Systems should give you FP, not consume them

[DoomCarrot]

Exactly as title says. Why do you "spend" FP to own many systems? This encourages people to just hold one system with an invincible and invulnerable homebase, and as long as you log on to the server once every week or month, you pretty much have unlimited FP.

If it gave you points to own systems, players would be encoiraged to spread and take over systems, to keep their homebase invulnerable. If you lost all your systems, you would start eating through faction points to protect your homebase, and eventually you would run out of faction points to even keep that safe.

Sample:

Points to own a faction per tick: 500 points
Points GAINED per tick for each owned system: 250,150,100,50,20,+10 for every system after. Aka, you must own at least three systems to not LOSE faction points.

The new system would do a few things:

1. Encourage players to stay active. Right now, every server is flooded by one man, one system factions that have infinitely invulnerable homebases, even though they are not active. This is because FP are hardly consumed if you have one system.

2. Encourage factions to spread out. This system would encourage players to spread out and conquer, as a means of "farming" FP to keep your big bad homebase invulnerable.

3. Encourage factions to clash. With this system, players would often clash over territory, and players would be forced to defend. If you lose systems, you lose faction points. And if you lose faction points, your homebase might be vulnerable. You MUST defend your territory or risk that titan you are building at invulnerable homebase to maybe not be invulnerable someday.

4. It would give players a way to eliminate non-active players. If a faction only owns one system, they would be losing points every day. Soon, they would run out of points, and an active player could destroy their homebase or claim it for their own. This would make servers less "dead and inactive"

FP right now: Player logs on, creates faction, builds a homebase, plays for a few weeks, has one system and like 30k FP, logs off and is inactive for a year, but they only use 1 FP a day to protect their homebase so it is no big deal.

FP if this system is implemented: Player logs on, creates faction, builds a homebase, claims 3 nearby territories to build up faction points. Enemy faction does not like the nearby presence, and attacks and takes control of those systems, original player retreats to homebase and tries to claim other systems, but is thwarted repeatedly by intercepting invasion fleets. After a few days/weeks of owning no systems, the larger faction claims their homebase for themselves.

As you can see, this system would result in much more interesting gameplay. Thoughts?

Tl;DR: the faction points system is currently ridiculously backwards, and could be easily fixed to make starmade an infinitely more fun game.

P.S. This idea seems way too obvious and good to me, so there is no way that there isn't already a topic about this, but forgive me for being a noob and not knowing where it is lol.

 

[JinM]

I like the overall idea, that more sectors owned give me more protection.

Nice thoughts.

I would do it differently: My homebase is allways invulnerable. But I can have other bases around my homebase, that are protected, if I have enough sectors claimed with another station. If the stations get destroyed, I get less fp income, and one day I can't afford to protect my stations invulnerability.

For easier brainstorming I suggest to divide your thoughts for a pure pvp server (people expect that their stations can get destroyed), and a mix server (people know that their stuff will allways be protected and thus also invest into building creative and unique).

 

[DoomCarrot]

I think this system is both PvP and PvE friendly though.

For PvE players who just want to build and fight outcasts and scavangers, they could go to the corners of the galaxy where they will not bother anyone, or they could join an alliance with many other factions so that no one wants to risk fighting them.

However, for players who purely want to play safe (which isn't even PvE, more like creative mode) with no PvP whatsoever, why even play on a multiplayer server? I don't understand the logic. Why would such players not just play on a creative server if all they want to to is build with friends

The main problem I am trying to solve is: undefeatable inactive on man factions and factions that want to fight but have no reason/ability/incentive to do so.

 

[Snowtiger256]

For PvE players who just want to build and fight outcasts and scavangers, they could go to the corners of the galaxy where they will not bother anyone, or they could join an alliance with many other factions so that no one wants to risk fighting them.

I see a problem with this, to get to the outer rim in the first place, in survival, you need to spend a few hours in transit, dodging pirates, other nasties and PvPers (some PvPers are rather territorial by nature). All this in a dinky little starter ship cobbled together in spawn, that has possibly no weapons to speak of, no shields, or even a jump drive (because spawn shop has been emptied of anything usable by other new players and admins haven't been seen online for days).

Meanwhile you'll also be looking for a nice system for yourself, which means that the trip will take longer as you're looking for a specific kind of system, that will have enough resources for you. Not to mention that possibly anything on the way could kill you and start the cycle again, due to you losing all your resources, and having to aquire more in order to do it again.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Exactly as title says. Why do you "spend" FP to own many systems? This encourages people to just hold one system with an invincible and invulnerable homebase, and as long as you log on to the server once every week or month, you pretty much have unlimited FP.

If it gave you points to own systems, players would be encoiraged to spread and take over systems, to keep their homebase invulnerable. If you lost all your systems, you would start eating through faction points to protect your homebase, and eventually you would run out of faction points to even keep that safe.

Sample:

Points to own a faction per tick: 500 points
Points GAINED per tick for each owned system: 250,150,100,50,20,+10 for every system after. Aka, you must own at least three systems to not LOSE faction points.

The new system would do a few things:

1. Encourage players to stay active. Right now, every server is flooded by one man, one system factions that have infinitely invulnerable homebases, even though they are not active. This is because FP are hardly consumed if you have one system.

2. Encourage factions to spread out. This system would encourage players to spread out and conquer, as a means of "farming" FP to keep your big bad homebase invulnerable.

3. Encourage factions to clash. With this system, players would often clash over territory, and players would be forced to defend. If you lose systems, you lose faction points. And if you lose faction points, your homebase might be vulnerable. You MUST defend your territory or risk that titan you are building at invulnerable homebase to maybe not be invulnerable someday.

4. It would give players a way to eliminate non-active players. If a faction only owns one system, they would be losing points every day. Soon, they would run out of points, and an active player could destroy their homebase or claim it for their own. This would make servers less "dead and inactive"

FP right now: Player logs on, creates faction, builds a homebase, plays for a few weeks, has one system and like 30k FP, logs off and is inactive for a year, but they only use 1 FP a day to protect their homebase so it is no big deal.

FP if this system is implemented: Player logs on, creates faction, builds a homebase, claims 3 nearby territories to build up faction points. Enemy faction does not like the nearby presence, and attacks and takes control of those systems, original player retreats to homebase and tries to claim other systems, but is thwarted repeatedly by intercepting invasion fleets. After a few days/weeks of owning no systems, the larger faction claims their homebase for themselves.

As you can see, this system would result in much more interesting gameplay. Thoughts?

Tl;DR: the faction points system is currently ridiculously backwards, and could be easily fixed to make starmade an infinitely more fun game.

P.S. This idea seems way too obvious and good to me, so there is no way that there isn't already a topic about this, but forgive me for being a noob and not knowing where it is lol.

This can already be done using an inverse fp config, however reverse FP has issues of its own which is why you don't see many servers running them.

I did propose something awhile back that would achieve the same goals as your own but also solve a few others, if you wish feel free to check it out, you might find some inspiration for your own ideas.

 

[DoomCarrot]

The system you describe in that link I like a lot more than the system I had in mind. However, the one problem I have with it is it still doesn’t encourage players to spread out, unless only one homebase can be built per system

 

[GDPR 302420]

The system you describe in that link I like a lot more than the system I had in mind. However, the one problem I have with it is it still doesn’t encourage players to spread out, unless only one homebase can be built per system

As I said before, the very system you are describing in your original suggestion can already be done using an inverse FP config. I have played on servers where this config was present and it seems that in practice, players do distance themselves from others, but not for the reason of having more space to control but rather to enforce long travel times for attacking factions.

From my experience, factions even when spread out will generaly only claim the bare minimum required to stay in positive FP per turn, most do this because they wish to consolidate their defenses to as little territory as possible so they don't spread themselves too thin when they come under attack in multiple systems at once.

I believe the solution to encouraging expansion beyond the bare minimum for survival lies in adding actual conflict drivers, I proposed an idea of conflict drivers some time back.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

for PVP to Thrive there needs to be
incentive to claim systems (EG resorce bonuses based off how many systems owned)
incentive to fight over systems (limited systems to own, reward for capturing systems claimed by another etc)
incentive to join exsisting factions rather than create 1 man factions (inability to maintain invulnerable home base solo)

 

[OfficialCoding]

another idea is if a person is inactive for more than say 30 days, the home base loses invulnerability. That I think would have the same effect that your idea would have.

 

[Nosajimiki]

The issue with this system is that it promotes spamming single block claim stations which would be very tedious and boring.

As for RedAlert's linked posts: the idea of solar stations is bad because it puts the timer in the hands of the attacker; so, if an Australian wants to attack an American dominant faction, then he could effectively make sure the timer ends when no one is awake to defend it.

30-day Invulnerability also fails to solve any problems because a person can play every day but still be an annoying turtle.

---

One solution I can think of that would be feasible and fair is to force the invader to create and hold a "siege" station. The idea here would be that an invader (willing to risk massive resource to destroy an enemy) could spawn a base inside of enemy territory which would quickly drain enemy faction points. There should probably be a special block or function based on the station's value used to determine how fast you can drain faction points using a diminishing return function so that attackers aren't dropping worthless one block siege bases.

This would make one-man factions less powerful because an organized faction with many players could easily gang up and destroy a large battle station and amass a large pool of faction points more quickly whereas the one-man faction might not be able to muster the force needed to break the siege. If the drain happens hourly, then the defenders are encouraged to respond quickly if they can. This would promote the highest possibility of a PvP encounter, but the effect should be that an established faction should take days (or even weeks if they are big and old enough) to actually overwhelm with a heavy siege base so that you can not simply overnight them.

I think this model would even make Multiple-invulnerable bases (thus multiple claim systems) for larger factions viable since it would then become a trade-off of more points to defend vs more places to dock large warships without lagging you to death.
[doublepost=1512162638,1512162024][/doublepost]As for the RP crowd, if you just want to build and not be bothered, you always have to option of hiding in a voided (non-protected) base, playing in single player mode, or joining a server that allows locked BUILD sectors.

 

[Snowtiger256]

...a server that allows locked BUILD sectors.

Do servers with locked build sectors even exist anymore, outside dedicated build servers, where nobody actually has a need for them? It's been pretty long since I last heard of a server that offers them. The only server I know of with locked build sectors was Shattered Skies, which was shut down long ago.

 

[Sachys]

Red is actually correct - though in my experience massive expansion prevented HB invunerability loss if you could hold multiple sectors for just a couple of days (the FP drain usually being so low to prevent griefing of newer / smaller factions by the server whales).
[doublepost=1512177119,1512177050][/doublepost]

Do servers with locked build sectors even exist anymore, outside dedicated build servers, where nobody actually has a need for them? It's been pretty long since I last heard of a server that offers them. The only server I know of with locked build sectors was Shattered Skies, which was shut down long ago.

Until a week or two ago, Starbits still had them*, though they (were?) ultimately flawed by an exploit regarding sector locking. Not sure if fixed. Certainly caused issues for some on SS.

[*some database error or something caused a major crash / issue]