- Joined
- Jul 3, 2013
- Messages
- 220
- Reaction score
- 34
Space. It's really, really big and stuff.
Space is supposed to be big, the issue is there's not enough of everything to fill the universe. Traveling is boring, yet it's what we spend most of the game doing.
As a pirate, I spend a lot of time searching for targets. Considering canvassing a 25 sector block means I have to scan over 15,000 sectors. That's a lot of time doing nothing. But what can we do about it?
1. Have a universe size limit.
Have a server option to limit the number of sectors the game will generate. Say, if you enter 50, the sector numbers will go from -50 to 50. This can be hard limit or soft limit.
- Hard Limit: When you reach the end, the game forces you to turn around and tells you that you cannot go any further.
- Soft limit: When you reach the end, the game will warn you that you've reached the limit. You can keep going but nothing will spawn. No planets, shops, stations, etc.
This has three purposes, first it keeps players within a play zone, making diplomacy that much more important. It increases competition for resources; increasing teamwork and conflict. And finally, it keeps the usage of server resources down.
Is that too little space? Consider this: a setting of 25 means there will be 125,000 sectors. Considering most servers have less than 100 regularly active players; that's over 1250 sectors per player.
2. Limit the number of factions.
Add a server option to limit the maximum number of factions. Furthermore, add server option to determine the price to create a faction. Right now, everyone and their grandmother can make a faction instantly. And seriously, why bother joining an existing faction if I can make my own and be completely safe?
Have you seen the Sun-World server? They have so many factions (most of them inactive) that looking at the faction hub causes the FPS to drop massively.
This has several purposes. It encourages players to form larger factions; especially newcomers, Is useful for RP servers, and fewer untouchable faction homes; which leads me to the next point.
3. Limit the number of items a faction can claim.
At the cost of 10,000-ish credits, I can lock down a station or planet and make it completely untouchable. I can then hide a faction block on every planet or station I come across. They'd be forced to destroy a faction block that they can't see, most likely ruining the object in the process.
If you'd like, you can place a hard limit on how many ships/stations/planets can be claimed. Or add a soft limit, where you can purchase additional "slots" (Ship, Station, Planet) up to a certain limit. Prices can be set in server config.
You might say, why pay credits? Why not give factions more bonuses as they get more members?
Well, I can make as many new characters as I want; when I want, and only the admins would be able to tell. I'm not going to force them to look through the logs to hunt down multiple characters.
But the economy is broken? Well that's a problem with the economy then, not the factions.
4. Make claiming and invulnerability more costly.
lolol I set up gigantic turrets on my homebase and anyone who comes near it dies and can't do anything about it lolol
lolol I set up a homebased turret next to your base and you can't do anything about it since it's untouchable lolol.
Invulnerable homebases aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they're horribly exploitable. So to help mediate that, make it cost a good chunk of change.
- Homebasing takes money from a faction account. The bigger the claim, the more it costs.
- Tax factions for things claimed; bigger factions can claim more since they're more active. It kills off factions that have become inactive and also curbs excessive faction growth so others can still compete.
- To help pay for things and deal with the 4byte limit; we use a bitcurrency. Members can purchase bitcurrency that is automatically added to the faction bank.
- You can set the conversion rate of credits:bitcurrency in the server config. The buying and selling costs can be different. (In case you want to stop people from using factions as money banks).
- Buying and selling bitcurrency requires separate faction permissions.
Now for docked object invulnerability. Have two special docking blocks and enhancers. These special docks can only be placed on a faction homebase and spread the homebase's invulnerability to the docked objects.
These docks are prohibitively expensive. 50 million credits for the docking module and 10,000 per enhancer.
Right now you can protect an entire fleet with 1 million credits and some docks/enhancers. That's kinda cheap for ABSOLUTE SAFETY ANYWHERE wouldn't you say?
5. Make things actually worth claiming.
Most of the time, factions set a faction home, build it up, and then never leave it. Usually after this individual players will go inactive from boredom and the faction slowly disappears. I mean, why make another station when your single homebase is completely untouchable?
Starmade Space in general is boring. You have stations (Lootchests), planets (laggy time-consuming lootchests), suns (annoying and bright) and asteroids (who even bothers?).
Add more space phenomena! Nebulas, Gas Clouds, Particle Fountains, Alien Relics, Ship Graveyards, Planetoids, Etc
You can set up a station nearby and add some resource collection blocks and the station will generate resources. (The phenomena themselves are indestructible so the server won't run out of resources).
Why not take it a step further and set up rare resources that give faction ships bonuses? Like a special power generator or shield crystal that increase shields/power by a % as long as it's factioned.
Maybe special NPC stations that have special shields that make them immune to ships; and you could go in and board them with your friends; giving you a steady credit/block income from taxes once you conquer it?
Warp Gates can be set up, allowing easy travel, but also may be dangerous due to players such as myself. You can risk the short way or go the safe, but long, way.
Giant shops or shop clusters can be spawned; you can increase the chance of finding players here for friendly or less-than-friendly reasons. Maybe you can set up a base here to deny enemies the chance to resupply? But what if they made ships that cloak/jam so they could sneak through?
This vastly increases competition and gives a faction a reason to expand. Factions would war over territory and set up strategic assets to defend them.
The most important part of this is that nearly all of these can be configured by the server. This allows vastly different server profiles without the need of external mods.
Space is supposed to be big, the issue is there's not enough of everything to fill the universe. Traveling is boring, yet it's what we spend most of the game doing.
As a pirate, I spend a lot of time searching for targets. Considering canvassing a 25 sector block means I have to scan over 15,000 sectors. That's a lot of time doing nothing. But what can we do about it?
1. Have a universe size limit.
Have a server option to limit the number of sectors the game will generate. Say, if you enter 50, the sector numbers will go from -50 to 50. This can be hard limit or soft limit.
- Hard Limit: When you reach the end, the game forces you to turn around and tells you that you cannot go any further.
- Soft limit: When you reach the end, the game will warn you that you've reached the limit. You can keep going but nothing will spawn. No planets, shops, stations, etc.
This has three purposes, first it keeps players within a play zone, making diplomacy that much more important. It increases competition for resources; increasing teamwork and conflict. And finally, it keeps the usage of server resources down.
Is that too little space? Consider this: a setting of 25 means there will be 125,000 sectors. Considering most servers have less than 100 regularly active players; that's over 1250 sectors per player.
2. Limit the number of factions.
Add a server option to limit the maximum number of factions. Furthermore, add server option to determine the price to create a faction. Right now, everyone and their grandmother can make a faction instantly. And seriously, why bother joining an existing faction if I can make my own and be completely safe?
Have you seen the Sun-World server? They have so many factions (most of them inactive) that looking at the faction hub causes the FPS to drop massively.
This has several purposes. It encourages players to form larger factions; especially newcomers, Is useful for RP servers, and fewer untouchable faction homes; which leads me to the next point.
3. Limit the number of items a faction can claim.
At the cost of 10,000-ish credits, I can lock down a station or planet and make it completely untouchable. I can then hide a faction block on every planet or station I come across. They'd be forced to destroy a faction block that they can't see, most likely ruining the object in the process.
If you'd like, you can place a hard limit on how many ships/stations/planets can be claimed. Or add a soft limit, where you can purchase additional "slots" (Ship, Station, Planet) up to a certain limit. Prices can be set in server config.
You might say, why pay credits? Why not give factions more bonuses as they get more members?
Well, I can make as many new characters as I want; when I want, and only the admins would be able to tell. I'm not going to force them to look through the logs to hunt down multiple characters.
But the economy is broken? Well that's a problem with the economy then, not the factions.
4. Make claiming and invulnerability more costly.
lolol I set up gigantic turrets on my homebase and anyone who comes near it dies and can't do anything about it lolol
lolol I set up a homebased turret next to your base and you can't do anything about it since it's untouchable lolol.
Invulnerable homebases aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they're horribly exploitable. So to help mediate that, make it cost a good chunk of change.
- Homebasing takes money from a faction account. The bigger the claim, the more it costs.
- Tax factions for things claimed; bigger factions can claim more since they're more active. It kills off factions that have become inactive and also curbs excessive faction growth so others can still compete.
- To help pay for things and deal with the 4byte limit; we use a bitcurrency. Members can purchase bitcurrency that is automatically added to the faction bank.
- You can set the conversion rate of credits:bitcurrency in the server config. The buying and selling costs can be different. (In case you want to stop people from using factions as money banks).
- Buying and selling bitcurrency requires separate faction permissions.
Now for docked object invulnerability. Have two special docking blocks and enhancers. These special docks can only be placed on a faction homebase and spread the homebase's invulnerability to the docked objects.
These docks are prohibitively expensive. 50 million credits for the docking module and 10,000 per enhancer.
Right now you can protect an entire fleet with 1 million credits and some docks/enhancers. That's kinda cheap for ABSOLUTE SAFETY ANYWHERE wouldn't you say?
5. Make things actually worth claiming.
Most of the time, factions set a faction home, build it up, and then never leave it. Usually after this individual players will go inactive from boredom and the faction slowly disappears. I mean, why make another station when your single homebase is completely untouchable?
Starmade Space in general is boring. You have stations (Lootchests), planets (laggy time-consuming lootchests), suns (annoying and bright) and asteroids (who even bothers?).
Add more space phenomena! Nebulas, Gas Clouds, Particle Fountains, Alien Relics, Ship Graveyards, Planetoids, Etc
You can set up a station nearby and add some resource collection blocks and the station will generate resources. (The phenomena themselves are indestructible so the server won't run out of resources).
Why not take it a step further and set up rare resources that give faction ships bonuses? Like a special power generator or shield crystal that increase shields/power by a % as long as it's factioned.
Maybe special NPC stations that have special shields that make them immune to ships; and you could go in and board them with your friends; giving you a steady credit/block income from taxes once you conquer it?
Warp Gates can be set up, allowing easy travel, but also may be dangerous due to players such as myself. You can risk the short way or go the safe, but long, way.
Giant shops or shop clusters can be spawned; you can increase the chance of finding players here for friendly or less-than-friendly reasons. Maybe you can set up a base here to deny enemies the chance to resupply? But what if they made ships that cloak/jam so they could sneak through?
This vastly increases competition and gives a faction a reason to expand. Factions would war over territory and set up strategic assets to defend them.
The most important part of this is that nearly all of these can be configured by the server. This allows vastly different server profiles without the need of external mods.
