It'll be nice if we can get some bonus goodies from tying ourselves closer to a faction

[Raptor34]

For starters I'll note that I like the current system where you can be friends with everyone. But there also isn't a reason to have a special friend, which we can see from how the ideal is making a shipyard selling to everyone so they kill each other on launch so you get more demand for ships. Until lategame anyway when money ceases to be relevant.

So what I'll like to see, perhaps with the upcoming diplomacy update, is a system where you can bind yourself, temporarily of course, to a faction in return for special bonuses.
I'll rather not have ships behind this system, but perhaps gear could be something that is given. Something like the Split Mk4 Combats, or perhaps Mk5 now, could be locked behind this system. Each faction could have such BIS equipment locked behind this system. Though of course there are different weapons too, so not simply the best weapon, but more like the best weapon for a specific purpose. Like Plasma Cannons were ordinarily Paranid right? They could have Mk 3 Plasma Cannons. Argon could have Mk 3 Ions. And if possible you could have tiers of being an ally too, separate from the rep system, so you could choose to bind yourself at a lower tier, but in return for greater freedom of action, but I'll elaborate on this part later.
Besides that, factions could also have Mk3 shields too, but focused further on their own specialties. Like how TEL shields are the thickest, PAR are the fastest charging. TER could get a Mk.4 too. Not sure what BOR should get though, but perhaps it'll be special modifications and improvements to their gear so you could fit it on the other faction ships too. Like imagine a Syn with all those powerful L Boron turrets.

So we have the rewards, but how to unlock it. You can bind yourself to a faction at different tiers of course. To keep it simple, this can be adjusted later of course, but to make it simple for me to type, assume each higher tier includes everything from the lower tier.
Tier 1: Sell raw materials to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 2: Sell intermediate products to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 3: Sell advanced products to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 4: Sell civilian ships to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 5: Sell small military ships to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 6: Sell large military ships to your allied faction exclusively.
Tier 7: Full binding, your faction's enemies are your enemies, their allies, your allies. This would of course be temporary, if you decide to break away from them, your faction rep to everyone is reset to before. At this tier there would of course now be penalties to breaking away. But depending on how much you've helped them previously, the breaking away could be amiable.
Now all these are negotiable of course, I haven't really thought about which of these are more or less impactful, but the general idea is that the higher tier you go, you need to sell the more profitable stuff exclusively to your allied faction. Or perhaps more complex to produce stuff. Like you may sell iron ore to whoever, but microchips? Weapons? These are more selective.
And of course these are hard restrictions, because unless a system is developed where they can actually detect you cheating, the simplest method is to just apply a hard blacklist. Maybe you yourself are allowed to cheat, in the sense you can personally fly over and deliver goods to other factions, but not anything automated or remote controlled.
Also note these are only selling restrictions, buying from their enemies to sell to your ally is allowed.
And for that matter, if you decide to bind yourself even at the lowest tier, you should also have your rep temporarily restored with their allies too. So say you pissed off the Boron all the way to -30, but you are still on talking terms with the Argon, you can bind yourself to the Argon, and now you can trade with the Boron to repair your rep.

So for how you'll access these new special faction gear, the simplest method is going to their shipyard/wharf/EQ Docks. But you'll also get access to a new general station module, unless Egosoft wants to design faction specific versions. This station module would be to put it simply a combo fab/habitat module, habitat in the sense that it consumes food/meds of the faction you are allied with, not that it gives workforce.
The idea of course is that the benefits are only as long as you are allied to a faction, but as long as you are allied, they'll send engineers to your own shipyards, which you need to keep fed and healthy of course, and you can now mass produce ships using these special faction gear. But if you break away, they leave too and you can no longer produce ships with faction gear. Any ship which already has those is of course unaffected. So if you want to craft the ideal personal ship, you can slowly ally with everyone and build up that way.

Now of course, as you are allied with a faction, even at the lowest tier, you'll earn a new currency of sorts which is like rep. This would track volume of trade that is specific to a tier, so for example, if you bind yourself to Tier 1, then say every 1 unit of raw material sold to your ally gains you 1 point, but intermediate products sold gives you nothing. And of course as you move into higher tier of goods, each 1 unit would give you more points. So say 1 raw material is 1 point, 1 intermediate good is 2 points so on and so forth.
These points can be used for a variety of things, the simplest one is it basically tracks how much you've helped them. So to put it simply say breaking away peacefully at Tier 7 with no penalties needs say 1 million points, so if you have that you can pay the penalty with this. But if you don't have enough, then the cost would be paid in reputation instead. If you try to cheat by just jumping to Tier 7 to get all their gear but without helping them and immediately leaving for the next faction, this can drop you all the way to -30. Though that's a Tier 7 specific thing, lower tiers would have weaker rewards and consequently weaker thresholds. And even the lower tiers, all the way up to Tier 3 perhaps, you don't even have a penalty, though at that point the rewards aren't that fun either. But should still be good enough to give you a taste of things to come.
Another usage of points is basically FF protection, friendly fire not leading to destruction or capture would drain your points, but not your actual reputation. But make it not just for that specific action you are allied with, you also get FF protection, but at a higher cost for their allies. Going back to the Argon/Boron example, if you are allied with the Argon and have helped them a lot, tracked by the points, then the Argon would negotiate on your behalf. It'll be costlier in terms of points of course, because you aren't actually helping the Boron directly. But maybe make it so you can share the lower tiers? Like you can be at Tier 7 with the Argon, but you can also go up to Tier 4 with their allies.
You should also be allowed to call for assistance with points too. Like say spend a thousand points to ask a fighter wing to defend a position for one hour. Timer only starts when they arrive of course. Then like 10k points for a destroyer group, you get the general idea.
Buying paintjobs is another use too, like while getting high rep allows you to use a faction's paintjob currently, under this system at higher Tiers you can also get access to their other paintjobs as well, but as one's you can apply, not just use as default like it is currently, so more freedom.
Note of course that I wouldn't tie access to faction gear to points, once you've bound yourself to a certain tier you immediately get access to that gear, you just need the points to cushion you when you break away from them later. So in theory you can jump around at lower tiers to get access to all that gear. But not the best gear and paintjobs of course, you need to go to the higher tiers and their higher penalty thresholds for that.

[j.harshaw]

From experience, problem with this is that nothing is ever considered a "bonus goody". And to be clear, I'm not complaining. It's just how it is.

Access to things is seen as either a natural consequence of having reached a milestone (for example, getting access to a faction's more restricted blueprints after improving your relationship with them by a certain degree, or even more pedestrian: dock access) or content without which something is seen as incomplete (such as the Erlking's additional components that you can stumble upon -- which were, funny story, actually conceptualized as rewards that improve an otherwise already-useful ship to incentivize exploration. Finding all of them was initially imagined to be quite a rare occurrence). Of course, it might be a trick of presentation, or maybe it has to be something purely cosmetic and unimportant, but seems like there'll always be at least a segment of the player base that'll see rewards as content that they have to have, won't particularly enjoy the activity you have to do to get at it, and decry walls or hurdles that they're being "forced to engage in".

That said, maybe it'll turn out doable after all and we'll figure out the trick of it at some point. We're all still learning (and hopefully will continue to do so until we simply can't anymore).

PS. just realized that second paragraph was almost all one sentence. may have been in Germany too long. honestly don't see anything wrong with it.

EDIT: thinking about it, a temporary privilege for setting yourself up in a temporary situation or with a temporary restriction might be interesting.

[Vovadrik]

I think the biggest problem is fear of missing out. As a sandbox game players want to have access to everything as an achievement and in current state messing with one of the factions will close access to them forever.

I like idea of having exclusive equipment for exclusive relationships but the whole idea has to be very carefully considered so that it does not become too imbalanced or boring.

[Feloidea]

From experience, problem with this is that nothing is ever considered a "bonus goody". And to be clear, I'm not complaining. It's just how it is.

Access to things is seen as either a natural consequence of having reached a milestone (for example, getting access to a faction's more restricted blueprints after improving your relationship with them by a certain degree, or even more pedestrian: dock access) or content without which something is seen as incomplete (such as the Erlking's additional components that you can stumble upon -- which were, funny story, actually conceptualized as rewards that improve an otherwise already-useful ship to incentivize exploration. Finding all of them was initially imagined to be quite a rare occurrence). Of course, it might be a trick of presentation, or maybe it has to be something purely cosmetic and unimportant, but seems like there'll always be at least a segment of the player base that'll see rewards as content that they have to have, won't particularly enjoy the activity you have to do to get at it, and decry walls or hurdles that they're being "forced to engage in".

That said, maybe it'll turn out doable after all and we'll figure out the trick of it at some point. We're all still learning (and hopefully will continue to do so until we simply can't anymore).

PS. just realized that second paragraph was almost all one sentence. may have been in Germany too long. honestly don't see anything wrong with it.

EDIT: thinking about it, a temporary privilege for setting yourself up in a temporary situation or with a temporary restriction might be interesting.

Temporary priviliges for temporary faction related duties that will run out after a set period of time and enter a cooldown state so you can't chain them together ad infinitum would be an interesting addition to the game. But the old question of what would be incentive consummate with the limitations of such things (such as closely tying oneself to a faction for a specific time and as a consequence possibly losing priviliges to an opposed faction for the duration) is going to be difficult. On one hand, if the reward is too good/META it will be considered mandatory to get. On the other hand, a reward too inconsequential would be uninteresting and often not worth the tradeoff.

I would always prefer something that transforms the universe. A special mission line for a faction that ends up shaping its influence like say facilitating (either directly or indirectly through support) the change of sector ownerships to advance territorial gains for a faction at the expense of another an always be seen as a net positive for the player. You get the mission rewards (as trivial as just paintjobs or things like exceptional modding materials, high level crew or perhaps even slightly (!!!) modified unique ships for the collectors among the players) which late in the game are just a neat bonus but nothing major, but on the other hand you can help escalate a faction conflict that can give you lots of profit opportunities even if you root for the faction you played against as it drives the war economy demand.

This could even be something that temporarily puts allies against one another (a little bit of espionage friction that may result in both factions becoming actively hostile top each other for a limited ingame time, not a full war but enough time that sector ownership and borders can change a little bit).

In how much this might overlap with the diplomacy feature that is planned, I wouldn't know. But reshaping the landscape of relationships between factions has always been the best thing about plot missions. Change the universe in meaningful ways.


Also, a two-and-a-half sentence paragraph is perfectly normal. We're reading, not talking; there's no need for pauses in between sentences to catch a breath and it's good practice to use punctuations that aren't just periods such as the all-too neglected semicolon.

[Raptor34]

Of course, it might be a trick of presentation, or maybe it has to be something purely cosmetic and unimportant, but seems like there'll always be at least a segment of the player base that'll see rewards as content that they have to have, won't particularly enjoy the activity you have to do to get at it, and decry walls or hurdles that they're being "forced to engage in".

Funnily enough one of my first thoughts was that there would be mods to remove the restriction. So I do get what you mean. It's kinda the same deal with ship mod parts too. I'm not fully certain how you view it, but I view it as a bonus for the player as a win more button, but there are definitely people who don't see it that way.

Incidentally I'm somewhat sympathetic to that, which is why I chose those particular rewards, as in just stronger versions of gear that already exists, nothing exotic or unique or whatever, just normal gear, but stronger. Like I'll be annoyed too if you lock say ships or special toys behind it like similar things in other games. I think in RPGs or whatever what I propose is similar to joining a guild and going up the ranks and in the end you unlock some super special unique gear you cannot replicate elsewhere. That's what I want to avoid frankly, especially since getting to the highest tier and then being able to leave without nuking your rep under my proposal would take some work, though of course since it's basically just trading, not much personal work.

Otoh, I'll also note that I don't actually care that much about like Mk5 shields or whatever, that's just a proposal for extra incentives. What I actually think is the real interesting part is the being allied to a faction, and it's something acknowledged and enforced as well. Take the proposal for earning credits that allows you to get away with FF for instance, it's not new gear or anything, but besides being useful, it's also a reflection of a faction's trust in you actively gimping yourself in order to help them. Which is also another thing I think is interesting and some players already play that way, for me it's more like I build faction specific shipyards to serve a faction rather than an all-in-one. But if something like this is also acknowledged by the game, and more importantly, also enforced and you're given some bonuses, I think that would be nice. In a sense you can think of it as the player faction signing a contract with the NPC faction. Like I won't supply your enemies, in return you'll buy my stuff at a markup. Or forgive my minor transgressions or something. Oh and also, for Tier 7 in the proposal, where you are essentially joining their military, so to speak, them letting you color your ships with their paintjobs is another nice thing too. Currently we only get the civilian ones so to speak, but they also have those military camo ones that afaik we cannot get currently, maybe through ventures or something, but tbh I don't care for that.

Though coming back to the military thing, currently an issue in joint ops with a faction, if we can catch them that is, is the FF issue. Because the game doesn't really seem to understand if I've joined up, because there is nothing that specifically says that I have. Under my proposal joining up would be official and also come with significant maluses, i.e. you become enemies of their enemies too. And also penalties for just leaving without contributing, which under my proposal would include both selling goods and ships to the faction exclusively and also something I forgot, killing their enemies. Under this system I think relaxing the FF rules so that non-kill shots do not count would be acceptable, because you still need to actually help the faction after all and in the grand scheme of things the faction would probably benefit more than whatever exploits the player can pull. Of course actual kill shots or ship captures would have the usual penalties. Then again the player can also go around slowly crippling the faction and then betray them at the last moment, but I think that's a feature, not a bug. We can already print Asgards anyway, so little tricks like this imo would enrich the game more, like we can roleplay as a saboteur. Of course we'll still need to actually contribute to the faction through the credit system mentioned earlier so it's not like it's free.

TLDR:
Helping a faction exclusively and have it be enforced by the game is good. And the player should get some small rewards from it, whether it be paintjobs, ignoring non-kill FF or whatever.
Exclusive unique ships/gear locked behind this is bad. I do not consider say Mk.5 shields or whatever to be unique. But I consider say shields that emit AOE damage or whatever to be unique.

I think the biggest problem is fear of missing out. As a sandbox game players want to have access to everything as an achievement and in current state messing with one of the factions will close access to them forever.

I like idea of having exclusive equipment for exclusive relationships but the whole idea has to be very carefully considered so that it does not become too imbalanced or boring.

Actually under my idea it actually gives you a freehand to mess with an enemy faction. So let's say you join up with the Argon officially. Your Split rep would be dropped to -30 because you are at war and now you can shoot them. But after you leave the Argon, your rep is reset to what it was before you joined up with the Argon. I'll take the ToA ending as a model for this.
Basically rather than the current system where you mess with the Split because you want to, the idea here is you are joining up with the Argon as a soldier instead. Or to put it another way, it's nothing personal, just business. And because it'll all be part of the game systems, the Split would understand this unlike the current system where you cannot actually join up with the Argon, so as far as the Split are concerned, you just declared war on them personally.
Then after you've contributed enough to the Argon war effort, you can leave them amiably and befriend the Split. Maybe help them take back their systems or whatever. The key point of course that only stuff you do under a faction's flag, and only against their enemies don't count. So you cannot say go farming Borons while being part of the Argon. Hell, you can even make it that doing that enough, i.e. drops your rep below a certain threshold causes the Argon to kick you out and instantly go to -30 with you because you basically flew the Argon flag to attack their allies.

Temporary priviliges for temporary faction related duties that will run out after a set period of time and enter a cooldown state so you can't chain them together ad infinitum would be an interesting addition to the game. But the old question of what would be incentive consummate with the limitations of such things (such as closely tying oneself to a faction for a specific time and as a consequence possibly losing priviliges to an opposed faction for the duration) is going to be difficult. On one hand, if the reward is too good/META it will be considered mandatory to get. On the other hand, a reward too inconsequential would be uninteresting and often not worth the tradeoff.

My proposal is that it's as temporary as you want it to be, it could be permanent if that's the playthrough you want. And you don't need a cooldown either because that's what the credit system tracking your contributions is for, if you don't contribute enough before breaking it off, you suffer rep penalties.
Think of it as you signing a contract with a faction to supply them with something exclusively in return for some benefits. Let's use Ore as an example, to put it simply, you'll agree to supply them with Ore while not supplying it to anyone else in return for higher prices. So let's say the natural price ceiling is 100 credits, you get to sell it to them for 110 credits. And it'll have a target where you must have supplied them 1 thousand Ore before you can break the contract for no penalties. If you supply them below that, the difference would translate to rep penalties. If you've supplied them above that, no penalties. This is what would function as a cooldown. But again this isn't temporary, the limit is filling up all the storage that faction has. Which of course means you can exploit it with station building missions. But then again, I'm of the opinion that credits are functionally irrelevant once you reach a certain point anyway so frankly I don't see an issue here. Maybe it'll help players reach end game sooner, I know there are people out there that do not find the scrabbling for resources part fun. And if you don't want to exploit it by building station consuming Ore with dozens of L solid storage, because that's dumb and factions don't build like that anyway.
And of course in return of this great deal, the game applies an auto blacklist which prevents any of your automated or remote controlled assets from breaking the contract. You as a player can of course personally pilot a ship and make contract breaking trades.