Will we see any new faction or the persean league was the last big faction in the sector?
Hard to say for sure, but nothing like that is currently planned.
Will we have any news of the man's dominance in the game?
A kind of reconquest fleets would be a lot of fun or a kind of "crisis" for the late-game and change the power board in the sector.
Some very important events would be very good, since it would force the player to adapt to them and that the game did not become linear in the mid-late game.
I'm sure you have something prepared up your sleeve with gates or something very important that we do not have information yet.
I'll just say that we have certain plans/ideas for the end-game, but I certainly don't want to talk about them.
Hmm.... does the "cincinnatus" tag means anything?
Mhm. Bit of an obscure reference, I'll be surprised if anyone gets it.
Assuming i have a market that produces 8xfood, is it able to supply other markets demand up to 8 food (ie: market 1=4 + market 2=3 + market 3=1 =8, supplier can not supply any more food) or is it able to supply an arbitrary amount of markets that require less than 8 food (ie: it can supply 50000000 markets that need 6 food)?
It can supply any number of markets with up to 8 food. To make it more clear, hopefully: a market supplying another market with something has no effect on its ability to supply something else with the same thing.
That or a bit of clarification in that part in general, whatever floats your boat (or thrust your ship? How does the say change when taken into space?)
("Whatever keeps your air in", perhaps?)
One thing about the new system isn't clear to me. Can markets meet their demand by importing from multiple sources? E.g. if Kazeron needs 5 food, but only exporters available can offer only 4 food each, can it meet its demand (or at least alleviate its shortage) by importing from some number of them or will it just pick the best one of them and be stuck at a 4/5 shortage?
Only one source. So, multiple sources of 4 food can never build up to being 5
food.
I got the impression that it's the latter but that makes some things weird. For example then having local food production doesn't help protect against a famine at all unless it can meet all of the market's food demand and it's useless to produce something if you can't meet any one market's entire demand even if there is an overall shortage of the stuff you're producing.
Partially met demand is still valuable. For example, food shortages currently give a -1 stability penalty per unit of food that's missing. Local food production, even below demand level, can help protect against shipping disruptions. A market can also export what it's producing, even if it's getting the bulk of its demand filled elsewhere. For example, if you need 5 food and are importing 5 food, but producing 4 food, you can still export up to 4 food. Another market might also import less than its full demand from you if you're the best available source.
Outposts eh? I see my "wait for Alex to implement in vanilla" strategy is paying off.
It's great news that the system is more robust and runs much faster now, but part of me just can't get over the whole "one 4 supply market can supply infinite 4 demand markets" thing. Or the "market can only buy commodities from one supplier" thing, for that matter.
I think it makes good enough sense if you squint a bit
Logarithms! Production scaling! Economy of scale! *handwaving intensifies*
(Consider also that there's "reach", and a preference for in-faction suppliers, so the case where it starts making less sense - when a single market is supplying like 20 other markets at full capacity - is rather unlikely to actually manifest itself.)
- Will trade routes have any faction checks besides same/not-same faction? It'd make sense to prefer suppliers with whom the faction has a good relationship (preferably even modifiable in mod API, for things like "free trade agreement" or "trade embargo" events).
I've been thinking about those kinds of events/treaties/etc, yeah. Not sure where that'll go. I don't want to factor relationship in, though, since that might make things too confusing to try to figure out. "Same faction" then "stability" is not too bad, and throwing in "also, treaties" might be alright too...
- Ha, we can control commodity legality now! How will legal status influence production and trade? (How badly do things break if you ban food?)
Not sure on the details quite yet. Am pretty sure you won't be able to make food illegal, though - I'd imagine a narrow set of commodities will be tagged as "can be made illegal".
- Smuggling was briefly mentioned in the blogpost; do you want to explain the effects here, or are those still being worked on or such?
It's not quite done, but what's already in place is this - imports via smuggling reduce stability, at (total units / market size) * 2. Out-faction imports reduce stability at half that rate.
- In Mount & Blade the player can buy a productive asset (e.g. a bakery or ironworks) in a city belonging to an existing faction, and collect the profits it generates
to fund their warmongering imperialistic ways. Might such a feature be expected here?
I don't think that'd be a very good fit for industries in Starsector - in M&B, those industries are pretty separate from the city and its ownership, but in Starsector, the industries more or less make up the market, which is designed around a single faction owning it. Something separate could of course be tacked on (talk to NPC, invest, etc) but, being separate, it,s well, separate from the outpost stuff.
A 5 food market can satisfy other markets that require 5 food. Does that take into account at all how much food the supplier takes out of his own supply, or how much the other markets are lacking? Could a 5/4 supply/demand market satisfy 3 other 0/5 markets? Is anything actually taken from the supplier as a result or does he remain a 5/4? What if the three other markets were 4/5, would that make any difference in how this whole calculation works? How can he partially meet the demand of a 5/6? Fractions?
It doesn't matter what the supplier uses of their own supply - if it produces 5 food, it can send up to 5 food to any number of destination with no penalties whatsoever.
As I understand it, using a scale where each number increments an order of magnitude means we're giving markets a big leeway to satisfy demands with 'imaginary' surpluses. How will shortages happen at all unless someone consistently interrupts shipping lanes?
Conceptually, it's not surpluses but production being easily scaled within a certain range, but not beyond. Shortages could happen due to any reason that disrupts production or shipping; I'm not actually sure I understand the question.
(I'll also note that the log scale is also mostly conceptual. Much like a size 5 market doesn't produce 10 times the patrols that a size 4 market does, the same sort of thing will apply to all other areas where market sizes are directly involved in gameplay.)
One question: Will factions try to expand and build outposts too?
I think I answered it earlier, but in brief - maybe, but if they do, I wouldn't expect it to be on a large scale.
I guess why they may not is the major factions are kind of busy with their wars and politics, and enough of the rest find it easier to just steal or destroy the goodies found. However, NPCs that try to build an outpost elsewhere (and succeed if not stopped) would give some urgency for the player to find a good planet and build fast (assuming we cannot conquer and steal their outposts).
Hmm. I don't know if rushing the player like this is a good idea, plus that implies outpost construction on a scale where all the "good" planets would get used up, and that seems like a bit much.
Will players be able to raid markets like pirates? Will we be able to steal factory cores and LPCs?
Will we be able to techmine or research technologies and LPCs?
Will outposts built in proximity to a black hole create special bonuses?
Good questions, maybe :)
Can we build factory cores or buy them somewhere?
Current thinking is you would be able to occasionally buy a "corrupted" core that has various industrial penalties, only allows d-hull production, etc. A pristine core, you'd have to find through scavenging or
perhaps acquire through some other means. Really need to see how it all shapes up, though.
Ooh, very nice! This is just the sort of thing I've been looking forward to since campaign mode was originally added in!
:D
A question: are there plans for secondary, automated offensive (or active) fleets for the player? I mean, you say there'll be patrol fleets to defend outposts, but can you also buy an AI-controlled fleet to, for example, raid a certain system?
It's not something I want to commit to outright, but definitely thinking about how that sort of thing could work.
One (semi?)interesting way of allowing more than X amount of outposts could be to allow the creation of independent(faction) outposts. This way you could create an independent minor supplier outpost for yourself and other surrounding places, while keeping your personal administration points for more interesting planets. This could lead to Independent planets becoming very common though, and I don't know how the faction itself interacts with the other factions.
Yean, more or less what I'm thinking here as well, as far as the "Grant Autonomy" button. I *think* you probably wouldn't need too many of those around - once you've got one source of Food or Ore or whatever, you really don't need any more - but yeah, if those became super common, that'd get weird. Maybe those could get some sort of penalty if there's too many of them, too, and eventually decivilize, or something.