Better Faction Control: Private Systems + Faction Tax

[Edymnion]

As we all know, the biggest problem with Factions at the moment, and the reason we see so many factions with only 1 or 2 members is because its far too much of an All or Nothing system. I'm constantly bombarded with people asking to join my faction and don't seem to understand why I tell everyone no. I don't want them messing with my ships, I don't want them accessing my resource stores, I don't want them mining my best systems. However, I have to have a faction to claim systems for the mining bonuses and for the invincible home base. In short, there is every reason to be in a faction, but no reason to ever invite a second person to your faction.

My suggestion for fixing that is two fold:
1) Private Home System
Each player can claim a system as their home system, can set up their own individual home base, and have it be locked to their faction. Just because you join a faction doesn't mean everybody can use your stuff, and it doesn't mean you should be able to use theirs. If the faction wants to set up public resources in the form of stations, material stores, etc, thats great. But we should have our own personal space where we don't have to worry about people messing with our stuff. Our own private home system where no one but us gets the mining buff, a station where faction members cannot rummage through and anything docked to it is personally locked to prevent anyone from borrowing them.

To use MMO terms, right now there is no "guild bank" and "character bank". If I join a faction, all of my personal gear becomes public property. We need a separation there, and I think private homes with private storage are the best way to do that.

2) Faction Taxes
Currently the only thing that benefits the faction from having more members is generating more faction points, which currently have no function. In exchange, you concentrate multiple people to mining the same systems, which strips them all the faster. So we have more people competing for the same resources, on top of the expectation of being in a faction granting access to more resources which have to come out of personal pockets. This doesn't really make sense when all resources in the universe are finite (unless you abuse the asteroid respawn bug). There is no compelling reason to let someone else mine your territory when you get no benefit from it, and effectively you actually lose benefits from allowing it.

So, what about a guild tax? Where part of what you mine (or possibly additional resource duplication) goes into a guild fund/storage. That way if you're mining faction space, then part of that is going to faction property instead of your own private pockets. Perhaps combine that with the private systems in that they still get the faction bonus for mining someone's private system, but half of what you mine goes to the system owner for the private system.

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So to recap, the biggest reasons not to allow anyone else into your faction is fear of someone messing with your stuff and taking your resources. If you're a server veteran and somebody that just came in for the first time says "Looking to join a faction", you don't think "Hey, someone else to play with!", you think "Hey look, somebody looking to leech off of me." I don't want to have another faction member because I don't want them taking my resources, my ships, etc, so I don't allow people to join my faction. I presume that others typically feel the same way.

So we need a way to have private property that even faction members can't touch, and we need a way to have faction activity benefit the faction and not just the single player in the faction.

Otherwise, I don't see any reason why we'd ever get factions with more than one or two people in them, simply because few people are going to trust random internet players with access to everything they own in the game.

 

[thakyZ]

The private faction system could also work as if you want to make a base in an ally's system, so with that you would probably need to get permission from the ally or something could be done about that in another way.

And with the faction taxes I think that there should be a base tax to set and then it changes off of that, the more people join the faction, because some factions leaders (like me) would not want to tax my faction till it becomes over 25 people or something so you could change it at any time but only a person with a certain permission can change it though.
Also speaking about taxes why not a extra tax on shop's that are on a factioned station?

 

[Edymnion]

Well it could also be done the way they did guild tax in World of Warcraft. If you were in a guild, any time you got quest reward money, a fraction of that money was copied to the guild bank. The player still got 100% of the reward, but the guild got free money on top of that, meaning having a lot of people that liked to quest in the guild was very good for the guild, as they were said guild's main source of income.

If something like that were applied, then the "tax" being applied to everyone in the faction (other than the guild/faction master, to stop 1 man factions from getting additional bonuses), then there would be no penalty to the members in any way, but still plenty of incentive for the faction to recruit as many people as possible.

Heck, it could even be set up as something you physically have to build in game. A kind of tax teleporter machine. Blocks sort of like factory enhancers that, the more you build, the greater the amount of resources they can gather/duplicate from the faction members and dump into a linked storage container.

Or, perhaps we could have a Faction Tax Block that you place like an effect block that links into your salvage computer (or just link the existing Faction Block into the computer). Mining in faction space normally gives you x3 materials. If you have a Tax Block linked to your array, that is boosted to x4, and that additional multiplier gets copied over to the faction bank as well. So the faction members could be the ones to decide if they want to help the guild, mainly by helping themselves.

 

[ltmauve]

Hmmm.... I'm not so sure about the private system bit. After all, if everyone is off in their own system, there's limited interaction between members.
But without asteroids respawning (planned) you're right about the resource issue.
Opinion about "taxes:" I'm going to vote for the faction just duplicating 10% or whatever for it's own use.
Private bases, definitely.

 

[Lecic]

This sounds more like an issue with the lack of personal permissions to limit people from using your stuff. The kind of faction you're describing sounds more like a bunch of people in a loose allegiance than an actual faction.

 

[alterintel]

I really like this Idea... What about separating the personal and faction stuff. Everybody is allowed to have a home-base that is invincible much like the way it is now. But if you want to claim the system you need a faction, and you need to place a faction block. The faction block should cancel home-base invincibility. Along with that, the faction block shouldn't be the toughest block. It should be the weakest, like no armor rating and one hit point.

In addition to the mining bonus that you would get by claiming the system, you would also get a percentage of all shop or any other money transactions that take place in that system. or like the guild bank reference above, the faction gets bonus money for transactions.

Also Invincibility should have some conditions added. maybe a size or block limit of some sort, say 1000 blocks or so. Maybe make an invincibility/Home-base block. You can only have one active at a time, maybe even allow players to activate it on a ship as well. It would be fun to cruise around a pirate base in an invincible ship. Not sure how it would effect scout ship roles though?

Thoughts?

 

[GDPR 302420]

 

[Doomsider]

I was thinking of a different kind of tax, one that charges a faction a certain amount based on the total blocks they own as a way to prevent factions from accumulating too much too fast.

I will for surely implement claim sector for players as well as AI guards for sectors.

Also was thinking of a faction bank account since I have already implemented the personal bank account.

 

[Voldrath]

I will for surely implement claim sector for players as well as AI guards for sectors.

I like the idea of personal sectors. Rather than having to claim an entire system, thus flagging it on the galaxy map.

I have already implemented the personal bank account.

Is that an upcoming feature or do you mean the shop block?

 

[Doomsider]

I like the idea of personal sectors. Rather than having to claim an entire system, thus flagging it on the galaxy map.



Is that an upcoming feature or do you mean the shop block?

No it is not an officially planned feature as of right now and I implemented it with Shadow which is a server-side modification script.

 

[Lidren]

Nice ideas. I too think the faction system can be greatly expanded upon. The only thing I disagree with, is that asteroid respawn is not a bug. It was left that way intentionally as a stopgap until faction points could be used to handle the respawning.

 

[xlBlackhawklx]

Bench prettyyyyyy please! With a space berry on top?

 

[Circuitbomb]

I really like the idea of faction member private areas, but I think it should be limited to sectors in faction controlled space.

+1 on faction taxes (also add a faction wide credit wallet)

 

[ltmauve]

Nice ideas. I too think the faction system can be greatly expanded upon. The only thing I disagree with, is that asteroid respawn is not a bug. It was left that way intentionally as a stopgap until faction points could be used to handle the respawning.

Maybe only asteroids in claimed sectors respawn? That way factions that want a large fleet (and the upkeep that comes with it) needs a large territory?

 

[Benevolent27]

As we all know, the biggest problem with Factions at the moment, and the reason we see so many factions with only 1 or 2 members is because its far too much of an All or Nothing system. I'm constantly bombarded with people asking to join my faction and don't seem to understand why I tell everyone no. I don't want them messing with my ships, I don't want them accessing my resource stores, I don't want them mining my best systems. However, I have to have a faction to claim systems for the mining bonuses and for the invincible home base. In short, there is every reason to be in a faction, but no reason to ever invite a second person to your faction.

My suggestion for fixing that is two fold:
1) Private Home System
Each player can claim a system as their home system, can set up their own individual home base, and have it be locked to their faction. Just because you join a faction doesn't mean everybody can use your stuff, and it doesn't mean you should be able to use theirs. If the faction wants to set up public resources in the form of stations, material stores, etc, thats great. But we should have our own personal space where we don't have to worry about people messing with our stuff. Our own private home system where no one but us gets the mining buff, a station where faction members cannot rummage through and anything docked to it is personally locked to prevent anyone from borrowing them.

To use MMO terms, right now there is no "guild bank" and "character bank". If I join a faction, all of my personal gear becomes public property. We need a separation there, and I think private homes with private storage are the best way to do that.

2) Faction Taxes
Currently the only thing that benefits the faction from having more members is generating more faction points, which currently have no function. In exchange, you concentrate multiple people to mining the same systems, which strips them all the faster. So we have more people competing for the same resources, on top of the expectation of being in a faction granting access to more resources which have to come out of personal pockets. This doesn't really make sense when all resources in the universe are finite (unless you abuse the asteroid respawn bug). There is no compelling reason to let someone else mine your territory when you get no benefit from it, and effectively you actually lose benefits from allowing it.

So, what about a guild tax? Where part of what you mine (or possibly additional resource duplication) goes into a guild fund/storage. That way if you're mining faction space, then part of that is going to faction property instead of your own private pockets. Perhaps combine that with the private systems in that they still get the faction bonus for mining someone's private system, but half of what you mine goes to the system owner for the private system.

----------------------------

So to recap, the biggest reasons not to allow anyone else into your faction is fear of someone messing with your stuff and taking your resources. If you're a server veteran and somebody that just came in for the first time says "Looking to join a faction", you don't think "Hey, someone else to play with!", you think "Hey look, somebody looking to leech off of me." I don't want to have another faction member because I don't want them taking my resources, my ships, etc, so I don't allow people to join my faction. I presume that others typically feel the same way.

So we need a way to have private property that even faction members can't touch, and we need a way to have faction activity benefit the faction and not just the single player in the faction.

Otherwise, I don't see any reason why we'd ever get factions with more than one or two people in them, simply because few people are going to trust random internet players with access to everything they own in the game.

I agree with all of your concerns here, and some of your suggestions, but I feel your solutions on taxing aren't quite in line with what StarMade should be. I'll explain.

Firstly, as a faction leader, here are my thoughts on the subject of being a faction leader (you will find I agree with you on many things here, but I'd like to elaborate a little to put into context my response):

Right now home base protection is necessary for new players, because otherwise these players would be wiped off the face of the universe by more established players who have a lot more stuff and are bent on destruction. But on the other hand.. only one base can be protected by a faction.. So this really encourages 1 man factions, simply because it's more economical. You don't have to worry about anything, you're safe. But on the other hand, for factions.. this means everyone for that faction HAS TO share one base if they want their stuff protected.. As a faction leader, I find this to be very problematic. I cannot give build mode access of my base to my members, because they could just take everything and destroy the base. This is much too risky. But if I don't provide them with anything, then they have nowhere to safely park their ships (unless they hide somewhere far away in an unclaimed system), and what is the point of them joining me if they have LESS protection? But why should I share my hard-earned stuff with these players? Now, if I give them a place to park.. Well I guess they are safe, but what about using factories and building their own base? Maybe they want to do this. So, what I do is I create a hybrid system where I make miners for them to be able to use, it goes to the faction storage, and I basically limit how much is in there at any given time by transferring items to another private storage. If resources run out, they can ask me to put stuff into the shared storage. And if they have ideas for the base, I have them build a docked entity to expand the base, and they can build on that.. But they cannot build factories, shipyards, or warp gates.. so I find myself responding to people's requests and spending a lot of time just building the base to try and suit everyone's needs, rather than working on my own stuff. This is frustrating.

Now, as wonky as all this already is, THEN I need to make docking arms for everybody. The bigger my faction gets, the laggier my home base gets. People with slower computers can't even move around my base anymore; there are too many entities around causing lag. I find myself constantly trying to find ways to expand my base, and the lag intensifies and intensifies. People complain about my docking arms not being big enough for their ships.. They bring in some giant titan of theirs and suddenly nobody can do anything.. So I have to tell them to park it somewhere far away, but this exposes a great number of THEIR resources to danger, so why would they want to be in my faction, when they can just make their own faction and park their stuff at their own home base?

SOLUTIONS:
I agree with you that each person should be able to have their own home base. But, I think it would make it too easy for factions to claim large parts of the universe, while protecting each other. This would also be open for abuse, as people might create multiple user accounts and keep claiming more and more territory. I feel I should mention that there actually IS a benefit to factions, in that faction members will generally help each other out, banding together for protection. However, if everyone can have their own home base and claim sectors.. I think this would be rife for abuse, so there needs to be limits set, PLUS there is another problem that runs deeper here. That problem is PVP and home base protection. One of the biggest things I love in StarMade is the PVP, and it is also one of the things I find to become stale and meaningless very quickly because of the homebase protection. Anyone who actually participates in PVP is basically giving up resources to have fun in combat. These players are willingly weakening themselves, so who wants to PVP to risk their ships? Also, where is the excitement of defending your home base? When you have predictable AI, and nobody can touch you, no matter how big you get.. It really discourages PVP. The home base question is a complicated one and people are going to disagree on solutions, so I say make the solutions configurable by server admins.

Home base options:
1. Allow all players to have a personal home base. This would make it easy to recruit members. Just have em go make their own base. However, I think ALL HOME BASES need to be in the faction HOME SYSTEM in order to be protected. This would give the PRO of being protected by each other in the faction, but the CON of not being able to claim as many systems easily. This would also protect against abuse by players who create multiple accounts to claim as many systems as possible with invulnerable bases. I believe there should be pros and cons to being in a faction anyhow, and managing a faction (setting up resource areas, ect.) is an important part of giving a sense of duty to faction leaders. If everyone can just go claim their own areas and have their own bases wherever, then I believe this would also would weaken the purpose of being a faction leader, and again the potential abuse is great here.

2. Allow server admins to set a time-period that home base protection is in effect. Perhaps it could taper off over time. For example, maybe every player has 1 month of home base protection. Then each month it tapers off by 10%. So, their second month, they have 90% damage protection, then 80%, etc. Or admins don't have to use this at all, and can use another option. (particularly, the next option)

3. Allow home bases are invulnerable UP TO a certain size. After this size, the effect tapers off. The larger the home base is, and the more ships docked to it, the less protection it gets. For example, a server may set a limit of 200k mass to a base for invulnerability. This would INCLUDE any docked ships. Once this mass limit is reached, the effect starts to taper off. At 201k mass, the base is 99% protected (taking 1% damage). The server admins also set a high limit, which may be at 500k. At this size, the base, and all attached entities gets 35% protection (as set by the admins). For this server, they give at least some protection no matter what the size of your home base is. This would introduce risk over time and give players the ability to start out with fewer worries, but once they are big enough, they will need to learn how to manage their risks and compete in PVP. This will add to the excitement of the game, because, you do not value as greatly that which is not at risk.



Regarding TAXING:

I feel that Starmade has a more.. realistic feel to it. There aren't imaginary trade systems set up where you send items into the ether and somehow they return to you at the click of a button. Items are transferred in person and through real storage systems. For stores, you have to be NEAR it. I think that is a good thing. Though I do think some form of taxation would be great for factions, I do not believe it should be done by magically pulling a certain percentage of items from faction members while they mine. Also, this would be rife for abuse because a faction may simply set the tax to be 100%, so whenever anybody mines, all the resources are simply warped directly to the base instantly. This is not realistic. To be honest, I do not really know what the solution is here, other than trusting your members to actually contribute something. I have thought of complicated logic and docking systems, where people dock their mining vessels.. but there is nothing really here to stop someone from just taking the resources elsewhere.. except that they would not have home base protection. And if everyone has their own personal home base.. What is the solution? Not even faction leaders could touch their member's resources then.. I really don't know the answer at this point, but I don't think we should introduce more unrealistic mechanics to the game as a solution. I believe this would detract from the immersion, and I feel immersion is more important in StarMade than taxing members.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I like the idea. I think what you're getting at is having groups within factions. Call them companies or regiments or something, but each one could have its own permissions and sectors while still belonging and contributing to a larger faction.

I like the faction tax idea, but I think it should only be a tax on selling to a shop, not on mining. And it should have a max value of 50% or something, or better yet is configurable in the server.cfg.