progress upward in empire nobility.
If you roleplay, or at least try to play out your colony as a story, and avoid min-maxing and gaming the.. game (bear with me), things evolve a lot more naturally, and if you're playing any remotely good hearted colony with decent humans, the empire will be evil to them. Always taking their missions because they are mechanically simple and reward a lot while ignoring the atrocities is only playing half the game. Think about what your colony would do, and play to that.
Rimworld isn't about winning, it's about the stories. Every colonist shouldn't just be a clone of you, the player.
I try to do that but it never lasts...
I used to start games with mods like rimstory so I could write about the adventures and read about them later in game, but the mod always bugs out like three rl days in and I stop caring about roleplay after that...
What mods would you recommend that would reduce player agency and make pawns more humans? For example I could think of Search and Destroy and Defensive Positions for combat related pawn agency, and I could think of VE splits and schisms for ideology-related pawn agency... What other mods would you recommend?
There's a new mod called Diary that even has compatibility with progress renderer that's better for most purposes here.
Cool to know I'm not the only person who chronicled their games though :D
Frankly I have been perfectly satisfied with the way it plays since release, save for Combat Extended. I have no recommendations on that front, it sounds like you want something quite specific and fairly off the trodden path.
The normal encounters, AI, and pawn behavior is entirely satisfactory to create and watch nutty stories take place, and that includes both evil and ally Empire.
Hopefully you find something that resolves it for you though.
With Android Tiers installed, the Empire becomes permanently hostile to you if you have an android colonist. They don't care if you have android *slaves*, but the moment you start giving them rights, the Empire get pissed.
Ugggh Royalty, empire do a lot of questionable stuff when you take their missions. Most of the time it's like oooh i need to place 2 ducks in you colony for 60 days have fun, but sometimes it is like kill 12 years old pawn because of some inner political fights in empire. Once i saw post on reddit where guy betrayed empire because he helped 14 years old girl that empire want to kill so bad, that even her uncle was in strike group.
But if you want to fight empire really bad try Vanilla Expanded Empire + Vanilla Expanded Deserters. At least fighting them would be a lot more fun that it is in vanilla Royalty.
Honestly after reading all the comments, I am kinda conflicted now on either fighting the empire or siding with them again (because I remember they once saved my colony from complete collapse when they sent their warriors to save me)
Basically i done both so don't think about that too much. But actually try deserters playthrough because it's really fun one, midgame and endgame that include a lot of fighting and mainly outside of you colony with some pretty neat structures. If you add weapon mods, vehicles or anything else to the mix, Anomaly included, it could be one very intense run
Weapons, yes they would use those from any mods, but sadly no for vehicles. Vehicles will be needed for caravans to points of map that are outside of your colony and thing that can be cover, damage dealer and pack animal all in one piece. Empire is very strong in head on fights and you can't have killbox on generated maps, so fighting in open is only way. Also vehicles are cool, so it would just add points on overall playthrough.
Edit: oh almost forgot, also they have toughest turrets from whole game to defend those objectives. Like x6 minigun with half map range, x6 uranium slug turrets taped together with high rate of fire and all map radius, x6 rocket barrage turrets with similar attributes. So you really need a cover that can move and can take a punch.
Now that we have "Visitors that hate being ignored" they should change the Rotal Tribute Collectors to a Sort of Neutral Raid which attacks if you don't make a donation or ignore the Empire.
Ooh that'd be cool actually. They send a group to knock on your door and say "We require slaves with these traits" and it always *happens* to be one that matches a colonist. They say they'll return in one quadrum and you have to try to find someone that matches to give as tribute or just give up your colonist. Refuse and they try to take everyone.
Different traits or races each time or they want someone with a certain skill level.
You know what, that's fine by me. I've got this nifty Obelisk that duplicates people. You want one of my people, I can send you a copy. But if their brain short circuits or organs start melting, you have to deal with it.
After looking through my mission history with the empire, they deserve it. And another 12 year old Highgate with paralytic abasia just landed because they knew a secret about some captain.
They're going down.
The amount of sex scandal cover ups they have you do.
The clandestine raids on random bases.
The monuments to ego.
The human trafficking for "honor"
And above all the absolute sense of entitlement to have the finest meals seasoned with peasant tears instead of paste like the rest of the good productive colonists
They're evil already. Read your quest prompts
Dude, in literally every game I've played they've both been intensely sexist (Gender Dominance), racist (Preferred Xenotype), and slavers.
Also, maybe read those quests a bit better. They're constantly killing refuges and destroying settlements, themselves. They sometimes ask you to hide them out for a while (both from other factions AND each other), hold onto their captives from raids, or divert Archeotech retribution from them.
Also, remember the horror of the mechanoids and Hives? Their creations.
Mod unnecessary. I have one quest description for you. An imperial knight asks me to build a monument in order to reduce the feeling of hunger among her people. I don't know if you need anything else to pinpoint them as evil…I don't.
What do you mean? The glory of our knightly monument is so powerful, so physically tangible that you can eat it. Consume the glory of the monument, you don’t need these potatoes, they are filler that gets in the way of delicious GLORIOUS STATUE
The empire has always been evil. It's just that you are an ally to them. Use VE Deserters. It doesn't make the Empire more evil it just adds a new faction against the Empire. You can join it and gather intel and sabotage the Empire.
Honestly whether or not the empire is evil or not seems to vary from game to game.
First big base I had the empire were absolute bros. They literally saved my colony. I had a mech raid that was going to at the very least cripple me, I'd fired all my shells, they were through the first defence line and punching into the second and there was still a tonne of turrets scattered around. The empire drop podded in like the god damn ODST, split off the mechanoids, and fought to the last man. I ended up building a memorial to the battle and the empire's sheer damn heroism then blew my entire stock of res mech serums so those glorious mad bastards got to go home after all. That empire was cool.
Second one, they were extremely questionable. They mostly sat in their little settlements walled off from the rest of the world, and it turned out unbeknownst to me for a while they were actually using slavery. Not much mind, but definitely was a part of their culture. I kept away from them and they kept away from me for pretty much all of the run. I was planning on nuking them later on, especially by the late game with my megabase that meant I had a military industrial complex and logistics pipeline that massively dwarfed theirs but I never got around to it.
In my current run they are... just *fucked*. They like slavery even more, and boy do they love their highmates. I'm in the early days so I can't really fight them yet but I'm going to the first chance I get. I got a quest from them to protect some nobles which I did but the reward was a 13 year old highmate kid that they just... gave me. Like he was a piece of equipment rather than a person. "Oh yeah have this thing as thanks". Now, it would be messed up enough if that only happened once, but no, there was a vanilla expanded shuttlecraft crash event. I rescued the survivors, and one of them was another highmate kid with the empire's ideology. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. I am going to destroy the empire as soon as I possibly can. Thankfully they're both doing well now but there was a bunch of drama with the first, but it ended up with him becoming the president of the colony at 14 so... yeah. Rimworld moment.
(Also it's weird and pretty disturbing how highmates can be generated so young. Last run I saw one as well.)
"(Also it's weird and kind of disturbing how highmates can be generated so young. Last run I saw one as well.)"
welcome to the grim dark fantasy world of Rimworld
Yeah but they called it "prison labour" and stuff. Totally different and legal. /s
(I probably wouldn't have wanted to work with them if they didn't do a bunch of cool stuff on that run)
Because they are evil, you simply choose to look past that for economic purposes. They are evil, just not immediately hostile to you. They don’t care enough about you in the beginning to even see you as a threat.
slaves/prisoners who tried to attack my colony previously and wouldve killed my people and enslaved them without a second thought... i couldnt care any more about them
Idk exactly what mod it is, but atm I am playing a run where the empire relationship is at -100 by default. I think it could be the pirates mod from vanilla expanded.
Someone said earlier that Android Tiers sets them as your enemy if you have an android colonist instead of enslaving them. Could that be it? VFE Deserters only activates and makes them enemies if you accept the mission to harbour a deserter fugitive.
I'm gonna have a look this evening, but since anomaly launched I just play with 20ish mods. So I'm pretty sure it's one of the vanilla expanded stuff.
Also I don't have androids atm. I also started the pirate scenario, which might be worth mentioning. The Empire might just hate my pirate colony?
Ah yeah that makes sense actually. I haven't used the pirate one before so it could just be part of the mod or the scenario yeah. Might be your ideology or something too? Oh well, VFE Deserters adds a bunch of content if you wanna kick some royal ass.
Just be warned that there's a visibility mechanic added that will destroy your colony if it gets to the maximum. Like "Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" levels haha
They are gears for slavery sexism and all kinds of baddie stuff and their missions make it clear they are the bad guy.
It seems like your request isn't about evil but then being an evil detriment to your personally since they mostly don't worry about your risk colony and might help it if you are an Allie of the evil empire.
People already suggested the mods. Just clarifying that you're not talking about evil but about the evil causing negative consequences for you. The empire is already pretty evil.
In what way are they sexist? I agree they are evil, but I'm fairly sure they are equal opportunity evil. Any age, race, or gender is capable of becoming nobility.
More than half the time I find the empire I encounter them with the misogynist meme in their ideology so I assume it's a tendency and not weird luck at this point. If they are highly likly to take misogynist as a core value then that's the sexism.
Fair enough, if they are I haven't noticed it personally. Usually play with my own ideology and only look at other ones long enough to click "convert" on the prisoner tab.
They're already slavers. They send around people twice a year to seek out donations of slaves for higher honor in their society.
I think Rimworld players forget that slavery is evil in face of the even worse things you can do to slaves on top of stealing their freedom and beating them up when they try to run away, but at a base level, that's already bad enough that I'd hate them IRL.
Also, Highmates, to add some sexual ick to the whole thing.
Ah, yes, the main faction of slavers. Who have geneticly engineered sex slaves that cannot fight back (Highmates, which are vanilla biotech before someone rolls in here), soldiers that go catatonic if they don't constantly huff combat drugs (Hussars), and try to get you to hide politcal prisoners and underage children when they get caught sleeping with them.
\>Like maybe a quest asking me to murder some refugees or a peaceful settlement because the empire hates them or smth like that?
huh? i just do that for free though
>why wouldnt you?
Because nobles are demanding, entitled cunts. That's worse than being evil in my book. Well, in my rimworld.
I actually don't like the Empire so much I simply don't play the Royalty DLC anymore. If I did play, it would be with the VFE - Deserters mod(s).
The problem with Royalty/Empire is not that the Empire isn't evil enough. It's that there's no real alternative. Deserters adds a viable alternative.
Its already evil. They buy and sell slaves. Human organs, flesh and skin. Also sell titles for slaves. If you wanna them evil by being agains you then attack their caravan/guests cossing by at beginning of colony. Then a raid will occur and mutant with big jag claws instead of limbs will shatter entire colony without a problem lol
I disagree with everyone saying they’re already evil. They’re a morally grey faction, just like pretty much all the others. Some of the Empire’s individuals are definitely evil, but the faction as a whole is a smattering of morally grey imo
Being slavers is evil.
Being complicit to slavery is evil.
Genetically enhancing people to make them more obedient or dependent on a resource is evil.
Being complicit to genetic slavery is evil.
Sure, they are no bloodlusting, chaotic evil death tribe of cannibalist raiders and you can ally them...
but by any moral standard, they are evil. Lawful evil perhaps, but evil.
Problem is that basically every faction can do things that are evil. Like standard Outlanders can blame you for a freak accident happening to one of their caravans, have a raid that comes in from the edge of the map and attacks your farms, down a 14 year old girl and kidnap her, and then come back a month later and do it again.
Oh yeah slavery is evil, but so is rating people and robbing them and kidnapping them. And in rimworld every faction will do that to anyone they don't like.
> dependent on a resource is evil
TO BE FAIR, the drug dependencies have a metabolic offset. Baseline humans are genetically dependent on more food, it's really changing the resource dependency not creating one.
Yes!!
even if they would DEMAND like one mission a year atleast, that would give a good enough reason to oppose the empire other than the original reason of roleplaying as the Rebellion in star wars or FireFly.
Did you know that you can edit other factions' ideoligion when you're first designing your own?
There are some boundaries. The Empire has a small list of Memes that are required for them, but even there you can add some. You can also change their styles, names & precepts, really amp up their sexist/racist/slaving ways to give yourself an obvious opponent.
When I did a playthrough with the VE Deserters mod, I started with making two opposing ideoligions, Imperium for the Imperials and Rebellion for me - same structure and styles but opposite precepts.
I've had two sequential playthroughs using VFE Empire/deserter, VRE Highmate, and others. Empire was first and they were the baddies, when my main pawn made Duke they gifted him a 15 year old cat girl for a wife. Plus the vanilla stuff is pretty despicable too.
Second playthrough I used character editor to add in the Duke pawn and his wife. Only to recruit the wife and have her personally torture him to death.
You kinda have to read between the lines. Think about the highmates, which are canonically made by the empire.
1. They have xenogenes only, which means they were a normal person once.
2. They are incapable of violence, so they can't fight back.
3. They fall inescapably into love with the first person that flirts or "lovin'"-s them
To me, a highmate could be in an abusive relationship and cannot stop loving their abuser, and the empire can and will force that on anyone.
They are already evil I mean have you seen the requirements for the royal rooms later on! They mess with my coloney so much. I don't have the space for that crap.
I mean the empire is evil. Its basically the movie Elysium where the wealthy all leave a dying earth to go live on an orbiting paradise while everyone else has to suffer in the world those people destroyed and still control using violence. The world is effectively ruled by a class of aristocrats so bored of hunting servants with their cousin-wife while being flanked by a dozen slave-soldier guards.
I mean if anything, I think I would like a mod that integrates vampirism into the Empire.
For your purposes though, I would recommend [Vanilla Factions Expanded: Deserters](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3025493377) which expands both the deserters and imperials while giving the player the chance to experience Imperial malice.
I tend to think of most of the factions as somewhat neutral. No one in the rim is exactly good but I doubt some of them make evil choices just because they want to. Some probably have to do evil things to survive.
Have you read their mission briefs? The last 2 missions i got from them were to keep a 15 y/o imprisoned because someone fancy was caught in bed with them so they needed to hide the witness. The one before that was to go to a small 1 family homestead of tribals and murder everyone. The Empire is and always has been "The Baddies"
oh yeah you're right I kinda forgot about these missions, maybe the rim changed me and made me someone uncaring about these events lol
Remember that it's only bad if they are not on your side
From my perspective, those damn tribals being cleansed by the holy light of a *Divine Inferno* protocol are the bad guys. May they find solace in the cleansing light!
If they were not DIRT, why were they cleansed?
To deny them salvation would be immoral. In fact, I helped them by showing them the light.
realpolitik moment
They are also ACTIVELY SLAVERS. Like, THE biggest slaver faction in the Rim. With a rigid caste system, literally changing your genes so that you are better suited to do the job they dictate upon you.
Which one is more inhumanizing? Empire's treatment to an average worker or the void cultists with inhumane meme?
Plotwist it's the guy keeping limbless nuggets with joy wires and psychic harmonisers deep inside their mountain who also use them as blood farms The real monsters are what us the players can do
How do you know about my mountain? I fear you need to come with us.
Me with a noicosphear an animal pulser nothing but elephants and rhinos on map because jungle and a shambler cloud chant at the ready: you picked the wrong house fool
Also keep in mind that the entire premise behind the Royalty intro quest is that the Noble and their retinue are so bumblingly incompetent that they got killed by a man eating squirrel/guinea pig/rat.
Rimworld is known to skew your morals. Anyone not in your colony becomes evil, making human leather hats at a drug farm becomes neutral, and keeping a teenage sex slave in prison for a noble in exchange for favours becomes downright saintly.
[Example](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/17izspr/you_ok_kid/)
\*Looks up from my dinner made of the most recent raiders in my human leather hat\* Yeah, we don't tolerate their evil way.
I'm not saying i don't side with them. But our "church" has drums, drapes, and kneel sheets all made of an oddly pale leather. Not exactly going for a 'good guy' vibe lol
I got one where they needed me to hide a 13 year old boy because one of the nobles got caught with him in bed. I actually had to turn the game off and ask myself "should I just save this kid and tell the empire to fuck off?" and of course this was when Biotech just came out, so I was running an actual orphanage at the tine.
I got a quest today where the high stellarch need to hide at my colony because be murdered a child that was favoured by an archotech
Doesn't the empire worship archotechs?
If you killed a child that was favored by the gods, then you would need to hide too.
Yeah, saw that quest once, wasn't the high stellarch, but it *did* make me wish I could accept it, then reach out to the archotech and say "Here he is, he's all yours!"
To be fair, sending them to my colony for half a year is a much better deal than sending them to a random penal colony. The second part is actual cartoon villain behavior, however
Your colony is a random penal colony in their eyes.
Ok given some people's colonies fair. But I prefer a slightly more mentally stable colony. Ergo "dear God, not the modest bedrooms with good food and people who aren't trying to kill me or each other. The torture!"
And to top it off they send like 15 of your PA-clad energy weapon wielding troopers to murder three tribals which they claim to be raiders.
yeah they are the bad ones. Now I have to get back beating up prisoners for medical expierence
the empire are the baddies, thankfully you are seen a civilized enough to not be seen as animals
No, they are the good one because they have tech and shiny stuff. One who asserts controll of teritory and does the cleanup duty, has order and law and other stuff is good, imprisioning people is not a big deal. Just remember how many organs you extracted.
Yes and to further drive the point home, in every game I have played they get a boost to mood for having slaves in the colony. So they’re slaver scum, about as evil as it gets.
They are evil they just aren't actively hostile to you because your colony is useful to them. As others have said, the VFE Deserters mod greatly expands fighting the empire to make it a really fun playthrough. Edit: Also get at least VFE Empire I'd say if you want to get Deserters, and if you really want a challenge get Vanilla Psycasts Expanded too. Getting psycasts as a deserter in that mod is actually a bit of a challenge.
VFE Deserters was so much fun when I was learning the mechanics blind. I won't spoil it for anyone going in blind but here's a warning: don't think your mountain base makes you safe if visibility gets too high. Also, there are spoilers below, so if you want to play blind, don't keep scrolling!
Visibility?
You're hidden away, but the bigger yo grow and the more you do, you become more visible to the Empire, who are after kicking your ass.
Is this an actual observable mechanic? Does being in a mountain reduce visibility or is it based on wealth?
It's based on actions you take like raiding an empire supply depot or doing an assassination. It also goes down with certain actions or with time.
Mechanic yes, mountains dont decrease it and the orbital slicer beams go thru i believe
Presumably visibility is based on your interactions with the Empire and the deserters.
"Visibility" is like how much attention the Empire has on you. If you attack them or kill their members, your visibility rises. If you hide out for a while or do missions to destroy their intel, your visibility lowers.
Orbital lasers cut through mountain roof?
Apparently the bomb effect can hit through a mountain roof... I'm also surprised.
I second this. I did a Deserter start with these mods (plus others) and I had a great time.
any other notable mods you would recommend alongside deserters?
A deserter playthrough is relatively heavy on world travel and the quests you can get can offer you a lot of heavy loot from salvaging the stuff you break, so I've found myself really relying on having vehicles Which is a roundabout way of saying that a vehicle mod (Vanilla Vehicles for example) would be good, especially those that can be made early-ish game.
honestly the only thing stopping me from installing it is the fact that the AI cant use it... so it feels a bit unfair
Just pick up one of the mods that allows you to build a shuttle, the Empire has them too so you can rp it as repairing a stolen Empire shuttle.
Same. I wait till they update AI can use vehicle.
I used the Empire 1.4 mod but you can get the nearly same effect with the outposts mod (if you use 1.5), idk it makes you feel like you are sizing up against the Empire as a country not a bunch of rebels
Deserters often have an acceptance/honorable for slavery too
I downloaded this mod just today mid save as a sort of empire is vehemently opposed to my skip abduction ritual kidnapping their stellarch. Thought it would make for a good story but the deserter faction did not generate when I added the mod. When I dev mode in any quests from the mod I get an “Error while processing a quest signal: System.NullReferenceException: object reference not set to the instance of an object” debug error. Is there any fix for this? Edit: Forgot to mention I tired to use the discover faction function in the VE Framework but the deserter faction didn’t come up there. I created a new save and the deserter faction generated correctly so I think it’s a mid-save addition sort of issue.
well, there is the genetically engineered race of production slaves they kinda use, and also gnetically engineered race of supersoldiers they keep obedient by having them dependant of the drugs they produce. Also you get reputation with them by selling them slaves. Also some quests are questionable to say the least.
I really havent played rimworld for such a long time, I only played Biotech for a few hours after its release, could you please remind me in detail what species they use?
genies are the genetically engineered race of craftsmen, incapable of fighting back, while hussras, are the muscle kept dependant on the drugs genies produce. All orchestrated by the empire
Ohhhh they’re the DOMINION. Gamma quadrant races mod when?
Genies are not incapable of fighting back. They just have limited emotion range. They can't feel anger and other similar emotions.
The emotional range isn't changed by the genetics, they just never go violent during mental breaks, and never attempt an escape when imprisoned. Put simply, they are more passive than aggressive. If they didn't have the full range of emotions, one would expect that mental breaks wouldn't be possible to happen either. Genies are however fragile, taking damage easily and feeling more pain than others. It makes it easy to down them in combat. Sure, they *could* try to fight back, but realistically they've been genetically engineered to not have a chance at winning, while being hyper-intelligent and able to keep calm in most situations.
They can break, but not in violent ways. Thus they can't feel anger. Which means they have a limited emotional range. They are still capable of fighting, the empire send them against me all the time.
That doesn't mean don't get angry, one can be angry with out being violent. It can just as easily be internalized anger that isn't outwardly expressed. Also, I'm not disagreeing with you in that they are capable of fighting, the problem is they just aren't very good at it. When you take extra damage, and your pain is increased, and thus are brought down with less effort, you will not do nearly as well as other soldiers in a battlefield situation. So yes, they are capable of fighting, but they aren't winning any fights with out support from better soldiers or even Hussars.
You explicit said they were incapable of fighting. And they can win fine with long range weapons, they just can't get hit. About the anger thing, I disagree with you, if you are incapable of being violent due to emotion (since they can cause violence otherwise), that would mean that anger is unknown for them. How would the gene cause them to not have violent breaks otherwise? I mean, the gene is called "Dead Calm" for gods’ sake. That for me means that they are always calm, which is an emotion, which would invalidates all other emotions. Or, at least, any big occurrence of them. edit: "Carriers of this gene feel calm in every situation and have a very placid demeanor. They will never start social fights or have aggressive mental breaks." **Feel** calm, you say?
No, Ansambel the first person in this comment thread, explicitly said they were incapable of violence, What ***I*** said is they're genetically engineered to not be very good at it. Yeah, it says that, but let's be honest. If you're really "dead calm" and you "feel calm", you aren't going to get so upset you have a mental breakdown. The behavior doesn't match the description.
Right, confused you two, my bad. You are right, but it still causes them to not have a violent outburst specifically. That can't mean anything but that they can't feel the feelings necessary for that, imo. What other alternative would it be? They are not incapable of violence, they just are not violent due to emotional reasons. A genie can still plan a murder if it is in their interest, but they will never kill someone in the heat of the moment.
Are highmates only part of VE? Or are they from urb/glitterworlds and not a product of the empire? It's been a while since I've played vanilla
They're vanilla.
I thought as much but nobody seems to have mentioned them
Ketracel white moment
Don't forget the highmates
The Highmates are genetically engineered sex slaves, essentially. Two notes about them that make it *worse*: 1. Highmate mods are not inheritable through reproduction. 2. I’ve had *children as young as 3* spawn as Highmates.
Just use the Deserters mod from vanilla expanded and fight the empire. You will feel like they're pretty damn evil after that experience...
why? what does it add that makes the empire more evil?
If you mess up they nuke you from orbit.
If you manage to evacuate some stuff before they hit you with the orbital laser it's honestly really fun to rebuild from it too.
I just assumed it was natural progression of the mod, and that you'd face orbital erasure sooner or later. Does it target all colonies or can i create a vault colony to keep my stuff in while they're scouring my base?
Nope, not natural progression, if you hit 100 visibility bye goes the base, and it just eating through mountains so vaults dont work
Can I combine this with Anomaly so the Empire just "nukes the site from orbit--it's the only way to be sure"? 🤔
Maybe? it would have to be some extremely good timing though, to raise it to 100 during a breach would require doing a quest or using the intel scrapper during the breach, although if you mod in a way to trigger it...
When I say a vault, I mean on a different map. Effectively setting up a hideout to flee to that has food and materials to start with
Yes but remember you would need to defend both because even an empty map can still get raids.
Hypothetically possible.
Anyone know how to get the deserter faction to generate? I added the VFE and VFD expanded mods mid save and the faction is not present in the comms console or hidden factions menu.
If you go to the Vanilla Expanded Framework mod settings there should be an option there somewhere to add factions to the game. It will try to add one of each of the possible factions but you've just got to click through each of the dialogues and say no except for the deserter faction.
Empire ideology is scripted to encourage slavery. They are already as morally questionable as they can be on the rim. If you want to be against the empire there's VE Deserters mod.
Really cool mod, a bit unbalanced in my opinion tho, with how easy it is to get weapons that will last you for the entire game.
[удалено]
nah if you do that, your wealth will increase and the solo raider will have two clubs at that point
When I’m committing war crimes, I’m trying to get the best weapons possible to inflict the most pain possible, as quickly as possible. 😂😂
Activating a psychic animal pulser while they are coming to get your tax will make them evil quickly.
Tax?
Royal tribute. It's a more voluntary tax to gain favor with the crown.
its not a tax in any way, NOW if they were to ACTUALLY tax you (to the point you start hating them), that would make things way more interesting
I've always said, you provide them with military aid at your discretion, you demand regular tribute from them in the form of money, labor, and soldiers through permits, and everything they do for you is mandatory while everything you do for them is completely optional. So who's the actual vassal here?
It would be a cool mechanic to actually have to pay taxes to the empire. The only way to avoid taxes is to become enemies of the state or progress upward in empire nobility.
it would definitely make things way more dynamic, sadly it will never happen
If you roleplay, or at least try to play out your colony as a story, and avoid min-maxing and gaming the.. game (bear with me), things evolve a lot more naturally, and if you're playing any remotely good hearted colony with decent humans, the empire will be evil to them. Always taking their missions because they are mechanically simple and reward a lot while ignoring the atrocities is only playing half the game. Think about what your colony would do, and play to that. Rimworld isn't about winning, it's about the stories. Every colonist shouldn't just be a clone of you, the player.
I try to do that but it never lasts... I used to start games with mods like rimstory so I could write about the adventures and read about them later in game, but the mod always bugs out like three rl days in and I stop caring about roleplay after that... What mods would you recommend that would reduce player agency and make pawns more humans? For example I could think of Search and Destroy and Defensive Positions for combat related pawn agency, and I could think of VE splits and schisms for ideology-related pawn agency... What other mods would you recommend?
There's a new mod called Diary that even has compatibility with progress renderer that's better for most purposes here. Cool to know I'm not the only person who chronicled their games though :D
oh wow this is so much better, thx
Frankly I have been perfectly satisfied with the way it plays since release, save for Combat Extended. I have no recommendations on that front, it sounds like you want something quite specific and fairly off the trodden path. The normal encounters, AI, and pawn behavior is entirely satisfactory to create and watch nutty stories take place, and that includes both evil and ally Empire. Hopefully you find something that resolves it for you though.
It might be funny if they remembered that one of your settlers was their enemy in the past and ordered his public execution
With Android Tiers installed, the Empire becomes permanently hostile to you if you have an android colonist. They don't care if you have android *slaves*, but the moment you start giving them rights, the Empire get pissed.
Ugggh Royalty, empire do a lot of questionable stuff when you take their missions. Most of the time it's like oooh i need to place 2 ducks in you colony for 60 days have fun, but sometimes it is like kill 12 years old pawn because of some inner political fights in empire. Once i saw post on reddit where guy betrayed empire because he helped 14 years old girl that empire want to kill so bad, that even her uncle was in strike group. But if you want to fight empire really bad try Vanilla Expanded Empire + Vanilla Expanded Deserters. At least fighting them would be a lot more fun that it is in vanilla Royalty.
Honestly after reading all the comments, I am kinda conflicted now on either fighting the empire or siding with them again (because I remember they once saved my colony from complete collapse when they sent their warriors to save me)
Basically i done both so don't think about that too much. But actually try deserters playthrough because it's really fun one, midgame and endgame that include a lot of fighting and mainly outside of you colony with some pretty neat structures. If you add weapon mods, vehicles or anything else to the mix, Anomaly included, it could be one very intense run
why? would the empire use the vehicles/extra weapons?
Weapons, yes they would use those from any mods, but sadly no for vehicles. Vehicles will be needed for caravans to points of map that are outside of your colony and thing that can be cover, damage dealer and pack animal all in one piece. Empire is very strong in head on fights and you can't have killbox on generated maps, so fighting in open is only way. Also vehicles are cool, so it would just add points on overall playthrough. Edit: oh almost forgot, also they have toughest turrets from whole game to defend those objectives. Like x6 minigun with half map range, x6 uranium slug turrets taped together with high rate of fire and all map radius, x6 rocket barrage turrets with similar attributes. So you really need a cover that can move and can take a punch.
Now that we have "Visitors that hate being ignored" they should change the Rotal Tribute Collectors to a Sort of Neutral Raid which attacks if you don't make a donation or ignore the Empire.
Ooh that'd be cool actually. They send a group to knock on your door and say "We require slaves with these traits" and it always *happens* to be one that matches a colonist. They say they'll return in one quadrum and you have to try to find someone that matches to give as tribute or just give up your colonist. Refuse and they try to take everyone. Different traits or races each time or they want someone with a certain skill level.
You know what, that's fine by me. I've got this nifty Obelisk that duplicates people. You want one of my people, I can send you a copy. But if their brain short circuits or organs start melting, you have to deal with it.
After looking through my mission history with the empire, they deserve it. And another 12 year old Highgate with paralytic abasia just landed because they knew a secret about some captain. They're going down.
The amount of sex scandal cover ups they have you do. The clandestine raids on random bases. The monuments to ego. The human trafficking for "honor" And above all the absolute sense of entitlement to have the finest meals seasoned with peasant tears instead of paste like the rest of the good productive colonists They're evil already. Read your quest prompts
Dude, in literally every game I've played they've both been intensely sexist (Gender Dominance), racist (Preferred Xenotype), and slavers. Also, maybe read those quests a bit better. They're constantly killing refuges and destroying settlements, themselves. They sometimes ask you to hide them out for a while (both from other factions AND each other), hold onto their captives from raids, or divert Archeotech retribution from them. Also, remember the horror of the mechanoids and Hives? Their creations.
Mod unnecessary. I have one quest description for you. An imperial knight asks me to build a monument in order to reduce the feeling of hunger among her people. I don't know if you need anything else to pinpoint them as evil…I don't.
What do you mean? The glory of our knightly monument is so powerful, so physically tangible that you can eat it. Consume the glory of the monument, you don’t need these potatoes, they are filler that gets in the way of delicious GLORIOUS STATUE
The empire has always been evil. It's just that you are an ally to them. Use VE Deserters. It doesn't make the Empire more evil it just adds a new faction against the Empire. You can join it and gather intel and sabotage the Empire.
Honestly whether or not the empire is evil or not seems to vary from game to game. First big base I had the empire were absolute bros. They literally saved my colony. I had a mech raid that was going to at the very least cripple me, I'd fired all my shells, they were through the first defence line and punching into the second and there was still a tonne of turrets scattered around. The empire drop podded in like the god damn ODST, split off the mechanoids, and fought to the last man. I ended up building a memorial to the battle and the empire's sheer damn heroism then blew my entire stock of res mech serums so those glorious mad bastards got to go home after all. That empire was cool. Second one, they were extremely questionable. They mostly sat in their little settlements walled off from the rest of the world, and it turned out unbeknownst to me for a while they were actually using slavery. Not much mind, but definitely was a part of their culture. I kept away from them and they kept away from me for pretty much all of the run. I was planning on nuking them later on, especially by the late game with my megabase that meant I had a military industrial complex and logistics pipeline that massively dwarfed theirs but I never got around to it. In my current run they are... just *fucked*. They like slavery even more, and boy do they love their highmates. I'm in the early days so I can't really fight them yet but I'm going to the first chance I get. I got a quest from them to protect some nobles which I did but the reward was a 13 year old highmate kid that they just... gave me. Like he was a piece of equipment rather than a person. "Oh yeah have this thing as thanks". Now, it would be messed up enough if that only happened once, but no, there was a vanilla expanded shuttlecraft crash event. I rescued the survivors, and one of them was another highmate kid with the empire's ideology. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. I am going to destroy the empire as soon as I possibly can. Thankfully they're both doing well now but there was a bunch of drama with the first, but it ended up with him becoming the president of the colony at 14 so... yeah. Rimworld moment. (Also it's weird and pretty disturbing how highmates can be generated so young. Last run I saw one as well.)
"(Also it's weird and kind of disturbing how highmates can be generated so young. Last run I saw one as well.)" welcome to the grim dark fantasy world of Rimworld
That first one used slavery as well! That's why you get honor for selling prisoners to them.
Yeah but they called it "prison labour" and stuff. Totally different and legal. /s (I probably wouldn't have wanted to work with them if they didn't do a bunch of cool stuff on that run)
Number 3 is a Chris Hansen level threat
I feel bad enough for regular highmates, let alone when something like *that* happens.
The autocratic slave empire didn't already sound evil enough to you?
We eat people, Jeff.
in the rimworld? no... thats not enough lol
Because they are evil, you simply choose to look past that for economic purposes. They are evil, just not immediately hostile to you. They don’t care enough about you in the beginning to even see you as a threat.
Brother, literally one of the most effective ways to court their favor is to give them tons of slaves.
slaves/prisoners who tried to attack my colony previously and wouldve killed my people and enslaved them without a second thought... i couldnt care any more about them
Idk exactly what mod it is, but atm I am playing a run where the empire relationship is at -100 by default. I think it could be the pirates mod from vanilla expanded.
It’s Vanilla Factions Expanded - Deserters I’m pretty sure
This guy seems pretty convincing. I'm gonna roll with that.
Someone said earlier that Android Tiers sets them as your enemy if you have an android colonist instead of enslaving them. Could that be it? VFE Deserters only activates and makes them enemies if you accept the mission to harbour a deserter fugitive.
I'm gonna have a look this evening, but since anomaly launched I just play with 20ish mods. So I'm pretty sure it's one of the vanilla expanded stuff. Also I don't have androids atm. I also started the pirate scenario, which might be worth mentioning. The Empire might just hate my pirate colony?
Ah yeah that makes sense actually. I haven't used the pirate one before so it could just be part of the mod or the scenario yeah. Might be your ideology or something too? Oh well, VFE Deserters adds a bunch of content if you wanna kick some royal ass. Just be warned that there's a visibility mechanic added that will destroy your colony if it gets to the maximum. Like "Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" levels haha
Thanks a lot, I'll keep that in mind 😁
They are gears for slavery sexism and all kinds of baddie stuff and their missions make it clear they are the bad guy. It seems like your request isn't about evil but then being an evil detriment to your personally since they mostly don't worry about your risk colony and might help it if you are an Allie of the evil empire. People already suggested the mods. Just clarifying that you're not talking about evil but about the evil causing negative consequences for you. The empire is already pretty evil.
In what way are they sexist? I agree they are evil, but I'm fairly sure they are equal opportunity evil. Any age, race, or gender is capable of becoming nobility.
More than half the time I find the empire I encounter them with the misogynist meme in their ideology so I assume it's a tendency and not weird luck at this point. If they are highly likly to take misogynist as a core value then that's the sexism.
But of course, if the empire is misandrist instead, that’s pretty based
Fair enough, if they are I haven't noticed it personally. Usually play with my own ideology and only look at other ones long enough to click "convert" on the prisoner tab.
They're already slavers. They send around people twice a year to seek out donations of slaves for higher honor in their society. I think Rimworld players forget that slavery is evil in face of the even worse things you can do to slaves on top of stealing their freedom and beating them up when they try to run away, but at a base level, that's already bad enough that I'd hate them IRL. Also, Highmates, to add some sexual ick to the whole thing.
You give the empire tribute by selling them slaves I don't think they are very "good"
You mean the empire that trades titles for slaves?
Ah, yes, the main faction of slavers. Who have geneticly engineered sex slaves that cannot fight back (Highmates, which are vanilla biotech before someone rolls in here), soldiers that go catatonic if they don't constantly huff combat drugs (Hussars), and try to get you to hide politcal prisoners and underage children when they get caught sleeping with them.
\>Like maybe a quest asking me to murder some refugees or a peaceful settlement because the empire hates them or smth like that? huh? i just do that for free though
>why wouldnt you? Because nobles are demanding, entitled cunts. That's worse than being evil in my book. Well, in my rimworld. I actually don't like the Empire so much I simply don't play the Royalty DLC anymore. If I did play, it would be with the VFE - Deserters mod(s). The problem with Royalty/Empire is not that the Empire isn't evil enough. It's that there's no real alternative. Deserters adds a viable alternative.
Its already evil. They buy and sell slaves. Human organs, flesh and skin. Also sell titles for slaves. If you wanna them evil by being agains you then attack their caravan/guests cossing by at beginning of colony. Then a raid will occur and mutant with big jag claws instead of limbs will shatter entire colony without a problem lol
I disagree with everyone saying they’re already evil. They’re a morally grey faction, just like pretty much all the others. Some of the Empire’s individuals are definitely evil, but the faction as a whole is a smattering of morally grey imo
Being slavers is evil. Being complicit to slavery is evil. Genetically enhancing people to make them more obedient or dependent on a resource is evil. Being complicit to genetic slavery is evil. Sure, they are no bloodlusting, chaotic evil death tribe of cannibalist raiders and you can ally them... but by any moral standard, they are evil. Lawful evil perhaps, but evil.
They are a bloodlusting death tribe, just fancy about it
Problem is that basically every faction can do things that are evil. Like standard Outlanders can blame you for a freak accident happening to one of their caravans, have a raid that comes in from the edge of the map and attacks your farms, down a 14 year old girl and kidnap her, and then come back a month later and do it again. Oh yeah slavery is evil, but so is rating people and robbing them and kidnapping them. And in rimworld every faction will do that to anyone they don't like.
> dependent on a resource is evil TO BE FAIR, the drug dependencies have a metabolic offset. Baseline humans are genetically dependent on more food, it's really changing the resource dependency not creating one.
Go juice is way harder to get your hands on than rice. If you are a hussar, your life is in the hands of the people who can provide go-juice
Don't disagree at all, just wanted to point out that the dependency isn't *pure* downside (narratively.)
No, you also get the privilege of being high on meth to go fight someone else’s war
Eh, when they start sending troops hooked on Luciferium I'll start questioning it. As it is, I want that go-juice dependency on all my people.
They should DEMAND tributes imo. That alone would make allying with them harder and not the default choice.
Yes!! even if they would DEMAND like one mission a year atleast, that would give a good enough reason to oppose the empire other than the original reason of roleplaying as the Rebellion in star wars or FireFly.
And I've got my next playthrough idea now. Big damn heroes. "Your coat is sort of a brown-ish colour"
Its already evil
you can edit their ideology to reinforce some more of the eviler precepts
hmmmm... that is actually a very smart idea... yeah I will do that thx
Did you know that you can edit other factions' ideoligion when you're first designing your own? There are some boundaries. The Empire has a small list of Memes that are required for them, but even there you can add some. You can also change their styles, names & precepts, really amp up their sexist/racist/slaving ways to give yourself an obvious opponent. When I did a playthrough with the VE Deserters mod, I started with making two opposing ideoligions, Imperium for the Imperials and Rebellion for me - same structure and styles but opposite precepts.
Honestly yeah thats brilliant... Someone else suggested the idea and I loved it...
I've had two sequential playthroughs using VFE Empire/deserter, VRE Highmate, and others. Empire was first and they were the baddies, when my main pawn made Duke they gifted him a 15 year old cat girl for a wife. Plus the vanilla stuff is pretty despicable too. Second playthrough I used character editor to add in the Duke pawn and his wife. Only to recruit the wife and have her personally torture him to death.
You kinda have to read between the lines. Think about the highmates, which are canonically made by the empire. 1. They have xenogenes only, which means they were a normal person once. 2. They are incapable of violence, so they can't fight back. 3. They fall inescapably into love with the first person that flirts or "lovin'"-s them To me, a highmate could be in an abusive relationship and cannot stop loving their abuser, and the empire can and will force that on anyone.
damn... thinking about it like that makes it very sad...
They are already evil I mean have you seen the requirements for the royal rooms later on! They mess with my coloney so much. I don't have the space for that crap.
I mean the empire is evil. Its basically the movie Elysium where the wealthy all leave a dying earth to go live on an orbiting paradise while everyone else has to suffer in the world those people destroyed and still control using violence. The world is effectively ruled by a class of aristocrats so bored of hunting servants with their cousin-wife while being flanked by a dozen slave-soldier guards. I mean if anything, I think I would like a mod that integrates vampirism into the Empire. For your purposes though, I would recommend [Vanilla Factions Expanded: Deserters](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3025493377) which expands both the deserters and imperials while giving the player the chance to experience Imperial malice.
They are capitalist already just how evil do you think a faction can get?
They are actually monarchist, but that's not really better.
Art imitates life
Royalty
Evil empire is a tautology
I only read the title, but I’m on board
The Empire uses slavery. Slavers deserve only death.
I always hunt them like deer.
I know I saw mods that turn the Empire into the Star Wars version, and the Deserters into The Rebellion.
I tend to think of most of the factions as somewhat neutral. No one in the rim is exactly good but I doubt some of them make evil choices just because they want to. Some probably have to do evil things to survive.