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.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I don't think that ships/weapons are going to be the sum total of faction reputation rewards, though they largely will be for the next release.
As far as vanilla weapons, they were already built with an eye towards progression, though the better versions tend to be expensive and not better in *every* aspect. For example, in the "small kinetic" line, you've got Light AC -> Light Dual AC -> Railgun -> Light Needler. I think this line in particular is a pretty solid progression, even if you account for the higher OP costs.
That said, separating weapons out by availability in this way actually opens up the opportunity to have some that *are* straight upgrades, or just bigger upgrades. Definitely need to keep an eye on that. I don't think too many new weapons are needed, but a couple more in key spots would be nice. So, right, good point all in all.
How is the reputation required to buy a good determined?
For weapons, it's "tier" in weapon_data.csv. 0->favorable up to 3->cooperative. Almost makes it look like I've planned this out from the start, doesn't it? Muahahahahahahaha*cough*.
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.
Kind of how it works, actually - the black market gets fewer weapons, but they aren't tier-restricted. As far as prices, they're actually lower on the black market because there's no tariff; the standard tariff elsewhere is 30%. The idea behind no tariffs on the black market is to encourage the player to smuggle/offset its risks. Weapons don't participate in that at the moment, but they probably will eventually, so it might not work out. Hmm. Let me write this down and take a look. The idea of "higher prices for weapons on the black market" makes sense, just need to think through how it works with everything and make sure there isn't some giant loophole where it results in free money. And also if it's easy to make work that way.
The consequences of getting caught, still working through - you're not actually caught in the act, but there's reputation loss due to suspicion, the possibility of an investigation event with more dire consequences, etc. Where it's at might be good enough for now, but I need to take a good look at smuggling, and that's likely related.
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.
Yeah, there's lots of room for trade-related skills here. Definitely not in the cards for this release, though - staying away entirely from changing/adding skills.
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).
Aw! I like 'em, but they might not be final.
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.
The names, I think make sense. The colors/insignia, they other two currently use the one for the Luddic Church as placeholders; I'd imagine they'll all end up with their own (though similar/related). The Path doesn't actually have a presence in the Sector just now, so it might not make an appearance quite yet.
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....
We'll see, yeah. Right now there's no explicit support for "related" factions, as it's not strictly necessary, but that'll have to be fleshed out at some point, and adjusting this UI is part of that.
Have you thought about placing a few procedural worlds on the fringes? I know a while back you wanted to do a core of hand made content and a few procedural worlds to fill it out - it might make the next version really interesting to have just a few worlds subtly changing the trade relationships for each playthrough. Might become a balancing nightmare though, and I wouldn't want to push back the release!
I did a little bit, but, uh. What you said
I think that belongs more in a release focused around exploration stuff.
Question: does attacking enemies of a faction improve your rating with them? Or would they have to 'authorize' you first? Maybe one way of being bumped up to cooperative is if your faction relationships match that of the faction (the Hegemony only really trusts you once you've well and truly shown that you are anti-trytach... and back if up with battles/destabilizing smuggling).
Not unless there's a bounty out. Been thinking about that too, though, so that's not set in stone.
Very interesting idea re: needing similar relationships. I'm not sure that's something that's easy to express using the current mechanics, but could see this playing a part in, say, doing missions for faction higher-ups - which might, in turn, be eventually be the only way to get up to "cooperative". It might even be a requirement for getting such missions to begin with.