- Joined
- Dec 1, 2014
- Messages
- 33
- Reaction score
- 153
Hello again, I’ve had this idea for a while now and I’ve been meaning to share it with this community. Looking at the current state of Factions in Starmade, from the Major Forum factions (that are more like empty shells now) to the little bundles of friends on a server working together to make something new, I noticed something. It’s all a bit, well, dead. Not in the meaning of nobody does it anymore but as in True expansion and conquering between players on servers. That is 1 of the major unique factors in starmade that is slowly sliding off a ledge. And I don’t think it’s to do with the community side of problems anymore, I think it’s just too hard now to do it. Having a major faction of players is 1 side of the problem building one of them up now is hard, but applying your members in game to certain jobs is a different story. what I’m trying to get at is, it needs to change soon.
So my idea is simple. Npc factions use a set amount of members to do their work in specific jobs and ships, allowing them to have fleets of miners and defending warships, as well as trade fleets and so on. So why do we have to do it the hard way? Instead of relying on Players to maybe do the boring jobs every now and then, why not have a couple of Npc hired AIs/crew to do the dirty work. I shall split this into 4 main sections, AI hiring and management, expansion mechanics, war mechanics, and resource mechanics.
AI hiring and management.
Now the idea for this I had was to use the NPC shop trader from advanced shops and buy the Npc crew people from him. So you could simply buy the guy, assign him to your faction, and from there you could manage him from the faction Players list tab. So the players and Npc’s in your faction are separated to make life easier to manage them. From there you can click on the Npc and it will give you the option to drag and drop a FILLED blueprint of your choosing for him to use as his ship. Once he has that you can switch to 1 of 3 tabs now in the faction menu. Combat, Expansion, mining. From each of these tabs you can add which Npc’s go where and what they do their jobs are explained down below. A new block could also be added for cargo called a Npc Beacon, that allows the Npc’s in your faction know what cargo computers they can add there mined resources or loot into. Alternatively, marking it with a marker beam might work.
Expansion mechanics.
Expansion is an underestimated feature in starmade, it can became a viable mechanic in the multiverse of starmade servers. Your Npc’s could be assigned to a unique role in the faction tab called expansion where you assign 3-6 Npc ships in your faction to expansion duty, which gives them the task to claim as many systems your faction can support without losing faction points. The tab itself will have a credit fund you can add to and a blueprint bank you can fill with completed stations you want to use as the claims for new systems. Once the Npc fleet has arrived at a new system they will choose a sector to load a claim station in (best idea so far is randomised sector choice that excludes sectors in range of suns burn damage.) once they have cleared the sector of hostile entities, they will deploy the station. After deployment, they could guard the station for a short while and move on to the next system, the claimed systems they add will be new areas for mining duty and patrol duty Npcs to use.
War mechanics
Wars in starmade are fun in starmade multiplayer, but they're just battles between 2-4 ships at a time. Why not widen the scale a bit? Npcs assigned to Combat Fleets in the Faction tab, will now follow your orders you give them, so you can tell them to go on patrol in your territory and they will wipe out any hostile entities to your faction in your claimed systems. Or you can tell them to go on assault agent’s specific factions, they will then target that factions Bases (system claim stations), Expansion fleet, mining ships, and defence ships, all in the effort to destroy the opposes industrial capabilities. The fleet size however relies on the amount of actual Players are in the game. 1 player factions could only get 5 ships total allowance in the fleet, for example Each player in the faction adds an extra 5 ships from there allowance in the Combat fleets tab.
Resource mechanics.
Mining in starmade is important part of expansion in starmade, boring but necessary, but why should we just have to do it? Npcs that are assigned to the Resource tab immediately use their assigned ships mining capabilities to gather resources from asteroids in your territories. They will collect what they can, where they can, and can be told to ether mine just asteroids or add derelict stations to their mining list. Once their inventory is full they will transport the material back to your factions Homebase or designated storage station. They will add the resources directly into a storage chest linked to a Npc Beacon. This process will continue until they run out of stuff to mine.
That’s quite a bit of stuff right now and balancing would have needed to be figured out. But this could change the way starmade is played forever. Servers would have massive scale wars between factions and territory would be fought over to expand into, it would portray a journey for you the crummy newbie that built an empire from the ground up. Granted having more real people in your faction is good for making it larger but a 1-man army can still be an enormous impact on the galaxy with this update. It would move the end game bar way out than it currently is.
I’m looking forward to what you all think of this so far in the comments. Tell me what you like dislike and what you would change and improve on in it. Now this is my idea of how it would work in my mind, it’s not what should be done its to allow Schine to take what they need from it or give them a baseline to work from. Schine is free to do what they think is right with it if they decide to add something like this into starmade WHICH IS REALLY NEEDED.
Plaz out
So my idea is simple. Npc factions use a set amount of members to do their work in specific jobs and ships, allowing them to have fleets of miners and defending warships, as well as trade fleets and so on. So why do we have to do it the hard way? Instead of relying on Players to maybe do the boring jobs every now and then, why not have a couple of Npc hired AIs/crew to do the dirty work. I shall split this into 4 main sections, AI hiring and management, expansion mechanics, war mechanics, and resource mechanics.
AI hiring and management.
Now the idea for this I had was to use the NPC shop trader from advanced shops and buy the Npc crew people from him. So you could simply buy the guy, assign him to your faction, and from there you could manage him from the faction Players list tab. So the players and Npc’s in your faction are separated to make life easier to manage them. From there you can click on the Npc and it will give you the option to drag and drop a FILLED blueprint of your choosing for him to use as his ship. Once he has that you can switch to 1 of 3 tabs now in the faction menu. Combat, Expansion, mining. From each of these tabs you can add which Npc’s go where and what they do their jobs are explained down below. A new block could also be added for cargo called a Npc Beacon, that allows the Npc’s in your faction know what cargo computers they can add there mined resources or loot into. Alternatively, marking it with a marker beam might work.
Expansion mechanics.
Expansion is an underestimated feature in starmade, it can became a viable mechanic in the multiverse of starmade servers. Your Npc’s could be assigned to a unique role in the faction tab called expansion where you assign 3-6 Npc ships in your faction to expansion duty, which gives them the task to claim as many systems your faction can support without losing faction points. The tab itself will have a credit fund you can add to and a blueprint bank you can fill with completed stations you want to use as the claims for new systems. Once the Npc fleet has arrived at a new system they will choose a sector to load a claim station in (best idea so far is randomised sector choice that excludes sectors in range of suns burn damage.) once they have cleared the sector of hostile entities, they will deploy the station. After deployment, they could guard the station for a short while and move on to the next system, the claimed systems they add will be new areas for mining duty and patrol duty Npcs to use.
War mechanics
Wars in starmade are fun in starmade multiplayer, but they're just battles between 2-4 ships at a time. Why not widen the scale a bit? Npcs assigned to Combat Fleets in the Faction tab, will now follow your orders you give them, so you can tell them to go on patrol in your territory and they will wipe out any hostile entities to your faction in your claimed systems. Or you can tell them to go on assault agent’s specific factions, they will then target that factions Bases (system claim stations), Expansion fleet, mining ships, and defence ships, all in the effort to destroy the opposes industrial capabilities. The fleet size however relies on the amount of actual Players are in the game. 1 player factions could only get 5 ships total allowance in the fleet, for example Each player in the faction adds an extra 5 ships from there allowance in the Combat fleets tab.
Resource mechanics.
Mining in starmade is important part of expansion in starmade, boring but necessary, but why should we just have to do it? Npcs that are assigned to the Resource tab immediately use their assigned ships mining capabilities to gather resources from asteroids in your territories. They will collect what they can, where they can, and can be told to ether mine just asteroids or add derelict stations to their mining list. Once their inventory is full they will transport the material back to your factions Homebase or designated storage station. They will add the resources directly into a storage chest linked to a Npc Beacon. This process will continue until they run out of stuff to mine.
That’s quite a bit of stuff right now and balancing would have needed to be figured out. But this could change the way starmade is played forever. Servers would have massive scale wars between factions and territory would be fought over to expand into, it would portray a journey for you the crummy newbie that built an empire from the ground up. Granted having more real people in your faction is good for making it larger but a 1-man army can still be an enormous impact on the galaxy with this update. It would move the end game bar way out than it currently is.
I’m looking forward to what you all think of this so far in the comments. Tell me what you like dislike and what you would change and improve on in it. Now this is my idea of how it would work in my mind, it’s not what should be done its to allow Schine to take what they need from it or give them a baseline to work from. Schine is free to do what they think is right with it if they decide to add something like this into starmade WHICH IS REALLY NEEDED.
Plaz out
