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[golumstoe]

I accidentally posted this in the General Discussions page. Hope it is okay to post it again here.

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I've been playing for a pretty long time and, although I like the idea of starting the game with a small ship and building your army, things are getting a bit stale.

What if you can choose what faction you want to be part of when you start a new character?

For example:

1) If you choose to start a character as part of the pirates, you will start off as one of the small fighters within a small group of ships. You cannot control where you go and who to attack, but you must survive as a tiny little fighter through many fights and eventually the commander of the fleet will recognize you and give you a frigate or something. From here on, you can either stay in the fleet and pillage other fleets, or ask the commander of your fleet if you can break off into your own fleet and start pillaging. (like the pirate scouts you see flying around in the beginning of the game).

If you decide to stay in the fleet, you will eventually control bigger and bigger ships. The plus side here being that you will be relatively safe since you are in a decent sized pillaging fleet, and you will save up a lot of money fast in case you want to break off later. The downside here is that you have no control over where you want to go or what to do. Also, if you decide to break off and control your own pirate fleet, you will not get direct support from any other pirates in the area. They might help you, but they are pirates afterall and will flee if they see that there is nothing to gain from helping you.

2) If you choose to start as part of the Hegemony group(?), you will be given a small frigate similar to how the game starts now. The only difference being that you will be placed in a pretty strict chain-of-command where you will need to receive permission to travel somewhere or attack a fleet. If you do well in the military style environment, you will continue to be promoted until you are so high up in the chain-of-command that you do not need to go fight anyone yourself. You will be able to direct other fleets in the area to do anything you want them to! Of course, if you are reckless and make bad decisions, you will be kicked out of the group and become a lonewolf captain.

The pros for joining the Hegemony group is that you will not have to pay for anything, such as new ships and supplies. Everything is provided as long as you do your job as you are told. You will also be supported by other fleets in the system. No soldiers left behind!

3) If you choose to join the Tri-Tachyon group, you will be given your own medium sized fleet. You are "sent" by your superiors from your home galaxy to provide peace to the rest of the universe. You are one of many captains commandeering these fleets all over the universe. This is why you cannot just go around killing everyone with your technologically advanced ships. You are the self-proclaimed peacekeepers in the system. You are on nobody's side since nobody is on their side. You must level up your politics skills (maybe this can be added?) in order to lower the tension between other factions in the area. You will do this by going to other planets or talking to other fleets. Whereas now you are only able to attack or flee when you "touch" a fleet, you are now able to have a "political debate" with the captain. This will compromise of some kind of a mechanic where you persuade the captains or the planet leaders to do what you think is best. But be careful since if it goes badly, you will have to fight.

This might be a pretty good deal since you have at your disposal a vast array of technologically advanced ships, but remember that these ships are very expensive, and without destroying other fleets, it will be hard to get new ships or replenish your supplies. Here lies the dillemma: focus on careful strategic politics but have a weak fleet, or kill everyone for money and build up the greatest fleet that there ever was, but be shunned by your home galaxy?

4) The last choice you can choose should be the same way as how the game starts right now. Maybe you got lucky at a casino or spend all your life saving up money to buy a ship. This was your lifelong dream. Your ship sucks and you are alone in the vast realm of space. Maybe you want to be the richest trader in the world or the captain of the strongest fleet feared by everyone. Up to you!


I kind of got carried away but I think this kind of different starting points will add lots of replayability and character to the game.

Thanks for reading!


P.S. Sorry for the possibly horrible grammar and spelling. It's 2am and I couldn't sleep without typing this out and empty out my brain!

[Lucian Greymark]

I like the general idea but it seems somewhat constricting compared to the sandbox style Alex purportedly wants. Idk it it'll stick.

[golumstoe]

Maybe this could be used as some sort of a 'tutorial' section? After some time the player would become independent from whatever group they started with.

I guess the open sandbox nature of the game is good too. But I just thought that being in an open sandbox all the time could get boring. I thought adding a bit of story to each faction and being part of them would create some immersion and variety.

[Lucian Greymark]

Absolutely, but I'm sure it can be done without changing the original premise of the game :/

[mostmodest]

I think this is a pretty great idea. I'm not sure how much coding and development it would take, and that may be it's biggest downfall. To me, it still has that sandbox feel (you can choose to start by yourself, after all) and it also has some bonus goodies.
Also, does starting in a faction give you a bonus to relationships?

[Okim]

Its already possible to mod in starting diplomacy dependent on your char generation choices and there is at least one mod that already does it (though its a non-vanilla total convertion).

You can try asking for it on modding forums if you don`t want to wait for too long. I`m sure somebody like LazyWizard will be glad o help with this.

I`m more than sure that we will get something similar in the campaign in future. May be not directly starting as a member of one faction, but probably get some starting boost to relationship. That`s my IMO.

[sdmike1]

A good example of what Okim is taking about is the Fight for the Universe mod by WarStalker