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fluffyfreak
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I wish to once again broach those topics that always seem to get the almighty conversational fly-swat 😉

Gameplay - that thing some of us are here for:

There's some rudimentary gameplay in Pioneer already, you can buy and sell ships/equipment, trade goods, fly around, annoy the police, get killed, take some jobs deliveries etc. That's all pretty good but from then on it's rinse and repeat ad infinitum. "bchimself" seems to have found the most fun thing to do is just go exploring and see the different planets and stars out there.

What the game seems to lack though are the things which drove some other players to play for extreme amounts of time and with almost obsessive devotion... like me! 😀

Factions - the feature that dare not speak it's name:

I speak of course of the dissonant relationship between the Federation and Empire in Frontier, the resulting military structures/missions/nukes/ranks and the boost your elite rating got as you inevitably climbed the ranks of one, the other, or both.

We're completely lacking even the initial basis for any of that in Pioneer, ok they don't have to be Fed' vs Imp' anymore, there don't even have to be just 2 factions, why not 3/10/13067?

What there is currently is a faction void, one that I think we should fill and fill it very soon. I'd rather see the start of this than almost any other technical feature or improvement.

So the question is, what do we want factions to mean?

Some open headed "stuff falls out" thinking:

Lets start with the familiar premise from Frontier - there are 2 factions, they do not like each other.

Great place to start, very simple for players to understand, if they visit one area of space star systems will be of faction "A", if they visit another volume of space they will be of faction "B". This handily though also allows us to have a default 3rd faction "C" the "independent"/"none-of-the-above" star systems.

In Frontier this led to differences in stock prices, things that are illegal and expensive in the Federation systems, were cheap and legal in the Empire. Thus establishing a trade gradient that you could try to exploit, again the independents had their more chaotic own rules regarding legality and thus cost creating mini-gradients in some specific items.

With officially opposing forces (Fed' vs Imp') and some seriously antagonistic trust issues between the two you also got plenty of odd jobs that they couldn't officially be seen to do. But hiring someone else with no official connection? Sure! 😛

So the player got to do things and use equipment that they otherwise would never have access to, recon missions with a fitted camera, nuking the shit out of things! Retrieving stolen data, fending off attack by Imperial ships, it was awesome! I often didn't care when I'd just been blown to pieces and would reload the same mission only to die again because it was so awesome trying to outrun them!

With missions completion came greater ranking and greater trust over the missions you could undertake, in truth it always seemed to be just rank but it felt like trust 😉 and so from parcel monkey to nuking bases you really felt like you were progressing in your clandestine life.

Except that you didn't have to, it was something that you could dip into when you chose and you could as easily stop to go and explore the galaxy, upgrade your ship or do a few simple parcel runs with a little extra cargo for profit. It was there for those who wanted it though.

What factions need - a minimum:

What do we need to get factions working then?

As in, what are the technical minimums we can identify from the above ramblings?

    [*:3r8giydd]we need a number of factions #N + 1 for independent systems,

    [*:3r8giydd]each faction must define what is legal/illegal on it's planets/stations,

    [*:3r8giydd]independent systems should have some algorithm to decide legality,

    [*:3r8giydd]factions define, for each planet type item availability,

    [*:3r8giydd]legality and availability feed into each items cost,

    [*:3r8giydd]factions occupy volumes of space - worlds within their volume belong to that faction,

    [*:3r8giydd]factions have militaries,

    [*:3r8giydd]militaries provide missions both within and across borders

Is that a good minimum list?

I have almost certainly missed things so please try to dredge you memories and imaginations for things that simple list would not support or actively prohibit! 😳 unfortunately my brain is getting tired so I'll leave implementations proposals to just this brief rundown of possibilities:

    [*:3r8giydd]Lua scripts system supplies the faction identity,

    [*:3r8giydd]That identity defines what is legal/illegal for each factions,

    [*:3r8giydd]Independent systems legality is done in another script(

discuss!?!),

[*:3r8giydd]Lua scripts define, for each faction and for each planet type item availability,

[*:3r8giydd]Faction volumes is handled in code (must be fast),

[*:3r8giydd]Volumes could be done using simple spherical volumes, oct-trees, or my favourite idea 3D Voronoi volumes,

[*:3r8giydd]a factions military acts like a private job board - you join up and then always deal with the same military "entity",

[*:3r8giydd]Initially military missions would just be a limited set from the public jobs/mission boards.

Okay my brain is now dead, I need some lunch but one last thing, it's a request really.

In closing - for lunch:

The usual argument that is put forward against discussing all of this is that feature X/Y/Z isn't ready yet, or that we want to move item/object definition into Lua, or not, or something else. I see no good logical or other reason why any of that has any bearing on implementing anything above. In fact I see good reasons why implementing the above would help us fix or create some of the things that it supposedly is on hold for.

I've tried to read this https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/wiki/Discussion.Design-Goals Design Goals wiki entry and it's impenetrable, clearly a discussion between a passionate group of #N interested developers, but impenetrable because of it.

What were the conclusions? How will something be done? What is the desired design goal? It's design by committee at it's worst because what it's resulted in is absolutely no progress on these oft requested, fondly remembered and thoroughly enjoyable, features for more than a year.

So, there we go. Now... beat that for long winded Gernot 😆 😉

Andy


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robn
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fluffyfreak wrote:
I wish to once again broach those topics that always seem to get the almighty conversational fly-swat 😉

As always, I'm going to defer any actual commentary until I find time to think, a promise that often takes me weeks to fulfil. But I will throw these two points out there:

    [*:1tml1c6w]We can design and debate and theorise as much as we like, but at the end of the day working code is going to win out. The wiki merely captures the discussion so far, so we have some context for development. First person to submit something likely wins.

    [*:1tml1c6w]I refer you to

issue #1213. To be fair that issue didn't exist until a few minutes ago, but the actual backstory development that Thargoid did has been waiting for me to action for a month. My fault entirely :/

Yes, we need a plan for factions. More than that, we need working code. We have not been offered any, and the people who currently are actively contributing code are scratching their own itches, which does not appear to directly include this stuff (though a few of us are slowly working on infrastructure) If someone implements an awesome faction system that everyone likes, I'll merge it immediately and we'll sort out the details later.


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Dalkeith
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I think the dev's do a brilliant job...

Its a real hard job as for Github its a developer environment I would think non-technical general feedback should not be placed there.


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Brianetta
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Dalkeith wrote:
I think the dev's do a brilliant job...

Its a real hard job as for Github its a developer environment I would think non-technical general feedback should not be placed there.

We have a little motto: If it isn't on Github, it didn't happen.


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fluffyfreak
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robn wrote:
If someone implements an awesome faction system that everyone likes, I'll merge it immediately and we'll sort out the details later.

This is sort of the problem though, if I go away and write an "awesome faction system" there is little to no reason to expect that it will be one which everyone likes.

I put a lot of time into Pioneer to scratch my own itches, Orbitals, Job library, military engines, project maintenance, etc but my time is limited and seeing stuff get left by the wayside after months of effort it disheartening.

So what we need is to know up front what specification will be accepted by "everyone" because then we can say: "write to this rough spec' and it goes into the game.", it doesn't have to be massive or intricate in it's details. It just has to have a few solid points, like I've tried above, that people (maybe me) can mostly cover.

Also, this is where we usually get the "if it isn't on GitHub" or "join us on IRC to discuss" but that really limits participation to only those who can, I've managed to get on IRC twice I think and GitHub is ok for merging changes to an idea but I find it stifling for actually discussing one. So if I'm starting the discussion on a topic here then lets keep it here. Once it's shaped up a little I'm happy to wiki-fi it and put it up on GitHub myself but this is about exploring ideas to create a spec' from.

Andy


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fluffyfreak
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Dalkeith wrote:
I think the dev's do a brilliant job...

Its a real hard job as for Github its a developer environment I would think non-technical general feedback should not be placed there.

Yes they do, but there's no reason not to discuss an idea here where people who don't get onto the IRC channel or use GitHub can participate.

This isn't about thrashing out the technical details of a feature - although I do dip into that a little - it's about what players might want in a feature, and I think the game benefits when a wider audience joins in that discussion.

Andy


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robn
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If you need a discussion starter, please read Thargoid's backstory/history proposal. This is what I'm trying to push along in issue #1213. Right now I'm less concerned with getting the perfect backstory, but just with getting something "blessed" so we can build without wondering too much about whether we're doing it right.


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fluffyfreak
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Note that this is NOT a criticism of Thargoids backstory, history or proposal (from here https://github.com/Thargoid/pioneer/wiki/Discussion---Storyline,-Background,-Narrative ) but an comparison and breakdown of it compared to the topic of factions.

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1) Is the galaxy/universe static or dynamic? Ie will events that happen in the game change the game world? (think FFE) or will nothing of import actually happen (FE2). I assume the answer is static as Pioneer is based on FE2, but was is the consensus out there?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is only slightly relevant to the actual discussion of factions.

Two reasons for this the 1st being that both suggestions (follow the link I didn't cut n' paste everything) which follow it are _HARD_ to implement and even harder to logically handle well - that's not to say they're not good ideas but they're going to take a long time and a lot of thought and discussion on their own. The 2nd reason is that whether factions, their effects on the galaxy at large, and the volatility of prices/missions/etc are static or dynamic can both be added later and have no bearing on what is needed to implement factions in the first place so we can safely put this on the back burner and forget about it until after we actually have a basic plan for "static" factions.

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2) The world doesn't revolve around the player, (though in FE2 you might disagree). To really create visimilitude there needs to be things happening in the background, life going on, troughs, peaks, disagreements, minor wars. The question in my mind is how do we get this information to the player?

This part is good, I like the idea of local information about missions, politics, event etc. This is a case though where Pirates (again, follow the link at top) had a very finite predefined world, set of politics, and could script a great many things. We have a very different set of circumstances but that doesn't mean we couldn't do it.

Unfortunately, this again doesn't seem relevant to the topic of what we need to put two, three or more "factions" into the game, it's a possible outcome of having factions in the game that we could add later, extend, build upon factions but we need factions first.

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3) There needs to be people populating this world, celerbrities lets call them, which are followed by news and gossip, that are of some import to the universe. FFE had Meredith Argent and Mic Turner, the jjagged bbanner band, etc. They don't necessarily need to play a part in anything that actually happens, but they should be out and about, being mentioned every now and again.

A good point but seemingly irrelevant to this discussion about factions.

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4) Backstory to Pioneer: So far all that I can find out is that people left the solar system in the 24th Century at slower than lightspeed and set up Epsilon Eridani colony. Hyperspace came along in the 28th Century. Someone has thought about this and I suggest we stick to this timeframe. It does limit how big the 'known galaxy' can be and how many colonised systems there can be, but it does open a few cool possiblities. There will be two tiers> step one will be 'old' systems colonised the 'old navy way' by slower than FTL. They will be the biggest, strongest, richest systems. Then there will be the FTL systems which are newer, struggling, a bit poorer and easily picked on by the old systems. There will be a hierachy and friction and discontent. Then there will be those odd groups that leave Earth to do their own thing and set up systems far far away. think Van Manneens star system in FE2, but other ideas include independent kingdoms, communist enclaves etc, odd balls which spice things up.

This is good, this might be where and how we define what the factions are, and what volume of space they occupy. That can give us some of the description information and we can decide from that what goods/items/equipment is legal or illegal.

The only thing is that I don't see the back story as being important to the actual things that factions will affect, although it does provide a talking point to maybe figure some of that out.

I'm personally thinking of it this way; a Star Trek mod would have 6 or 7 factions, a BattleStar Galactica mod will have 2, Babylon 5 would have 4 or 5 divided into a few alliances, but they all need to use the same "faction" system to define them. What common system can we create that provides that basis? One that gives us their name, description/backstory (this is just a blob of text!), prices of items(?), laws (legality), and perhaps most obviously what star systems belong to that faction.

The reason I started this wasn't to discuss Pioneers backstory, it was to get input from scripters, coders, artists and players on what each of them would like from a faction system. I tried to define it in quite limited terms because backstory has virtually no bearing on the topic. Don't misunderstand, backstory matters a great deal, and Thargoid proposed history and introduction letter are brilliant, but they're not that relevant here except as possible factions that someone might implement in the factions system once we've actually discussed and implemented the factions system. It is stage 2, but this is stage 1! 😉

Andy


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fluffyfreak
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Maybe I can guide this a bit more so we get some progress. I can see why everyone else has avoided this topic before now 😆

Lets use Frontier as our basis again, we have elsewhere, it seems to work ok 😉

    [*:332oevex]3 factions - federation, empire, independent,

    [*:332oevex]2 militaries - federal, imperial,

    [*:332oevex]3 sets of laws - different items/equipment are legal/illegal, for ease lets assume consistency across a given faction,

    [*:332oevex]each military provided missions and ranks earn't through completing them - details of specific mission irrelevant,

    [*:332oevex]2 of the factions had defined volumes of space - what are peoples ideas for defining those?

What did I miss from that list?

Do people have any ideas for how best to script each of those parts up?

What should even be scripted?

What other information defines a faction - i.e. Name, description, number of hamsters that could fit in it's volume of space... etc?

Discuss?


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robn
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Ok, I think I know where our difference in understanding (read: confusion) comes from.

I'm coming from a "everything is generated" standpoint. Or, put another way, "content free". We don't appear to have the resources or direction to build and maintain multiple complex factions, especially if they have to define things like item availability for each planet and stuff like that. It ends up becoming a massive job, and even harder if you want to have similar amounts of depth for every faction in the game. We don't have the people for a massive job. It won't get done.

So instead what I want to do is define some set of traits that define the charactistics of a particular faction. Things like isolationist/expansionist, pacifist/aggressive, etc. Then define a few basic systems (or even just one home system) and let the simulation take care of the rest. It'll work out imports and exports based on availability of resources (by planet), mission types, general strategy for a faction AI ("go to war", "kick everyone out"), and so on.

It does mean that there's certain limitations - it may not be possible to define a Star Trek or BSG galaxy that is true to its source material because you don't get the kind of fine control you want. On the other hand, it means there is minimal content required to get results, new features and behaviours can be added to all factions at the same time, and it all only needs to get written once. It may be more work initially to get the code, but I don't think it has to be. I can already see a design for a minimal system in my head, its just finding the time amongst everything else to do it.

That's the reason that I consider a backstory for each faction to be important. I need to know what parameters to feed into this thing.

But that's me. I'm probably on the more extreme end of the "no fixed content" spectrum - hell, I only just barely tolerate the custom systems, and only because people want Sol to look Sol :P. Its my own opinion though, and I'm happy for everyone else to get together and tell me I'm wrong. The code will speak loudest though. Without it we're just arguing on the internet.

So by all means, design and discuss. I'll join in. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm really not. Right now I just don't see where the resourcing is going to come from to build all this stuff, but even if it does happen I don't want to be left with a massive amount of data that needs to be tweaked every time a bit of game logic is updated or extended.


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fluffyfreak
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robn wrote:
I'm coming from a "everything is generated" standpoint. Or, put another way, "content free". We don't appear to have the resources or direction to build and maintain multiple complex factions, especially if they have to define things like item availability for each planet and stuff like that. It ends up becoming a massive job, and even harder if you want to have similar amounts of depth for every faction in the game. We don't have the people for a massive job. It won't get done.

Ah ha, this is what I've been after 😀 as it highlights another difference in our approach. I'm not after anything that would define everything per planet, that way lies madness 😉

No I'm trying to find something similar to what you suggest but without the complex algorithm behind it!

Tricky to do this without putting something up that will close peoples minds to other possibilities/approaches so lets take a semi-real world example: Farming under US capitalism vs Soviet communism, as our two "factions". NB: just using a very broad brushes here 😯

You have two groups that both farm on an industrial scale, but capitalism underwent a green revolution in the use of machinery, chemicals, pesticides, breeding etc leading to massive increases in production. That contrasts heavily with the communist approach that dictated who worked on their farms even when they weren't suitable, how to farm even when the methods chosen made no sense for that location, and treated all farms as equal based on their size even though one was in Siberia and the other on verdant plains leading to a complete clusterfuck.

The Pioneer equivalent would be agricultural worlds, where under one faction production would be higher and needs less people but needs lots more chemicals and machinery, vs another faction where it needs more people, medicine, etc, but fewer chemicals or machinery. That wouldn't be defined per-world, just per-planet-type for each faction and only when/where it deviates from a "base" definition.

So we'd create a global basic definition, perhaps used by a default "independent" faction, and then where it was different we'd specify only that change. Then every world that matched that type == "agricultural", and was of that specific faction would inherit that change.

Currently we have only a handful of world uses, like agricultural/tourist/industrial, so this wouldn't be much information per-faction and specific worlds would still influence the amounts of items just like they currently do where they take the imports and exports for the world usage and then scale them according to the climatic conditions of that star system / planet. Specific worlds differ, but they differ from a template that comes from their faction.

That's roughly how I see it going, small data at the start, differences per-planet.

The trouble with going so abstract as defining traits that build up into something recognisable is that you spend a lot of time just tweaking and rewriting the algorithm to produce something that people find recognisable because most of the time it will produce a lot of poor results. It is itself a lot of work when we can have a lot more specific, and controllable, results that are flexible enough to suit 99% of people by choosing a data driven format.

If it potentially takes a week to do the first faction definition in Lua, but then only a day to each one after it by copying and pasting, then we can have a lot of factions in a short time if that's what people want just by editing some Lua files.

robn wrote:
So by all means, design and discuss. I'll join in. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm really not. Right now I just don't see where the resourcing is going to come from to build all this stuff, but even if it does happen I don't want to be left with a massive amount of data that needs to be tweaked every time a bit of game logic is updated or extended.

I'm not trying to be an asshole either, and I didn't think you were 🙂 I've just seen this haunt us for over a year and my ideal timeframe for getting this discussed, agreed, planned and implemented would end somewhere before um... a week from Friday! 😆 4th May, that sounds about right. Then people have something concrete to build upon. It's not this that will be so amazing, it's what people do after that I'm trying to enable here.

Andy


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laarmen
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I'm with robn with the minimal content stuff. When generating content (in a large sense, i.e. code, models, etc...) for a software project, you not only have to think about the actual content, but also how it will evolve as the software evolves.

On a side note :

fluffyfreak wrote:
Yes they do, but there's no reason not to discuss an idea here where people who don't get onto the IRC channel or use GitHub can participate.

Well, I see an obvious reason. All the devs, i.e. the one who will do the actual work, are either on IRC or github, whereas I'm far from certain they follow what's going on here.


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fluffyfreak
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laarmen wrote:
I'm with robn with the minimal content stuff. When generating content (in a large sense, i.e. code, models, etc...) for a software project, you not only have to think about the actual content, but also how it will evolve as the software evolves.

On a side note :

fluffyfreak wrote:
Yes they do, but there's no reason not to discuss an idea here where people who don't get onto the IRC channel or use GitHub can participate.

Well, I see an obvious reason. All the devs, i.e. the one who will do the actual work, are either on IRC or github, whereas I'm far from certain they follow what's going on here.

You do realise that I'm also a Dev who does actual work? As are several other people on here. There is no "one pool" of mystical Devs floating on clouds up on high somewhere, we're just people behind keyboards who have preferences about how we use the internet 😐

EDIT: Also, I deliberately chose here because this is where a lot of people discover Pioneer and I want the input of players too. Something that often gets missed. Not everyone, especially artists actually, understand/use GitHub or IRC and by restricting discussion and idea development to just those places you choose to exclude a lot of people. Anyone can use this forum and I emphasise _anyone_ which is why this is here.


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laarmen
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fluffyfreak wrote:
laarmen wrote:
I'm with robn with the minimal content stuff. When generating content (in a large sense, i.e. code, models, etc...) for a software project, you not only have to think about the actual content, but also how it will evolve as the software evolves.

On a side note :

fluffyfreak wrote:
Yes they do, but there's no reason not to discuss an idea here where people who don't get onto the IRC channel or use GitHub can participate.

Well, I see an obvious reason. All the devs, i.e. the one who will do the actual work, are either on IRC or github, whereas I'm far from certain they follow what's going on here.

You do realise that I'm also a Dev who does actual work? As are several other people on here. There is no "one pool" of mystical Devs floating on clouds up on high somewhere, we're just people behind keyboards who have preferences about how we use the internet 😐

Oh, yes, I am aware of all that. It wasn't meant as an attack or anything else, more like a constatation. You said you didn't see a reason, I pointed out one. It IS a fact that the devs are sort of forced to use Github. Hell, even potsmoke66 finally began to use the issue tracker! Nonetheless, I agree that a phpBB forum is probably the most well known forum technology on the Web, as I agree that Github could be a little more non-dev friendly/


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fluffyfreak
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laarmen wrote:
Oh, yes, I am aware of all that. It wasn't meant as an attack or anything else, more like a constatation. You said you didn't see a reason, I pointed out one. It IS a fact that the devs are sort of forced to use Github. Hell, even potsmoke66 finally began to use the issue tracker! Nonetheless, I agree that a phpBB forum is probably the most well known forum technology on the Web, as I agree that Github could be a little more non-dev friendly/

Ah ok, then I apologise. I totally misunderstood what you were saying 🙂 sorry.


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ollobrain
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more populating the universe suggestions needed.


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Subzeroplainzero
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I'll be happy even if (for starters) the only real different between factions is that they manufacture and sell a different range of ships. But if my opinion is worth anything, the most urgent thing that needs to be implemented is a crude trading system. Nothing too complex, just the ability to buy something cheap at xx and sell for more at xxx. That would give people more of a reason to explore, and perhaps that crude set up can be built upon later. I'm no programmer though, so perhaps if things are going to get complex later on, the ground work might need to be put in early on.


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Marcel
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Another thing that would help to differentiate factions is to add tags to buildings and ships that would indicate the faction to which the object belonged. Police ships especially should be of differing types, as would military ships if that option is added. Ships in systems, including the shipyards would have certain types predominate in certain areas and building styles would vary depending upon where you are.


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Potsmoke66
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Quote:
There is no "one pool" of mystical Devs floating on clouds up on high somewhere

i can lend you my cloud for a while...


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walterar
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"i can lend you my cloud for a while..."

What are you looking pirates in the clouds?

Now I'm good at evasive maneuvers, pirates and gangsters are only interested in the cloud. (irony)


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fluffyfreak
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Ok, clouds aside 😉 we do have some other stuff to consider.

People seem mostly concerned about what happens within the areas defined by the factions - ships available, buildings selection in cities, police and military ships and textures.

Trade too could could get a boost if we defined goods costs and availability differently across factions.

Is there anything else we need to know about the factions themselves? I'm trying to make a list of properties that a faction will then have so a list off the top of my head might be:

    [*:22trlbcj]faction name

    [*:22trlbcj]short description

    [*:22trlbcj]longer backstory-like description

    [*:22trlbcj]home world/star-system location

    [*:22trlbcj]founding date

    [*:22trlbcj]rate of galactic expansion

    [*:22trlbcj]military name

    [*:22trlbcj]military logo

    [*:22trlbcj]police name

    [*:22trlbcj]police logo

    [*:22trlbcj]goods/equipment availability (

1-per-economy-type: aka agricultural, industrial, tourist, etc)

[*:22trlbcj]goods/equipment legality

[*:22trlbcj]ship availability

I figure that building would list what factions they were under rather than factions listing what buildings since there'd be a lot of buildings common to both! 😆 likewise with ships, police textures/versions of ships would be listed on the ship rather than the faction itself.

I'm not yet decided on the best method of defining the volumes of space that belong to each faction but I have some ideas and will keep plugging away at it before I spout off on here.

So, is there anything else you think a faction should define? i.e. a faction actual information beyond it's name location and description? Or is there something on that list that you don't think makes sense.

I'm really trying to involve everyone in this since it could be such a fundamental part of the game.

Andy


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faction name

short description

longer backstory-like description

home world/star-system location

founding date

rate of galactic expansion

military name

military logo

police name

police logo

goods/equipment availability (1-per-economy-type: aka agricultural, industrial, tourist, etc)

goods/equipment legality

ship availability

i guess if we leave some aside, or concentrate on what's important, we get a good stat with that

priorities, imo

- home world/star-system location

- rate of galactic expansion

- goods/equipment availability, legality

i think with that it should be possible to give the factions a shape, the rest can be defined later imo, when the framework is built.

if you don't mind, i wouldn't concentrate to much on the how or with what i can generate factions rather to do it simply, with whatever method is reachable to me.

shouldn't be a big thing to have three factions and a space distributed between them, what method, algorithm you will use is secondary to me.

in the end we have two or three factions, simply plotted with a "pencil" or clever generated, it doesn't matters much to the player in the end.

or in other words the player won't notice what's behind usually, as long as the things arn't to obvious he didn't recognizes if it's "hard plotted" or generated.

ergo we could say you could simply draw/plot the factions by "hand" and it won't differ much to a far off algorithm, while of course i think the latter is cooler to have.

i don't mind if they are grown or appear like real grown factions, that's cool stuff but secondary imo. btw, a player playing the game won't notice it, well perhaps after playing the game repetively for years as we all did with FE2.

something to think of at this point is if the factions should be dynamic, if they should interact with the player or his decisions he made. at least it would have to be set already to leave the opinion.

to me it appears a bit like the board i made for the boardgame, if we have the board (environment) we can start to think of obstacles.

if there is a way to make the environment depending on decisions, even better, likewise i didn't prescripted the fields and cards to buy we had more rather fields, no game appeared twice the same. the path was given but the conditions varied each game a little, because you played the game.

if i think that i only took some elements known to me from computer games and simplified it for a boardgame...

a lot of the environment is already here, we only have to use it, imo. simple or advanced use, i don't mind in the end (i prefere simple 😉 )

if we can have generated factions with a history which is grown, wow that's amazing i would like to have that to, that's your artistry and i understand also the longings to get that working. it will be outstanding.

not to mix the factions with the missions stuff, i will post some additional suggestions to the "roleplay- boardsgame elements" thread i opened.

because i feel, this here is really important, it's the shape of the "board" we are working on here. the core of the game if you like.

anything else is secondary imo.

i know many missions and even my idea for quasi generated missions or better little events which build something like a mission, don't need any factions.

they will work without such, BUT it makes the thing far more interesting to have them, they build a additional own environment in the existing one.

open a lot of doors for ideas and are something like the "heartbeat" of the game.

the thing that let's you move on* , likewise to get rich in the boardsgame, you evolve.

*at least for those who didn't have to get rich essentially, i guess i played FE2 only once as "freighter captain", after i have had owned every ship of FE2 i never did that again, i concentrated only on the missions (which are in FE2 truely based only on the existing factions) and got rich by the way.

if i play it now, i usually have no idea what to do with the money except to donate it, also because i use a rather cheap vessel to do all missions, no heavy shielded panther "cheat". besides of that i can't think of a mission not to complete in FE2 with a small powerful ship, while with the panther you wil be very limited and the "flying stations" as well stations on planets with high gravity are out of reach.


[/hr]

time to fly... 😉

just walk,

i remembered a cybernetical problem which is already a old one, it's the way how arthropods walks, they have no brain no central nerve to control the synchronisation between the single working limbs. each is standalone but it works all together because they work after the same scheme.


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Marcel
(@marcel)
Captain Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 1188
 

One thing that might be nice is if your reputation is based partly on what faction you are from. You might have a choice of starting positions similar to the three we have now but each is in a different faction. A flag is set in your saved games based on which starting position you picked. If you travel to another faction's territory you might get a "You're not from around here" type suspicious reaction from people when applying for missions, lower pay, or some people might refuse to deal with you. Police might be more likely to search your ship. Illegal goods traders might offer lower prices or not even deal with you. The strength of the reaction would be based on the level of hostility that exists between the faction you're from vs. the one you are in. Your reputation could improve over time or get worse based on your actions.


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Potsmoke66
(@potsmoke66)
Captain Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 1815
 

player related, 😉

a simple counter you could say

start with i.e. 0 pts count in all other factions rather your own, each successful contract adds some value to reach at least i.e. 100 for "fair" or higher for "well". easy no?

player related

add/discount some to "players faction value"

probably add/discount some to "players overall reputation"

we would have only one "players faction value" which simply has a negative value in the other faction?

we only need a value i can use later on in a next event (mission is related to "faction". if "players faction value" is #n then ... else ...)

mission related

add/discount some to "players mission" counter, next step is perhaps locked because it needs a higher mission value (simple reputation, only valid in a single mission).

or better split, if you reach the needed pts. go on, if not, do it again or do something special. but you the "cards writer" will decide what's to do.

faction (game world) related

players faction is? to this faction is a value added or discounted

from on certain negative or positive counts something changes (i.e. factions expansion, changes availability of goods/equipment)

while not all events are relative to all, some will result only in "players reputation"

but sometimes i feel i spoke out only well known old stuff...

anyway factions will boost the possibilities you have (argh, as if there wouldn't be enough)

of course one very important thing we need first,

the "character", who? faction? is-female? eyecolor 😉 ? birthdate? whatever you like, only some given info to your person, to get some numbers from that.

especially the chosen faction is "player related", means a faction can change, you choose one to start, add or even discount from the relative counter while you play, if you go beyond a given value you loose faction relation and of course above you get member, while in this system you can work for both factions but the value counts negative in the opposite faction. that will mean you are after a while a true "federal" while the value on the other faction is that "low" you never get out of that.

that will strongly limit some actions, but on the other hand, i know a lot of players are dissatisfied with "you can work for both factions without getting punished for".

that would really mean, either we have only black and white, so the decision is easy,

or a third faction like the "independent" which will be probably the starting faction and default to it if you reached zero (or any given value) in your faction.

"independend" should be more or less not be influenced by your "players faction value", except perhaps as a general reputation, i.e. a known "War Lord" can't make a caritative mission like "carrying whales from A to B", or save population from station X, no matter how i boosted my "players reputation" with i.e. donations.

i would like that, because as a decided imperial* all this will be locked to me, except i "degrade" to a independend again, (but who likes to throw away his career?).

it would also mean i have to start the game in each faction, or work for each faction to get through all missions we will have (in future, 😉 ).

double crossing spys are perhaps to handle extra, but it would need a extra player counter to note how often you changed the sides.

or a "player faction value" for each faction, but imo that's a useless complification. but it's to think about if we like to have more then two opponents.

for two and a third independend one "player faction value" will work.

and perhaps we can juggle additionaly with the money one makes, or donations he made...

while the money is "player related" as well as "mission related" or "game world related".

that isn't really new no? but perhaps i helped where to start, that would be already fine. 😎

at least i could perhaps made the idea a little user friendly (without the printed label "100% user friendly")


[/hr]

*i like to play the "bad one", must be because i always had to as a child, everybody choosed the allies i had to play the role of the axis. 😆

it was really a problem for me as a child, but of course not yet anymore, i started to like it. playing the role of the bad is as good as the good, perhaps even better.

in certain games you make a dice roll to decide "black or white" i don't need, give me the black please! (if you really feel it makes a difference?).

i even think the whole procedure to start a ma-jongg is a complete, ah, you know what i mean.


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Subzeroplainzero
(@subzeroplainzero)
Master Chief Registered
Joined: 13 years ago
Posts: 171
 

Just a trivial visual thing, but I could make some varying clothing and accessory styles for each faction in the facegen. I've had no time at all to work on it lately, but I do plan to clean the whole thing and make it look more "finished" aswell.


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