Hey all, about a month ago I began writing a thread to post on this forum summing up a conversation I had in the Starbase discord. We were discussing the reasons that wars would begin in a starbase and there really didn't seem to be many if any at all. Long story short, that post eventually evolved into a short essay that I made into a video. Here it is my friends, hope you enjoy and let's get discussing.
Crisis of Conflict: Is there a reason to go to war in Starbase?
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- Jan 4, 2020
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nice video, its a pretty interesting topic. i think the economic wars will depend on whether you can gain more than in the time of fighting than if you put that time into collection the recources yourself, so if two functions get a hold of a big amount of an extremly rare recource, it will cause a big scale war. an idea to make it happen quickly is to make a recource exceedingly rare as its collected, so at first it will be not to bad to find and some factions will start to hoard it and as time moves on it will be harder and harder to come by so the best way to get a hold of a good amount of it quickly will be a big war over it.
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eco wars happening faster as you think, we have a speed limit na d the asteroid belt is 2000km thick and has a ~14.000km diameter, which means 4 hours straight driving (150m/s = 540km/h) just for its thicknes and 26 hours for the opposite
at day one there are a lot of ressources but over time you have to fly longer distances, may getting in struggle with fuel
solutions are gas stations inside the ring, over time you have to fly longer, asteroids didnt respawn even the ring have still 90% ressources beginners have to travel long ways, faction coult help them to get new members and destroy gas station of other faction to have main control
day one evrything is ok
day two civil war
day three mega corp war
day four MadMax in space
imagine of flying 7 hours around the circle to find one asteroid of wotrhless material
fly 7 hours back
fuel refill 100cr
ore sold 110cr
(prices are theoretically for show and may didnt fit to starbase)
your mining barge is shit
pirates do nothing, you are not worthy, they will wait for worthy oponents
you want to build a cool capital mining ship but you are poor af, asking a corp for help
you have the join Corp
they give you a large exhumer but you have to help to build their station, no problem.
goin in space again, your exhumer swallow multiple asteroids
7 hours 30 min later nice stuff found, pirates far away
you need flying back, pirates behind you, but getting stuck, limit 150 m/s reached
telling members what happening, they see pirate ships leaving station, things getting serious
they call members and the entire alliance, other pirates see what happening, they call their alliance
after 3 hours and 25min of flying you see pirate ship commin from your targettet mega station
a min later your rented exhumer getting wrecked by an torpedo
you respawn at an capital respawn ship you have never seen bevore, nice Corp archivements...
crop says, "take an fighter and help" spacebattle happening until one side getting exhaustet
and the winner can salvage the entire battlefield
-- I hope you survive my garmmar and typing mistakes--
K.Q.
at day one there are a lot of ressources but over time you have to fly longer distances, may getting in struggle with fuel
solutions are gas stations inside the ring, over time you have to fly longer, asteroids didnt respawn even the ring have still 90% ressources beginners have to travel long ways, faction coult help them to get new members and destroy gas station of other faction to have main control
day one evrything is ok
day two civil war
day three mega corp war
day four MadMax in space
imagine of flying 7 hours around the circle to find one asteroid of wotrhless material
fly 7 hours back
fuel refill 100cr
ore sold 110cr
(prices are theoretically for show and may didnt fit to starbase)
your mining barge is shit
pirates do nothing, you are not worthy, they will wait for worthy oponents
you want to build a cool capital mining ship but you are poor af, asking a corp for help
you have the join Corp
they give you a large exhumer but you have to help to build their station, no problem.
goin in space again, your exhumer swallow multiple asteroids
7 hours 30 min later nice stuff found, pirates far away
you need flying back, pirates behind you, but getting stuck, limit 150 m/s reached
telling members what happening, they see pirate ships leaving station, things getting serious
they call members and the entire alliance, other pirates see what happening, they call their alliance
after 3 hours and 25min of flying you see pirate ship commin from your targettet mega station
a min later your rented exhumer getting wrecked by an torpedo
you respawn at an capital respawn ship you have never seen bevore, nice Corp archivements...
crop says, "take an fighter and help" spacebattle happening until one side getting exhaustet
and the winner can salvage the entire battlefield
-- I hope you survive my garmmar and typing mistakes--
K.Q.
depopulating the belt will be tough, just going by the 10 years for 1% mined metric, the safezone itself will take multiple years to scratch and without knowing the size and distribution of rare resource nodes, you won't really know where to look unless the nodes are fairly large (i.e. months of dedicated megacorp mining) and allow a node, vein, or run of resource to be contested and fought over- having large pockets everywhere but dispersed might actually encourage fighting given space is big and finding things is hard, but that would mean most fights over resources would require watching the market and sleuthing to find out where a corp is getting all its shiny stuff from. Any corp that manages to become independent of the market could relocate and virtually disappear.
Good video and I agree on most of these points. Hopefully the nonuniform distribution of resources will provide at least enough of a starting point for territory to be meaningful and worth fighting over. Starting wars "just because" isn't going to be enough of a motivation over time if there are no stakes and nothing to gain from it. Otherwise, there's no real value to holding one area or another, and with the play space as large as it is, there isn't much practical reason to take someone else's spot when you can easily carve out your own.
Might be interested in this video as well, even if it's for D&D, but it does expand on reasons to have wars in games.
Might be interested in this video as well, even if it's for D&D, but it does expand on reasons to have wars in games.
Problem with your suggested solution no 1: resource sectors is the scale of the game. Nobody will travel for tens of hours to attack another faction that is half the belt away. Also the size of such zones, or even just places where they meet is thousands kilometres.
I'd rather make resource pockets within reasonable travel distance (2-5h with slow ship).
Maybe inside and outside of the belt (closer/further from the planet) could have different resources? With core of the belt having the most variety.
Then the point of the belt core closest to capital cluster would be the most precious location for a base.
I'd rather make resource pockets within reasonable travel distance (2-5h with slow ship).
Maybe inside and outside of the belt (closer/further from the planet) could have different resources? With core of the belt having the most variety.
Then the point of the belt core closest to capital cluster would be the most precious location for a base.
I think what would maybe spark some conflict is if there is modules for the stations required to work, making them expensive to build should spark conflict since they would be expensive and we all know how people act if they want something but don't want to work for something 
And yes i know i'm late... xD
And yes i know i'm late... xD
I've noticed a lot of people on this forum that seem to have little to no experience playing a sandbox PvP MMO and have some really naïve assumptions about how players interact in the sandbox.
In all my time playing PvP MMOs roughly half of all wars are a result of sensible territory, security, or roleplaying agendas. The other half are a direct result of rich people just being bored of not being in a war.
The larger the stockpile of materials, the more likely an organization is to start a war just because its fun, or just because they can save a bunch of screenshots of people complaining they didn't do anything to deserve it.
Never underestimate the willingness of people playing an MMO to be horrible to each other just because they can. Never underestimate the willingness of people to smash everything another player owns just to hear them cry. Never underestimate the ability of a large faction to annex more territory just because it can, regardless of its ability to maintain it.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the same drivers for armed conflict are present in video games as they are in reality. In reality people don't start wars just because they like being at war. In video games people do it all the time.
In all my time playing PvP MMOs roughly half of all wars are a result of sensible territory, security, or roleplaying agendas. The other half are a direct result of rich people just being bored of not being in a war.
The larger the stockpile of materials, the more likely an organization is to start a war just because its fun, or just because they can save a bunch of screenshots of people complaining they didn't do anything to deserve it.
Never underestimate the willingness of people playing an MMO to be horrible to each other just because they can. Never underestimate the willingness of people to smash everything another player owns just to hear them cry. Never underestimate the ability of a large faction to annex more territory just because it can, regardless of its ability to maintain it.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the same drivers for armed conflict are present in video games as they are in reality. In reality people don't start wars just because they like being at war. In video games people do it all the time.
My experience with games where the major factions fight each other for no reason other than "just because" is that the 20th such "war" is no different from the 19th or 18th. After a while people just have no more motivation to log on and participate because the outcome changes nothing and the game has no actual stakes.
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Hopefully the evolving engineering meta behind ships and an advancing understanding and implementation of yolol widgets keep the wider theatre of war lively and fairly interesting, but yeah, if your systems and gear stagnante there's only so much enjoyment that can be had in war before it becomes "war, war never changes".
Good topic. Sandbox games have an issue finding a sweet spot for the question: "Why fight?" The historic view is that it doesn't matter. Any sandbox with the capability for fighting will result in plenty of fighting just because. Sometimes people just don't like other people. Sometimes there's just someone close and convenient to attack. And all that results in fun gameplay. You fight for fun.
But there is something to consider that not many games solve. Rust has frequent server wipes, so the problem doesn't arise. Atlas has the problem to a degree; eventually fighting 'just because' can lose meaning. EVE had a solution for the problem; content. Which is the solution. If the devs make sure to give players abstract content that focuses interest and gameplay direction, there can be a reason to fight. The 'moon' example in Starbase is a good goal for the game. Players working to get to the moon, to be able to say they did it first - and then all the pirates and other factions pushing for the same, fighting each other to slow each others' progress.
If the devs can put a nice timeline on these things - not a hard timeline, but for example, set the moon out where it would take ~4+ months of building and warfare to reach the moon, it brings focus to gameplay and some reason to go to war, as well as a critical component - a measure of success. Then, once achieved and people populate that area, the abundance of resources and the economy surrounding the area might spur some local war conflict (because why pay for something when you can take it by force) before some new, far out content is presented as a new goal for the playerbase.
It feels like Starbase already has this kind of thing planned - or stumbled upon. The solutions are there. With an asteroid belt you can fly in for an hour and never see anyone else for the next week, the presence of gameplay goals and 'what do we do in game' can focus players and gameplay. When you bring players together, you create hotspots, and if the goal is abstract and not forced, the gameplay is organic, which is something a lot of games miss out on.
But there is something to consider that not many games solve. Rust has frequent server wipes, so the problem doesn't arise. Atlas has the problem to a degree; eventually fighting 'just because' can lose meaning. EVE had a solution for the problem; content. Which is the solution. If the devs make sure to give players abstract content that focuses interest and gameplay direction, there can be a reason to fight. The 'moon' example in Starbase is a good goal for the game. Players working to get to the moon, to be able to say they did it first - and then all the pirates and other factions pushing for the same, fighting each other to slow each others' progress.
If the devs can put a nice timeline on these things - not a hard timeline, but for example, set the moon out where it would take ~4+ months of building and warfare to reach the moon, it brings focus to gameplay and some reason to go to war, as well as a critical component - a measure of success. Then, once achieved and people populate that area, the abundance of resources and the economy surrounding the area might spur some local war conflict (because why pay for something when you can take it by force) before some new, far out content is presented as a new goal for the playerbase.
It feels like Starbase already has this kind of thing planned - or stumbled upon. The solutions are there. With an asteroid belt you can fly in for an hour and never see anyone else for the next week, the presence of gameplay goals and 'what do we do in game' can focus players and gameplay. When you bring players together, you create hotspots, and if the goal is abstract and not forced, the gameplay is organic, which is something a lot of games miss out on.
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- Jan 16, 2020
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- 2
Wars happen because there is no other desirable alternative. It really is as simple as that. doesn't matter if you are talking about real life or a game. you can add objectives to try to give reasons to fight but a better solution is to just give players the ability define objectives themselves, for what ever reason they want. players are as likely to fight over who has the better ships as they are to fight over some pre-ordained important objectives. In short don't design the game to have reasons to have wars, design a game world in which players can have wars over whatever they want. Wars shouldn't be profitable in and of themselves, they should be costly.
100% true, but social connections are always a stronger pull to log in than systemic rewards.
This is why smart developers are constantly iterating on the WHY. Your biggest factions are going to carve your world up in to pieces that make wars a boring stalemate. When you introduce new resources, of kick their economic legs out from under them with new systems it tends to stir things up.
In the end the things that motivate large organizations are generally the same things that motivate individual players. New content or mechanics, time limited or rare rewards, or recognition/status.
This is why smart developers are constantly iterating on the WHY. Your biggest factions are going to carve your world up in to pieces that make wars a boring stalemate. When you introduce new resources, of kick their economic legs out from under them with new systems it tends to stir things up.
In the end the things that motivate large organizations are generally the same things that motivate individual players. New content or mechanics, time limited or rare rewards, or recognition/status.
Nobody goes to war in a sandbox to lose money.
They might lose money as a result of forcing their opponent to lose more money, but the easier and faster it is to lose a ship than it is to make a new one, the less and less people are going to be willing to engage in armed conflict.
In the sandbox you have to constantly thing, at the bank of your mind "how does this system encourage players to cooperate or conflict with each other"
They might lose money as a result of forcing their opponent to lose more money, but the easier and faster it is to lose a ship than it is to make a new one, the less and less people are going to be willing to engage in armed conflict.
In the sandbox you have to constantly thing, at the bank of your mind "how does this system encourage players to cooperate or conflict with each other"