Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6

Author Topic: Faction Relationships  (Read 50002 times)

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Faction Relationships
« on: August 12, 2014, 05:22:56 PM »

Blog post here.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2014, 05:28:17 PM by Alex »
Logged

MShadowy

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 911
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2014, 05:35:07 PM »

Now this should lead to some interesting things to play with with faction relationships in the upcoming release.  Definitely getting hyped up, yeah.
Logged

LazyWizard

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1363
    • View Profile
    • GitHub Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2014, 05:56:03 PM »

Weapon unlocks are now my favorite upcoming feature. I want to earn my giant fleet of murder-ships. :)


What happens if you lose a fight with a faction? Will your relation with them still go down?

On a related note: I think that if a faction is Vengeful, then you should be able to raise it back up to Hostile if you lose in battle to their fleets*. I mean, at that point they are thoroughly avenged, right?

*Obvious rule patch: you'd have to base the reputation gain on what all the player lost, otherwise we'd be able to stop by the Abandoned Storage Facility to drop down to a Hound and go death-hunting.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2014, 05:59:37 PM by LazyWizard »
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2014, 06:07:21 PM »

What happens if you lose a fight with a faction? Will your relation with them still go down?

Same as if you win but don't pursue, at the moment. Conceptually, it's going off your intent - "you didn't want to fight" vs "you wanted to fight" vs "you forced a fight they didn't want".

On a related note: I think that if a faction is Vengeful, then you should be able to raise it back up to Hostile if you lose in battle to their fleets*. I mean, at that point they are thoroughly avenged, right?

*Obvious rule patch: you'd have to base the reputation gain on what all the player lost, otherwise we'd be able to stop by the Abandoned Storage Facility to drop down to a Hound and go death-hunting.

Hmm. I think that'd be highlighting a mechanic that already doesn't make a lot of in-fiction sense, namely you being totally fine after losing the battle. If there are some harder consequences, then that might make sense. For example, if you're captured and have to spend time in prison, or if there's a chance for perma-death, or some other such.
Logged

TheDTYP

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 136
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2014, 06:10:46 PM »

You're killin' me, Alex! I can't deal with this teasing!!!!!
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2014, 06:12:48 PM »

Now this should lead to some interesting things to play with with faction relationships in the upcoming release.  Definitely getting hyped up, yeah.
You're killin' me, Alex! I can't deal with this teasing!!!!!

Hype! :D
Logged

PCCL

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2016
  • still gunnyfreak
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2014, 06:13:27 PM »

imo losing a fight vs a faction (assuming they're the aggressors) shouldn't change relations one way or another. I mean, the assumption is you escaped with your life, and thus they're still just as hostile towards you as ever. If you lose a fight as the aggressor, relations should go down depending on losses inflicted (if no losses, it should go down a trivial amount since it's little more than a misunderstanding/harmless harassment)

Vengeful, imo, shouldn't be able to be negated barring VERY special events, off of the top of my head, here are a few possibilities:
-Formal declaration of surrender including massive war reparations and likely loss of planets/outposts
-Armistice/peace treaty signed
-Special pardon from leader of faction, likely result of display of heroism in battle (ofc, this would require the faction to be desperate enough to let you fight for them in the first place)
-Change of faction leadership, likely result of the death of the current leader or the utter defeat and subsequent splintering of the faction

And even then, for the most part the most you'll be able to raise it up to is suspicious
Logged
mmm.... tartiflette

Mattk50

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 420
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2014, 06:22:10 PM »

Sounds like a near perfect framework for these things. One thing i wonder about is why "independents" have a unified rating at all, though.

Also, how moddable do you think the specific actions and effects of relations will be?
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2014, 06:33:13 PM »

imo losing a fight vs a faction (assuming they're the aggressors) shouldn't change relations one way or another. I mean, the assumption is you escaped with your life, and thus they're still just as hostile towards you as ever. If you lose a fight as the aggressor, relations should go down depending on losses inflicted (if no losses, it should go down a trivial amount since it's little more than a misunderstanding/harmless harassment)

One thing I forgot to mention: if all you do is escape (without dealing hull/armor damage), while you do lose some standing, it doesn't automatically get lowered to hostile on top of that, as it would if you had engaged. (If your standing is originally good, you could see it as being explained away as a "misunderstanding".)

In-fiction-wise, I can easily see you escaping being aggravating. Not aggravating enough to get into "vengeful" territory, but enough to push to the very bottom of "hostile".

Something else that factors in here is you might find yourself in a fight when the faction is not hostile towards you, for example when you're caught hacking a comm relay and aren't sufficiently contrite.

Vengeful, imo, shouldn't be able to be negated barring VERY special events, off of the top of my head, here are a few possibilities:
-Formal declaration of surrender including massive war reparations and likely loss of planets/outposts
-Armistice/peace treaty signed
-Special pardon from leader of faction, likely result of display of heroism in battle (ofc, this would require the faction to be desperate enough to let you fight for them in the first place)
-Change of faction leadership, likely result of the death of the current leader or the utter defeat and subsequent splintering of the faction

And even then, for the most part the most you'll be able to raise it up to is suspicious

Yep, generally on the same page here.


Sounds like a near perfect framework for these things. One thing i wonder about is why "independents" have a unified rating at all, though.

Yeah, still undecided on how to handle that. I think it more or less makes sense for hostile status, but maybe less so for stuff being unlocked. Probably not going to worry about it for the next release, but it's definitely on my mind.


Also, how moddable do you think the specific actions and effects of relations will be?

Very. The way it's structured now, a mod could override the behavior of a specific action while leaving everything else intact. Adding actions is also simple, and since there's no strictly-defined concept of what an action is (or what constitutes a response to an action), it's very flexible.
Logged

CrashToDesktop

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3876
  • Quartermaster
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2014, 06:57:10 PM »

Hey, I'm seeing some improved Market Conditions icons (albeit, not all of them).  Might want to hack away at those. :D
Logged
Quote from: Trylobot
I am officially an epoch.
Quote from: Thaago
Note: please sacrifice your goats responsibly, look up the proper pronunciation of Alex's name. We wouldn't want some other project receiving mystic power.

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #10 on: August 12, 2014, 07:20:39 PM »

Weapon unlocks are now my favorite upcoming feature. I want to earn my giant fleet of murder-ships. :)

That reminds me - something I wanted to talk about in the blog post but didn't really get to is how the weapons for sale are generated. What it does is takes the ships this market would generate, and then looks at the weapons on those. So, it's a generic algorithm that takes into account the faction-specific fleet compositions and the market stability, which results in higher "quality" ships being picked. The nice thing is there's no need to update some kind of weapon list every time fleet compositions change, it's just naturally all linked. Not a major thing, I just think it's neat :)

If ships for sale end up being generated the same way, this would also make sure that the market naturally has the right kinds of weapons to slot in.

(It also sprinkles in some random weapons, btw.)

Hey, I'm seeing some improved Market Conditions icons (albeit, not all of them).  Might want to hack away at those. :D

All of the icons in the initial shots (from the Markets post) were placeholders; David's been gradually replacing them with the real thing.
Logged

Cyan Leader

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 718
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #11 on: August 12, 2014, 08:03:56 PM »

I hope the rewards for higher tiers of friendship isn't only bigger ships/weapons. What I mean by this is that if the player goes out of his way to max a friendship status with a faction, say a faction that is very hard to please even, then the reward should be very rewarding. So far from the mods and from the game I've been seeing a lot of people trying to balance the game so no ship would be inherently OP, which is fine, but if we're going to introduce a progression system into the game then I hope the ships/weapons/etc we get from this are actually better than the stuff you can find elsewhere. They should still be very expensive, but maybe they are a little better than the other ships when it comes to the Supply/Power ratio or have an unique ability that makes them special while using them in combat or very useful.
Logged

LazyWizard

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1363
    • View Profile
    • GitHub Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #12 on: August 12, 2014, 08:05:02 PM »

Weapon unlocks are now my favorite upcoming feature. I want to earn my giant fleet of murder-ships. :)

That reminds me - something I wanted to talk about in the blog post but didn't really get to is how the weapons for sale are generated. What it does is takes the ships this market would generate, and then looks at the weapons on those. So, it's a generic algorithm that takes into account the faction-specific fleet compositions and the market stability, which results in higher "quality" ships being picked. The nice thing is there's no need to update some kind of weapon list every time fleet compositions change, it's just naturally all linked. Not a major thing, I just think it's neat :)

If ships for sale end up being generated the same way, this would also make sure that the market naturally has the right kinds of weapons to slot in.

(It also sprinkles in some random weapons, btw.)

I like that system. And making adding/maintaining a faction easier is always a good thing. :)

How is the reputation required to buy a good determined?


Vengeful, imo, shouldn't be able to be negated barring VERY special events, off of the top of my head, here are a few possibilities:
-Formal declaration of surrender including massive war reparations and likely loss of planets/outposts
-Armistice/peace treaty signed
-Special pardon from leader of faction, likely result of display of heroism in battle (ofc, this would require the faction to be desperate enough to let you fight for them in the first place)
-Change of faction leadership, likely result of the death of the current leader or the utter defeat and subsequent splintering of the faction

And even then, for the most part the most you'll be able to raise it up to is suspicious

Yep, generally on the same page here.

Fair enough. My post was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of accidentally locking myself out of game content. But upon re-reading the blog post it seems that you have to be deliberately trying in order to achieve Vengeful status, so it's all good.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2014, 08:06:42 PM by LazyWizard »
Logged

kazi

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 714
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #13 on: August 12, 2014, 08:19:15 PM »

Alex, you're such a tease. Lets have that update already haha... (although I'm not sure if I've properly prepared for the modpocalypse)

I feel like it would be cool if the black market offered a way to buy fancier weapons/ships than a faction is otherwise willing to sell you (equal to a reputation boost of x amount). Prices for weapons would generally be higher than legally acquired ones, and you might take a small relations hit if caught. More hostile factions might impound your ships until you pay a certain fee... could be an interesting way to lose ships/money when you get caught smuggling. Outright hostile factions will try to impound your ships/not let you dock regardless of whether you're dealing on the black market or not.

You could even have a skill in the "industry" category that give bonuses to black market trades. Each rank in the skill is equivalent to +10 faction relationship for the purposes of black market trading and reduces the chances and consequences of getting caught. Ranks of the skill would also improve your ability to sell weapons/ships/cargo on the black market and increase your selling price (factions might not buy weapons from you if they don't trust you). Likewise, just being outright friendly with a faction gives you opportunities for better deals and other side missions.

The logos for the Ludd factions/Diktat seem a little uninteresting. The Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon logos, on the other hand are rather fabulous and spiffy (OMFG I LOVE THE HEGEMONY ONE). Also not sure how I feel about having 3 very closely related factions all with "Ludd" in the name. They might feel a little more different if the names were changed so that only one of them was the "Ludd faction" and they had different colors/insignia.
Logged

PCCL

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2016
  • still gunnyfreak
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Relationships
« Reply #14 on: August 12, 2014, 08:25:01 PM »

re: 3 ludd factions

would it be cleaner to have them sorted by alliances? Like having a "Luddite" alliance for these 3, then the "star patrol" (mentioned somewhere in the lore) being rolled together with the Hegemony, along with whatever allies or vassals they might have. That could get messy if really complicated faction relation webs start forming though....

Also: the "martyrdom of a figure known as 'Ludd' during the fall of the Domain?"

Was.... was he...... responsible for it? Perhaps indirectly in some way.....?

the plot thickens ;D
Logged
mmm.... tartiflette
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6