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Fleets, Exploration, To Boldly Go Where...
uhmari
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
No crazy suggestion post has gone before...
Looking at potential ways to progress end game, I came up
with a revision to my idea about exploration, Pvp, Expansion in the universe.
Creating a Race
I'd like to create a new feature in Foundry for fleets.
This upgrade would allow a Fleet leaders to fabricate planets As well as Make a racial template for its fleets species. You may choose to pool from the same faction (Federation, Klingon) or create up to 10 variations yourself.
Each Fleet will be able to pick symbols to represent their empire, when seen in the sector map, you will
see these symbols (if in a team-fleet)
Each fleet will right back story, This will show in the Boxes of the pop up in sector space.
Interacting with the fleet
Once a fleet has created its race, it will be published into a spawn location ( Up to 5 per a system). Typically sectors will have up to 25 systems, So each race will be granted by default 5 systems to expand to. Fleets bases will be stationed in the home world (spawn location) system of the race.
PvE and PvP Missions
The game will have scripted in it various Missions. Both Pve And PvP Quest givers will be located on the lobby floor in the Star-base.
Pve Missions Will include tasks like, go and offer alliance proposals to other races (fleets), Colonize new worlds, Scan annomolies etc.
PvP Missions will include things like, conquest of another fleets systems, Kill other fleet members (the general quest, ie bread and butter) that you are at war with, and even Attacks on the other fleets star-base.
Conquest and Expansion
Below is a map, please review.
http://i82.servimg.com/u/f82/18/05/75/56/sector14.jpg
In this example we can see 3 fleets (Red, Purple and Blue) And we also see a neutral non-colonized system in the middle of the map.
The Aura's here represent the influence of that race in order to expand it, you need Pvers. If a neutral system is not in your influence zone, It is not Colonizeable or exploitable to you.
If two factions share influence in a bordering system, they can both engage in battle there, or each of the two can colonize it. However, the influence cannot extend into the territory of another fleet, only to borders established by both parties.
(this is the sole control mechanic to stop massive Extreme expansion rates)
Colonies
Because your home system is the only one with a star-base (at least at first)
You will need to protect your space. You do this by preventing other players from
attacking your planets, etc.
Colonies will have classifications depending on how many days they have been under
the control of that race. Further, they will offer unique benefits to the fleet, based on
its type. These colonies are automatically picked by its corresponding system type.
Colony Focus's
Military Colony
These colonies are established on Planet based systems. They offer 15 Defense Platforms, and 5 Defense AI controlled ships, as its benefit.
Mining Colony
These colonies are established in Asteroid based systems. They offer 1500 Dilithium a day to the fleet.
Trade Colonies
These colonies are established on Moon Based Systems. they offer 150,000 EC a day to the fleet.
Outskirts Colony (a small, Outlying colony, Automatically applies to systems on the border of the empire (With in 2 squares of the edge of its space).
Colony Types
Home world
This is the colonies are the home world of the system. If lost, the race dies off, and another race is born (after 24 hours). They Gain 200% effects of the colony focus.
Border World
These Worlds are with in 2 parsecs (Squares) of the fleets border. They only receive 50% of the effects of the system (due to corruption).
Colony
These worlds are neither Border, or home worlds, They receive 100% of the focus bonus's.
Alliances
Subjection treaty
In one of two situations, an empire may be placed here, Either because they were conquered, and the conquere choose not to kill the off, by rather turn them into slaves (which has benefits) Or because they spawned in a spawn location in the influence of a superior race. Subjected rates pay 15% of their Ec and Dilithium income to their master race.
Alliance
These Two parties are allied, and can protect each other space from invaders.
this increases the income rates of EC and Dilithium by 0.5% up to 12.5% over the period of 30 days.
Trade Alliance
These two parties trade with each other. this increases the income rates of EC and Dilithium by 1% up to 10% over the period of 30 days.
War
These parties are at war, and are attackable to each other in their two territories (only)
Colonizing & Conquering a system
A homeworld is system is only conquered through the destruction of its fleet star-base.
Other colonies can be
Blockaded (stops all income on the planet from happening while that fleet has players in orbit).
Destroyed (This will wipe out life on this planet, but in return will prevent you from colonizing it for a week).
Enslaved population
this will allow you to make the population work for you, but will only last up to a week or until liberated by its race. you will only gain 20% of the income when doing this.
Colonization
This will just involve the planet is in your influence zone, and going to the planet, and transporting materials, and deploying defense satellites in orbit. (takes about 5 minutes)
What the fleet members get for doing quests here
Each fleet will be granted a slot for each ship type (Sci, Eng, Tac) additional
slots can be bought with zen.
This will allow the Fleet leader to design a ship (through a series of connector parts) its color, and its tac/officer slots. these in return can be bought with Special operation fleet marks, which only come from doing quests in this area.
The foundry will receive upgrades to allow for unique designs of ships that have
yet to be seen by the people in sto/star trek. Perhapse we can include many Parts
from ships of races yet to be seen, like Voth, Kazon, etc.
This proposal was watered down from a much more complex system involving planetary happy rates, rebellions of planets, and much more.
Looking at potential ways to progress end game, I came up
with a revision to my idea about exploration, Pvp, Expansion in the universe.
Creating a Race
I'd like to create a new feature in Foundry for fleets.
This upgrade would allow a Fleet leaders to fabricate planets As well as Make a racial template for its fleets species. You may choose to pool from the same faction (Federation, Klingon) or create up to 10 variations yourself.
Each Fleet will be able to pick symbols to represent their empire, when seen in the sector map, you will
see these symbols (if in a team-fleet)
Each fleet will right back story, This will show in the Boxes of the pop up in sector space.
Interacting with the fleet
Once a fleet has created its race, it will be published into a spawn location ( Up to 5 per a system). Typically sectors will have up to 25 systems, So each race will be granted by default 5 systems to expand to. Fleets bases will be stationed in the home world (spawn location) system of the race.
PvE and PvP Missions
The game will have scripted in it various Missions. Both Pve And PvP Quest givers will be located on the lobby floor in the Star-base.
Pve Missions Will include tasks like, go and offer alliance proposals to other races (fleets), Colonize new worlds, Scan annomolies etc.
PvP Missions will include things like, conquest of another fleets systems, Kill other fleet members (the general quest, ie bread and butter) that you are at war with, and even Attacks on the other fleets star-base.
Conquest and Expansion
Below is a map, please review.
http://i82.servimg.com/u/f82/18/05/75/56/sector14.jpg
In this example we can see 3 fleets (Red, Purple and Blue) And we also see a neutral non-colonized system in the middle of the map.
The Aura's here represent the influence of that race in order to expand it, you need Pvers. If a neutral system is not in your influence zone, It is not Colonizeable or exploitable to you.
If two factions share influence in a bordering system, they can both engage in battle there, or each of the two can colonize it. However, the influence cannot extend into the territory of another fleet, only to borders established by both parties.
(this is the sole control mechanic to stop massive Extreme expansion rates)
Colonies
Because your home system is the only one with a star-base (at least at first)
You will need to protect your space. You do this by preventing other players from
attacking your planets, etc.
Colonies will have classifications depending on how many days they have been under
the control of that race. Further, they will offer unique benefits to the fleet, based on
its type. These colonies are automatically picked by its corresponding system type.
Colony Focus's
Military Colony
These colonies are established on Planet based systems. They offer 15 Defense Platforms, and 5 Defense AI controlled ships, as its benefit.
Mining Colony
These colonies are established in Asteroid based systems. They offer 1500 Dilithium a day to the fleet.
Trade Colonies
These colonies are established on Moon Based Systems. they offer 150,000 EC a day to the fleet.
Outskirts Colony (a small, Outlying colony, Automatically applies to systems on the border of the empire (With in 2 squares of the edge of its space).
Colony Types
Home world
This is the colonies are the home world of the system. If lost, the race dies off, and another race is born (after 24 hours). They Gain 200% effects of the colony focus.
Border World
These Worlds are with in 2 parsecs (Squares) of the fleets border. They only receive 50% of the effects of the system (due to corruption).
Colony
These worlds are neither Border, or home worlds, They receive 100% of the focus bonus's.
Alliances
Subjection treaty
In one of two situations, an empire may be placed here, Either because they were conquered, and the conquere choose not to kill the off, by rather turn them into slaves (which has benefits) Or because they spawned in a spawn location in the influence of a superior race. Subjected rates pay 15% of their Ec and Dilithium income to their master race.
Alliance
These Two parties are allied, and can protect each other space from invaders.
this increases the income rates of EC and Dilithium by 0.5% up to 12.5% over the period of 30 days.
Trade Alliance
These two parties trade with each other. this increases the income rates of EC and Dilithium by 1% up to 10% over the period of 30 days.
War
These parties are at war, and are attackable to each other in their two territories (only)
Colonizing & Conquering a system
A homeworld is system is only conquered through the destruction of its fleet star-base.
Other colonies can be
Blockaded (stops all income on the planet from happening while that fleet has players in orbit).
Destroyed (This will wipe out life on this planet, but in return will prevent you from colonizing it for a week).
Enslaved population
this will allow you to make the population work for you, but will only last up to a week or until liberated by its race. you will only gain 20% of the income when doing this.
Colonization
This will just involve the planet is in your influence zone, and going to the planet, and transporting materials, and deploying defense satellites in orbit. (takes about 5 minutes)
What the fleet members get for doing quests here
Each fleet will be granted a slot for each ship type (Sci, Eng, Tac) additional
slots can be bought with zen.
This will allow the Fleet leader to design a ship (through a series of connector parts) its color, and its tac/officer slots. these in return can be bought with Special operation fleet marks, which only come from doing quests in this area.
The foundry will receive upgrades to allow for unique designs of ships that have
yet to be seen by the people in sto/star trek. Perhapse we can include many Parts
from ships of races yet to be seen, like Voth, Kazon, etc.
This proposal was watered down from a much more complex system involving planetary happy rates, rebellions of planets, and much more.
[SIGPIC]http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/image.php?u=98704615000&type=sigpic&dateline=1372675812[/SIGPIC]
Post edited by uhmari on
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Comments
I had not considered this. This actually makes things very difficult.
The purpose of the system is to create races that are constantly changing
so that exploration is always changing in game.
So we have to make a choice on two choices.
Permanent races that are dev created, At the cost of having static play
Or stepping out side of that role of captain, and playing emperor at the cost of going against that role.
Since there is races in the Star trek series, and their were govern with people, why
not open up that possibility? Let me know what you think; because if we go with option 1
we are forced to have say 20 static empires.
Unless we could find a way for players to create it and still fill that role (which is a possible third option)
Logics tells me Remove control of the race, but keep the rest.
But that is me.
I have a working conceptual way of making the play keep the role of captain
but allowing for players to create an empire (races) for exploitative content to
remain unique.
They would follow through with the creation part above, then the race would
automatically react according to players choices of quests etc.
For example, you have two quests, Pve and PvP.
Pve quests give + 25 Points on the bar
PvP Quests give - 30 Points on the bar
The bar is set ups so that
0-20 % is Evil race 21-79 % is Neutral (both) 80-100% Is Good
The quests of the race will differ depending on what alignment the race is.
When creating the race, you will select its starting alignment. Then, once
spawned, the race will have a decay rate of X % Per a day back to its original
alignment.
PvP races will be offered in the area, but will flag you for having the quest.
PvE Will be offered in the area, but will not flag you. However because
pvp has more risk involved, it will have more impact (this should balance out
considering more people are pro-pve, then pvp)
Let me know what you think from there
Fleets are designed to represent smaller groups within Starfleet/KDF/Romulan Republic. Much like my Company is a smaller group within the Army.
So long as you are suggesting or advocating the idea of creating and maintaining a race, I shall continue to tell you that it is not for this game. I would be happy to entertain ideas that have to do with new fleet missions.
For example, perhaps there could be some sort of reward for setting up a fleet vs fleet PvP, such as 5 members of my Fed fleet go up against 5 members of a KDF fleet winners get 50 fleet marks each and losers get 25 each with no other rewards. This would encourage fleet teamwork and perhaps increase PvP as this would mean 125 or 250 Fleet Marks each round for the fleet.
the most important thing would be how to design that system, and when a race would cease to exist. a good idea may be that people do enough quests with that race a month, the races stays alive.
but you would set up the interaction with the race in the universe, as you interact with feds, or other races. Just doing quests and tasks for them. Yes the race was created by the player, but not controlled by it.
maybe in time, you could allow the player to station his fleet base in orbit of one of their planets.
I really am curious to see.
lets assume we both agree, that foundry is the best tool to make exploration
be the future of pve (and maybe pvp) that the foundry can faciliate this need
of new constant Content, that allows us to explore new stuff.
What would the birth and death conditions be if you had the choice?
What sort of mechanic would you use to cause the race to expand, and thrive?
How would you involve it so that fleets would be part of it?
Nice way to try it out, isnt it?
And I do agree that this is Star Trek and your proposal about conquering, colonization, has nothing to do with Star Trek universe..
A new game could be designed that way, but not here. There is so much going on already..
Yes, we want better exploration options, we'd like to be able to discover planets that we can revisit later on, and we'd like to be able to do different stuff on these new worlds. If possible, a story that unfolds over time.
No, I don't think this should be something that only fleets can do. Otherwise, anything that allows a player to feel as if they have discovered a developing planet or an ancient world is great.
Yes, we'd like some kind of territory control, so that it feels like there are actual wars and conflicts going on.
No, I don't want to see open territory, non-consensual PvP. No, I don't think the game needs to include a complex planetary conquest system and I don't want it to become Civs in Space. The focus should remain on starship combat and away teams. A simple Cap and Hold mechanic should be enough.
Note: The above is entirely my own opinion.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
What about a new kind of Fleet holding called a Fleet Colony?
(Yeah, yeah, I know I said not for fleets only... but maybe in addition to an Exploration system?)
Basically the Fleet Colony could be a space map and planet map where various exploration and colonization DOFF assignments are available.
Those assignments could generate the inputs necessary for the projects that unlock features of the Fleet Colony. As you unlock features, the colony outpost grows and begins to provide services. You could even perhaps unlock special away team missions. At the very least, you should be able to prowl around the countryside doing similar things as on the New Romulus map.
The Fleet Colony could even be used as the setting for Colony Defense and Colony Invasion scenarios. It could even include Doors for Foundry missions.
Anyhow, just a thought.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Although the foundry and crafting are Cryptics next targets...
I wish there was the ability to play any content (Story/PvP/STFs/Other PvE/Foundry/ Exploration) and get the same rewards for the same time spent as CSE, ISE and KASE under a single mark system, freedom to do what you want in a game means a lot.
From a good game designers perspective: Rewards that are more powerful functionally = bad, they destabilize a game, like a virus to a program...
Rewards in general should be limited:
rewards = product of work
work = something you have to do (opposite of freedom)
pleasure from work = enjoyment - responsibility - repetition, enjoyment is variable
pleasure from freedom = enjoyment - nothing
Therefore rewards should be supplement not focus, story/content should be focused, otherwise less players playing game/having fun in game.
Humans hate repetition, it should be minimized wherever possible...
Repetition is the main cause of death for a game...
So games should change as much as possible without colliding with the target audiences interests.
In life the human urge to repel repetition is a good thing, it drives innovation and increases the amount of things a human will experience in their lifetime.
Sequential as opposed to parallel helps combat repetition...
So constant releases for a game is better than waiting a while and releasing it all at once, it shortens the amount of time between players logging into a game and therefore decreases the likelihood of the "oh I haven't played this in a while, delete" phenomenon and keeps players interested; although it does combat suspense.
Suspense is both good and bad, it keeps players occupied and therefore interested but also frustrates them in some cases and increases repetition (decreasing relaxation etc)...
Well a lot of that stuff is not limited to games, if any of it is.
Doff mission are a nice concept, but they are to long, and ... well yawn to be of any major part of the game, It needs some upgrades. We should have reports back to read with audio, to make it interesting. Audio dev work is costly, and timely, so its very hard to do this.
When interviewing players on this topic, I was told the following
General feedback
1. Players love rewards, and want lots of them.
2. Players love to be immersed into Role play content, Even if they are not RPers.
3. The greatest improvement which players felt would vastly improve role playing to Role play is audio upgrades followed by a good story.
The best solution to PvE exploration is undoubtedly the foundry. The question is, How to set it up.
We know the following
We need new races
We need new zones to place them in.
We need those races to facilitate PvE Min, And possibly / Desirably pvp.
We need a mechanic that allows a player who loves a race to revisit, and grow with that
races story line
It would be great to have racial vs racial interaction (war, alliances etc).
Now, Comes the hard part.
in essence we are trying to make a new "federation" or "klingon empire".
The race itself, its back story, and even things like the races body templates, ships, and planets/solar systems can be done through Foundry. This is now a problem, an upgrade to foundry can resolve this.
The question is, How do allow these races to grow from single planet pre-warp civilizations to mega empires like the iconians.
What conditions are to be met with each type of alliance or relationship.
What conditions decides if the race will grow, or not.
These are all difficult questions, all of which will likely require a complex system (like diplomacy, and so forth).
I am looking at a way for foundry to tie it all together, Or some modification to it, but i am still uncertain as of yet..
I disagree on the DOFF mission concept. DOFFing is one of the best parts of the game right now. I would like to see more DOFF missions with a story background to go into the exploration aspects of the game, or to fill out the storyline a bit. I think this is especially true for fleet holdings - instead of sending doffs to the base to be compacted into glue; we should be able to send them out on doff "construction missions" to get SB XP or something. We captain a starship, they do the gruntwork.
Now for your other point: It's an interesting storyline idea, Uhmari. Thing is, I think your storyline idea is more-or-less the entire Romulan Republic storyline! You have a fledgling Republic that the Federation and Klingons are fighting for influence over.
But this is where stuff like Diplomacy, DOFFing, Reputation, and other non-combat mechanics can come into play - where you have to run doff missions to build up New Romulus, etc. and gain influence. Alternatively, you could use DOFF missions or these non-combat mechanics to sabotage the other side's progress.
This could go hand-in-hand with cap-and-hold PvP, in my opinion.
Well, I agree... going from what we have to a fully-functioning exploration system is the hard part.
I have to say that I don't favor a "programmed" or "random" evolution of new worlds and new cultures. While there could be some random elements, we are basically talking about something that needs to follow a plan. That plan will be a lot better if it feels more like a story than an "if...then" script.
I think the Foundry could eventually be the right tool to do the job, if it can be extended for the purpose. Authors need the ability to purposefully tie their mission arcs together somehow and to add elements that make it feel more like exploration and less like point and click.
One thing that would be required is giving Authors the ability to set prerequisites to run a mission arc, like, played Story A before being able to start Story B. That way the story of that planet can be told in a more linear fashion.
In fact, it would be great if the system could prompt you to play Story B after you got done with Story A. The only thing I don't like about that is the necessity to have Story B planned before completing the work on Story A. But if they implement the ability to subscribe or follow particular Authors, that problem could be easily solved.
Another thing that would help would be the ability to set some kind of persistent variables in one arc that can then trigger events or dialog in the next. Thus being able to create the illusion that something you did had an effect in the future.
Combining the two would be amazing: Consider playing Story A in such a way that you could run either Story B or Story C next, but not both? If you wanted to know what Story C was like, you could always repeat Story A and make different choices.
The backend systems that accomplish things can be as complex as the Devs (and Authors) want to make them. But from a player standpoint, the less they have to fiddle with things and the more they can just dive in and do, the better.
EDIT: And of course, now, I am way off the subject matter for this particular forum. So I won't develop that thought any further. Back to Fleet Holdings...
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
This is actually a simple task.
You insert a choice to them, Their choice has a result. that Result is diplomatic.
If you give then an environment, They will tailor their race to adapt to that,
especially if you make it so that those choices have a major impact on their
survival rate.
for example,
You have encountered another species, Emperor, What shall we do?
1. Declare war! Death to those scally wags!
2. Purpose a trade treaty
3. Send a friendly greeting (Some random, automated message like "Life long and prosper!".
These choices can impact them on a massive scale.
So the objective, is basically three things
1. Diplomacy
2. Growth and decline rates
3. System of expansion (conquest, colonization)
If we create these systems, we would of liked forged enough room for empires to spawm.
Take eve for example, it has empty space (which we will have with the space expansion). It has a diplomacy system, and a system to build outposts (star-bases); lastly it has a system for defense and expansion.
from these things they devs really never have to look at messing with it, the players
decide the rest. so in theory, all we have to do, is something similar
There is an easy mechanic to address this.
Add a place to tell the map to look for option 2, 3 or 4. If its blank, then it displays a message <we have no assignments for you now, come back later>.
Right, known as "phasing" its when you are in a different story line then others and those the environment around you is different then what, say your fleet buddy would see.
We can do this we create a template for players, say a chain of 20 quests, 8 (of each side) of which are side (yes or no) Quests, and then the 2 (start and finish)
http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/18/05/75/56/box10.jpg
Like this (link) but maybe more complex.
then all the player has to do is go in and create the different quests for the two story lines, lets say the good version, or evil version of the race?
hope you get the point, al you have to do is just make it so they fill in blanks, and problem is solved!
Exactly, And all you have to do in foundry, is make a similar chain for your race.
Create a mark/reward system for the owner of the race. Make the expansion of the races
like a game of risk (very strategic).
you go with the original idea of expanding the universe by X amount of sectors with x amount of solar systems (in this case, lets say 10 sectors, 25 systems each, total of 250 systems).
Lets say, that 5 of those 25 systems are spawn locations.
As a new race, you obviously will want to grow your race, so you will need to colonize.
What we will do is set up a chain about the race, designed by its creator.
This chain will give the player a choice of career with the race, Pve or PvP.
After the chain of training, and explanation of the career objectives, the player will continue on to
do X amount of things for the race.
Life as a pvp/pve player in relation to the new race.
So each position (pve and pvp) will have objectives. PvP will be focused on military capture, and expansion
of the race. they will also patrol and defend that races space. (note, this will pin fleets to alliances with a race, and will cause them to fight against players with pvp flags enabled; these flags will be required to do pvp quests, which are like kill other enemies in your space, etc)
PvE'ers will get other missions like Colonization, and diplomacy.
Each of the two casts will be controlled by the races leader.
he will get a special map Ui/hud that will allow him to click on systems in the sector map
and select options like "colonize, conquer X system".
this creates a quest for the player (pve or pvp depending on the quest) to do.
Once this task is completed by the pvp'er/pve'er the race expands, and gains control of another system (through conquest or colonization) and because of this the racial leader gains a special upgrade mark, that he can use to
- Buy a trade station (they are like complexes on asteroids, etc
- Upgrade his empires level (unlocks more options for special features like ship parts etc; It also extends his races influence range) (influence range is a n aura that is around the races space, thta expands out, this aura is required to touch a neutral system (uncolonized) or hostile system (colonized) to conquer or colonize it, Or even to form alliances.
- Special marks are used to create and forge alliances.
so in essence the player is interacting with the race, like picard did, helping them etc, to expand solving problems etc.
now we can increase complexity of this by adding a mechanic that each time a quest happends, an exp bar for that race, vs the faction happens. If faction one does quests, it gives exp, if the klingons do it, it takes exp from the other side, and adds it to theirs (a sort of tug-o-war diplomacy).
This reputation can have special benefits also.