Improving the Quality of Diplomatic, Factional and Economic Gameplay

[MeepMoop]

Introduction and Synopsis​

The main goal of this post is to describe, inform, and suggest how faction actions could be modified to allow a greater incentive for some form of roleplaying. These suggestions will improve the quality of Starmade gameplay greatly, it will make factions interesting, it will create the possibility of having some factions that behave like governments and some of them behaving like corporations. It will even add incentive for pirate factions. Keep in mind, this is not a "faction type bonus", similar to a talent tree. Absolutely not anything like that- all things will be available to all factions and there will be no choosing involved at all.

So what exactly are these changes?

These changes revolve around allowing better faction to faction diplomacy, neutral behavior and also competition. It will make it a serious consideration into behaving as a corporation or a military. What does that mean? Well, for example, system 0,0,0 might be owned by "Valhalla Armada", but because they have chosen some settings for system permissions, there's a few factions like "Plex Galactic" and "Hylat Arms" that exclusivly mine and produce in those zones. Valhalla Armada protects the system from pirates while the other two factions compete to sell items at the lowest prices. You can see what I'm aiming for, at this point.

The Changes​

Improve faction customization settings: This will increase economic activity.
First thing's first; factions need to be able to set more settings with regards to diplomatic relations and whatnot; for example, a faction should be allowed to set what relation gets what kind of bonuses. A faction might be able to set how much of a bonus to resource mined for each of the different relation settings.

This does a lot of good for the game; economic factions don't have to expend their time and resources into securing a system of their own and can instead economically base themselves in another factions system and still be at peak economic production. Compare this to the real world; a government owns land and protects the corporations, which allow the corporations to produce more goods, which leads to tax money going into the government to help defend the corporations better.

That basically leads onto my next point, and that is taxation. A faction should be allowed to, if they so choose, to tax shops(and some other things, but I'll go into that later). With this system, military factions will not have to put such an emphasis on production and can still have money to duke it out with oppossing factions. Note: In no way is any faction not permitted to take a system just as before and economically produce and militarilly attack. Any faction can, and with the same capacity as before, preform the same actions. This system only encourages better diplomatic action.

Now, with the taxes suggested, it's pretty obvious that a faction should be able to have a bank. The total accrued faction funds. This would be visible on the faction screen and only members with permission to could withdraw. With this out of the way, I can lead to a simpler suggestion, and that is to raise the amount of ranks to 8 or 10. Trainee > Private > Captain > Commander > Admiral is so short and restrictive; if this game looks to support massive factions with many people and roles, there will need to be plenty of ranks so that people know their place in the chain of command.

That's nice and all, but can I see all of the suggested changes more easily in the form of a list?
I love it when requests are oddly specific, and yes, I can do that. Here are all of the features for factions and such along with the positive effects from each of them.

1. Set mining resource boost by relation: As stated earlier, this will allow for corporate entities to exist better. It will also allow for more complex diplomatic deals.
2. Allow factions to tax, should they wish to: Any system owned by a faction should be allowed to be taxed by the faction. This means that factions that are military don't need to have so much production on their clocks- they can instead make money through the shops that are taxed. This also melds well with the previous suggestion.
3. Add a faction bank: Pretty self explanatory; this would be the factions reserve of money. It could possibly only be available if the faction has a homebase; and whenever homebases can be destroyed, those funds can be plundered.
4. Increase the rarity of NPC shops and increase the prices for purchasing from them(IN MULTIPLAYER): This will help in so many ways. If this is done, then a larger amount of responsibility over player shops and thus corporate entities or enterprising players can actually make decent money off of this. In fact, this would possibly be one of the better things to do. Player owned shops and production are always good.
5. Add a consumable resource: Something like fuel, food, water or something. Anything that is used regardless of wartime and is always used in steady and large amounts. People always think of this as a bad thing- having fuel or food will indeed create tedium, but in many ways it can greatly improve gameplay. Please read this amazing and compelling forum post by Valiant70. It can really inform you about fuel and the likes extremely well, and may end up changing your mind for the better, either affirming your beliefs against or together with fuel. In addition, fuel/food/whatever doesn't even have to be required- it can simply be an alternative way to do something, similar to having effect computers. Or it could be a different method of propulsion, whatever. Food could instead of being required, it just gives your character benefits, like increased mining speed, jump height or run speed.
6. Abillity to pay faction members by rank: In the faction screen, faction members of adequate rank could select "Pay members by rank". This would allow some semblance of wages for workers and soldiers alike.
7. Ability to set a cost for other factions to use your owned modules: This was suggested by a couple of people: it would allow for people to charge other people(by relation) to use their services. You could charge a rate by mass for ships, charge for the usage of factories and even docking bays.

Finally, I must say that these suggestions added up will greatly improve many aspects of economy and roleplay. Imagine Firefly, in the episode they stole a ton of medicine from a corrupt corporation. Cool scenarios like this can happen in Starmade if Governments are separated from Corporations. There can be interesting pirate roleplays, interesting everything from all sides. The RP won't even be intentional; simply playing would be sufficient, as decisions made under these conditions would be far more realistic.

Diplomatic Changes​

Diplomacy can be made more natural and realistic while not being forced or restrictive: this is, after all, the intention of Starmade. To have a universe that is not restricted in any real way, a world where you aren't forced or coerced into making any specific decision; it's all you, and it's your world, your way.

Restrictive measures for encouraging diplomacy would be forcing a player to wait 24 hours after declaring war to actually fight. This is heavily restrictive and essentially destroys the chances of roleplaying a whole number of scenarios. It makes suprise attacks impossible, it destroys the need for trust or faith. Diplomacy should be limited to actual player to player agreements(possibly written, even. I'll explain more later.), and building a reliance. For example, if you help another faction get much better by installing protecting them and building Space Stations around their area to defend them, you just created dependence. You now have powerful stations positioned in strategic locations that will both assist you and them in times of alliance and do harm to them should they wage war.

Take Civilization, for example. If you make a trade agreement with another civilization for luxury goods, then they won't need to worry so much about happiness and can move on to building other things. However, their neutral happiness will plunge lower and lower, and they'll need your luxury goods more and more. (This isn't even counting BNW expansion, which expands upon this by a lot). Now, creating dependencies in Starmade is a bit more difficult, however, it can be made FAR more realistic and much better if fuel or some other controllable, extremely high value and rare resource.

That's nice... List plzz

1. Agreement log: Similar to a news post, this is a cross faction separate news post which two members of the oppossing faction can co-sign. This would keep track of mutual agreements made between factions, such as land deals, armistices, and alliance pacts. This would also allow for corporations to have resource deals, production deals and the likes, an for mercenaries to have contract deals. The idea of this is so that all members can know where they stand with other factions in specific, and to also keep the news posts from flooding. Please note: This does not in any way restrict what you can do; it doesn't make you unable to attack allied members, or not give ores to a certain faction or whatever. It's simply a cross faction agreement post.
2. Alliance mail: Identical to the above, just for every allied member.
3. Increase the amount of ranks: There needs to be more accurate chains of command and possibly roles. 5 ranks simply isn't enough.
4. Increase faction relation levels: If complex diplomatic actions are to occur, there shouldn't just be 3 faction relation levels that show war state, alliance state and neutral state. I opt for 5 relation states; Allied, friendly, neutral, hated, and enemy. This means factions can hate, tax an keep on their toes with people they don't like but don't want to war with. It also allows for goodwill between friendly but not yet allied factions.

Finally, with regards to diplomacy, I say that scarcity and need for consumables like fuel is not just what tears factions apart from eachother and into war, but also what unites them. There can be monopolies on certain things like the only gas giant in 10 sectors all around. Then some smaller factions band together and agree to split the gas if they can end the massive imperial monopoly. (Sort of like Star Wars, in a small way)

Conclusion​

Ultimately, this is not a complete fix for Starmade, however it is a great leap in the right direction. With this, so many new fun ways of playing the game can surface, and overall a more fun and enduring experience for all people and parties will result.
From this, I hope for Starmade to be more closely similar to the glorious and miraculous Sci-Fi worlds we know and love, from Metroid to Star Trek, and Star Wars and beyond.

I have surely not gotten everything correct, and I would like for you to post your thoughts, suggestions, agreements and disagreements with this thought. This is a brainstorm type of thing and your thoughts are supremely poweful and valuable, as ultimately you are the player, and the life of the game.

 

[Poofer]

Set mining resource boost by relation: As stated earlier, this will allow for corporate entities to exist better. It will also allow for more complex diplomatic deals.

+1

Allow factions to tax, should they wish to:

+1

Add a faction bank

yes plz.

Increase the rarity of NPC shops and increase the prices for purchasing from them(IN MULTIPLAYER)

NPC shops imo don't make that much of a difference, since they can hold little resources at a time, making them more expensive just means less resources to buy until shop fills with cash. Bulk trade is done, in my experience, player to player (Perhaps a Broker UI would be better?)

Abillity to pay faction members by rank

yes, using the alliance bank.

Agreement log

this would be fine for rp i guess.

Alliance chat

planned.

Faction mail

you can do this already by selecting your own faction in diplomatic tab

Alliance mai

yes

Increase the amount of ranks

ranks do need a rework, this has been mentioned before many times.

 

[MeepMoop]

Great reply Poofer. I'll be editting the OP with some of what you said in mind.

After thinking it through though, I realize you're right about the shops. Most of the production is done from within the faction and bulk trades are done in person, making shop modules generally irrelevant. However, for a tax system to exist, there would need to be shop modules with active and bustling business; in fact, it's nearly the only way to enstate a government and have passive corporate entities co-exist.

There are other forms of tax, however. One of the things I thought of was including two forms of tax; credit tax on shop purchases, and mining tax on all minerals mined. This would mean even if shops weren't used very widely, there would still be a reason to allow people to colonize your systems. Unfortunately, there would be some negative effects from this system and ultimately I scrapped the notion of it.

I would like to hear your take on it though, Poofer. Your response was good enough on shops to change my mind, so I'm wondering what you think should be done.

 

[Megacrafter127]

One of the things I thought of was including two forms of tax; credit tax on shop purchases, and mining tax on all minerals mined

How would the mining tax work specifically? Are mined resources turned into credits for the bank, or will the faction have a mineral-bankvault by default?

Also, I can think of a transit toll(for non-members of the faction), an income tax, and thousands of currently enumerable other forms of fees/taxes/subsidies/welfare. If we get a faction-wide credit-vault, I also wish for all the possibilities a governement has in terms of it's finances to be applied on factions. *is a bureaucrat through and through*

 

[MeepMoop]

How would the mining tax work specifically? Are mined resources turned into credits for the bank, or will the faction have a mineral-bankvault by default?

Also, I can think of a transit toll(for non-members of the faction), an income tax, and thousands of currently enumerable other forms of fees/taxes/subsidies/welfare. If we get a faction-wide credit-vault, I also wish for all the possibilities a governement has in terms of it's finances to be applied on factions. *is a bureaucrat through and through*

I actually hadn't had any specific plans for mining tax. As you said, I thought about having a bank and also the mineral bankvault, but they are both not very intuitive and kind of intrusive. I'd say on the fly conversion to credits to the faction bank might be best, but that can be discussed.

As for other forms of tax: I don't know how those things can be done without it becoming intrusive for some people. If taxes are added, they'll probably have to be some low profile forms that aren't too noticable, with many maximum caps.

How do you think a transit toll might be added? Would it be intrusive for new players and the likes? Maybe when you pass through a system, you'd get a popup asking for you to pay an amount of money equal to (0-10%) of your credits depending on faction relation, and up to a maximum of (0-10,000) credits. Then there would also be a cooldown; if you pay the transit toll, then you won't have to pay it for another hour or two(possibly depending on relation). Last but not least, the tax might be optional. If you don't pay the tax, though, it will send mail to the appropriate user with your name and tell them the amount you didn't pay.

 

[Poofer]

The way alliance tax is handled in a game i frequent is this:
There's a tax on income (i play on the redshift server and this could be applied to player to player credit transactions)
There's a tax, if the leader wants, in bank deposits.
This way bulk trades that involve credits contribute to the faction bank and normal day to day transactions with npc shops contribute too.

 

[Megacrafter127]

How do you think a transit toll might be added?

I mainly thought of a tax on using warpgates here, or coming into a certain distance to a base of the faction, while still within the faction's territory.

 

[Monchoman45]

TL;DR: direct taxes are impractical, unrealistic, and/or exploitable. Paying for logic block activation would be a much better system.

In real life, a government can only collect tax if it can enforce the tax. I can choose to not pay my taxes, if I do so, something bad has to happen to me. In real life, ultimately not paying my taxes would land me in jail. In starmade, any random idiot can create a faction, build an invincible homebase, and have faction control over an entire system. The only costs involved are the setup cost for a station and the cost of the faction block. On some servers this is pretty low; mushroom fleet has 1 credit stations and you spawn in with 20k credits. Theoretically, that means you can control an entire system before you ever attach a thruster to a core. If I can then impose an arbitrary mining tax on that entire system, then I might arbitrarily impose a 100% mining tax. Then, any poor bastard who mines in my sector gets nothing, and I steal all of their resources. You could fix this by imposing a cap on the tax you can impose (with some config value, ideally), but the problem of setting up a dummy faction for massive tax collections still exists. If anyone gets mad at me, I can just put everything I own on my invulnerable homebase and stay AFK to keep earning faction points.

Taxes on things like mining can't be flat, game-enforced. It's too easy to abuse, and not realistic anyway; in real life, you need some show of force to collect those kinds of taxes.

Shop taxes are easier, since you can just deny a sale if the buyer doesn't want to pay the tax. However, there isn't really any need for this; if you want more money from your shops, just increase your prices. Imposing a tax on goods purchased or sold from trading guild shops in your space doesn't make sense either, since the trading guild operates independently of any faction (they stock their own shops and have their own fleet for defense).

One thing that would be useful is a system for making people pay to use faction permissioned blocks. Imagine a public factory where you pay to open the hangar door and dock you ship. Once inside, you have unlimited factory usage (or, if you really want to milk people, get them to pay for every factory block they open). Or maybe a dockyard with massive docking areas - you can pay to dock your ship, which would give you the benefit of that faction's defenses. If you're at war and your bases are at risk, docking with another faction might let you save some of your resources from being plundered. This would also be huge for warp gates - a faction could set up a massive warp gate network, where you pay a small fee for each jump. Ideally, you would pay by mass, but I'm not sure how schema would achieve that technically.

 

[MeepMoop]

I mainly thought of a tax on using warpgates here, or coming into a certain distance to a base of the faction, while still within the faction's territory.

You know, that's an extremely good idea actually. In fact, maybe there could be a module(that's connected sort of like an activation module?) that will allow for people to use a factions services(like docking, entering the base, using a warpgate etc.) in return for credits. Sounds really good; I'll add this to the OP.

The way alliance tax is handled in a game i frequent is this:
There's a tax on income (i play on the redshift server and this could be applied to player to player credit transactions)
There's a tax, if the leader wants, in bank deposits.
This way bulk trades that involve credits contribute to the faction bank and normal day to day transactions with npc shops contribute too.

Determining who the income tax/bank transactions applies to might be tricky. I'll think on it, sounds like a good idea.
[DOUBLEPOST=1426014649,1426014046][/DOUBLEPOST]

TL;DR: direct taxes are impractical, unrealistic, and/or exploitable. Paying for logic block activation would be a much better system.

In real life, a government can only collect tax if it can enforce the tax. I can choose to not pay my taxes, if I do so, something bad has to happen to me. In real life, ultimately not paying my taxes would land me in jail. In starmade, any random idiot can create a faction, build an invincible homebase, and have faction control over an entire system. The only costs involved are the setup cost for a station and the cost of the faction block. On some servers this is pretty low; mushroom fleet has 1 credit stations and you spawn in with 20k credits. Theoretically, that means you can control an entire system before you ever attach a thruster to a core. If I can then impose an arbitrary mining tax on that entire system, then I might arbitrarily impose a 100% mining tax. Then, any poor bastard who mines in my sector gets nothing, and I steal all of their resources. You could fix this by imposing a cap on the tax you can impose (with some config value, ideally), but the problem of setting up a dummy faction for massive tax collections still exists. If anyone gets mad at me, I can just put everything I own on my invulnerable homebase and stay AFK to keep earning faction points.

Taxes on things like mining can't be flat, game-enforced. It's too easy to abuse, and not realistic anyway; in real life, you need some show of force to collect those kinds of taxes.

Shop taxes are easier, since you can just deny a sale if the buyer doesn't want to pay the tax. However, there isn't really any need for this; if you want more money from your shops, just increase your prices. Imposing a tax on goods purchased or sold from trading guild shops in your space doesn't make sense either, since the trading guild operates independently of any faction (they stock their own shops and have their own fleet for defense).

One thing that would be useful is a system for making people pay to use faction permissioned blocks. Imagine a public factory where you pay to open the hangar door and dock you ship. Once inside, you have unlimited factory usage (or, if you really want to milk people, get them to pay for every factory block they open). Or maybe a dockyard with massive docking areas - you can pay to dock your ship, which would give you the benefit of that faction's defenses. If you're at war and your bases are at risk, docking with another faction might let you save some of your resources from being plundered. This would also be huge for warp gates - a faction could set up a massive warp gate network, where you pay a small fee for each jump. Ideally, you would pay by mass, but I'm not sure how schema would achieve that technically.

I agree on what you say; there should be a show of force, absolutely definitely. As you said, the taxes would have a cap and there will need to be thinking over some of the mechanic. Specifically what I want to talk about is clarifying what you say here;

"Shop taxes are easier, since you can just deny a sale if the buyer doesn't want to pay the tax. However, there isn't really any need for this; if you want more money from your shops, just increase your prices. Imposing a tax on goods purchased or sold from trading guild shops in your space doesn't make sense either, since the trading guild operates independently of any faction (they stock their own shops and have their own fleet for defense)."

The imposed sales/purchase tax would be for other factions that want to set up shop in your system. The suggestions I make guide Starmade's general direction into making it a serious possibility for a faction to, instead of owning a massive fleet(they would still have a fleet and a station(s) of course, just leaning more on utilizing the owners defenses), to just use the system owners defenses for most of their protection and to just produce and sell at shops. The system owner would get mad deals from it because of the taxes from mining, shops, transit etc.
Think of it like the real world, corporations just worry about selling while the government defends them- in return, they get tax money.

PS: Making people pay to use faction permissioned blocks is an excellent idea. =)

 

[Megacrafter127]

As you said, the taxes would have a cap

I disagree with that particular clause, unless all the caps would be server-configurable differently.
Also, too high taxes will cause players to abandon you, unless that is impossible(server spawn[in which case the admins may or may not want to intervene]).

 

[Monchoman45]

In fact, maybe there could be a module(that's connected sort of like an activation module?) that will allow for people to use a factions services(like docking, entering the base, using a warpgate etc.

Attaching this to faction permission blocks would make the most sense. For one, it doesn't really make sense that faction permission blocks, as is, only make stuff public. They could have setttings, for example:

• Faction rank required for activation: [None] [5] [4] [3] [2] [1] [F]
• When rank requirement is not met:
  • Do nothing
  • Ask for credits: [text box for specifying how many]

This way, you would be able to set faction permissions for, say, a warp gate computer to faction rank 3. Anyone under faction rank 3 must pay X credits to use the gate. Or, attach a permission block to an activation module that opens a door. To open the door, you either need a particular faction rank, or pay some quantity of credits. This would allow you to collect money for all sorts of services your faction offers.

 

[MeepMoop]

I disagree with that particular clause, unless all the caps would be server-configurable differently.
Also, too high taxes will cause players to abandon you, unless that is impossible(server spawn[in which case the admins may or may not want to intervene]).

Ah you're right. There would be no real cap for taxes that could be rejected without disrupting gameplay(e.g. Shop taxes could be insanely high, price for using faction modules could be high etc.), whereas things that can be done in secret might have a cap, like mining tax. If there were some ungodly mining tax, it would make new players start very rough. I want to know what you think about this exactly; all of your suggestions are intelligent, reasonable, and well though out. =)
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Attaching this to faction permission blocks would make the most sense. For one, it doesn't really make sense that faction permission blocks, as is, only make stuff public. They could have setttings, for example:

• Faction rank required for activation: [None] [5] [4] [3] [2] [1] [F]
• When rank requirement is not met:
  • Do nothing
  • Ask for credits: [text box for specifying how many]

This way, you would be able to set faction permissions for, say, a warp gate computer to faction rank 3. Anyone under faction rank 3 must pay X credits to use the gate. Or, attach a permission block to an activation module that opens a door. To open the door, you either need a particular faction rank, or pay some quantity of credits. This would allow you to collect money for all sorts of services your faction offers.

Excellent, great idea!

 

[Megacrafter127]

I want to know what you think about this exactly; all of your suggestions are intelligent, reasonable, and well though out. =)

Thanks ^^

whereas things that can be done in secret might have a cap, like mining tax. If there were some ungodly mining tax, it would make new players start very rough.

taxes that are deducted "in secret" (income tax, mining tax, etc.) should at least be visible somewhere in the UI. And again, if there is no way to escape the tax due to game mechanics (the tax is on being/mining/whatever at the server's spawnpoint e.g.), it should be the server admin's job to intervene IMO. However, if the game's mechanics do not prevent someone from averting the tax by either moving to another sector or simply not doing an nonessential task(there are replacement tasks for the task), IMO there is no need to limit them, as people will avoid too high taxes by default. (I e.g. would still happily pay my taxes, even if there'd be no punishment for not doing so, as IMO the taxes are mostly well spent where I live[germany])

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah, I also believe that ranks should be unlimited; when you make a faction it starts with 6 (or something?) by default, but you can add or subtract as much as you want. If for some reason you want a faction where everyone but founders are equal you can bring it down to two ranks; if you want a full space-naval rank structure (Ensign through Admiral of the Navy, not to mention the rates of Crewman (a.k.a. Seaman) through Master Chief) plus a few army ranks and a pile of different civilian positions you should be able to do that too. This could be hard-capped at some high number - might 64 work? - to prevent too much data space being taken up by some idiot spamming the + button in the rank menu.

 

[snowhusky5]

Big post! hehe. Sounds like good ideas to me. My only input is that private property should be possible; instead of setting faction block permissions by rank, there should be a list of usernames, and an option to allow only faction members (by rank, perhaps), and another option to allow allied faction members, along with the usernames.