Saltberia "Prison"

Geronimo553

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Feb 14, 2020
Messages
61
#1
Captured enemy faction players? That criminal running amuck finally has been brought to justice? Well now they can serve time by mining rocks until their debt is paid. Perhaps time can be served by mining for broken laws or maybe that captured enemy will change allegiances to your faction instead... I really like the idea of the game having an element in place for crime or captured enemies. It would really be neat to see a system for this introduced into the game.

Here is a great example video of the concept

This court system teleports in random players to become the judge and jury for trial.

EDIT: changed the title to Saltberia "Prison" for people to easily find and discuss this topic.
 
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AlexiyOne

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Feb 3, 2020
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85
#2
That's what my faction is doing currently, we capture prisoners and send them to a prison station
 

AlexiyOne

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Feb 3, 2020
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#3
We give credit for the idea to the creators of the Boltcrackers series for that though:
We have our own punishment system with people having to mine a certain amount of asteroids till they are allowed to leave prison or be given permission to be killed if they committed a very high felony according to our Nemesis laws
 

Geronimo553

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Feb 14, 2020
Messages
61
#4
We give credit for the idea to the creators of the Boltcrackers series for that though:
We have our own punishment system with people having to mine a certain amount of asteroids till they are allowed to leave prison or be given permission to be killed if they committed a very high felony according to our Nemesis laws
The only issue is a person can simply respawn. Which would need to be changed to either spawns can only occur in the prison or the body becomes persistent.
 

Geronimo553

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Feb 14, 2020
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#8
I have only seen people mention Saltberia. Really nothing about it or how it will function nor the extent factions can control it if any.
 

Croomar

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Aug 9, 2019
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#9
"Saltberia" is at the moment really only a concept and the devs are rather unclear about it. Whenever it is mentioed, it has something joking to it so you never really know how serious you can take it, but it's definitely planned to exist. There are a few things they did share though...

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Saltberia is supposed to be a an empty moon under the Empire's rule for players who commit in-game crimes against in-game laws set by in-game factions. It's less of a pison and more of a lawless space without the means to get out easily.
It is not a place for players who are cheating or hacking, for example, those are bannable offenses and Saltberia is not universally usable, although anybody could enter it (which is supposed to be illegal and land you... in Saltberia)

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It's not clear yet how players will be transported there, but if it is by in-game means, then that also opens the possibility for "privatized* pisons and prison factions the way @alexking600 is planning it.

From what I know about it, the concept of Saltberia seems less than an in-game feature with its own system, rather than the result of many of Starbase's features combined to allow the possibility to create in-game prisons.

1581876125487.png
 

Geronimo553

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Feb 14, 2020
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61
#10
Ahh this vast speculation highlights all the more importance of discussing how this could work in starbase and finding solutions from other games for devs to review. Which is the point of the thread. Thanks for sharing that Croomar, it must have taken some time to find all that.
 

Vexus

Master endo
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Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#11
This is actually one 'game feature' I am concerned about, where the devs have made good choices elsewhere. Separating your playerbase is a very bad idea. If you remove a player from his group, for 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes... they are going to quit the game for that duration, and be less inclined to join the game back because they then went to play some other game in the duration.

A prison system needs to be looked at by what it incentivizes, and what it disincentivizes, the players to do. Will players be incentivized to play nice? Maybe. Does a prison system disincentivize players from playing with their friends? Yes. Does it prevent them from playing all the core features of the game? Probably. Who decides what is bad? Does the player automagically teleport across the game world to this prison? There's a lot of holes here. Maybe Starbase is trying to mimic Altis Life style gameplay, or GTAV, in having something like this. The issue there is those mods/games rely on players role playing. The whole point is that players go in and role play - and they're heavily restricted to access to in-game weapons and tools and so on.

We see Altis Life and GTAV work in small server numbers in systems which are heavily rule-based with an underlying roleplay objective (often enforced by server admins). If Starbase can pull off an underlying tone of that kind of gameplay, then it can work for a bit and in limited capacity. I see issue with any skilled group of 10-20 people coming in and just shutting down any 'enforcer' who is trying to stop people from playing the game. Or 100-200. In addition, if the power to send someone to prison is in the players' hands, 100-200 people running around putting everyone into prison is also as likely. For it to work, there will need to be a lot of arbitrary rules and so on which detect 'crime' and other things which will constantly have to be updated and managed as players find new ways to break those rules - like if killing someone in an area is a crime - take someone else's ship and run someone over to achieve the same effect, jumping off the helm right before the ship hits the target player, so the devs have a hard time finding out 'who done it?'

I do see this kind of feature working within the main dev factions, as a way to deal with people who purposefully sabotage their own team and so on. So it has some value, no doubt. I just hope it is not some widespread thing where people in the void of space can get sent away from their friends because some other player wants to split up your group for no reason. Lots of headache with that kind of thing.

This type of system is fine in small server-based or small matched based games. I'm concerned about it working in Starbase. But if the devs see it working and they can pull in that kind of gameplay, then so be it. If it works, it could be great. I just see it hurting for a long time at first until all the issues get worked out - these other games/mods have been designed from the ground up around these systems. We shall see!
 

AlexiyOne

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Joined
Feb 3, 2020
Messages
85
#14
I hope that people can't just make you be a prisoner and there is a system, maybe put handcuffs on a person if they have a record of having destroyed something in the last couple of minutes, hours, or days.(This record is saved by the game)
 

Amos.37

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Aug 22, 2019
Messages
154
#15
There needs to be some sort of way to verify that people are actually guilty. Otherwise the system is too easy to exploit, which could easily ruin the games for players that end up in prison for no reason.
I'm not sure of an in-universe way of doing this though. Only straight forward system I can think of is some sort of activity log linked to your account. As this would still be client-side, it could still be exploited.
What other ways could you verify if someone has actually committed a crime that aren't easily exploitable?
A screen capture/recording of them doing it submitted to a dev/mediator maybe?
 

Vexus

Master endo
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Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#16
I think the main function of the system is that there needs to be something to deal with friendly fire and so on within the Empire and Kingdom factions. I don't see it being used in the wild - which is basically 'lawless' territory. In other words, if an Empire player shoots and kills another Empire player, it is not hard to get that information and then people can act on it, sending the 'criminal' to Saltberia.

The issue for me is the ensuing arms race, as players get mad they were punished for doing something, and then find ways to cheat the prison system. Doing hard to track things like setting off a chain of explosions. Grabbing faction loot and simply dropping it where no one will find it. Taking ships and randomly crashing them. Taking ships and pulling out the fuel rod and dropping that where no one can find it. So on and so forth.

The root of this problem is as follows: players love a challenge. If they cannot find sufficient challenge out in the game world, they might find it hilarious or fun to find that challenge within the factions by 'griefing' the own team - for lack of a better word at the moment. As the Prison and other punishment systems get ramped up - now the player has a challenge. The challenge to defeat the system is now more appealing than the challenge of playing the main game at all. As such, they spiral into constantly trying to figure out ways to defeat the system. Generally, these players are more experienced and quicker to adapt than devs, and as such get more reward for their time spent than they receive punishment for.

When you make the most difficult challenge in the game the defeating of an in-game system, you breed players who will do nothing else except find ways to beat that system.

However, the duality of its benefits still exists, and for the common player, being sent away to prison will have a numbing effect on their desire to try the same things again in the future. However, often times this makes the player feel detached from the game, either quitting the game as a whole - because what drove them to inner-faction team killing was boredom in the first place (not finding enough external challenge) - or being a shell of the player they might have been if the game pushed them enough to become that potential.

This is compounded if you let other players be the 'judge' on who gets sent away, as well. Then a band of salty players might not be happy you're not playing the game their way, and then banish you to prison by leveraging their size and political sway, not understanding the multitude of ways players can approach the game.

My preferred way of handling this is to have no such prison system, and simply make it clear within the faction that if you get kicked out, you don't get back in. Empire and Kingdom are much like a military, and if you screw up, you get kicked out, period. As those players get kicked out, back to neutral territories, they have little else to do - no more team killing, no access to all the loot and ships, and they'll have to work like everyone else to get their first ship and get out into the game world - where the safe zone is the main area of action, and if they want to go out into the wild, good luck. The incentive to play nice in the dev factions or else get kicked out, I think is good enough.
 
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PopeUrban

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Oct 22, 2019
Messages
140
#18
I loved the archeage justice system. Nothing like creating a cabal of corrupt jurors that places all of your friends above the law.

We once sent three people to prison for being unfortunate enough to let me jump in front of their swords. I had that mob camp to myself for an hour. It was the most fun I've ever had demonstrating the stupidity of a gameplay system. I stole every unplotted crop I wanted because every time I went to trial for it I was voted innocent by reason of being above the law. We used the player justice system almost exclusively to a political end.

Unless your goal is to create a corrupt and entirely partisan justice system, players can not have input in a justice system. Players do not and will not ever vote in an objective manner. They will weaponize votes to deal as much damage as possible to their rivals and as little as possible to their allies.

The only way this works is with an EVE style omnipotent reputation system. Get killed in empire space with low enough empire rep, do not pass go, respawn in prison.

Even then ingame prison is a terrible idea.


The entire purpose of a prison is that it isn't fun, and it prevents you from interacting with society. The entire point of a video game is that it is fun. The entire point of an MMO is that you interact with society.

Giving players the ability to take actions in a game that result in the game putting them in a corner and removing their agency is dumb. If you don't want players taking those actions, you're a video game, don't let them take those actions. If you DO want them to take those actions and suffer some consequence so they don't do them all the time, great, use a consequence that doesn't remove their agency, like a fine, being placed on a kill list, or having some banked property seized.
 
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