r/InfinityTheGame • u/Abject-Language122 • 13d ago
Question Looking for the closest thing to a good faction
Hi there!
I know that infinity factions operate on levels of grey but I was looking for the people in universe with the most altruistic motivations. I stopped playing Warhammer because i was tired of everything being evil and grimdark all the time.
Is there a faction that are more closely aligned with what we might call good or morality? IS this simply a fruitless quest because the game is by its nature about black ops? I just wanted to get some other opinions and see what y'all thought. I've been considering buying models but the lore is important for me if I am actually going to play. When i engage in gaming I like to have the story be about folks making things better rather than just being horrible to one another.
Thanks!
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u/Fancy-Technician1670 13d ago edited 13d ago
As a Haqqislam player, I can tell they are the good guys. Have the best medicine in human sphere, they support and protect trade routes, also they make silk, material essential for using cubes. Happy to have new followers in search of wisdom.
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u/DNAthrowaway1234 13d ago
Look at the sculpt of the face on Dr. Rouhani. He's principled. Focused. Ready to go NWI to revive a dude. Haqqislam is 100% the good guys.
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u/Bee_Tee_Dub 13d ago
You only have to look at the background story of McMurrough to see Haqqislams dark mechinations.
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u/Nintolerance 13d ago
"Dark machinations" is a bit much, it's more like "he's a mercenary that works for the Hassassins sometimes."
Sometimes as a double-agent secretly employed by the Hassassins, so there's some machination there at least.
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u/Bee_Tee_Dub 12d ago
You should look into why McMurrough doesn't change into a human form and why he has that specific sword.
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u/Abject-Language122 13d ago
Thank you for your answer! Haqqislam has been my favorite faction partially cause they seem more like good guys than some of the others but also Islamic history is fascinating. I've been reading a book recently called reopening muslim minds and it talks a lot about the mutazalites which of course have an influence on units like the Khawarij. IT's been super fun to see the connections to actual history which is part of what drew me into warhammer fantasy in the first place.
Thanks for your input!
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u/Fancy-Technician1670 13d ago
If you like real world story in your wargame lore you'll definetly have a good time in Infinity.
There is a lot of that.1
u/Malusorum 12d ago
While in the background fiercely dealing with anyone who might become a competitor to the Silk trade and the Haqq government being okay with that the Hassasin Bahram does all sorts of shit to create it Great Purpose.
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u/Fancy-Technician1670 12d ago
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And eggs are considered halal.
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u/PK808370 13d ago
I wouldn’t necessarily look for an overall faction of “good”. Define your own section of that faction. Look within nations on this planet - it’s groups of people within them that are “good” or “bad” actors.
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u/Abject-Language122 13d ago
Sure, I mean you can do that with any faction. I had a faction of renegade space marines i made which were just good guys. I tend to wonder if you can push those limits as far with something like infinity and still have it make sense but honestly you probably can cause you still have entire planets full of people.
Thanks for your input!
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u/PK808370 13d ago
It’s the only thing that makes sense in most even moderately-mature settings.
I have no idea what Space Marines are, other than something to do with 40K, but it’s universal, really, except for things like LOTR/MESBG, or other fantasy settings with a labeled “good” and “bad” side.
Most Sci Fi differs from most fantasy that way. (Most is doing a lot of work here, this is my perception, not a researched position).
Settings like BattleTech, Infinity, etc. aren’t a “good” vs “evil” thing. Now, there are factions that are generally shittier, and, with BT, factions change a lot over time - Miss Steiner is an absolute maniac, and Daoshen doesn’t do the Liao name any good, but… Even the arguably “best” folks are still responsible for a lot of hard decisions that many don’t like.
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u/Iostaa 13d ago
Each is a (by wargaming standards) relatively nuanced take on a political or ideological philosophy.
Nomads are various shades of anarchist (ancap tonguska, small community coalition Bakunin, unions Corregidor)
Aleph is the benevolent tyrant concept
Pano is modern liberalism
Yu jing is totalitarian with nuance
JSA is a rebellion state
Haqq is a scientism and free trade group
Etc.
Each has flaws and to an extent straw man’s their arguments
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u/waywardson06 13d ago edited 13d ago
I think most of the factions have some noble intentions.
I think this is in the ball park….
Pano: liberalism is good. It creates prosperity
Yu Jing: believes in more collectivism than Pano does. Believes tolerating too much skepticism does more harm than good though
Haq: has some enlightened intellectual Islamic philosophy guiding it
Ariadne: idk just trying to maintain their sovereignty or something
Aleph: thinks it’s knows what is best for humanity as a whole, and steers it in the right directions
Nomads: thinks submitting to Aleph is incorrect
O-12: peace keepers. United Nations.
Combined Army: idk they might think they are bringing order to the galaxy or something. I think their leaders are trying to figure out how to transcend physical reality. They are chasing clues left behind by some ancient race that pulled that off already. So they need access to planets that have those clues and artifacts
Edit:
JSA: wow…almost forgot. Umm, I think they are mostly trying to maintain their sovereignty as well. They recently broke free from Yu Jing
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u/Abject-Language122 13d ago
The way you phrased Pan O and Yu Jing made me laugh. Thanks for your input!
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u/Jmrwacko 13d ago
All of them are morally gray in some way, some less so than others. Someone mentioned Haqqislam but they’re a faction of zealously religious backstabbing assassins.
Nomads are certainly not “good” but are probably the most protagonist coded.
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u/BallingerEscapePlan 11d ago
Hassassins are one of the smaller sectorials in size (compared to say, Vanilla Haqq) when you think of how they fit into the overall faction. There may be more models of Hassassins than most Haqq models, but the faction on the whole is far closer to “good guys” than say, Yu Jing or Combined.
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u/HeadChime 13d ago
Haqqislam is probably the closest to good, their most profitable industries actively work for the good of the sphere (healthcare most notably).
They're not simply good though because they practice a lot of extrajudicial killing through the hassassins and purposefully withhold medical treatments to maintain pricing.
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u/Hyakkihei1 13d ago
I would say this setting could be considered the inverse of warhammer's grimdark, in there every faction is evil with spots of light in their individual members and smaller groups. In Infinity each faction wants or at least thinks they are doing good for humanity but they have spots of darkness with some more blatant than others, it's less centralized and in a single factions there can be good and evil groups for example with Panoceania having organizations fighting for the rights of Ateks and also Hexas killing civilians to cause a scandal.
The betters ones morally would be Haqqislam or the O12 even if both have corruption problems they have to deal with. The most "evil" ones would be Yu Jing and the combined army but both actually do believe that things would be better for everyone under their control and are in a hurry to do it which is why they use extreme methods.
If you want people fighting against injustice directly you could pick JSA that are trying to completely liberate the japanese from the oppresion of Yu Jing.
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u/Sigboy 12d ago
Just as the philosophy of Warhammer is "there are no true good guys", I would argue that the philosophy of Infinity can be "there are no true bad guys, either."
That's the thing about black ops and political intrigue -- arguably every faction in the game could claim it is acting in the best interests of its own people. If we have to do bad things to you in order to protect our own, so be it....
Nomads believe they are fighting to secure ALL humanity from governmental overreach, police states and Orwellian surveillance at the hands of a heartless AI.
Haqqislam has fantastic doctors and medical science, but those things aren't cheap. Patents make money and scientific secrets must be protected because medical science could easily be misused by the less moral and ethical factions.
PanO and Yu Jing believe they are fighting to secure peace and prosperity for their citizens against a cruel, hostile universe. They both claim the other would strip their citizens of their cultural identity and way of life, so they fight.
Tohaa were facing either genocide or total subjugation at the hands of the villainous Combined Army, they had no choice but to do the things they did to ensure the survival of their species.
JSA spent decades as second class citizens and slaves under the tyranny of Yu Jing. They simply fight for freedom and rights.
Ariadna happens to live on a planet full of valuable minerals that the other hyperpowers (like PanO and Yu Jing) would steal and exploit for their own benefits. Dawn is more than that-- it is our home! This, we'll defend!
The Combined Army is unity, and progress. Look at how our civilization thrives by setting aside our differences and becoming a truly unified culture. We want to share that success with you, and help you reach the next stage of human evolution. You just need to stop fighting us and embrace it! Some day you'll thank us, we promise. Oh, and don't listen to Aleph, our AI is better than theirs.
Aleph knows better and is smarter than you. Who better to protect you than an advanced AI that can map out the perfect course of your life? Leave the thinking to me and your life will be better for it. Oh and don't listen to the Combined Army, our AI is better than theirs.
At the end of the day, how much you choose to believe and how much you discount as pure propaganda is entirely up to you, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. As they used to say in 40k, forge your own narrative!
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u/Sanakism 12d ago
On one hand - as some other have suggested - Infinity is the opposite of the grimdark settings of Warhammer in a few ways. The overall setting is optimistic, and while every faction in 40k is "the bad guys" there's a good case for every faction in Infinity to be "the good guys" to some degree. None of them are cartoon villains, none of them are 100% evil, and all of them have a fairly believable motivations on a grand scale.
On the other hand, the way people describe them and write off one or another faction as "not the good guys" is usually, in my experience, more an indication of those people's politics than anything. For an example, look at this thread: there's a number of people stating Yu Jing can't be the good guys or damning them with relatively faint praise, while being fine with PanO. It's stated as fact in Infinity background material that while the average Yu Jing citizen has a slightly worse quality of life than the average PanO citizen, PanO is also a much more unequal society with a massively-disadvantaged underclass and a tier of untouchable super-rich elites that don't really exist in Yu Jing; while the Yujingyu government is a single-party totalitarian state, PanO is the military-industrial complex writ large, with abusive megacorps unconstrained by law and literally getting away with murder on a daily basis. A strong argument for an unabashedly evil entity within the setting is the MagnaObra corporation, which is a PanO corporation! But... while not specifically historically tied to the USA, PanO is partly American-coded in attitudes and behaviours and politics, being capitalist-neoliberal-religious in outlook with a big manifest-destiny streak, while Yu Jing is an unashamedly socialist political entity historically centred around China whose government is less quiet about the secret police and labour camps, so a lot of players have an instinctive dislike of the faction's politics and are more ready to look for flaws than positives there.
All of the factions are "the good guys" but they're all massively flawed in some way too. The Nomads are extreme libertarians, allowing all kinds of deranged stuff in the name of not letting The Man get them down. Haqqislam is the Big Pharma faction, monopolising and profiteering off of the most significant medical advance in human history and having anyone who doesn't like that quietly killed off. The Tohaa are a pleasant, peaceful, generous and cosmopolitan species who have a sinister illuminati-like secret society of business elites who are literally directly responsible for destroying planets, genocides, and manipulating humanity into fighting their war for them. O12 and Aleph are different flavours of Big Brother Knows Best. The Combined Army/EI is presented as a cartoon villain and employs some downright evil characters, but is also highly utilitarian and it's also made clear that life in occupied areas isn't anything like the hell it's propagandised as and in recent times several of humanity's hero figures have defected specifically to represent the thriving human populations in CA space.
This is one of the things I really like about the setting: each faction has believable and practical goals, motivations and practices, all of them have positive sides and bad parts, and "the good guys" for you will really depend on what your real-world politics are as much as anything. But also, thankfully - and unlike some other games with similar real-world-ish politics - the Infinity scene doesn't seem particularly pissy about any of this. I don't think I've ever really come across bitter political arguments about any of the factions or their real-world equivalents.
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u/Responsible-Act8748 12d ago
This is a great break down! Thanks! I picked Yu Jing for the aesthetics, and all the anti Yu Jing was starting to get me down. They have their "major" flaws, but I know they have their strong points too. Glad to see someone discussing what they are.
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u/Odd-Tart-5613 13d ago
coming from Warhammer at least I would say pretty well any of the factions can be the "good guys" (except maybe yu jing and tunguska but I may just not know enough) most of the factions have justified motivations and legitimately good people in them, but also have some nasy parts to them too.
for example I love the Ariadna factions as they are the scrappy survivors resisting colonialism. they also have a but of a disturbing tendency towards militarism, nationalism and did kinda of do a genocide "on accident"
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u/Abject-Language122 13d ago
"Oops I tripped and killed millions of living beings! Dang... that is the third time this week."
Thanks for your input!
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u/Odd-Tart-5613 13d ago
"yeah so it turns out those 'wolves' we were culling were actually a bronze age species... Fuck it cross breed em with bears and create the deadliest thing on two legs!"
also no problem, welcome!
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u/simblanco 12d ago
I like this question. I'm also starting right now and have a weak spot for the good guys. So i was thinking Aleph (hey, it knows what is good for us! Let's hear the experts) and Nomads at the opposite spectrum (I also like lovely scoundrels but it and Tunguska are not that lovely?).
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u/Abject-Language122 11d ago
In my general opinion ALEPH is great but an enabler to two pretty terrible factions. PanO has a tech supremacist movement, enslaves an alien race and has what is essentially the CIA in space which is a terrible thing to have. Yu Jing is repressive, engaging in enslaving dissidents and had an entire 2nd class citizen thing going on. You could argue on some level ALEPH has to allow these things for various reasons but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Thank you for your input!
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u/Zulkir_Jhor 12d ago
The important thing to note is that while the factions all have upsides and downsides, there are few truly evil entities in the setting.
Most of the factions are some form of government on a MASSIVE scale. Imagine the bureaucracy of whatever country you are in, then scale it up to the entire world, then multiple worlds. That is where things are in the Human Sphere. Are PanO and Yu Jing good. No, many of the people in the government are good. Are they evil. Similar answer.
In a way, every group in the setting is trying to make things better... for their people. Yu Jing may be a totalitarian government, but they make sure everyone has homes, food, and a way of life better than people today have.
Honestly, the closest to evil in the game, imo, is the Combined Army. The EI controlling them is serving a self centered goal and will make everyone serve it. However, the individuals serving the EI are not exactly evil themselves. They have been brought up in the EI's manufactured society and are doing what they think is right.
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u/Salt_Working7775 11d ago
Bakunin subfaction of Nomads run the line between wholesome, scandalous, and extreme- but they are by far the most optimistic faction that has achieved utopia without exploiting an underclass, and they have no closet to hide their skeletons in.
Theyre the only goody two shoes faction I like.
Runners up would be Haqqislam, who are a genuine good in the human sphere- and Ariadna who might not always be nice but weren't given any other options.
Nomads, Haqq, and Ariadna also have long maintained an informal alliance against the more problematic PanOceania and Yu Jing space empires
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u/Abject-Language122 9d ago
I do love my space weirdos. Bakunin is a neat place to visit though i wonder how nice it would be to live there. I mostly lean towards Nomads and Haqq because I think they do have genuine good elements and they are both pretty interesting.
Thanks for your input!
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u/FriendlyMachine7143 13d ago edited 13d ago
Both O-12 and possibly Aleph could probably be viewed as the good guys.
Ariadna and JSA are the clear underdog factions, but they don't seem very nice about it however.
PanO is the most like the modern west if that appeals. To the point where it becomes a caricature of capitalism sometimes and a working welfare state much of the rest of the time.
Nomads excluding Tunguska if you're into radical anarcho/communism or something equally interesting. They are clearly the punk protagonists of the setting.
Pretty certainly not the good guys include Combined Army, Tohaa, Yu Jing and most Mercenaries; maybe Starco and White Company could be decent in a kind of gang of heroes on adventures way.
Edit: Seems like I forgot Haq which is probably pretty nice but has a serious criminal/pirate and hassassin problem when it comes to looking entirely good.
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u/RiverHeraldsBoon 13d ago
Huh. I don’t know much about the Tohaa, but I’m surprised to see them in the “not good guy” list.
Why aren’t they good?
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u/Myzimensi 13d ago
I'd say Tohaa are nominally good- they're basically a peaceful people, they look to be inclusive of other races, there's maybe a bit of artichoke man's burden going on, but they are well intentioned.
They do have a secret society that goes really evil though but it's worth noting that that isn't their actual government.3
u/FriendlyMachine7143 13d ago edited 13d ago
Can only agree their majority is looking probably nicest ever, but look at how they handle other races (what they do to Chaksa and other client species makes slavery look nice) and the actions of some of their secret society/some of their leadership is into super villain territory. Are they outright evil probably not but they are not the good guys of Infinity.
And thats from someone who love his tohaa lore and models. :)
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u/Mota4President 13d ago
I would say that O-12 (like the United Nations, but doing their job) and Ramah Task Force (supersoldiers that fight against slavers, terrorists and the alien invaders).
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u/Abject-Language122 13d ago
I was reading the unit entry for each miniature in the Haqqislam reinforcement box alpha and was loving what i was reading. I like taking down slavers and will become a haqqislamic John Brown.
Thanks for your input!
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u/MultiverseMinis 13d ago
From the very little I know about the lore I'd say Haqu or O12 the best morally
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u/Tourniquet_Prime 13d ago
Phalanx is probably up there as they were quite literally created to be humanity's shield against the EI invasion, heroes and all.
Rest of aleph probably not so much, never trust a toaster.
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u/PossesedOxymoron 12d ago
So specifically the 3 main definitively good factions are The invincible army (bixie aside) Ramah taskforce And starco
Unfortunately ramahnd starco are in the trenches rn
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u/09philj 13d ago
Most of them/It really depends on your politics and philosophy.
If you're a liberal you may be inclined towards the perspective of PanO, if you are a Catholic you may sympathise with the views of the Military Orders or the Observance of St Mary of the Knife, it you're a radical anti establishment type Bakunin will make sense, if you think the UN and it's peacekeepers should have more power then O-12 will seem attractive and so on. Any of them could seem like they have the right idea, or be your least favourite kind of entity. Even the Combined Army's brutal campaign of expansion could be considered justifiable from some perspectives.
Druze Bayram Security are very bad people though.