Enemy Colony Effeciency & Global Events

[zekeen]

Right now, as attacks go, it is generally more random and sometimes can be followed up a little too quickly. If you get attacked, you generally take damage, losses, ect, and thus you yourself lose some efficiency as you build back up. As such, I think that every little "outings" of the other colonies should change an efficiency % of their colony. The whole idea, is that if you kill off 20 pirates or call in 5 groups of allies to suicide against a mechanoid army, then they won't be able to send very many people into your map zone until they rebuild their losses.

If a colony sends out 10 people to assist you, and all but 3 die, then the efficiency drops and any other outings, attacks, or assists will be smaller. The efficiency goes back up at a certain rate and this gives way to NEW GLOBAL EVENTS. These events can improve or reduce the rate that efficiency returns for a colony.

Global Events can be such as this. A new black market appears and as such pirate factions gain more efficiency back after taking losses on their attacks toward your base. Maybe a bonus of more combat suppliers come by and maybe a 10% discount. A counter is policing in the area shrinks their efficiency rate and makes combat supplies more rare and guns less common and more expensive (bonus to selling them though!). Could also add in various global events where the colonies fight off map and change efficiency as a result.


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Now, just to add on, and I know this is probably a horse someone has beaten dead, but the ability to fight back at THEIR base would be nice, even if it was all prefabs with random numbers and geared people on those maps. Being able to send your own guys in with a custom made DROPSHIP instead of spaceship (because I know a ton of us don't build that thing since we don't plan to "win" just to keep living and building). To be able to drop some of your colonists on another map and attack their own base and get a different variety of resources would be nice, and more balanced if it's just carrying what they can carry by hand and leaving map. All damages causes trouble to their efficiency, but the base might be loaded with mortars and turrets.


Just a brief summary since I am so wordy - As another colony loses people, their efficiency drops and the number and quality of people sent to roam, pass by, explore, attack, or assist goes down. A 30% efficiency might send around 3 to attack or help, a 100% sends around 10. It charges over time and is influenced by global events

[Axelios]

I like the suggestion of members of other factions dying causing a loss in their strength.
It clashes with the current difficulty curve system, where the storytellers decide how large and difficult the raids are.

I would like to hear Tynan's thoughts on this sort of thing, as there is a lot of room for factions to have fluid strength, and to grow or weaken based on deaths of their raiders, successful kidnappings, black market activity, whether your colonists leave you and join them - it's a wonderful new range of story events!

[zekeen]

Well, this wouldn't so much hurt the difficulty curve too much. See, it means they have "this much" efficiency to pull from. On the same note, a massive assault will be smaller when their faction is weakened, but it can still be tossed even when they are weak, just means they will take even longer to recover from that. Think of efficiency making it more rare for them to ship that much pain out your way.

Also, if one faction is hit hard, there's usually a second one to harrass you.

It's all just numbers to make more sense of the random and not feel "cheated" by the events.

[milon]

I really like this idea, but I'd use a points system instead of an efficiency %.  Kind of like the current points system used to determine size/makeup of a raid.  A given faction can send out, say, 10 - 50% of its total points, which feeds right into the raid/visitor generator.  If they're killed, the faction loses those points (and continues to generate points over time).  If they leave the map, those points are returned to their faction (and maybe reassessed since they may have been operated on and be worth different amounts).  Obviously, there's a point where a faction's points can run so low that they can't send out any pawns, and they can't raid, explore, or come to the aid of the player's colony.

[SSS]

Ignoring the dead horse suggestion to raid other bases, I really really like this idea. It would go well with faction system improvements.

Also, as far as gaining and losing strength, I think any potential for loss of difficulty could be countered by having more factions per world, and perhaps allowing outlander towns and such to be hostile more often. Sure, you might argue that there shouldn't be a lot of people on a Rimworld, but seeing that they have essentially endless numbers anyway, I don't see more factions per world as a problem.

This could also allow for a different sort of game progression: At first your enemies would outnumber you so greatly that you couldn't hope to get out from under them, but if you successfully thwart them time and again, causing multiple factions to take heavy losses over time, then dominance of the planet should be an acceptable outcome, where hardly anyone can send raiders to harm you. By requiring some player initiation, you could even turn it into an ending where you start broadcasting that your colony now rules the planet over the comms console (maybe have a chance for weakly positive relations to turn hostile in the process?). You could pressure your enemies into a last stand this way, and you wouldn't even necessarily need to have the "final battle(s)" take place off the original map.

Imagine multiple simultaneous sieges, more frequent sapper parties, and the full wrath of whatever strength remains of your foes coming at you over the course of a couple weeks. It sounds pretty epic to me.

[Axelios]

That DOES sound pretty epic.

[Kegereneku]

I like the basic idea, but it might not be feasible.
And it have to come with better base for Diplomacy because it would all be interlinked.

Weakened Faction (as in, not auto-balance raid) lead to a vicious circle where everything get easier the more you survive.
But allowing Raids to succeed (like kidnapping/stealing/ransom rather than mindless destruction) would lead to difficulty increasing out of control.
More Factions (even with a limit to the number of raid) amplify those spiraling challenge.
In result we would need a way to turn Faction against each others to "lessen the burden".

So we are probably better letting this sort of stuff to the discretion of the Storyteller and more simply start generating lesser-Raid, compensated by other events made harsher, to break monotony.

[akiceabear]

So we are probably better letting this sort of stuff to the discretion of the Storyteller and more simply start generating lesser-Raid, compensated by other events made harsher, to break monotony.

I also like the general idea of breaking up raid monotony in games that last more than a few months.

That said, turning factions against each other (on the worldmap I assume) is a fairly abstract idea - care to elaborate how this might actually look to the player in game? Would it just be a simulation running in the background that impacts raid frequency? Why not just tweak the frequency of raids without the blackbox  equations?

I think reducing raid monotony could be accomplished by:
- Making raids from a particular faction exhausted for year(s) after a certain number of losses. My thinking is that a faction would initially send a scout, then a raid, then a revenge one (assuming the first two failed). After that, they probably are decimated both in terms of morale and manpower. It may take years for them to muster the strength to come back.
- Making turrets available only by trade, or requiring a AI computer, or being manned, or further behind a research wall. This increases the challenge of individual raids, which would be less frequent but perhaps then more memorable (and leave a more lasting impression on the colony). I also think this is consistent with the rest of the game design, where it isn't possible to build any really advanced weapons, only trade for them.
- Making environmental/colony management events/challenges more abundant/variant in all stages (early, mid, late) of the game. This helps fill in the gaps left by reducing the count of raids. I prefer long duration environmental events, as having many short ones fire back to back seems silly to me; I think its less ridiculous (from a narrative POV) to have perhaps one long term event running for a few months, plus one or two short term ones firing in the interim that upset your balance further. I do feel like development is gradually going in this direction (on this last point), which is encouraging.

This of course reflects my own biases - I like mods like Superior Crafting, Seeds Please , Better than Sentry Turrets, and Combat Realism. I often play such mods on lower difficulty levels, which primarily serves to lower raid difficulty (headcount) to a tolerable level as other challenges have been introduced by the mods. While those mods exact formula may not be what fits best in vanilla, I think their general attitude (to make colony management more difficult and combat more impactful - but not bigger in headcount) is the right direction for the game. Just my 2 cents.

[Kegereneku]

That said, turning factions against each other (on the worldmap I assume) is a fairly abstract idea - care to elaborate how this might actually look to the player in game? Would it just be a simulation running in the background that impacts raid frequency? Why not just tweak the frequency of raids without the blackbox  equations?

I can only elaborate on the parameters and what to avoid,
The interest of Rimworld is in freedom of choice/storytelling more than specific-gameplay-toward-objective so we don't want to force a player to play some specific way and we don't want his diplomatic effort to be random or luck-based.

In result we don't need to simulate a "balance of power" as simulation are more prone to imbalance due to positive-feedback or Exploit from players. We want to abstract until it is predictable but can be justified by anything.
So gameplay-speaking, what we we want is Factions visiting/attacking at the same neutral rate/strength than before, but with a modifier a player can play on upon to change the strength/frequency of attacks.

This modifier can be :
> Simply the +/-100 Relations we already have. The worse it is, the bigger the raid. The better it is, better tradinghelp get. (Frequency is only linked to Storyteller)
> Or new(s) modifier(s), abstracting faction-strengths & else but at the cost of complexity.
> players-based actions, at the cost of imposing a minimal playstyle to use some.

In all case we want to keep it simple.
What I said was on the topic of influencing raid through 'diplomacy' (including show of strength).
But if we only want to break monotony, there is much simpler : More events, plus the idea of including lesser-raid/events that are below our "wealth-level" and balancing around them.

If you want a comment on your points Akicebear...
- 1st would only play on raid frequency, the reason don't need to be told, the scout/wave1/wave2 is flawed(and create a monotony by being predictable), killing the scout only postpone wave1, deliberately failing wave1 keep raider full strength an you deadpoorer, surviving wave1 only call in wave2... is a Stall/loose/loose situation.
- 2nd is... something I wouldn't mind, but change a lot the gameplay, this is not just balance.
- 3rd is better left to Storyteller choice iMHO, yes long term events are a good idea, myself I would even use specific Storyteller for 'events' of infinite duration.