Faction Revamp, trading with other factions, fancy world gen and more 'stuff'

[Arekan]

I had posted a block of text on a Reddit thread detailing the various changes I thought could be made to factions to finalize them for a 1.0 release, or as a content update later on. Right now, my feelings on factions is that they're a very unrealistic challenge, and oftentimes, facing off against raids doesn't feel good if I win or lose because the enemy is more or less invincible. I'll try to categorize my ideas. Keep in mind a lot of it may be incorrectly categorized, or relatively incoherent.. there's a lot to write.

I'll complete each section with a summarized list for quick readers.

FACTION REVAMP

Problem: Factions don't feel tangible. Their resources and pawns are infinitely generated (or so it seems) until the faction is completely wiped off of the map. Faction interactions between the player's colony and other factions are nonexistant and the events that do happen feel like nothing more than simple RNG.

Faction Locations
The first step to fixing the problem is to give factions proper locations. Faction bases should be close together, forming coherent shapes of territory that they 'control' or have easy access to. (See: Faction raids) Faction bases not inside of these groups should be considered scouting bases, with very little supplies, and not very many pawns. Pawns that do reside there should be relatively weak, equipped for things like scouting out other bases. Most bases that are placed randomly around the map should be considered generic, unaffiliated 'Looter' groups (or some other generic name like Scavengers or something). I'll talk about it later in the raiding section, but this would be a wise replacement for the majority of raids, as I don't find it realistic that a faction would constantly raid you when you keep beating their attempts. Instead, they get conducted by random groups that don't know any better.

• Faction bases close together, forming coherent boundaries
• Faction bases not inside of boundaries considered scouting bases, smaller and with little supplies
• Majority of bases outside of any faction boundaries should be considered looter colonies, unaffiliated with factions

Faction Raiding - The actual raids
One of the major problems with raids is that they don't feel like a true threat because the pawns will keep randomly generating, they can travel insane distances, and the quality of their gear (so long as they aren't tribal, in which case, they'll just send millions of pawns) increases constantly. They usually don't feel like a realistic threat because their gear is either much better than yours, or much worse than yours. Finally, raids from the same factions over and over again remove the feeling that the factions have anything to lose. Fixes to all of these problems would be to not only associate raids with specific faction bases instead of just "the faction," but to scale the raids dependent on all factors considered. How much of a threat you are to their colonies, the gear you have, how capable you've proved yourself to handle raids, how many allies you have, and just how much they will have to lose themselves. (See: Dynamic factions and faction bases) I'll go over it in the next section, but giving raid parties a location would allow some possibilities for retaliation.

• Raids conducted by a faction should include what specific base they've come from
• Factions should consider factors before raiding you: How much of a threat you are to them, how close you are, how much they have to lose,
  how capable you've proven yourself to handle raids

Faction Raiding - Finite pawns
One of the problems with faction raids is that when a faction raids you, the pawns just keep coming. Killing off some of their pawns doesn't make it feel like you're weakening their numbers. A good fix is to make it so when you are raided, the generated pawns will actually exist at the base it says they've come from. This will lead to some interesting opportunities. If you win a raid, you'll know that the base they came from will be weak - perhaps with only a few pawns that weren't sent on the raid, if not completely empty because they all went. Even if you lose, you might've harmed the pawns enough to make it viable for you to attack them back. Faction bases should be able to merge and move, too, which I'll go over later, to help mend broken bases - unless you finish them off.

• Pawns from a raid should actually exist in the specific base they're said to have come from
• If you win or lose a raid, you may have an idea that the base they came from is empty or has very little opposition, allowing easy retaliation
• Factions should be able to move and merge bases if you've crippled one enough

Dynamic factions and faction bases
Factions at the moment never change, except for the occasional leader death. Unless you kill off every base, they're there to stay, their numbers infinite. The easiest way to make them come alive is to give each base randomized supply amounts, weapons and pawn counts. You should have the ability to visit these bases to scout them out, and unless one of them spots your pawns, you can get out without them knowing. If you are spotted, you should be considered a bigger threat. When you do this, it should cement these randomized amounts with actual items and pawns. (This is so when the map is generated, it won't take even longer.) Factions should have the stronger bases in the middle of their territory, with weaker ones near the outer edges of it.

• When the map is generated, give each faction base a randomized, vague amount for how many supplies it has (food/medicine), the amount of weapons (and how good those weapons are), and how many pawns it'll have
• These vague numbers should be cemented into actual items and pawns when you visit the base
• The ability to scout bases out by visiting them, but not being spotted, should be a viable way to see what the bases contain. This already exists, but there's no reason to randomly scout bases since they're all more or less completely RNG
• Being spotted should make your faction a bigger threat to the one you're invading

Faction relations
At the moment, you can only be 'hostile' or 'friendly' with factions. There is no other things you can be with factions. This 1 or 0 dictates if a faction will help you, curse at you on comms, or send caravans over to you. Instead, factions should have multiple relationships with eachother, as well as yourself, that could be beneficial. Certain factions should specialize in the creation of certain materials, foods or weaponry, broad or specific. This should somewhat depend on where they are located. These factions should be able to trade with you, even if they're hostile with you, unless you're really hostile with them, and they perceive you as an immediate threat. Until then, prices depend on your relations, and the amount of goods they offer should depend on relations. These factions should trade with eachother, too. While these trades don't need to constantly be happening, if you interrupt or 'steal' a specific faction from trading with others, the goods they supply should appear less often in the other faction's inventories. Say a faction specialized in the creation of weaponry and armor, and you entice them by offering to pay high or pay in bulk. They then trade with you more exclusively, and other factions should have less weapons and armor. Unfortunately, specialization can't really happen unless Rimworld contains more 'stuff,' which I'll cover extremely briefly last.

• Factions shouldn't just be 'hostile' or 'friendly,' and instead, should only attack or perceive you as a threat dependent on your actions or relations other factions
• Factions should specialize in certain areas. These areas can be broad, like 'weapons or armor,' or specific, like 'we only make chairs.'
• A faction should be able to trade with you even if you're considered hostile, but the prices and amount of items they bring should be heavily dependent on that. This would give you incentive to friend specific factions.
• Factions should trade with each other. If you entice a faction (or all of the factions on the map) that specialize in weapon manufacturing, other factions in the area should, as a result, lose access to higher quality weapons. This should happen if you trade with these factions often, or in major bulk, making them more likely to trade to you specifically instead of to others.

TRADING WITH OTHER FACTIONS

Problem: You can never make a profit on the things you sell. No matter what, you're always going to be selling at a loss, compared to the normal market price.

Becoming part of the trading market on your world, or in the galaxy
Just a quick suggestion, which doesn't have to be part of the major faction revamp, but you should have options to specialize and produce your own product that other factions will want and trade you for at a higher (or equivalent) price of their market value. This should only happen if you consistently produce whatever it is, and other factions know you do. (That could be a possible addition of the communications console, the ability to advertise that you're selling specific items. Other factions will send over caravans to check out your selection, as designated in special zones, and offer to purchase at prices above or at market value (which you can then decline or accept, or counter-offer, but what they pay will depend on your relationship.)) The factions that trade can be hostile, but not too hostile. Otherwise, they will only trade if they do not perceive you as a threat. Since you can advertise items, you should be able to select what factions you're advertising to (or all of them), and factions should have trust values in the event that they get there and the items aren't up to the quality that you said that you had them in, or you never have a lot of the product available. (Examples: A faction wants superior chairs but you never have one that's superior or above in stock when they arrive, despite saying you did. A faction wants 20 regular medicines, and you advertised that you had high quantities of it.)

• You should be able to sell items you create reliably at market value or higher
• You can do that by advertising these items on the communications console. Other factions will decide if they need that item or not, and send caravans with money over to look at your selection
• Special zoning tools should be given to zone out where these items will reside.
• If they want something, you'll get a prompt saying what they want, how many of them, and what they will pay. If it's something that can have art, it'll include the specific names so you'll know what you're selling - in case you REALLY like something and only want to sell at very high prices.
• The prices that factions offer for your items should ONLY be at market value or above. Depending on your relationship, or if if any other factions specialize in producing these items (would need to be connected to the faction revamp), they should offer to pay at higher prices
• You should be able to counter-offer with custom prices for each item, or for all items clumped. They choose to accept depending on relations and how much they need the item.
• Factions should have a trust system depending on how reliant you are on having the items you say you have in stock. If you advertise extremely rare items, and never have them, it should make them reluctant to trade with you. Same should apply for every item, but the rarity should impact how much trust gets lost. Vice versa, if you do have the item, it should make them likely to come back later or trust when you advertise new items.

Trade deals
Factions should be able to establish trade deals with you. They should request specific amounts of items at specific times, and they will pay you large sums if you have it on time. They should pay even more if they require you to actually deliver it, too. (Otherwise, they'll come to your base to get it.) Generally, these deals should be relevant to the items you're producing, but sometimes they might ask for special cases. Depending on the items, it should even influence what that faction has. If you make guns, that faction should have the guns you give them.

• Factions should request for special amounts of items by specific dates. (or in x amount of days.) These deals can be recurring or on-offs
• They should pay extra for these deals, as well as pay even more if they require you to deliver it. Otherwise, they'll come to your base to pick the items up
• Requested deals should be relevant to what you produce, with rare cases of it not being relevant, or if you don't specialize
• If the faction revamp ideas are added, depending on what you're trading and how often, they should actually depend on your items. If you're trading them guns, they will be more well-armed. If you suddenly stop, perhaps they're less armed and easier to raid.

Right now this system "exists" but seems very random, never recurring, and always requires you to deliver. They also almost never seem worth it, as they underpay with items that aren't valuable. They should, instead, almost always offer silver, and their offer should always be worth more than what the market price for the amount of items is.


FANCY WORLD GENERATION

Problem: Loading screens. Long loading screens!

Simple idea. Just make it so you can see each individual cell load in on the map, perhaps even blinking when it appears. This could be a laggy process, but it would make the game feel more polished. Also it's boring staring at a loading screen.


MORE 'STUFF'

Problem: There's almost no variety in the amount of furniture or joy items Rimworld contains.

Instead of relying on mods, I really think that vanilla Rimworld should contain tons of items to diversify bases. I can't imagine adding new furniture is too hard to add, other than making art for it. I don't have any specific ideas, but I think it should be said anyway, especially if I'm going to be discussing options to 'specialize' in things for trade.


Welp, that's all that I can think of at the moment. I wrote this all in one go! Please add or comment on these ideas, or even add new ones. I'll see if I can edit this post with these additions or changes in a way that looks coherent so people can see these ideas develop as it gets discussed.

[Wanderer_joins]

Faction Locations

There is a mod, faction control, which does just that. You can have few, tightly packed, factions bases. But as long as there is no territory concept, it's a bit articficial, just to make a domination victory more playable and have your world look different.

Faction Raiding - Finite pawns

Raids are just fine, i'd just like a slightly better AI (sappers notably).

Dynamic factions and faction bases

+1, at least we need dynamic outposts, the 2000 silver reward too cheap early game compared to the risks, is meaningless mid-late game. Regarding pirate bases, i would even consider removing them for the world map. Just show the network of outlander bases for trade, and hide pirate factions like the hidden mechanoid hive. Allow them to raid and to set dynamic outposts next to your colony (based on colony wealth?)  or larger stronghold further away, with better incentives to raid them

Trade deals

+1, we should be able to offer trade deals too from time to time

[Harry_Dicks]

Problem: There's almost no variety in the amount of furniture or joy items Rimworld contains.[/i]

Instead of relying on mods, I really think that vanilla Rimworld should contain tons of items to diversify bases. I can't imagine adding new furniture is too hard to add, other than making art for it.

I have to disagree with you here. I think the best way Ludeon can spend there time is making the base game as easy as possible to be built off of for mods. Sure, mods aren't for everyone. But Ludeon simply could never, EVER ever BEGIN to compete with what the modding community can put out FOR FREE! If you want RimWorld to remain as great as it is and for only $30, you can't have it both ways. This is what is going to make the game great going forward.

If Tynan can make RimWorld the best platform possible for modders to easily build off of, then there is literally no limit to where you can take this game. Instead of Ludeon making a second bed or a third chair or something entirely redundant, they can change how world travel works, make it easy to add new needs systems, set us up with the right tools so that anyone can entirely customize the game to suit their own needs. The dev's time and effort spent doing things like this is invaluable compared to more simple content.

[angleof9]

It would be fancy, and fun, but balance reasons(with finite pawns, raids will just run out eventually, and then lategame literally becomes a sandbox with 0 threat) and the immense amount of data that would need to be stored and tracked for every outpost to know exactly what guns each pawn has, what their injuries are, and how their wealth should progress is absolutely ludicrous, these ideas just wouldn't work with the game as you put them. Perhaps Tynan or another dev will see this and implement part of this system, or maybe they already have it in the works, but the way you've proposed it, it just isn't feasible.

[StripedMonkey]

I have to disagree with you here. I think the best way Ludeon can spend there time is making the base game as easy as possible to be built off of for mods. Sure, mods aren't for everyone. But Ludeon simply could never, EVER ever BEGIN to compete with what the modding community can put out FOR FREE! If you want RimWorld to remain as great as it is and for only $30, you can't have it both ways. This is what is going to make the game great going forward.

See, the problem is that there is a difference between focusing on adding aesthetics and a genuine need to add more variety. Right now there are far too few ways to actually give joy for colonists. A chess table and a horseshoe ring are not exactly a decent variety.

[Harry_Dicks]

See, the problem is that there is a difference between focusing on adding aesthetics and a genuine need to add more variety. Right now there are far too few ways to actually give joy for colonists. A chess table and a horseshoe ring are not exactly a decent variety.

I don't see this as a problem. Get whatever kind of joy activities you want for your colonists tailored specifically to your tastes based on what mods you decide to use.

[Inacio]

These are great ideas. Some form of diplomacy would also be fantastic.
Perhaps have actual areas factions have control over like in 4X games, expanding the borders of your area of influence and such, adding a victory condition for wiping or absorbing factions...

This could be really cool!

[RichL]

See, the problem is that there is a difference between focusing on adding aesthetics and a genuine need to add more variety. Right now there are far too few ways to actually give joy for colonists. A chess table and a horseshoe ring are not exactly a decent variety.

I don't see this as a problem. Get whatever kind of joy activities you want for your colonists tailored specifically to your tastes based on what mods you decide to use.

I disagree with this stance entirely.  The game is not complete if you have to find mods to get a 'complete' experience.  Mods are great, but can't replace vanilla. They have several major problems.

• Searching for mods, ensuring compatibilities etc. takes time and can be boring. Some people don't have much time to play, and just want a good vanilla experience out the box.
• Some may not have the technical ability to use them (especially if you don't have the steam edition).  These people end up with a worse gameplay experience if vanilla is assumed to be supplemented with mods.
• Mods are inconsistent in quality, theme, balance and functionality. A good game has a consistent vision, and their content conforms to a firm set of design principles. Mods don't have these quality checks.  Maybe a mod has super OP items (too many come to mind to list).  Maybe the textures look different to the base game (e.g. no thick black bordering lines, writing on items as in VG). Maybe a mod contains something immersion-breaking, like modern day brand names (to an extent, CE does this with the ammo names, in thousands of years I bet .303 ammo wont be referred to as British). Maybe the mod misuses game mechanics (e.g. Furniture+ architect tab, different versions of items for different materials instead of stuffing), or are limited by being mods (e.g. Hospitality doesn't work with traders).  Maybe some mods don't work together, or aren't updated so the functionality is lost. This isn't at all a gripe at modders, they make what they want how they want it and really do make this game what it is today. But if I need to use mods to get a decent vanilla game, I would want them to conform to a set of design principles.

A potential compromise would be to have curated list of vanilla friendly mods which Tynan and crew personally approve - they could simply assess balance, and make suggestions for improvements before they get the stamp of authenticity. This would be max 5 minutes of work for a simple mod such as adding in a table football table rather than hours making new textures and rewriting the xml which I'm sure the developers have to do when they incorporate a mod. That way players can add in an approved mod with the expectation that it won't potentially detract from the game, and the devs don't get much more work.

[The_Spare_Ace]

I think you should also designate which colony of yours your colonists (individually) belong to (if you have multiple colonies).

[sick puppy]

having faction bases be closer to eachother is already a mod. having more of them than just 5 would be a nice addition in my opinion tho. ideally you could make a number before generating the map. definitely vanilla-suitable.

a finite number of pawns and loot and perfectly calculated amount and kind of weapons is ridiculously overcomplicating things and will make for horrendous loading times.
a much simpler idea would be this: have bars (like hunger, sleep, comfort and so on) for every faction
-one is for tech. tribes start with zero tech and advance very slowly. outlanders start on medium and advance a bit quicker. this bar defines the max tech of any faction. (charge rifles = high tech, pila = low tech). pirates are all over the place, as said in their description)
-one is for population. after a raid, said village's population goes down. it will steadily rise until the max. so if you want to raid a village, you will know how many people are in there (if you scouted them)
-one is for wealth. tribals are poorer than outlanders generally, pirates are all over the place. wealth changes with time. sometimes goes up, sometimes goes down. if a raid managed to steal stuff from you, their wealth will stay up for a while. more wealth means more and better quality arms and armor, also loot. keep in mind that high wealth doesnt mean they can access better weapons than their tech level. (maybe one or two, through trade) wealth also goes higher up if you trade with them. higher wealth also means more silver available for trade (and yes, i do understand that after trading in all their silver for your elefant tusks, thrumbo horns, scyther blades and organs they wont have any additional silver for a while, but afterwards, yes)
-maybe there could be more bars, dunno. maybe there could be a bar for current happiness in the town, maybe not. you get the idea. so that you could add whatever you find important.

while i think it is important to know which town a raid came from, i dont think the raiders need to consider anything. if they are in war with you, they may raid you. but if you do want more options in this regard, maybe you should have a system like this:
-faction trust above 40: strong allies. will send a lot of reinforcements if paid, trades and doesnt raid.
-faction trust above 10: alliance. will send some reinforcements if paid. no raids and will trade.
-faction trust between 10 and -10: peace. you can trade, cant ask them for reinforcements but they wont raid you either.
-faction trust under -10: embargo: wont trade, reinforce or attack.
-faction trust under -40: war. no trade, wont reinforce but will raid. pirates are always at war with everyone else.
the faction trust is an additional factor for trading. better relations mean better deals.

if you raided an enemy town, surrounding towns might consider helping them rebuild. they will send pawns and resources (population and wealth bars will decrease at the helping town so that they increase in the other one) to fix the place. great timing for you to either raid the same place another time or the source of the help.

factions shouldnt specialize in items. if anything, maybe in stuff like weapons, growing stuff, hunting, sewing, furniture and tech stuff like heaters and batteries and so on. they also shouldnt trade with eachother. that just needlessly complicates things.

no, dont change the market balance. it is made the way is for a reason. maybe make the discrepancies more reliant on things the player can actually influence and not just skill of pawn. but dont make it be possible to gain more money than you sold your stuff for. that ruins the game.

the whole trading system you just described is way too complicated. the way it is right now is just right.

while i do support making trade deals a bit more streamlined, so as to create more deals that are not just doable but also worth your time. gathering 6k agave fruit is just too annoying if you only get some silver in return, especially if you have to do it in a fortnight. if you have to smith 42 knives in the same amount of for a good tv, i'd not only do it because it's worth it, but also because it is just a funny and relatively easy to do task. i had other cases aswell where i had to change a triple rocket launcher to a doomsday one, which i only did because i got it from a resource cache just before and i went through that one town anyway. but even so i dont think it was really worth it. doomsday creates too much chaos to be useful, triple is at least somewhat calculable. if you asked me, i shouldve either gotten a really high quality one or i don't know, maybe a second one or something. like, how unlikely is it that you have one of those badboys just laying around, not needing it and gladly changing it for the doomsday one?

eitherway

i dont think we need more furniture that dont add new features to the game.

"fancy world generation" could totally become a thing though