Multiplayer and Faction Ideas

A common problem with multiplayer games (especially ones that support mods) is ending up with lots of small public servers with only 3-4 players on them, or larger private or modified servers. Currently atleast for me, factions just seem like a way to share grids with some other people, and have a private chat, I've got a couple of ideas that I think would help to get more people on fewer servers, and encourage more diverse playstyles, without mods. I think these also fit well within the world of space engineers, and the new colony systems being put in.

1. Faction gamerules.

This would allow factions to set conditional gamerules that are applied to everyone in the faction. I would imagine some simple conditional logic like:

[Allow/Prevent] [Action] if [Condition]

For example, in SE1 I feel like rovers don't get enough love in the game, so there are some rules I impose on myself to make them more valuable. No building thrusters in atmosphere and no functional buildings on ice. To create them with the proposed rules it might look like:

[Prevent] [Building -> Thrusters] if [Gravity > 0] and [Prevent] [Building -> Functional Blocks] if [Grid Intersects -> Ice]

You could also make a scrapyard type faction with something like:

[Prevent] [Mining] if [True] and [Prevent] [Building -> Most Things] if [True]

This would create more diverse factions that could be specialised in different things, and would also mean if you wanted to try a different play style it is as simple as changing factions.

2. Faction/Player Attributes.

To help find factions and other players with similar goals and playstyles, and also to reward different playstyles and encourage specialisation, I propose an attributes system, similar to the implementation in Project Zomboid, with each attribute having a positive or negative number associated, depending on the seriousness of it. You could use the attributes to help find factions, and to help decide whether to approve new members or not. A bonus could be applied for attributes the faction and player both share. Some example attributes could be:

• -3 Reduced Mining Speed
• -2 Reduced Carry Weight
• +3 Increased Welding Speed
• +3 Better trades with NPC's
• -5 Grinding only produces scrap

Or for some more fun ones:

• +10 Alien - You don't need oxygen
• -5 Vertigo - You loose health when piloting a ship

These could then couple with the gamerules to allow the faction benefits compared to other factions, a scrap faction for instance could take reduced mining, in exchange for extra strength, or maybe bonus resources when grinding, since they can't mine anyway. You could end up with factions that are better at mining, refining or shipbuilding, which should help promote trade and give reasons to join an existing faction rather than start your own.

3. Deeds and Blueprint rules.

To help create a market for designers and builders, in addition to resource production, and also to try and make servers have more of a community, and value in what people have made, I think we could make some changes to the blueprint system.

Firstly, and most simply, the owner of a grid can create a deed, which can be traded (or stolen) to transfer ownership of a grid. I would imagine this is not created by default, but instead there is a button in the interface when the owner can generate a deed. Possibly this could also be loot in encounters.

Secondly, to treat blueprints like tradable commodities. To do this right I think you would need some basic rules, or licenses, with options such as whether or not a blueprint can be made of the grid, how many times the blueprint can be used, and whether or not it can be traded.

The obvious use is that now you could have shipyards with their own designs that people can only get by trading, and that they could sell either the finished ship, or a blueprint that allows a person to build it one time. Other uses could be that factions could have smaller blueprints of ship or base parts using their design language, that members can grab to use on their ships, but not trade with other people, it could also mean that factions could have starter ship, rover or hab designs for their members that they can grab and build, rather than having a whole lot of pcu sitting around waiting for new members.

Possibly you could couple the blueprint changes with some sort of an option to create a ghost blueprint, which could be a sort of functional version of the blueprint, but without the resources used, that could be used for test drives, or even more creative like building in survival. You'd probably need to stop items and energy transfer in and out, limit the range, and make sure it can't damage other grids or players, but otherwise it seems like the natural evolution of the new blueprint building mechanics