Things to Spend Faction Points On

[Edymnion]

Brainstorming things we could use faction points for, beyond just asteroid respawning and the like.

These would be things we could spend points on to "buy" for the faction as a whole. They would either be single use exchanges, or they could be passive bonuses that would allow factions to tailor how they function. For example, a faction that wanted to focus on building things could buy perks that make building or manufacturing things easier, while a combat focused faction could buy perks to make their ships tougher fighters.

Things that spring to mind for me, in no specific order:

Increased Mining Bonuses
Reduce the initial faction mining bonus to something lower, like 2x. then have multiple ranks of increased mining bonuses that can be bought.

Extra Production
Several ranks of being able to have additional blocks produced when using a factory. So start at say 5% chance every tick to make an extra whatever without using any additional mats, pop it up to 10%/15% with additional bought ranks.

Vanity Items
Spend faction points to be able to add special vanity items to a faction base's shop that you can't otherwise manufacture or buy from shops. Things like chairs and tables, or star charts, maybe even little animated monitors like TV screens.

Potions
Find a better name for them, but spend faction points to get items that can restore power or shields when used as a consumable item. Spend X points, get a stack of Y potions that can then be used, given out to faction members as rewards, or sold in the shop.

Filled Blueprints
Since we now have point values assigned to blueprints, we should be able to figure out a way to translate that into a fair equivalent amount of faction points. So say it was a a 10:1 ratio ship points to faction points, a 10,000 point ship could be "bought" for 1,000 faction points in order to get a filled blueprint for immediate spawning.

Speed Boosts
Ranks for passive speed boosts for anyone in the faction. Say do the standard 5/10/15% levels. So if the server speed limit is 100 m/sec, if you're in a faction that has bought these perks, your normal speed limit would be 105/110/115 m/sec.

Lowered Taxes/Extra Effect
More ranked tiers, this time to reduce the energy tax on additional arrays. There is currently a "tax" in place for multiple individual arrays linked to a single computer (presumably because those additional arrays increase lag or something like that, and this being an inbuilt way to discourage their excessive use), this would reduce the that energy tax. Alternatively, if lowering the tax causes issues, it could instead increase the effect of existing arrays.

Block Leeching
Ranked tiers, % chance that any block destroyed in combat gets salvaged and appears in ship/station inventory. So if you fire off an explosive missile that turns the target ship into a donut, some of those vaporized blocks wouldn't be lost, but would be instead transferred to you.

Bartering
Ranked tiers to lower the price of items you buy from shops and/or increase the price for items you sell. Probably two separate paths here, one for each side. Would need to find a way to stop factions that have both from being able to just buy cheap and sell high to the same station for unlimited free money though.

Faster Cooldowns
Like the increased speed limits, except that it speeds up your cooldown time. Which would grant greater DPS, and allow for less cannon slave blocks.

Guild Tax
Whenever a faction member sells something, ranked percentages of that money is copied for free into a guild vault. So if it was a 1/2/3% guild tax, someone selling an item for 100 creds would get their full 100 creds, but 1/2/3 creds would also be copied over into the faction treasury.

Shop Stock
Going back to the idea of filled ship blueprints, figure out a fair faction point value for the blocks that would normally be granted to a shop using the existing stock command, and let factions spend points to stock their own shops with blocks. Either a really steep faction point cost to just drop free blocks into the shop that the faction leader could take out, or add some extra checks to the faction shop to know when these blocks were bought this way to make sure they can't be taken back out, only bought (which would mean it would take less faction points since you'd need to essentially buy those blocks twice).

 

[0Samuel0]

Cool idea, definitely worth looking into. Not so sure about your specific examples, quite a few of them have glaring balance issues (speed increases, lowered penalties for multiple arrays, reduced cooldowns)
Things like shop pricing changes, and mining bonuses are cool, and being able to restock shops (blanket restock makes more sence though) is definitely something we need

However the current faction point system is territory negative, and if this were added you would need a territory positive system. As it is, the idea that multiple territories increase cost is dificult to justify

I'd suggest a dual system, such as found in games like Civ. You get a blanket percentage increase for owning more systems, and earn more points the more owned systems a member visits during their activity cycle, but the upkeep does still go up.

A way to 'contest' systems would be cool as well, where a system that has higher enemy (at war with, not neutral) activity would have increased upkeep, and would have growing defensive debuffs. However, friendly activity has defensive buffs, to replace the current homebase immunity system. The homebase would still have immunity in most cases, because it's defensive buff would be capped at full defense and a lot harder to lower. But bases in active systems would still have, say, up to 75% defensive buffs, so that holding a system would be more possible and taking it a worthwhile challenge.

Maybe have increased mining boosts for owning adjacent systems as well?

 

[Zaphord]

Instead of potions, you could have something like consumable auxiliary batteries for different systems that could instantly recharge a set amount of power to that system on use.

Need a quick shield boost? Pop a shield battery and get the extra shields you need in the heat of battle. Of course, wether this is an instant boost or a quick recharge over a short time would depend on how much power the battery provides. There might also need to be a cool down too, being able to pop a dozen shield batteries in a row would break the game.

 

[Valck]

special vanity items to a faction base's shop that you can't otherwise manufacture or buy from shops. Things like chairs and tables, or star charts, maybe even little animated monitors like TV screens.
[...]
faction points in order to get a filled blueprint for immediate spawning.
[...]
% chance that any block destroyed in combat gets salvaged and appears in ship/station inventory.
[...]
Whenever a faction member sells something, ranked percentages of that money is copied for free into a guild vault. So if it was a 1/2/3% guild tax, someone selling an item for 100 creds would get their full 100 creds, but 1/2/3 creds would also be copied over into the faction treasury.

I see all of these as highly counterproductive for any establishing or balancing of a player economy.
Free blocks, free money out of [nowhere] just for assembling members into a faction may be nice for creative mode, but a nightmare for a survival game.
If there is a demand for something, it should be produced by players. Slightly off topic, but on a tangent, I'd like to see the trade guild buy their supplies on the market, and their role shift from suppliers to distributors.

Also if you want blocks from ship combat, disable the ship and salvage it. I don't like the idea of materially benefitting from blowing stuff to smithereens without consideration, apart from the tactical value.

 

[Edymnion]

Well the point is that we need things to spend faction points on.

The primary way of getting faction points is having lots of members online.

Most people don't want to join someone else's faction or have others join theirs because of the current problems with maintaining control over resources. So, factions are going to need to offer something that players can't get on their own in order to lure in members.

Unless we want to go against the nature of a sandbox and start restricting access to block recipes, then the only way to really do that is for factions to be able to offer something above and beyond what the players can already do on their own.

To encourage players to join factions and hence for faction points to have any real purpose at all, there must be an incentive to do so. Which means either taking away from what players can do on their own now to give that to the factions, or to give factions more on top of what the players can do by themselves. We either have to cut everybody back, or we have to expand the power level to accommodate.

Unless you have a better idea?

 

[Zaphord]

Maybe a good way to get players to join a faction is to offer a faction credit salary based on rank and amount of contributions made towards advancing the faction?

Of course having a faction bank payed for with fp would be needed to pay these salaries. This should be optional thought, as I personally run a mercenary faction so members have to take their own jobs to make credits.

I do like the idea of a faction bank though, payed for with fp and expandable by paying more fp.

 

[Valck]

So, factions are going to need to offer something that players can't get on their own in order to lure in members.

Why the need to "lure" in members? If there is a need for and benefit to being in a faction, then factions will form. If there isn't, then it doesn't make any sense to form factions in the first place, let alone gather more people.

Granted I play solo mostly, but as with many things Starmade, faction points, and factions themselves, are a rudimentary stub at the moment, and some day there will be a faction update, just like the planets update, and the shipyards update, and the fauna update, and I bet Schine already have a lot of great ideas up their sleeves. I'm always a bit uneasy about suggestions of what should be and what might be, before the creators of the game even had their chance to implement their own creative ideas.

 

[Edymnion]

Why the need to "lure" in members?

Because right now the game has a legitimate problem with everyone making 1 person factions.

You get a massive, indispensible mining boost from being in a faction. However, being in a faction with other people means they pretty much get to raid your coffers and use your stuff. So everybody (myself included) makes a 1 man faction for the bonus, then refuses to let anyone else join because they don't want people screwing with their resources and their ships.

As long as I can get all the benefits from a faction while being the only one in it, I will. And I know a lot of other people are like me.

The main problem there being faction clutter. When every single person that comes through a server makes a faction, and then 99% of them quit playing within a week or two, we're left with dozens upon dozens of empty, dead factions.

If we're going to say being in a faction is mandatory (and with that bonus, it is indeed mandatory), we really need to get to work consolidating this "every person has their own faction" nonsense down. Which means we need to not just give people a reason to be in a faction, but to be in a faction with other people. And to have to put up with other people, most players are going to need a bribe.

 

[lilheartless]

Because right now the game has a legitimate problem with everyone making 1 person factions.

You get a massive, indispensible mining boost from being in a faction. However, being in a faction with other people means they pretty much get to raid your coffers and use your stuff. So everybody (myself included) makes a 1 man faction for the bonus, then refuses to let anyone else jo"snip"

players don't need a bribe. Factions need zoning tools and individuals need ownership modules. These ownership modules would work like faction modules except that they work on an individual basis. ( aka ownership modules are produced in a standard factory they function exactly like faction modules except they tie they object they are placed on to a single player. to make sure that this doesn't mess with turret targetting you just add a two tag system if both are placed all faction controlled areas like hangers check only tag 1 (is this ship part of the faction that owns location x) but when players try to access a ship 2 checks are made is this ship owned by this players faction if yes check 2 does this ship belong to (player id of the person who set the ownership block).

and secondly players need a zoning tool ( the faction permission block could be changed into this) where it opens a menu selection kind of like advanced build mode and allows you to set a (zone) that can be applied to either a specific individual (player id) within the faction or a rank of faction members that way you could zone for instance 3 factories rank 4 members have access to factory on floor a of station which has a 10% resource tax and rank 2 and 3s have access to a nicer factory that has a 5% tax and rank 1 / founder has access to the the best streamlined auto factory on floor 3 that has better production runs and a donation box instead of a manditory tax. (as well as allowing for zoning such as docking and rooms apartment 1 on station 187 can only be modified by randomname_187 a member of faction madeupfaction and the owner of the station. this would solve all the problems factions and their members would have a legitimate way to feel that their belongings are safe from other faction members and would then be able to enjoy the benefits of playing with others such as group builds group pvp all while having their personal items in an area only they could get too without the need to put huge unnecessary logic locks and faction permission modules all over the station and even if placed strategically don't offer enough control.

I think that once this system gets put in place there can be some changes to the faction points system specifically that point gains are put on a rather significant initial curve aka with only one faction member you get enough points per hour played to maintain 1 system so you can only have one station you can't field warp gates etc with 2 people you probably get about 3 times that and it should level out to the current rates after 5 or so people this would encourage people to at least form small 3 - 4 man factions so that they can expand and mine in new areas as well as maintain more than one station have gates etc.


Edit: i had some more thoughts if a ownership block were to be implemented it could open up alot of other possibilities ala people who don't need to be in factions if you wanna play a roaming space mercenary or a pirate or some thing like that you could own ships that other people can't just walk into the core and take without being in a faction which i think would be a nice way to add some rp ability that doesn't exist right now. ( yes you can just create a one man faction but that clogs up the faction ui this would make it so you don't have too do that)

combine this with the new two tag system and you could add specific neutral named entities to your faction whitelist so that you could maybe keep a group of 2 - 3 players who aren't actually in your faction but still let them live / reside (dock use factories/shops) in your station and send them out to do your factions (dirty work) when you don't want to start a war or something like that.

 

[unelsson]

Vanity Items! Fun!

Potions! maybe rename them as boosters or rigs? Maybe make some of these permanent (or long time effects) ways to gain "tech level 2", e.g. Faster Cooldowns and Speed Boosts for your ships? I really love this idea for RP reasons and fairly balanced grinding/powergaming.

Blueprints with FP will break economy, but I still like it. Perhaps off by default, but server config option for on?

Bartering - why not, but might have balancing issues. Also, doesn't feel like the most urgent development goal.

Guild Tax - I do not object, but I see lots of more urgent development goals.

The rest feels a bit useless or doesn't hit the nerve for other reasons.