#Encourage Civilian Faction Cooperation

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fallow bramble
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TL;DR Currently civs have little reason to help factions. I propose three things; Moving trade to faction stations, mutual benefits between faction and civ cooperation like gaining resources and research sharing and forcing faction players to skirmish before portstrike.

Why: I’ve felt that factions feel very detached to civilians and ignoring factions as a civilian presents no significant opportunity cost to players. Major factions should have more major effect with their presence in the sector. There should be a benefit to having civilian traffic to their stations all round instead of fragging starved station gunners firing at everything that strays within 3 kilometers. As a bonus hopefully when fully implemented this will present a purpose for factions to patrol around the sector instead of waiting until portstrike to do anything.

How: Simply suggesting something is not going to matter if there is no implementation strategy to act on so I will split this into two sections, no code and code changes. Ideally both could be done in parallel but even implementing one would be an improvement to the current status quo.

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No code: The foundation that can be implemented with little to no code changes right now, essentially and almost exclusively mapping changes. The first major change would be to remap the main faction stations to be able to service a good amount of civilian traffic.
• The PDV station is already well set up to do so however it would benefit from more docking infrastructure and adjusting the turrets.
• The TSF station however is not set up to service civilian traffic and does not even have a civilian accessible fuel vendor.
I am aware there is currently a project to remap the faction stations so I hope that this suggestion will be taken into account when doing so.

The second major change would be to remove the Trade Station, The map itself is a frontier holdover and currently only exists to buy and sell cargo or be taken over by chimera with little resistance.
The reasoning is that trade should be moved to the major factions to encourage civilian traffic thus potential interactions. The second reason is the nature of the station of not having a crew and the transitory nature of the ships visiting the station makes any meaningful interactions rare aside from free chimera infections or low risk pirating.
In addition the trade infrastructure on Camelot Station should also be removed as USSP is no longer a major faction and should only have a sell pad similar to CC or none at all.

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As a preface to the following sections, I am not a SS14 coder, I do not know how difficult or feasible the following suggestions will be to implement. My only knowledge on this subject is my brief mapping experience and an intro to programming course I took years ago in a language that SS14 is not even written in. This section will probably require a lot of input and changes from the coders and maintainers of the monolith project to even be viable. This is assuming they even like this idea and want to take on the challenge of implementing this suggestion.

Code changes: Obviously not everything can be done solely with mapping changes and will require some coding to implement. I will sort the changes according how impactful to the round I think it would be.

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Logistics: something something win wars or whatever, the basic crux is to modify the existing cargo transport mechanics to be faction specific and provide a benefit to both sides of the transaction. The basic mechanics for the civilian side will essentially be the same as it is currently, move crate from A to B for spaceos, except the A would be from the faction station. The twist would mainly be on the faction side, For every faction crate successfully delivered the faction gains something in return either in spaceos, faction telecrystals or an enhanced uplink system that lets factions get a wide variety of materials or things.
Alternatively, if we are willing to make a completely new system, a key item generated from the faction station like a pickup invoice or something prompting traders to go to a particular trade depot to exchange for a faction crate to deliver back to the faction station. So instead of crates moving out from the station it instead comes in from the outside.
I think this will encourage a more active role for both the factions and civilians as interdicting these deliveries will deprive the other side of more advanced resources and make factions defending either these ships or trade nodes a worthwhile thing to do especially before port strike.

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Research: Factions especially at the beginning of the round want research but the process of selling that research to them has a lot of friction. In addition selling that research to them deprives you of using that research for yourself. What I propose is a new machine, a Remote Server Uplink, a flatpack purchasable from the faction station that allows access to the main faction’s server.
How it operates is essentially the same as a research server but research points put into it can be used by the main faction freely. In exchange any research they unlock can be used by machines it is installed on. This can be useful for their own faction’s ships or a loosely affiliated civilian.
An additional feature that would be nice is that the contributing person can spend the points themselves to unlock research prior to sending it to the faction, unlocking it for everyone connected.
One issue I foresee is, what if the opposing faction captures this uplink? A number of things can be done to prevent its use. One would be to simply make it detonate if an enemy faction attempts to interact with it directly or a machine connected to it. Alternatively or additionally there could be an uplink management computer that allows the faction to see its location and remotely destroy the uplink. While I don’t think there will be foolproof way to prevent its abuse but having mechanics and server rules in place(Askam brain swapping/Turret IFF exploit) to discourage it should be enough in most cases.

cosmic tartan
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More things that I believe will be helpful is implementing
SOP and ways to interact with civilians and what you can do with them
-what you could sell to them
-what's hiring and general wages should be
-the differences between combatant civilian and a normal civilian

stray anvil
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i really like the idea of going to a preferred faction to trade

lost otter
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Seems like a good way to learn about the factions IC and lead into playing the factions for newer players.

mellow ridge
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Issue: faction players wanna frag and don't wanna trade usually

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And it's hard to "encourage" people to do something other than what they chose the role for

fallow bramble
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This is less about making factions do a thing and more making civs do more with factions

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Honestly this suggestion is basically three different ones in a trench coat

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Nuking trade depot gives a reason for the two to meet and research sharing gives a reason for civs to care more about a faction without being obligated to do anything

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Obviously if a faction gets destroyed the research goes too

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Factions are still free to frag in fact encouraging civs do the boring research and resource stuff for them gives them more time to frag

frosty crescent
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I've thought for a long time that civ esq roles for factions would be good. dedicated people (and space on station) for guys to handle relations with mercs, handle logistics, and benefit from faction research. I basically get to do that with PDV-Mart and im telling you guys its actually really fun to do

fallow bramble
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It also presents an interesting dilemma of if your faction should commit war crimes on the civs to deny the other side resources

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Might be worth in the short term but turning the sector against you is also a thing to consider

mellow ridge
fallow bramble
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If one faction refuses then they are basically shooting themselves in the foot but if both refuse then I dunno that’s a player culture issue I guess

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I feel as long as enough mechanical incentive is provided it’s a nonissue

inner barn
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Good advice

rose sky
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Logistics:
Honestly the TFC Flagship should remain relatively hard to interact with for civilians, being a warship and all. The TSFMC Seconday Outpost could be turned into the civilian facing part of their operations in the sector. Each faction should have their own sort-of Trade Mall Station / Area.

Whenever a civilian sells their goods there, a portion of the value gets taxed and added to the faction as well as gaining these recourses to their inventory. The taxing part already exists since that's what vendors and shipyards already do.

They can also put up orders for specific items like Buy Orders that civilians can check out and sell items to at a set rate.

I don't quite agree with the faction crates, because either way when you get one because you want to support OR you randomly find one and want to drop it off for cash, the other factions are more likely to stop civilians flying near the other's stations and search for those crates. Or worst case, shoot them down TO cripple the supply. Imo it's a dark pattern where Civilians carry items that help my enemy -> I should antagonize civilians to hurt my enemy.

rose sky
# fallow bramble Research: Factions especially at the beginning of the round want research but th...

Research:
For the Server Uplink, there are some considerations code-wise that I'll lay out here.

Like ATMs, you must be able to slot in Research Disks into Remote Server Uplinks, instead of the usual transfer of points to the server. You must then be able to spend that "research point credit", but not the research points already deposited to the faction. Sort of like a Deposit-Only Research ATM. That would mean coding for research disks that have partially used-up research points.

With this done, it wont make sense for one faction to obtain a remote server uplink from the other except for reconnaissance purposes.

I really like your idea of an remote server uplink management computer for real time updates of the remote server's location and possibly the grid it's been anchored on.

The question of why a civilian would want to use a remote server uplink instead of their own? Maybe for security. If yoru ship blows up and you have to abandon it, your research is still safe in the faction databanks. Or as to my previous suggestion, let the faction leader set a rate for how much they are paying per research point deposited to their server on the remote server uplink management computer.

fallow bramble
rose sky
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Yea it's important IMO that players that choose to be independant Spacers are still free to do so without feeling like missing out

fallow bramble
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The whole point is factions should be important enough that choosing to ignore them does incur an opportunity cost to encourage civs to do more with them while retaining their freedom to do whatever unlike faction players which come with restrictions and obligations

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I feel like most people choose to play as civs because they don’t want to be tied down to doing faction things the whole round otherwise we would see rounds with 20+ players on each side

smoky aspen
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Trade outposts for both factions are planned with the new faction game loop plan,along with making the current bases off map. Also Halcyon does have a fuel vendor in reception.

cosmic tartan
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The black market would also be a pretty good in between for anyone who doesn't want to interact or benefit either factions

Because I know sometimes I have beef with both factions

cosmic tartan