Dynamic Faction Changes and Creation, Squad Managment option

[DatMerchant]

Down the line I'd like for us players to join other factions and abandon our own, or betray a faction to help another one, for payment, weapons... women?, or even just quit the faction and default back to our own. It'd be a nice edition.

In addition I'd like to see squad management screens, so we could have more than say 20 guys, maybe 100, etc.

In addition, I'd like to see official Rank screens, Then you could promote ranks for


1. Group Levels, so you are part of another faction you can still have your own group or mercs with ranks.

2. Faction rank, this is your rank WITHIN the faction, on another tab. This is how your faction perceives you and tells you what NPCs you follow. Lets say disobeying orders comes with severe consequences, etc. Higher ranks get big benefits, like being able to hang around the big boss, and maybe even bodyguard him, weapons, buildings... women? Even looting rights, or access to rare technologies. Maybe even being the big cheese yourself. But of a predefined faction. Especially when predefined faction headquarters come into existence. With bases with the bosses of the faction, the leaders.


3. Maybe even an expanded reputation map on the faction relationship screen. Little reports on why people hate you. Or Love you, would be funny. "Hated by Starving Bandits faction, Reason: Lit cows on fire in YonYon town." etc etc etc.

What I'd love to see eventually, and this may be hard to impossible to implement, is faction death and faction recreation. It would be great in simulating a living world. Where NPCs see factions dying as opportunities to create their own.

One game kinda like this was the Guild 2 series. If a dynasty died, NPC dynasties spawned to replace that player or colored dynasties death as a player adversary. Because only a limited number of enemies could play during one game. This was so if you beat the mode but had it in endless mode, threats would still appear.

How this could be handled is, buildings could have defined owner groups: Faction Name, or Abandoned, No-Owner, etc.

When factions work on the map they have goals, some are to kill and loot, some are to invade and take and kill and loot, some are to trade, defend, build, resource gather, some are all of the above. Maybe even more unique choices like research factions who sell tech, so research and trade, or a mixture of all. Maybe some are xenophobes and simply kill anyone they see, but are technologically advanced and hard to befriend.

Later this could be expanded with diplomacy NPCs, think Rome Total War series.

But as I was saying, these factions are constantly playing against or with each other, when one dies, or when one refuses to add a leader for a set number of time, it dissapears.

And then from a random name generator or from a list of names, a random NPC somewhere will decide to eventually start their own faction and compete. They should each try to invade new buildings and start their missions or maybe buy ones already there or whatever. The idea is


<Faction1> =====> <20 in game days -----> faction leader destroyed -----> over half of the NPCs in the faction self-preserved themselves and abandoned their posts, or died, or died from famine or plague, etc -----> no second in command> =====> <faction dies>

<certain amount of in-game days pass> =======> <random NPC somewhere with high skills forms new faction by recruiting NPCs> =======> <takes over buildings, or buys buildings from factionless NPCs ------> declares new headquarters -------> loads overlord AI and dialogue mode, AI objectives, etc --------> becomes new overlord.>


This would be amazing, dunno how hard to code, but amazing none the less. And would really make endless play modes and make the game that much more worthwhile. And relaxing, no need to regen beaten worlds. As the world keeps dynamically changing.

Eventually you could simulate things like Weather changes, food shortages, civil unrest, meteorite showers, invasions from the forces of evil themselves! And even make events moddable. These kinds of events could play a large part in existence of the different NPC factions and their reactions to each other and the players. For instance, The EMpire of Catan may hate the starving bandits faction, but if a plague is killing everyone they may hire them on as guards or ally with them as half-bear people have gone crazy and almost reaver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaver_%28Firefly%29 like, and then they also ally with sand ninjas, and the half-bear reaver crazies are also breeding like crazy spawning more and more so the whole map ends up doing this All VS Bear people (thanks Tolwrath)

Anyway, I hope that this idea is good enough, and I hope you add something like it one day. Thanks.

[Tolwrath]

It's already planned for NPC factions to be out conquering, trading, and allying with each other. So that much, at least, you don't have to worry about. Also: yay people listening to the silly things I say!

[Deathhood98]

All these ideas seem extremely cool for me and would really add onto the game

[Guysensei]

i rly want everything in here!

[Nicktaylor]

I love the idea of bringing Guild 2 style/features into the game. Guild 2 was epic and im sure that if Chris was to incorporate this into the game, it would be mind-blowingly good!

[chizzal]

I love it! I also would love to see a ranking system that effect how others interact with your specific people within your squad. For example if i have one leader who i hold higher then the rest if bandits were to come beat me in a fight and kidnap someone, they shouldn't do it at random. Instead they should grab the most important person around. I think this would just add a nice touch of realism that would be nice. i'd say that people could form opinions of each other within factions but then you stop to think about how insanely complex a request that is and the idea seems a little far fetched. I'd love for one of my hired soldiers to dislike my leadership and to steal supplies and run away, but the amount of work putting that much into that many characters seems like a cruel request.

[ArtfulDodger]

I love all the idea's here. I for one would really love that dynamically changing factions. Also another thing I'd really love for Chris to implement are your own faction's squad management and customization.

Example: The ability to customize your own Faction Hierarchy Tree. From "co-founders/co-leaders", "Captain", "Rookie", whatever you want to name the position would be up to the player and you'd be able to customize how high up the tree that particular position would be. The higher up on the tree the more perks the character would get. Maybe the "boss" position would give +3 Toughness and lower ranks would receive +1 toughness. Of course don't add perks to positions that wouldn't make sense.. a person doesn't just get magically better at fighting if you anoint him "boss". Even if there is no perk or real statistical reason to rank a character. It'd just be really cool to have a rank hierarchy system within your own faction.