So I posted this on the Steam Community Hub, and here’s the copypasta for here just so more people can see it for more feedback.
THE EVENT
Seeing how some of the Invasion/Open-Space zones had become destroyed gave me a small idea.
What is it?
Basically, every so often (maybe once a week) an “Incursion” event occurs, where a zone becomes under attack by biomorphs. It’s up to the players to band together and eliminate the biomorphs/hunters/scouts/whatever in each attacked zone to protect it from being invaded.
If they are successful, then the zone is secured and nothing happens to it, although the defenders are rewarded with creds. (Maybe a bonus reward from sector conflict for a short time due to the abundance of alien loot?)
If however, they fail, the zone becomes a wasteland, much like the grey wasted zones we can see in this most recent update. From there, players are required to participate in a cleanup event (maybe bring dreadnoughts in for this?) and eliminate the biomorphs to resecure the zones. Once resecured, the zone returns to normal. (Maybe no bonus reward to sector conflict as punishment?)
How does it work?
Now, as for the event itself. It’s fairly simple, players enter the zone and attack biommorphs. There’s a quota of biomorphs to kill and once that gets hit, we win!
There is another part to it though. If the biomorphs score enough kills on players or the time runs out (maybe a few days per zone), the players fail the defense and the zone falls to the aliens. The sector becomes destroyed until players can eliminate the alien defenders and resecure the zone. The zone remains “wasted” until a week passes after a successful defense.
What about rewards?
The participating players gain credits and synergy (maybe GS rewards for the top killers?) whereas the corporations have more of a reward. Sponsorship!
There could also be other bonuses and things, like if a sector is held by a corporation, then the corp can “invest” in the sector. After the corp loses the sector, their investments remain, allowing for other corps to further upgrade the defenses of each sector. However, once the sector falls, all investments are reset.
I think this could bring more of a meaning to Open Space, as well as making it more dynamic and allowing the players to feel more involved with the world. There could be things like " <<ZONE NAME>> defended by: <<CORP NAME>> " and " <<ZONE NAME>> Recaptured by <<CORP NAME>> " as well as the feel of participating in the war and helping support and strengthen a faction’s forces.
What’s a sponsorship and why should I care?
Basically, the corp who owns a sector in sector conflict is able to influence that sector in the form of a sponsorship. The owning corp’s players then gain the ability to vote as a council on what they wish sponsor within that sector.
Defense/Security
The sector’s defense section contains things like turrets or more escort fleets.
Turrets are simply just weak turret emplacements. You can either focus on more turrets or stonger turrets (or both), making you choose between a lot of weaker turrets or 1 mega turret.
More escort fleets will strengthen the escorts around haulers and increase their number. It’s up to you whether to go for numbers for strength.
Economy
The sector’s economy section works on hauler fleets and taxes.
You can either increase their value and take some of the extra earnings of each successful hauler as a tax, or increase the frequency of the haulers and get less money per run but possibly more tax due to more successes.
As far as taxes goes, you can modify the tax rate on the sector. Higher taxes means lower hauler frequency due to them wanting cheaper routes. It could also mean an increase in pirate/cartel ships.
Infrastructure
Finally, the infrastructure section. This will affect loot drops and bonus fleets.
As far as loot drops go, you can either increase their spawn rate or their value. Increasing their spawn rate means you can get more cheap loot, but increasing the value will spawn higher rarity loot more often.
Bonus fleets are you prospectors, family guards, treasure hunters, bounty hunters and the like. These are the small fleets of 2-4 friendly ships you see flying around. You can either choose to increase their spawn rates or their strength. This assists with the defense section, but seems to fit more in the infrastructure section for me as they seem to be more like your citizens of the realm.
How do I do it?
So that’s what they do. You can invest in these sections with either iridium or credits, and as you reach a new tier in each section, all the other upgrades increase in cost. For instance, if I upgrade turret strength from T0 to T1, all the other T1 upgrades become more expensive. If I purchase another T1 upgrade (maybe escort numbers), then the last 2 T1 upgrades are more expensive, and the T2 upgrades also become more expensive.
Each section has a tier cap of 5, meaning you can only get 5 bonus turret emplacements or 5 bonus escort ships.
Did someone say "repercussions?"
Bear in mind that upgrading each sector may have undesirable effects, such as more pirates coming into a flourishing sector with little defense, so managing a sector becomes a game in and of itself. Do I run this sector well, or burn it to the ground for the next corp? Who knows?
What do you guys think? Yea or Nay?
