Minor Faction Characterization

from Sins2 Forums

Hi!

I loved the first game and I am really enjoying following the progress on the second game. Thank you for your great work!

There would be many things to say and I'll probably make a more comprehensive post later on, but right now I would like to focus on minor factions.

Here are a few features that I would love to see to make them stand out more as a feature of the game and in and of themselves.

-It would be nice to see variations on the simple metal-factions and crystal-factions that we have right now. Maybe keep the main theme but give them more flavour and a few variations for both.. the metal faction could be a miner faction but also a ship salvager faction, while the crystal faction could be based on a gas giant or be interstellar traders. This in turn could give slightly different flavours and bonuses for players with high favour with them.

- A simple but nice thing to do would be to give each minor faction a mid-level Capital ship, based on their theme. That would add so much character, and a bit of challenge if one decided to conquer them! For example, the TEC metal miner faction could have a level 5 Marza Dreadnought with a couple defensive components!

- It would also be nice if the top level of favour with the minor faction gave you the option to "confederate" them peacefully, maybe paying a certain amount of credits, resulting in gaining a well developped planet, all their ships and orbital structures.

- While the minor faction absolute neutrality (except for the pirates of course) is an interesting feature, it could be nice if the minor faction didn't tolerate aggression between players inside of their space. The system could work so that neutrality among all factions is the automatic standard in the gravity well, but one could actively attack an enemy faction's ships. This in turn provokes unilateral retaliation from the minor faction forces towards the aggressor, without them automatically going to war with them. The minor faction (who is from a thematic standpoint an economic focused neutral faction, interested mainly in doing business with all parties) would act as a sort of police force inside its own space. I think this would add much thematically and mechanically (especially with a stronger garrison featuring a capital ship), and would strengthen the feeling of diplomatic immunity inside the minor faction's gravity well, especially useful for diplomatic frigates.

 

I may be focusing too much on this feature of the game, but I find that the presence of these minor factions, along with the pirates,  adds a lot to the narrative of each game!

Thanks again for all your hard work, I cannot wait to see and play more :) (also really missing Dev Journals!)

sins ii feedback
12,392 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Sins2 Forums Top

Glad to hear you're enjoying the NPC Factions! We're definitely receptive to feedback on what you'd like to see from them. We're continuing to evaluate their role on the map and how they best serve gameplay and emersion.

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Reply #2 from Sins2 Forums Top

Trying to usurp power over a minor faction via bribing their ruling 'whatever' could result in the minor faction wanting to call in the other major player to help maintain their sovereignty from would-be aggressors trying to steal their freedom. Because even though these days 'we' might be used to ultra-corrupt and degenerate people in some countries leadership being puppeteered by money oligarchs, the oligarchs that do the puppeteering and the drama those officials play, is one thing, the rest is the actual people, who have sneakily power taken away from them by an outside power. So in such a case, of a betrayal of their so-called elites, the people in order to restore their sovereignty-power, are inclined to call help from outside powers to remove an usurper vassal regime that would of course try to use all means of oppression to cement its hold, on outsiders behalf, all the while utilizing the official language of love and freedom, that just happens to be the opposite of reality and what they want to remove. Also, assault on indigenous culture, subversion, trying to inspire drug use in order to bring down a society. History is full of examples of that. (opium wars etc)

........

more practical suggestions: 

Minor factions, having good relations with them, could somehow grant you the ability to build special items/slots either on ships, or special buildings, even defense turrets, ships. (something like you can do with pirates on asteroids as tec rebels T3)

Are directional shields still planned ? Like the shield on the old game Starbase that had frontal deflector shield. A minor faction could either give access to that to be built, or your cap ships would gain the ability to have that special kind of equipment in minor faction grav well.

when it comes to items for cap ships, there should be differences between loyal and reb factions. Since divisions took place, they no longer are the same factions, the philosophy of their defense/war strategy dictates the equipment,(not demagogues) so aggressive vs heavily defensive outlook will inevitably produce different things.

In Rebellion you had each faction with own particular corvettes that could pretty significantly alter the gameplay.

Like Vasari has an overgrown fighter Defensor doing PD and general light firepower, there is space for a missile corvette too. instead of a bomber.

TEC fighter is called interceptor. Using WW2+ terminology, Interceptor was the thing to get the heavy bombers. Ability to go high fast, at the cost of dogfighting ability. Later on, Interceptors in some countries became long range patrol planes. Normally outside the reach and performance of a front-line fighter. Those normal fighters service ceiling IRL is about 16km. (F-16, MiG-29) Interceptors, say MiG-25PD was able to go higher, faster, later iterations, like 31, quite modern planes, became carriers of heavy 'very fast projectiles'. But IRL the planes are huge. The ... 'interceptor', could work similar to a corvette, but also a sort of like cavalry archer, where it just keeps sending the missiles while keeping distance. Its missiles however should be able to target fighters or bombers. Otherwise it would be just be some reskin of Javelis with weaker missiles, perhaps something like bombers. (80/20 per missile 120 pen, something more than 20 pen of fighters) Anyway, Im getting into too much detail, which might not be actually useful.

So, there could be carriers, or items that could provide some squadron/s of interceptors, that do use missiles against their targets, primarily bombers, from range. Missiles could be faster than usual, so light corvettes like scouts would be unable to outrun them.

Again, properly used proportional navigation should work fine as long as the missile is faster than the target.

So, that would add some more missile saturation, more missiles to saturate PD with perhaps. Interceptor as a super-heavy fighter anti-fighter/bomber.

It is very far from making an 'integrated space defense' though :)

Cheers :)

I think some of the ideas are actually pretty cool :))

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