Brainstorm This Faction Points as an Abstract Consumable, i.e. Food, Oxygen, and Fuel

[nightrune]

I brainstormed an idea in MacThule's thread. Infrastructure vulnerability in Starmade

Here is the idea in full. Its a bit long, and I'm sure there are still holes. I wanted to find a good compromise between everyone that wants consumables and a faction point overhaul.

Lets start with the things that give FP in some shape or form.
1) Fuel Refineries - Cool looking block that that passively generates faction points
2) Farms - Another set of blocks that generate faction points
3) Planets - Have a natural generation
4) Fauna - Maybe farms or quarters with fauna?
5) Water Refineries - Turning ice into something usable beside water, and engines
6) Factories - Industry should increase faction points
7) Possibly keep player logon increase as well.
8) Trade - Trading and selling to other players generates Faction points? I'd like to encourage this, but it may be op as allies could trade continuously..

Spoiler: MacThules Trading Idea

This could be made to work if it was small. Say, every day that someone not in your faction buys or sells at a shop you own at least once, your hourly FP gain goes up by 5 or 10 for the next 24 hours. Something small and over time, not per trade and only giving one potential bonus per shop at any given time. That's not OP, but it would reward having well-stocked, regularly in-use shops (another piece of vulnerable infrastructure, especially since to see trade they need to be prominently seen in busy places) over time.

EDIT: Even better for trade - for every different faction (counting no faction as a single faction) that trades with each shop, you get a 2-3 point bonus for 24 hours. So if members of two allied factions, one neutral faction and some random drifter all traded with a shop of yours, that counts as 4 diffent trade sources and you'd be getting an extra 8-12 points for 24 hours from that one shop.

Faction Point Drain
1) Having your own ships outside your territory. They should drain faction points in proportion to the power used on the ships. This is to represent food, oxygen, fuel reserves as well as supply lines to and from the ship. Travel within allied territory is either cheaper or free. If a ship is idling it uses less power, if its fighting it uses more, and more fuel.
2) Enemy Ships in your territory - Should drain your faction points at the rate they are spending theirs. This gets more complicated with cloaked ships, and radar jammed ships but should provide some interesting cat-mouse game play.

Modifiers: Someone mentioned it would be a good idea to have NPCs modify the amount.
NPCs - NPCs modify the amount of Faction points you get. Specificially if you have no NPCs you only get a fraction of what you would normally, but having a full crew (I'll need to expand on this idea) would give you 100%, then maybe excecptionally happy NPC give 150%

Now I already think that makes for some interesting gameplay, but adding one more dynamic should really spice it up.

Faction Point Storage
The drains and increases should act like a regen number, and then whatever is left is added or subtracted from your current amount. You should also have to build storage into your bases for Faction Points. If no more storage then the excess is wasted. This works very close the the power system we already have. You physically build faction point storage into stations . The excess is distributed evenly to every storage in faction territory, but you can physically move faction points as well. Planets definitely have natural faction point storage. Stations might as well.

Moving Faction Points
Factions points that are being moved are stored in normal storage, and are no longer assigned to anyone. They are taken from a specific set of storage and then can be unloaded onto other faction point storage. You could physically move faction points to an ally and help in a remote war without sending ships, but these could also be intercepted and the faction points stolen.

Faction points are not destroyed when you take a base, ship or planet. In fact they get added to your global count. This makes taking locations extremely strategic as it may increase your overall strength, and provide a supply line in enemy territory for refueling/restocking ships.

How this applies to AI.

In wars the AI will now have better targets to pick from and a range of easy ways to calculate how and when to take territory. It can also calculate when to retreat.

Most of these are assumptions as I know the devs already have their own ideas.
Pirates:
Pirate like factions would already own most of the territory. It would be easy for them to harass and encroach on territory. You can then fight your way into owning territory if you wish or help the Trade Guild deal with the pirates.

The Trade Guild is allowed to build stations in allied territory to generate FP by creating fuel and other resources for trade. They tend to stick to allied territory anyway so their costs may always be low. They may also trade goods for faction points to help fuel your war.

Other options that would fit into this:
1) Removing the softcap for power should be fine now, as fielding your massive ship is both costly in parts and resources when outside your own territory.


There are too many dynamics that this allows for me to go into all of them. Please let me know what you think. I'll likely be back to edit flow/grammar/other things.


EDIT:
Changed how NPCs affected drain.
Added alterintel's idea to remove power cap for this.
Added MacThule's trading idea.

 

[MacThule]

I love it. This is a very creative and stimulating idea, and I'm expecting the Council to run this by the Schine team at the earliest opportunity. It's a fantastic opportunity to create value for planets, outlying bases beyond the invulnerable home base, and balance the power a single player can exert in multiplayer servers. It addresses many imbalances and gaps in one fell swoop, without requiring any massive new system to be implemented. It also forces factions and players to conserve resources without demanding additional grind time doing rote tasks like mining roids or farming pirates.

We need to address how players without factions would receive FP and be charged to fly. Leaving them immune would ruin factions, but if one has no space of their own, how is the cost of logistics represented?

8) Trade - Trading and selling to other players generates Faction points? I'd like to encourage this, but it may be op as allies could trade continuously..

This could be made to work if it was small. Say, every day that someone not in your faction buys or sells at a shop you own at least once, your hourly FP gain goes up by 5 or 10 for the next 24 hours. Something small and over time, not per trade and only giving one potential bonus per shop at any given time. That's not OP, but it would reward having well-stocked, regularly in-use shops (another piece of vulnerable infrastructure, especially since to see trade they need to be prominently seen in busy places) over time.

EDIT: Even better for trade - for every different faction (counting no faction as a single faction) that trades with each shop, you get a 2-3 point bonus for 24 hours. So if members of two allied factions, one neutral faction and some random drifter all traded with a shop of yours, that counts as 4 diffent trade sources and you'd be getting an extra 8-12 points for 24 hours from that one shop.

 

[nightrune]

We need to address how players without factions would receive FP and be charged to fly. Leaving them immune would ruin factions, but if one has no space of their own, how is the cost of logistics represented?

I think you could accomplish this with Trade with the Trade Guild and other players as well as with Quests. Trade, Quests and missions would likely be the main source of FP in the beginning. I also think FP cost through areas should relatively small. Massively offset by the amount of you get just for logging on. We do not want to turn players away and make it too complicated at the beginning, but I also think its silly to login the first time.

You could also award FP for exploration. It depends on their plans for navigation, but adding and visiting stars would be a really cool way to start out.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Anything that stops players flying whatever ship they want, and introduces a cost to flying those ships, is something I cannot support in a creative voxel game, especially one that encourages exploration outside of your own borders. Passive faction point and resource gain, however, is something I wholeheartedly support.

 

[nightrune]

Anything that stops players flying whatever ship they want, and introduces a cost to flying those ships, is something I cannot support in a creative voxel game, especially one that encourages exploration outside of your own borders. Passive faction point and resource gain, however, is something I wholeheartedly support.

It doesn't stop you from flying whatever ship you want. It just makes you pay for the ship you want outside your area of influence. Build whatever you want and fly it around in your territory. Free! Venture out taking territory as you go so it doesn't cost much. Just the amount to get you to the location. It forces you out, Get big, Fight as long as you can, ally forces, maybe fall, and do it all over again somewhere else.

Blocked by enemies on all sides. Cloak a force through enemy territory to build a warp-gate on the other side of them. Take that territory ally and pincer them.

 

[MacThule]

I don't feel that the concept limits player creative activity.

First of all, if all you want to do is create cool looking ships and fly them around, there's always SP and there will always be RP & care bear servers. So nothing is being limited here.

I also think the point is that someone who just wants to camp in their 1-man-faction station and cruise around visiting allies would be able to. They just wouldn't be able to send a massive ship or fleet out to OTHER players' territory to wreak havoc unless they invested in the cost of infrastructure first.

EDIT: I think it's more about attaching a cost to projection of force, than simply to flying a ship.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Hum. I like the idea a lot. Though I do understand where Jake is coming from(though I don't entirely agree). But, what would you think of making it so player flown ships don't incur the cost but rather only AI/fleets? You can still allow players to fly around doing whatever like they do now, and the added costs would be associated with maintaining your fleet actions?

I would like this suggestion implemented even if it apply to players and not just AI/fleets though as I think it adds enough to the game to be well worth the inconvenience. As long as its not conflicting with any of the Dev's plans, I think this would be a inter stellar idea!

 

[MacThule]

I think a reduction in FP cost for a player pilot/admiral would be sensible. It's along the lines of reducing cost while flying in allied space. I know NPCs with skill portfolios are coming soon; I could also see ships/fleets commanded by one with a particular skill reducing FP cost while in the field.

 

[alterintel]

This can be a Docked Power replacement!

If we got rid of the power soft cap, and instead relied solely on FP loss to restrict the size of ships, we could get rid of docked reactors and all the headaches that go with them.

Just a Thought

 

[nightrune]

This can be a Docked Power replacement!

If we got rid of the power soft cap, and instead relied solely on FP loss to restrict the size of ships, we could get rid of docked reactors and all the headaches that go with them.

Just a Thought

This was one of my thoughts as well. I think I wanted to wait and see what other people thought.

EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and add this to the original proposal.

 

[MacThule]

This can be a Docked Power replacement!

If we got rid of the power soft cap, and instead relied solely on FP loss to restrict the size of ships, we could get rid of docked reactors and all the headaches that go with them.

Just a Thought

This was part of my thinking as well. The power softcap doesn't work. Whatever the intent behind, it is not being achieved. Because players bypass with docking power, and that bypass can be really disruptive when ships are damage or something is accidentally undocked.

I'm backing this brainstorm of nightrune's exactly because it seems to work at a nexus that addresses multiple problems and imbalances simultaneously while drastically simplifying the development outlook in terms of fuel, food, atmosphere, etc. Ship size regulation, fleet force projection, bringing value to factions for claiming planets & other non-HB facilities.

It also helps to check the ability of one or two players to run roughshod over an entire galaxy because in order to do so they require infrastructure. If you see a faction projecting fleets all over and cruising around in big ships often, you now know they have a ton of tasty and vulnerable infrastructure somewhere just waiting for you to bring the pew pew (and fly away with a pile of loot). And from that arises organically generated, sustained or at least serially occurring conflict without the need to admin fiddling, "quests," or any such artificial construct.

And again; this actually streamlines representation of logistical factors from the developers' perspective.

 

[Madman198237]

Not so much atmosphere, as that can be recycled using planets or chemical processes (Atmosphere is infinite on a large enough ship....as long as you don't get breached)

Nor fuel, which I would like to see independent of faction points.

But food certainly works. Consumable supplies like food and materials for the constant repairs anything needs on an extended voyage can be represented by faction points.

I really appreciate the idea behind this suggestion, it's a great way to avoid questions of food and consumables besides fuel.

 

[nightrune]

Nor fuel, which I would like to see independent of faction points.

What would you like fuel to do that is not covered under this? Why manage another thing?

I really appreciate the idea behind this suggestion, it's a great way to avoid questions of food and consumables besides fuel.

Thank you! :D

 

[Madman198237]

There's another suggestion concerning fuel that I find interesting and useful.

You might look it up. I'm too lazy to get a link.

 

[nightrune]

Alright I've been thinking on this for awhile. I want to balance single play and nomadic play with the infrastructure heavy setup I have above.

First I think I may start calling them Resource Points (RP) as that better fits with the theme.

Lets start with single players:
I don't want to remove the cost for neutral territory. I don't think it fits with the over all concept very well. It does make exploration a little harder but I think I've come up with a way to help.

1) Players have a large RP regen but not a lot of storage. This should enable quite a decent ship to roam the galaxy but make you think about what you did versus just picking on other players.
2) Most of the RP blocks should be able to put on any ship, but only storage should be on entities and capitol ships.
3) NPCS operate the same way in your faction/on personal ships. This should allow a single player to field a much larger ship if they have a crew.
4) When you join a faction you must dedicate a certain amount of your RP regen to that faction. This is determined by the leadership. This allows a player to build a personal base/fleet and still help the faction. Also allowing faction in faction gameplay or larger conglomerates/empires. ^ This would actually help permissions levels more then anything.
5) Excess player RP should overflow into a selected personal storage if there is no global RP storage.


When you combine most of the above. The single freighter captain is possible and is expanded when he adds a crew. The nomadic component is also possible. You could field a large capitol ship with lots of farms and fuel refineries then fly through neutral space as long as you wanted while still a faction. This is still balanced though as you have to balance your whole fleet to the infrastructure of said nomadic fleet.

If this is good enough I'm going to add to the original suggestion.

 

[Nickizzy]

I don't have time to talk about it much, but +1! I like the idea. Maybe if you run out of fp for that ship(or if you cut off funding) the ship starts to some of it's stats. Lower regen, lower caps, weaker thrusters, weaker weapons, ect.
I would also make the tick rate go by the hour or quarter day, calculatimg from amount of time in certain modes of territory, if it took damage(battle/sun/collision), if it's shields were down and it was damaged, if it used exessive systems(if it jumped across the galaxy or flew around a ton. Because of this inactive ships would be a lot cheaper to maintain than ships that were constantly fighting and flying around.

 

[nightrune]

I'm trying refrain from odd debuffs as I think they make things complicated to code and to learn.

The mechanism I was thinking for a faction running out was to have it splinter and create a lot of NPC factions and player factions.

So if your faction runs out of points suddenly you own a ship but must keep it alive through your own rp regen and storage.

 

[Monchoman45]

Please no.

The mechanism I was thinking for a faction running out was to have it splinter and create a lot of NPC factions and player factions.

This would be incredibly annoying. What if I have to take a break for a week?

The current system of just making you lose your homebase protection is fine. It's easily reversible, and if you have to take a break, you can have your friends cover for you.

More to the point, if I'm a single player faction, I really don't want to be managing all of this. I'm probably not going to be trying to field a massive fleet of titans anyway; I'm only one dude. The current faction system is nice because if you ignore it, it more or less doesn't affect you.

The question comes down to what you want to spend your time doing. Personally, I don't want to spend my time managing faction points just to have the opportunity to play the game.

 

[nightrune]

Please no.



This would be incredibly annoying. What if I have to take a break for a week?

The current system of just making you lose your homebase protection is fine. It's easily reversible, and if you have to take a break, you can have your friends cover for you.

More to the point, if I'm a single player faction, I really don't want to be managing all of this. I'm probably not going to be trying to field a massive fleet of titans anyway; I'm only one dude. The current faction system is nice because if you ignore it, it more or less doesn't affect you.

The question comes down to what you want to spend your time doing. Personally, I don't want to spend my time managing faction points just to have the opportunity to play the game.

Im not sure where you got the idea that youd be managing them all the time. I may need to rewrite the descriptions some. Most of this very very passive and thats why I wrote it up. I dont wanna manage fuel or other consumables either. You just recruit npcs and place farm blocks. Then maybe some storage. Want bigger ships to explore into enemy terrritory then make a bit more infrastructure.

Even as a single player, It gives you a pretty good reason to build out more stations as protection. All of those blocks are still passively generating while you are offline. So it shouldnt be a problem unless you are getting attacked a lot.

I 'll rethink through the split mechanic but for large faction warfare its pretty cool. Like a fuedal japan problem after the empire falls.

 

[MacThule]

I want to talk about FP/RP cost and try to narrow down at least a ball park of functional equations. I also don't want to hijack the suggestion.

Anyway, what would be a viable ratio of power generation to FP cost (PG:FP)? 1,000,000:1 seems pretty expensive, but would be properly effective in forcing players to invest in infrastructure and conquests if they need it to fly anything bigger than a shuttle or light miner or fighter. Deploying a 2,000,000e/sec battleship into enemy territory could cost 1,200 FP within 10 minutes if it's using power all-out. Perhaps 10,000,000:1 ratio would be more reasonable. Let's crunch some numbers and get an idea what this might look like at different ratios.

Personally I think that running out of FP should result in loss of HB protection and a flat 50% reduction in power generation. This would cascade into eveything else without requiring tons of coding, and the FP negative player could still limp about.

Also, I would like to see the most powerful source of FP be planets & stations rather than players and NPCs. Just me.