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RadCavalier Posts: 24
6/7/2018
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As ever, these are merely suggestions. I'm certain DrDread has his own vision for the game and I want to start by thanking him for creating something we all enjoy so much.
This game has an excellent foundation, but there have been concerns over end-game inflation and stagnancy. With that in mind, I've decided to compile the notes from a discussion in Discord along with a few of my own thoughts. I'll be breaking down the post into several sections, starting with the design/theory and ending with practical suggestions for solutions. If you just want to get right to the suggestions, skip this first bit, because it's all about why we need what we need.
From a design perspective, I personally think the solution to a lot of our outstanding problems can be summarized into two big categories, Money Sinks and Context/Narrative.
In reference to Money Sinks, players don't have enough reasons to spend their money. For a healthy economy (especially in a game all about economy) there needs to be a balance between money being generated by the playerbase vs. money exiting the ecosystem of the game. This prevents inflation and the stagnancy of "having all the things."
This balance is actually achieved very well during the early-mid game as upgrades and infrastructure costs burn up a great deal of money generated. It creates a really good sense of progression, but it's a temporary state, as once you hit your logistics/military cap and upgrade your structures to Level 10, you run out of things to burn your money on. This is where I think we should implement more "running costs" rather than "lump costs" to coin some phrases.
I define a "running cost" as a continual "cost of doing business" that recurs over and over, a good example of this would be the cost of using a Warp Gate to accelerate your fleet. Every time you want to use the gate, it will cost to make that happen. But, importantly, you can choose to forego the cost for the slower alternative. A "lump cost" would be something like upgrading your Corp HQ from level 9 to 10. It is a one-time obstacle that is meant to be a tall hurdle, but once cleared, you've progressed beyond it and don't face it again.
Because of this distinction, asking for higher levels in buildings, or higher logistics/military is good for the sense of progression, but it won't solve the inflation issue. That will only be solved by "running costs" that create continual, dynamic choices that force the player to choose between the more efficient/more expensive option, and the less efficient/less expensive option.
The second thing I mentioned was Context/Narrative, it's all well and good to get bigger numbers, but there needs to be a reason to care about those numbers. So far, the community has done a great deal to try to provide their own narrative, but it struggles against the design of the game, rather than acting in concert with it. An example of this would be the Lunar Accords and the conflicts leading up to it when the game first started. That was an excellent piece of player-driven emergent narrative that gave a context to the struggles around Sol's ONLY artifact node. The reason I bring this up at all roots back to Eve Online. Eve's core gameplay tends to be very dry, it's often joked about as "Spreadsheets Online" and yet it has high appeal to new players. Why? Because of the stories that veteran players have in the sandbox environment of the game. Even if the gameplay itself isn't pulse-pounding, the context surrounding the gameplay makes it riveting all the same. As such, I personally believe we, both DrDread and the community as a whole, need to come together to flesh out the world of BotG in an effort to give it more character and personality in the hopes of making memorable stories not only for ourselves, but as a point of appeal to those we'd like to invite to the game.
Now, stories can't exist without conflict, as we've seen in the game's past. And conflict typically doesn't occur without reason, especially in a game where war quite literally doesn't pay. The huge expansions of space caused by Weyland-Yutani meant that everyone got much-needed breathing room and more to spare, but it also meant that conflicts died down because everyone had plenty of space to expand in their own corner of the world. While this presents a problem, I believe it can be mitigated by adding content that gives each star or region of space a character or identity all its own. When I left, there was some discussion about creating "planetary quirks" that would give each planet mechanically-relevant changes to industries and units on their surface (think like, a "Fertile" planet increasing production of Crops/Meat industries while also lowering demand for both). I think this is an excellent idea that creates varied appeal and prompts meaningful decisions on where and how to expand your operations. Even negative quirks could have an upside. A planet might be more hostile to commercialization, but it also means if you're willing to put up with the maluses you'd have the planet to yourself. Another possible option is an Artifact-esque addition of "strategic resources" (a concept seen in Stellaris to great effect). Specific resources which could be harvested to increase production speeds, or provide additional artifact-like bonuses to units, but are only found with great rarity. These would be a point of contention amongst corporations and prompt the politicking and intrigue I feel many of us feel is lacking in the gameplay. Perhaps this is what DrDread has in mind with the "Artifact Fragment" update, though I'd like to see Artifacts become even less abundant and more useful.
At any rate, that concludes my musings on the game design. Here are some concrete suggestions both by myself and others in the BotG Discord:
- A tax percentage option that directly impacts population growth in a town, adjustable by rulers. This tax would act exactly how the current tax system does, but with the added choice of balancing profits over city growth.
-In-city events that would have to be mitigated by investment from players (disease, crime sprees, riots, etc.). These could factor into the prestige system as well, where we, as corporations, either ignore, mitigate (say, 50% expense for a partial success) or resolve (100% expense, total success) the issue at hand. These events would be in the style of fads and such.
-The ability for rulers to create tariffs on specific guilds or corps. Both inclusive and exclusive. Basically, setting a tariff rate, and who it targets. This could be used to generate non-combat friction and possibly even prompt embargos and trade wars between players without the destruction of their property.
-Industrial espionage via "operative" assets that act similar to nanite swarm/geoscorcher artifacts, these operatives could be created out of a unique building (similar to the way a research station creates an artifact). Potentially create a Play-Counterplay interaction with Operatives and Security. This would lead to the cost-benefit analysis of deciding exactly how much Security you need to upkeep to maintain safety.
Some ideas:
-Sabotage (production at one structure is lessened by a 20-30% range for a short time)
-Labor strike
-Work Accident
-Espionage (production at one structure is stolen by a ~5% range)
-Planetary Quirks. As mentioned before, either randomly or non-randomly assigned bonuses and maluses that affect the appeal of planets for various purposes. Not all planets would even have to have them. This would act as an extension of the non-random attribution of resources on various planet types (for example, the high metal content of volcanic worlds or the fact food resources only spawn on certain terrestrial planet types).
-Nameable Planets (either generated names, or player named). This one is actually a big one for me. Stars have names, cities have names, our planets need names. Once something has a name it can start having an identity. Perhaps name them only after a certain number of population is reached? I think it's a small thing that would actually go surprisingly far in helping us create a world full of character.
-This will seem like an odd one, and perhaps I'm way off here, but I think adding separate discord channels under the general channel for each populated star system would be useful for helping develop internal communities within the greater playerbase. Again, it always comes down to creating systems that help form distinct identities within the community.
-Strategic Resources (similar to artifacts, specific boosts to productivity in certain industries, ability to mitigate harmful planetary quirks, etc.)
I'll add more to this post as I think of them, but I'm in a bit of a scramble right now. I really would love to see some open discussion on these suggestions and whether or not people would like to build on the ideas or point out flaws in them.
-Shaw
edited by RadCavalier on 6/7/2018
edited by RadCavalier on 6/7/2018
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