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

[nightrune]

Short on time, but here are the first three likely steps as I see it:

STEP 1) Preparing the ground with minor changes to factions & faction relationships (In order to avoid having solo players left in the lurch when suddenly they have little or no FP generation and flying starts to cost FP).

• Allow factions to change relationships as follows:
  • Merge Into. This lets you subsume your faction into another existing one. You would receive the lowest rank in the new faction and all of your faction's assets & FP would become the property of the faction you joined.
  • Retire. This creates a new 1-player faction with you as its founder, and removes you from the old faction taking with you 1/2 of an equal share of their FP.

• ALL new characters start automatically as founders of their own personal faction named with their character name. They start with a small stash of FP and can save up new FP. Now even at spawning, no player will be left behind. Basically every player has a straw-man faction and is assumed to at all times be running their own private enterprise/kingdom/corporation/WE.
  
• All factions generate a base amount of FP/tick. Say, enough to fly a small (100,000 e/sec) ship around pretty much non-stop)

STEP 2) Shut down FP gain from faction members and turn on slow, passive FP gain from Stations owned (including the HB) and Planet Plates (for now...) owned. Set FP max reserve as a function of a faction's number of active players (for now).

STEP 3) Turn on FP drain from power generation anywhere outside of owned or allied territory, and from HB invulnerability. Impose 50% penalty (for now) on power generation and removal of HB invulnerability for factions with <1 FP.

As I see it, that would accomplish all the underlying goals of the OP, with a minimum of work from the developers. Some work to be certain though; especially modifying the faction relationships and setting up a more dynamic FP check system. Without those faction changes in place though, I see soloists instantly being ruined, and players being unable to leave a bad faction when they want to without ending up as paupers even if they've invested a lot. Once those are in place, it's just a few tweaks to completely alter the way FP affects the game. Even solo players will be wanting to claim a planet and maybe set up a few stations for their corporation/empire so they can deploy more hardware.

Thoughts?

I think the only thing I would ask that they add would be a maximum FP/RP then go ahead and give us a way to set the amount of passive storage on planets and stations.

 

[Nickizzy]

We'll pull this apart one bit at a time. I'm partial to keeping the faction block the center point of the entire system. I think its pretty essential. I really don't like the enhancers though. My thinking is that NPCs should be the modifiers and possibly allow multipliers for fp/rp generation. I think it gives a very natural feeling then. Active locations with lots of NPCs likely generate more faction points, and are bigger targets. You are also more likely to attempt to take a station then (Which I think is essential for the game as it is). This gives a really good sense of permanancy to a world as you see old structures renovated, and repopulated after wars. Lots of character there, and role play possibilities.



I can see what you are aiming for. You don't want people building 8 layer thick armor around their stations and you can't get to it, but I'm still not sure this really helps gameplay. It just adds unnecessary complications for the code. We really just need a way to locate faction modules with intense scanning.

The faction block would be the centerpeice, but you could have smaller "farms" on your ship instead of only being able to have one massive nugget arount the faction module. Npcs are sort of what I was aiming for, they could be used to find the faction block(bc npcs show up on the nav) and farms.

I was aiming for that, and aiming for making the need for these generators to be prominant and shown, as a building or module, instead of having it just packed in between the systems underground or in the center of the ship. Almost a want for straffing runs by fighters on the generator really.

 

[nightrune]

The faction block would be the centerpeice, but you could have smaller "farms" on your ship instead of only being able to have one massive nugget arount the faction module. Npcs are sort of what I was aiming for, they could be used to find the faction block(bc npcs show up on the nav) and farms.

I was aiming for that, and aiming for making the need for these generators to be prominant and shown, as a building or module, instead of having it just packed in between the systems underground or in the center of the ship. Almost a want for straffing runs by fighters on the generator really.

I see a bit better now. I can tell you that based on what I know of quarters, this would be a better bet for it. Transport or scan for greenhouse, and then take out that section! It works better for NPCs, and gives players the freedom to develop their station as they see fit versus having to keep a structure in blocks.

 

[Nickizzy]

I see a bit better now. I can tell you that based on what I know of quarters, this would be a better bet for it. Transport or scan for greenhouse, and then take out that section! It works better for NPCs, and gives players the freedom to develop their station as they see fit versus having to keep a structure in blocks.

Exactly.


Could the farm things be explosive...?

 

[nightrune]

Exactly.


Could the farm things be explosive...?

Maybe? If there a little touches from the curret game that can be added to the blocks I think that would be cool, but they would need to be balanced. For immersion sakes, and imagination, fuel tanks should explode. So in the current idea if a storage container had resource points in it, it had a chance to explode like a warhead. Might be neat. Feel free to brainstorm ideas like that but I think that they should be very simple and easy to add. Any bonus should also have a downside in some fashion.

 

[TheWurm]

This seems like it would mesh really well with the planned NPC morale system, and mutinies. The impression I'm getting is that _ Points (whatever we end up calling them) are sort of an abstraction of the well being of your faction, so of course it makes sense that if your faction is poorly managed or suffers major losses (like a refinery/farm planet, for example) your employees would be upset and try to split from the faction, taking ships, stations and sectors with them, and that would be how the faction got splintered.

On the flip-side, I think NPC's would make a great _ Point storage system for whatever ship they're on, along with whatever benefit their specific tasks provide. Maybe not the only way to store _ Points, but it makes sense that having people aboard to perform basic maintenance etc. would be helpful on long trips. Larger crews for longer trips also makes sense. I could probably flesh this out a little more later if it doesn't seem clear.

On the other hand, it would be good to consider how much ship each source of faction points could reasonably support, in a ballpark estimate sort of way. I don't think, for example, that a player by himself should be able to run a ship with 2.000,000 power regen/second, though off the top of my head I can't think of a decent number for a single crewman to maintain. I'd err on the side of caution and say, without some sort of outside support system/ extensive automation on the ship itself (represented by...something) maybe 300,000 e/s would be a good upper limit for a lone voyager, so however the system shakes out, _P per player per hour of play should be enough to do that much on it's own, apart from any passive regen from structures. Basically, whatever kind of ship/fleet one player should be able to get before worrying about infrastructure/the NPC system, put a number on it and that's how many _ Points you generate solo. 300,000 actually seems kind of high, thinking about it.

 

[nightrune]

This seems like it would mesh really well with the planned NPC morale system, and mutinies. The impression I'm getting is that _ Points (whatever we end up calling them) are sort of an abstraction of the well being of your faction, so of course it makes sense that if your faction is poorly managed or suffers major losses (like a refinery/farm planet, for example) your employees would be upset and try to split from the faction, taking ships, stations and sectors with them, and that would be how the faction got splintered.

Thank you :D

On the flip-side, I think NPC's would make a great _ Point storage system for whatever ship they're on, along with whatever benefit their specific tasks provide. Maybe not the only way to store _ Points, but it makes sense that having people aboard to perform basic maintenance etc. would be helpful on long trips. Larger crews for longer trips also makes sense. I could probably flesh this out a little more later if it doesn't seem clear.

This is really awesome, very creative. Its gonna take me a bit to reconcile with my view, but this is awesome.

On the other hand, it would be good to consider how much ship each source of faction points could reasonably support, in a ballpark estimate sort of way. I don't think, for example, that a player by himself should be able to run a ship with 2.000,000 power regen/second, though off the top of my head I can't think of a decent number for a single crewman to maintain. I'd err on the side of caution and say, without some sort of outside support system/ extensive automation on the ship itself (represented by...something) maybe 300,000 e/s would be a good upper limit for a lone voyager, so however the system shakes out, _P per player per hour of play should be enough to do that much on it's own, apart from any passive regen from structures. Basically, whatever kind of ship/fleet one player should be able to get before worrying about infrastructure/the NPC system, put a number on it and that's how many _ Points you generate solo. 300,000 actually seems kind of high, thinking about it.

Definitely. Its my opinion that a crew of 5 to 10 with the player should be able to support a ship at 2 mil regen for a long period in neutral space.

 

[Byamarro]

It would be nice to add a little bit of story. Instead of calling it "faction points", what about "matter" or "energy".

 

[nightrune]

It would be nice to add a little bit of story. Instead of calling it "faction points", what about "matter" or "energy".

It definitely needs a different name.

Faction Fitness, Resource Points, Faction Energy...

I'm still unsure.

 

[terra mining corp.]

morale points?

 

[MacThule]

It definitely needs a different name.

Faction Fitness, Resource Points, Faction Energy...

I'm still unsure.

Mana? :p

Seriously - maybe something Logistics or Supply.

 

[Madman198237]

Resource points sound good.

Maybe only one type of faction point generator---no point to add in a ridiculous amount of new blocks to overcomplicate system. Except it has massive diminishing return problems----a group of 1000 is not that much more effective than a group of 100, or something like that.

The solo faction thing is a neat idea. But no actual faction for a player---just make every ship require resource points (Based on system block count) to run at full efficiency. If you lack RP, you lose efficiency OVER TIME, not just a flat rate, representing lost maintenance. Also, crew loses efficiency or effectiveness to represent loss of morale/malnourishment/lack of videogames. Whatever, really.

The RP-generating structure is your food-synthesizer, atmosphere recycling device, water recycling system, and repair materials-creation-device. Perhaps you can put less-efficient (More power required to generate the same amount of RP) structures on your ship, while stations are more efficient that ships, while planets are the most efficient.

I agree with the previous idea that RP drain is calculated at a shorter time interval than at present, negative drains constantly calculated, positive gains every _____ amount of time. You can't go negative/gain negative effects until the next positive tick, to prevent this system from destroying a faction/player without a large stock of RP.

 

[nightrune]

Resource points sound good.

Maybe only one type of faction point generator---no point to add in a ridiculous amount of new blocks to overcomplicate system. Except it has massive diminishing return problems----a group of 1000 is not that much more effective than a group of 100, or something like that.

Actually all the blocks are for individual purposes. It really adds to the immersion when you can see a water refinery in an area. Plus I really want reasons to fuel storage areas/farms domes/ and other things. So we can argue number of blocks all day, but I think it adds more then just have ids. More textures/more RP/more specific targets for PVP. I think those are all good.

The solo faction thing is a neat idea. But no actual faction for a player---just make every ship require resource points (Based on system block count) to run at full efficiency. If you lack RP, you lose efficiency OVER TIME, not just a flat rate, representing lost maintenance. Also, crew loses efficiency or effectiveness to represent loss of morale/malnourishment/lack of videogames. Whatever, really.

I quite like the idea that it gets worse over time. I'm going to think on this some more.

The RP-generating structure is your food-synthesizer, atmosphere recycling device, water recycling system, and repair materials-creation-device. Perhaps you can put less-efficient (More power required to generate the same amount of RP) structures on your ship, while stations are more efficient that ships, while planets are the most efficient.

I'm not actually sure it matters. As you don't want your battle ship to have gardens on board mainly due to mass and fear of losing it in battle.

I agree with the previous idea that RP drain is calculated at a shorter time interval than at present, negative drains constantly calculated, positive gains every _____ amount of time. You can't go negative/gain negative effects until the next positive tick, to prevent this system from destroying a faction/player without a large stock of RP.

Agreed.

 

[Nickizzy]

Nice bumbnecro glad it brought me back.
Actually about the ship garden thing, having moveable gatherers would be nice for a more mobile faction. Not just crazy nomad revolutionaries*cough*
Blaza612 *cough*, but for factions that want to move ships away incase of an attack, or shift them to different places, not to mention the capabilities of shipyards and AI fleets.

 

[Blaza612]

*cough*
Blaza612 *cough*

Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me for trying to add another play-style to the game. :p

Great, now I'm obligated to read the thread

NOTE: I've only read the OP, I really don't have the time to read the whole conversation, pls don't hurt me for it.

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

I guess I AM going to have to make the drug thread. Farms and fauna and such can be used for so much more than for generating faction points. I'd rather see them to make consumables, such as drugs, that can add a lot more to the game, from boosting stats with chances of side effects, to certain drugs being illegal in certain empires, creating an incentive for smuggling and avoiding x empire, etc.

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.

No. Simply no. A player should not be restricted from flying their ships because their faction is low on FP. Exploration and adventure should be encouraged, not penalized. Not only that, but you're creating a big inconvenience for players in general. Most people leave their ships idle in space a lot, whether it's for temporary use or they just logged off. Having this will force players to dock to stations/planets whenever they want to do stuff outside of their ships, which is just stupid.

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.

This is also bad. It should be restricted to what the enemy faction DOES in your territory. If anything, being in enemy territory creates attrition to those that are entering, so if this was to become a thing (I'd rather it not) then it should be a matter of the attackers getting penalized.

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%

Having NPCs be an influence in the faction scale is always good, especially with the faction updates that should be coming later down the line.

You should also have to build storage into your bases for Faction Points

What? Faction points are an abstract thing, why should they carry any sort of physical resemblance? Besides that, this creates a very OP system. Faction Points should be limited, but not by a storage block that players can spam thousands of to become invincible. It should be limited based on the value of a faction. Each player that's a member increases limit slightly. Each asset (ship/station/claimed planet/claimed system, would be balanced based on score of each asset) would also increase the limit slightly. However, there will also be a modifier to the asset limit increasing. The lower the number of players, the greater this modifier. Say two factions have an identical amount of assets, but faction A has 4 players, and faction B has 6. Faction A would be able to hold more FP than B, because they achieved the same amount of assets with a smaller number of players, rewarding them for their difficulty.

Of course there would be various things in place to prevent people from abusing this system. Such as the fact that this limit is not permanently increased, and will lower based on loss of assets/players. So you cannot have all of your members leave suddenly to build up FP, because the FP generated would be lost when going back to the new limit.

Factions points that are being moved are stored in normal storage

Again, abstract that shouldn't be stored via placeable blocks, let alone moved.

and are no longer assigned to anyone

Since when were they assigned to people?

Faction points are not destroyed when you take a base, ship or planet

This idea actually has some merit to it. I do like the idea of a global economy of FP, where you cannot create or lose FP. However, if this idea as it is were to be implemented, then it would be subject to one of the worst cases of inflation to date.

The way I see it would be utilizing Arkazan's server, Elwyn Infinity, method. You would collect FP from systems you own over time. These systems will give their max amount of FP over time, which will be added to the faction that owns it. When a faction claims an unoccupied system, it will cost a significant amount of FP, which will be covered by the systems yield. The further away from the Homebase a system is, the greater the initial cost.

If another faction were to destroy some assets or kill some members, then FP would go from the losing faction's treasury into the attackers treasury. If a faction were to take a system owned by another, then the original owner of the system would give half the earnings from the system to the attackers, and the other half will go back to the system to be collected over time, adding an incentive for occupation. Each galaxy would have a maximum amount of FP that can be collected based on the systems, while no hard cap will be in place. However, territory in void sectors and other galaxies from the home base would not provide FP, and there will be a significant cost of FP to move the homebase between galaxies. If a faction takes an occupied system in another galaxy, then they can earn no yield, and the cost (without the HB cost modifier) will be doubled.

This would create a much more interesting and dynamic FP system, as it will be in the form of a strong economy.

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.

I'm pretty sure this was already going to be a thing for the AI?

Pirate like factions would already own most of the territory. It would be easy for them to harass and encroach on territory

I'd say they only own the sectors of which their stations exist in. Destroying these stations would yield rewards, that wouldn't be in the form of FP.

The Trade Guild is allowed to build stations in allied territory to generate FP by creating fuel and other resources for trade

I do like the idea of the TG setting up stations in your territory, but not to generate FP. I'd say have them there to improve your trading. It could be similar to Civilization, where each system has a limited number of trade routes they can handle alone. If the TG sets up stations (not stick-shops, stations) in a maxed out system, it will increase the limit massively, but there will be a credit tax as they will be performing the trading.

Well, thats my 3 cents, hopefully ye can make something out of it. I might make a couple of suggestion thread based on the stuff I talked about. :p

 

[Nickizzy]

Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me for trying to add another play-style to the game. :p

Nothin wrong with that!

Great, now I'm obligated to read the thread

Just my secret little work. Should I have made the text smaller? I figured you deserved a "4".

Faction Points should be limited, but not by a storage block that players can spam thousands of to become invincible. It should be limited based on the value of a faction.

The idea is to make Fpoints steal and tradeable.
Making vaults for Fpoints, so poeple can take Fcapsules(it would be needed) to and from a vault.
Fpoints can only be placed in Ftanks or in player inventory, and always drop on death.
You can only place or remove Fpoints manually, you cannot use build mode to help you.
This allows for trading and selling of resource, and stealling and attack on bases.
Fcapsules have the weight of normal capsules, and each have one Fpoint. Ftanks can hold only Fcapsules, but can hold up to 100k Fcapsules(10k mass), so they can hold much more.
Ftanks can only be placed on a faction owned structure, ship or station, but can be accessed by anyone at anytime.
My 14 lines.

 

[Ithirahad]

If we are to do something like this, we're going to have to turn 'faction points' and 'territory claims' into something less ambiguous like "cubatomic energy" and "cubic fields."

Anyway, I don't particularly like this either... Faction Points should be an abstract representation of the amount of population and wealth a faction has, not some kind of weird physical resource you have to store and move around.

However, every ore extracted from a claimed mantle extractor, gas scooped from a gas harvesting station, etc. should earn your faction FP... So should hired NPC crew, until they die and you lose the points again.

 

[Jay_do]

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..


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.

I actually really like this idea. GG +1!

 

[MacThule]

After some time to consider it, I strongly prefer a version where FP are not physically represented.

Limited, sure. Limits affected by number of planets/stations owned, totally. Physical blocks - no. At that point they are a physical resource, not a point. To me the huge appeal of this proposal was how it stood to simplify the entire prospect of consumables in SM by reducing them all into a dynamic represented by a single abstract value.

I'm not opposed to physical storage of consumables, and believe consumables are in dire need, but if we're going to do physical storage mught as well just make it fuel and call it that, IMO

 

[Blaza612]

owever, every ore extracted from a claimed mantle extractor, gas scooped from a gas harvesting station, etc. should earn your faction FP... So should hired NPC crew, until they die and you lose the points again.

I would prefer a limited economy of the whole world. So, how about doing this stuff is the means to extract the FP from a system? This will create a need for development of a system. I'm tempted to just make a separate thread of FP being an economy. :p