NPC Faction Update Video

[Gonzalo]

HOH
spicy update

 

[Jananton]

Very interesting, I like the depth that this will add to the universe and the players experience during their travels.

Noting that server owners can influence, or even define, the NPC faction behavior and goals will probably also open up the possibility to add missions, quests and even some sort of campaigns in the future. That last one will be especially of interest for the single-player sandbox.

I won't say my imagination goes wild, what it does, because some people may respond negatively again to that, but hey, one can dream. :D

Greets,

Jan

 

[Drakkart]

- as it was said that we can adjust which fleets a faction should use. will there be a general import/puttogether tool for player made fleets so that we later could share entire fleet station packs for factions?
- Since there seems to be an ai in place that is able to perform certain tasks.
In what way is it planned to incorporate this into player factions? i build a miner hire an npc tell it yo dude mine?
i am out for extended amount of coffebreak till next weekend clear the damn sector deliver ressources to this docker fopr processing. bye
- please clarify on these ship roles: support attack defense carrier scavanger scout
- stations all
- since we are able to setup faction parameters in the settings for npc factions is this feature also planned for hired npcs behaviour of player factions along with ui?

 

[Archailect]

Oh man, this is gonna add a lot to the universe.
I was injured and couldn't build ships for the contest, but, I've got lots of ideas for cool factions to add on my own if that's possible!
Maybe this will be the start of something like mods? Faction files seem like they'd be reasonably easy to share...

 

[terra mining corp.]

maybe we could have a station contest?

 

[MacThule]

Well this explains the delay in making economic fixes.
Standing by to wait patiently....

 

[Archailect]

maybe we could have a station contest?

There was a station contest quite a while ago, I think!

 

[terra mining corp.]

^most of those are outdated in need of updating, fresh faces are needed.

 

[StormWing0]

Don't forget the turret role for the blueprints and the sub types for it. This way the AI can add turrets to stations and ships that don't already have turrets. schema

 

[Zekester81]

Can't wait to see it. I bet single player will be much more interesting. I wouldn't limit the factions too much, make some quite aggressive and expansionary. Once you get enough stuff to beat one, it would get boring unless it the NPC can still be challenging. If they were too weak, it would be no different than the pirates now, leaving the only challenge to be other players. Definitely ready for a more challenging single player.

 

[codercommand]

looking forward to update, I'd say you've got a great community Schema cause I never hear them complaining like other community's do.
your game is growing strong with its community unlike most games, this I'd say is one of the strongest!

 

[DukeofRealms]

I never hear them complaining like other community's do.

You just need to look a little bit harder

maybe we could have a station contest?

As much as we enjoy contests, they end up being a lot more work than doing the same task on our own. Not to say we won't be doing any future competitions though.

 

[Shaker]

your game is growing strong

Steam stats say we had 950 peak players on daily 2 years ago, now we have 250 peak players online.

 

[Comradecolonel]

Thats on steam though. Not that I disagree with the notion of the communities decline but that seems a bit misleading to me.

 

[Shaker]

Well considering my server, craftau had 15-20 players online most nights at the start of this year, to which we currently have 1-6

I want to see this game get revived, the wait for this update is killing it, ive sunk more than 600hours into this game and love it to bits, but its falling point is currently gameplay, once your built your ship/station, whats next?

 

[godmars]

cautiously optimistic

 

[Ghent96]

*slow clap* finally... now I can really get to work with NPC factions on our server like I've been needing to for a year now.
Second, someone needs to do the talking on Starmade official videos besides Saber. He's too difficult to hear and understand. Advice to Saber, .... breathe.... put some actual breath and diaphragm behind your voice instead of trying too hard to growl into the mic as low as possible.
Third, NONE of this patch addresses possibly the worst problem behind NPCs ever since the start of the game - DIFFICULTY SPAWN GRADIENT!!!!
...right now, and after this patch, the same ships are going to spawn 1 sector from 2,2,2, as out in 100,100,100 or as in the NPC home system. Why has it been so hard for the community to communicate this simple concept to devs? We need a way to ensure weak NPC spawn near the center of the galaxy where newbs will encounter them, and strong NPC spawn farther out in the galaxy.

To answer a few questions (quoting doesn't want to work)
...
4: All galaxies will have factions in them from what I understand, or at least that is the plan... MP.

How about let us all focus on ONE galaxy, yeah? We the players have shown consistently that +1 galaxy fails, bad idea, no one goes there, and if they do it kills the server. ONE galaxy.

Chaining in from Shadow's post above, Will a ship be able to operate as a dual purpose? IE, a Scavenger with offence capability like long range missiles. Will it flee from all combat, or will it recognise it has both, and begin salvage operations at the end of battle, or flee when its among the last left in a fleet as per morale system that may come?

This is easy guys, just drop the same ship into the different blueprint slots under the NPC faction, so that the NPC will spawn the same ship when it "wants" each of the multiple roles. If you have a battle salvager... put it in both slots. If you want 1 fighter to spawn all the time, put it in all the folders of appropriate name.

its good to see this update comming.
...
I have a bomber ready and i'm working on a cargo but it won't be ready in time for the update.
here is a little pic (WIP)
View attachment 34186

Matey, I really really REALLY would love to talk to you about getting that beetle-insectoid cargo ship and your other fleet ships (if they are also insectoid) onto my server, because we have a fleet /NPC faction that uses insectoid ships. Table's totally open for negotiations at this point...

I noticed the NPCs were stocking Turret Docking Enhancers...

Can we finally get rid of those stupid things?

Seconded. Get rid of them if the game isn't going to use them anymore. They'll just spawn as empty spaces on old ships if loaded in. No big deal. Easy fixes. Otherwise, split the game into Classic Starmade (with old turrets) and New Starmade, and continue dev on the New.

Hopefully we get this update before my server runs out of players, the game population is pretty much waiting on this update.

Also is it possible to limit the game file to 1 galaxy?

Seconded, and SECONDED. Community is hurting for active players.

So, faction loses a territory when you destroy enough ships and take enough resources from them? Can we have a progress bar to how much damage needed to done for territory takeovers?

Right now NPCs have a big territory and a lot of stations. I think it is pretty hard to wreck them all. (wrecking 20 well made station is HARD)
Is it possible to lessen the amount of stations we have in a sector? (I think 5-10 stations/solar system is balanced)
What is the size of the fleet?
When do we have updated stations which works without docking modules?

So make your factions custom, with smaller, easier stations so they're easier for players, especially new players, to go destroy. Also, just go thru the stations, and replace old docks with new, mod the turrets (all the old ones sucked anyways), and redock. Might take a few hours, and then you get the honor of stamping your name on the new download pack You're welcome for the build inspiration. Don't wait for someone else to fix it when you can.

There going to be a BP Roll for a turret? Since that'd be handy for the AI and players for that matter when trying to locate turrets in the catalog for use. Also it'd help in other ways, say a station spawns without turrets the AI would look up turrets it has use of in the catalog and ID what ones can be fit into the various rail turret spots. Maybe we could go further and mark areas for AMS, Normal, and AP turret types as well so the AI knows what to hunt for.

...you're ascribing way way way too much I to the AI... when they lose a turret, they're just going to sit there until a player or other AI overheats them and eats them. They're not going to spawn a new turret and dock it and start flying again. Nor... do I want them to, nor should you! Such level of AI would eat way too much server power that we already can't afford.

Will players be able to join the NPC factions or...

Matey, they already can. I admin-joined a player to -1 in our server that was really interested in being a pirate. He's loving it and doing well.

Neat. Can this also be done on a player faction level? That is, could a player-run faction be friendly or allied with an NPC faction, or is it just on a person-by-person basis?

...we can already do this, see above...

Criss any chance that we can change the number of galaxies or even the size of galaxies in the future?

We at craftau have tried to suggest all our players to stay in the main galaxy but we cant really stop players from flying into the abyss

SECONDED (again, for i think the third time)

Not sure if we will change the number of galaxies that show up ever...

wtf not???? How hard is it to code this in:
config.ini > numGalaxy=1

SERIOUSLY???? listen to your community!

Don't forget the turret role for the blueprints and the sub types for it. This way the AI can add turrets to stations and ships that don't already have turrets. schema

They don't need to do this.
1) dont put a blueprint in for the AI to use unless it has turrets like you want, and
2) if they get shotup and lose a turret, then they should just sit there and wait for another player or AI to come finish the job. We don't need more server power going into this. Performance is already bad enough.


Finally, and in closing, hopefully Schine crew test this on a "real" multiplayer server on a different continent from their own, and takes the time to see if a server will actually run and be functional and STABLE with this new AI system.

 

[Bench]

- as it was said that we can adjust which fleets a faction should use. will there be a general import/puttogether tool for player made fleets so that we later could share entire fleet station packs for factions?

There will be some way to easily package and share a "faction" pack

- Since there seems to be an ai in place that is able to perform certain tasks.
In what way is it planned to incorporate this into player factions? i build a miner hire an npc tell it yo dude mine?
i am out for extended amount of coffebreak till next weekend clear the damn sector deliver ressources to this docker fopr processing. bye

There will be some way to easily package and share a "faction" pack

- since we are able to setup faction parameters in the settings for npc factions is this feature also planned for hired npcs behaviour of player factions along with ui?

Citizens will be explored at a later point, for now the focus is just getting this aspect of gameplay functionality added in.

Third, NONE of this patch addresses possibly the worst problem behind NPCs ever since the start of the game - DIFFICULTY SPAWN GRADIENT!!!!
...right now, and after this patch, the same ships are going to spawn 1 sector from 2,2,2, as out in 100,100,100 or as in the NPC home system. Why has it been so hard for the community to communicate this simple concept to devs? We need a way to ensure weak NPC spawn near the center of the galaxy where newbs will encounter them, and strong NPC spawn farther out in the galaxy.

To a degree it does, because it creates faction clustering within their territory. So you're more likely going to encounter larger and more fleets of a faction within their territory as you get closer to their homebase, than out on the fringe. If you're on the other side of the galaxy from a particular faction, you won't encounter their ships unless it's a scout or cargo ship due to trading.

 

[DukeofRealms]

Criss
So no way of limiting it to the 1 galaxy for the less powerful servers?

Criss any chance that we can change the number of galaxies or even the size of galaxies in the future?

Yep, I don't see why this won't happen. We already plan to have core gameplay centered in one galaxy (Quests, Missions, NPC faction building), a config option to only have one galaxy spawn is very likely to occur. I'll speak with development about this.

 

[Ghent96]

To a degree it does, because it creates faction clustering within their territory. So you're more likely going to encounter larger and more fleets of a faction within their territory as you get closer to their homebase, than out on the fringe. If you're on the other side of the galaxy from a particular faction, you won't encounter their ships unless it's a scout or cargo ship due to trading.

But what if a faction randomly establishes itself near spawn? You guys still haven't given us a way to control how far and how difficult the AI is from spawn. The AI Spawn Groups that we can do now are great in theory, but have never worked in practice because of the problem I already mentioned. If I define only difficulty level 1, then only that spawns... If i define difficulty 1 - 10 all carefully planned out, only level 10 spawns, and annihilates everyone.
You all went and did way more work than you needed to do, totally changing and revamping AI (which is nice, don't get me wrong), ...but all you needed to do was enable AI for all -# factions, like -1, -2, -3, -4 etc etc as many as an admin wants to define in the faction list, AND of course get the difficulty gradient working so that the game uses the different difficulty levels that an admin defines.