When we presented our idea of a new faction influence concept (New Concept: Faction Influence), you had a lot of feedback and thoughts on the topic. We took all those into account and came up with a significantly reworked variant.
Here’s an overview:
In addition to planetary governments, there is now one faction government per faction. It consists of “faction officials” voted on in their own per-faction elections (likely not nearly as frequent as planetary elections).
These governments have their own government context separate from planetary governments. It’s not a prerequisite to be part of a planetary government before becoming a faction official candidate. We’re currently thinking the only prerequisite is belonging to the respective faction.
Systems still change faction affinity based on influence, but changes only go neutral → faction or faction → neutral, i.e. there’s no direct competitive back-and-forth between factions and no “hostile take-overs”. The challenge is about spreading and holding influence (i.e. more “PvE”).
Given the (intended) lack of “PvP”, the “influence decay” will be relatively significant, so that holding a large number of systems at the same time will become quite challenging. Influence requirements may also scale with population size, so that e.g. high-density systems may require more influence to “stay appeased”.
Faction governments have access to their own set of motions, one of which will be something like an “influence camapign”. This is the new major lever in distributing influence beyond its initial generation.
In the previous concept influence would constantly shift between adjacent systems, which is not the case anymore, instead influence either remains in the systems where it’s generated or is handed to the faction government to “fuel” their motions. Planetary governments will be able to decide about their “system vs. faction” split (potentially reducing the latter if they’re unhappy with their faction’s politics).
Other faction motions are TBD, but could involve things such as the previously mentioned “faction grants”, “starting planet rights” and other planetary or infrastructure improvements.
I like the change to have a single faction government. I think it’ll make the roles in that government a lot more competitive than more federated system level model. It’ll also create an opportunities to create a way to become a visible leader within a faction.
I wonder if there should be a faction chat (restricted to members of a faction) to allow discussion between the leaders of a faction and their “people”. A bit like planetary chat between governors/mps and the folks who have bases on that planet. Another option is a chat between faction MPs and planetary MPs.
I think the removal of direct faction on faction influence is probably a good idea for the first iteration at least, if for no other reason that it may not be “fun” to encourage folks to pile into a “winning” faction.
I like the idea of avoiding PvP here, but even without “stealing” from others, there are still some important systems that no faction currently claims, but several factions would likely fight for. For example, the “New Antares” ( KW-688 ) and “Shadow Garden” ( RC-040 ) systems. If one faction “wins” one of those systems for itself, and you don’t leave a way for another faction to do something against that (like conquering the system back), players could get frustrated because they feel powerless.
I have seen the anger and frustration based on just the name of one of these systems, so I’m sure you can imagine the pain of “losing” an important, but currently neutral, system to another faction without a way to reverse that.
I think a relatively simple way to give players more actions would be to allow multiple factions to spread influence to the same system at the same time, and the faction spreading the most influence takes over the planet.
I also really like the idea of local governments “pushing back” against their faction overlords and being able to gain some autonomy if desired. In my eyes, the players on a planet should be given a strong voice in how their planet is governed, and to a lesser degree, how it is aligned.
Finally, I also like the idea of faction policies such as designating starter planets and starting grants. I would add to this and suggest a policy of “expansion” which increases the number of plots on a planet. The justification could be that the construction of new infrastructure leads to more usable space on the planets surface. Of course, this idea does not have to fit into the faction influence features, it could also be a general government policy.
Not avery comprehensive answer. But when you only allow players of a certain faction to run for the faction government, then there should be some (expensive or non-trivial) way to change faction allegiance. Since I know of a few players who started in a different area and are now majorly involved in a different one. Who is eligible to vote in the faction elections?
I would second the idea of having some way to designate starter planets as the faction government and potentially building infrastructure to expand the plot limit on certain planets would also be a very nice task for such a faction government.
Many ideas. But I like the idea of a non-competitive version of this influence idea. I think many features could be built on top of this faction goverment system.
I like this new concept, and agree with a lot of what @Weiiswurst mentioned, especially about allowing multiple factions to influence the same planet. I’d also stress the ability for planets to influence themselves. It would be interesting if some planets decided they want to be neutral or independent, and could declare themselves as such against all other factions.
One add on for the faction governments. I think a useful skill for them to have would be to set and regulate the MMs. Currently y’all (the devs) update those as needed. I think it would be more in keeping with the spirit of the game to let the players decide what commodities get MMs and at what price points. A limit would have to exist on how many could have MMs, but I think this would both add content to faction governments and allow the players to take some autonomy in matters of the CXs.
How many faction officials? Will they have different offices? Will there be a parliament/congress of some sort?
What’s the expected term length? Would there be a motion to adjust that?
Will there be a way to “impeach” or “no confidence” members, if they become problematic or go AFK?
Can planets decide which faction to support? Can supporting themselves in excess of their faction lead to independence?
What happens to planets outside of faction space?
How will factions make money? Will there be a way for planetary governments to pass funds on directly, perhaps on a percentage and/or ongoing basis?
For the mechanics scaling with population, is that players or in-game pops? If the latter, would different tiers have different values for appeasement?
One problem that I see is with the current HQ production bonus, for example Verdant is a neutral planet but it is also the farming starter for Moria so it will likely turn Morian. This would mean that the HQ wouls switch from (tiny) RE/chem/fuel to (still small) construction/metallurgy.
Talking about starters: will the faction gov be able to set starter planets and their recommended professions?
And will there be faction wide taxes like on planets to finance for example gateways or other infrastructure or is it completely based on donations?
Can faction govs own objects like gateways or colony ships (in the future, together with corps owning stuff)?
Will the planet gov choose which faction they want to belong to or if they want to be independent or is it based on the players on the planet?
Is it planned for one of the future updates that “sub factions” can be created so that for example Hubur, Arclight, corp or frontier areas can operate partially independant while still being a part of the main faction or even completely independent? (mainly for RP reasons but also local rules like reduced taxes for frontier bases).
Starting faction but we will probably add a way for you to change factions (and make it easily accessible at least for the first time).
It’s not set in stone yet, but currently we’re thinking 5 players, all with the same rights / voting power, with influence periods lasting 2 weeks each and government terms 12 weeks.
An “impeachment” mechanism would be useful to have indeed, although abstaining from a vote due to inactivity isn’t supposed to be able to block any motions from going through.
Planets can only support the faction they belong to or not. Outside of faction space a planet is either neutral or stays with the last faction it belonged to (although we’re still discussing how long that should be possible, given it would create a universe of systems and planets potentially being not aligned in their faction affinity at all in the long run).
Currently they could already make money via MM sells, government programs, company deletions and ARC payments. We also have a concept for “faction levies” (shoutout to @Ficks_Dinkum) that could, depending on government settings, be different for local and foreign faction players to add on top of that.
Likely players on the planet for now, since it’ll be based on an “average daily amount of influence” per player.
Yes, that’s one of the faction motions we want to have.
That’s pretty much the “faction levies” idea I mentioned above.
Not planned yet, but an interesting thought!
Not planned, but I like the idea a lot! I think we first want to establish an interesting and fun gameplay loop with the core factions though.
Thinking about this further, this means that the Faction Councils will likely take it upon themselves to reimburse losses through inactivity if the value of a company upon liquidation is returned to the Faction itself.
I would also like some thoughts from people as to whether giving councils the power to apply “Sanctions” would be seen as an overall net benefit - it would allow for the communities to police unwanted behaviour in their regions, without being too inherently competitive. For example, you could have a sanction that reduces the effect of experts within that faction’s space, maybe lock players out of using LMs or prevent them from renting new warehouses.
Overall I do like the idea of this system more than what was originally proposed in September. Some questions/ideas:
Can there be a faction chat in game that people in a certain faction automatically get access to (like APEX global/help channels)? I think this would help in game coordination (not everyone uses the discord servers) and would also help the current governments make their cases to their constituents.
On MM sells/regulating the MM markets, how exactly would that work? If faction governments were able to generate revenue through MM sells, is there a danger that MM sellers would stop being a economic backstop, and instead be a source of competition against players that make RAT/BFabs (which are normally new players?).
Conversely, if faction governments managed MM buys as well, would MM buys come out of government coffers? If so, how would a faction government guarantee that they would be able to cover the money needed for having MM items sold to them?
(People may ask “if the money still comes from the aether, what’s to stop faction governments from setting the MM buyers super high?” Hopefully the threat of hyperinflation in that scenario is enough.)
For governments getting money from company deletions, is there any worry of a bad actor creating/COLIQing dummy companies in order to inflate government coffers? (Hopefully nobody would do this, but it may be possible).
On faction contracts: any thought on having the contracts be related to the active faction motion?
For instance, an “influence campaign” motion could spawn thematic contracts related to extending influence to another system (deliveries to that system, communication equipment, various consumables to “donate” to the populace to win them over, etc). A “restock grant program” could be similar (donations of BFabs, PSL, and worker consumables). A “change starter planet” motion could spawn contracts related to “building up” the necessary infrastructure on that planet. And so on.
I think this would help make a faction feel more “alive” and make players feel like they can contribute to faction governments/influence rather than the system just be a vote once a quarter.
If faction contracts also contribute to the overall success/failure of a motion, it could also act as an implicit veto: if the player populace doesn’t approve of the action a government is taking, they can just refuse to do contracts, drag their heels, and gum everything up.
Will faction contracts be paid out from government coffers when completed?
Are you considering other options where faction governments might be able to raise funds (bonds/a bond market, maybe?)
A few ideas on motions:
Any thoughts on a motion to let a faction purposefully “abandon” a system it has influence over (in case it becomes necessary or desirable on a strategic level)?
Any thoughts on motions to let faction governments interact with each other?
For example, @Weiiswurst brought up the point of there will still be conflict over some planets i.e. New Antares and Shadow Garden, and whoever loses the “race” would have no option other than to complain in various chat channels. A “system trade” motion where one faction hands over influence of a system in exchange for money or another resource might be a mechanism with which to help alleviate this concern/give the non-influential faction government an option while still preserving the PvE nature of faction influence as a whole.
Instead of the faction bonuses that we have now, could we have motions that provide different bonuses faction wide (assuming there is enough influence and/or support through faction contracts, as described above?)
There’s been talk of setting different faction tax rates on in-faction versus out-faction companies. Will this also set up the possibility of import/export controls i.e. tariffs and embargos?
Thanks for reading all of this. Looking forward to seeing how you all develop this concept further!
