Some observations (mainly faction issues)

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Thorsten
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Some observations (mainly faction issues)

Post by Thorsten »

I'd like to share (and possibly discuss) some of my experiences with Vega Strike here.

First, I have to say that I enjoy playing the game very much. I like many things - from the beautifully designed graphics of desert or water planets to the view of watching a space factory slowly approach when coming in for docking, and the way intertia is felt when comparing zooming around in a Dostoevsky with hauling cargo with 40 times the empty mass of a frighter. So - a big thanks to all the folks who have been busy with graphic design, coding and all other details.

My main stumbling block at the moment are the faction issues (and reading through the forum, I don't seem to be the only one...). After a first try in which I took bounty missions without even checking against whom they were which ended in a major bloodbath when pretty much everyone took shots at me, I tried to be very careful with faction issues in a second round. Well, that sort of worked and made me go up to 2 M credits when...

... one day hauling heavy cargo I encountered a pirate. Being in a plowshare, intertia pretty much pinned me to my trajectory, and escape was out of the question. But, of course the cautious trader has a pair of disruptors just to be ready for this possibility - so I wasted the pirate (and his friend who appeared a minute later) in self-defense. The problems started when I came back to the factory in shmrm space. My relations with many factions were improved by killing two pirates - with the exception of uln and forsaken_citizen (and pirates, naturally...). When I left the factory, there were already 4 capships of forsaken_citizens with a bunch of fighters waiting to take revenge for me killing their pirate buddies. Well, my relations were not that bad with them (like -10 or so) and in fact the relations with the forsaken (I assume that's the military) were even positive. Nevertheless, there was no way of getting through alive with a heavy cargo or even my trusty Plowshare.

So, I thought, maybe I am dealing with an isolated problem. After all, forsaken and uln are not major factions, I was in shmrm space, so maybe if I eliminate the flight groups, I can go on hauling cargo. Thus, I spend 0.5 M to get myself a shiny Dostoevsky, went out and blasted everyone who took a shot at me first. A major shootout was the result (right in front of the shmrm factory with the local shmrm system patrol being just 10k km away doing precisely nothing), at the end of which some 12 forsaken_citizen vessels were wasted. Naturally my relation with them dropped like a rock, and at some point they called in the cavalery, a squad of forsaken fighters appeared which proved a little tougher, but went to pieces soon after (I used to play lots of flight sims a while ago, so I have some dogfighting skill...). One or two uln might have bought it as well, at some point is was rather hectic and I just fried whatever was shooting at me without taking notes.

Anyway, then matters were quiet, and I thought that maybe I could get back and haul cargo again. Unfortunately, getting back out with the Plowshare, a LIHW vessel opened fire at me (apparently they like either the uln or the forsaken) and would not back off, so I had to fry him as well in self defense.

When I checked the ratings again, I discovered that I was close to being expelled from shmrm space (0), the confeds were not overly likely to take me in (5), many other relations were strained and in fact the only faction that liked me really well were... the aera (97) and their merchants (63). All as a result of self-defense against a pirate attack!

What I did at this point was to restore the faction matrix in the savegame tp its initial config - which did the job. But the question is - how to do it 'the honest way'? How is it supposed to be?

Looking around a bit, one piece of advice is to shoot luddites - which is supposed to improve relations with everyone as everyone hates them. Apart from the philosophical objection that it is a bit perverse to go out hunting and shooting one faction to demonstrate your peaceful intentions - I simply did not find any. I regularly checked bounty missions if they would bring any, but there were none. So, apart from flying around at the fringes and randomly checking hostile cap ships for their ID (which you can't see from afar) - not so easy.

With a fast ship, you can still get anywhere you like if a flightgroup of, say, forsaken is after you - just cargo runs are impossible - and they do even follow through jumps! How far would one have to flee? I haven't found the limit - has anyone tried?

I kind of like the setup that the faction matrix is not set up black and white, and that there is a grey area from pirates via forsaken to LIHW eventually to the confeds - but the way the system operates at the moment is that simply everyone gets dragged into private vendettas over time. I don't really know how the relations are managed in the game (it would be nice if someone could comment in detail what triggers what), but I have some suggestions (from simple to complicated):

* Change the faction matrix such that shooting pirates will not drag you into a war with the confeds eventually - isolate groups of factions instead of having cross-talk among all

* Change the behaviour of the AI which controls the other ships. In economical terms, it seems completely ridiculous to get four forsaken flightgroups from all across the system to attack one trader just because a pirate friend has died (and the actual relationship is merely -10). It would be reasonable for example if there is a distance measure involved - unless the rating is very negative, a faction would only attack if it is not much effort, so say for distances less than 100 km or so - in this way, getting bad relations would still hurt you (because you could not approach a station or wormhole if an adversary is hanging around), but you'd not be forced into an all-out war. Or let them back off if they realize they can't win - after losing 10 fighters and a net worth of a few M credits, the forsaken might have noticed that the encounter is not going well for them somehow...

* Track self-defense and don't give negative ratings for shooting back

* Introduce some sort of police action - the notion that a major shootout is going on at the doorstep of the shmrm with the patrol being idle a few k km away is rather odd - why should a faction accept vigilante-type action in their own controlled space? This could be a radius around points of interest (obviously one can't control the whole system).

So, I'd be interested in comments from other players how one can manage to deal with such a pirate encounter without editing the savegame, and from the developers how easy or difficult the mentioned suggestions can be implemented - and I'd love to lern more about the interna of how the faction relations are set. I'm actually a theoretical physicist, so if it should come to the point that any mathematical modelling of the relation evolution is useful, I may very well be of help in that department.
loki1950
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Re: Some observations (mainly faction issues)

Post by loki1950 »

Welcome Thorsten very good analysis of what is wrong :wink: there is a brainstorming thread from a while back that pretty much came too your conclusions as well.Most of the faction handling is done in python data side not in the engine it's self so feel free to hack it if you have that skill set if not as i have stated it is slated for a rewrite when the development group get some free time but i am sure patches would be accepted in the mean time.

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Thorsten
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Re: Some observations (mainly faction issues)

Post by Thorsten »

Most of the faction handling is done in python data side not in the engine it's self so feel free to hack it if you have that skill set
I'm a decent enough codewriter - but that's scientific computing where Fortran 77 is still alive and kicking - we don't really touch the modern stuff much, so I have no skill in python as such - but how hard can it possibly be? If anyone can point me to the file and the approximate location where AI behaviour is controlled, I would certainly like to give it a try.

Apart from that, I have to correct myself slightly: As I now discovered after making a few hundred M credits and going bounty-hunting as a hobby, an important issue is the ratio of pirates to forsaken/LIHW you shoot - since shooting pirates makes you more popular with most factions, but forsaken make you less popular with some you'd still like to be in favour, it's not so bad as long as you keep shooting more pirates than anyone else.

Of course, that requires that you have the option to avoid battles and pick only those you'd like to take, which means going around to trade with a fast ship like the Lancelot or the Franklin, and that requires that you can trade AI cores. There's no way to avoid battle with a freighter stuffed with factory equipment.
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Re: Some observations (mainly faction issues)

Post by Turbo »

I got sick of the Uln going hostile no matter which faction I killed, so I hacked everyone who dislikes the pirates to also dislike the Uln slightly (-5). That minor change rippled through the faction relationships until it leveled out to make trading a lot safer by making self-defense against pirates allowable. Plus, no matter where I went, the Uln were too busy getting shot at by everyone else to mess with me.

Your mileage may vary, it being a dynamic universe and all that.
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denyasis
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Re: Some observations (mainly faction issues)

Post by denyasis »

Of similar note, I had the same problems, thorsten.

I posted a small tweak in this thread: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... 21&t=14685

Its intention is to limit everyone going south by dis-connecting the positive uln->generic baddies relation and reseting it to 0.

I hope that helps.
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