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General Discussion / The hubris of balancing a sandbox with an iron fist
« on: June 04, 2023, 07:43:44 AM »
My problem with the current system of colony management is that despite the game appearing like such a sandbox, it's actually programmed with an iron fist. In fact, i would say the approach of the developer can be evinced from every faction in the game being ruled by some sort of iron fist leadership. Even the pirates now got the narrative version of total overlord Kanta, the freest faction now being the most rabidly restrictive and demanding the player bow to them flat-out. Even the Persean League is commonly described as an alliance of autocracies and near-despotic monarchies. Not criticism yet from me, this fits the narrative well!
But as players, ultimately we all want a benevolent leader delivering us what we desire after an appropriate challenge is won. The idea you can balance(read: control) a player's gameplay experience by spawning narrative and world elements like pirate and ludd bases ad-hoc according to colony stats seems like an overreaching iron fist of despotic design to me, breaking in good measure game and narrative progression for the player(suddenly i'm losing cash until i find that damn base), and punishing the player for his efforts and investments ("I shouldn't have colonized this fast.")
Here's the constructive part of the criticism: what i would have done is simply place Pather and Pirate bases around profitable markets and nearby empty systems at world generation. The pirate ones already exist in populated core systems, in fact. Those bases cannot (and should not) be truly destroyed by player fleets, and would infest the nearest trade routes in a territorial way, requiring increasingly high patrol costs for safe trade, and making colony income a wild swing of gains and losses unless the player patrols trade routes (not so different from now!) Then the player could indeed engage with the leaders of these bases and make deals, but there would need to be no spawning of bases or eternal whack-a-mole, rather a calculation of proximity of markets to existing pirate bases and the relevant costs of ensuring their safety.
A player might as well engineer a market dominance on volatiles, build a favorable relationship with the local pirate leader and enjoy the resulting profits. It then becomes trivial to add a chance-based event where a local pirate base boss the player has deals with gets suddenly replaced by an aggressive newcomer who begins fleecing the newcomer until a demonstration of force is administered. Or perhaps the newcomer is less confident and a better deal can be negotiated in player's favor.
The difference is less in balance (which is maintained) and more in psychology. We all immediately realize the current bases are spawned ad-hoc for us to suffer, infinitely, by an iron-fist algorithm that ensures we don't grow too rich and prosperous too fast. In my static version, the problem exists instead as part of the world, and can be managed before the colony is even formed by getting on good terms with pirate leaders around markets our potential colony might trade with in the future, perhaps even receiving financing from them for later conceding the colony to be used as a transit for "hot" goods. It would be quite simple then that fire-bombing these pirate bases instead would result in the local governments of the systems hosting them lowering the player's reputation, because pirates or not, having unaffiliated fleets blasting away in their home systems in absence of a bounty or commission would be politically frowned upon. And at that, those governments likely have deals on their own.
Finally, i do not think it requires a huge change to the existing codebase. Just a move from spawned bases and relative narrative events to existing static ones. I think it would further organically enmesh the player into local politics, rather than the player fighting his own solitary war against moles somewhere in the periphery of the Sector.
But as players, ultimately we all want a benevolent leader delivering us what we desire after an appropriate challenge is won. The idea you can balance(read: control) a player's gameplay experience by spawning narrative and world elements like pirate and ludd bases ad-hoc according to colony stats seems like an overreaching iron fist of despotic design to me, breaking in good measure game and narrative progression for the player(suddenly i'm losing cash until i find that damn base), and punishing the player for his efforts and investments ("I shouldn't have colonized this fast.")
Here's the constructive part of the criticism: what i would have done is simply place Pather and Pirate bases around profitable markets and nearby empty systems at world generation. The pirate ones already exist in populated core systems, in fact. Those bases cannot (and should not) be truly destroyed by player fleets, and would infest the nearest trade routes in a territorial way, requiring increasingly high patrol costs for safe trade, and making colony income a wild swing of gains and losses unless the player patrols trade routes (not so different from now!) Then the player could indeed engage with the leaders of these bases and make deals, but there would need to be no spawning of bases or eternal whack-a-mole, rather a calculation of proximity of markets to existing pirate bases and the relevant costs of ensuring their safety.
A player might as well engineer a market dominance on volatiles, build a favorable relationship with the local pirate leader and enjoy the resulting profits. It then becomes trivial to add a chance-based event where a local pirate base boss the player has deals with gets suddenly replaced by an aggressive newcomer who begins fleecing the newcomer until a demonstration of force is administered. Or perhaps the newcomer is less confident and a better deal can be negotiated in player's favor.
The difference is less in balance (which is maintained) and more in psychology. We all immediately realize the current bases are spawned ad-hoc for us to suffer, infinitely, by an iron-fist algorithm that ensures we don't grow too rich and prosperous too fast. In my static version, the problem exists instead as part of the world, and can be managed before the colony is even formed by getting on good terms with pirate leaders around markets our potential colony might trade with in the future, perhaps even receiving financing from them for later conceding the colony to be used as a transit for "hot" goods. It would be quite simple then that fire-bombing these pirate bases instead would result in the local governments of the systems hosting them lowering the player's reputation, because pirates or not, having unaffiliated fleets blasting away in their home systems in absence of a bounty or commission would be politically frowned upon. And at that, those governments likely have deals on their own.
Finally, i do not think it requires a huge change to the existing codebase. Just a move from spawned bases and relative narrative events to existing static ones. I think it would further organically enmesh the player into local politics, rather than the player fighting his own solitary war against moles somewhere in the periphery of the Sector.