Many other posts have already defended the inclusion of multiple commodity types and I agree with them so I won't touch that further.
So, instead of removing them as an option, I'll talk about the second idea of making them more useful. A couple things have already been suggested.
What stood out to me: Metal used for ship repairs would be an easy-to-implement and welcome change for me. You get a lot of metals from salvage and they take up more in your inventory than anything else. Especially in the early game, I'd rather save that space for supplies, fuel and weapons so I end up dumping a lot of metal if I can't get back to a colony in time and I am low on inventory space. This would make that commodity in particular much more valuable and add more immersion. +1
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That's only one commodity though, so what about the others?
I will say I am in the camp of
having colony/ship construction require commodities, however Alex has already given reasons why he is not a fan of that change:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16611.msg263485#msg263485- To summarize, he feels that
having construction cost materials would result in the endless chore of carting those materials to every colony and in the end- essentially make for grindy, boring gameplay during mid/end game colony management.
First and foremost:
I completely agree with that assessment. If the player is responsible for keeping colonies stocked with resources then that will most certainly become a chore to some if not most players. There is probably a percentage of players who would agree to that change in order to make colony management more fun, but like most things the entire player population needs to be considered here.
My potential solution to the above problem: (If this specific implementation has been suggested before, I apologize. I, personally, have not seen it.)
- The game is already set up to have npc trader fleets "trade" with player colonies, so
why not have npc trader fleets sell those colonies' needed commodities and more realistically tie them into the global Core Worlds' economy? A trader fleet docking with a colony will simply give an offer to the player in the intel screen where they can accept/deny the purchase of goods. Prices are determined by proximity to the faction's colony offering the deal, the commodities value itself to that particular station (shortage/demand etc), the reputation of the player faction with the trader faction, and even the quality of the colonies' administrators. As you can see, that change alone could broadly affect multiple parts of the game in good ways, imo, and also make sense from an immersion standpoint.
However:
Two immediate issues from the above suggestion are apparent and I will attempt to solve them after pointing them out:
1)
We are right back to the first issue.
Having to accept all those requests during the late game where the player could potentially have many colonies
would become a chore. So what can we do about that?
Potential Solution:Spoiler
- Just like faction doctrine management there would have to be additions to the UI to do a couple key things: (I know UI work is awful and that is probably a tough consideration in this case)
First and foremost: An option to "accept/deny all" npc trade requests- No faction reputation penalty for this, that is a key point. Mayybe long-term rep penalties if all offers are rejected repeatedly and market share is lost for the faction?- for good ol' immersion's sake- but even that could be problematic or difficult to implement.
Second: When "accept all" is selected, a maximum credit amount per month to spend on offers (to not bankrupt the player by accident) and a "maximum offer that will be accepted" box so the player can set a value to prevent what they feel is a "bad deal" on a global player-owned colony scale (could mean no npc offers are accepted and shortages will occur but the player will probably catch on if that happens- Maybe an intel alert would occur if that really became necessary down the line.)
A couple of global player faction economy settings like these in the colony management window lets late game still remain mostly automated, yet still gives hooks to do certain things to improve colonies beyond simply saving credits for structures. Filling shortages (should be mostly a mid-game thing that can be solved by late game) to temporarily boost production could be a fun gameplay mechanic that ties into exploration and salvage and encourages trips to the core worlds if the player chooses to go that route. Choice is important, though. The player shouldn't feel obligated to perform that task all the time past a certain point, and that brings me to the second problem.
2)
What if we want to make deep space or fringe colonies? Prices would certainly be much higher, if we even got offers at all, and that's not good for fun and draws back to problem one because the player has to provide the commodities personally again.
What if we want to eliminate the Core Worlds in our quest for sector domination? Same issue. That wouldn't work very well with the above suggestion either and we don't want to do anything to eliminate or hinder those play styles. So what's the potential solution here? Buckle up, this is going to get a little RTS-y!
Potential Solution:Spoiler
- To tie into the "Deny All NPC Trades" selection for the market management UI,
new buildings could be constructed that would be Gatherer buildings to gather colony resources for construction of ships, weapons and new infrastructure. This could be a single building, or spread out over a couple or all commodity types. Its pretty scale-able so that's good.
Like Patrol HQs, these buildings/building would send out harvester/collector fleets that can bring resources to the colonies instead of the player having to get involved. That being said, there are a number of
obvious hooks there to get the player involved that are also
very scale-able:
Spoiler
1) Harvester fleets could be attacked by pirates/REDACTED/other nearby factions - under the hood this can be handled a number of ways either dynamically or through the current marauding fleets; whatever seems the easiest solution to such possible outliers as: "my collector fleets always die no matter what I do" kind of thing. Again, the idea behind this is automation rather than giving the player chores so in the purest implementation of this suggestion the collector fleets could be mostly fluff for immersion and disappear at the system's jump points and either "always return" and only consider in-system threats or have a chance of "encountering trouble" (random event that is handled behind the scenes rather than player-visible) that could then be modified by the next tie-in to the campaign:
2) Patrol HQs have a secondary function of "protecting" harvester fleets. As before, this is also scale-able to: low impact spectrum- only in-system impact, and high impact spectrum- actual campaign integration into hyperspace, etc; Whatever seems the best or easiest to implement. Simply having the building can reduce the chance of "trouble" in the purest implementation (low impact spectrum), or actually have player patrols escort collector fleets in the most in-depth and nuanced implementation (high impact spectrum).
So how do all of these suggestions affect the campaign in a positive way?1) A better sense of player progression and more solidification of intuitive transitions between early-mid-late game. Details:
Spoiler
- Early game would now require more careful resource management since more commodities are required to get a colony up and running. It needs to be noted that it only impacts the transition stage into colonies and can be completely avoided if colonies are avoided. This would extend the length of the early game in a good way if commodities where then better gated to the player. Multiple suggestions have already been offered there.
- Mid game would now be more about colony management and growth through a more in-depth and fun advancement system (it already is mostly, but this greatly extends the nuance and complexity of this mechanic in a fun way, imo). It would also directly tie into a current mechanic: choice of colony location is even more important based on the above mechanics. Do you choose to go the route of automation through your own factions collectors? (that would of course anger nearby factions not aligned to you much in the same way as AI cores do now), or rely on nearby allies in exchange for their interference, drawbacks etc? Both have their own considerations, benefits, and drawbacks and operate on a sliding spectrum on currently tracked campaign values such as distance, price and reputation. That would streamline implementation at least.
- Late game; other than specifically planned setbacks that could tie into those two mechanics like pirate raids, faction warfare or reputation loss, etc, the late game would mostly remain as it is now due to the automation features. This suggestion, however, is designed to scale from 0 late game impact- (full, easy automation of commodity requirements in order to preserve the current feel and better distinguish mid game concerns from late game concerns so that late game is mostly "colony management free")- to some impact that can be precisely controlled for better campaign balance.
2) Easy tie-ins to many existing mechanics- but can still remain "hands-off" or untied to those mechanics if scope or scale becomes an issue. Details:
Spoiler
- Raids, faction rep, traders, colony threats and existing defense structures have already been given examples.
- These mechanics could also be impacted by skills. Industry skills could specialize the player in either player faction automation by benefiting collection structures or npc faction automation by reducing npc trader offer price or increase commodities gained, etc.
- Administrators can also impact every layer of the suggestion- whether through better management of collectors or getting the player better commodity deals from factions.
- Commissions: players with faction commissions could get much better commodity deals, and some factions (such as Luddic Church, Independents or Sindrian Diktat) could even be made to be more attractive choices than they currently are through these kinds of incentives. Especially for Independents, this would certainly tie into the lore in an obvious way.
And finally: considerations I cannot easily solve:Spoiler
- It would be a lot of dev work even considering the purest implementation since it would require U.I work and at least some limited tie-in to the current economy. Certainly not something that would likely be accomplished by the next update, I'd imagine.
- There are a couple campaign balance pitfalls that would have to be avoided through potential mechanic tweaks after player feedback. For instance, if either player faction npc collectors or faction commodity deals were obviously optimal for whatever reason, that would cause issues or make player's feel obligated to go one way or the other.
I defintely think it is do-able, though, and I would suspect that many, many players would appreciate this kind of nuance. The best part is (unless I missed something which I may have) that players who want to forgo these mechanics still mostly retain their choice to do so- barring mechanics already in play that force player reactions.