Base invulnerability bought with faction points

[unelsson]

I have a suggestion that brings a lot gameplay with fairly little coding effort.

This goes in line with suggested new Territority System http://starmadedock.net/threads/new-territory-system.8552/. I've also read suggestions on other uses for faction points, but I think it´s worth keeping it simple. I´ve also read a lot of discussion on how to build pvp and pve into game, how to cope with griefers, invulnerable bases and so on.

The core idea is to make invulnerability bought with faction points:
* paying fp-rent for homebase invulnerability (cheap)
* paying fp-rent for any other base invulnerability (expensive)
* paying fp-rent for ai-controlled defender ships that would spawn as fleets (medium cost)

These improvements would bring a lot of dynamic gameplay for multiplayer servers. There should still be a server config option for completely invulnerable homebases though.

To improve my core idea towards pvp-purposes, some people have suggested sieges with faction point economy. For simplicity, enemy ships next to a base would just increase the cost of invulnerability, and therefore defending faction would need to get rid of sieging ships or face losing faction points. The problem in this is that people play with different frequencies. Some might not play at all for a longer time, and it would be unfair to lose everything just because you are offline for a while. To solve this, perhaps fp costs would only increase after player of a defending faction logs in or it should take a fairly long time to deprive a faction of fp. Perhaps homebases could be kept invulnerable indefinitely even in a siege given that there is e.g. 1-2h of play on average everyday. This would also create a reason for joining together and living in bigger factions.

 

[Khantron]

This is aa really good idea! It solves the problem of homebases being the only place to safely dock ships so it's gets harder and harder to project force, yet it's not completely invincible, you lose too many outposts and you don't get enough FP to make your bases invulnerable. It wouldn't be trivial to balance, but if you'll pardon my vagueness, it just flows so well:

1. You establish a faction,

2. Establish a few outposts to get your faction point income coming in.

3. When defending faraway outposts gets too difficult you establish a forward base to improve your galactic logistics.

4. The power of your faction wanes (maybe you lose some key players)and several outposts are taken.

5. Your forward base loses its invincibility. You evacuate to your home base where your once great faction relives their glory days in relative obscurity.

It just feels right, you know?

I also feel that establishing fleets should cost rent that doesn't increase with losses, they should cost more the bigger the fleet/ship size, and they should respawn slowly, so that 1. They can be defeated and 2. You don't have to worry about dumb ai burning through your faction points.

Proper balancing would be difficult, but so rewarding.

 

[unelsson]

Khantron, yes, it would bring exactly that strategic aspect into game. Balancing is not possibly that difficult, but it´s a matter of taste and should be configurable on server.

(Edited the first post to make it quicker to read)

 

[cyberus111]

Make the initial homebase invulnerability default at the establishment with a reasonable window (30 days?) before 1st "rent" payment is due and I could go with the concept, otherwise you can run into the "old guard" haves and no new factions (IMHO)

 

[alterintel]

shine could also make money by selling faction points for real money? Then maybe they could afford to develop the game full time?

Something would have to be done to make sure that people who pay real money don't get too much of an advantage.

Probably a bad idea. Lets see how far down my approvals go with this post?

 

[Megacrafter127]

shine could also make money by selling faction points for real money?

How? To do so, schine'd need remote access to EVERY private server[as there are no public servers], which I doubt would be recieved well by the server-owners, especially considering that the value of FP can differ greatly due to server-specific configs.

 

[alterintel]

How? To do so, schine'd need remote access to EVERY private server[as there are no public servers], which I doubt would be received well by the server-owners, especially considering that the value of FP can differ greatly due to server-specific configs.

Yeah your right, Shine would have to operate their own server to sell faction points. But on the plus side, anybody could make money by running their own private Starmade server.

But then again a lot of gamers get touchy when you suggest that somebody can pay to get some kind of advantage.

 

[cyberus111]

alterintel Yay lets to make this game another P2WIN shit. Seriusly worst idea ever.

Amen! Just what we need is a galaxy full of invulnerable bases and AI fleets bought by some 15yr old with mommies credit card so he could go out and PWN everyone.

IMO nothing is worse than games that go to the P2W format.

 

[StormWing0]

In the case of AI fleets spawning to guard faction owned area it could be made so that the game looks for blueprints made by players in that faction to spawn, if none it defaults to either nothing or an admin made list of BPs the game can use. Would make it so that the game won't spawn another faction's ships to guard someone that hasn't at least tried to put in some effort to play the game but also if selected defaults are set than it makes it so someone isn't totally cut out of this handy thing either.

 

[unelsson]

cyberus111, the initial free time for invulnerability is not a bad idea at all. It´s all about finding the right balance though, and perhaps this also could be server-configurable. I´d go with fairly short establishment period and then compensate by making the fp cost for homebase invulnerability low.

stormwing, custom blueprints for defender ships is a really nice feature, and probably not too big thing to implement. It just needs some coding and limits for ships, perhaps ship size limit or so. Defender ships would of course act as a way to grind blocks from fp, but that´s probably not really that big of a problem.

It occurred to me that there are some balance issues here, but nothing that breaks the game. For example, sieging would obviously be extremely risky business. I think it should be possible to siege (increase fp cost) out of turret range. And if it´s just that any ship is ok for sieging, one can siege with very small expendable ships, even just cores. That would probably result in all sorts of weird tactics, like bringing a carrier ship full of drones to a siege. On the other hand, defenders could sweep defenceless cores fairly quickly with ships with turrets. It might even come to a point where two factions have invulnerable stations next to each other, both actively trying to siege the neighbouring base. It would create certain kind of dynamics, and affect gameplay and tactics, but would that really be a problem?

 

[cyberus111]

I dunno if the window should be server.cfg

IMO it should be something that, once a good balance is found, should be stable across the game, otherwise new people could be driven away by bad servers