MOD:WCU:Privateer3:ReqFactionsOldthread

Amazing! This conversation took place at crius.net in march 2005!!! I was convinced it had been like two years since those horrible days when LOAF tried to snatch control of WCU from spiritplumber by a bogus vote among his minions. Feels like a nightmare from a looooong time ago, and yet it's january 2006 as I write this... less than a year! I also was convinced that my period at crius had been very, very short, like a couple of weeks; but I just noticed there I had 309 posts. Not a whole lot, but more than I could have posted in a month, for sure. Someone might ask, what was I just doing there, given that I swore never to go back. Actually, I got a link to one of my own posts while googling around :)

Me (Dan W, a.k.a. chuck_starchaser):

Yeah, I was just reading about Wing Commander Armada, and it suposedly was a kind of strategy game,
where you colonize planets, mine asteroids, produce ships, and so on; intermixed with WC style skirmishes.
Of course, the game must have had a different interface. But I'm sure that if one manages to colonize a
planet in WC, it wouldn't take too much coding for adding an 'administration room' to a base, where you
can go there and edit the schedule of tasks you want done on the given planet, or have an overview of the
planets you control.

As for making enemies automatically stronger as you upgrade the ship, I totally disagree. It doesn't take
long for gamers to figure out such tricks. The original Privateer was like that: The strength of the
enemies parallelled the power of your guns, so you were better off upgrading everything in the ship but
sticking to lasers. That sucks. And knowing the policy super sucks, as there's basically no incentive to
move forward. Instead, make difficulty geography based, so that if you get stronger, you can go to places
you would otherwise not survive in. So, even if there are 200 systems in the universe, at the beginning
you could only survive in a handful.

Forlarren:

Basing the difficulty on a players weapons, I agree is a really bad idea. But I dont think that a pure
geography solution is correct also. While some places may have more conflict I do not think that conflict
partisipants would nessasarly have better weapons/equipment based on stricly geographic location.

Instead putting to use the faction system would be the most eligent way to handle this. Each faction
should have a like/dislike score and a fame/noteriaty score, with a sector/system subdivision. Changing
these scores should not be based purely destroying ships of oposing factions. Instead missions and events
should score more strongly.

Example: Your a young trader just starting your trade career. You see Kats and Confeds duking it out,
pirates rading fat merchent ships laden with treasure, but you go relitively unscathed as long as you
stick to the safer neutral systems. You know that if you travel to the unsaviory bits of the universe all
bets are off, but at the moment you are below everyones radar.

Here the plater would have just the normal starting faction scores. Any in system NPCs would make a check
aginst the players faction scores. Large/powerful NPC groups would have a very low chace to harass an
insanificant target, like our players little trap freighter. More heavily factioned systems though would
be VERY hostile to a neutral factioned ship with little to no fame/noteriety.

Example 2: The player just bought his first Dramon with all the profit earned from months of hualing
whatever needed moved from one location to another and is now ready to kick the profits up a notch,
loading up on ore and food in vast quanitys, for trade. Leaving the system you must pass through a
couple rough system to reach your destination. Never having much trouble before you figure you dont
need hire a wing man. After your second jump on your radar is a flight of pirates. Not unexpected,
but worrysome. Suddenly your com comes alive and the pirates are demanding payment for save passage.
Only you dont have any money, spending it all on your new ship and its cargo. You make a run for the
jump point and prey....

What happened is that the player still had a relitivly neutral score with the pirates in both like/dislike
and fame/noteriaty. But what changed was his score with the merchent guild, the pirates checked aginst the
players fame score with the merchents and seeing that it was a high score means that the player is known
to be wealthy and cary valuable cargo often. This combined with the class of ship the player was flying
pushed the pirates into an interested mode. When criminals are interested in you that means they want
something. If you cant/wont pay then they go into aggressive mode and take what they want from whatever
is left of your ship after they cut it to shreds with their lasers.

Consering faction points:

Each faction should have their own method of gaining and loosing faction points. The AI of each faction
dosn't just check for there own faction scores but the faction scores of other factions as well.

Lets just assume each faction has 4 faction scores. #1 Fame/Noteriety Local, #2 Fame/Noteriety Global, #3
Like/Dislike Local, and #4 Like/Dislike Global. Your local scores would be system based, in some systems
one faction may not like you but in another system the same faction may love you. Your faction scores in
each system are indapendent of eachother. Global faction on the other hand adjusts your local faction
score by +/-X%. You earn global faction by earning/loosing lots of local faction in many systems. Lets
just say that local facton is -1000 to +1000. At every 400 points you would earn 1 global faction point.
At -400 you would have -1% global added to your pool. At -800 you would have -2% added to your pool.
Oppisite with positive faction.

Faction points would also tent to migrate to 0 if the player takes no actions. This change can be slow or
quick depending on the faction (hey fame is fleeting).

Example: Merchents guild faction:
Like/Dislike: Each mission/deal earns you a small amount of like, trust is gained slowly in buisness.
Attacking merchent ships quickly earns you large amounts of dislike. With enough dislike the Merchent
guild will buy contracts on your head.

Fame/Noteriaty: Taking difficult missions, collecting merchent bountys, and the total (recent) value in
goods exchaned, increase your fame. You can loose fame by not finishing missions, making bad trades
(selling off goods for less than you paid for it), and welching on your contracts (steeling cargo from
cargo missions). A high fame score means that more / better paying contracts are available. As well as
having greater bargining power when trading goods. A negative score means that no body will do buisness
with you, missions will be small and few, and you will rarely get full market value in trade for goods.

The merchent guild dose NOT do buisness with pirates. Even a small global fame score in the pirate faction
will mean ejection from the guild. If you have any global positive pirate score your normal global merchant
like score is replaced instead with the inverse pirate score doubled.

What does everyone think? This doable?

Dan W:

I fully endorse it.

In fact, I would like to add further dimensions to Forlarren's proposal: Besides Notoriety and Like/Dislike,
I'd like for the system to also include a score for Trust/Distrust, such that Kilrathi may get to like you,
but may never get to fully trust you. Also, I would like to bring back the issue I raised in earlier posts:
Namely that Hunters don't like or dislike as much as other factions, as they are rather cold-blooded people;
they simply put a price on your head, and if you want to clear your score with them, you can only do it with
MONEY.

Yep, add a fourth score: Price on your head. To the extent a faction dislikes you, they are willing to pay
for your demise, so the more factions dislike you, and the more they dislike you, the total bounty goes up,
and more hunters, and even other factions, would like to collect that bounty.

Another detail: Destroying a ship of a faction when the ship was friendly or neutral should produce a much
greater change in score with that faction than if the ship appears as hostile in the first place; and
perhaps NOT affect your score with that faction at all if the ship attacked you first.

Forlarren suggested that if you do any piracy, the merchants reject you. I'd like to put a little kink on
that: It should depend on the KIND of piracy. Transporting contraband is none of their business to judge
you for. Attacking merchant ships, on the other hand...

Also, accidentally shooting a friendly, or ramming into them, should NOT produce instant enemity: They should
just say something along the lines of "Hey, look before you shoot, buddy!". After 3 shots, say, they might
become hostile.

So, to Forlarren's proposal of a 2-level friendliness scoring, namely Local and Global, I'd like to add a lot
of levels:

   * Individual ship
   * Flight group
   * System
   * Quadrant
   * Sector
   * Global

And the scores from the most localized level would trickle along the chain towards Global at various rates,
reflecting the speed at which the gossip spreads.

Forlarren:

Bingo we have a winner!!!

I really didn't think that the code would be hard, at least it seemed simple to me. So basicly we need to
define the granulariy of the system, how to earn loose points for each faction, and how many faction score
subgroups we will need.

I propose for granularty we use a -1000 to +1000 scale for each system faction score.
For the global score /2 to *2 of the global scale, (ok the math side of my brain just went out to lunch...
ok basicly your local score would max at -2000 to +2000 when adjusted by your global score). That should
give a lot of room to work with. That way we have the option of factions that take a LONG time to earn
trust, some that are faster (earn more points/misson), and fine tuning the system would be easier because
you can make very small changes, while still a small enough pool of numbers to keep eveything in your head
when debugging it.

As for faction sub groups we have:
Like/Dislike
Fame/Noteriety
Trust/Distrust

I think that fame and trust are very close together. But I can understand the diffrence and why it would be
important. Any others we would like to add to the list?

Now as far as how to earn loose points and the effect on the AI that is the difficult part. First we need a
complete list of all factions. Then one at a time discuss how you would earn/loose faction points.

Once we have all that it would just need to be coded up and plugged into the game. It should in theroy give
us a simple way of keeping score of a players actions within the game. That would act as a basis of
generating missions, AI interaction, and game difficulty all at the same time... In theroy that is. :P

I think a price on your head should be a combined funciton of dislike and noteriety for some factions and
its a one time thing. Paying the price on your head would boost you up to just under when they issue contracts
aginst you. Differing factions would have differing level at witch they decide they want you dead.

Like if your combined global score adjusted system faction for the merchents for dislike and noteriety is
greater than -800 then you can no longer do buisness with time, when it hits -1200 a small contract is taken
out, %20 chance that a bounty hunter will attack you in system/day %5 chance in neiboring systems. At -1600 a
large contrat is taken on your head %50 chance in system a group of bounty hunters will attack you, or %20 in
neiboring systems. At -2400 its %100 sure that you will be attacked in system and you better watch your ass
anywhere you go. If you pay your retrobution then you are boosted up to -1000 again.

...................................................

If done correctly this faction system could be a good framework to hang a LOT of other scripts. It would be a
good way to measure a players actions through the game without having to resort to experence points, or other
such nonsence.

If this system is as intuitve as it seems to be then I really dont think we will need to output anything to
the player. If he cant remember that he is a wanted man in Troy then thats his own problem.

Dan W:

Exactly!

I wouldn't even make the faction scores available to the player. All these complex computations should result
in faction attitudes that seem logical and reasonable to the player, given past actions.

Spiritplumber:

Most of this stuff is probably going to make a visible difference to the player only in multiplayer though...
I think that faction likeability and bounty on your head should cover it  I mean, this is all very cool but
will it show in gameplay? That's the main thing.

Dan W:

Sure it will! The factions' attitudes towards you will make a lot more sense. Say, after the Palan missions,
hunters might hate you *in Palan and surrounding systems*, as well as in Oxford and surrounding systems, but
not, say in New Detroit or Troy... YET, but given time the hatred might spread. How fast it spreads will
depend on your notoriety. Ironically, your notoriety *with the hunters* might be higher if you've done a lot
of bounty missions through their guild. In the systems where hunters hate you, or, rather, have a bounty on
you, if you go to their guild, the computer will tell you you've been disqualified to take missions. If you
talk to the girl, she will tell you that you are wanted, how much the bounty on you is, and offer you to
clean your record by paying the bounty on yourself.

Trust: The cats may get to like you, but the only way they'd get to trust you is if you ran missions for them.
So, it might be possible, but very difficult to become a friend of the kilrathi.

Retros, on the other hand, they are idiots, so it might be very easy to get them to like you and trust you,
and consider you one of their own. Might depend exclusively on how you comm with them.

Confeds would be impervious to comm; they will only like you if you kill cats and/or retros.
Similarly, militias might be a bit more amenable to sweet talk, but for them to like you, you have to kill
pirates and/or retros.

Merchants will like you if you comm nicely, and/or kill retros, pirates and kilrathi, but would trust you most
if you also do a lot of cargo missions.


So, each group has different types of stimulus/response according to their characters.

And if you don't interact much with a given faction, then you have low notoriety, which means that you might
impress some of them locally, but the news doesn't spread to other systems; but if you have a lot of interaction
with a faction, and your notoriety is high with them, anything you do, positive or negative, news spread quickly.

But you wouldn't consciously be able to make out all these complex rules. It's just that the end result would
simply make sense intuitively.

(Even the type of ship you're flying, might tip the attitudes.)