I've been playing this game for the summer and I think its an amazing game, with amazing potential and great features only half implemented. This was opinion was formed after jumping into the recent Colonia combat CG while taking a break from my Sag A run. My first and probably last exploration journey. The CZs popped up but they felt like a non-stop orgy of ships flying around shooting each other until most were gone and new ones jumped in. I do enjoy combat but each CZ had seemingly no purpose but to fly around, shoot till you were jumped by more ships than your vulture could handle then jump out only to jump back into the fray and repeat. I did have fun but it got old after a short time. So I considered what made FPS more fun when its pretty much the same thing. Well, the combat ends, an objective is achieved and you restart. This, you fly around for a week filling up a bar as high as you can to reach your goal. My thought was, it would be fun if each CZ appeared in strategic locations and after a set number of reinforcements were killed that CZ would close and another would open eventually leading to a fight at the station of the controlling faction where the objective is to land transport ships full of troops inside to take it over or to destroy a planetary outpost the rival faction used as their temporary base.
This led to another thought, why not break open the BGS? My thought was that once you became allied with a faction you could gain access to the faction tab. In this you could sell exploration data, use a black market, turn in bonds, ect directly with the faction regardless if they were the controlling faction. This would be a quasi power play quasi CG at a local level. My thought is the sections would be re consolidating some of missions/objectives that are already in game to more CG style objectives where you can possibly declare yourself for those faction to complete those objectives. I was thinking dividing it using the instruments of power, Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economics (DIME) and through these you can see and contribute to the goal of alliances/feuds with factions, exploration and faction expansion, taking of military objectives like securing/disrupting an area of the system for traders, ect outside of missions that are generated. As these could also replace community goals with objectives such as build an asteroid base for the faction where you bring materials/credits until the goal is met. Or with through information tab you find through exploration and exploit a ringed planet creating RES's then through military reducing them from Haz to secured. Through diplomatic you can build alliances that would influence areas you are likely to expand to or destabilize areas reducing the controlling faction security and creating more favorable conditions to expand. Through economics you can build mining bases in your system and when conflict arises you have a greater rate of reinforcements to CZs reducing the risk of losing control. Those are thoughts and I believe the ideas and mechanisms are already in the game in some form. The idea is to have those listed in the tab and allow players to choose goals they want to support when they want to support them. You would see the faction's security status, the level of food to prevent famine, potential systems to expand into and the required resources for that expansion and then you could influence each of those goals summing to the total system standing. There could be bonus points if you are declared for that local faction, allied with the same super power or declared in the same power play faction.
Exploration tools that would be cool to support this is to add into the detailed scanner a mapping scan where you orbit within so close of the planet and scan. During this scan you find items like: High density mineral field, volcanic activity, potential structure, potential human structure, potential thargoid structure, ect. This is mostly to reduce some of the RNG and flying around a planet aimlessly hoping to stumble across stuff. There would could be a probability that the structure was just a rock or volcanic activity was nothing or other false positives. The next layer to add is once those are found is the SRV survey where when you investigate the potential high density mineral field you find out what is there and the actual density. When you turn this into a faction, all people who are allied with the faction can visit that station and gain that information. This is to reduce this, "so I discovered this, now what" feeling I've had after too many hours scanning planets.
Additionally, add in "knowledge" to the tool box. This would be like gaining a pass to a system but it unlocks tools. For example, after completing a mission line from Felicity Farseer which goes into the history of terreforming and culminates in discovering the conditions for earth like worlds (ELW) you gain a report that when you jump into a system, use your ADS you get a list of potential ELWs to look at based on star type, temperature and the planet's distance from the star. Minor, but it allows you to create a decent exploration plan to which planets are worth greater detailed scans. This could also include a questline on the origin of soontil relics, or thargoid history, that will help you discover their structures on planets.
Just some ideas. I've gotten the idea that much of this already in the game but not immediately apparent or base solely on internet databases outside of the game. But some of this could reduce the community goals allow them to be for bigger events such as the thargoids have begun a massive invasion of xyz system or the federation and imperials are in major conflict over another system rather than let build this faction a base as the faction could already be building it over the past month.
This led to another thought, why not break open the BGS? My thought was that once you became allied with a faction you could gain access to the faction tab. In this you could sell exploration data, use a black market, turn in bonds, ect directly with the faction regardless if they were the controlling faction. This would be a quasi power play quasi CG at a local level. My thought is the sections would be re consolidating some of missions/objectives that are already in game to more CG style objectives where you can possibly declare yourself for those faction to complete those objectives. I was thinking dividing it using the instruments of power, Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economics (DIME) and through these you can see and contribute to the goal of alliances/feuds with factions, exploration and faction expansion, taking of military objectives like securing/disrupting an area of the system for traders, ect outside of missions that are generated. As these could also replace community goals with objectives such as build an asteroid base for the faction where you bring materials/credits until the goal is met. Or with through information tab you find through exploration and exploit a ringed planet creating RES's then through military reducing them from Haz to secured. Through diplomatic you can build alliances that would influence areas you are likely to expand to or destabilize areas reducing the controlling faction security and creating more favorable conditions to expand. Through economics you can build mining bases in your system and when conflict arises you have a greater rate of reinforcements to CZs reducing the risk of losing control. Those are thoughts and I believe the ideas and mechanisms are already in the game in some form. The idea is to have those listed in the tab and allow players to choose goals they want to support when they want to support them. You would see the faction's security status, the level of food to prevent famine, potential systems to expand into and the required resources for that expansion and then you could influence each of those goals summing to the total system standing. There could be bonus points if you are declared for that local faction, allied with the same super power or declared in the same power play faction.
Exploration tools that would be cool to support this is to add into the detailed scanner a mapping scan where you orbit within so close of the planet and scan. During this scan you find items like: High density mineral field, volcanic activity, potential structure, potential human structure, potential thargoid structure, ect. This is mostly to reduce some of the RNG and flying around a planet aimlessly hoping to stumble across stuff. There would could be a probability that the structure was just a rock or volcanic activity was nothing or other false positives. The next layer to add is once those are found is the SRV survey where when you investigate the potential high density mineral field you find out what is there and the actual density. When you turn this into a faction, all people who are allied with the faction can visit that station and gain that information. This is to reduce this, "so I discovered this, now what" feeling I've had after too many hours scanning planets.
Additionally, add in "knowledge" to the tool box. This would be like gaining a pass to a system but it unlocks tools. For example, after completing a mission line from Felicity Farseer which goes into the history of terreforming and culminates in discovering the conditions for earth like worlds (ELW) you gain a report that when you jump into a system, use your ADS you get a list of potential ELWs to look at based on star type, temperature and the planet's distance from the star. Minor, but it allows you to create a decent exploration plan to which planets are worth greater detailed scans. This could also include a questline on the origin of soontil relics, or thargoid history, that will help you discover their structures on planets.
Just some ideas. I've gotten the idea that much of this already in the game but not immediately apparent or base solely on internet databases outside of the game. But some of this could reduce the community goals allow them to be for bigger events such as the thargoids have begun a massive invasion of xyz system or the federation and imperials are in major conflict over another system rather than let build this faction a base as the faction could already be building it over the past month.