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I am having a blast role playing as a zealot with a few diplomats in my crew manipulating the politics in game. Just remember this game just left EA and it already has amazing depth. Roll a new character if you are bored with your current one. Most of the impact curently of these systems are felt early on in a Captain's career when you are still trying to make money and get gear.
I think they need to make it harder to get the best stuff in the game(weapons, ships and money in general) and up the survival pressure mid/late game so that you care more about contacts.
I completely agree! But the question remains, is STF doing that? Are wars really making huge, sweeping changes or are they just... not all that? Like I said, we know it affects contacts and possibly causes tax & tariff events, but what else? There's got to be more to it, right?
This is why I originally suggested having persistant ships & captains (which the devs immediately shot down, sadly), because then wars really would matter - a lot. Knocking out half an enemy's navy would during a solar war would be something that could take them years or even decades to recover from.
1. Make conflict outcomes explicit in a way that tells you, with detail, what happened and how much you influenced it. For example, if you’ve contributed to the score of a conflict, it’s end might have a splash page that tells you exactly what happened to all known contacts, vaguely what happened behind the scenes to unknown contacts, how much total conflict score you personally added, and if results are variable based on margin of victory, some text to let you know whether it was a big or small win or loss.
2. I get why planets don’t change hands. The whole structure of this society is built on that. But it would be nice if a few things could happen.
2a. System ratings could change. For example, maybe beating down a faction in an economic conflict could increase the economy rating of some friendly systems while decreasing it for your enemy.
2b. Contacts could spawn on non faction planets. For example, maybe a spy conflict that Zenrin wins against Rychart could result in a Zenrin black market across contact spawning on a Rychart world. This would let you operate in Rychart systems more effectively, even though Rychart doesn’t like it. Or maybe a “traitor” contact spawns in one of the losers systems, and depending on its influence you can access some of that systems resources (fuel, etc). That wouldn’t flip the system, but earning a traitor by winning a spy war and getting a safe harbor in hostile territory as a result would be cool, thematic, and useful.
2c. It would be nice if winning and contributing to conflicts could earn you personal rep, particularly, with contacts who don’t offer missions.
2d. The end of a conflict could, if won, erase some of your negative rep with the loser. This would represent your faction imposing its will on the loser. They don’t have to like you but they do have to tolerate you a little.
3. Long term I would like to see more direct story tied to conflicts. I would be willing to pay for this as an expansion.
The issue with early game vs late game contact fatalities is that in the early game we don't have enough money or influence to use half the contacts and by the time we do, so their lives really don't matter yet... while in the late game we've got enough crew skills to just reveal a dozen new ones every week, making them easily replaced.
I know planets can't change hands (bummer) but there should still be some kind of persistant, maybe even permanent, consequences to wars other than contacts.
Since I know they'll never do persistant ships & captains, maybe they could at least change up the random encounter lists to reflect a faction's naval capacity, and allow wars to effect that. Total up all their military & shipyard points for a quadrant to determine the highest level of ship & equipment those ships can spawn with, and have wars cause positive or negaive variables to that (or change those military/shipyard ratings themselves).
For example: One side wins a solar war by 10 points, so 5 points of military and/or shipyard rating are sliced off it's planets at random due to the victors doing some orbital bombing after attaining supremacy of the skies. Meanwhile, the victors get to add that many points to their own planets, chosen at random.
Another example: Someone wins a trade war by 10 points, so 5 points sliced off one side's economy and added to the winning side.
Do this long enough and eventually the losers will no longer be able to spawn anything but Scout Cutters with level 1 weapons and their economies will fall into complete ruin. The winners will prosper, having stronger economies and navies.
So now there would be very good reasons to support your side (other than generic cash for missions). You'd be helping boost your economy for trading and opening up your shipyards more for better, cheaper ships & equipment.
I was thinking they should add a Notoriety system like "Pirates!" did back in the 1980s. Simply put, you blow away enough ships and everyone starts to fear you. Vaporize fifty enemy battleships and, lo and behold, their frigates stop trying to pick fights with you all the time. They just turn and run at first contact.
That's the thing that always bugged me about kung-fu movies. The hero will knock twenty goons senseless, yet goon number twenty-one still tries to rush him anyway. Don't these guys understand the concept of "morale checks"? Don't they know when to just give up?
I mean, we have morale checks already, but they only apply once combat is already joined. I'm talking about a morale check for before the fight even starts. Because when you see a L40 pirate in a Titan coming at you, you don't attack him first and then go into retreat mode on turn one (which is what the game currently does, by the way). You just bail, right then and there.
Game needs to add that, or rather correct that little oversight in the combat system. After a while it gets kind of eye-rolling to have a faction ship automatically force you into combat because you're at -500 with them and then immediately try to flee because, oh yeah, you're in a Titan and they're in a Scout Cutter and maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, eh? Honestly, little guy, ya shudda just ran from the get-go. I would have probably let ya go, too. Being sporting and all.
https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Conflicts
;)