Increasing the amount of interaction between players.

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    Space. It's really, really big and stuff.

    Space is supposed to be big, the issue is there's not enough of everything to fill the universe. Traveling is boring, yet it's what we spend most of the game doing.

    As a pirate, I spend a lot of time searching for targets. Considering canvassing a 25 sector block means I have to scan over 15,000 sectors. That's a lot of time doing nothing. But what can we do about it?

    1. Have a universe size limit.

    Have a server option to limit the number of sectors the game will generate. Say, if you enter 50, the sector numbers will go from -50 to 50. This can be hard limit or soft limit.

    - Hard Limit: When you reach the end, the game forces you to turn around and tells you that you cannot go any further.

    - Soft limit: When you reach the end, the game will warn you that you've reached the limit. You can keep going but nothing will spawn. No planets, shops, stations, etc.

    This has three purposes, first it keeps players within a play zone, making diplomacy that much more important. It increases competition for resources; increasing teamwork and conflict. And finally, it keeps the usage of server resources down.

    Is that too little space? Consider this: a setting of 25 means there will be 125,000 sectors. Considering most servers have less than 100 regularly active players; that's over 1250 sectors per player.

    2. Limit the number of factions.
    Add a server option to limit the maximum number of factions. Furthermore, add server option to determine the price to create a faction. Right now, everyone and their grandmother can make a faction instantly. And seriously, why bother joining an existing faction if I can make my own and be completely safe?

    Have you seen the Sun-World server? They have so many factions (most of them inactive) that looking at the faction hub causes the FPS to drop massively.

    This has several purposes. It encourages players to form larger factions; especially newcomers, Is useful for RP servers, and fewer untouchable faction homes; which leads me to the next point.

    3. Limit the number of items a faction can claim.
    At the cost of 10,000-ish credits, I can lock down a station or planet and make it completely untouchable. I can then hide a faction block on every planet or station I come across. They'd be forced to destroy a faction block that they can't see, most likely ruining the object in the process.

    If you'd like, you can place a hard limit on how many ships/stations/planets can be claimed. Or add a soft limit, where you can purchase additional "slots" (Ship, Station, Planet) up to a certain limit. Prices can be set in server config.

    You might say, why pay credits? Why not give factions more bonuses as they get more members?


    Well, I can make as many new characters as I want; when I want, and only the admins would be able to tell. I'm not going to force them to look through the logs to hunt down multiple characters.

    But the economy is broken? Well that's a problem with the economy then, not the factions.

    4. Make claiming and invulnerability more costly.
    lolol I set up gigantic turrets on my homebase and anyone who comes near it dies and can't do anything about it lolol

    lolol I set up a homebased turret next to your base and you can't do anything about it since it's untouchable lolol.

    Invulnerable homebases aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they're horribly exploitable. So to help mediate that, make it cost a good chunk of change.

    - Homebasing takes money from a faction account. The bigger the claim, the more it costs.
    - Tax factions for things claimed; bigger factions can claim more since they're more active. It kills off factions that have become inactive and also curbs excessive faction growth so others can still compete.
    - To help pay for things and deal with the 4byte limit; we use a bitcurrency. Members can purchase bitcurrency that is automatically added to the faction bank.
    - You can set the conversion rate of credits:bitcurrency in the server config. The buying and selling costs can be different. (In case you want to stop people from using factions as money banks).
    - Buying and selling bitcurrency requires separate faction permissions.

    Now for docked object invulnerability. Have two special docking blocks and enhancers. These special docks can only be placed on a faction homebase and spread the homebase's invulnerability to the docked objects.

    These docks are prohibitively expensive. 50 million credits for the docking module and 10,000 per enhancer.

    Right now you can protect an entire fleet with 1 million credits and some docks/enhancers. That's kinda cheap for ABSOLUTE SAFETY ANYWHERE wouldn't you say?

    5. Make things actually worth claiming.
    Most of the time, factions set a faction home, build it up, and then never leave it. Usually after this individual players will go inactive from boredom and the faction slowly disappears. I mean, why make another station when your single homebase is completely untouchable?

    Starmade Space in general is boring. You have stations (Lootchests), planets (laggy time-consuming lootchests), suns (annoying and bright) and asteroids (who even bothers?).

    Add more space phenomena! Nebulas, Gas Clouds, Particle Fountains, Alien Relics, Ship Graveyards, Planetoids, Etc

    You can set up a station nearby and add some resource collection blocks and the station will generate resources. (The phenomena themselves are indestructible so the server won't run out of resources).

    Why not take it a step further and set up rare resources that give faction ships bonuses? Like a special power generator or shield crystal that increase shields/power by a % as long as it's factioned.

    Maybe special NPC stations that have special shields that make them immune to ships; and you could go in and board them with your friends; giving you a steady credit/block income from taxes once you conquer it?

    Warp Gates can be set up, allowing easy travel, but also may be dangerous due to players such as myself. You can risk the short way or go the safe, but long, way.

    Giant shops or shop clusters can be spawned; you can increase the chance of finding players here for friendly or less-than-friendly reasons. Maybe you can set up a base here to deny enemies the chance to resupply? But what if they made ships that cloak/jam so they could sneak through?

    This vastly increases competition and gives a faction a reason to expand. Factions would war over territory and set up strategic assets to defend them.

    The most important part of this is that nearly all of these can be configured by the server. This allows vastly different server profiles without the need of external mods.
     

    CyberTao

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    Very Wordy, so I ended up skimming a few bits e- e but some of these Points were touched on in the Starmade Q&A, Via the faction point system. With this system even Homebases will not be Protected unless a faction is active, and there was mention of a territory system to claim Sectors, as well as costing these Points to Factionize stuff (ships included).

    The problem I see with Limiting sectors is that Servers will aim for Insanely high amounts for the same reason they say they have \"999\" player slots. As well, I would suggest a \"Wrap Around\", in that travelling too far in 1 direction loops around to the other side.

    I agree with the Cost of setting up a Faction however, There is too many factions made merely to protect a single person\'s ships. On the other hand, for the same reason, I would suggest a \"Ship Lock\", so that only the owner can enter the core (would apply while in a faction as well, so they dont touch your personal ships ;o). But a Hard limit on factions will be troublesome.

    I dont Agree with with Bonus\'s from Monoliths and stuff tho,a Sandbox game could be a level Playing field where Player creativity and ingenuity play the main role, not stat boost from claimed objects.

    And as a final note, I think warp gates or the like are being considered for FTL (in the Q&A as well)
    http://star-made.org/content/starmade-devs-qa-notes
     
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    Imhappy as long ad I can go solo, but still be able to talk to other people, in my homebase, cause seriously I have trust issues, what if my enemy is my partner and takes all my stuff, never, I gi e small amounts away, I trade and buy, but what your saying, I shouldnt be protected, 60km from spawn so I can build and talk and trade some times, when I get more recipes on this server I want to sell packages, you pay me so much rock and I give you thismuch that, tat much this blah blah, while being safebehind glass.

    I support sector limit, and prehaps you fly through 50,0,0 to -50,0,0 instead of turning back

    Make the 50 for the module 10, little more resonable, what if its a fighter? Why would I pay 50mil to protect 1000 blocks, ill just destroy them, and rebuild, but that wont bother me, I usually like 3 ships, salvage, frigate, miniture cruiser
     
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    Holy jugglefuck.

    1: universe limit? Sorry mate, but space is big, REALLY big. If you are getting pissy because you cant find anyone, try harder, or stop being a pirate and just bloody loot some poor planet.

    2: faction limit? Are you fucking serious? What if someone wants to make a freelance faction? Then suddenly \"SORRY MATE, THE FACTION LIMIT IS REACHED\".

    3: Item limit? Piss off...

    4: Invincibility/homebases? I have to agree with you, giant death turrets wrecking ass while being invincible are OP. BUT WHO THE FUCK IS FORCING YOU TO ATTACK THEM? I am sorry that you want to kill everything in sight like a deranged animal, but there is a thing called \"passive\" behaviour. Learn it.

    5: I have to agree with you, this shit is a good suggest- \"Giant shops or shop clusters can be spawned; you can increase the chance of finding players here for friendly or less-than-friendly reasons.\"
    Fuck off...

    Look mate, i know you want to pirate, i know you have little more on your mind than to kill, but please leave the game be.
     
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    Suggestions 1 n 5, but limiting factions isn\'t a very good idea IMO, it would limit the number of servers we forum based factions can play on. For example say the CR wants to play on NASS which has lots of 1 man factions, but because of a faction limit we can\'t play there, and that wouldn\'t be too fun, and grinding our way to forming a faction isn\'t exactally very enjoyable either. I would suggest removing the invuln on fac home bases thus solving the problem of 1man factions.
     
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    That all of these are server options. They can be configured by the administrators.

    If you don\'t like how some servers are run, you can find another. That\'s the beauty of it.
     
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    In this case, i support additional freedom of this sort, its needed really.

    +1.

    Please explain the OP more in the future.
     
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    1. I like aguses reasons, and I wll only play on 1 server, we require blocks for blueprints, custom recipes, and a supportive communities. Go away please, this is just to far, players want to play on good server, but if you cant solo on the good servers, its not fun
     
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    1 & 2: Well, I suppose these might help. Especially the part about having to join rather than create a faction.

    3: Since the devs have announced a system with faction territory and faction points, maybe it could be that claiming something outside your faction territory costs faction points, and when you run out of faction points your claims disappear, and other people can claim it then.

    4: the main point of the faction point system is to mediate this. Setting up invincible uberturrets next to someone else\'s homebase would impossible with the terriotory.

    5: Sure, but let me make an amendment: You can\'t have your homebase be anything except a homebase. Your faction\'s refinary, mines, wrap gates, etc. have to be seperate from your homebase. This means they would all be vulnerable to attack, and need to be defended.
     

    therimmer96

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    I think that factions under a certain size should loose rights aswell, such as 1/2 man factions not being able to protect ships and factions under 5 members would not be able to have a homebase. Just to stop the abuse.
     
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    I mean, if you can\'t protect your ships why bother having a faction?

    Apparently the point system would make it so that a 1-man faction could only have maybe a dozen ships protected and only a skeltal base.
     

    Ithirahad

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    1. Have a universe size limit.

    Have a server option to limit the number of sectors the game will generate. Say, if you enter 50, the sector numbers will go from -50 to 50. This can be hard limit or soft limit.

    - Hard Limit: When you reach the end, the game forces you to turn around and tells you that you cannot go any further.

    - Soft limit: When you reach the end, the game will warn you that you\'ve reached the limit. You can keep going but nothing will spawn. No planets, shops, stations, etc.

    This has three purposes, first it keeps players within a play zone, making diplomacy that much more important. It increases competition for resources; increasing teamwork and conflict. And finally, it keeps the usage of server resources down.


    None of this. After 100 sectors around or so (Configurable) it costs more Faction Points or whatever to claim things, and there are a ton more pirates, including some strange ships that don\'t appear in the central area. If people want to build their base at 200 200 200 and be constantly under siege by giant tentacled purple starships that \"eat\" their ships with powerful damage pulsers, they still can. :P
     

    MrFURB

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    I\'m seeing a lot of suggestions for limitations which go directly against a lot of Starmade\'s design philosophy. We want people to have the choice and ability to play the game how they like, and we\'re attempting to set the game up in such a way as to fit everyone\'s vastly different preferences together into one community while alienating as few people as possible. If someone wants to head off into the void and not be bothered often, then sure, let him. Just make sure that it isn\'t harming the rest of the server\'s ecosystem.

    I believe that a better direction to take suggestions is... Well, just that. Suggest things to the player instead of forcing actions upon them. Create and change the way the the player interacts with the game in such a way as it naturally pushes the player towards healthier habits without flat-out telling them to do or not do something.

    For example, I think having clearly visible (via a 3D starmap of sorts) borders to faction territories will help out immensely. Properly communicating where high traffic (or low traffic, if the faction doesn\'t enjoy visitors) areas are will help keep people informed of where it\'s safe and where it\'s good hunting.

    Another idea would be to have the only method of fast travel requiring either some naturally spawned or artificial entity that is static. These create choke points and, in turn, high traffic areas that are easy to identify and work with. Or against.
     
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    Anything that requires a specific number of players could just be circumvented by solo players creating alts. If factions require five members to make a certain faction perk accessible, then one player can just create four alt accounts to reach it.
     
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    These are simply server options that allow server administrators to create their server as they envision it.

    As players have the right to play as they want; server administrators should have the right to realize their own vision of their server.