Faction specialization to encourage trade

[sayerulz]

So at the moment in the game, there is little reason for factions to trade with each other that I can see, because resources are equally available everywhere. I think that something ought to be done to give a reason to trade. The most obvious way might be to make it so that resources are more concentrated, so that one faction can control the supply of a resource, but that would make starting out extremely tedious, as one would have to always be traveling between resource areas. I think a better way would be to give factions specializations. What I am thinking is that the more a faction manufactures a certain type of item, such as weapons, hulls, or shields, the better they get at that, meaning that items manufactured by some factions have better quality than others. However, to prevent factions just all being good at everything after a certain point, a faction could only level up a manufactured item up to a certain point before getting better at that made them worse at other things. This would create much more incentive to trade, with, for example, a faction that manufactures very good hulls trading them with another faction for better weapons. It would also provide a way for factions to become powerful on servers besides conquest, since a faction that supplied something critical like shields would inevitably have huge influence, even if they did not have an incredibly strong military. It would also mean that factions ship designs would differ more, since high quality armor might be more available to an armor specialized faction than shields, so they might want to build ships that rely more on armor. This system could even be applied to mining, so that mining factions get more resources, that a manufacturing faction might want to buy. Naturally, this would be a feature that could be turned off for those that don't want it. Please give feedback!

 

[EricBlank]

This doesn't sound explicitly bad, except that I can't think of a good way to keep track of all the extra overhead this creates. Each faction would have to have different blocks they're creating. Say they're building grey advanced armor and advanced armor is their specialization. Their advanced armor blocks would have to be tracked as a separate item and entity than everyone elses' and the default advanced armor blocks. Otherwise, how would the server keep track of them? Of which ones a player is placing? Faction a's, b's or default? And that'd have to be tracked on the ship itself, and unless you're importing tremendous quantities a given ship will end up incorporating many different factions' blocks.

I just don't think something like this would be possible logistically, never mind the gameplay mechanics aspects of it. Trying to track all the extra metadata might kill our servers.

Its possible there could be other ways to do what you're wanting, like importing entire completed ships, with faction bonuses derived from the original creator's faction, but not through blocks.

 

[sayerulz]

This doesn't sound explicitly bad, except that I can't think of a good way to keep track of all the extra overhead this creates. Each faction would have to have different blocks they're creating. Say they're building grey advanced armor and advanced armor is their specialization. Their advanced armor blocks would have to be tracked as a separate item and entity than everyone elses' and the default advanced armor blocks. Otherwise, how would the server keep track of them? Of which ones a player is placing? Faction a's, b's or default? And that'd have to be tracked on the ship itself, and unless you're importing tremendous quantities a given ship will end up incorporating many different factions' blocks.

I just don't think something like this would be possible logistically, never mind the gameplay mechanics aspects of it. Trying to track all the extra metadata might kill our servers.

Its possible there could be other ways to do what you're wanting, like importing entire completed ships, with faction bonuses derived from the original creator's faction, but not through blocks.

What I mean would be to have items "level up" so that for a specialized faction the grey standard armor recipe would make for example "Grey standard armor. Quality: good". Otherwise it would be way to much for the game, you are right.

 

[starhaiden]

Instead maybe more of a variety of blocks should be created.

• different hull blocks with unique abilities e.g Hull that reduce damage done to shield if the weapon hit it, hull that is resistant to energy weapons or missiles, regenerating hull etc.
• different power sources and fuel
• different thrusters

To make so people don't build everything, the resources required for building different types of things could only be common in a few of the systems in a galaxy.

 

[sayerulz]

Instead maybe more of a variety of blocks should be created.

• different hull blocks with unique abilities e.g Hull that reduce damage done to shield if the weapon hit it, hull that is resistant to energy weapons or missiles, regenerating hull etc.
• different power sources and fuel
• different thrusters

To make so people don't build everything, the resources required for building different types of things could only be common in a few of the systems in a galaxy.

I like the idea of special resources found in certain areas, allowing one to make special blocks, as it would create reasons for factions to trade as well as fight. I think it would be good to have this alongside the system I proposed, with one change: only factions with a high mining skill can harvest these special resources, encouraging trade between mining factions and manufacturing ones, and preventing one faction that controls a very powerful resource from becoming all powerful. And having shipments of rare and valuable ore going between factions would certainly be interesting for any players who choose to be pirates, as well as perhaps mercenaries to guard shipments.

 

[Zaphord]

I agree that resources are too abundant in this game as of now. You can find any group of asteroids and there's at least 4 or 5 different types of minerals and crystals there. There needs to be a rarity to some minerals while others could be common as dirt.

Also, manufacturing specializations could cost faction points maybe? Upgrade a spec 1 level for so many points to improve quality and manufacturing efficientcy. Factions could specialize in one area or generalize and have better than average blocks but nothing too advanced in any one area.