mindlord0013's (unoffical) Minor Faction Competition

[mindlord0013]

Introduction

If you're anything like me, you probably have your own roleplaying faction. It's entirely likely that faction has it's own design aesthetic, lore that you've thought of, and you might have even have an opposing faction for them. In the future, the devs are going to put procedurally generated factions into the game - smaller factions aside from the 5 main planned ones.

This competition will see you build your own minor factions, complete with a station, a small selection of ships, lore, and details.

This isn't an official competition, there is no guarantee that the winners or any entries will actually end up in the game. If there is enough interest and entries, the devs might consider using some entries as assets for procedurally generated factions. This is mostly for fun, and seeing what impressive faction portfolios people come up with.

Details

Entries will close April 30th 2016, giving you about 4 months at the time of posting. There is a maximum of 3 unique entries per person, which should be sufficiently different in terms of lore and style (no sub-factions as entries). As this is a fairly build-heavy competition you can work in groups of up to 4 people on a faction, but it counts towards your 3 entry limit.

All entries should follow the "Faction Portfolio" template as below (everything below the line). Entries that do not strictly adhere to this template will not be accepted (you have been warned).

Additional Details
Stations

• No larger than 500m in any direction.
• Try to keep he number of docked entities to a minimum, especially PD turrets.
• Keep it stylistically consistent, quality over quantity.
• Have at least one easily accessible USD
• Roleplay is the focus
• Limited to 1

Ships

• Any ship over 100m in any one dimension is no longer considered "small".
  
• 3 - 5 ships of "small" or "medium" size.
• Ships should have a USD if possible, if not a Rail Docker on the bottom of the ship at the lowest point nearest to the centre.
• At least one ship should be classified as "Transport", which should be largely unarmed and have a Rail Docker on the bottom of the ship at the lowest point nearest to the centre.
• Only one ship should be "weighted" as a "Transport", and it should fit the above conditions.
• Aesthetics and roleplay should come before combat ability.

Skins

• Optional
• Up to 5 skins for the default player model
• Skins must be shown in-game, with and without a helmet.

Entries will be judged on a number of factors including:

Lore (3 points)
Station (11 points total)
----Aesthetics (5 points)
----Features (3 points)
----Defences (2 points)
----X-factor (1 point)
Ships Overall (11 points total)
----Aesthetics (5 points)
----Features (3 points)
----Role Fulfilment (2 points)
----X-factor (1 point)
Skins (10 points total)
----Variety (5 points)
----Quality (2 points)
----Lore (2 points)
----X-factor (1 point)
Stylistic Coherency (5 points)

If you're interested in co-judging this competition, let me know.

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Faction Portfolio

Faction Name
​

[Lore]
No more than 500 words about the in-universe lore of the faction, such as their history, who they are, and what their goals are. Why are they in the universe? If they are part of a larger empire, why are they so much smaller now? (scouting outpost from a different galaxy, remnant from a once great empire, etc.)

[Temperament]
Explain in a few words or sentences their attitude towards other factions and players. It's good to have a 1-2 word/phrase that encapsulates the faction's temperament, then a sentence elaboration.
e.g.
Friendly - the faction always tries to make allies, and will only become hostile after being regularly attacked.

Vengeful - this faction is neutral towards others, but will aggressively pursue and hunt down aggressors until they have been slain (even across entire galaxies).

[Default Relations]
Explain the relations this faction has with the currently known major factions.

Scavenger Pirates - Hostile, Neutral, Allied
Outcasts - Hostile, Neutral...
Trading Guild - etc...

[Intended Difficulty]
How difficult this faction is intended to be - Easy, Medium, Hard. Basically, if you find this faction, how worried you should be. Make this decision based off the temperament and how powerful the ships are.

[Station - station name]​

Give a brief description of the default station for this faction, including any relevant lore.

Station Media (pictures and/or videos)
​

Any additional info that might be relevant such as dimensions, turrets, and main features.

Additional links, including SMD community content link and any external image albums.

[Ship - ship name]​

Brief description of the ship, including any relevant lore.

[Role]
What is this ship's intended role? Keep it short and to the point. Small fighter, general purpose corvette, transport, freighter, etc.

[Ship Weighting]
A number between 1 and 5 that signifies how common a ship is within the faction. 1 is very common, 2 is common, 3 is uncommon, 4 is rare, 5 is very rare. Personal transport ships (not cargo ships or freighters) should have a weight of "Transport". Keep it balanced, don't make a combat oriented frigate very common.

Spoiler: Elaborated Explanation

Weighting is the chance for that particular ship to spawn for that faction. You could theoretically have multiple ships of the same weighting, if you so desire. Each weighting adds a particular number of entries into a random number picker, except for "Transport" which would spawn in more specific circumstances. A weighting of 1 could add 50 entires, a weighting of two could add 30, 3 could add 15, 4 could add 5 entires, and a weighting of 5 could add 1 entry. Keep in mind, the total number of entries may not add up to 100. It could range from 2 entries up to 200.

For example, let's say a faction has Ship1 (Transport), Ship2 (Weighting = 1), Ship3 (weighting = 1), Ship4 (weighting = 2), and Ship5 (weighting = 5). This faction spawns in a fleet of 5 ships. For each ship, it picks a number. In this case, there are 131 entries. Ship2 or Ship3 each have a 38% chance to be spawned (50/131), while Ship4 has a 23% chance to be spawned (30/131) and Ship5 has a 0.008% chance of being spawned (1/131). With these numbers, you might expect 3-4 spawns of Ship2 and Ship3, and 1-2 spawns of Ship4.

In my mind, the key difference is a "Transport" convoy. Which always spawns between 1 and 3 "Transport" weighted ships, with 2 escort ships selected through the above method.

Ship Media (pictures and/or videos)
​

Any additional info that might be relevant such as dimensions, turrets, and main features.

Additional links, including SMD community content link and any external image albums.

[Available?]
Yes/No - is this ship usable by other minor factions? If set to "Yes", players would be able to buy a blueprint/fully made ship once a player discovers and allies with this faction.

[Ship 2 - ship name]​

Etc.

[Skins]​

[Skin 1 - skin name]
Brief lore and role of the skin.

Skin Media (pictures and/or videos)​

Any additional info that might be relevant such as dimensions, turrets, and main features.

Additional links, including SMD community content link and any external image albums.

[Skin 2 - skin name]
Etc.

[Authors]
List everyone who contributed to this faction, each person's role is optional.

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[Reilly Reese]

I wouldn't mind helping judging.

 

[NeonSturm]

[Ship Weighting]
A number between 1 and 5 that signifies how common a ship is within the faction. 1 is very common, 2 is common, 3 is uncommon, 4 is rare, 5 is very rare. Personal transport ships (not cargo ships or freighters) should have a weight of "Transport". Keep it balanced, don't make a combat oriented frigate very common.

You are very vague about weight:
5= unique ?
4= only somewhere in space AND uncommon?
3= only somewhere in space OR uncommon?
2= where do you draw the line between common and very common?
1= surely means if somewhere are 2 transports, 1 of them is the very common one.

It is also nice to have lists of missing entries or cooperative works.
A list of attributes for a character would help to see where where something is missing.

Temperament / Personality traits: ideas and should it not have common/uncommon too? I mean not all humans act the same either.
Fearsome

• Run away and Hide rather than retaliate.
• If they retaliate, they choose their opportunity carefully
• While retaliating, they run/hide at the slightest chance of a loss.
• They prefer retaliation only against minor opponents or appear with at about 1/3 their whole military force if forced to fight (the other 2/3 is for defence and reserved as backup military for the chance it's a trap).

Loyal / type

• They loyally stick to whatever goal or whoever that earned their loyalty firstly.
• To change their loyalty, it requires a great pressure to choose one of opposing goals and a quite large offset of preference toward the new goal.

Honest

• If you save their lives from a scavenger or outcast attack, they reward you highly.
• Maybe they share 50% of the savings to you, after subtracting what they see as minimum they need to keep for living or continuing busyness and subtracting what they don't own themselves (purchase price of trade goods they need to deliver for someone else, etc).
• They try to defend honest peoples against dis-honest.

 

[mindlord0013]

You are very vague about weight:
5= unique ?
4= only somewhere in space AND uncommon?
3= only somewhere in space OR uncommon?
2= where do you draw the line between common and very common?
1= surely means if somewhere are 2 transports, 1 of them is the very common one.

It is also nice to have lists of missing entries or cooperative works.
A list of attributes for a character would help to see where where something is missing.

Temperament / Personality traits: ideas and should it not have common/uncommon too? I mean not all humans act the same either.
Fearsome

• Run away and Hide rather than retaliate.
• If they retaliate, they choose their opportunity carefully
• While retaliating, they run/hide at the slightest chance of a loss.
• They prefer retaliation only against minor opponents or appear with at about 1/3 their whole military force if forced to fight (the other 2/3 is for defence and reserved as backup military for the chance it's a trap).

Loyal / type

• They loyally stick to whatever goal or whoever that earned their loyalty firstly.
• To change their loyalty, it requires a great pressure to choose one of opposing goals and a quite large offset of preference toward the new goal.

Honest

• If you save their lives from a scavenger or outcast attack, they reward you highly.
• Maybe they share 50% of the savings to you, after subtracting what they see as minimum they need to keep for living or continuing busyness and subtracting what they don't own themselves (purchase price of trade goods they need to deliver for someone else, etc).
• They try to defend honest peoples against dis-honest.

You're right, I didn't explain weighting very well. Weighting is the chance for that particular ship to spawn for that faction. You could theoretically have multiple ships of the same weighting, if you so desire. Each weighting adds a particular number of entries into a random number picker, except for "Transport" which would spawn in more specific circumstances. A weighting of 1 could add 50 entires, a weighting of two could add 30, 3 could add 15, 4 could add 5 entires, and a weighting of 5 could add 1 entry. Keep in mind, the total number of entries may not add up to 100. It could range from 2 entries up to 200.

For example, let's say a faction has Ship1 (Transport), Ship2 (Weighting = 1), Ship3 (weighting = 1), Ship4 (weighting = 2), and Ship5 (weighting = 5). This faction spawns in a fleet of 5 ships. For each ship, it picks a number. In this case, there are 131 entries. Ship2 or Ship3 each have a 38% chance to be spawned (50/131), while Ship4 has a 23% chance to be spawned (30/131) and Ship5 has a 0.008% chance of being spawned (1/131). With these numbers, you might expect 3-4 spawns of Ship2 and Ship3, and 1-2 spawns of Ship4.

In my mind, the key difference is a "Transport" convoy. Which always spawns between 1 and 3 "Transport" weighted ships, with 2 escort ships selected through the above method.

Anyway, that's just a theoretical example as to how "weighting" would work behind the scenes. The TL;DR is, whenever that faction spawns in a ship or fleet, the weighting is the chance for that ship to spawn.

As for the personality types, for the sake keeping it simple it might be easier just to describe the overall faction Temperament. We're just assuming that every pilot in the faction acts the same way. I'm not going to argue the point, because it's my competition.

 

[Dannage]

Lets see if I can find any time!

 

[TheFloorMatt]

I would enter this with my stuff, but unfortunately all of my ships focus on combat over roleplay (with relatively basic aesthetics I guess?). Oh well

 

[mindlord0013]

I would enter this with my stuff, but unfortunately all of my ships focus on combat over roleplay (with relatively basic aesthetics I guess?). Oh well

As long as they're not BORG cubes, it wouldn't hurt to enter anyway. It might be a good exercise in improving your roleplay aesthetic skills.

 

[Ithirahad]

Not much point in this with an official competition coming very soon.

 

[mindlord0013]

Not much point in this with an official competition coming very soon.

I disagree. It's a good warm-up for an official minor-faction competition, and if the rules are very similar you can almost copy-paste your entry to this competition (at least the ships and stations) into the official one. If they announce an official minor factions competition while this competition is still ongoing, then at least people have been working already on ships and stations to submit.

Also, I'd like to know your source for "an official competition coming very soon". I did plenty of research as to if there was going to be an official competition, and the only mention of any time frame for a new competition was "maybe, but it won't be for a while" in regards to major factions. They said if there was going to be a build competition it would be for minor factions, though they didn't specify when and they also noted it was subject to change.

 

[JimmyJamba]

Not much point in this with an official competition coming very soon.