Destinct NPC Factions

the rudest of clouds shared this feedback ago

Not Enough Votes

All of the different factions feel the same. it doesn't matter to me if i'm selling to the "Divine serpents" or the "artisan builders", only if they sell ships or items. here's a few ideas to make them more distinct.

NUMBER ONE: FACTION THEMES.

different factions sell different classes of ship. I don't know if the factions are randomly generated, but it works either way. the way it works first, factions all sell the same ships. which doesn't make much sense. why is the red faction selling the green faction's ships? how it could work is that different designs and lists of items that can be sold to at a station are stored together as separate "Themes". when a faction is generated, it chooses a theme and will only sell ships and buy items from that theme! faction x is a mining theme so they only sell mining and hauling ships, while they only sell refined metals and buy ores, with a few random components thrown in there. examples of themes...

- the mining theme above.

- "raider" theme that sells fighter, bomber and carriers, and trades ammo and guns.

- "dreadnought" theme that sells only small ships gone large and heavy armor warships and trades ammo and guns like the raiders.

- "scrapper" theme that sells cobbled together hulks of other ships welded together, aswell as grinder/welder ships. trades random stuff.

- "trade" theme that sells couriers and haulers, and trades components and refined metals.

- "manufacturing" faction that sells refining/assembler ships. refined metals and components.

- "balanced" faction that trades a mixed assortment of all of the above ships + any that dont fit in those categories. trades random.

not every station has to sell ships, but the possibilities are endless!

NUMBER TWO: BATTLES.

a battle happens between two factions. this one should be disable-able by players if their computer or server cant handle it.

how a battle happens is two factions (preference to factions themed around war) are picked as the two sides of this battle. 1-2 large ships and 3-5 small ships are picked on either side and start roughly 15 kilometers away from eachother. they both fly to a location and turn hostile against each other, (note: station should be blacklisted against this as they are shielded and shouldn't be targeted while spawning a "DO NOT APPROACH: ONGOING BATTLE" GPS mark is added . once all of one factions ships are rendered uncontrolled, unpowered, or the battle goes on too long the "winning" faction will retreat, and the GPS mark changes to "BATTLE CONCLUDED". with all the wreckage of the battle hanging around for a while before despawning. the player can go to the battlefield and loot the wreckage, as the despawning timer is paused if the player is within 5 kilometers of the wreckage, but they have to be careful, as a local "scrapper" faction has a chance of also turning up for the goods, grinding away at about 90% of the the wreckage, and they do not like others getting a piece of the pie.

NUMBER THREE: PLAYER-SUBMITTED SHIPS.

this can be a thing on the r/spaceengineers subreddit. make a post of "theme of the week: X faction theme" with a body of "alright everbody! todays theme of the week is X! excepting [ships that X faction theme produces], colors are [HEXCODE] for primary, [HEXCODE 2] for secondary, and [HEXCODE 3] for tertiary! good luck!" then, players will build ships that fit that theme, (they must only be built of blocks in those three colors, and no modded blocks). they must upload them to the workshop and add link them in comments to the post. then when the week is over, you can post the next weeks theme while curating the ships in the comments. the best/most upvoted get added to the theme folder. you could also add new themes with a post like "alright we're making a new theme, the theme is Y and the colors are..." with players submitting what they think fits this new theme!

I like this feedback

Replies (2)

AdaRynin ●

Re: Faction Themes:

I like your proposed themes (miners, raiders/military, scrappers (I really like that idea, a bit of Minmatar vibe!), traders/haulers, manufacturing, balanced), but not sure what to make of dreadnought.

Could such a specialisation cause an unfair advantage of player factions hogging the "better" stores, though? What if my faction happens to start near stores that specialise in attack helicopters and zerg drones, and yours near stores specialising in inflatable rovers and pencil sharpeners?

I do like the idea NPC factions that have distinct personalities. But would it not be fairer if all vehicle sellers sold a small balanced base set (their one favourite type of miner, of fighter, of survival rover), and the distinction was in the other half of goods?

E.g. one NPC faction sells one miner, one rover, plus variations of fighters. Another NPC sells one fighter, one miner, plus variations of rovers. The third sells a miner, a rover, a fighter, and 300 pencil sharpeners. Now, even if you spawn near the pencil sharpener store, you'd have a chance of buying at least one fighter (and modifying it) at the same time as the other player faction can buy their first attack helicopter.

And yes, NPC factions should colourise their sold ships! Simple pseudo-branding would make NPC factions much more memorable! We would have associations such as, "This newbie over there has a red survival rover, hmm, wasn't it the red faction that also sold red tanks? He can't have driven far... Let's look around if there is not a red store close by..."

Reply URL

the rudest of clouds ●

good point with paragraph 3, i thought of that and tried to word out they they all would sell a few similar ships, just with different colors and maybe a an extra set of wheels. i guess i thought of that with items, (probably because i was thinking of how No Man Sky does it, with all stations sell a bit of ferrite and carbon etc, aswell as trade goods) but i didn't think of that with ships. i dont want people to always hog the "best" faction, but maybe stations should space places not around planets, like derelict ships except not derelict. that way their too spread out for one faction to guard all of them.

and what i meant with the dreadnought faction is to set up a sort of rivalry of two NPC factions. with one factions focusing on always bringing numbers to the table with tons of fighters, vs the other having a small number of huge, tough ships and almost no fighters. quantity and quality (though i'm not saying dreadnoughts are necessarily quality, that's for you to decide ;P )

"red team thinks fighters are the best! they cant go 4 kilometers without needing to refuel! dreadnoughts are the way to go!"

"blue team is so pompous with there bit hunks of steel. cant even turn without an hours notice! Fighters all the way!"

URL

Filip Dušek ●

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback

Reply URL