Incentives to Expansion (Anti-Turtling)

[Lukwan]

What has emerged from various threads on gigantism and Soft-caps is that there is an underlying issue that the the Devs and players alike want to break down:

How do we entice people to come out of their turtle-shell, un-dock their 'precious' and stop crate-humping at their base?

For the purpose of this thread I am asking people not to focus on gigantism specifically but to brainstorm some carrot & stick ideas. I feel we need to explore more carrot solutions that reward and encourage exploration and risk-taking. So far the stick approach has had a lot of attention from Schine and the forums. Time to start thinking outside the box. What would entice you to risk taking your ship out into the void?

Edit: Nov 22nd 2016: (some observations from this and other threads)
*NOTE: this issue relates to faction-war and MP meta and is not intended to affect SP or 'build-friendly' modes.*

A) People want more things to do...a reason to leave the base.
B) Nobody wants to completely eliminate HB-protection. Some discussion about it's relationship to turtling. Debate regarding limiting HB-protection in a hardcore-mode of MP play.
C) Reverse faction points has been brought up elsewhere as means of governing expansion.
D) Obtaining crew has been suggested as a incentive to explore.
E) Spreading out the functions of a HB to other system-bases has been suggested to decentralize.
F) Having a selectable 'game-mode' would help SM appeal to the widest possible audience.

 

[KiloZulu]

I've always found a natural desire to expand and some point. Partly, it's probably that I get bored with seeing the same old space and space station. I also think that once I hit a certain mark in the game, I see expansion as the next "level" of game play. At least, that's the current meta when there isn't much else to do besides build things. Once NPC factions are introduced, we might just find ourselves pushed into the deep end of the pool to keep from being overwhelmed by expansionist AI factions that threaten, like in a Civilization game.

There are always going to be players who turtle because they can't compete with the expansion pace and resources of others. It's the difference between the person with a family and job versus the kid on summer break. As such, you certainly don't want to have a lot of stick incentive.

 

[Spoolooni]

I find it troublesome how the community is suggesting methods and ways to punish players for un-docking or exploring sectors with their larger ships and to punish people for turtling feels really fucking retarded. So I am going to suggest some biblical methods of approaching this dilemma.

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First of all, after factions are released, freight runs need to be a thing. Freight runs that use cargo in particular, working with trade guilds or black market dealers in which the player is directed to different sectors of the universe, transporting cargo of a certain material to the desired contract location. The contract will pay the price for those goods with a huge percentage bonus in credits. The more cargo, the bigger the bonus. We may branch out our ideas from here. But the point is, we want to encourage larger freighter ships to un dock, get out there and start delivering for massive credit or material returns unparalleled by just mining alone. Mining does not need to get nerfed, but rather doing these freight runs should be arbitrary if you wish to reach a certain goal faster than everyone else, forcing you to undock your larger ships to haul larger cargo.

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Secondly, another 'mission' we can implement that could involve a lot of PvP is escort missions. Escorting VIP's that will bribe players of delinquent nature large sums of credits and materials if they can escort a ship or an NPC unit from point A to point B. The more notorious, the higher the chance you might be attacked by opposing NPC faction fleets that could even alert player allies to come intervene.

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Thirdly, this one might get flaked by everyone but I think this is pretty badass. Think of the pokemon miles system for a second. Apply that to Starmade. Larger ships can gain large boosts to their systems and engines that are "seasoned" through use. After crews are implemented, your co-pilots or crew members can only level up, if your ship moves outside your protected sector. So the only way, your large ships will "level up" is if they un-dock, leave the sector and explore space. This will provide an incentive for every ship to become mobile at some point, or lose to other ships that aren't cowardly hiding in base.

So what if this makes the pussies turtle even more? Well, let us approach this with a video game mindset but with a touch of partial realism. Think of how cars and printers work in real life, have you ever had to let your engine run for a while, let your car -warm up- before getting your ass on the high way? Have you ever had to print "dummy" copies of color tests before materializing your design product? Ships could work the same way, the less mobile they are, the more they decay, this does not mean the ship is destroyed. But eventually, if the ship becomes a white elephant for too long, it will get negative bonuses that can be easily fixed if you make your god damn ships "exercise" every now and then.

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Conclusion:

Time and time again, I see suggestions trying to remove and remove elements of gameplay, trying to replace X, nerf Y, remove and replace Z. Seriously screw off with that bullcrap, let's stop poking players with dicksticks and start wiggling giant carrots to lure the rabbits out of the rabbit hole.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I've tried to hit on a few of these ideas lately too. My two biggest suggestions were a change in resource distribution to encourage players/factions to expand to find anything beyond the basic resources, and new game modes incentivizing conquest and combat as an alternative option to the current sandbox mode. However any method of encouraging expansion over turtling needs to be defensible. One major reason for the current turtling is it's completely safe. Why spend a bunch of time and resources building up other star systems when they can easily be wiped out if I'm offline for a few days?

And so I think a rework of how faction points work and how territory is claimed, defended, and conquered is also in order. Like maybe some way of fortifying star systems to make them essentially unconquerable without significant effort by your enemies. The Factions PvP mod for Minecraft could be a good source of inspiration. If I recall correctly, factions claimed chunks, and your chunks are essentially safe if they are surrounded by other friendly chunks, meaning opposing factions had to chip away at your territory only from the edges. I'm not sure how that would translate to StarMade but it could be a starting point for further discussion.

 

[KiloZulu]

We have a Star Trek economy in StarMade, which is to say that money isn't a real factor in the economy. As far as I know, the only thing we need money for is the purchase of a space station. Everything else is more easily attained through mining and crafting. After the purchase of the home base, the only time you really need to un-dock is when you go mining.

So, there isn't currently any real incentive to make trade runs for money unless your desire is to expand and build more space stations. If that is the case, you're operating inside a closed loop.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

We have a Star Trek economy in StarMade, which is to say that money isn't a real factor in the economy.

Very well-put.

 

[Panpiper]

Crew and crew experience will change everything, and that is coming 'soon'. Moreover if crew is paid out of faction points and some variation of 'inverted faction points' is used, where maintaining faction control over additional star systems with non-invulnerable space stations gains you faction points with which to pay for extra crew for extra ships... We'll have every incentive to get out there and 'not' turtle.

Crew will not gain experience if their ship stays docked. They will gain the most experience in combat with pirates, other factions or players. This alone is all the reason we need to undock. Defending non-invulnerable space stations will most certainly be a thing, as will be potentially attacking them, though a faction would probably need to be hemmed in before aggressive warfare becomes attractive. But with NPC factions expanding as well as player factions, this will certainly become a thing.

 

[AtraUnam]

I imagine we will be seeing a resurgence of credits when the faction update comes out as players will need them if they wish to interract with these factions.

 

[Jasper1991]

Reverse FP factions configs are taking it in the right direction, the only problem is that lots of players do not like these kind of configs because they "require someone to be constantly online" although after you have all your claim stations destroyed if you have enough FP you will not need to worry about claiming stations for (in my experience) up to several weeks.

Now I think reverse FP faction configs should be default however not everyone shared my opinion so perhaps you could do something such as what games like what EVE Online does with Citadels which are basically EVE's version of home bases.

For those who do not understand what the linked article states in a nutshell:

After a Citadel is anchored (spawned in after being deployed similar to being spawned from a BP) it will have only structure hitpoints and will be cannot be interacted or docked at for 24 hours as it is being "constructed" after this 24 hour timer the Citadel will be vulnerable for 15 minutes and then if it is not attacked during this time then its armor and shield hitpoints become 100% and then the Citadel will be invulnerable until its vulnerability timer occurs, this vulnerability timer is set by someone with the necessary permissions when it is anchored initially. Different Sizes of Citadel have different amount of vulnerability windows, the larger it is the more hours, e.g the smallest Citadel has a weekly 3 hour vulnerability window while the largest has a 21 hour vulnerability window and this is usually set at a time when most of the corps active player base is online so they can defend it.

Imagine a system like this in StarMade?

 

[Scypio]

Maybe thinking like a rts, the more your empire spread, the more you can get ressources or things like that.

I'm thinking at something, using crew and npc populations. For example, you need population to maintain things, get crew and so on. If we take real ships for example you need large amount of crew for vessels, titans could use hundreds of them.
Then each sector got population and crew that can be hired, each planets, each stations alive. With logarithmic curves for the max population, having a larger station wouldn't work at some point. Also there should be the same mechanic for the population inside the same sector. So to get a bigger crew potential, aka a bigger fleet, you'll need to expand your empire. You can still be a turtle in your HB but you ain't gonna rule the galaxy from it.
I may be going too far.

 

[MacThule]

What would entice you to risk taking your ship out into the void?

1. NECESSITY - not sure how this can be possible without nerfing something else, hence the stick focus I think.
2. FUN - Which in my case would have to involve the opportunity for meaningful PvP (not PvP playdates, fights with purpose). Killing AIs, running meaningless errands (NPC missions) and seeing variously rendered nebulae are not fun for me.
3. PROFIT - By which I mean any kind of opportunity to increase my resources, capabilities or general power within the game. It would have to be... significantly more profitable use of my time than simply doing a quick loop of the local, claimed 'roid belts in my super-miner in the same amount of time.

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So, there isn't currently any real incentive to make trade runs for money unless your desire is to expand and build more space stations. If that is the case, you're operating inside a closed loop.

And who wants to build more stations when they are so underpowered compared to ships?

What if stations required continual credit maintenance?

 

[KiloZulu]

1. NECESSITY - not sure how this can be possible without nerfing something else, hence the stick focus I think.
2. FUN - Which in my case would have to involve the opportunity for meaningful PvP (not PvP playdates, fights with purpose). Killing AIs, running meaningless errands (NPC missions) and seeing variously rendered nebulae are not fun for me.
3. PROFIT - By which I mean any kind of opportunity to increase my resources, capabilities or general power within the game. It would have to be... significantly more profitable use of my time than simply doing a quick loop of the local, claimed 'roid belts in my super-miner in the same amount of time.

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And who wants to build more stations when they are so underpowered compared to ships?

What if stations required continual credit maintenance?

I think the conversation has so far focused on faction control, but your comment in point 2 reminds me that Schine intends to add a quest system to the game. This could create incentives for players to get out of HB and crisscross the galaxy, particularly if the rewards scale well to the needs of the server.

Attaching a maintenance cost might get players out of the HB, but it might also curb their enthusiasm for expanding. I don't imagine that a maintenance cost would create much, if any, additional space traffic over the routine mining that occurs. Not that I have great amounts of imagination...

 

[Spoolooni]

I think the conversation has so far focused on faction control, but your comment in point 2 reminds me that Schine intends to add a quest system to the game. This could create incentives for players to get out of HB and crisscross the galaxy, particularly if the rewards scale well to the needs of the server.

Attaching a maintenance cost might get players out of the HB, but it might also curb their enthusiasm for expanding. I don't imagine that a maintenance cost would create much, if any, additional space traffic over the routine mining that occurs. Not that I have great amounts of imagination...

I don't thing maintenance costs will solve anything and I agree with your statement at least not unless it's done a certain way. I think credit maintenance costs should be implemented as gold sinks for factions that are well developed. Taxing everyone just for having a ship or a station would more likely demotivate people from leaving the base as they're forced to take a risk or eventually go bankrupt, thus making the environment or the game itself fairly un-enjoyable.

Maybe thinking like a rts, the more your empire spread, the more you can get ressources or things like that.

I'm thinking at something, using crew and npc populations. For example, you need population to maintain things, get crew and so on. If we take real ships for example you need large amount of crew for vessels, titans could use hundreds of them.
Then each sector got population and crew that can be hired, each planets, each stations alive. With logarithmic curves for the max population, having a larger station wouldn't work at some point. Also there should be the same mechanic for the population inside the same sector. So to get a bigger crew potential, aka a bigger fleet, you'll need to expand your empire. You can still be a turtle in your HB but you ain't gonna rule the galaxy from it.
I may be going too far.

I wouldn't really be using "RTS" as a source for your synopsis. Solely on the fact that RTS games do encourage certain "factions" or races who have more defensive mechanics to turtle. I do think turtling shouldn't be punished as we consider factions like the trade guild that are quite immobile compared to everyone else and some players will attune to that gameplay habit. People turtling isn't an issue, the issue is that turtling has become a habit not because of player philosophy or roleplay driven notions but because it's the only thing you can possibly do right now because there isn't an incentive to leave or undock your ship. Which Panpiper mentioned before, will change eventually when crews come into place.

 

[Tamren Shade]

I like the experience idea, you're crew gets less experience if they're in a a system you control, but there has to something interesting out there to go look at or else you're just flying in circles grinding crew exp, and that isn't fun. Right now, the only reason I've even flown halfway across the galaxy have been social, to go check out something someone else is building and chat about it for a bit.

Another thought is that if schine implemented a item creation system for stuff your astronaut carries, you could have rare resources spawn in pirate stations or on planets for cool stuff to personally equip. Like the lightsaber crystals in KOTOR. I'd love to see a way to put together custom weapons and armor, they don't even have to be dramatically more powerful, the prestige/cool factor alone would be worth it.

An idea I'm stealing from the Rogue Trader RPG is a if a mechanic was established for establishing colonies that will grow on their own, but grow faster if you do missions or run resources to them would be very cool. Of course they'd give you some kind of benefit in return. There would have to be some kind of way to keep them safe or hard to wipe out. I know how much damage a nuke from one of my smaller ships would do to the equivalent of a minecraft village....

A follow up to my previous idea, is that perhaps you could hand over blueprints to your colonies, and they could be planet based or station based, and as they grow and gather resources they'll actually put together ships for their own use and defense that you would have access too. It could be setup in such a way that it consumes extra FP to a certain point, or maybe the number and size of ships they could support are tied to an abstract population number, this would also have the side effect of bringing ships into the game that are available for other players to interact with, violently or nonviolently, which would make online play more interesting.

Because I'm one of those people that only has a few hours a day, at most, for gaming, I'd prefer not to be punished for not needing more than one station and one system :P.

 

[MacThule]

I don't thing maintenance costs will solve anything and I agree with your statement at least not unless it's done a certain way. I think credit maintenance costs should be implemented as gold sinks for factions that are well developed. Taxing everyone just for having a ship or a station would more likely demotivate people from leaving the base as they're forced to take a risk or eventually go bankrupt, thus making the environment or the game itself fairly un-enjoyable.

I'm actually opposed to gold sinks in general, regardless of the level of success of a faction. They wreck the economy.

Gold sinks became common in-game economic practice in order to drag players into using real life currency to prop up their in-game economic standing by constantly draining their resources into the void. We have no need to copy-cat MMORPGs and pay-to-play games in Starmade, and it would actually hurt the game's social dynamics.

Without a desire to draw players into spending real money for in-game gold, all sinks do it erase liquidity from the economy. Currency ('gold'/'credits') exists to facilitate trade, and in a sandbox that's its only ability since players can't grind to stack it then buy uber-weapons or the like. If players can't amass currency/liquidity because of sinks, then they cannot easily conduct complex trade, nor can they store wealth/value except in the form of hoarding mass cargo ("crate-humping" I think Lukwan called it). Massing cargo isn't bad in itself, but rigging the economy to allow players ONLY that one option for economic success is.

Since fluent trade depends upon currency, and most diplomatic relations (both positive and negative) spring from some aspect of trade or economic competition, I'm not interested in nerfing the potential of Starmade's macro-economic scope by setting up pointless credit sinks. I was just throwing out the idea of maintenance costs in response to KiloZulu noting that credits aren't required by the game except in station spawning and that after spawn they can be ignored (and currently should be, since the NPC shop system gives them negative value). What is the natural conclusion of following that line of thinking? Etc.

 

[jayman38]

Bigger, better-optimized, rare planets will be an interesting destination to explore.

Mission quests will be a good way to encourage players to "get out there".

 

[MacThule]

Bigger, better-optimized, rare planets will be an interesting destination to explore.

Mission quests will be a good way to encourage players to "get out there".

They're going to have to make missions more profitable than super-miner sweeps in order for them to draw people out on a consistent basis.

Planets that aren't no-fly zones would be a big deal for sure, in a game where most space objects are either 'roids or planets.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I don't like the idea of abstract gold sinks, but if there are practical maintenance costs due to usage I'm fine with that. For example, rebuilding and repairing ships after a battle. That's an existing maintenance cost, but it's very direct and not just some abstract gold cost you periodically pay whether you're online or not. Hypothetical (and somewhat controversial) fuel and ammo for certain weapons also fits this.

Something like paying "Total Ship Mass x 25 Credits" per day is too abstract and not fun in my opinion.

 

[jayman38]

They're going to have to make missions more profitable than super-miner sweeps in order for them to draw people out on a consistent basis.

Planets that aren't no-fly zones would be a big deal for sure, in a game where most space objects are either 'roids or planets.

Interlinking missions that tell a story are some of my favorite game mechanics, especially in sandbox-style games, regardless of "profitability". I've been known to earn money through other methods in the game, in order to have enough to get through the next bit of story.

 

[Spoolooni]

I'm actually opposed to gold sinks in general, regardless of the level of success of a faction. They wreck the economy.

Gold sinks became common in-game economic practice in order to drag players into using real life currency to prop up their in-game economic standing by constantly draining their resources into the void. We have no need to copy-cat MMORPGs and pay-to-play games in Starmade, and it would actually hurt the game's social dynamics.

Without a desire to draw players into spending real money for in-game gold, all sinks do it erase liquidity from the economy. Currency ('gold'/'credits') exists to facilitate trade, and in a sandbox that's its only ability since players can't grind to stack it then buy uber-weapons or the like. If players can't amass currency/liquidity because of sinks, then they cannot easily conduct complex trade, nor can they store wealth/value except in the form of hoarding mass cargo ("crate-humping" I think Lukwan called it). Massing cargo isn't bad in itself, but rigging the economy to allow players ONLY that one option for economic success is.

Since fluent trade depends upon currency, and most diplomatic relations (both positive and negative) spring from some aspect of trade or economic competition, I'm not interested in nerfing the potential of Starmade's macro-economic scope by setting up pointless credit sinks. I was just throwing out the idea of maintenance costs in response to KiloZulu noting that credits aren't required by the game except in station spawning and that after spawn they can be ignored (and currently should be, since the NPC shop system gives them negative value). What is the natural conclusion of following that line of thinking? Etc.

Well that's a good point we don't need gold sinks, we need activity sinks. If someone is cargo humping, they could perhaps own a freighter company and do something with that cargo, giving pirate players an incentive to attack as they deliver cargo to various NPC'S.