Read by Council Personal Space for Faction Members

[Khantron]

Right now the most common faction in Starmade is the one man faction. The reason is obvious, you get your own invincible station and system free of charge (well the station costs like 5 million credits, but other than that), it's a pretty good deal, and I wouldn't want to change that. It's important that players are able to offer loan wolves some safety.

The problem is that faction recruiting is highly discouraged. If permissions aren't set right a new recruit can completely destroy a homebase and steal everything. If permissions are set correctly then that new recruit can't do much of anything on the invincible station, besides using what is already there. They can't build anything, which is a problem for a game about building everything.

You don't want to give new recruits the ability to edit the homebase, but it's also in the factions interest that players can make a space for themselves that's protected, that they can store items, dock ships, and make factories within (and possibly a personal shipyard when that's implemented), rather than having to make a space for a new recruit that has everything they need, because that's a lot of work for station builders, and people forget things. It would be nice if there could be some sort of localized personal space for new faction members, so that 1. New faction members couldn't steal everything and 2. New faction members could still reasonably make personal infrastructure (that senior members could access as well).

I'm sure there are a number of ways this can be implemented. My idea is a system like the old docking system, where players are free to build within a box that's set by "permission enhancers." Only the new player and players of a sufficiently high ranking can build within the semi-personal space after it is programmed. That way faction recruiting can offer some independence.

Combine this with some other suggestions like http://starmadedock.net/threads/new-territory-system.8552/ and http://starmadedock.net/threads/base-invulnerability-bought-with-faction-points.20131/#post-218711 and maybe starmade will be able to sustain factions larger than a handful of trustworthy players.

 

[Deleted member 433088]

In a nutshell, configurable permissions for faction members to build only inside a defined area but still connected to the home station?

At first glance, it seems like a great idea. The only downside I can see to this is that different building styles might lead to frankensteinian-looking stations, but that can be avoided in several ways or just ignored (or even celebrated xD)

 

[Khantron]

In a nutshell, configurable permissions for faction members to build only inside a defined area but still connected to the home station?

At first glance, it seems like a great idea. The only downside I can see to this is that different building styles might lead to frankensteinian-looking stations, but that can be avoided in several ways or just ignored (or even celebrated xD)

The Frankensteinian stations might have their own charm. But yeah, station admins could build around the personal areas so that they aren't visible from the outside. Like a teenager's room. It's still less work than making individual, fully equipped station quarters.

 

[Winterhome]

I could get behind this quite happily.

I've been wrestling with this issue ever since I started my faction with Jaaskinal. We want to give our players a creative outlet on our homebase, but we don't want to give them access to build blocks or storage modules on the main base.

 

[StormWing0]

I've got this issue even worse with my faction normally set to public. I restrict the lower rank so that it can't do anything but use the factory. Maybe adding a menu to the faction permission blocks and letting us C on the block and V to everything we want to apply those permissions to might also help.

The idea here though is just as useful since some of us could make temp copyable zones for people to mess with and the Delete Trolls can go burn somewhere.

 

[kiraen]

I very much like this idea, and even mentioned something like it a while back. I'm glad I'm not the only to be thinking this way. With the introduction of the Build Inhibitor, the code for this idea should pretty much already be in place. It just works in reverse. We just need some work on faction and permission modules. I think it would be pretty cool to have 'quarters' on my station for friends and allies. I'll build the walls, they can build anything they want inside it.

 

[alterintel]

Right now the most common faction in Starmade is the one man faction. The reason is obvious, you get your own invincible station and system free of charge (well the station costs like 5 million credits, but other than that), it's a pretty good deal, and I wouldn't want to change that. It's important that players are able to offer loan wolves some safety.

I completely agree. I am one of those lone wolves. I love that I can build to my hearts content with an invincible home base and my own sector to do what I want to do, and nobody to tell me how to play my game. But then again I love to help people out, I'm a very generous person, I share everything I do with others.

I'm not sure if personalized build space within a home station is the right answer though, but as far as aesthetics go... think of a town house maybe. I don't know if a small box to build in would be good enough insensitive for me to give up my own sector and my own base.

Maybe we should look at this more like a feudal system with temporary alliances set up between lords/kings. every body is there own "faction" or lord of their own sector (like it is currently with the current lone wolf setup), but alliances are made that give you privileges in each other sectors, like mining rights, and shop purchase incentives and taxes.

Has anybody here ever played "Tribal Wars" this idea reminds me of that game. Every body gets their own town (sector) to start with, but then you need to coordinate with others to defend and attack each other. the big incentive to join a faction was for the protection. They only way you could grow was to take out other players. If you play solo you would be gobbled up in no time flat. a map would be total conquered in a matter of 6 months to a year. I am not saying this is necessarily a good model to follow, because that game is so addicting and aggravating at the same time. I get so fed up with it, that I literately haven't played it for a year.

My point is, maybe we can work something out were individual players still get their own sector and invincible home base, AND some kind of incentive to join factions and do battle with other factions.

Maybe less focus on what we can take away from new players, and more focus on what we can give them?

 

[DivineEvil]

As far as the topic goes, it stumbles into a person-dependant claiming, perhaps trough the expanded functional for Faction Permission block. Aside from that, you might just as well place a Rail block on your station and let a player of your faction to dock a "ship" on it, and let him build whatever he wants on it. The problem of course stands, that there's no personal protection at the moment.

Maybe less focus on what we can take away from new players, and more focus on what we can give them?

It's not like a new player misses something, so it is indeed a question of what has to be taken. Personally I don't support the permanent invincible home bases that we have at the moment. Personally I believe, that the invincibility is the function that has to worth some significant amounf of Faction Points to maintain for each phase; the price should depend on the size of the station, and certain faction members should be able to only activate it when real danger arises, and either try to resolve the hostile situation, or to evacuate the station while the protection still stands.

On the other hand, living by yourself should not be punished as heavily as it is now. It should be ok to run a solo faction, or rather no faction at all, and still being able to mine the same amount of resources as anyone else. Having a informational control over the sector should be the incentive enough to claim it, although I still think that claimed sectors also should be protected from warp jumps from outside to give it more defensive meaning.