StarMade Dev Update: NPC Factions

[Levarith]

What I find rather frustrating is the fact that NPC ships are complete pushovers, utterly feeble and no threat whatsoever to someone flying anything properly combat oriented, or even half way reasonably defended. In the fleet submissions, they actually 'asked' people to 'not' make them tough. Imagine that.

"We care more about the looks of a vessel than the performance. Obviously we need it to fly, but we don’t need a super powerful ship from each submission. In fact, quite the opposite. Giving ships weaknesses is just as important as giving them strengths. Maybe your set of ships belong to a faction that focuses on exploration or cargo transport. Not every submission needs to be combat oriented. The more diverse the better! Schine may adapt the systems of your submission to fit within our in-game asset plans."

In my opinion, the pirates one might encounter while developing your own space aught to be relatively tame. Certainly a bit more of a threat than the current crop of obsolete Isanths, but not that much more. Those pirates are what one needs to deal with when flying around in ones starter miner, gathering resources. They are the motive for you to scramble to put a 100 mass turret on your ship and then scrounge to add another.

NPC factions pushing into space and defending their territory should be a whole other kettle of fish. They are the ones that you build towards, the threat of whom should be scary, the reason you need bigger ships, bigger guns, etc.. Having the NPC races fly around the same sort of pissant pop guns that are typical of starter pirates takes any potential challenge out of the game, save PvP in multi-player. And as the necessary balancing features are currently not present for such PvP, there is no challenge there either.

PLEASE let NPC races have some combat worthy assets. When those ships mass upon you, it shouldn't just be spooky, you should shit your pants.

This is why you will be able to assign ships to those factions later. If you are unhappy with the base "easy" ships then download or create others and substitute them in. Some people (like me) don't have a lot of experience in pvp and don't like to build huge monstrous vessels (I rarely build anything with any dimension over 100) so the new ships may still be a challenge or at least decent to some of us.

 

[kingreol]

Question, will aux for AI use be addressed, along with passives, in this or next update? I'd be very happy to see Npc factions utilize. Can party up and fight them and not roflstomp

 

[Ithirahad]

Question, will aux for AI use be addressed, along with passives, in this or next update? I'd be very happy to see Npc factions utilize. Can party up and fight them and not roflstomp

Next update is when actual AI features and improvements will be added, according to the video, along with perhaps some more fleet capabilities. This update is just the faction framework.

 

[godmars]

maybe its not that the npcs are underpowered, but us players are overpowered!!

 

[Ithirahad]

maybe its not that the npcs are underpowered, but us players are overpowered!!

In a sandbox game, players will always be 'overpowered' without limits. It's up to the game designers to make the environment and NPCs 'powered' sufficiently to provide a challenge.

 

[Levarith]

In a sandbox game, players will always be 'overpowered' without limits. It's up to the game designers to make the environment and NPCs 'powered' sufficiently to provide a challenge.

Why must the designers be the ones to make them powered appropriately? They gave you all the tools to do just that yourself and a whole community of content to do it with. Now we can each customize our games to our play style. I play single player only and don't build big "overpowered" things do powered up doesn't need to happen in my game, if you do then you should.

 

[ToddoftheYear]

In a sandbox game, players will always be 'overpowered' without limits. It's up to the game designers to make the environment and NPCs 'powered' sufficiently to provide a challenge.

Some people think they are challenging as is, some people think they are too easy.

So who should the default set of NPC faction ships cater to?
Experienced players are more likely to think they are too easy. They're also willing to put the time and effort into changing the default set of ships.
Brand new players are more likely to think they are challenging. These are the kind of people who think default Isanths are scary. They're still struggling to learn all the controls and optimal building patterns, let alone changing server configs. The default NPC ships will be their first impression of the game.

That said, we should start working on NPC faction ships that aren't a bunch of flying cardboard boxes.

 

[kiddan]

Why not cater to freshmen and veterans? When a group of ships has to appear physically, why not buff or nerf them depending on the amount of time the player that got near them has played on that world? You could also set the "experience" level when creating a new world, providing a simple way to cater to many types of players without the need for anyone to edit configs.

 

[DukeofRealms]

What I find rather frustrating is the fact that NPC ships are complete pushovers, utterly feeble and no threat whatsoever to someone flying anything properly combat oriented, or even half way reasonably defended. In the fleet submissions, they actually 'asked' people to 'not' make them tough. Imagine that.

As far as I'm aware, no major completed PVP oriented ships or factions are in the game yet. If its assigned role is for attacking/defending, and they do not sufficiently fill that role, the inside systems will be adapted to fit (or are waiting on additional features to reach completion, for example, Crew). I believe one of the reasons why the fleet submissions said to not worry about systems, was because we were probably going to end up ripping them out and redoing them anyway. No need to waste precious building time

Criss and Saber have a better idea of what's happening here than I do. So, if what I've said contradicts them, I've lied

NPC ships/difficulty will definitely need to be tuned/modified or in some cases completely redesigned. It will take a while to build all these ships and systems and then perfect it all inside the game. The beauty of this system is that you don't need to use the default ships or factions, we're making the system so that you're free to create your own faction ship packs and configs.

Yes, balancing is nowhere near perfect as of now. Yes, not all NPC ships are in and not all ships (or maybe none) have had their systems built for their specific purpose yet. Yes, it will take a while to test and balance the default NPCs. No, we won't achieve this before the update is development ready.

The best way to help us with NPC factions is what you're doing already, pointing out weaknesses and suggesting how to resolve them.

 

[Ithirahad]

The thing with ship systems is that, for many of the ships, the issue isn't just how the systems were built. The fact is, most of them are so full of interior that they actually have significantly less systems than a typical player ship of a similar size class. If everyone built tons of interior in, that'd be awesome, but ATM there's no reason for that, and I can't see that changing with a reasonably-balanced NPC crew update.
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Why not cater to freshmen and veterans? When a group of ships has to appear physically, why not buff or nerf them depending on the amount of time the player that got near them has played on that world? You could also set the "experience" level when creating a new world, providing a simple way to cater to many types of players without the need for anyone to edit configs.

You could do that... Or, just fix the ship score system, and use that to dictate how many and what type of ships to send after a player.

 

[godmars]

Why not cater to freshmen and veterans? When a group of ships has to appear physically, why not buff or nerf them depending on the amount of time the player that got near them has played on that world?

I think a better way would to take the avg ship score (or w/e its called) of all enemies in their space and scale what they send after you depending on avg attack/defense value, maybe? That way you'd generally be fighting something roughly around your level..and maybe modify that value depending on how much they hate you.

Personally I think balancing it around any single players definition of what 'strong' or 'weak' is is a horrible idea, because it varies from person to person and the scale they build or play at.

 

[Criss]

I believe one of the reasons why the fleet submissions said to not worry about systems, was because we were probably going to end up ripping them out and redoing them anyway.

It was mostly due to us not being able to build 80 different styles, and that is where we wanted them to focus. Because of the variety I don't think it's feasible to get every fleet to compare when it comes to performance.

fix the ship score system

That is essentially the plan. Right now it is very simple, and we use the score to determine things like that, but in the future we will be defining more and more based on block count and systems plus other things.

As for NPC quarters, we would need them to be just as worthwhile on a ship as a weapon or additional shields. If we can find a balance between quarters and systems, then our ships will fit right in.

Lastly, with regards to the Scavenger faction. They are meant to replace the current pirates. In some cases these new ships are better than isanths, and worse than isanths. Most are better. I really can't imagine a new player running into their frigate quickly, but if they do, they won't be surviving if they have played under a week or two. But beyond that? Scavengers are space fodder, a pest. Their ships are cheap, and basically garbage. They perform like garbage because, well it's hard to build a good ship when it looks like garbage. If we have to make them a bit numerous to make them dangerous, so be it. We can still save the big nasty warships for other factions.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Something to remember is the functionality of making your own NPC factions is getting put in iirc, so if the current npc ships aren't to your liking you can always add your own.

 

[Bogdan]

If this has been answered already and I have somehow missed it I would appreciate it if someone could direct me to that place or give me a reference.

At the moment however, one issue that ideally it would be good to know is whether it is essential to have a server reset to implement the NPC Update. That question leads on to the following two questions:

1. Is it possible to set NPC factions to generate in a secondary galaxy?
2. Is it possible to set NPC factions to generate in already partially populated galaxy?

 

[Levarith]

If this has been answered already and I have somehow missed it I would appreciate it if someone could direct me to that place or give me a reference.

At the moment however, one issue that ideally it would be good to know is whether it is essential to have a server reset to implement the NPC Update. That question leads on to the following two questions:

1. Is it possible to set NPC factions to generate in a secondary galaxy?
2. Is it possible to set NPC factions to generate in already partially populated galaxy?

It seems like a server reset is necessary. You can export sectors with your stations in them though then just import them again so maybe it's not a total loss.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Yay! Can't wait to try this dev build out.

 

[Andir]

It seems like a server reset is necessary. You can export sectors with your stations in them though then just import them again so maybe it's not a total loss.

I did a fresh server install and got 0 new Factions. I had the trade guild and pirates. The trade guild had some dinky little ships, the pirates still had Isanth variety ships (old and new) but there was nothing new on the faction front.

Linux server, new launcher, new user created specifically for this update, fresh update (-nogui -dev parameters)

Nothing.
My Windows Client, however, did have factions when I started a single player game.

 

[Ithirahad]

I did a fresh server install and got 0 new Factions. I had the trade guild and pirates. The trade guild had some dinky little ships, the pirates still had Isanth variety ships (old and new) but there was nothing new on the faction front.

Linux server, new launcher, new user created specifically for this update, fresh update (-nogui -dev parameters)

Nothing.
My Windows Client, however, did have factions when I started a single player game.

You'll have to remake a new world again, and this time check your world settings/parameters. By default the max number of NPC factions in a fresh install/fresh world is "disabled" (-1) for whatever reason.

 

[Kingofanime]

My server.cfg is set to "NPC_FACTION_SPAWN_LIMIT = -1" and I usually get at least 5 factions.



The odd thing I've noticed about factions is that when I spam the next turn button for various factions... they seem to mine their systems (ResAvail, mined), but then after so many turns the ResAvail value stop going down. Like they have stopped mining and expanding altogether. I notice is mostly with the trade guild and outcast factions.

I'm not sure if the scavengers do it or not. They seem to mine their systems out a whole lot faster than the trade guild and outcasts, which is weird, because I'm not sure they even have salvage ship blueprints. They will eventually strip their systems down to "0% ResAvail".

I can tell that the "next turn" button is still working for the individual factions though, because their inventory is changing every time I click. But I am unable to click "next turn" enough times to make a trade guild faction actually expand to another system, but I've seen the scavengers do it multiple times. I'm wondering if the trade guild and outcast factions will stop stalling and become more active once they have a fully functioning trade/shop on their homebase. Maybe that's what their waiting on? Or maybe the lack of having actual salvage ships is making the scavengers even better at salvaging asteroids?

I could be wrong, and I'm not sure where else to post this. Hopefully it's helpful in some way. This is just the behavior that I've noticed so far while watching the npc factions in action. Every time I start a new game the faction systems always start at "100% ResAvail (0 mined)". Then the trade guild and outcast quickly mine their systems down to about 95-97% and stop. But the scavengers will eventually mine their systems down to 0% and expand multiple times.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm strange I haven't noticed any of the new default factions spawn but I have seen the generated ones spawn. Trading Guild doesn't have any territory, neither do the pirates or the outcasts, but I have seen a lot of generated factions using those blueprints though.