Will result in a 5-point reputation penalty when the expedition starts
And a 5-point penalty when it arrives in system
No reputation penalty for fighting the expedition's fleets
Reputation cost to avert reduced to 20 points
Takes roughly twice as long for factions to build up towards sending an expedition
After 2-3 expeditions are sent (total, by all factions), no expeditions will be sent for 6 to 12 months
So if you use a synchrotron you'll be at war with Syndria within a year, and the only way to prevent it is to cause hostilities with other factions so they'll max out your expeditions first?
... I'm starting to feel like it's about time for a reputation rework. I think the only major mechanic left that'll interact with it is here now and said new mechanic is getting the most weirdness from it. Maybe reputation should be made logarithmic like production & population is
What if reputation worked on a averaged Scales of Kind system the way economic production and population did, instead of a linear addition system that makes international relations weirdly arithmetic?
So your reputation with a faction works on a twenty point scale (max 10 min -10, 0 neutral) instead of a two hundred point scale, with your interactions with a faction having a pre-determined place on said scale and each point of difference on said scale being ten times difference. After ten stacks of "did ___", they get combined into a stack one "
does ___" stack of the next scale up. Instead of just reputation changes bumping your reputation score in a direction, your score is instead an average of all your reputation affects made in the last month (including a saved value of your last month's final reputation that this month's works off of)
So if you start off neutral at 0 reputation with a faction, running with a transponder off & needing to be dinged for it by traffic cops gives you a "caught not using transponder" status effect with a value of -1, giving you an average reputation of -1 (inhospitable) (-1/1) for the time being. If you get hit again for running with your transponder off in a different system by the same faction, you get another "caught not using the transponder" -1 status effect in the reputation screen, which means your reputation is still a total of -1 (-1 + -1)/2 = -1) because you're still just a miscreant who doesn't follow traffic rules. If you then hit your transponder and show up to help a patrol of said faction run down pirates, you get a "aided a patrol" +2 reputation affect, which puts you at +2 total reputation because each +2 (and -2) counts as ten +1 (and -1) actions so now the average is 2 ((-1x2 + 2x10)/12) because aiding a patrol in running down pirates is way more notable than being reminded to keep your transponder on, twice.
If you get tagged for your transponder ten more times after those first two, however, somehow managing to get let off each time by doing it in a different system to a total of 12 transponder hits in one month the games takes your ten stacks of the same -1 reputation and combines them into a single -2 "
refuses to use their transponder" hit, so now the reputation is -1 (-1x2 + (2x10) + (-2x10)/22) because you gaining a reputation for willfully defying their laws negates the goodwill of helping a patrol do what it was already gonna do anyway, leaving your un-negated "is
still breaking traffic laws" -1's to be the remaining deciding factor.
The point here; Lets assume you hadn't helped out that patrol and your reputation is at -2 bc of your refusal to use your transponder (-1x2 + -2x10)/12). If you then get tagged by the same fleet a second time for the transponder and they go weapons hot causing you to flee without casualty giving you a -2 "fled an inspection" hit, the game doesn't drop you down to -4 (twice the actual reputation loss for fleeing an inspection, which is thus far your vastly largest interaction with the faction); you stay at -2 because your fleeing an inspection merely
cements your reputation you already had as a harmless miscreant who disrespects traffic law.
The pro of this system; you can't make a faction go to war with you just by not using your transponder. You can make patrols attack you, but if you always disengage without casualty then the worst you can get is a -3 reputation from combining10 stacks of the "fled an inspection" to get one stack of "flees inspections" reputation hit. If you
kill an inspection (bc your fleet is too big to flee without incident, say) but let them flee, you get a -3 reputation for it and if you keep doing it it gets rolled up into a -4 which is
almost war. Which, I think, feels right; if you make the Suspicious reputation status of -4 make patrol fleets who spot you treat you as if you're hostile but the rest of the faction not unless a patrol asks them for assistance against a much larger Suspicious fleet (for example, if they tag you for transponder and then realize who you are and that you will definitely murder them without a functioning reputation loss (IE no reason not), they disengage then maintain contact with your fleet while calling for backup from a nearby larger-than-patrol military fleet to come help them with an inspection check at a much larger scale) it would work really well.
Also; engaging a faction in the warfare they throw at you doesn't flush your reputation down to the worst possible because you don't get linearly added reputation hits for each battle, without needing to contrive exceptions for it. Defending yourself from an unjustified attack could have one more reputation hit than resisting an inspection, of -4, so that doing so won't trigger a war while
still affecting your reputation with that faction (because you
did kill thousands of souls, regardless of whether it was technically your fault), but putting yourself into a position where you'll get unjustly attacked repeatedly (say, by contesting Syndria's fuel monopoly) and rolling a stack of "killed an expedition fleet" -4's into a stack of "kills expedition fleets" which, unless you're doing stuff to get onto Syndria's good side gives them enough excuse they need to mobilize a military offensive at your faction. And, because there's a lot more context baked into this system, instead of war just being infinite hostility forever it can be one month (at minimum) of said faction no longer needing to warn you in the intel screen that they're going to send hostile fleets your way because mobilizing a warfleet against a colony they've declared war on generates way less news coverage than mobilizing a warfleet against a colony they're at peace with -- so now instead of hitting -50 reputation being them declaring infinite all-out war forever everywhere it now feels like the faction getting *** off and mobilizing a more official version of what expeditions already are -- like Syndrian High Command gets sick of having to hear that wayward admirals went off into the outter rim and lost a whole battlefleet to a fuel-competing colony repeatedly so they took the excuse (once given it) to step in and try to remove what was causing their admirals to run off and die to stop it from happening.