It might be interesting to use this sort of thing for positive events too.
Oh, absolutely! In fact I'm right now working on an "Event" that has positive effects
Game-changing, top-tier-skill-impact level ones, at that.
While I get this system is still in its infancy, the possibilities it opens up is breathtaking. I think I’m more excited about what it could be than what it is but I really like the idea your decisions, or lack thereof, have lasting consequences or making progress on an “event.”
Endgame stuff can be built off this and I would love to see multiple, mutually competing, trees or tracks you could start going down once you hit a certain level of development. Gaining progress in one event stifles the progress in another, etc. but all lead to some major Sector-spanning event in one form or another. But as you describe the system as it is, there are milestones that would tell you that you’re getting close to points of no return or you’re about to trigger something that will permanently impact future events. This keeps a player sandboxing from unintentionally going off the deep end.
We're definitely thinking along similar lines!
I am excited to see the new pirate/pather interactions and where they take me. This does feel like more mid-game content, which I’m glad for. I’m afraid that if system is well-received, you’ll have a lot of people asking for punitive expeditions to get the same treatment. I hope you’re not a victim of your own success in this!
Hahah! I think I have a note for punitive expeditions - something along the lines of "keep the ones that are for making a colony in faction space, roll the other ones into HA" but we'll see. And I've written up what a Hegemony AI Inspection might look like as an event. No promises, though, it's very much a "we'll see". I'm aware of the impulse to re-do things in the shiny new way and want to make sure there are actually *good reasons* for it!
Could this system also encompass the "expeditionary fleets" sent because of your market share? Maybe stuff with AI core usage and [REDACTED]?
Hmmm, I guess I want to see this shiny new toy applied to many of encounters that result in someone wanting to do something to you. This gives the player a greater feeling of agency, great work Alex.
(Hahah! Wrote up the answer just above before reading this, and I think it touches on a lot of the same things.)
Seems like a bit of a disconnect between threat and impact.
Each system has a low danger rating, but colony impact is considered to be extreme?
Correct! They're intentionally fairly decoupled. Colony impact is more of a function of how long hostile activity has been neglected for, though it will tick up faster if there's more danger.
And why would every colony need to have heightened security to mitigate Luddic Path attacks, when they're only targeting one colony?
Probably because at that point - if it's gone unchecked long enough - their activity covers more than just one colony, if there's only one that has proper "cells". Or it might represent support your other colonies need to provide. Or additional security they need to perform on traffic to/from the targeted colony. Or whatever. It's pretty easy to come up with in-fiction justifications for it; the whole thing is fairly abstract.
Love the new feature.
Thank you!
Dont like how panther and pirate is going to be boundled up into one. They should be separate somehow.
They were already "bundled into one" in the sense they that impacted your colonies. Now, instead of "affecting your colonies negatively, but separately and with bespoke and hard to balance/etc effects" they just "fill up a bar that affects your colonies negatively". But the important things that made them distinct - fleets, raids/sabotage/etc - are still distinct. It's also organized in a way that makes it easier (i.e. readily possible) to add more stuff than just Pathers and pirates.
