Incentives to Expansion (Anti-Turtling)

[MacThule]

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.

I just read a book. The stories are richer and more complex.

I'm here to design space ships and stations, then use them in fights (ideally) - something other mediums cannot do better.

To each their own, for sure, but I avoid missions like the plague in MP games. They always feel like digital hamster wheels.
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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.

Agreed.
Give players cause to mine further afield and make it take longer, and make it properly profitable to ship cargo about and pirates will arise, after which pirate-hunters will come. Instant, infinitely dynamic, player-generated plot. Even better than procedural generation.

For a while now my prescription to draw players out has been 1: nerf the crap out of resource respawn rates and reduce respawn predictability, 2: nerf the crap out of stick-shop spawn rates and fix their prices to have them actually make a profit rather than sell things at cost and even at a loss as they do now, 3: increase stick-shop currency caps and generation rates, and 4: increase the player currency cap to something ridiculous.

Mining will become more profitable while simultaneously requiring miners to range further afield taking more risks, and it will allow player-run shops to profit, thereby employing traders/shippers which will also become profitable.

 

[Scypio]

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.

For me who played a lot of DoW, we need to conquer and fight for strategic point. It's true that this isn't the case of most rts games but that's the thing that will get people to move for.

What i proposed is to fight for something that players can't do on their own, crew and the ability to get them. If done well turtle factions can't get a huge fleet, to get that you'll need to expand. But i'm probably going too far with thinking about npc populations and ability to hire them.

 

[Malacodor]

Secondly, another 'mission' we can implement that could involve a lot of PvP is escort missions.

Noooo!!!11 Just reading the term "escort mission" causes flashbacks of horrible traumatic events (I'm a seasoned gaming veteran). Escorting NPCs controlled by artificial stupidity is the worst thing players can be tortured with.

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.

Fly in a random direction via auto-pilot and leave your computer running over night to train your crew?

They will gain the most experience in combat with pirates, other factions or players.

Giving folks a solid reason to farm weaker players for XP will make the problem even worse instead of solving it. Also, most battles would probably be staged fights between actually allied factions, where one faction supplys the trainees of the other faction with cannon fodder and vice versa.

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

Money sinks don't wreck the economy, they are needed to counterbalance money sources. Otherwise the economy would be wrecked by inflation. That's why they also exist in games where no in-game money can be bought for real money. Either the money supply is kept constant, then new would have a hard time getting it from established factions, or there are money sources that are easily accessible by new players, such as pirates or quests, combined with money sinks that keep the money supply halfway stable.

 

[Panpiper]

Giving folks a solid reason to farm weaker players for XP will make the problem even worse instead of solving it. Also, most battles would probably be staged fights between actually allied factions, where one faction supplys the trainees of the other faction with cannon fodder and vice versa.

That is a valid point. However I think that the problem will for the most part be mitigated if there is no experience 'bonus' for picking on players as opposed to NPCs. Judging by the NPC fleet contest, the NPC factions will pretty much be pushovers. I expect most players will go for the easy pickings of NPC fleets as opposed to the very risky behavior of picking on the newbies. You never know when some white knight will take offense and come charging to the rescue, and that could be a mite problematic if you are trying to keep your ship alive. A carrier with a chain drive and two dozen 2M power spinal mount destroyers attached, each with a decent jump inhibitor and there's not a griefer out there that would survive. If I think that way, bet on others too.

 

[KiloZulu]

Just a side-thought: I'm not thrilled with the idea of making the game too RTS. The only balancing factor in the game is the amount of time any individual has to spend on it, which is to say there is no balance at all. I would be shut out of the multiplayer option simply because I have responsibilities outside of the game, while others can spend endless hours manufacturing fleets of titans. As Schine evolves the fleet system, I hope they also work on creating limitations on what any one individual is able to manage and control. As cool as the automation of mining by fleets will be, I can envision how it could get out of hand. Based on my experience in Minecraft, I've seen players build automated systems that harvest and produce on a scale that bogs down and kills servers with the quantities involved.

 

[Spoolooni]

Fly in a random direction via auto-pilot and leave your computer running over night to train your crew?

And is that a problem? I don't think so. An auto pilot function wouldn't be bad either. And to be quite fair, if you're flying in a random direction, I wouldn't be surprised if you woke up one day finding your ship colliding into planets, burned by sun damage or destroyed by NPCS and or players. So you present an exploitable situation that comes with great risk.

Noooo!!!11 Just reading the term "escort mission" causes flashbacks of horrible traumatic events (I'm a seasoned gaming veteran). Escorting NPCs controlled by artificial stupidity is the worst thing players can be tortured with.

Not really Malacodor, NPC Ai does not need to have complexity to begin with, just have them automatically seated to warp into a seating position in one of your passenger blocks. I am sure when crews become a thing, an NPC would be adopted on your ship as a temporary crew member.

 

[Malacodor]

And is that a problem? I don't think so. [...] And to be quite fair, if you're flying in a random direction, I wouldn't be surprised if you woke up one day finding your ship colliding into planets, burned by sun damage or destroyed by NPCS and or players. So you present an exploitable situation that comes with great risk.

Stars and planets can be easily avoided due to their regular arrangement. Setup some logic that lets the ship auto-jump when shields go down, use a fast and durable ship and it's pretty unlikely to be destroyed.

An auto pilot function wouldn't be bad either.

Spoiler: Autopilot

Not really Malacodor, NPC Ai does not need to have complexity to begin with, just have them automatically seated to warp into a seating position in one of your passenger blocks. I am sure when crews become a thing, an NPC would be adopted on your ship as a temporary crew member.

I was thinking of escorting ships. What you describe is rather passenger transport. Anyhow, if I can safely tuck an NPC in my ship for transport/escort, then that's not a problem of course.

 

[Spoolooni]

Stars and planets can be easily avoided due to their regular arrangement. Setup some logic that lets the ship auto-jump when shields go down, use a fast and durable ship and it's pretty unlikely to be destroyed.

Spoiler: Autopilot

View attachment 34040

I was thinking of escorting ships. What you describe is rather passenger transport. Anyhow, if I can safely tuck an NPC in my ship for transport/escort, then that's not a problem of course.

If you can create a ship that can "patrol" or traverse space to that extent, than sure- you deserve the reward but it still does not remove the risks involved entirely. Of course, it depends if the crew can be transferred from one ship to another which will raise certain concerns with levels of exploitation. Also, if you've been traveling for 8 hours worth of real life sleep, I can imagine returning back to base being a huge chore.

As for chain drives, I believe the developers have stated they are on the fence about such a contraption being legit or not. For all we know, it might change in the future.

 

[kurosawa]

why put fences in the sandbox?

let people sit in there HB or build what ever size ships they want, but do not limit or punish players base on what ever it is you/me/him/her think is the right way to play.


No fences in my box please.

 

[Scypio]

why put fences in the sandbox?

let people sit in there HB or build what ever size ships they want, but do not limit or punish players base on what ever it is you/me/him/her think is the right way to play.


No fences in my box please.

Thats why :

For the purpose of this thread I am asking people not to focus on gigantism specifically but to brainstorm some carrot & stick ideas.

I suggested the ability to gather more easily crew by doing so. As i see it, crew are going to be the frame for fleets and space empires, so if you stay at your homebase you just cannot rule the entire galaxy. Is that too much fences ?

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I personally find the use of faction points as a currency redundant if there is already an actual currency in the game. We have credits so use them for everything currency based.

As for the carrot/stick scenario, there are a lot of good suggestions here in exploration, pirating, hunting, missions, frieght etc. A lot of which comes naturally to those enclined.

To address the turtling at HB, I would suggest a different way to operate protection.
My suggestion is, make this available faction base wide, but only when the faction members are offline.
The protection would also be granular.
If no faction members online, all base assets have HB protection.
1 faction member online, HB and bases close to HB protected, but bases further out subject to count down timer.

Online vs Offline
Offline - All bases protected the same way HB protection works. Undocked assets are fair game.
Online - rank based protection
- HB protected using current method
- Additional bases protected by time countdown
- 1-5 sectors away from HB, protected for 5-8 hours
- 6-10 sectors away, 3-5 hours
- 15+ sectors, 2 hours

This would incourage factions to spend more time at their remote bases maintaining and fortifying, not to mention require regular rounds of monitoring.

The countdown times above could be adjusted, and I suggest a server admin control for these also.
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Escorting NPCs controlled by artificial stupidity is the worst thing players can be tortured with.

Lol, I love that sentence! ;-)

 

[Edymnion]

I brought this up in Suggestions a while back, I still think its got some good ideas in it:
Recognized - Exploration/System Bonuses and Actual Empire Building

Basically, we need luxuries or other rare resources that aren't strictly required for building blocks that people will still want, that require active exploration and expansion to control.

 

[Lukwan]

I'm digging the ideas so far, keep it up folks!

I just read a book. The stories are richer and more complex.

I'm here to design space ships and stations, then use them in fights (ideally) - something other mediums cannot do better.

To each their own, for sure, but I avoid missions like the plague in MP games. They always feel like digital hamster wheels.

I know exactly how you feel about the 'digital hamster wheel'. I have an active 'inner life' that provides meaning and context where they don't already exist. Most game plots are boring and unoriginal to start with and the process of slogging though them is tedious as a result. I prefer 'emergent' game play where the plot is not handed to me but rather a bunch of interesting elements are there to be discovered. The 'story' that emerges is my own, created by my imagination but using props from the Plot to give it context and meaning. For others, however, a plot to follow may be just what they need to get into the RP aspect of a mission. Plot-elements: yes, Plot-tunnel that prods you along a rail...not so fun.

Noooo!!!11 Just reading the term "escort mission" causes flashbacks of horrible traumatic events (I'm a seasoned gaming veteran). Escorting NPCs controlled by artificial stupidity is the worst thing players can be tortured with.

Fagreed! I hate escort missions...with a passion! Why? They offer the player no agency whatsoever. Go here...meet this NPC...follow them around...don't fail. No choices about how to approach the mission at all: just 100% jumping through flaming hoops. Fie on any developer who thinks this will make their game better. Many other quest/mission types do offer choices about how to go about it so lets make sure that missions and quests remain engaging and allow players meaningful choices.

Giving folks a solid reason to farm weaker players for XP will make the problem even worse instead of solving it. Also, most battles would probably be staged fights between actually allied factions, where one faction supplys the trainees of the other faction with cannon fodder and vice versa.

Good point. It might be wise to restrict Exp gathering somewhat. Possible guidelines for Experience:

1) No Exp when unloaded.
2) Minimal Exp without a human crew-member on board. (Must prevent farming significant XP)
3) Time-delay (after first angry shot) before Exp gets generated. This eliminates Exp bonus for one-shoting noobs. (Not foolproof. This angle can be covered by Line-5)
4) No Experience until ship receives hull-damage. Training missions within an alliance are allowed but have to be 'serious'. (Change this to System-Damage: at least 20% IMO.)
5) No experience for attacking non-factioned players. [Or human-players period?]
6) Max Exp for battles with larger factions. (More bonus-XP for fighting superior forces)
7) Exp for fleeing a battle with massive damage to your ship. Exp for repairing a ship. (Difficult to track and possibly exploitable.)
8) Exp for mining & trading and performing quests.
9) Exp for selling original BP. More credit-value=more Exp. (exploitable)
10) Exp for exploring planets and systems. Exp for navigating the void between galaxies.
11) Exp for completing the loop of wormholes. Exploration.
12) Exp for dominating strategic points. (Strategic points do not yet exist.) This focuses conflict.

>>Edited with some feedback Nov 3, 2016<<

 

[aRottenKomquat]

What about new gameplay mechanics strengthening interplay, politics, and diplomacy between factions? Some kind of Galactic Council (StarMade's United Nations) that allows factions to vote on things that affect the whole server, allowing an implementation of trade taxes and tariffs, system annexation, or galactic regulations that somewhat alter the pros/cons of various systems. And your influence in the Council is determined by things like your Faction Point income, or territory, or total ship/station mass, etc. As a hypothetical example, you want to expand to increase your influence to make sure you can get a new Trading Guild regulation passed that encourages NPC shop and trade within your territory, or to create sanctions resulting from the use of nuke missiles (which your enemy faction happens to be fond of, of course), or you want to be elected as the Galactic Council host faction which maintains the Council's neutral station which would have some pros and cons. And there'd have to be a way to remain a rogue who is outside of and not subject to the Galactic Council's decisions.

Imagine the shenanigans if the Galactic Council votes to ban Nocx (we'd need to brainstorm just what affect being caught with contraband has), or yholes...Just tossing some crazy thoughts out there...

EDIT: To add, I guess we'd need cargo scanners, and a way to designate a faction as international police who can enforce sanctions and contraband rules and stuff.

 

[Malacodor]

1) No Exp when unloaded.
2) No Exp without a human crew-member on board.
3) Time-delay (after first angry shot) before Exp gets generated. This eliminates Exp bonus for one-shoting noobs.
4) No Experience until ship receives hull-damage. Training missions within an alliance are allowed but have to be 'serious'.
5) No experience for attacking non-factioned players. [Or human-players period?]
6) Max Exp for battles with larger factions. (The bigger the target faction the greater the reward.)
7) Exp for fleeing a battle with massive damage to your ship. Exp for repairing a ship.
8) Exp for mining & trading and performing quests.
9) Exp for selling original BP. More credit-value=more Exp. (exploitable)
10) Exp for exploring planets and systems. Exp for navigating the void between galaxies.
11) Exp for completing the loop of wormholes. Exploration.
12) Exp for dominating strategic points. (Strategic points do not yet exist.) This focuses conflict.

1) + 2) Agreed
3) Exploitable with stop effect + warp inhibitor + low damage
4) Makes armor tanks a more likely target compared to shield tanks, better give XP only for system HP damage. How to detect the seriousness of a battle?
5) Not sure about this one
6) Make this dependent on relative size, so that attacking stronger factions yields more XP and attacking weaker ones less, but attacking an equally strong faction always gives an unmodified amount of XP.
7) Hard to detect properly. Exp for repairing is exploitable, distinguishing self-inflicted damage from real combat damage would likely require too much technical overhead.
8) Mining is boring, not sure if XP for trading makes sense, XP for quests is a must.
10) See above autopilot comment.
11) Funny idea, agreed
12) For what, idling on a specific spot? Better give a bonus for the faction on XP gained by other means for each controlled strategic point.

 

[Scypio]

1) No Exp when unloaded.
2) No Exp without a human crew-member on board.
3) Time-delay (after first angry shot) before Exp gets generated. This eliminates Exp bonus for one-shoting noobs.
4) No Experience until ship receives hull-damage. Training missions within an alliance are allowed but have to be 'serious'.
5) No experience for attacking non-factioned players. [Or human-players period?]
6) Max Exp for battles with larger factions. (The bigger the target faction the greater the reward.)

To prevent using this to "train", that could be a huge function with a certain number of terms. Fight that last at least X mins, Fight where both side did X damage to each other (could be simply a variable on the ship himself about how much damage he absorbed.) and so on.

12) Exp for dominating strategic points. (Strategic points do not yet exist.) This focuses conflict.

I was thinking, if thoses strategic points was control point ? I mean to claim a sector all you need is a faction module and something to put it on. What if we remove that and instead use pre-built stations to control sectors ? They should be the same on every sectors and the one who want to claim the system should own it. The station couldn't be changed, that mean you need to board it to change the owner of the system, that mean epic fights around and in theses stations (boarding <3). The players who want to play solo or peacefully in their HB can and the ones who want to claim over a lot of system need to fight for them. To give something to fight for, theses stations could give credits to their owner if they come to harvest it. See it as a tax for every living things in the sector. The tax can be just generated or simply taken from NPC and/or players in the sector for every stations/planets claimed.

We can go halfway but in that case we need to find easily via scan theses stations build by players.

 

[KiloZulu]

I personally find the use of faction points as a currency redundant if there is already an actual currency in the game. We have credits so use them for everything currency based.

As for the carrot/stick scenario, there are a lot of good suggestions here in exploration, pirating, hunting, missions, frieght etc. A lot of which comes naturally to those enclined.

To address the turtling at HB, I would suggest a different way to operate protection.
My suggestion is, make this available faction base wide, but only when the faction members are offline.
The protection would also be granular.
If no faction members online, all base assets have HB protection.
1 faction member online, HB and bases close to HB protected, but bases further out subject to count down timer.

Online vs Offline
Offline - All bases protected the same way HB protection works. Undocked assets are fair game.
Online - rank based protection
- HB protected using current method
- Additional bases protected by time countdown
- 1-5 sectors away from HB, protected for 5-8 hours
- 6-10 sectors away, 3-5 hours
- 15+ sectors, 2 hours

This would incourage factions to spend more time at their remote bases maintaining and fortifying, not to mention require regular rounds of monitoring.

The countdown times above could be adjusted, and I suggest a server admin control for these also.
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Lol, I love that sentence! ;-)

I'm intrigued by the idea of switching out faction points with the normal currency. I feel that the current economic model excludes the currency. Don't get me wrong, I like the crafting system, it's only that when credits are only necessary in such a limited fashion, either drop it altogether or find additional uses for it. Such as what you suggest - which kind of makes sense when the only way to build a station is by purchase.

As to your idea of extending HB protection to other stations, I'm quite opposed to that idea. My personal belief is that a faction shouldn't be able to hold any more territory than it can defend. My impression is that the model you propose would allow for a bunch of skeleton factions that gobble up useful system space and hide behind HB protections. They don't have the numbers to use the sectors they control, but they can sit on them indefinitely. You would, in essence, be creating more turtles.

A group of players could just as easily create their own individual factions and ally with one another. That way, they can control numerous sectors with stations that each have HB protection. They could call themselves the United Federation of Planets or something.

 

[JinM]

What encourages coming out of the shell: 3 easy suggestion balls and 1 big suggestion cloud after them:

1. Some nice places to visit. Better planets, interesting stations, floating abaddoned ships (not stations - ships), and some npcs flying around and hailing you with a random questline or the ability to trade. NPC Stations or in multiplayer nice stations from players.
Possible addition: Make stations easier accessible for everyones use. Faction permission blocks are nice, but having a global setting for all the doors on an entity would make it much easier.


2. Precious treasures (rare ressources are atm easy to obtain - why not change the ressource distribution?) to find. Blueprints for interessting vessels or some artistic stuff.
Possible addition: An allready existing blueprint catalogue that fullfills every gamers needs (small to big salvagers, low to high end carrier, some good fighters - basically being able to play the game without constructing your own ships and stations). But the blueprints that are not included in the catalogue and need to be found first, are special for its artistic style (very nice paintjobs, mechas, statues, an chess game) or constructions (robotic arms that move ships on stations around, retractable turrets, complex ship transformations, RP-Style ships with quest lines in it).

3. Quests. And rewards in form of ships, blueprints, ressources - or opening more questlines.

4. Big suggestion:

How it is in other games: Declining of ressources for the sustainability of a station or vessel: In other space games you need to visit a planet to fill up your energy ressources, mine water or get new oxygen. Also those games have ammo that you want to replenish - you can't defend your shell forever because you are some day low on ammo, energy, o2 or food. - Starmade is not that kind of survival game. But maybe we can have other ressources that decline? I don't have a clue, how to include this game mechanic in Starmade. I just wanted to point into another possible direction.

But my ideas for this declining ressource thing:
Station sustain points (just like faction points but different): You need to do certain tasks so your faction does not loose those "sustain points".

Like a political point component: The station you own uses political power points up (depending on its mass, or its size of connected weapon blocks or on its size of factory blocks), because it needs its legitimisation from the workers on the station - if we every have the crew update it perfectly blends. Those political power points are only obtainable by keeping attackers outside of sectors and visiting certain other stations, and helping the other stations out either by doing quests or paying taxes or giving free ships to them.

Another sustain point example...Let me think...Ha: Intimidation points of a station: You get more and bigger attacks from enemy npc waves, the less you attack the enemies and show them that you have a fearsome fleet. Like a warlord-reputation. If you want to prevent that you get attacked on and on, you have to go out and show them that you are strong and mighty by attacking their station. If you warlord reputation is at zero every pirate out there is going to use everything he has. It sound illogical at first because you might have a strong defense and welcome many attackers, but maybe someone can flesh this idea out. Just like: hey he never comes to our station, we can attack him as much as we like. Or you loose political power points from your workers because they are annoyed from every new attack. =)

Also: Influence of mining bonuses to a station: The mining bonus is something you can do some nice things with. Why not make the radius and the ammount of the mining bonus dependent on the warlord reputation your station has. Or the ammount of stations around the central mining station? There is so much possible with this mining bonus.

Enough brainstorm for now. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Malacodor]

As to your idea of extending HB protection to other stations, I'm quite opposed to that idea. My personal belief is that a faction shouldn't be able to hold any more territory than it can defend. My impression is that the model you propose would allow for a bunch of skeleton factions that gobble up useful system space and hide behind HB protections. They don't have the numbers to use the sectors they control, but they can sit on them indefinitely. You would, in essence, be creating more turtles.

Not a problem if invincibility of other stations than the homebase costs FP.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I'm intrigued by the idea of switching out faction points with the normal currency. I feel that the current economic model excludes the currency. Don't get me wrong, I like the crafting system, it's only that when credits are only necessary in such a limited fashion, either drop it altogether or find additional uses for it. Such as what you suggest - which kind of makes sense when the only way to build a station is by purchase.

As to your idea of extending HB protection to other stations, I'm quite opposed to that idea. My personal belief is that a faction shouldn't be able to hold any more territory than it can defend. My impression is that the model you propose would allow for a bunch of skeleton factions that gobble up useful system space and hide behind HB protections. They don't have the numbers to use the sectors they control, but they can sit on them indefinitely. You would, in essence, be creating more turtles.

A group of players could just as easily create their own individual factions and ally with one another. That way, they can control numerous sectors with stations that each have HB protection. They could call themselves the United Federation of Planets or something.

Some good points there and I agree, this could be abused in this way. This us why admins exist to govern such behaviour and strict penalties could be applied.

Where I suggest the countdown, this would mean that while a faction member is online it is the protection is removed after the time period. This doesn't need to be hours as initially suggested and if admin controlled could be reduced to zero minutes. Meaning it's on (as in to strike) the moment they come online.

As for the exploiting of it, that's going to happen and is happening already with the current methodology. So, nobody is going to bother building remote bases.