New Concept: Faction Influence

[Counterpoint]

After the introduction of gateways, one of the next big features we’d like to tackle is faction-wide politics. In a way, this will be our version of introducing “conflict” and a constant back-and-forth between factions. Our plans are to strengthen faction identity and give giving politics something tangible to strive towards, other than “keep things running as efficiently as possible”. While the decision-making regarding this feature will largely fall into the hands of political actors, such as governors and members of parliament, every single player will be able to participate. And certainly, coordinating among as many players as possible within your faction, and not just between the different governments, will pay off.

Here’s a quick overview of the system we’re envisioning: Players generate faction influence via their reputation with each faction. Faction councils of all the governments within a system come together in regular intervals to distribute this influence between their own and adjacent systems. Building up enough influence of one faction within a system continuously can cause it to change its faction affinity, affecting the universe map, currencies and policies in a certain area.

Earning Faction Reputation & Influence

Players will now be able to earn faction reputation with each faction, not just their own. As usual, one way to do so is fulfilling faction contracts, which will now be offered from foreign factions as well. Additionally, running production lines on a faction planet with many content workers will be a new way to increase your reputation with the respective faction. Holding political offices will generate additional reputation on top.

In between faction councils, you will be able to assign your faction reputation to any (faction-space) system you own a base in. This assignment converts your reputation into faction influence to be used by the political actors of the system during the voting face of their faction council.

Note that choosing between all the systems you’re associated with is each individual player’s call. So faction-wide coordination, and potentially the mobilization of “slumbering” influence supplies, will be key to your own faction’s expansion or overcoming another faction’s plans.

Faction Councils

In regular intervals, all governments within a system come together as a faction council to vote on how to distribute the influence generated by players. They will have their own system-wide group chats to coordinate and make plans.

In practice, each council member will create their own suggested influence distribution and the one applied in the end will be an average of all the suggestions. So again, a coordinated effort with everyone following a shared plan will be the most efficient and ensure as little as possible influence goes “astray”.

Note that, as most of the ideas presented here, the details are still very much in flux and subject to change based on feedback or testing. For example we’re thinking of weighing the average by the population sizes each council member is responsible for instead of simply just calculating the raw average from all suggested influence distributions.

Influence Shifts

After the faction council voting period ended (which naturally happens at the same time for all systems in the universe), faction influence will be moved between systems according to the final distributions.

At this point the new faction influence values are determined for each system. Note that additional factors might come into play here, such as defensive infrastructure (Counter Influence Agency). Additionally, pre-existing influence values will “decay” if no new influence is added externally for a long time (which could even result in a system losing its faction affinity altogether).

That said, now we can, for all systems, determine whether there are any changes in terms of which faction is the dominating influence in a system!

Faction Affinity Changes

Any system where the strongest faction influence is not the same as the system’s current faction affinity will change their affinity to that new faction. Note that we are still determining how immediate that change is going to be. For example we’re considering a “threatened” status in case the influence differences are relatively small, and only an already threatened system would then be able to actually change its affinity.

A system changing its faction affinity will for example affect its local rules (and their limits in it had no affinity before), its currency (likely not immediately but via a “currency adjustment motion” from the government) and potential “foreign-faction production levies”. The latter are another thing we’re considering introducing to strengthen the overall faction identity. While any producer within faction space would have to pay a certain amount to the local faction, players belonging to another faction are subject to higher levies, and thereby incentivized to stay within their own (or outside any) faction’s space.

Of course the faction spread will be visualized via an updated map display mode for the classic strategy game feeling of “painting the map in your color”, and to allow you to plan your counter-moves for the next cycle.

As usual, please let us know what you think of this idea! We read every post and will take your opinions, suggestions and concerns into account while developing the concept further!

See you in APEX!

[Archiel]

This sounds pretty cool! A few thoughts / questions:

We have a lot of players who identify as Antares residents, but they started in a different region. (we often recommend people do their first base on Promitor, then move every subsequent base to ANT). Will there be a way for players to change their faction? Or maybe base it on where they have most of their bases? Specifically this is with regard to something like the “foreign-faction levies”.

Faction Councils

I understand this as a sort of per-system government. When I hear the name “Faction Council”, I assume this is one council for all of Antares, one for Insitor, etc. Maybe a different name would be better there.

I note that most planets (by count), are pretty small, and most systems have one good planet, and maybe a second planet with just a handful of bases on it. There’s a couple core systems that might actually have interesting System Councils. In Antares, it’s probably just Antares I and Antares II. The rest of them are pretty well dominated by a single planet.

I’m governor on 8 planets right now (I downsized a bit). That would put my on 7 different System Councils. If this was something I’d need to check each week for influence votes, I would probably feel a bit of burnout. At a minimum, I’d want them to persist…. COGC already has this problem, they never change, 99% of the time no one wants them to change… but someone needs to click vote each week to keep them turned on.

Especially with influence decay, a recurring vote might feel like a chore. So a system that avoid that would be lovely.

I think these councils might be more interesting if they happen per-sector. There’d be few of them, and they’d have more interested actors. Right now I think 90% of system councils would have a single attentive member, which is generally the case for planets.

Weighting by population is a good idea, probably weighted per worker tier like COGC votes.

Faction Rep/Influence

I like the idea of lots of groups that assigning their influence in different directions on a map. So the faction might coordinate where some systems are trying to push north, and other systems are trying to push south, etc.

I have a ton of mechanical questions, but I assume these things are still in the ideation phase. Does a player spend (and lose) their reputation when assigning it as influence? Or do they just assign/pledge their reputation, and it is preserved? Do players still start with 100 rep? If Moria assigns influence to the adjacent system of Gundabad, can that system push that influence out to the next system? So the influence can diffuse more than one system from where it originates?

Can the APEX Representation Center be tied to any of these mechanics? Right now, it is something of a forgotten feature, since it has no mechanical effect. I could imagine contributors to the ARC could gain more influence per week. Also don’t forget the CORPARC!

It would be really cool if your corp could play a role in the faction system. Right now the lack of mechanical features within corps cause a lot of players to ignore the corp system in favor of single-individual corps just for the 10% bonus on their chosen planet. OOG has half a dozen “members” who don’t use the corp tag since they’d rather pick a different planet for their HQ bonus. Driving players into social groups is really nice since it improves retention - at a certain point, players in a MMO are sticking around for the friendships, and it’s nice to encourage that.

Flipping Factions

Non-faction systems are often deliberately chosen because it gives you different controls over taxes and base establishment fees. If this system flips systems in and out of a faction, that could have some serious consequences. It can invalidate plans and player intent. I just want to make sure that doesn’t get overlooked accidentally. In some ways, a system might “get worse” if it flips from non-affiliated to a faction system.

There are gonna be a lot of opinions in both directions on the conflict aspect of this. Flipping some systems like Evo’s systems or the old IDC farming systems would be a pretty hostile act. It’s a game design decision if the game moves in that direction, and I don’t think I have a personal opinion on that.

Generally, I think more people would be more interested in using the faction system to “further development” vs. flipping BEN and HRT to ANT or MOR colors.

Faction Affinity and Faction Bonuses

I think there’s some good opportunity here for a rework of the faction HQ bonus - “Company Headquarters” (Antares gets 10% electronics, etc). If this bonus is tied to actually building within your faction, it better achieves the faction identity idea. Right now I get that electronics bonus even if I don’t build in Antares faction space. I also don’t need to have most of my bases in Antares, or really associate with that faction at all.

Faction levies are interesting. Generally people don’t calculate taxes into their profits, because they aren’t modeled in most of the tools. They will occasionally and sort of randomly get riled up about them. I think a planet setting taxes for some people but not others will drive a lot of conflict. If the planetary government can choose the foreign-faction tax rate, be prepared for it to be set to 0 for most planets.

You could use them to incentivize players to swap factions, but only if that’s implemented as an option!

I guess it would also be interesting to get some sort of bonus other than another stacking production % bonus for faction affinity. We’re just so used to maximizing production efficiency, it gets hyperfocused on.

Comments from others:

1. [the proposed rep system] works if people WANT conflict. But I have yet to see the community want to do that. And we already have the ability for “hostile takeover”, and don’t use it.

2. If this goes the same way as COGCs, someone will cobble together a spreadsheet that computes the optimal faction bonuses for planets and then anyone deviating from that plan will be vilified for cutting into another player’s profits

[Counterpoint]

Hey @Archiel, thank you very much for the detailed feedback and thoughts! Let me try to address a few things!

@Archiel

Will there be a way for players to change their faction?

You make a good point that faction identity was not a big deal when this universe started, so it makes sense to offer this. Of course it shouldn’t be a regular option, and I don’t think players should be able to flip back and forth by closing / founding bases in different regions. I can see this being maybe a one-time option per player, or one with a very long cooldown.

@Archiel

Maybe a different name would be better there.

Good point, I guess it’s more of a “system council”. Although faction politics and influence is what’s being spread, so that’s why we’ve so far been referring to them as “faction council(s)”.

@Archiel

most systems have one good planet

That is, currently, true. However, I’d note that a planet doesn’t have to be “good” to be part of the council. It just needs a government and is then able to generate additional faction influence for the system. If you’re interested in pushing into this direction, you’d in fact be encouraged to incorporate as many planets as possible.

@Archiel

If this was something I’d need to check each week for influence votes, I would probably feel a bit of burnout

The cycle length is an open question. I think a week is certainly too short of a period. A month might be too long though before you get to see any effect of the decisions made and it wouldn’t feel like a back-and-forth as much? So maybe bi-weekly?

@Archiel

councils might be more interesting if they happen per-sector

One consequence of that would be that sectors as a whole would belong to a single faction, plus it would dramatically increase the potential influence targets. Instead of ~3 adjacent systems, you’d have all the systems in a sector as a baseline and then all the systems connected to all those systems. So this might quickly become overwhelming (“paradox of choice” and all)?

@Archiel

Can the APEX Representation Center be tied to any of these mechanics?

It’s an interesting idea. The ARC was specifically designed to not interfere with game mechanics, basically as a pure leaderboard race for those who are looking to participate in something like this. So I’d probably rather try to tie the faction influence system to other existing systems first.

@Archiel

It would be really cool if your corp could play a role in the faction system.

Reworking corps has been on our list for a while. I think currenly they’re very loose and don’t really tie into faction at all, and there certainly is a place for that kind of group feature (we’ve been discussing whether to turn current corps into something more like “interest groups” and having other groups that are more game-mechanics-related; I guess (planetary) governments + (system) councils are that in a way, but on the politics rather than the purely economic level).

@Archiel

In some ways, a system might “get worse” if it flips from non-affiliated to a faction system.

Absolutely, and part of that is intended. We realize this introduces a new type of dynamics into the game that can feel more “adversarial” than what’s currently in the game, but we also think it can be very interesting to have to deal with and work around these kinds of events instead of having a rather linear idle-game-like growth (which should still be the case overall if you’re doing well, you just might get more “hiccups” in certain parts of the universe along the way).

I should also note that we’ll very likely have a set of “core systems” per faction that can never be flipped. Also so that new players starting in those would not have to worry much about faction changes until they expand to outer regions.

@Archiel

If this bonus is tied to actually building within your faction, it better achieves the faction identity idea.

Very good point, the HQ bonus concept should be looked at again anyways if faction affinities can change dynamically. Will definitely take this into account!

@Archiel

[the proposed rep system] works if people WANT conflict

Now, while there’s tons of valuable feedback in your post, this secretly feels like the crux to me. Players are currently very used to basically playing a fully cooperative game. Yes, in theory there’s economic competition, but in the end everyone can grow, players help each other out etc. So this concept would introduce a level of, potential, conflict that’s currently not a thing, but (as in the real world with politics playing off of economy and vice versa) could enable very interesting gameplay dynamics. At least, that’s the idea. I’d love to hear from a few more players on how they feel about this (and yes, we will probbaly put this in front of non-behind-the-scenes players at some point too). Could be that we may have to re-think the topic of faction politics as a whole and fit it more into the current cooperative nature of the game. It would come with less shake-up potential, but maybe also with fewer “new challenges” to overcome in consequence.

Thank you very much for the input again!

[Counterpoint]

FYI: This post was initially made available to our supporters with behind-the-scenes access exclusively. We now moved it to the public feedback category to collect feedback on a broader scale. Looking forward to your thoughts!

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

How important is the distribution of player faction affiliation in this? As Moria seems to be the busiest CX I assumed that there are more people is NCE faction than any other.

[bobnobrain]

All this faction fighting could become kinda hostile. Maybe we can limit the fighting to something mostly decorative? Like, repainting the map without actually changing local currencies and faction bonuses. Or maybe whichever faction is shown the first on the company creation screen

I would love to see some kind of player-run faction-wide government as a part of this update. So that it can decide, for instance, which starter worlds are recommended to new players and for which professions are they advertised. And said government can have a financial account, so that old players can donate money to it, and the players in the faction parliament can spend this money on grants for new players and on developing planetary/system infrastructure. This will give player initiatives like ADI some in-game tools for hunting and capturing new players
So that as a new player, when you create your company, you can see actual info on which planets are better for what profession, and what help can you receive from your faction government. And all of this would be player-driven!

[jackinabox]

I like where Bob’s mind is on this. I think the game does better, at this unfinished stage at least, by focusing on cooperation, not conflict. It’s currently fairly difficult to do so in-game, so decent tools and great communities have formed outside the game to support that cooperation (coops, bots, etc.).

The game already has a lot of tools in place to allow either faction-wide government or more robust corps/coops because of the implementation of the context window. Before repainting the galaxy (and definitely before opening the can of worms that is increasing taxes or otherwise penalizing the “losing” faction), I think it makes sense to give corps the context window so that they can have centralized accounting, etc., similar to planetary governments. This would allow corps to function as coops, should they choose, governed by boards of directors and with MUCH simpler and more transparent accounting.

I don’t want to go too into depth on an idea not directly related to this thread, but I think overall emphasizing cooperation over non-economic conflict is best in this economic simulation and welcome the dev team increasing functionality (and making cool quirks, like owning shares in a corp, mean something again).

I will also associate myself with those who do not want a ton more checkboxes or notifications to participate in conflict through a lot of votes; if the game goes down this path, allow us to give someone our proxy.

[eminence32]

A question on the mechanics:

@Counterpoint

Players will now be able to earn faction reputation with each faction, not just their own. As usual, one way to do so is fulfilling faction contracts, which will now be offered from foreign factions as well. Additionally, running production lines on a faction planet with many content workers will be a new way to increase your reputation with the respective faction.

So I’ve got a base on Phobos (which is currently owned by Antares), so I’d be earning reputation with Antares just by letting my production lines run there? And then when it comes time to assign that Antares Reputation to some system, can I assigned it to any faction-owned system like the Benten system? Or do I have to assign my Antares Reputation to some Antares system?

@Counterpoint

In between faction councils, you will be able to assign your faction reputation to any (faction-space) system you own a base in.

Will this be something that every player will have to do every few weeks? If so, I worry that almost no one is going to do this. We already have a pretty huge problem with COGC programs. For example, Gibson has 400 players, but only 11 of them voted in the most recent COGC election. Or Deimos has 580 players, but only 13 of them voted. If people don’t assign their reputation to systems, will that reputation be unavailable to the faction councils?

@Counterpoint

In regular intervals, all governments within a system come together as a faction council to vote on how to distribute the influence generated by players.

How do governments vote on this? Will each government need to pass a motion on their planet to dictate how their influence will be distributed? Or will each member of parliament get a vote on the council? Do you envision any tweaks to how governments are elected? For example, today you don’t need to have a base on a planet to run for government/parliament there (though you can’t vote).

[Corriild]

I like the idea of giving faction points more relevance. As a player who doesn’t medle in planet politics i like to focus on some possibilities it could affect every single player individually:

Faction Influence Tiers

One idea for making people want to collect influence in different factions is to reach a certain tier. Giving players a target to strive to (such as reaching a high tier) other than expanding your empire sounds appealing in my opinion. Whenever you reach a new tier you’re granted some kind of reward. These rewards should be big enought to make people want to reach new tiers, but not as big as to not being competetiv if you dont have that tier.

Some examples may be:

• Daily generation of a certain amount of fuel/other consumables at that factions station
• Access to a single already completely filled planet in that factions space (like a ghost plot for new players)
• Decrease the speed at which buildings degradate in that factions space

Every faction should have their own rewards, adding to that factions identity and giving people a reason to collect reputation in different factions.

Faction Contracts

I think the current faction contracts could be utilised to add more to a factions identity. The rewards of a contract should give more items that the faction is associated with, and more items that you actually need as an input in your production chain. A contract feels way better if it rewards me with items i actually need and it adds a feel of the faction looking out for me.

Faction Taxes

Currently we only have some production taxes on a planet level. Adding some kind of faction wide tax for having bases in that factions space would make sense to me, especially if you have a low reputation. This could be utilised to combat inflation a bit. I could also see a tax for trading at a factions station (new players should probably be exempt for a certain amount of time, or just start at a higher reputation)

[Laaxus]

Hello, this is my feedback. I’ll separate it into 2 posts. First, I’ll go through each section and comment on what was said. Second I’ll give my own suggestions.

PART 1: Comments

Earning Faction Reputation & Influence

I think this is the part I dislike the most. I think faction reputation should not be convertible into influence, for the following reasons:

• I don’t think doing errand with faction contract should means the faction has more influence.

• I don’t think population should give influence directly. Let’s imagine 2 bases, base A full of scientist, producing nothing, and base B, SME producing very profitable SI. Why should base A give more influence than base B ?

• I don’t think holding political offices should mean the faction has more influence. Let’s imagine case A : planet A.1 producing 100 coin a day, and case B : planets B.1 and B.2 producing 50 coin a day each. IMO, both case should give the same amount of point, but the advantages and drawbacks should be on the strategic level. B should not be advantaged just because “they have one more governor”.

  Furthermore, each planet must hold government offices, so it doesn’t matter in a faction fight, and on top of all of that, it gives the perverse effect of everybody fighting over every single government offices to get faction point; however competent they are. This is why I am EXTREMELY against offices giving reputation point and influence, in the office current implementation.

This is why I think reputation and influence should not have any direct link. My suggestion, that I’ll describe later, is to keep faction reputation as standing / ranking inside the faction and influence being the actual power AKA MONEY, but more on that later.

Factions Councils

I’m sorry to say that I dislike this idea entirely. In short, it creates screens, clicks, lot of complexity, for no further depth to the game.

If the result is an average anyway, you can let each planet decide where its influence should go and you get the exact same result, with much less complexity.

This game is already UI heavy, it honestly should be reworked, and many screens should be made into one, but that’s a topic for another time. However, we should strive to not make the problem worse for no real purpose.

Furthermore, there are systems with only one planet colonized. All the system council stuff will be a real pain.

Let me state that again: Governance is click heavy enough. This game greatest point is that it does not require lot of time if you want to. The basic maintenance of your base can be done in 5-30m, depending on how advanced one is, but governance take much more time and care, with COGC that does not have any storage and must be voted/ input filled every single week times each planet one govern.

Influence Shifts

What I dislike about the presented system is that, if I understand how it works, there’s little reason to put influence in systems that are not at the borders. And if, for example, Moria can claim an Antarean system from the other side of the universe, it will be chaotic and very frustrating.

I can be wrong, but the influence game, as presented here, seems like a micro-game, managing influence system by system, when PrUn is a game about infrastructure and long-term planning. Influence game should also reflect that.

Faction Affinity Changes

This is the hardest part to review.
IMO, this is the most crucial part, but it relies on everything else, so it doesn’t make sense to criticize it when I don’t support anything it relies on.

[Laaxus]

PART 2: What I suggest

This is just a list of thoughts. Feel free to pick any, all, or none of them. Consider it food for thought. I hope it will help this new system in any small way.

Faction point

• Faction points (FP) should be totally unrelated to influence, no link at all between the two
• FP should be used to rank people inside the faction and that should be it
• FP gain should be exponentially harder to get, like HQ upgrades. Late game, main source of FP should come from contribution to the faction
• Any meaningful change to FP should mean a reset for everybody

Faction councils

• The faction should have objectives everybody can participate, like infrastructure. Late game faction contracts should be contributions to that global objective, in exchange for cash and FP.
• Apex representation center should be reworked, but in the meantime, it could exchange FP for money, and that money would go directly into the faction budget.
• The faction Objective could be decided through a voting system, using FP ?
• Factions objective could be things like building a gateway, infrastructure on planets, or anything related to influence.
• Players would then receive contracts to participate to the faction objective, which would give them a fixed amount of FP, but the contribution required would scale with the amount of FP, like HQ with AFabs. Players could also receive contracts for cash, but that would overlap with the apex representation.

Faction space

A system can have 4 states:

• Historical: System in the original faction space of a faction that will never ever be contestable
• Claimed: System containing a station controlled by the faction
• Unclaimed: System not controlled and not contested

Furthermore:

• To claim a system, a station should be built through a faction objective.
• A station can be upgraded and improved for better infrastructure, through faction objectives
• A station can be destroyed through combats, started by another faction.
• A station defend itself through defense systems and fighting ships.
• Fighting ships can be built through faction objectives and then assigned to a station in auto defense mode. But player can also build their own fleet and defend / attack station by themselves.
• A fight is a matter of infrastructure (long term investment and strategy) and supply (short term tactics and economic power)

Stations & logistics

Stations provide many benefits

• Allow a system to be claimed
• consuming a bit of supply (just for maintenance/repair)
• increased FTL speed between 2 system (depending on the lowest station level)
• Could be requirements for many of the future update (automatic shops, energy update, planet terraformation, etc)
• Main benefit would be the automatic supply, both for fights and good shipping.

Stations can be upgraded, but it should take an exponential cost (like HQ).

Let’s imagine a fight in system T, defenders need 10 supply (whatever that is) per day to be at full power. Player P decide to contribute 1 supply at the CX, the supply is automatically transported from the CX to the fight using drones, through the automatic supply infrastructure.

• Drones must be built manually, through faction objectives & faction contracts.
• Drones must be repaired, also consuming materials
• Drones take time to go the destination and come back to the CX, meaning fighting further away is a disadvantage.
• A fight can be supplied by multiple path from the CX
• The amount of supply being able to be automatically transported depends on the amount of available drones, the amount of path, and the bottleneck on each path.
• In peace time, people could put cargo in their local station with a specific bids, and available drones would automatically scan shipping order and take the one with the highest price per jump. The profit would go to the faction coffers.

The main benefits of this system is that it rewards strategic thinking, cooperation, but also, it automatically balance itself out.

Let’s imagine a strong faction A is currently waging a war against faction B over system T, being right at the middle. Let’s imagine A won the war.

• Station T was destroyed, so it must be rebuilt and is therefore quite weak
• A can’t just instantly wage a far for T+1, as T would be the biggest bottleneck in the automatic supply
• Even if A won again and again, let’s imagine they’re contesting T+3. The closer they go to B CX, the harder it would be to increase the bottleneck compared to B, because the path A to T+3 is now much bigger than B to T+3
• As each station consume a bit of supply, A has to increase station supply early in the path to compensate for the longer path, meaning every station in every system will get upgraded eventually, whatever happens.

It’s also very nice from a player point of view:

• A player who do not care could do nothing and would not be disadvantaged.
• A player who care but is busy could just give supply or money at the CX
• A player who is very invested could create their own combat fleet, “supply” production chain and influence fights themselves.

One can also imagine giving supply to another faction in help. For example, faction M could decide to provide its economic power to help B resist, making inter-faction diplomacy interesting.

[CoinCrafter23]

Question: would starter planets/capital systems (ie Hortus) be immune to changing?

[YuLun]

I’d love to see some sort of uncertainties got introduced into this game and this concept is indeed an opportunity to do so. The fact that in current stage of game, any player could be almost omniscience by simply browsing all commands made this game a bit boring. I found myself would spend a long time planning out some ambitious production bases over several sectors, and when it’s done on PrUn Planner I immediately lost the motivation to realise it in game. (So now I’m moving black boxes across CX for fun as that’s the only approach with enough unpredictability and uncertainty for me to enjoy.)

But I don’t quite like some ideas of this concept so here’s the breakdown of my options on this:

Earning Faction Rep & Influence

I don’t like the idea of earning faction reps from any faction, as there’s only 4 (+the forgotten Exodus Council) factions in game, gaining reps from 2 of them would mean the player have a potential to affect half of the faction area in total. To me that is a terrible balancing design. I would stick with earning faction rep from only one faction, but introduce the ability to change which particular faction to earn faction rep.

Faction/System Council

The idea of having a place to let every governor in a system to sit down and vote doesn’t make sense for a concept about adding conflicts. As it’s possible that in a same system, there’re governors from different faction regions and it’s very likely for them to have disagreements. Some of them might want to expand influence to a nearby system while others might just want to take over the system for the interest of their faction.

My idea on how to tackle this particular issue is there would be an “invite“ phase before every vote. Any governor in the system could invite other governors in the same system to vote on something, this would also make it future-proof if we’d have for example some infrastructure projects requiring larger scale coordination. Then if a certain ratio of governors have accepted the invitation the vote may start, otherwise it got cancelled due to lack of response. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to limit how often the interval between two invites could be, as there might be a need for rapid meeting & voting around some faction flipping frontline if that would eventually happen.

Faction Influence Spread & Affinity Change

I like the idea about faction influence got defused into nearly systems, but sadly that’s the only part I like.

First, I don’t think it’s suitable for players to directly manipulate faction influence by a vote, in my opinion that’s just a war game about sending troops that magically annihilate foreign ones, yet under a different cover that made it looks peaceful.

Second, faction affinity of a system would automatically change is unnatural and weird, especially when combined with a vote from neighbouring system is the determine factor for that change. It’s giving me a vibe of Imperialism from 19~20th century and for a futuristic space game it just feels off to have it.

My suggestion is to scrap this whole system completely and implement it in a whole new method that’s based on planet population. Pretty much like the real world, people would like to move to a better place with for example better health care or lower living costs or safer community. So for a planet with a functioning government, it would get a score based on needs fulfilment. The life support would be an overall factor for the final score while other fields in a weighted sum. Then sum the scores for all planets in the system according to faction of the governors (for some core planets could just lock that), the faction with highest score would be the most influential faction in the system. This way it guarantees that any expansion require a player to actively run a CoGC in a formerly non-faction region planet and also encourage investment on planet infrastructure.

Corporation & Faction

I think it’s time to address this as it can greatly affect gameplay. Corporation can only be built on planets that’s not in faction region so it have to be changed during or shortly after this concept being implemented.

Also some questions about the hierarchy of corporation and faction: are they going to be at a same level, or the corporation would be lower than faction? If they’re going to be at same level, would faction be treated as some sort of starter corporation? Or if it’s lower than faction then would it also have a faction representation? How would this affect corporation if it does have a faction representation?

[MADDOG9100]

I would rather see some love for corporations and a better way to manage members, multiple wallets, maybe a tax system, shared corporation warehouses, ability to build gate ways, maybe the ability to build multiple sub HQ’s, ship management for corporation. Also would like to see repeating contracts, kinda annoying seeing the button and it not be able to pressed.

[Filefolders]

I like map painting, which probably isn’t an unusual overlap for people with affinity for this game, and I certainly think the Insitor flag should flutter in the Boucher breeze in a more official capacity. That said, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of reason for the players to want conflict for its own sake. What’s the point of raising taxes on foreigners if all taxes are for at present is maintaining planetary population? Spite?

When I think about reasons for conflict, what comes to mind for me is infrastructure mega-projects. What is government for if not solving issues of collective action, and what does government need if not taxes to fund those solutions? Government above the planetary level seems naturally disposed to being interested in gateways, which are large enough to require collaboration and which can be positioned to affect multiple planets. This has naturally arisen, with separate gateway preparation projects in each faction, led by patriotic corporations. Why not have the extra taxes go past the planetary government and to the sector or faction government for such uses? This way, not only am I being bullied with higher taxes for being a foreigner if I smelt aluminum in Antares space instead of back home on good ol’ Berthier, I also am funding their revisionist gateway connection to Castillo-Ito space (literally who?) instead of the workers’ righteous highway to Boucher. This still requires some sense of patriotism to matter, but it also gives players reason to care to what faction a planet belongs.

Furthermore, I think any elevated tax rate for foreigners should be set at a level of government above the planet. Consider planetary production taxes the equivalent of municipal taxes. The faction is the national government imposing its own taxation. Also, if we’re going to offer players the opportunity to impose additional costs on foreigners, what about empowering a faction government composed of players to impose tariffs on their faction’s CX? In a game about tradeoffs, this adds a new layer of revenue generation for projects to benefit the commonwealth which needs to be weighed against the cost of capital flight of foreign businesses and the alienation of foreign trade. If tariffs could be set per faction, this also could create interesting inter-faction dynamics rather than the relationship between any two given factions being mechanically identical, as has been the case so far.

All that said, I think there are some quality of life changes which might be more important for the game before any of this gets much attention. I will take this opportunity to beg once again for an automatic government storefront for governments to automatically pay people for restocking authorized infrastructure upkeep materials.

[Cyrup]

Hi, I’m Cyrup. I’ve been playing this game for a while now, but it’s the first time I’ve posted on the forums. I have a few thoughts/questions about the system as it’s proposed.

Questions on the system as it’s proposed:

1. The proposed system lets players earn faction reputation outside of their own faction. For example, let’s pretend there is a player in the NEO faction that has a base in Uponor (CIM faction space). They get assigned CIM tasks and, upon fulfilling them, gain CIM faction reputation.

The way I’m reading it, they could then assign that influence in CIM space only, generating CIM influence that would then be used by the governor of that planet to, potentially, vote on initiatives that would affect NEO space negatively.

In this instance, why would the NEO player ever use their CIM reputation? Could it be used as counter influence instead, or in another way?

2. What about bases outside of faction control? Do they just not generate influence?

• If someone or a group settled in a non-faction system and a faction decides to go after it, what is their recourse? Do they just have to sit there and take it?
• If a player decides to, say, settle around Hubur as a challenge, are they cut out of the influence system altogether?

3. Is there a system in place to prevent one faction from steamrolling the other factions if they were ever to gain a significant numbers advantage? I think the system decay part seems like it’s intended for this, but I wonder if having systems closer to the core needing more influence to “flip” might need to be part of it too.

4. Planetary taxes are already set pretty low, with most governors (as far as I’m aware) either setting taxes to just barely cover expenses, or set altruistically with the governor basically eating the expenses of running the planet. In relation to the “foreign production levy”:

1. Is it automatically set, or is it set by the governor?
   1. If it’s automatically set, would it be high enough for most players to care?
   2. If it’s set by the governor, what’s to stop them from setting it to 0 in order to not inflame foreign producers already on the planet?
2. Does it go to the planetary governance, or to the faction-wide government?
   1. If it goes to the faction-wide government…where does it go? (Or is it just consumed and acts as a deflationary measure?)
   2. If it goes to the planetary governance, why should any of the core/non-threatened system governors care about the faction council system, other than being yet another series of buttons they are obligated to click once every period?

5. Can a (for example) NEO player still be governor of a planet aligned to a different faction? If so, do they sit on the faction council of the opposed faction? If not, do they automatically lose their governorship?

My thoughts:

I do like the idea of the four (five?) factions having more of a presence in the game, and for ways for players to really around their respective flags.

I guess my biggest fear is that there isn’t going to be a lot of buy in from a lot of players the way the system is described right now. Unless players have bases near the borders of faction space, there’s really is no risk for them. Unless they are in faction space and either a) have a base near a faction border that would be negatively affected by a flip and/or b) they really like map coloring games, I don’t think there are very many reasons for players to engage in it.

I think I like some other’s ideas of there needing to be a player or governor wide faction governance first, before this is implemented. It could tie into the foreign-production levy and CX tariff ideas (I know tariffs and more extensive import/export gameplay are also on the roadmap).

I do like some of Laaxus’ ideas regarding this. Funds generated by those could be used for faction wide buffs and other infrastructure projects - these projects could have to be fueled through the purchase of materials from players, giving players economic incentives to participate. Faction wide buffs versus system-claiming stations might give trade offs to the factions as well - do you prioritize increased tax revenue with the risk of spreading yourself too thin, or do you try to maximize what you have? And how does your faction grow its internal markets to support those endeavors?

I think consideration also has to be given to bases outside of faction space, players who settle out there, and any other exploration loop. Having to generate faction influence and gaining faction wide buffs might disincentivize players settling out into the Rim or participating in any other exploration gameplay, unless there are other incentives.

Finally, as others have pointed out, this only works if players want faction competition. Right now, the game is very much a cooperative game - the cross universe initiative to link gateways is evidence of this. I do believe that if this is put into the game, it would represent a big sea change in the underlying social “rules” of the game and would best be put in as part of a new universe/game wipe, where those “rules” could be reset as people plan their new bases.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope this makes at least some sense, and I’d love to hear people’s further thoughts on all of this (on anything related to this, not just my post). I am ultimately excited about having more things to do with factions, so I am interested in this, and I can’t wait to see how this all develops.