In-game factions discussion

[Produno]

I posted a poll over on the discord asking what kind of factions people would prefer to see in SpaceSlog.

These were the questions asked:

What kind of factions or gameplay experience would you prefer?

A: Procedural generated factions that change every game and have limited lore and background?
B: Static factions that stay the same every game but have much deeper lore and background?


The poll is leaning towards B and i do have a few ideas regarding this.

We could have specific faction types which follow a strict rule for procgen factions. This means we could potentially have factions of type Bandit, Religious, Reaver etc. These faction types will have a loose backstory to guide the engine to create them. We can have other hardcoded rules for this for instance - ensuring we always have at least one Bandit type faction.

The faction type could also contain other rules to help the creation process. An example could be technological state, will Religious factions always have low technology? Or power, will a Military type faction always have high power (Power is what decides how powerful a faction should be, how much wealth it has ect.)


Feel free to give me your ideas! Is this a good way to go to ensure we have some kind of static factions mixed with procedural generation for expanded replayability? What faction types should we have? What rules should we have and how far should we go with them?

[Got_Donuts]

I would love to see some kind of scrapper/scrap heap faction that collects the random debris of ship destruction and cobbles them together for both profit and survival.
I wouldn't consider them high power  or low power, it really depends highly on what kinda parts they come across and are able to repair/slap together to function.

[Produno]

I would love to see some kind of scrapper/scrap heap faction that collects the random debris of ship destruction and cobbles them together for both profit and survival.
I wouldn't consider them high power  or low power, it really depends highly on what kinda parts they come across and are able to repair/slap together to function.

Yeah, i like this idea. Though we need to think how this could be incorporated. We would probably require new art for the scrap items. I plan on having some sort of crafting too so maybe this could be incorporated into that. The player could possibly melt down scrap and use it as a cheap way to build a ship. How feasible would that be in space though? I guess it would be ok for armour blocks or armour plating.

Another idea could be that this faction instead decorates their ship with scrap parts, which could be fun.

[TikTokToe]

Love the idea.  Maybe a shout-out to the Belters (from the Expanse).  An atypical faction: a collection of like minded folks with a distinctive culture; they make up in numbers what they don't in organization or firepower.

Would it be easy to shade grey or dark an existing ship (perhaps from older battles?) to indicate space debris?

[Produno]

Love the idea.  Maybe a shout-out to the Belters (from the Expanse).  An atypical faction: a collection of like minded folks with a distinctive culture; they make up in numbers what they don't in organization or firepower.

Would it be easy to shade grey or dark an existing ship (perhaps from older battles?) to indicate space debris?

You mean to show damage? All items will have some type of decal to show wear and tear, though your engineers should be fixing these.

[TikTokToe]

You mean to show damage? All items will have some type of decal to show wear and tear, though your engineers should be fixing these.

I guess I was imagining Space Slog would have two views.  One that depicted the on goings within the ship (environment in ship).  The other depicted a regional map (environment around ship). 
It is the latter "space view" I was thinking of.  Assuming the second view, one could show a damaged-beyond-repair-no-life-forms-dedected-requires-towing-or-dismantling ship - or scrap - by using contrast rather than color (color blind folks detect contrast).   This "darker ship" would be available for scrapper faction only (belter-like-folk) for resource collection.   [I also assumed some ship to ship combat in-game that may result in destruction of crew without utter destruction of ship..  So, I guess I did not mean damage within the ship for which the shipmates would fix - but a way to indicate scrap for a faction specific resource to be collected and visually shown with a much darker contrast (so technically it may not require a new images - but "coding by contrast"?]. 

[Got_Donuts]

Would also be cool to see a super high tech researcher group, if you raid their ships maybe you could unlock research or information on different star systems/planet anomalies to explore. Could be some kind of laser/energy weapon using folks with shields or some kind of other tech defense. Just spitballing ideas into the void lmao

[Produno]

Would also be cool to see a super high tech researcher group, if you raid their ships maybe you could unlock research or information on different star systems/planet anomalies to explore. Could be some kind of laser/energy weapon using folks with shields or some kind of other tech defense. Just spitballing ideas into the void lmao

Thats not a bad idea, allowing the player to 'hack' ship systems could be a way to encourage boarding missions rather than just blowing up the ship.

[Konstantine]

There are pros and cons to both approaches, but I have to lean towards B myself.

The main drawback in procedural is that you may give the player the feeling that the factions are really just a bunch of numbers, the name may change, but the faction encountered has been encountered before.

Static factions on the other hand allow you to hand craft them, which in turn allows for greater immersion. This route would be more beneficial if there was a pool of these factions and it was randomly determined at game start which factions participate in a session. The idea being that the player would enjoy a different experience each time the game was played. Of course, and not to get too far ahead of things, it would be something that could be built upon via expansions.