Politics, relations, clans, nations etc.

[Jebediah Kerman]

Good day everyone.

 

I'm pretty sure something commong has been already posted here, but regarding the existing poll of preferred elements developed and numerous threads about people having troubles with agreeing with someone (or everyone) in the nation, so people tend to turn everyting into a mess referring to existing game mechanics, saying that they do whatever is not technically restricted, I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on possible solution for existing issues in the game and by this start giving suggestions since it's early access and it's good when players offer their suggestions.

 

The idea is making the game more sandbox than 'national sailor simulator', which it is now. It would mean reworking whole gaming process, missions, port battle timers and port battles themselves, assets, access to the ports etc, and I totally understand that this is not something that can be done right away.

 

In general, this would make new players start as neutral (with chosen spawn areas) given a possibility to get missions from other nations to improve rating for them. By passing the 'levels of reputation' (or titles), the player would gradually gain access to the nation's ports, resource prodiction buildings, more space in stash, larger dock, better prices in the shop, some national ships blueprints etc, and then, from the certain title, eventually the possibility to represent that nation in the open world (including port battles). The nations themselves would be fully driven by NPC (meaning all the diplomacy and some regular port battles, which just happen every day, besides those which are created by the players) and have fixed relationships with other nations (or probably would change once in a couple of weeks), so that would mean that if a player decides to represent a nation, he would have access port battles pretty much all the time (with changed pb mechanics of course). A player would also be able to whether he represents a nation or not by putting a proper flag on his ship (with some cooldowns and only in certain ports, to avoid greifing). It would be also possible to have access to different nations ports (if one wants to do some trading) so he carries a national flag or a neutral flag to gain access to different nations' ports (if one has enough reputation to do that).

 

This system also includes the possibility to not represent any nation, but stay within the guild. The guild would have relations with npc nations depending on their reputation towards them: if the average reputation is on a certain level, a clan leader could switch the relation level to cease fire or peace, but it would be 'war' by default, and also would be able to set relation with other guilds. So if a guild wants to have access to some nation's ports or missions or represent it in OW and port battles, it would need to improve its reputation to a certain level. The guild would be able to choose independance from the nations and be able to mind their own business, having assets in free ports and capture their own ports (with a possibility to adjust the access — to the nation or to the clan). They would be counted as neutral, but their overall reputation would be calculated from the actions they do: sinking national/neutral ships, attacking ports, doing missions etc. This way a guild could turn pirate if they attack everyone so their reputation goes negative, remain neutral but with some access to some ports for trading or resource production in some nation, depending on the reputation level, or represent a nation as a whole clan when reaching a certain level or reputation (so the clan could represent a nation and put on its national flag, but with much higher cooldown than if it's a single player). It would be also possible to create a clan within a nation, and it would automatically represent that nation (with no problem with creating one, since it's created by players who already have certain reputation level).

 

I can develop this idea, but in general this system would make the game more about player choices, it would eliminate the diplomacy problems (which we experience now, according to the national news forums), it would not force players to stick to each other when they have no reason to (unlike it is now — still be in one nation and deal with each other, like it or not), and this would be a good driver to form guilds with good organization and work hard on external relations, trading, war strategies, ports and assets management.

 

Like I said, this would be a huge change in the game and would basically need a lot of work to make it happen, but as for the general concept, I personally think it would work well.