Building on the changes to Factions made in 1.1, in update 1.2 I will be introducing Faction Privileges into the game in order to enhance the gameplay for factions and make them a little more dynamic, while also providing more insight into what they want and how the political landscape of the Age of Space operates.
Here you can see that the Imperial Navy has quite a few things I can "request" from them, which have a long list of effects. Each faction has around 5 of these, which range in their function. While some factions, like the Imperialists, have obvious strengths, others are more well rounded. The Libertarian Faction, for example, can give bonuses to your economy, military, or research capabilities.
However, you must choose your privileges wisely. Privileges are limited based on the power of the faction in question, and generally speaking most factions will have 0-2 available privileges. It can be viable to concentrate lots of power in a single faction to get all those juicy bonuses, but there are also significant drawbacks should they get too big for their boots!
Factions can also control regions now, and this helps specify which regions will revolt when the faction in question becomes disloyal. You can also notice that each faction has distinct effects on the regions they control, some of which are provided by the privileges you grant them.
Faction regional ownership increases their power and their disloyalty, but the latter effect is significantly reduced by placing them in the Ruling Coalition.
You'll notice that a lot of these bonuses are a bit extreme. That is because I am rebalancing the game to focus more on factions and upgrades, and less on technology related effects. I think this has a positive effect on the engagement with the game as it rewards people who pay attention to the various systems at work. Keep in mind that every faction, and by extension every country, has access to bonuses of a similar power level, and so there will still be balance.