thoughts about economy

[marcus87]

I would like to give some thoughts about how I think the economy in SM could be set up with the new faction system and the galaxy´s.

What is the biggest problem we face today on servers? The lack of fighting! I have seen countless battles, but mostly forumside. But that is completely understandable, when a server has only about 10 to 20 people on it. The possibility for big fights are just not there, we need the possebility for battle when no enemy is online.

So lets start with how I would envision the future on SM economy.

Lets say each faction gets a home system, which they can claim when they set their homebase. Your homesystem generates X amount of money. So the important part of this suggestion is that all ships and stations cost upkeep. You can get additional systems to boost your income, but these systems will take a lot of time to develop. We could, maybe, even limit the number of systems a faction can have to the number of active players, maybe even these players who have bought the game.

So just think this through we start a faction set our homebase and get money from the system. So next we need a fleet. That fleet wil protect our homesystem, it is automated and will cost us money regularly. I would like to see playerships excluded from this upkeep, but then they cannot be automated.

This fleet will reduce the money our faction can use per turn or hour or wathever intervall gets implemented. So then we log out and bam pirates!!! Or an evil faction!!!! They come in and blow the fleet apart, but the fleet returns, when one of your fleets gets destroyed in your own terretory it will repsawn after a set amount of time.

This time could be influenced by the amount of facories you have, which will cost upkeep to, so you have to decide many fleets or fast respawn. But how then you ask should I conquer my enemy? When you want an enemy system you have to destroy the defending fleet, each system has a certain amount of, lets call it loyality, to his faction. Depending on how big the atacking fleet is you will lose these points when only enemy fleets are in the system.

Conquering an enemy system should take a long time, at least long enough for the other faction to react. Remember when you fleets get destroyd in your own system then you get them back! So when one of your systems is under attack send a response fleet and suddenly the attacker has two fleets attacking regularly.

I think this would be a cool thing, maybe we could give the AI fleets a small disadvantage in shield and hullpoints. This way the attacker could have the awesome we against the enemy horde feeling.

I know there are probably a lot of week points in this systems but I would like to hear what the community thinks about this. But the big plus with this I think, it would make battles a lot more regularly.

This way factions could even give missions to it members. Destroy y amount o enemy ships in system x.

 

[NeonSturm]

Go play http://xcraft.net

It has exactly what you want, is free-to-play and if your unlucky, some newbie purchases 1000 crystals for money, 2kk resources from that and spawns 50 cruisers bullying your little defenses.

When you get attacked by a Veteran-Player, he losing 0 little puny fighters because your defenses are dead so fast that they can't even kill the tiniest ship of his army.

DO_NOT_REALLY_WANT this here.


---EDIT1

So because another game is unbalenced you dont like it?

No, I don't like it because you suggest pay-to-win and you suggest that a faction is able to indefinitely punish a single player with no losses.

And NO, I don't bump your thread with a new post because you try to get me to do it :p

---EDIT2

Where, exactly, is he suggesting Pay-to-win?

We could, maybe, even limit the number of systems a faction can have to the number of active players, maybe even these players who have bought the game.

 

[marcus87]

So because another game is unbalenced you dont like it?

 

[jayman38]

I think multiple AI factions will help make the game universe more exciting. The bottom line: I think it will increase the opportunities for players to fight.

One of the more entertaining things about the game VegaStrike was when you'd encounter a raging battle between two AI fleets. Laser light shows! Missiles flying everywhere! You have to jink and strafe if you hope to survive accidental hits from the raging carnage! Entire forum threads can erupt with stories of AI war discoveries. Imagine two different players chronicling their point of view from two different sides of the battle.

An additional advantage of this kind of thing will be the sense of power players can have by influencing the AI battle one way or another. Generally AI fleets will tend to be evenly matched, so a player throwing his ship in with one side or the other will have a definite and deeply involving effect on the player, because they will have a definite and deeply involving effect on the battle. Even more fun: going in on the side of the underdog fleet when the two fleets are not evenly matched. Very exciting! And if there's more than two sides? Even wilder!

 

[The_Onion]

No, I don't like it because you suggest pay-to-win and you suggest that a faction is able to indefinitely punish a single player with no losses.

And NO, I don't bump your thread with a new post because you try to get me to do it :p

Where, exactly, is he suggesting Pay-to-win?

 

[marcus87]

maybe because I suggested that, "maybe" factions "could" get more points for having people who bought the game. But how you go from pay for the game to pay to win I have no idea.

The funny thing is had you not posted this Orion I would have never seen his new remark.

 

[Captain Roscal]

Dear Marcus,

your ideas are in general quite good. The game you have in mind would be ( if executed properly ) a nice game. The idea of having AI fleets and massive battles are also quite exciting!

but

The game you are describing is NOT Starmade. At least not the Starmade I have in mind. SM is a (minecraft style) survival / building game not a strategy ( Total war style ) game. I think that the game and the MP side of it would be truly terrible and broken in a very rule limiting set-up such as yours.

To sum it up again: I think that the game your thinking up is great, but it aint Starmade !

Regards,
Roscal

 

[Vengeance42]

I like having multiple NPC factions, but large automated fleets reduces the value of players.

I think your intent is to give people reasons to fight besides just wanting to go out and blow up something, and thats a good thing to try to add to the game, just needs to be done in such a way that players are still a more valuable commodity than non player fleets.

 

[marcus87]

They are, AI fleets should get less shields, armor ect. So any fleet of players would be better.

The reason I suggested these AI fleets that return, is to give people something to shoot at. Remember when did you have a faction war where you did not have to arrange fights? Obviously there would have to go a lot of thought into how to balance something like this.

Maybe pure AI factions would be an alternative to, but this would be less satisfying.

And if you do not want people complaining that all of their fleets get shoot up when they are not online, they have to return.

You also do not want to run out of money and you do not want people collecting giant amounts of wealth with not having any fleets. So there should be somthing, money or industrial power anything. Which gets generated regularly but cannot get accumulated. With this you "pay" or better these resurces you would allocate to fleets, bases ect.

Now that I think about it, these fleets could also operate offensively. But since they would not die in your terretory they would cost you a lot of money. But this way you could have giant battles of attrition.

 

[The_Onion]

The game you are describing is NOT Starmade. At least not the Starmade I have in mind. SM is a (minecraft style) survival / building game not a strategy ( Total war style ) game. I think that the game and the MP side of it would be truly terrible and broken in a very rule limiting set-up such as yours.

Didnt Schema already confirm AI fleets? If so, that alone will add a significant strategy element to the game. With the faction overhaul that Schema is doing, this could be a very different game when all is said and done.

 

[Captain Roscal]

AI fleets , yes ,

But AI fleets that are player controlled and that patrol your sector.? Maybe in a form of your own build ships that are controlled by a Bobby and can follow a patrol path. But I think its unlikely that you can purchase hole fleets that you need to pay upkeep for and that they respawn. It would make SM for ppl on theyre own and ship builders a bit tiering because of big wealthy pepole just having spawned vanila AI fleets everywhere. As if massive titanclass vessel wernt enough showing up at your home base.

I think SM battles should be determinded by who has the better ship for the job and is skilled with the controlls, not by who can afford the bigger AI fleet .

On a further note, having fleets clashing at eachother everywhere, would have a massive input on server lag. As if the servers wernt unstable allready.

 

[marcus87]

single people should not be able to spawn fleets. Factions do, the idea was to have property in the form of systems generate labor. And with that you pay for the fleets.

The amount of fleets a faction can control could be limited by the planets they control and maybe how many spaceports they have, which would need upkeep as well.