Expanding and improving minor-faction competition and Squadron purpose

[Mphoenix92]

The following suggestion is designed to cost minimal effort (minor backend coding and no additional ingame assets of any kind) but massively improve the experience of minor faction and squadron play and purpose. The short description is basically extending some power-play-like mechanics to minor faction squabbles and fleshing out our relationship to the factions we interact with.

1. Give the Squadron itself a rep-bar filled by its members gaining rep with its pledged faction. Every time a member of a squadron gains rep, so does the squadron. (Note: Either don't allow squadrons to lose rep or give squadron leaders a way to check what members rep is with their minor faction--wouldn't want griefing). Alternatively, use influence + happiness as a stand-in for this if we don't want to add a new rep bar, in which case that system doesn't need a change; just need to add those values to some future equations.

2. When a player is a member of a squadron that is pledged and rep=allied with a minor faction, they gain a 5/10/15% discount at stations they control depending on their personal rep from Cordial to Friendly to Allied.

3. When a player is a member of a squadron pledged and allied with a minor faction, and they themselves are allied with that same minor faction, that minor faction provides (at a nominal cost, say 1000CR) a shuttle service which can instantly bring players from station to station across systems, as long as that minor faction controls the station.

4. When a player is a member of a squadron pledged with a minor faction, they are paid a stipend ranging from (0-10,000,000)Cr per ingame week as a function: Pay = Personal rep*Squadron Rep*Highest Influence in any system (Or if we're removing the Suqadron Rep from the idea, Personal Rep*MaxInfluence*Happiness of highestInf system). That is, if you're a player pledged but your rep is neutral or lower, you get 0. If the squadron rep is neutral (or highest inf system unhappy), you get 0. If the maximum influence is 0 (is that even possible?) you get 0. If personal rep and squadron rep are fully allied 100% and maximum influence in any system is some set maximum (say 75%, 100 is unrealistic) you get 10,000,000 credits per week. Not a ton; a small amount really, but enough to pay for the carrier upkeep.

These mechanics together will motivate players to expand their minor-faction to as many systems as possible and be allied to the max. The more systems you control, the more discounted things you get and the more systems you can freely shuttle to, instantly, without having to fly there.

All of these suggestions leverage assets or systems that already exist, and just repurposes them (maybe adds a few UI elements to interaction menus), so would be minor backend labor, but would massively improve the day-to-day experience and give huge amounts of drive to players to attempt to accomplish something impactful by actually meaningfully gaining control over portions of the galaxy.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

These mechanics together will motivate players to expand their minor-faction to as many systems as possible and be allied to the max.

That doesn't seem to be a motivation already lacking among minor-faction supporters - after all, 12 now control 100 or more systems each, and 50 control 50 or more each.

Creating a personal squadron and attaching it to an already successful faction is likely to be motivated more strongly, though - do a little bit of upfront effort to get Allied (easy enough) and you get a bunch of bonuses without doing any actual work from then on.

3. When a player is a member of a squadron pledged and allied with a minor faction, and they themselves are allied with that same minor faction, that minor faction provides (at a nominal cost, say 1000CR) a shuttle service which can instantly bring players from station to station across systems, as long as that minor faction controls the station.

Instant teleport between faction-owned stations would be incredibly overpowered - especially if it worked in Horizons and teleported your ship and its contents too, but even an Odyssey-style "Apex but instant" teleport would still let you skip the spaceship-flying part of the game for a lot of Horizons-style activities.

Especially ridiculous for factions like Colonia Council or Brewer Logistics who hold assets with a 20,000 LY end-to-end separation... or Sirius Industrial for lots of spread-out bubble locations.

Less sentimental players (which describes the big BGS players right now pretty well) could quite easily use it against a faction, too - if the squadron can't lose rep then creating an "Enemies of X" squadron, attaching it to that minor faction, doing some inconsequential stuff (sell exploration data during a war, hand in bounties in an uncontested system, etc.) then being able to teleport freely around the stations being attacked would have a lot of uses. You wouldn't be able to do much which actively lost rep, but hopping around taking every suitable courier and donation mission for other factions present at your enemy's station and completing them in seconds would keep you at Allied with the faction being attacked.

(The rest, sure, why not, it's only credits and not much of them)

 

[Chrystoph]

TL;DR - I want discrimination favoring squadrons...

 

[Mersozz]

The following suggestion is designed to cost minimal effort (minor backend coding and no additional ingame assets of any kind) but massively improve the experience of minor faction and squadron play and purpose. The short description is basically extending some power-play-like mechanics to minor faction squabbles and fleshing out our relationship to the factions we interact with.

1. Give the Squadron itself a rep-bar filled by its members gaining rep with its pledged faction. Every time a member of a squadron gains rep, so does the squadron. (Note: Either don't allow squadrons to lose rep or give squadron leaders a way to check what members rep is with their minor faction--wouldn't want griefing). Alternatively, use influence + happiness as a stand-in for this if we don't want to add a new rep bar, in which case that system doesn't need a change; just need to add those values to some future equations.

2. When a player is a member of a squadron that is pledged and rep=allied with a minor faction, they gain a 5/10/15% discount at stations they control depending on their personal rep from Cordial to Friendly to Allied.

3. When a player is a member of a squadron pledged and allied with a minor faction, and they themselves are allied with that same minor faction, that minor faction provides (at a nominal cost, say 1000CR) a shuttle service which can instantly bring players from station to station across systems, as long as that minor faction controls the station.

4. When a player is a member of a squadron pledged with a minor faction, they are paid a stipend ranging from (0-10,000,000)Cr per ingame week as a function: Pay = Personal rep*Squadron Rep*Highest Influence in any system (Or if we're removing the Suqadron Rep from the idea, Personal Rep*MaxInfluence*Happiness of highestInf system). That is, if you're a player pledged but your rep is neutral or lower, you get 0. If the squadron rep is neutral (or highest inf system unhappy), you get 0. If the maximum influence is 0 (is that even possible?) you get 0. If personal rep and squadron rep are fully allied 100% and maximum influence in any system is some set maximum (say 75%, 100 is unrealistic) you get 10,000,000 credits per week. Not a ton; a small amount really, but enough to pay for the carrier upkeep.

These mechanics together will motivate players to expand their minor-faction to as many systems as possible and be allied to the max. The more systems you control, the more discounted things you get and the more systems you can freely shuttle to, instantly, without having to fly there.

All of these suggestions leverage assets or systems that already exist, and just repurposes them (maybe adds a few UI elements to interaction menus), so would be minor backend labor, but would massively improve the day-to-day experience and give huge amounts of drive to players to attempt to accomplish something impactful by actually meaningfully gaining control over portions of the galaxy.

I appreciate the time you put into thinking of ways to enhance squadron/faction mechanics. I'll try to add some additional commentary later in this thread. But to spare any suspense, I think it would be very cool if base-building (surface and orbital) could be powered to a degree by community actions, whether that be organized by squardon, faction, or some other mechanic.

Again, thanks for your thoughts on this topic.

 

[Mphoenix92]

I appreciate the time you put into thinking of ways to enhance squadron/faction mechanics. I'll try to add some additional commentary later in this thread. But to spare any suspense, I think it would be very cool if base-building (surface and orbital) could be powered to a degree by community actions, whether that be organized by squardon, faction, or some other mechanic.

Again, thanks for your thoughts on this topic.

Currently I think my issue is that the galaxy feels static, and the tension of something that mechanically matters actually depending on your actual behavior would make a difference--something that evolves as a function of your existence in the universe, and feels like in has an impact. At present, why do I even want my squadron's minor faction to expand? What does it do for me? Gives me more stations at which I have allied rep? It's not like that's hard to attain anyway.