Sometimes during development, you end up doing things you hadn’t initially planned on doing. Fleshing out player-faction relationships is one of those things. It was something I knew I’d have to look at eventually – the current system having two attitudes towards the player – “meh” and “shoot first and don’t ask questions”, with nothing in between, was definitely not going to hold up. Initially, though, it didn’t seem connected to the economy and events systems, which are the focus of the upcoming release. So, how did faction relationships get dragged into this?
With the introduction of trade and events, player actions carry more meaning than they did before. A successful trade run contributes to the stability of the markets involved; more so if the markets are small. Smuggling can be a hugely destabilizing force. A food shortage has long-term consequences, which depend on how severe it is, which in turn depends on whether the player got involved, and if so, how. Markets declare bounties when hostile fleets are doing damage to the economy, and so collecting on those bounties – by removing said fleets – has a real impact as well.
Not all of these are earth-shaking, and there’s still some work to do on making the consequences more pronounced and more clear. One way to do that that is to make other inhabitants of the world notice, and react to, your actions. It’s a clear way for the game to say “what you just did matters”. Provided that your standing with a faction has a tangible effect, it also increases how much it matters. We get improved clarity and increased impact – a win/win! Factions having more nuanced attitudes and responses to your actions also increases their believability.
This is all a long way of saying that if the player can do things that matter, it’s tough to separate that from NPCs having appropriate reactions, and if those reactions are limited to “attack” and “don’t attack”, that doesn’t provide enough expressiveness. (Put like that, this seems rather obvious… ahem, moving on.)
If you’re going to have more detailed faction relationships, there has to be some way to see what they are. Darn it, more UI work.
David sent this to me a little while back, and I thought it was very cool to see all of the ships together like that. Most of these are in the game, but some aren’t just yet and a few may or may not make it.
A lot of the ones not currently in the game hint at features under consideration. Let the rampant speculation begin!
We’ve got a planned set of features for next release, but every so often I like to take a couple of days and work on some lower-priority features that just wouldn’t get any attention otherwise. Of course, the feature has to be cool enough to justify the time spent! It is my pleasure to now introduce one such feature – damageable ship modules. Now when you shoot a ship, you can gradually disable its weapons and engines – more on the details in a bit.
For those with a shorter attention span – or simply less time – here’s a video showing the end result in action. I’d suggest reading on about how it works to help it all make sense, though. By the way, if you haven’t kept up with the latest changes in the development build, this thread on our forum has the full patch notes for everything that’s been done since the last release.
Read on for the reasoning behind this mechanic and the details of how it works.
Starfarer is still fresh out of the gate – but there are already several playable and very promising looking modding efforts under way.
I hope you give these a try, they’re a lot of fun already. Installing a mod is easy – here is a quick guide.
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters One of several mods by forum member Trylobot. Thread & download link here.
The combat has a vastly different feel to vanilla Starfarer, with some striking similarities to Star Control in how it plays out. It’s till in the early stages, but there are already three ships – the Earthling Cruiser, the Ur-Quan Dreadnought, and the Orz Nemesis.
I’m absolutely loving how this mod is coming together. Being a huge SC2 fan I’m a bit biased, though – so here are a few screenshots so you can see for yourself:
Junk Pirates A mod by mendonca, thread and download link here. Features an entirely new faction with 6 new ships and fighters, showcased in a series of 4 missions.
My personal favorite is the Dugong-class destroyer, pictured below. It’s got an amazing amount of firepower concentrated in a broadside, and is fast enough to run circles around anything it can’t flat-out outgun.
Uploaded a few screenshots from the latest build. You can see some new ships, improved UI elements, and a poor Apogee-class cruiser get completely hammered by bombs.
If you’re going to have more detailed faction relationships, there has to be some way to see what they are. Darn it, more UI work.
