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Author Topic: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core  (Read 1440 times)

SonnaBanana

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NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« on: November 05, 2020, 07:10:25 PM »

(Is this already implemented?)
Outside the core region, player should run into fleets doing missions, whether bounty hunting/base killing/surveying/analysing derelicts.
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Embolism

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2020, 07:58:13 PM »

I'd be nice if missions that are "taken" (disappears before it expires) actually sends an NPC fleet to fulfill that mission. Better yet if there's fleet (or at least leader character) persistence with this. Would add a lot of flavour, with room to expand on actual game mechanics later if wanted!

As it is though there's prospectors, so I guess the surveying part at least is covered (though they aren't mission-specific).
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SonnaBanana

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #2 on: November 06, 2020, 05:22:07 AM »

I'd be nice if missions that are "taken" (disappears before it expires) actually sends an NPC fleet to fulfill that mission. Better yet if there's fleet (or at least leader character) persistence with this. Would add a lot of flavour, with room to expand on actual game mechanics later if wanted!

As it is though there's prospectors, so I guess the surveying part at least is covered (though they aren't mission-specific).
This. This so much. Imagine helping bounty hunters destroy a fleet/base for a cut of the total. Imagine intercepting a procurement fleet and taking all the stuff for yourself. Or thinning out [REDACTED] in a system for a price so the analysis fleet can move in.

Hopefully this will be a thing in 0.10.0 or 0.11.0 if not in 0.9.5.
« Last Edit: November 06, 2020, 05:23:38 AM by SonnaBanana »
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Thaago

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #3 on: November 06, 2020, 08:03:48 PM »

I'd be nice if missions that are "taken" (disappears before it expires) actually sends an NPC fleet to fulfill that mission. Better yet if there's fleet (or at least leader character) persistence with this. Would add a lot of flavour, with room to expand on actual game mechanics later if wanted!

As it is though there's prospectors, so I guess the surveying part at least is covered (though they aren't mission-specific).

I really like this idea!

I'd be nice if missions that are "taken" (disappears before it expires) actually sends an NPC fleet to fulfill that mission. Better yet if there's fleet (or at least leader character) persistence with this. Would add a lot of flavour, with room to expand on actual game mechanics later if wanted!

As it is though there's prospectors, so I guess the surveying part at least is covered (though they aren't mission-specific).
This. This so much. Imagine helping bounty hunters destroy a fleet/base for a cut of the total. Imagine intercepting a procurement fleet and taking all the stuff for yourself. Or thinning out [REDACTED] in a system for a price so the analysis fleet can move in.

Hopefully this will be a thing in 0.10.0 or 0.11.0 if not in 0.9.5.

All of this sounds great. I especially like the idea of a combat fleet disrupting a colony and then waiting in ambush for the relief/opportunistic trading fleets, but joining in with other fleets going after pirate stations etc also sounds really fun.
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Gothars

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2020, 12:40:45 AM »

I agree, other bounty hunters going after named bounties would be great to make the Sector feel more real. But not too early, I think the bounty duration should be the time you have to kill it on your own, and only after that a fleet is generated to kill it off. And another one if the first fails.

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Arcagnello

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2020, 01:50:15 AM »

I agree, other bounty hunters going after named bounties would be great to make the Sector feel more real. But not too early, I think the bounty duration should be the time you have to kill it on your own, and only after that a fleet is generated to kill it off. And another one if the first fails.

I would also imagine the bounty for that fleet getting higher the more failed attempts of collecting it, not to mention said fleet getting stronger because of it and maybe even stop hiding around a planet actually start acting doing stuff worthy of a bounty, like coming back to the inner sector and start causing trouble!
« Last Edit: November 07, 2020, 02:27:01 AM by Arcagnello »
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Thaago

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #6 on: November 07, 2020, 02:23:20 AM »

I agree, other bounty hunters going after named bounties would be great to make the Sector feel more real. But not too early, I think the bounty duration should be the time you have to kill it on your own, and only after that a fleet is generated to kill it off. And another one if the first fails.

Some flavor text to the tune of "Rumors indicate that independent bounty hunters will close in within X days." to tell the player how long they have would also make a bit more sense than the current hard cutoff as well, where the fleet is still hanging around but now has no payout. Instead, if the player is cutting things super close they can race the hunting fleet to the target (or even ambush them to make sure that the player gets the kill!).
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SCC

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #7 on: November 07, 2020, 02:43:40 AM »

If some pirate raids were replaced/initialised by bounty fleets that expired, then weren't taken care of by NPC bounty hunters, that would be a bit more organic and also would let the player decrease pirate activity and make money at the same time.

Morrokain

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2020, 02:45:25 PM »

Ah yeah! I think it makes a lot of sense to tie flavor to dynamic events that already exist. That way the flavor itself is dynamic.

Unless it proves to be too complicated to implement or otherwise exploitable, it would be really satisfying to have these events fork into other events from "cause and effect" that the player can weigh in on or ignore. There could be a standard path (with a couple different random outcomes even!) if the player ignores the event, such as:
Bounty > NPC bounty hunters > bounty hunters fail > distress call near the bounty location > NPC rescue operation fleet

But then if the player interacts with the event at one point in the chain, it changes the outcome and creates a different effect tree:
Bounty > NPC bounty hunters > bounty hunters fail > distress call > player intervenes > gets pointed to nearby bounty with an increased reward

 - Stuff like that
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Thaago

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #9 on: November 08, 2020, 09:41:00 PM »

Ah yeah! I think it makes a lot of sense to tie flavor to dynamic events that already exist. That way the flavor itself is dynamic.

Unless it proves to be too complicated to implement or otherwise exploitable, it would be really satisfying to have these events fork into other events from "cause and effect" that the player can weigh in on or ignore. There could be a standard path (with a couple different random outcomes even!) if the player ignores the event, such as:
Bounty > NPC bounty hunters > bounty hunters fail > distress call near the bounty location > NPC rescue operation fleet

But then if the player interacts with the event at one point in the chain, it changes the outcome and creates a different effect tree:
Bounty > NPC bounty hunters > bounty hunters fail > distress call > player intervenes > gets pointed to nearby bounty with an increased reward

 - Stuff like that

That would be fantastic and go a long way into making the sector feel more alive.
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Morbo513

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #10 on: November 10, 2020, 10:07:44 PM »

Running into fleets that are going after the same objective as you, and the decision of whether to fight them over it would be cool. But a lot of the time going after bounties, probes etc is trying to locate the system and target - it could potentially lead to the AI snipping objectives well before the player's found the system and could be very frustrating. For it to be "fair" the AI would have to search themselves, but that's a lot of routines and resources to dedicate to something the player might not even engage with, and probably still be frustrating for the same reason.
 I like it in spirit, but I think implementation could be abstracted with scenarios, eg. you approach a probe and get a blurb about how some scavengers ran and went dark as you approached, and decide to ambush you after you've fought any automated defences. Alternatively if the player fleet severely outmatches them, it's a standard enemy-disengagement battle/option, their (and player's) transponder status and faction could also be variable factors.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #11 on: November 10, 2020, 10:25:51 PM »

I think to make competition with the AI over missions more interesting, you should have to return something to the core (scan data, bounty trophy etc) in order to receive a pay out for a mission. That way you could try to steal those from the AI fleets after they complete the mission objective. You could also have AI fleets trying to steal those from you and maybe you could get out of a fight by giving it up etc. That sort of stuff could even be scripted sometimes to make missions a bit more interesting.
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Arcagnello

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #12 on: November 11, 2020, 02:07:13 AM »

I think to make competition with the AI over missions more interesting, you should have to return something to the core (scan data, bounty trophy etc) in order to receive a pay out for a mission. That way you could try to steal those from the AI fleets after they complete the mission objective. You could also have AI fleets trying to steal those from you and maybe you could get out of a fight by giving it up etc. That sort of stuff could even be scripted sometimes to make missions a bit more interesting.

I've always found it rather odd that I got missions to scan planets/derelicts and somehow the object or my search either did not exist (a scan result for a derelict) or I didn't have to bring it back where it was requested (planetary survey data). Adding that extra step of bringing it back in one piece would both make the mission harder and also probably increase its rewards considering
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I think to make competition with the AI over missions more interesting, you should have to return something to the core (scan data, bounty trophy etc) in order to receive a pay out for a mission. That way you could try to steal those from the AI fleets after they complete the mission objective. You could also have AI fleets trying to steal those from you and maybe you could get out of a fight by giving it up etc. That sort of stuff could even be scripted sometimes to make missions a bit more interesting.
[close]
this very nice suggestion.

There's also one nitpick I have with survey missions. I assume the idea behind a mission like this would be to know how suitable for colonization a planet is or to gather information on ruins on said piece of cosmic dust for the requesting faction to either consider colonizing OR exploring the ruins on said planet. Then why do I get survey missions on gas giants (not the very rare ones with ruins in them either) and said factions don't even try and colonize the level V survey data planets I survey for them? Food for thought :)
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #13 on: November 11, 2020, 07:42:19 AM »

There's also one nitpick I have with survey missions. I assume the idea behind a mission like this would be to know how suitable for colonization a planet is or to gather information on ruins on said piece of cosmic dust for the requesting faction to either consider colonizing OR exploring the ruins on said planet. Then why do I get survey missions on gas giants (not the very rare ones with ruins in them either) and said factions don't even try and colonize the level V survey data planets I survey for them? Food for thought :)

Maybe they're just gathering data for science! Also, gas giants can have high volatiles sometimes.
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Arcagnello

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Re: NPC fleets "taking" missions outside the core
« Reply #14 on: November 11, 2020, 07:56:37 AM »

There's also one nitpick I have with survey missions. I assume the idea behind a mission like this would be to know how suitable for colonization a planet is or to gather information on ruins on said piece of cosmic dust for the requesting faction to either consider colonizing OR exploring the ruins on said planet. Then why do I get survey missions on gas giants (not the very rare ones with ruins in them either) and said factions don't even try and colonize the level V survey data planets I survey for them? Food for thought :)

Maybe they're just gathering data for science! Also, gas giants can have high volatiles sometimes.

True I guess, but having a faction only colonize planets it surveyed on its private database would be great!

On a side note, mining planets with high volatiles (assuming you've got Nex and a very mining capable fleet) is disgustingly profitable provided you've got efficiency overhaul on all your mining ships to account for the inevitable accients while mining high hazard planets.
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Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.
The therapist removed my F5 key.