A case study in factions- The solution to everything (ENDED)

[Arcaner]

Introduction: Factions, as they currently function ingame, have a lot of problems - When you enter a new server, you just need to set up a new (one-man) faction, make a Homebase somewhere (mostly a place to dock), claim the system, start mining there. Nothing more is needed to survive. The ease of owning an invulnerable station means there is widespread creation of one-man factions. This is a problem (Citation needed). This suggestion is aimed at fixing issues that the current faction system has. Namely, the homebase invulnerability topic, the one-man factions and (seemingly useless) faction points, system ownership issues, instigation to explore and fight.

The conclusion (and idea): Factions have to be altered to instigate exploration and battles.

First, delete your current understanding of factions, homebases, system ownerships and faction points. All is about to be redefined -

• Players create a "Faction" from the menu. (Same as current).

• Ships and Stations can be "owned" by placing a "Faction" block (same as current).

• Faction ranks remain as they are currently. So does the Faction permission module.

• On creation, the faction has a set number of "Faction Points" (say "x").

• Fixed number of faction points are added for every player that joins the faction.

• Faction points deplete at a rate proportional to the time a player(s) (of the faction) is online. (Online time is already measure by the server) Yes, you read that correctly. Herein lies the beauty of the suggestion! Nothing happens if a player is not online - you can go for a vacation and not worry about your homebase getting invulnerable because of that. This also means that having inactive players will do nothing apart from the initial FP gain when they joined (which may be removed).

• Faction Points are gained every time a player attacks enemy factions, attacks pirates or does a decent amount of mining. (Values will have to balanced here, see heading "Implementation")

• Faction points are also gained everytime people (of any other faction) buy (not sell- to avoid potential exploits) stuff from any of your factions shops. A fixed amount of credits corresponds to a set FP gain. (FACILITATES TRADING AND MARKET CREATION)

• A set number of Faction Points corresponds to one invulnerable station (say "y"). This means that if you have those many Faction Points, the Faction leader can set any one of the stations owned by the Faction as invulnerable. This will render it, and all docked entities invulnerable too. If a faction owns twice the amount of Faction Points, it can set two stations as invulnerable. (Ideally, it should be made very difficult to have the FPs required to keep more than one station invulnerable- I say difficult, not impossible. A very active faction with a decent amount of players should be able to have 2 (3, even) such stations). The stations themselves do not change Faction Points though. There will also be a need for a priority order menu here (not unlike the power priority). This will determine which station becomes vulnerable, in case the faction loses FP to sustain those many invulnerable stations.

• System Ownership: No longer does one faction have 100% ownership of the system. Any faction can make any number of stations in any system and claim partial ownership. The ratio of stations owned in the system will determine the % ownership (Invulnerable and Vulnerable count the same here ONLY VULNERABLE STATIONS CAN CLAIM SYSTEMS- this would be an offset to having multiple invulnerable stations. This would also kill tactics like alt accounting to make one invulnerable station (and then logging off) in your enemy's territory that would have (earlier) taken up some partial territory). For Eg, let’s say there are 4 stations in a system. 2 are owned by Faction A, 1 by Faction B and 1 by Faction C. The Galaxy Map will show ownership as 50%A, 25%B, 25%C.

• Mining Bonuses: Higher the partial ownership in a system, higher the mining bonuses (And so, more the FP gained for mining, making the already strong Faction even stronger (unintended))

• Keep x > y ! This means on creation of a one men faction, the faction INITIALLY has enough FP to sustain ONE invulnerable station, but not for long.

What this will do:

• One man factions will no longer be a thing. what they are right now-bridges to a free perma invulnerable homebase. A single player will not be able to find it hard to sustain even one invulnerable homebase for long. This does *not* mean it will not be possible to create a faction to find a safe place to dock for the night! (See below)
• Permanent turtling will not be possible - You will HAVE to go out of your invulnerable station to do stuff- whatever it may be.

• System ownership will be better balanced. No longer will one faction own a whole system with just their homebase now.

• Faction wars will be instigated.

• Exploration will be a thing - Factions will try to get away from the crowded central region and claim 100% ownership of a distant system (by using just one station).

• This would *not* encourage very few super factions. More the players in a faction, FP would increase faster (more stuff being done) BUT even the FP depletion would increase as overall playtime would increase. So, THE PROPOSED SYSTEM WOULD IN FACT **NOT** SUPPORT LARGE GROUP SIZES ANY MORE THAN THE CURRENT SYSTEM. This would mean there would be a sweet spot, where having 5 to 12 players would give max net increase in FP.

One man factions have a purpose and I think should be allowed for. - FlyingDebris

I assume you mean a safe place to dock for the night, eh?

This is why I said keep x greater than y. That is still going to be possible - create a new faction and make an invulnerable station and quickly logout. It will remain like that till the next time you login (whenever that may be). After some time of playing. your FP will decrease (to a value below "y"), forcing you to delete that faction. You can do this all the time. But it is obvious a good long term solution will be to settle with a big enough faction. In any case, Trading Guild Shops are always another open option.

Spoiler: Restrictive?

No. Creative servers or PVE servers or people who just want to chill out a bit can set their FP depletion values to 0. That will make it work pretty much like the current system.

The implementation:

• Servers already measure online time. It will be a simple task to multiply that time by a constant (configurable) and get FP decrease.

• Mining FP gains are pretty straightforward. One ore mined would mean a set FP increase.

• Maintaining a factory on stations should also give FP gain. Again, this would be calculated in the same way mining gains are calculated.

• Fights again ships and stations: At first thought, it may seem that the system will find this difficult to judge. What I suggest is simple - Measure damage done to the enemy ships and stations. This is already calculated :P. It would be a simple thing to read this damage value. Each amount of damage done gives a proportional FP increase. Simple. Also, take note I said DAMAGE. I mean damage to BLOCKS. This would automatically mean ships which don't lose shields throughout the battle, (which means 0 block damage to them) or those docked to an invulnerable station would register 0 damage done to them, warding off potential exploits too.

• A note on alt accounts and factions.: Creation of alt accounts which players may make to join their factions will be useless apart from the (to be removed) initial FP gain. No activity means no FP creation. Proxy faction creation for FP mining will not be a thing. (See the above point)

The only real obstacle as I see it:

Severe lack of players is restriction enough - Endal

 

[Antikristianos]

its a good idea for pvp.

 

[Lynx_]

I really like this idea.
However, one man factions came up because people didn't trust each other. For example my faction, which as about 7 members, most of them inactive tho only alows people that have a voice comunication system.
The other problem, why people who know each other from the server and know the other has usefull resources etc. don't go in the same faction is because everyone wants to keep his homebase. There your idea is great.
If you would ad faction ranks to inventorys then that totally makes sense.

 

[FlyingDebris]

One man factions have a purpose and I think should be allowed for. Other than that, sounds dope.

 

[Jojomo]

Possibly some problems - small factions will be wiped out (not just hurt - completely wiped out) by large factions, unless they don't log in.

"Realistic", yes. "Fair", yes.
But not good for a game that doesn't want its players to find something else to play.

 

[Arcaner]

Possibly some problems - small factions will be wiped out (not just hurt - completely wiped out) by large factions, unless they don't log in.

"Realistic", yes. "Fair", yes.
But not good for a game that doesn't want its players to find something else to play.

Actually, no.

As long as smallish factions do stuff enough to keep one station invulnerable, theyre fine. Also, reread my post. As long as you are offline, nothing happens to your FP. What this means is that if all the member of a (say, 4 member faction) were to go offline for a week, nothing would happen to their FP and invulnerable station.

 

[Jojomo]

Actually, no.

As long as smallish factions do stuff enough to keep one station invulnerable, theyre fine. Also, reread my post. As long as you are offline, nothing happens to your FP. What this means is that if all the member of a (say, 4 member faction) were to go offline for a week, nothing would happen to their FP and invulnerable station.

One member factions can't survive, they can't maintain a single invulnerable base. Possibly you may see that as a good thing, but it's exclusive of some potential customers/income.

If one player can't maintain a single invulnerable base I'd guess that the smaller a faction is the more difficult it is to maintain an invulnerable base. So small factions need to work harder to survive, and they may not be successful. Players in a game who lose everything they've worked for are much more likely to quit completely.

I don't disagree that this may improve quality of play, but it's going to decrease quantity of players, which I think is a downside.

 

[Antikristianos]

just ad a scaling factor for maintaining a Invulnerable station...
like:
1 Player Faction needs 1.000 FP for First Invulnerable homebase
2 Player F -> 1.500 FP ( getting a "small faction" bonus)
3 Player F -> 2.000 FP (still "small faction" bonus)
4 Player F -> 3.500 FP (still "small faction" bonus)
5 Player F -> 4.000 FP (all additional players adding 1.000 FP needed for invulnerable Homebase)

second Invulnerable homebase cost double of first one.. third cost double of second one ect...

 

[Coyote27]

This topic's been discussed in regards to LvD in particular, and I have some input to throw in from that discussion.

Punishing one-man factions could also make it much more difficult for new factions to get started to take advantage of power vacuums, or just to get started in general on new or newly reset servers. Rewarding factions for having large and growing numbers of members seems to encourage snowballing of a few large factions to grow ever larger and more powerful until there's either a fixed power-bloc cold war, or one dominant faction that takes over the whole galaxy (because incentives would encourage all the players to join whatever faction already has the most). Neither of those are particularly desirable for interesting gameplay.

If we want to encourage more PvP and give people more reasons to leave their homebase and go out into other systems, then one way to do it might be rewarding factions for claiming systems and holding onto them, thereby creating an incentive for territorial expansion and disputes. If claimed systems generated faction points, and those faction points could be used on something actually useful beyond simply maintaining the faction's existence, then we'd have a more interesting dynamic in the works - one where a faction wouldn't be /forced/ to push out and fight others for dominance, but it'd benefit by being able to do so successfully; and one where a faction's power or even survival isn't a direct result of how many people it can recruit, but having more people actively participating would still give an advantage in combat as it does now.

 

[Arcaner]

This topic's been discussed in regards to LvD in particular, and I have some input to throw in from that discussion.

Punishing one-man factions could also make it much more difficult for new factions to get started to take advantage of power vacuums, or just to get started in general on new or newly reset servers. Rewarding factions for having large and growing numbers of members seems to encourage snowballing of a few large factions to grow ever larger and more powerful until there's either a fixed power-bloc cold war, or one dominant faction that takes over the whole galaxy (because incentives would encourage all the players to join whatever faction already has the most). Neither of those are particularly desirable for interesting gameplay.

If we want to encourage more PvP and give people more reasons to leave their homebase and go out into other systems, then one way to do it might be rewarding factions for claiming systems and holding onto them, thereby creating an incentive for territorial expansion and disputes. If claimed systems generated faction points, and those faction points could be used on something actually useful beyond simply maintaining the faction's existence, then we'd have a more interesting dynamic in the works - one where a faction wouldn't be /forced/ to push out and fight others for dominance, but it'd benefit by being able to do so successfully; and one where a faction's power or even survival isn't a direct result of how many people it can recruit, but having more people actively participating would still give an advantage in combat as it does now.

This suggestion would in no way support larger factions as compared to smaller ones more than the current system does. This is because more players playing will mean a larger fp decrease as well.

 

[GnomeKing]

Some good ideas put forward here - having a decent meta for faction activity would be very good for multi-server games > it can be carefully considered and should be easily configurable, as it is not directly dependent on other game mechanics.

I will keep repeating this specific idea:

Attacking much weaker opponents should involve a 'faction point' cost > dominance and 'bullying' would then be more like strategies to employ with real logistical consideration, that also requires actions against 'more worthy' opponents, or other Faction Point building activity..

we are all familiar with the basic experience points concept > diminishing returns of experience points, so the Level 30 Fighter gets very little progress to Level 31 from destroying the entire Kobold Stronghold, yet the Level 1 Fighter levels-up after dispatching just the sentry guards....

Games without experience points tend to have 'points-for-kills' or similar > neither fits Starmade well (imo).
As in many other ways, Starmade can be bold and adopt a more interesting approach.
This is not about Karma-points in the 'snowflake' sense, but rather in the Sanskrit original : yes, it is possible to gain great power and use it as an evil demon/super-hero, but not without cost of actions and personal energy.....

 

[kulbolen]

this idea sounds nice, but wont work.

no server that punishes 1 man faction survives long, unless thats part of its pvp gimmick (even then.) the game isnt in a state where it has enough faction tools to force the issue, and there arent enough players on servers.

Some good ideas put forward here - having a decent meta for faction activity would be very good for multi-server games > it can be carefully considered and should be easily configurable, as it is not directly dependent on other game mechanics.

I will keep repeating this specific idea:

Attacking much weaker opponents should involve a 'faction point' cost > dominance and 'bullying' would then be more like strategies to employ with real logistical consideration, that also requires actions against 'more worthy' opponents, or other Faction Point building activity..

we are all familiar with the basic experience points concept > diminishing returns of experience points, so the Level 30 Fighter gets very little progress to Level 31 from destroying the entire Kobold Stronghold, yet the Level 1 Fighter levels-up after dispatching just the sentry guards....

Games without experience points tend to have 'points-for-kills' or similar > neither fits Starmade well (imo).
As in many other ways, Starmade can be bold and adopt a more interesting approach.
This is not about Karma-points in the 'snowflake' sense, but rather in the Sanskrit original : yes, it is possible to gain great power and use it as an evil demon/super-hero, but not without cost of actions and personal energy.....

"dominant" factions dont attack players for the rewards, as there basically arent any. adding a cost to fighting will just make it even less common. the analogy about xp doesnt work well; its about grinding npcs for proportional reward, not logistics and costs involved in taking actions against players.

how do you determine a dominant faction and a weaker faction, mechanically? a solo player can have a powerful ship and go bout "bullying" people in like an hour on a server brand new without many resources or much mass.

 

[GnomeKing]

well, I am open to ideas kulbolen > the principle I am promoting is that, if there are points gained from attacking factions (how is that calculated?) then attacking a 'much weaker' opponent incurs not just limited reward, but an actual cost.

The idea is to make 'actions-have-consequences' > a guaranteed or trivial military victory would still carry some overall 'cost' in terms of meta-faction gameplay. Eg, the new player in your example would be able to do just that, but after some time will have to seek more equal opponents or devote other time to Faction Point making (other than scalping other newbies as the only strategy for example, and sitting in homebase until some victims log-on...).
[doublepost=1511011841,1511011449][/doublepost]simple ranking of Faction points....perhaps with wide brackets for weaker - 'equal' - stronger ...

this is assuming other (unknown) mechanics for generating faction points, and is a principle in how to 'scale' rewards/costs of faction-relevant activity

 

[kulbolen]

well, I am open to ideas kulbolen > the principle I am promoting is that, if there are points gained from attacking factions (how is that calculated?) then attacking a 'much weaker' opponent incurs not just limited reward, but an actual cost.

The idea is to make 'actions-have-consequences' > a guaranteed or trivial military victory would still carry some overall 'cost' in terms of meta-faction gameplay. Eg, the new player in your example would be able to do just that, but after some time will have to seek more equal opponents or devote other time to Faction Point making (other than scalping other newbies as the only strategy for example, and sitting in homebase until some victims log-on...).

sorry i probably didnt say that right.

you arent gonna force people to play nice, and artificial single purpose mechanics to force it will 100% be circumvented... but organic system to push for group play and not killing new players would be good. the ideal answers to this problem rely on playercount that starmade probably wont ever reach on individual servers.

anyway i dont see how youd determine how strong or weak someone is, and i dont see how youd counter the million ways around it through alts and proxy factions.

simple ranking of Faction points....perhaps with wide brackets for weaker - 'equal' - stronger ...

this is assuming other (unknown) mechanics for generating faction points, and is a principle in how to 'scale' rewards/costs of faction-relevant activity

fp is in no way correlated to strength.

 

[GnomeKing]

if Faction points are not correlating to 'strength of a Faction' in some way, what are they ?

I am assuming we are talking about theoretical systems of points (if we are to have them) with potential different mechanics anyway - this is a suggested principle to scale them.

i am not about forcing 'playing nice' > simply that there are few actions with amount consequence/cost, and reward should come with risk/effort > this (imo) makes a more enjoyable game for everyone (easy rewards become stale fast...)

being a Dick on server will eventually get similar responses, no matter the game or faction-point rules.

 

[kulbolen]

if Faction points are not correlating to 'strength of a Faction' in some way, what are they ?

I am assuming we are talking about theoretical systems of points (if we are to have them) with potential different mechanics anyway - this is a suggested principle to scale them.

i am not about forcing 'playing nice' > simply that there are few actions with amount consequence/cost, and reward should come with risk/effort > this (imo) makes a more enjoyable game for everyone (easy rewards become stale fast...)

being a Dick on server will eventually get similar responses, no matter the game or faction-point rules.

currently fp is a crap mechanic to help decay unused factions, and thats about it. its been explored as a way to get people out of their hbs and fighting, but it never works out for long cause its just not a good system in the first place.

a system like you imagine is idealistic talk until you start outlining how you think it might work, and why. tell me how you would make it correlate to faction strength...

people are dicks on servers in every game with interaction. some of them have limitations and costs on people being dicks, some dont. some encourage it. contrary to what some people would say, its not inherently bad and can even be incorporated into gameplay.

 

[GnomeKing]

oh do shut up, if you have nothing to actually add to 'blu-sky' thinking about possible systems, then you are just being a cleverer-than-you-dick. :/

 

[kulbolen]

yes, im a dick. i had the nerve to ask you to actually explain how youd go about accomplishing something.

 

[GnomeKing]

An idea:

EG: faction point generation and everything else stays exactly as they are now, but when you declare war/maintain war by not accepting peace, there is a check against current relative faction ranking > if you attack a similar or more ranked faction, then maybe no cost to your faction points. If you attack a 'much' lower ranked faction there there is 'some' cost to your own faction points. If you maintain the war, perhaps there will be a continuing (perhaps individually nominal) cost. Therefore doing nothing to gain faction points and simply waiting around for easy prey becomes a strategy that has to be developed and thought about a bit, as does having a gazillion enemies all at once...

 

[kulbolen]

An idea:

EG: faction point generation and everything else stays exactly as they are now, but when you declare war/maintain war by not accepting peace, there is a check against current relative faction ranking > if you attack a similar or more ranked faction, then maybe no cost to your faction points. If you attack a 'much' lower ranked faction there there is 'some' cost to your own faction points. If you maintain the war, perhaps there will be a continuing (perhaps individually nominal) cost. Therefore doing nothing to gain faction points and simply waiting around for easy prey becomes a strategy that has to be developed and thought about a bit, as does having a gazillion enemies all at once...

its an interesting thought.

what do you do to about people who just dont make a faction, or to people who make an alt faction just to blow people up?
how do you combat the fact that a large faction with lots of players could be vastly outgunned by a small new 1 man faction? a lot of the "noob factions" have the most players and the game would now do less to discourage attacking them. most of this games "power" is rated by player experience, which is what i meant by faction points have no correlation to power.

you also open up a big can of worms on self defense, since war declaration is a big part of ai control, and people could just attack you with new factions to drain your fp quickly or grief you.


in the end, i often see adding extra artificial mechanics to control player behavior as well intended, but poorly executed. in a lot of actual cases, they just serve as an illusion of a safety net for the newer players, who get even more frustrated by those who circumvent them. i think it would be better to just design the game in a way that naturally discourages you from picking on weak people with no reward, but until the games more complete im not really sure how youd go about that.

theres a lot of suggestions like upkeep costs, operational resource sinks etc, that would naturally discourage those things while being their own gameplay mechanics, while not outright removing peoples ability to be dicks... but i think most of those ideas were shot down awhile ago (for different reasons.) theres more, but it depends on the games direction what would work and what wouldnt...