Search the Community

Add moving fleets on the map to every faction "wow, hold up! 350 factions, each with fleets! Even NASA couldn't run that!" That is why these 'fleets' are actually just an item that has: Coordinates of which 'cluster' it is in (more on that later) Which faction it belongs to A 'Fleet Power' point system: When a player enters a system with a 'fleet', 'Fleet Power' decides how many and how large the ships are. A fleet of 10 power will have 10 system slots worth of ships. With weights to create a semi-balanced fleet of large and small vessels. So for 10 fleet power, it could be three 2-slot ships and one 4-slot ship (10 total). The next step is to add 'Clusters': Effectively getting the whole map and dividing it into 'clusters'. Each cluster would have a 'Defensive Power' and a 'Cluster Capital' (a system that spawns with shipyards, HQs, repair docks...). Each cluster also spawns a fleet. Every so often fleets are ordered to: Merge with another cluster's offensive fleet (if that cluster has no enemy clusters bordering it, a cluster fleet cannot merge if there are no enemy clusters near neighbouring allied/own clusters) or attack a nearby enemy cluster system-capital. When this happens, add up the attacking fleets power and pit it against the clusters defensive power and fleet power (if it has a fleet). Then add a splice of RNG and have it slowly reduce each others power over the course of an hour or so. (This way, players could arrive at the System-capital and assist either side) Should the attacking fleet succeed, the Clusters capital becomes theirs and over the next hour, that cluster will convert to the victor's faction. Faction balancing: You may be thinking, "So, what? One faction gets the upper hand and starts gobbling the whole galaxy?" That is where 'Cluster Caps' come in, all factions have a cluster cap, if they are over this cluster cap, their offensive fleets get weaker by a flat %. This % increases slowly to a max % the more clusters they own, this is so a massive faction doesn't suddenly receive 99% smaller fleets for being 1 cluster over their max. If they are under this cap, the fleet size is unaffected (to ensure a faction with only 1 cluster will remain very weak unless the players ally them and ask them to attack a cluster, and helps them manually (more on that later)). Fleet power and defensive power are calculated by these factors: Distance from cores, player presence (if a player has several trading/shipyards... stations in a system and has positive relations with the faction present, that cluster gains a buff), faction perks (aggressive factions would have stronger offensive fleets) and nearby pirate clusters (more on them later). Player influence: Players can influence a clusters defensive and offensive strengths by: Positive: Trading Attacking pirates or aliens Building stations (more impact if in an alliance with the faction) Negative (most effective in cluster capital-systems): Raiding systems Destroying stations Smuggling Engaging fleet ships Alliance Options: When you are in an alliance with a faction, you can ask them to attack another cluster. This will bring up a menu where you can 'donate' resources to ~~bribe them to~~ attack a nearby cluster with their fleet. This cost is decided by: Relations with the target faction and their perks. An aggressive faction would be far cheaper to ~~bribe~~ get help from. Additionally, when you destroy a clusters fleet and all stations in its system capital, you get the option to claim the capital for yourself. You can then gift it to a nearby faction for money and relations. If you do not do something with the system, it will be turned into a pirate-capital after you leave the cluster and some time passes (more on that later). This could (but unlikely) be expanded to allow the player to create their own faction. A buy option costing multiple millions after taking a system-capital. You then get a menu where you name your faction, choose its color, and its ship/station designs. This could simply be a 'this design can spawn as a ship yes/no' or a 'this design can spawn as a ship yes/no and can only be between X slots and Y slots' to allow players to design certain ships that only spawn at certain sizes (with sizes that have no designs spawning randomly generated ships/stations). Pirates and You: Empty clusters will each have a pirate-capital somewhere within them. These do very little on the grand scale and factions will not attack them. All they do is: Reduce defensive and offensive fleet powers of nearby faction clusters. Spawn fleets that only target players if they are nearby. The closer to a pirate-capital the player is, the stronger the fleet. Fleet strength is also decided by distance to the core and the amount of nearby pirate-clusters owned by the same pirate faction. Event frequency judges the spawn rate of new pirate fleets. If you destroy a pirate-capital ships and stations, a new pirate-capital will generate in that cluster after a certain amount of time unless you claim it (or gift it). This means clearing out pirate bases can, potentially with claiming, almost completely delete pirates from the galaxy (events will have a small % of spawning pirates regardless of distance to pirate-capitals). Enemy Factions and You: If you enter an enemy cluster and begin attacking ships/stations. 'Fleet Power' ships will begin spawning to attack you. The amount of 'Fleet Power' donated to attack you is based on: How many slots total your combined forces have in that system, some RNG and your relations with the faction (the more hated, the more ships sent to attack you). The max amount of ships that can be deployed to attack you is: Total slots of your forces in a system X 3 (with a config allowing this to be increased). This means raiding a small outpost in a cluster to then start attracting and killing the clusters offensive fleet could be a strategy to weaken the amount of ships in the clusters system-capital (where fleets stay when not on a mission). If a fleet is below a % of strength, they will not send any more ships and become inactive until they regain most of their % back. If you are in an enemy cluster and you are near an allied cluster, allied offensive ships may spawn to assist you. This is based mostly on their perks. Other ship limits from above apply (max ships for example).

Currently factions are designed to have their territory sometimes bordering the territory of other factions with pirates spawning in out of nowhere all the time to suicide into the defences. I think that with the current galaxy generation there could be done a lot more! Idea: The factions can be divided into 3 main groups while the current main factions should be considered as nations which owns the territory Note: all of the 3 types are faction categories and not sub groups of a faction! 1. lawfull: Owners of the nation 2. quasi-lawfull: Independant factions that are accepted in the nations territory. They are no hostile towards the nation but they can be hostile among each other if they are rivaling the same business for example. 3. unlawfull: Pirates and the likes that are being hostile toward the nation but not neccesarily to the quasi-lawfull factions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Example Picture: Each of these factions will receive their own "area of influence" where they will appear for the player. This will be created randomly upon galaxy creation which could look like in the following picture as an example. The 2 circles in blue (Nr.1 and 2) show different nations (lawfull), each having their own territory. The orange circle (Nr.3) shows a pirate faction (unlawfull) The white circle (Nr.4) shows a traders faction (quasi - lawfull) with a wide area of influence. As we can see in that example the pirate faction shares an area of influence with both nations. In conclusion the pirates will attack any other faction that is hostile to in its area while patrolling ships of the factions also appear in sectors owned by the pirates to attack them. The traders faction could theoretically trade with all of the 3 factions but pirates are rarely not hostile to them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ General information: all types of Factions (lawfull, quasi - lawfull and unlawfull) own sectors in their territory while pirates usually have claimed less of them for their base of operation in comparisson to the nations. Quasi lawfull factions are also usually not interested in having many sectors with their own stations built in them. This could lead to many funny random scenarious. Imagine 2 lawfull factions being at war with another while a pirate faction only has their area of influence in one of the nations territories. It could lead to the case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" so lawfull faction 1 and pirate faction ships only shooting ships of lawfull faction 2. a couple more short aspects: - npc factions dont have any kind of dynamic changes to the reputations inbetween them or changes of their behaviour - all factions types are true factions that the player can become allied with offering all kinds of playstyles for the player to choose Remember the areas of influence are will always be generated completly random and lead to many interesting scenarios for the player to discover! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ optional change: Divide the ship and station generator into those 3 categories as well to give unlawfull, quasi lawfull and lawfull factions their own distinctible appearance! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ like always my ideas are to be seen as loose directions and not as copy and paste implementations into the game. If the developers want to modify it to their liking thats totally fine with me!

AI factions should have their own identity just like our player-created alliances have identity. Nothing too complex, simply: faction colors, faction symbols, and perhaps character portraits for the leader just like Captain update in 2.0 (or maybe not, for more roleplay potential). Anyway, the most important part should be the color and symbols. This is important to distuingish one faction from another, particularly because of their unusual, difficult to pronounce names. Letting them have other kind of identity should make the factions memorable and distinguishable. This identity should be shown not only in Diplomacy menu, but also in Galaxy Map menu. I created a mockup based on the mod Galaxy Map QoL. There should be a toggleable button (both in Galaxy Map and Diplomacy menu) that could toggle whether player wants to show faction color based on their relationship to players (hostile, ally, etc), or basd on their unique faction identity (color). In addition to that, in Galaxy Map, areas controlled by factions will display their logo/symbol. Areas that are not connected to each other should have separate smaller symbols per areas, while large areas should have larger symbols. This should work great with other suggestions like these:

Coming from Mount & Blade where the game world goes on with or without us, seeing factions declaring war and conquering each other is always fun. We could just do something else while watching control of certain sectors shift to other factions. This should allow a more dynamic world where it feels like a breathing, living universe. Would be nice to have diplomacy options (and sabotages/manipulation) as well.

I wish if it was possible to only have custom faction packs being spawned on the map, (so max can be about 17 based on the amount on the steam workshop), instead of trying to find them in the vastness of space mixed with so many other vanilla factions. Aggressiveness/chance to expand sectors as suggested by TenguKnight for these factions would be nice as it would add more immersion in an active galaxy. Instead of many small factions in the map, there would be large empires fighting for control, and each of them are from popular culture. Imagine Star Wars Imperial ships attacking Imperium of Man or even one of the groups from the Halo series, if there are such faction packs somewhere. I do hope such an option will be available in the future.

Pretty much what I envision is an overlay (similar to the trading Systems, but doesn't require an installation) that is toggled to show territory where your currently held Dangerous (or higher) Goods Permits are valid. Closest I can do now is searching the name of the faction (or at least the rather uniquely spelled part) to show sectors I've found of just that faction. Right now I've only got three permits from different factions, and granted I've gotten in good standing with them to boot, I'd still like an easier visual indicator of where about I can travel without having to worry.