Dread Mercenary System

Suggestions Social
1

I was watching with curiosity, how Corporations started to band together and users hopping between the corps to support each other. For me, this shows, that people want to fill up the queues and really play this gamemode more. Drama commences, as different corporations force alliances and support each other, even with fake attacks. I (sometimes) enjoy this part of the game, and I actually also like the decision not to directly add Alliances to the game, since it makes it even more interesting in terms of politics, like CEOs dizzing each other.

 

However it occured to me, why not make a feature out of a behaviour?

 

Corporations could hire other mercenaries from other corporations for attack wings, by paying iridium with some taxes directly to another corporation. Pilots from other corporations then can join up, but for 1 cycle they are only able to either fight in attacks of their own corp or the corp that hired them.

For every participating mercenary, the host corporation pays iridium as fee;

 

The guest corporation gets iridium for the pilot joining the host corporation in the attack, as part of that fee. However if the fee scales up for the host corporation, (controlled sectors, or similar conditions to prevent abuse), the guest does not receive additional payment, only the host has to pay more.

 

This is basicly the same behaviour as it happens atm. only in a regulated manner; If someone does not want to pay Iridium, he can still let their people swap between corporations.

 

In which way this exactly would be implemented, is of course up to the devs, I just suggest this as an abstract idea to improve like this, which would keep the mercenary style of the game, but prevent rigid huge alliance monopolies.

2

I’m going to give an example of what my understanding is.

 

Corporation A (say, NASA) holds a sector that has one or more attacks on it. NASA wants to defend, but they need X more players (say, three) to defend against all of them.

 

NASA finds one player from corporation B (say, Engle from OWL) and two from corporation C (say, NuclearHail and Satori from ARCH).

 

They pay 100 iridium for each player, for a total of 300 iridium. Costs go 40 to the player’s corporation (or nowhere, if the player doesn’t have one), 30 to the player, and 30 as tax. [numbers straight out of my rear]

 

40 iridium goes to OWL (1 player * 40 corporation iridium/player)

80 iridium goes to ARCH (2 players * 40 corporation iridium/player)

30 goes to Engle

30 goes to NuclearHail

30 goes to Satori

 

90 disappears into the aether.

 

That sound about right?

3

exact implementation (if per corp or per player), etc. is up to the devs. but yeah basicly the idea would be to make larger empires more expensive to expand, without giving a winning party leverage to be more lucrative to fight for.

 

it should similarly to changing corps have a drawback against abuse; but again it could deliver more battles for only partly online teams.

4

I am actually not sure if this would lead to OP alliances.

 

Eg. NMS, ESB and DNO playing in one team for atk too is pretty scary as they are as defenders already

5

atm. that happens anyway, all the time, since you can just make members exchange (even between the corps you just mentioned); this leads to individual alliances, where friends help friends; since a large portion of our playerbase is not in the forums, half of our playerbase is on another forum, and so on, making an official way for smaller corps to contribute, even if it makes certain corps “stronger”, would actually balance itself out. There is nothing wrong with friends helping friends, however, it always ends up in elitism and monopolies of a couple of corps, which currently hold the majority of the map.

 

This is a so called aesthetic: the result is not intended by the mechanics or the dynamics of the game, but players use it. Instead of fearing hypothetical results (“makes corps stronger”), or trying to counter the habit of players (changing the rules to switch corps, etc.), I think the current situation should be seen as an opportunity, for the game to grow in it’s social mechanics.

 

Therefore, I tend to disagree; if there is an open way to form temporary alliances (which you constantly have to pay for), and it is done with some innovative ideas, it could reach to more interaction.

 

Rules, like minimal 50% corp members in an attack wing, clear upsides of such a system over “switching corps behind the scenes” (in my example: the ability to either fight for the corp you are hired for, or your own; at any given time you can only fight for one anyway, since the games happen at the same time), or regulations like “very high taxes if a corp hires people for an attack wing, if it actually owns a lot of sectors”, which basicly also creates a nice iridium sink working against inflation (which will be a problem in the future anyway, with the already established megacorps), or the simple rule, that either your corp is hiring, or offering assistance, but not both at the same time, would regulate that naturally, imho.

interaction between corporations would lead to people also learning from each other. Smaller incomplete teams could still get games, and generally this would lead to more games.

Note, that while a smaller corp would get iridium for itself by fighting for others, larger corps, or better: corps having a lot of sectors, would/should not benefit as much. Again also there, regulations could solve inconsistencies.

 

So I don’t fear the downsides. And they can be fixed as they happen

 

Finally, it really fits the theme of the game: it’s about mercenaries after all…

6

I think this is a great idea. So what if powerful alliances form, it only advocates the use of teamplay. One corp can only hold so many sectors before the costs of attacking become way too high.

 

If this idea for some reason isn’t feasible, I think the game should implement alliances as a mechanic. Where corps can announce official alliances with each other, and the corps in the alliance show up green on the sector control map.

 

Edit: Going to go make a suggestion about this actually

7

The main problem with alliances is, that they are rigid, and just create even bigger monopolies.

 

My suggestion tries to circumvent this: alliances are business. They are in no way “permanent”, and all the politics have to be regulated in off-game channels. However, the basic idea to give corps the means of cooperating in the game would make corporations much more “personal”. Atm. the mechanics and low playerbase lead to fracturing and member stealing, and if we keep going on like this, only the biggest corps will survive, until they get bored themselves, because no new corp can ever defeat them.

If Alliances are business, personal friendships become an expense; this means, if you want to have the ESB-DNO-SRS triade to rule the galaxy, it will cost you a lot of resources. It is also basicly an abstract way of trading; but anyway, some abstract way of trading isn’t a bad idea (I do understand, that progression items should not be tradable, but still… trading! space game! trading!)

 

Since owls are neither the biggest, nor the smallest corp, I do not write this for my own benefit; I think, it is more something, that should be part of the game, and if we continue to look at similar games, like Eve, which still does a lot of things differently, and basicly is another game alltogether, but shares similarities, I think, the two biggest future expansions is: more tactical gameplay (conquering/defending and in future “using” sectors), and more endgame content (where personal progression is not part of the gameplay anymore, you can’t keep on going to add new things to “unlock”, atm. it is already a 1-2 year feat to unlock the game as it is; given the statistics say, a f2p game usually has 7 yrs of lifetime, until it has to reinvent itself, this needs attention and expansion)

 

Thank you however for the positive feedback. I really think, having a regulated way to cooperate between corps is positive for the game, and shall not be feared.

8

I like the idea. A lot.

 

But if the possibility to leave and join corps at will stay as it is, this suggestion might not lead to anything unfortunatly.

9

I like the idea. A lot.

 

But if the possibility to leave and join corps at will stay as it is, this suggestion might not lead to anything unfortunatly.

if the suggestion however leads to a mechanic where you can do that much more comfortably, and bigger flexibility, it might.

 

or do you mean, if implemented, people will still swap corps instead because its gratis? I don’t think so. After all, there is a reward for your own corp, and you still can go with your own people if needed; much more flexible than leaving corporations to join temporary to another one. Also much less complex.

10

Yup, it was the latter :stuck_out_tongue: But I fully agree on the mercenary with paiement, it’s a great idea :slight_smile: It would be fun mechanic, and more confortable too.

 

But if something is available for free, there always be abuse of it. That’s why I think it need safe-guard if it’s implemented.

11

Well technically it’s not really abuse, to switch corps around, and there (I thought, but there might not be) is a cooldown on that, which I tried to include in the proposition to be also be part of the “alternative feature”; in the end, of course, i can save all the iridium and just switcharoo, but, i also do not earn iridium through that.

 

i just imagined certain corporations might not have many sectors on their own but are feared as fierce mercenaries doing the dirty job for another bidder.

however of course, abuse is possible, by hiring the same corp on both sides, but this abuse is already given atm. anyway, nothing prevents you from doing that “off the books”, what such a system would introduce. the tax ensures, iridium is lost in the process; but it also ensures, that iridium can be gathered. you could not abuse it forever, because that would eat up iridium, and you would still need to play the games.

 

I think its worth the risk :smiley: but the devs have a unique viewpoint, still it could give them ideas, which is why i posted this more abstract, can’t think of all abuse possibilities; but maybe someone here in the forum has ideas about it.

12

To make this a little more balanced how about,   a corp can buy attackers but they are random chosen from a pool of players who sign up to dread.  and stop the corp hopping by putting a 8 hour ban on dread battles from the time you join a corp.