Encouraging deeper gameplay via economic bonuses

[Neon_42]

I suggest changing faction points to a faction health system and changing the game economy to encourage control of territory via mining, refining, and manufacturing bonuses, without the addition of new currencies. Below are the key points for doing this.

1. The faction health system would be dependent only on the number of bases a player has. 1 point per base. The first base would be invulnerable as per usual. Factions would be ranked by the number of bases they control.
   
   
2. The home base would receive no refining bonuses. All subsequent bases would receive a refining bonus based on the resources available in their sector or star system, provided the star-system is claimed:
   
   Option 1) star-bases receive refining bonus for the sector they are in. i.e. if the sector spawns dolom asteroids then the star-base receives a refining bonus for dolom asteroids.
   
   Option 2) star-bases receive refining bonus for the star system they're in. i.e. if the star system has dolom, teckt, and varis asteroids, then the star-base receives a refining bonus for dolom, teckt, and varis asteroids.
   
   This encourages the player to seek out systems with the asteroids the need and refine them where they are found and thus protect these sectors from pirates and other players. It would add strategic value to systems with more asteroids. It would also encourage players to ship resources to where they can be refined more efficiently.
   
   
3. Once a player has acquired enough bases (or all the resource bonuses). The faction would receive a manufacturing bonus at their home base. This would encourage players to manufacture ships and parts at their home bases, ship refined resources to their home base, and use them to defend their vulnerable refineries.
   
   
4. If a faction loses all of its secondary bases ( that is after it builds more than one base), the home base would become vulnerable. This would reduce the amount of single player factions and bloat on servers. For active factions it encourages expansion such that there is redundancy in the system. If you loose too many bases( or one resource bonus) you lose the manufacturing bonus.
   
   
5. mining bonuses would remain the same.

Over all these changes would add a bit of depth to the faction gameplay. Giving players the incentive to expand and control territory by compounding refining, manufacturing, and mining bonuses, and also giving a sense of progression as players accumulate these bonuses.

• Conflict would arise over systems with more resources than others encouraging but not forcing PvP.
• Players not interested in PvP wouldn't have to build more than one base and could still be part of the universe. Though their creations would still be vulnerable if they were undocked (they could act as guns for hire/pirates still if they didn't want to wage faction war). This gives players the option to participate in PvP, without it being super risky kinda like a pvp flag, but still be part of a larger universe Edymnion
• Trade would be encouraged since players who do engage in faction competition would be able to produce resources faster than those with just one base.
• Players would be encouraged to sell parts to afford stations to gain bonuses.
• There would also be a pseudo maximum faction size, since redundancy in bases would not be efficient after a while.
• This would encourage the claiming of consecutive sectors,because it is more risky to ship materials longer distances.
• This would encourage exploration to find all of a competitors bases.

There would have to be some balancing of the numbers. I can imagine that the mining bonus would have to be decreased from what it currently is.

This would possibly mix well with wizardoftrash 's suggestion: NPC faction-war pvp game mode

 

[MacThule]

I love the general conception of this as an RP-RTS mode or version of SM with definite objectives and dynamics. It would let sysads reset their servers frequently avoiding DB corruption and other age-related problems, and the sense of pressure would add a little excitement. The toughest thing to balance would be that once one faction got a decent edge early on no one would want to join a weaker faction and it would probably just snowball. The game could be pretty much decided by day 3 even if not finished for another week or more.

Still, I would love to see a mode or separately released version of SM that could pull this off in a fairly fast-paced way (i.e. game length of under a month or even around the 1-2 week mark).

 

[Neon_42]

I love the general conception of this as an RP-RTS mode or version of SM with definite objectives and dynamics. It would let sysads reset their servers frequently avoiding DB corruption and other age-related problems, and the sense of pressure would add a little excitement. The toughest thing to balance would be that once one faction got a decent edge early on no one would want to join a weaker faction and it would probably just snowball. The game could be pretty much decided by day 3 even if not finished for another week or more.

Still, I would love to see a mode or separately released version of SM that could pull this off in a fairly fast-paced way (i.e. game length of under a month or even around the 1-2 week mark).

In this suggestion I don't think factions would gain to much of an edge. Expanding too much would become cumbersome and I think factions would naturally reach an optimum size in territory. Small 1 base pirate factions would also provide a "restoring force" to keep factions from growing too big.

 

[apelsinsaft]

You could implement this into starmade today and it would be an improvement with virtually no downsides. Brilliant suggestion. Just a couple questions, though:

Once a player has acquired enough bases (or all the resource bonuses). The faction would receive a manufacturing bonus at their home base. This would encourage players to manufacture ships and parts at their home bases, ship refined resources to their home base, and use them to defend their vulnerable refineries.

Why not have the manufacturing bonus always present at your home base?

If a faction loses all of its secondary bases ( that is after it builds more than one base), the home base would become vulnerable. This would reduce the amount of single player factions and bloat on servers. For active factions it encourages expansion such that there is redundancy in the system. If you loose too many bases( or one resource bonus) you lose the manufacturing bonus.

At what point does a station count as a base? Is there anything stopping a large faction from spamming 1-block stations in every corner of their territory to prevent their homebase from ever becoming vulnerable?

 

[Neon_42]

You could implement this into starmade today and it would be an improvement with virtually no downsides. Brilliant suggestion. Just a couple questions, though:


Why not have the manufacturing bonus always present at your home base?

For a couple of reasons. It gives a sense of progression. It also forces players to maintain a minimum territory so that they don't abandon refineries when they are done with them (abandon capture abandon capture strategies).

At what point does a station count as a base? Is there anything stopping a large faction from spamming 1-block stations in every corner of their territory to prevent their homebase from ever becoming vulnerable?

I don't think this is really an issue, but it could be. In my mind a the credit cost of having bases is enough that these bases grow slowly. One block stations are very easy to destroy. If someone spams one block stations it would be very resource inefficient and wouldn't take long for a competing player to destroy them all. Though an argument could be made for making the starting block cost more for each consecutive station. Something like 10% more. That would limit promiscuous station building but I don't think it would be much of a problem as it is.

 

[Neon_42]

Thinking more about this, it might be possible to just have a random roll on a star system for refining bonuses. That would encourage shipping lanes. The most economic gain would be had by shipping resources to where players would have the appropriate refining bonus. This would also encourage trade in those sectors as players would be incentivized to buy those resources where they can efficiently manufacture them.

 

[Nickizzy]

Thinking more about this, it might be possible to just have a random roll on a star system for refining bonuses. That would encourage shipping lanes. The most economic gain would be had by shipping resources to where players would have the appropriate refining bonus. This would also encourage trade in those sectors as players would be incentivized to buy those resources where they can efficiently manufacture them.

Or it could activate a bonus(My two cents on encouraging PvP conflict in a stagnant universe) or give bonuses based on how much of each resource is in the systrem

 

[Neon_42]

Or it could activate a bonus(My two cents on encouraging PvP conflict in a stagnant universe) or give bonuses based on how much of each resource is in the systrem

That's not a bad idea. There could be a bunch of bonuses: pirate loot, mining, refining, shields... There could be hazards too? Like nebulae where shields don't function, or radiation that weakens armor,or obscures sensors.

 

[Nickizzy]

Extra tech points to ships built there?

 

[Zilvs]

I really like this idea, it adds a much more competitive edge to the game and would help those who burn out quickly while playing the game. I've tried to grab a few friends and carve us out a corner of the galaxy but as soon as we made some or decent progress nobody would want to keep committing time to the game.

 

[Arcaner]

I'm all for it. My only problem lies with

If a faction loses all of its secondary bases ( that is after it builds more than one base), the home base would become vulnerable

See my We need to relook at the Homebase issue...

Fact is, while your suggestion WOULD increase pvp interaction, I feel more gains are needed to push ppl out of their homebases.

 

[Nickizzy]

I'm all for it. My only problem lies with


See my We need to relook at the Homebase issue...

Fact is, while your suggestion WOULD increase pvp interaction, I feel more gains are needed to push ppl out of their homebases.

Like what? Your thread makes any faction that has it's PVP flag on, and lets any facton without it on free forever.

 

[Arcaner]

Like what? Your thread makes any faction that has it's PVP flag on, and lets any facton without it on free forever.

Well,, what else do you suggest? My first idea was very similar to the idea mentioned by Neon_42. It was downvoted by players.

Understand that nobody likes pvp thrust upon them. Introducing high risk for high gain is the only way to coax people out of their homebases.