Using the lull to talk about raider appeasment.

[Jstank]

I don't know if this has been suggested before but I have this idea about raider behavior.

Raider appeasement is quite basic. You currently have two options.

Raider appeasement comes in two flavors. You can either send them silver, or release prisoners.

This has two problems. The first is that just sending raiders silver isn't very interactive or fun and releasing prisoners is a good idea, but sometimes the player doesn't have a choice. If the raider has a 99 recruitment difficulty you can either execute them and take an undesirable mood debuff, or just release them even though you might not want to. For that reason I make the following recommendation.

1. Raiders show up and put down  a zone
2. You get a message saying that the raiders will attack in three days unless you put some items into their stock pile. They will tell you what they want. "We demand X number of item(s)"
     -Raiders 'know' what is in your stockpile and will demand a percentage of an item based on difficulty level including colony wealth.

3. If you appease the raiders they will go away.
4. If you fail to put the required items in their stockpile they will attack. You will get a standing de-buff. Faction standing debuff
5. If you attack them they will turn hostile. You will get a You will get a standing de-buff. Faction standing debuf
6. If you 'hang around their camp' (enter their home zone) for more than x amount of time they will assume you are trying to ambush them and attack. You will get a standing de-buff.
7. Appeasing the raiders may make them either friendlier to you or more likely to extort your colony in the future depending on your 'warden's' highest social skill based on a random chance. (success or failure)
8. This behavior will...
     -give players more choice when dealing with the raiders.
     -aleive constant late game assaults the annoys the player (me)
     -add to the list of possible raider activities.
     -be used on raiders who are too low to 'send silver too'.
     -be more interactive than calling them up and sending them silver.

[Livingston I Presume]

Unique faction events, nice.  If you could think of one for Outlander Towns and Tribes that'd very neat and would be great for immersion, and would certainly add more flavor to the factions rather than just back stories and equipment.
So I think you'd still have raids/sieges and visitors.  But for tribals if you're friendly with them you could get "Medicine Man Wandering" and a tribal doctor wanders through your zone just planting Xerigien randomly and helping hurt colonists.  Where if you're hostile to them you get something like "Fire Hunt" where they just come and start setting fire to trees everywhere in an attempt to burn your entire biome down. 
There are a lot of possibilities it could be something like "Tribal Artifact" and you had to get them a certain size and make of art with the same set up as the Raider situation.  I just really hope factions is the next thing that gets expanded on .

I'm sure people could think of many other simple unique faction events based on their disposition towards your colony

[Wex]

Why you get a debuff from attacking them? They had it coming!
You should get a mood buff if you fight (and win) and a debuff from paying them off.
Nobody likes a robbery.

[Limdood]

i've always thought that raiders should be interested in GETTING something rather than mindless violence.

I could see that as a type of "appeasement." 

I think the "fill the stockpile" would be quite complex to make work, and an easier alternative would be two options"

1.  Raiders raid stockpiles.  You have an external or easily accessible stockpile?  raiders who can get to it unmolested will attempt to go in and pick up the most valuable things they can, then leave (as if they'd captured colonists).  Wouldn't happen all the time, as late game it would be possible to outproduce even what tribal raids could feasibly carry away.  It would only happen when there are genuinely valuable things legitimately in reach of the raiders (like when they decide to take a prisoner away)

2.  make siege and "prepare to attack" raids have a prisoner number.  Release that many prisoners and the attackers leave.  This makes high difficulty recruit prisoners useful in some way, BUT would keep people from simply holding "a spare" when a huge year-3 tribal raid of 80-100 tribesmen requests 5 prisoners, instead of just "gimme 1 and you're off the hook."  This would allow you to even capture your own colonists to release in a pinch (to not go extinct or to rid yourself of the demented, frail, blind 90 year old)

Both seem simpler than trying to create, code, and prevent abuse of your "tribute" system.  Possible bugs with my ideas include players trapping items in an external stockpile (AI core surrounded by traps...) or attacking before the prisoners have cleared the map edge (as in, you tried to give the prisoners, released them, but then they attack anyways before it "counts" as released)

[Jstank]

Livingston,

I always wished I could set up a shrine to the narrator and 'pray for rain'

Limdood

1. Or just make a stockpile that is an 'offering stock pile' that the raiders will take from.
2. That would assume you have some of their prisoners.
3. I would imagine that you would only get the appeasement 'success' condition if all the goods in question left map in the raiders hands and the raiders weren't aggroed at any time during the incident.

Wex

I mean a faction standing loss. Sorry for the confusing language.

[cultist]

I do like the idea, but I think the concept of raiders setting up zones on your map and you manually moving items to their stockpile is a little convoluted. Most of this could be handled through text, like raiders send you a message that they want x within three days. Three days later another text box pops up and you can hand over the items if you have them in your stockpiles. If not, raiders spawn and launch an attack.

I know this is a lot less dynamic and interactive, but it's also much less time-intensive for the team to add it into the game. That means more time to vary the theme of the event and add different events based on the same basic idea.

[Limdood]

also seems like it would be way too easy to use the appeasement demand to just get free-ish loot.

Raiders hanging around your map, allowing you to approach and drop off items seems like it would be REALLY easy to ambush them.  Run everyone in at once into cover and open fire on specific targets, set up IEDs behind them, snipe some boomalopes near them, run some manhunters or mechanoids thru them, etc. 

The more safeguards you implement to make sure it runs smoothly, the more work you make, the more likely something will interact unfavorably with some other game aspect, and the more likely things will backfire - lets say i appeased the raiders and on their way off the map, one of them decides to punch a squirrel, getting hit and making all raiders go hostile (or they walk thru an enemy tribe, or mechs, or fire, etc.) - if that DOESN'T make them all go hostile, then what's to stop the player from laying traps to kill them without aggro, using whatever they won't aggro from.

To answer

2. That would assume you have some of their prisoners.

for the "release prisoners" idea, you wouldn't have to have any of their prisoners.  the game has already established that raiders capture anyone.  Give them ANY faction prisoners (including arrested colonists of your own!) to count towards the release.  Don't have any prisoners and don't want to/can't come up with enough?  Then it looks like you're fighting!

[Wex]

also seems like it would be way too easy to use the appeasement demand to just get free-ish loot.

Raiders hanging around your map, allowing you to approach and drop off items seems like it would be REALLY easy to ambush them.  Run everyone in at once into cover and open fire on specific targets, set up IEDs behind them, snipe some boomalopes near them, run some manhunters or mechanoids thru them, etc. 

I almost can picture them, being outside with raving squirrels about... O.o

[Jstank]

also seems like it would be way too easy to use the appeasement demand to just get free-ish loot.

Raiders hanging around your map, allowing you to approach and drop off items seems like it would be REALLY easy to ambush them.  Run everyone in at once into cover and open fire on specific targets, set up IEDs behind them, snipe some boomalopes near them, run some manhunters or mechanoids thru them, etc. 

The more safeguards you implement to make sure it runs smoothly, the more work you make, the more likely something will interact unfavorably with some other game aspect, and the more likely things will backfire - lets say i appeased the raiders and on their way off the map, one of them decides to punch a squirrel, getting hit and making all raiders go hostile (or they walk thru an enemy tribe, or mechs, or fire, etc.) - if that DOESN'T make them all go hostile, then what's to stop the player from laying traps to kill them without aggro, using whatever they won't aggro from.

That sounds like fun game play! I don't think its loot farming because if it was a normal raid you would get everything that dropped off the wave in the first place.

If you set up an ambush then you have to re-haul all the stuff back which could be a cost, and you would get standing loss with the faction which means they could send a heavier raid party the next time.


What if they drop a stockpile that is preset with the required items, and it would be the players choice to un-forbid the stockpile.