Factions overhaul?

[TrashMan]

An overhaul to how factions and raids work might be in order.

suggestion:
faction have the following new variables:
- population
- wealth
- tech level
- defense level

population is self-explanatory (it slowly increases over time)
tech level determines which weapons are available
wealth determines quantity (successful raids and trade increase wealth)

At the end of each day (or every X days) the game would simulate some decision making for each faction. This includes things like sending trade caravans, raids, caravan hunting or focusing on other things (improving relations, building defenses, etc..). Distance to points of interest (towns, colonies, etc..) would also factor in.

Once a raid/caravan is sent, time to arrival is roughly calculated.
Once a traveling group reaches it's location, a simple calculation is made to get results.
trade runs generate a trip back on arrival and add wealth to the faction when they return
raids may yield victory or defeat in various measures and results would vary from having the entire raiding force wiped out, a bloody retreat and all they way up to (rare) total victory.
Retreats or successes also generate a trip back.
Note that any traveling group has a chance of being targeted by a faction that is hunting for travelers/caravans.

Thus, raiders from faction 1 could be returning from a raid only to be hit by hunters from pirate faction 2
caravans/traveling forces would have their own variables - thinks like number of people, military power, fatigue

This would add more life to the world and at the same time make things more unpredictable. Factions could be destroyed, new ones generated.




*Maybe forces/caravans en route could bump into random events (or it could be calculated when the timer expires - arrived safely at location, ran into traders along the way, captured someone along the way, ran into deathbots) Either way, those random events could

[Lightzy]

 I think they already have that. Only you're not told and probably the game doesn't track it.
Tribes have large populations, low tech level and wealth
Villages have smaller populations, higher tech, etc.


Some of those suggestions make sense, but currently, adding all this would not add any life to the world, because it will all be invisible to the player, and so utterly pointless. Actual code to simulate and track changes in various factions would only make sense to add if the number of factions when you play increases dramatically, like, over 10, instead of just the 4 or whatever. Otherwise it's pointless to include.

Some of the suggestions are simply pointless. Why would I care if their caravan ran into bots on the way back and died?
If you're not thinking of how this affects gameplay then it makes no sense.
You may as well add tracking and simulation of how curly the hair on every pawns arm are (wink wink)

[TrashMan]

No, you don't.
Faction don't really exist as proper elements. Raids are just randomly generated - victory or loss does not affect a faction. Factions don't really interact in the world.

The whole point of this background simulation is to make the world more alive. If faction can grow or wither depending on what they do, then each game is more varied.

In one game, the friendly village next door might be lucky and have good trades and fends off raids - as a result it gets bigger and wealthier and a better trade partner.
In another it might suffer from raids and end up getting destroyed. (so yes, the number of faction would be variable and dynamic)
And either of those could cause other things to happen - like internal strife that causes a faction to split, assasination of the leader, another pirate band landing, refugee crisis, etc..

Don't tell me that it doesn't affect gameplay.

[Lightzy]

Maybe I didn't explain myself properly:

All of those reasons you give for faction growth/decline are meaningless because they do not affect gameplay.
The player doesn't care if the faction became weaker because of raids, because of inner strife, because of trade problems, because of natural disasters, or whatever else. It simply doesn't matter to gameplay.

If you completely randomize 1 factor called "faction power" or something, where each week, say, a faction has a totally random change of getting smaller or bigger, you get the exact same effect, as far as gameplay is concerned.



In Dwarf Fortress all those things (and much much much more) are simulated and tracked, but really that is more because the developers of that game are quite mad, and have the goal of creating not a game but a fantasy universe generator

[NickB0]

I like your idea of having the factions more dynamic so the world feels more alive, however as the game is now the factions strengths are dependent on your colonies wealth to keep the difficulty balanced e.g low colony wealth = weaker raids. Your suggestion of having independent strength unrelated to the colonies would cause the raiders to become weaker and weaker as you achieve more victories against them (or the opposite by having more defeats).

Maybe this could be balanced out by having alot more factions and different ways to interact with them but then this game becomes more like Civilization. This would put way more importance on competing/interacting with factions to survive instead of the interactions of your individual colonists.

I do agree that the factions need more depth though.

[TrashMan]

Maybe I didn't explain myself properly:

All of those reasons you give for faction growth/decline are meaningless because they do not affect gameplay.
The player doesn't care if the faction became weaker because of raids, because of inner strife, because of trade problems, because of natural disasters, or whatever else. It simply doesn't matter to gameplay.

They don't affect gameplay?

A pirate faction loosing a raid against you and growing weaker, then getting picked on by another pirate faction and getting destroyed DOES NOT affect gameplay?

Friendly faction prosperity - thus the frequency and wealth of trade caravens - DOES NOT affect gameplay?

How the hell does that make sense?
Given that the player's interaction with those faction is gameplay, how can player affecting factions and factions affecting faction NOT affect gameplay?

The whole point of this isn't randomness of events, it's interaction and a sense behind it.

Sure, you can just randomly change faction power - but where is player interaction in that? Where is the logic?
I'm basing faction changes on things that go on and the player can influence.

If you fend off a raid, the faction that send it gets weaker and madder. Depending on the leader, they might wait or want revenge.
In other words, the player can affect factions and can be instrumental in their prosperity and demise. How is that not gameplay?

[Lightzy]

Forget it dude the suggestion is not well thought out, just deal with it.

You have this whole story in your head how this faction went against that faction and on the road they were ambushed by a monster and then some of their underpants ripped and they were delayed because they had to sew new underwear and whatever and so the faction became weaker.
Good for you, but none of this affects the player in any way a random roll couldn't, and moreover, it's invisible to the player so it's of even less consequence.

Now in your latest post, at the very end of it, you suddenly give completely "new" ideas which are basically faction diplomacy, and try to present them as if they were your first ideas, which were all about invisible stories going around in the world where nobody cares about them.
Faction diplomacy is a good idea, and it is probably going to be added in one of the next updates, pretty sure of it.

[BetaSpectre]

Over all I believe that factions should be affected by more things, and there should be more options for negotiation etc.

The pay silver for X isn't that great of an option IMO. instead of silver I think relations, actual gift items, etc should be taken into consideration.