The Huari political ideology must be very bizarre.

[JohnBWatson]

The Huari are described as a long - suffering society, raided ruthlessly by the Sung because of their inability to retaliate effectively, and following a strange and unorthodox religion. This, supposedly, has made them paranoid about foreign factions, making them attack the player on sight.

However, they seem to be perfectly okay with the myriad other factions in the area.

Brutal marauders who slaughter innocents by the thousand for the sake of attaining luxury and power?

I'm sure they're just misunderstood.

Corrupt drug smugglers who ruin countless lives for the sake of profit?

Captains of industry!

Savage slavedrivers who kill through their armies of savage combat thralls?

But they look so cute next to their little zoanthrope pets!

And yet...

A peaceful republic with an impeccable human rights record that dedicates millions of credits to fighting your sworn enemies?

Foreigners! Kill them all, and raid their trade routes whenever possible!

And...

A responsible, orderly group of well run corporations that ruthlessly polices its own ranks for corrupt and dangerous practices and, indeed, manufactures the weapons fielded by your very fleet?

Greedy plutocrats! Wipe them out!

In seriousness, is the 'Light' they follow supposed to be Oracus in disguise? It would explain the vision that was clearly intended to dissuade the Pilgrim, as well as their counter-intuitive alliance pattern.

If not, a preferable setup for them would be to treat all factions(save for the Sung) as they treat the player, and for the CW to behave towards them as the Black Market does towards most other factions. It makes a lot more sense, and they'd be a lot more sympathetic if they didn't go around killing innocent people just trying to make a living while crying about how persecuted they are.

[Ultimate Chicken]

The Huari will NOT attack bases on their own. I had a Commonwealth-aligned Fuel Station pop up very near a Huari base. It was perpetually divested of its escort but it lives. Patrol radius of Hurins can take them to other bases but Hurins will never try to blow up bases (unless shot at by said building), just the guards.

You have to think of the Huari this way: like the Commonwealth even they know enough that they should not engage what they cannot afford to handle. The Black Market routinely hires powerful mercs*, the Heliothorpe are aggressive, the Ranx are both all but impervious to their weapons and aggressive, Outlaws have heavy resists to their weapons... not to mention the Huari haven't exactly ramped up production of their Slam Cannon boats yet. So guess what, these factions are usually able to build near a Huari base without fear of retaliation. Usually.

In the same vein, they can't get rid of the Huari easily either. Maybe the Ranx can take'em, but... half of the BM, Outlaw and Heliothorpe - especially Heliothorpe - can get OS or TS by Mark III, which every Huari facility seems to be armed with. A Hurin has 10x the firepower of a Meth Enforcer. Not to mention that for the most part, even the Akan 30 can't crack a Superconducting Shield fast enough. The BM will most probably hire a merc with Hi-Flux to deal with Huari unfriendly fire*, which (although not shown in the game) can get expensive! So despite being able to build near Huari facilities, they can't really get rid of the Huari either - if they're not lucky, it can cost them a hell lot.

Depending on how you look at it, its like building in Ferian territory. The Ferians are even more dangerous than the Huari - but Outlaw Miners still build there and don't actively try to clear the infestation, even if the Ferians are their competitiors. Ferians are LETHAL when provoked, and in-universe it could be even more unsettling dealing with their ships buzzing all over the place (as compared to having Huari bear down on you), BUT they dun care - tending to ignore their ships getting "accidentally'd", and they draw enemy fire like the Huari do.

It's an uneasy truce.

*This happened in my LP. I parked in a Black Market and was within range of a Huari base. That tried to shoot me down, but "accidentally" the Black Market instead. BM took offense; there was this mercenary Manticore parked nearby, and it went ape with Hi-Flux. This instantaneously caused the death of the Huari base in 2 shots. So yes, the Huari do get annoyed with its neighbors, and vice versa. Try doing THAT with a Ventari and Sung base next to each other, they will continue to shoot at you. >_>'

Apropos of this topic, Teratons do not try to blow up Phobos btw, even if they'd gladly blow up Polar convoys. >_>'

[JohnBWatson]

The Huari will NOT attack bases on their own. I had a Commonwealth-aligned Fuel Station pop up very near a Huari base. It was perpetually divested of its escort but it lives. Patrol radius of Hurins can take them to other bases but Hurins will never try to blow up bases (unless shot at by said building), just the guards.

That's a known glitch. Unarmed stations will never be targeted by the AI.

You have to think of the Huari this way: like the Commonwealth even they know enough that they should not engage what they cannot afford to handle. The Black Market routinely hires powerful mercs*, the Heliothorpe are aggressive, the Ranx are both all but impervious to their weapons and aggressive, Outlaws have heavy resists to their weapons... not to mention the Huari haven't exactly ramped up production of their Slam Cannon boats yet. So guess what, these factions are usually able to build near a Huari base without fear of retaliation. Usually.

In the same vein, they can't get rid of the Huari easily either. Maybe the Ranx can take'em, but... half of the BM, Outlaw and Heliothorpe - especially Heliothorpe - can get OS or TS by Mark III, which every Huari facility seems to be armed with. A Hurin has 10x the firepower of a Meth Enforcer. Not to mention that for the most part, even the Akan 30 can't crack a Superconducting Shield fast enough. The BM will most probably hire a merc with Hi-Flux to deal with Huari unfriendly fire*, which (although not shown in the game) can get expensive! So despite being able to build near Huari facilities, they can't really get rid of the Huari either - if they're not lucky, it can cost them a hell lot.

Depending on how you look at it, its like building in Ferian territory. The Ferians are even more dangerous than the Huari - but Outlaw Miners still build there and don't actively try to clear the infestation, even if the Ferians are their competitiors. Ferians are LETHAL when provoked, and in-universe it could be even more unsettling dealing with their ships buzzing all over the place (as compared to having Huari bear down on you), BUT they dun care - tending to ignore their ships getting "accidentally'd", and they draw enemy fire like the Huari do.

The issue with that is that the Huari's justification for attacking the player and the Commonwealth is that they are xenophobic and paranoid. They do not gain anything from wantonly killing CW pilots, they claim that they're simply defending their territory from interlopers.

Apropos of this topic, Teratons do not try to blow up Phobos btw, even if they'd gladly blow up Polar convoys. >_>'

On the topic of Teratons, one wonders why the Ranx aren't hostile to them. Their weapons appear to be designed for taking them out, and the entire reason that the Ranx seceded was that they were tired of the CW being soft on the Neo - humans.

[Song]

Technically, the Hauri are at peace with the commonwealth.....they recently signed a treaty or something like that, if you sit in on Parliament at St. Katherines Arcology.


They just are not particularly keen on people flying close to the last refuges of their wiped-out civilisation. The AI coding is a little borked, but that's hardly an uncommon thing in 1.5

[sun1404]

Don't the Huari fire at anything within their range? Not stations, but ships. Any ships?

[PM]

Huari do not shoot at you unless you fire* recently or stray too close to one of their bases.

* Press fire button. Can be awkward if your weapon is a utility device (e.g., force field) that needs to use weapon interface to work.

[sun1404]

But they do that to anything, don't they? Anything goes near a Huari Fortress, they shoot it down.

[StealthX051]

I think Huari shoot anything that gets too close or shoots one of their ships. The Huari seem pretty out of date. Slam cannons, even though still pretty powerful, are old. Howitzers, too. Their designs seem very cubical and stone like, hinting that they have been around for a long time.

[sun1404]

Yes, Hurin Destroyers are old Huari designs. The Huari Empire got destroyed by the Sung, their majority enslaved. Presumably they do not have the resources to research or design new ships, and can only manufacture the old design. Or perhaps all those ships were of the old fleet, and they can't build anything new.

[catfighter]

Yes, Hurin Destroyers are old Huari designs. The Huari Empire got destroyed by the Sung, their majority enslaved. Presumably they do not have the resources to research or design new ships, and can only manufacture the old design. Or perhaps all those ships were of the old fleet, and they can't build anything new.

Then how are their endless reinforcements explained? It seems logical, though, given their lack of shipyards/drydocks.

[Ultimate Chicken]

Yes, Hurin Destroyers are old Huari designs. The Huari Empire got destroyed by the Sung, their majority enslaved. Presumably they do not have the resources to research or design new ships, and can only manufacture the old design. Or perhaps all those ships were of the old fleet, and they can't build anything new.

The Hurin seems to be like those ghetto bolt-on "Technicals" from middle-eastern armies, which look old BUT are actually quite new and assembled from off-the-shelf parts (reconditioned Pirate vessels with second hand blast weapons maybe?). Possibly a vessel made to tailor to limited/skewed production capabilities; they can make/purchase COMPONENTS reliably, but they don't have enough shipyards to support a larger fleet of smaller craft, so the Hurin is the best use of that limited capability as it is.

I'd say its par for the course for a faction that got schooled in "Sung" Zi's Art of War, and are trying desperately to catch up.

Thing is, the Huari seem to have enough research resources to reverse engineer or counter Sung technology somewhat. Their signature, the Superconducting Shield Generator, for one... is a good countermeasure to Shi3ldsD0wn all things considered, having no smash recovery time at all and near instantaneous regen.

Also, if you visited Huaramarca, you'll find that they DO manage to wrest slave coffins from the clutches of the Sung... and [spoiler] while they don't always manage to snap the former slaves out of the matrix, they DO know enough to put the ones they couldn't awaken to good use.[/spoiler]

I've been suspecting the Superconducting Shield is a Lazarus-derivative, developed as a stop-gap to combat the Sung - and the Lazarus is actually Huari in origin, and it was the Sung's bypassing of the Lazarus that turned the tide in the first place. Perhaps they were once renowned for contributions to shielding, and merely don't have any weapons experience whatsoever.

[sun1404]

The reinforcements can be explained as ships the Huari still have left from their old fleet. They were once systems-spanning empire, a big fleet isn't too much to ask from them. There may be a lot of ships kept in maintenance in the refuges. But all these I speculate, of course.

Regarding the Lazarus... I think there's a lore saying it's developed by either CW or CH.

[StealthX051]

More Speculation: Even if the Huari had a massive fleet, why do they have only one ship type? No fighters, no logistics, no medium sized vessels.

[sun1404]

They should have other ship types, but perhaps fighters are not viable for them anymore, with the limited resources they have, especially people. A larger ship tend to be more maintainable than a lot of smaller ships. They also require less pilots.

Or perhaps, all smaller ships were spent in the war, and only the destroyers remain.

[JohnBWatson]

The reinforcements can be explained as ships the Huari still have left from their old fleet. They were once systems-spanning empire, a big fleet isn't too much to ask from them. There may be a lot of ships kept in maintenance in the refuges. But all these I speculate, of course.

Regarding the Lazarus... I think there's a lore saying it's developed by either CW or CH.

Considering virtually every faction in the game has infinite reinforcements, it's safe to say it's an abstraction.

With regard to the Huari only having one ship, that is fairly problematic, due to the well known flaw of large slow ships with no long-ranged weaponry. However, the fact that they tend to stay near their stations and the howitzers mounted on said stations makes this less of a problem. The Huari don't come across as a particularly intellectual culture, so it's not hard to believe that they simply built up their fleet on a single class of destroyer.

Also, UC's comment on shielding is interesting. If anyone's got G.O.D. installed, try checking the manufacturer of the superconducting shield and the Lazarus. Lots of hostile factions field close knockoffs of Corporate products, a good example being the Sung and their Bushido weaponry.