klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

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klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by w03 »

Due to me accidentally killing too many uln, both klkk_citizens and mechanist_citizens hate me now (-100 relationship!!!). I looked in factions.xml to see who I can kill to up my relationship with them, and the file listed pirates as enemies of klkk_citizens and mechanist_citizens. However, after killing hundreds of pirates, my relationship with both klkk_citizens and mechanist_citizens is still at -100!!! Perhaps the faction relationships are broken?!

What is going on?!

By the way, killing luddites isn't really an option, because I cannot find any at all, and my relationship with luddites is +100 due to excessive slaughter of pirates.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

That's a real playability issue, it's old, known, and content guys don't agree on how to tackle the issue.

You're welcome to join the discussion, not sure where it is, but somewhere in the dev side of the forums there was a discussion about the subject.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote:That's a real playability issue, it's old, known, and content guys don't agree on how to tackle the issue.
Maybe an intermediate solution would be to make it so there are no ties between factions that try to kill you at game start and those that don't. So only by starting a fight with friendly faction, will other friendly factions come after you.

I mean, since Uln attack you without provocation, why should all the human-allied alien factions be upset that you defended yourself against them? Or Purists be upset that you defended yourself against Luddites?
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

The engine does not distinguish between defensive or offensive kills.

A kill is just a kill.

That's the main problem.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

That's an engine level fix, and it could be a good one.

But what I'm talking about is a really simple content change-- make the purists not allied with luddites, shmrn not allied with uln, etc. Any faction that attacks the player right off the bat, cannot have allies that do not attack the player off the bat, as a game design rule. At least until an engine feature fix like the one you suggest is implemented.

It seems to me like this is the most simple, logical fix to this game breaking bug.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

Care to try?

The relations matrix is BIG (probably because there are so many factions).

It's not to be obnoxious, but only because I'm really busy with a lot of stuff, stuff where I'm far more productive than changes of the dataset of that kind - because I understand the code a lot more than the dataset.

So, if you can give me a patch, I'll be glad to test it and commit it.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

Oh, I had thought for sure that this information was stored outside of the compiled code, for ease of moding. In that case I should look into this again when I have a much stronger understanding of C++.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

Ehm... I didn't say it was in the code.
If it was in the code I could probably tackle it.

It's somewhere in the data files, but I'm not sure where exactly.

I think it's in the new_game savegame, the one used to initialize new games.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

Bah, it was hidden from me in plain sight, factions.xml in the root directory. :oops:

Okay so looking at the data, the Uln are not hostile to the player at game start but they are allied with the Aera, Pirates and Luddites who are hostile to the player from the beginning. That isn't such a big deal on its own except for the fact that many Uln are allied with a large number of player-friendly factions, who are in turn friendly with even more player-friendly factions.

This causes the game breaking chain-reaction- you defend yourself against Aera, Pirates and Luddites so the Uln attack you, and when you then defend yourself against the Uln, everyone starts to attack you!

So there's two things I can do to fix this--

1) Make Uln neutral to Aera, Pirates and Luddites.

2) Make all factions neutral to Uln besides Aera, Pirates and Luddites.

Which one do you want me to do?
Last edited by Deus Siddis on Wed May 19, 2010 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

I think you'll have to do both. But I'm not sure.

Faction relations isn't my area of expertise.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

I don't think it is absolutely necessary to do both, though I can, which just about makes the Uln an isolationist faction that no one cares about and that doesn't care about anyone else either (at least not overtly). To fully implement this, I'd make the Uln neutral to the player-friendly human and rlaan factions as well, so that if the player "defected" to the aera side or became a pirate, the Uln would remain not hostile.

The main gameplay departure this will make from 0.4.3-0.5.0, is that being attacked by Uln will no longer be an ordinary occurrence; instead the player will have to start a fight with the Uln, to ever end up in a fight with them.


BTW, it looks like purist citizens are sympathetic to Luddites, so I must make that relation neutral, as well.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

Thing is, if you make uln neutral to only a set of factions, a player that decides to get hostile with those factions triggers the "feedback loop".

So, by doing both, I meant you have to break all feedback loops.

Hostile factions should only be friends with other hostile factions, neutral with neutral, friendly with friendly. Other relations could be of hostility or neutrality, but not friendship (since that would create a feedback loop that would tend to propagate hostility towards the player across all groups).

Am I being confusing?
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by CLoneWolf »

May I humbly suggest a less pervasive change?

How about just increasing the starting Uln friendliness to the player, leaving more room for accidental or otherwise unavoidable Uln kills before the chain reaction starts?

Besides, the Purists' liking of Luddites has a logical reason: shared views in principle, though their course of action is different; I would leave that in place too, but that's just me. :mrgreen:
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

Alright here's the modified factions.xml file (attached to this post).

The Uln are now neutral to everyone and everyone is neutral to the Uln. In addition, the Purist Citizens are now neutral to the Luddites.

Note that this will break already existing save games for some reason (by negatively altering your relations statuses), so anyone who helps test this needs to start from a fresh campaign.


@Clonewolf; Increasing Uln friendliness would not fix this bug because their friendliness would still disintegrate eventually as you fought back against Aera, Pirate and Luddite attackers. You would have to forever tolerate constant Uln attacks and often die in the process, or else feel the wrath of the entire known universe.

The same goes for tolerating constant Luddite attacks, if their Purist Citizen (and in some cases Uln) connection is not severed.

As far as canon, that either has to weight for a smarter system like Klauss was talking about, or we can just assume that the faction relation systems models overt relations, not actual relations. The Uln might support pirates under the table, and the purists luddites, but they won't help them kill their victims directly, that would be politically way too costly. Those under the table ties should be handled by campaigns and special characters, not by the relations system throwing the kitchen sink at the player when he hasn't even taken a side.
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Last edited by Deus Siddis on Wed May 19, 2010 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by klauss »

I see no attachment.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

Woops. Okay now the file is attached.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by CLoneWolf »

Deus Siddis wrote:@Clonewolf; Increasing Uln friendliness would not fix this bug because their friendliness would still disintegrate eventually as you fought back against Aera, Pirate and Luddite attackers. You would have to forever tolerate constant Uln attacks and often die in the process, or else feel the wrath of the entire known universe.

The same goes for tolerating constant Luddite attacks, if their Purist Citizen (and in some cases Uln) connection is not severed
I won't argue, as I play too little to have a sufficiently relevant opinion, and as we "see" different bugs. I'll just explain my thoughts more, but not trying to make you change your mind.

Having to worry about Uln, to me, is something more to do in a universe with very little to do, at least so far, so not a bug; what happens now too early can be delayed at will without severing, just by lowering the anger of, say, Uln for Pirate kill, or of P.C. for Luddite kill. If a player then deliberately makes it happen by actively hunting those factions, I'd suppose he's well equipped to withstand the collateral issues. Besides, I could always start a business on USB F1-tappers. :mrgreen:

What I see as a bug, instead, is the lack of distinction between uncalled kills and self defense ones; but again, that's just me. :roll:
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

CLoneWolf wrote: Having to worry about Uln, to me, is something more to do in a universe with very little to do, at least so far, so not a bug; what happens now too early can be delayed at will without severing, just by lowering the anger of, say, Uln for Pirate kill, or of P.C. for Luddite kill.
Well like I said to Klauss, I think it would be enough to neutralize relations between the Uln and player-friendly factions (plus neutralize purist_citizen and luddite relations). So you would still get attacked by Uln after enough hostile action with the hostile factions. But killing Uln wouldn't affect your reputations with friendly, very powerful and very nearby factions like the Protectorate (which also have strong ties to almost all Humans and all Rlaan).
If a player then deliberately makes it happen by actively hunting those factions, I'd suppose he's well equipped to withstand the collateral issues.
The thing is you can't be equipped for this. There is no way to survive once the big factions have turned on you. The game is over, your saves are useless. Trust me, I've tried, I've even hacked the most fast and powerful vessels to try and outrun or outfight a universe turned against me. But there's no escape, what equipment you have won't make any difference at all.
What I see as a bug, instead, is the lack of distinction between uncalled kills and self defense ones; but again, that's just me. :roll:
I don't have a problem with that, and when that distinct is coded, this change could be rolled back and we could see if that is enough. But in the mean time, while the AI is still a total mess and makes no such distinctions, I seriously recommend we commit this or a similar content change to break the uln and purist chain reactions.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by eracc »

Deus Siddis wrote:
CLoneWolf wrote:If a player then deliberately makes it happen by actively hunting those factions, I'd suppose he's well equipped to withstand the collateral issues.
The thing is you can't be equipped for this. There is no way to survive once the big factions have turned on you. The game is over, your saves are useless. Trust me, I've tried, I've even hacked the most fast and powerful vessels to try and outrun or outfight a universe turned against me. But there's no escape, what equipment you have won't make any difference at all.
Now you know what it is like to be a pirate in the VS universe. ;)

Seriously, I have been playing VS from SVN recently and figured out that the only faction I need to spam a lot of friendly greetings with are ULN. I have no problem with this. I sweet talk the ULN to get some positive credit with them. Balance killing Luddites and Pirates until everyone else practically loves me (except Luddites). Then I can just keep that balance by keeping the ULN happy talking nice to them. I can even do occasional bounty missions on pirates and still keep everyone, including pirates but not Luddites, happy with me.

Sure, if one is brash enough to kill ULN even in self defense it ticks off everyone, but then I think one gets what one deserves by not taking care with factions from the start. If one gets in that pickle as a new player then one did not read enough about the game to begin with. Knowledge is power. Frankly, I think the faction relations are one of the aspects of VS that make it more realistic. After all, just look at reality on Earth right now and throughout history. Factions and fighting all through history and we are all one species! :)
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

eracc wrote: Seriously, I have been playing VS from SVN recently and figured out that the only faction I need to spam a lot of friendly greetings with are ULN. I have no problem with this.
Spamming is not gameplay, or making a tough decision, it's just button mashing.
I sweet talk the ULN to get some positive credit with them. Balance killing Luddites and Pirates until everyone else practically loves me (except Luddites). Then I can just keep that balance by keeping the ULN happy talking nice to them. I can even do occasional bounty missions on pirates and still keep everyone, including pirates but not Luddites, happy with me.
Uln are allied with both pirates and luddites. And Aera not to mention. At the very least, the Uln could have no connection or a negative relation to the luddites and/or aera, so that by balancing the self defense you could keep them neutral to you.

But the only option being to spam them love messages all the time? This is a good thing?

Also what about traders, players with ships that can not run away from enemies or pick they're fights? If they brush off enough pirates throughout the course of their normal existence they'll get attacked by Uln, then everyone else. Not everyone is equipped for so much fighting that they can spread out the relations to keep everyone happy.
Sure, if one is brash enough to kill ULN even in self defense it ticks off everyone, but then I think one gets what one deserves by not taking care with factions from the start.
But the Uln have no enemies; there is no one to attack to win their favor back. And they are allied with every faction that attacks you from day one.
If one gets in that pickle as a new player then one did not read enough about the game to begin with. Knowledge is power.
Is this information written down somewhere?
Frankly, I think the faction relations are one of the aspects of VS that make it more realistic. After all, just look at reality on Earth right now and throughout history. Factions and fighting all through history and we are all one species! :)
This isn't about having factions, it's about the exact opposite. The entire galaxy uniting against you because you defended yourself effectively. Dealing with factions is supposed to be about choosing the right side or striking a neutral balance between opposing sides you want to have dealings with or support from.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by -REBEL3- »

Deus is right-this bug is a game breaker. Sooner or later, no matter how much sweet-talking you do, the whole world hates you, and kills you off. There needs to be some way to fix this-at it's most extreme, a revision of canon to change who the Luddites like.

Edit-After thinking about it, I don't see many good ways to resolve this. :cry:
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by w03 »

I can think of two options:

1: Make uln dislike luddites (by the way, making forsaken dislike pirates is also a good fix, but I think it goes against canon). This (as far as I know) does not go against any canon, and balancing kills between luddites and pirates will give you a positive relationship with uln and purists.

2. Make confed, purist, shaper, etc. neutral to uln. This probably goes against canon, but it offers solutions for those who want to ally with pirates or luddites. Also, rlaan and aera already dislike uln (although on factions.xml it says rlaan consider uln friendlies...), so making other major or semi-major factions neutral to uln changes the problem to be much easier to manage.

Oh, and the klkk_citizen and mechanist_citizen relationship with pirates still needs to be fixed. :wink:

Although the issue is major, I don't consider it game breaking. So far,3-5 factions have a -100 relationship with me, and I have +100 with everyone else. I just ignore the attacks of my enemies. Besides, uln make for good entertainment. Wait until you attract about 20 uln. Then spec to the nearest rlaan ruizong or shundi. Circle around the capship for a while - the uln will bump into the ship and piss it off (If you get hit by an uln, you can always dock + repair and launch again). A while later, you should see the rlaan ship start vaporizing any uln that come too close. (This might work better with aera ships; faster metabolism, lesser tolerance, etc.)
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Deus Siddis »

@ -REBEL3-

There's actually at least a couple clear ways to resolve the issue, the only question as far as I can tell is which route do we want to take, and how far.


@ w03

You are right about the Forsaken, they too are allied with the Pirates. However Klkk and Mechanist citizens have a strongly negative relation to Pirates.

I believe we must at least make the Uln hostile towards Luddites (option 1), under any circumstances. The Luddites are HOSTILE to the Uln, there can't be a "canon" reason why the Uln would not shoot back or would take on their enemies to protect them. The Uln also have zero factions they are hostile to, which means there's no one you can attack to start to win back their favor, after fighting back against the Aera and Pirates.

Second I say we must also make the Uln neutral to the Aera or the Rlaan and Human factions must be neutral to the Aera. The Aera are fierce, aggressive and dangerous enemies of both species, there is no way they would tolerate Uln openly supporting them, and attacking members of their species and citizenry who have defended or fought back against such a menace. They have to pick a side or remain openly neutral.
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by Neskiairti »

mechanics wise.. just thinking about this here..

i would use three sets of factions.. character to faction, and inter faction relations..
which we have both already i believe.
also character to character relations.. (if i shoot a specific ship, it angers them, and their near by friends)

anyway, all normal faction shit should take place on a personal level.. think of it as a local variable.. :P what happens inside the system, stays in the system, unless some one (who cares) returns the result to the faction.

some factions should be allied, some should be enemies.. most shouldnt care a wit about other factions. inter faction relations should be very rough:
+3 close ally
+2 friendly
+1 associated
0 neutral
-1 aggravated
-2 hostile
-3 at war

these should never change except for scripted situations (story) or economic and political stress (procedural scripting).
just because a handful of men go renegade against a group who si supposedly their ally.. these people are still renegades from both sides... and would not effect the inter faction relation. the player cant start a war by killing everything in the name of another faction :p

character to faction relations.. specific characters in the universe may be tracked, but this generally means the player. this is how the individual factions feel about the player. 90% of them wouldnt know who the fuck he is, or give a shit :P and generally just leave him alone.. some that are labeled as priate may ambush just as a prospective target to get resources.. but otherwise, no one hates the player.

how to change faction via player's actions.. should be a bit more coarse.
first, the target of the relation change.. perhaps some one you shoot upon, or some one you befriend. this individual has a 'local' relationship with the character.. likely forgotten as soon as the character jumps out of system (either player or character) a faction in general does not care about this, nor hear about it. so say, you need to put yourself associated with 100 people before you move up to associated with the faction.. if you are friendly with 50 people, that would count for 100 associated people.. so you only need 50 to move up with the faction.. for ally (think wingman, or some one you guard as a mission) you only need 25.

in the reverse.. if you annoy some one.. (hit them with say more than 10 shots), the personal relation is aggravated.. they will return fire if they receive damage.
if they take more than 100 shots.. or are destroyed, they are considered hostile. (any direct allies, also share this personal feeling) so it defines a relational 'character' based on a group, or event.. perhaps even a system level. so even if there are 400 of this faction in the system.. killing one of them only counts as one tick towards the negative.. (of course each one you kill counts higher)

the next part of this is the return.. this is all local still.. it is only returned if a member of that allied group leaves the system alive.. and their 'point' in favor only counts towards their own faction.. not their allied faction.. so if you blow away the buddy of a pirate, who was in a mercenary clan.. the mercenary clan doesnt hear about it.. but the pirate faction does.

allies should be rare though. really. look at the relations in the world.. we are associated with alot of different countries.. but there are very few our individual countries are actually allied with.

again in the reverse.. if you blow away the enemy of one faction, infront of them.. they return to their faction and say "hey this dude killed our enemy!"

anyway.. rough idea.. :p needs work.. but its a start?
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Re: klkk_citizen/mechanist_citizen faction relationships

Post by -REBEL3- »

I like the idea about having the data be transferred to the faction when 1 ship leaves the system-however, how do you propose to handle bases? They can't fly away. Likewise, if I kill 100 people in a nebula where your sensors can't see me, you shouldn't be able to know about it.

First, we need to work on the sensors. They need to have range. This way, only ships that *know* about the incident can report it. By the same token, though, we should implement a distress call that alerts all ships in a much broader sensor radius.

Next, implement the idea of associated factional relationships-with a twist. Lets have the ships worth some "love/hate price"-this ties in nicely with a dynamic economy. Make it so a "civilian ship," a base, or a huge capship has a higher "hate price" then a small ship. By the same token, if I kill a huge Leonidas, the Confeds should love me more then I kill an Areus. Right now, they don't. :evil:

Then, we need defensive and offensive states for ships-this ties in with an AI rework. Depending on what state the ship is in, the "hate price" should change.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... =6&t=15282
My notes on the AI rework

I'll think of more later-right now, I want sleep.

~R3
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