Ideas for origin overhaul

HWS General Discussion
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1

Playing on HWS for nearly 2 months I think origin and few other systems needs a large overhaul so each origin gives a different experience.

In general I’d move from cops&criminals to a system of different factions with different values.

Let me present some ideas which need to be balanced and are in no way a complete system:

Naming changes
Alliance->Federation
Freelancer->Independent
Lawless->Pirate (or Raider)

Map changes:
Playfield being PVE should mean that there is someone who owns it so I’d divide all PVE space between origins in following proportions:

Most (like 2/3) of PVE space belongs to Federation
Pirates only have 1-2 planets as PVE - it’s an area of pirate truce where they don’t kill each other
Rest of PVE space is independent

Origins:

Federation
Merchant republic-like alliance of people sharing common interests, no longer the good guys as they only care about fellow federation members. Focused on empire building, trading and expansion

Advantages:

  • Protection from other federation members in PVP
  • Large federation PVE space

Disadvantages:

  • Less opportunities in PVP since other federation members can’t be attacked without large penalties
  • Unable to access pirate PVE space

Mechanics:

  • Can enter independent space, cannot enter pirate space
  • All federation factions are allied to each other by default
  • All federation players/structures are marked as federation to everyone
  • When Federation player is killed in PVP all federation players get an alert with location - players who respond should get RP reward
  • When federation player kills another federation player he loses RP and money (has to pay bribes) depending on victim’s RP, in very serious cases offenders might be banned from federation unless attack was provoked (by for example breaking alliance)
  • Rewards for having bases in PVP (expanding the federation)

Independent
No strict rules or values - they can work with both federation and pirates. Could be excellent traders or mercenaries

Mechanics:
Can enter both federation and pirate PVE space.

Advantages:

  • Can enter all PVE space (which should provide trading opportunities unavailable for other origins)
  • Can attack everyone in PVP without penatlies (other then being wanted by federation)

Disadvantages:

  • No protection in PVP

Pirate:
Only things that unite them is love of gold and hate of the federation - focus on aggressive PVP

There is pirate peace in pirate PVE space, outside of it they have no rules so they kill and plunder whoever they can.

Mechanics:
Can enter Independent space, cannot enter federation space
Rewards for killing other players in PVP as well as taking over their vessels, especially if victim is from federation.

Advantages:

  • Rewards for PVP
  • Can attack everyone in PVP without penatlies (other then being wanted by federation)

Disadvantages:

  • Very small PVE space for base building and total lack of access to federation space
  • No protection in PVP
  • Most likely will end up wanted by the federation

Wanted system (replaces guilty)
When non-federation player kills federation player he becomes wanted by Federation and gets an automatic bounty on his head. If he is independent he no longer can enter federation PVE space
Federation and independent players can kill wanted players for reward, wanted players are labeled so any federation/independent player meeting them knows about it, their location is also revealed as in current hunted system
Independent players can pay money to get rid of wanted status.

Factions changes:
Players can only be in faction of their origin
Players can change their origin for 50% RP loss, but:
Players changing to federation or pirate must pay the entry price (bribe)
Pirate players cannot change to federation without going through independent first
Wanted players cannot join federation

Other changes
Players can only build bases in PVE playfields owned by their origin or in PVP
There is no longer universal justice (besides server rules) - so all penalties for killing etc… are now dependent on origin.

Notes

  • I’ve focused mostly on federation and I recognize that independent/pirate need some buffs
  • Giving most of PVE space to federation might be too much of a problem for pirate players since a lot of PVE space would be locked out for them - here we could take a step back and make most PVE space independent and allow everyone to build bases there without changing other mechanics
2 Likes
2

I believe a complete overhaul will be to difficult to balance, this should be done step by step.

First I would add to Alliance (which can be renamed to federation ofc) the following rules:

  • All federation factions are allied to each other by default
  • All federation players/structures are marked as federation to everyone

  • Maybe even make Federation players always alligned, so they simply cannot kill each other in pvp.
    Someone who want to have this freedom shouldn’t play alliance/federation.

The Freelancers need alot of balancing, as currently they are by far the worst origin. But the name can stay (imo).

They have the least RP gain (alliance gets trade and lawless kills, lawless gets RP for all kills, Freelancers get nothing at all).
And they are at a disadvantage in pvp → Alliance can freely attack Freelancers, Freelancers cannot do much, as after 5 kills the become guilty. (This rule, which also applies to lawless, is a big problem in my opinion, actually giving alliance an advantage in PVP. It should be removed completely.)

So i believe freelancers should not have any pvp penalty, and due to their role beeing the “explorer” they should be able to get daily rp (like alliance for trading) for destroying POIs (from ALN) or killing a certain amount of ALN units. Depends on technical limitations, i think as Alliance can get daily 10 RP for trade, Freelancers should get 1 RP per ALN kill, up to max 10 per day (as this would be the easiest to implement i believe).

Lawless (Raiders i would prefer) should also get the alliance 5 players rule removed.

Instead the guilty system should be done a little differently:
Besides GG, and getting a bounty, people should become guilty for harrasing others.
This means, if you get actively killed multiple times without opening fire (doing any damage or killing someone within a certain time, 10 minutes f.e) the attacker should be marked as guilty.

3

I agree that doing this step by step might be the best approach, keeping a good balance is a hard thing and I agree that in my ideas independent/pirate need some buffs.

Personally I’d just remove it as it doesn’t make sense story-wise in many situations, if someone breaks fair play rules he should be punished by admin after investigation.