Planned NPC MISSIONS \m/

[jontyfreack]

so I have seen that around the dock people talking about how certain mission/quests could be implemented. however I would like for this thread to become a discussion thread for possible missions that the player could participate in.

im not the best at writing, so bear with me.

some ideas for how one would enrol to be part of an NPC faction:
the trade guild, you would have to bring x amount of resources to x amount of shops.
the scavengers, you would have to salvage x amount of ships.
the outcasts you would have to disrupt x amount of fleets.*

for maybe some of the PGF such as my faction the RedBorn, speed is what they focus on, so in order to join them you would have to make a ship to beat them in a race. feel free to come up with any other mission ideas below.

some ideas for how one would stay in an NPC faction, or to become higher ranked:
the trade guild, you would have to escort fleets to shops and other stations and to protect them from attack.
the scavengers, you would have to find derelict stations with a fleet to salvage them, or even to attack trade guild stations.
the outcasts, you would have to destroy the other fleets.

for the RedBorn, you would have to hunt fauna, whilst commanding a fleet to prevent any other ships from entering a sector.

again feel free to suggest/discuss any more ideas below.


an idea of missions like these is to encourage player interaction on multiplayer. say if one player wants to be trade guild, and another is an outcast, those two will end up fighting one way or another, or even sparking an alliance between the two for a short while.


so post your ideas below, this thread is for discussion. keep it on topic, don't be a dick, and feel free to suggest your own PGF if you have one.

 

[jayman38]

I would suggest that each dynamically generated faction get an AI "director", which serves as the leader of the faction, to focus their efforts on specific goals.

Example goals:
Conquer the systems to the right of the home systems;
mine resources in nearby neutral sectors, but leave the resources in the home sectors alone;
if at war with one faction, avoid confrontation with any other factions;
if ally at war with a faction, focus military on that shared hostile faction

This will keep dynamically generated factions from being random, easily-defeated filler and make them real factions with real threat vectors and meaningful goals.

Then I recommend that the missions available to members of these factions simply follow the leader's guidance. Attacking hostile faction ships, mining outside the core systems, bringing in resources from outside, conquer planets in the systems to be conquered for the faction, etc. This will make those missions make sense and provide the player with a meaningful and focused "direction" for the faction they are in.

Special: Trade Guild and other across-the-universe factions would behave differently from conventional factions, but if the AI "director" makes appropriate decisions, everything should follow. Example: Contacting other factions that have taken over entire systems, for permission to operate in sectors of that system. (E.g. placing a trade station in a system that doesn't have one.) (Appropriate player mission: deliver supplies to the new station.) Or declaring war on a whole faction if that faction has destroyed more than one trade station. (Appropriate player mission: attack hostile faction, just like with a conventional faction.)

Idea for player factions: A general order-and-reward-pot system, where the faction leader sets a goal, and applies money to a "pot". The game then auto-generates missions based on that goal, and an appropriate percentage of the "pot" money to go towards whoever wants to fulfill that goal. This way, the faction leader can focus on the "big picture" and isn't bogged down in building individual missions.
Example: The goal set is to conquer the system that includes 27, 93, 114. The game realizes that this system belongs to faction X, and involves conquering planets, so it starts assigning missions involving attacking faction X and conquering planets in that system, maybe assigning 1% of the overall "pot" to each mission.

"Fuzzy" mission parameters: When assigning a mission that involves going somewhere to find a ship, it would be best to find the ship's real position, and then pick a random sector within a 2-sector radius and tell the player that is where to find them. That way, there is a chance that the player will arrive 1 or 2 sectors away, giving the target ship an opportunity to react in some way. Similarly, if the mission involves an escort (attacking a ship with an escort, wiping out the escort and demanding surrender, scouting the escort, etc.), it would be best to take the overall real escort count and increase or decrease the number randomly by about 20%, so that the player isn't quite sure how many escort ships they will encounter.

 

[6ngb]

I was about to suggest something like that! These should be not very hard to implement programmatically, I guess.

I'd like to add time limits: Do X at sector Y within Z minutes. Success -> get $, EXP, Rep; Fail -> lose small Rep. The missions don't need to be divided by enroll / promotion. Simply: easier missions bring less Rep with that faction. A certain amount of Rep is required to enroll and climb each rank.