Author Topic: Gaining Federation Points  (Read 3100 times)

Offline GC13

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Gaining Federation Points
« on: April 25, 2014, 09:55:40 pm »
Has anyone spotted a good way to get these? I'm really close to being able to form a Federation in my beta patch, except I'm below 400 points with my guys.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline WhiteSeraph

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2014, 11:18:46 pm »
Points accumulate every month when a race is spacefaring and not in any specific alliance.  If you have two races that you know you want to start the federation, ensure that they are spacefaring as early as possible.  Then they can start accumulating points. 

Offline GC13

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2014, 11:52:53 pm »
Yeah, but it's still looking like it's going to put the brakes on my starting the Federation for a while; I was hoping to have a way to boost it a bit.

Still, at least the waiting won't be so bad. My last game was filled with warfare, but this one's a lot more relaxed.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2014, 04:36:58 am »
Yar...FP need some more variations on earning speed though, IMHO.

1) A fear empire ought to give a massive boost to FP generation among all other races
2) Planets being conquered ought to boost FP generation
3) Weaker races ought to be more inclined towards forming a federation than those who can stand on their own
The beatings shall continue
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Offline jonasan

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2014, 02:03:51 pm »
i think those are great suggestion from Shrugging Khan.... the FP system definitely needs to react better to the happenings in the solar system ;)

but i really like the mechanic overall, and today its given me my most interesting and challenging game of TLF so far!

anything that suggests a federation might be in the best interests of a race (long term) should give a boost to the FP counter... whether that's examples of co-operation or hostility in the system.

I like the way the hydral is penalised with this mechanic for taking hostile actions against races (when he is supposed to be a peace loving ambassador of the federation) but i'm wondering if it might be possible to develop the 'Black Market' a little here. Perhaps we could have it as a mercenary base where you can hire mercenary/terrorist/spies to perform some hostile actions for/with you at a much higher price, but without the hydral/race relation and FP loss associated with those actions normally?

For those hostile actions which require a combat mission the hydral could ride onboard and control the mercenary ship (upgraded with all the players current tech and customized at mission start?) - thereby still needing to win the combat mission and risking death/retreat. There would be no race/hydral relation changes for these missions, but race/race and FP changes could be very nicely achieved in this covert way.

This might help in making the strategy a bit deeper/complex/varied in the long run as well - we could have new highly priced covert actions at the mercenary base, e.g. hiring a group of peltian mercenaries to attack an Evuk outpost, but to do so while pretending to be part of the true peltian fleet, thereby potentially starting a war between the Evuk and the peltians ;)

this game is truly astonishing in terms of the number of ideas and features that could be potentially fitted into it over time :)

also, i'm interested in peoples opinions on this:

do you guys think that you would have found this mechanic really frustrating if you had found this in the game on your first play through?

do you think if its implemented like this it might put new players off from getting into the game because it takes them so long to get their federation going even after they have worked hard to get race relations in a good state?

I'm wondering if maybe this FP mechanic could be unlocked after three victories of the game without it involved.... as a new game plus mode for TLF? with accompanying achievements at the different difficulties?

Offline chemical_art

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2014, 02:55:34 pm »
I won't lie, but I'm sad to see arcen put such a mechanic in.

Rather then organically add in reasons why the federation couldn't be formed quickly, they just added another "gate" into this game. Like the game needed more number crunching.

It could be improved, however this is just a bandage to rather address larger problems.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 07:03:07 pm by chemical_art »
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Offline GC13

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2014, 03:23:38 pm »
As long as Federation Points are so hard to come by, I think the cure is worse than the disease. I can see them being useful, but they're not helping with so little in the way of mechanics backing them up.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline contingencyplan

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2014, 03:48:27 pm »
I am curious --- what problem was the FP mechanic supposed to solve? Were
people really blitzing the federation, or able to get everything just right
and bring everybody in within a matter of turns? I certainly haven't figured
out the "optimal" path, but I haven't played as much as others here, I'm sure.

@chemical_art: I'm inclined to agree with you on the bandaid factor. I think
it would have been more interesting to expand on the race-based factors that
determine how amenable they are to joining the federation, rather than adding
a new number that has to be tracked and balanced. As it is, it's just an
arbitrary slowdown factor that (as of now) doesn't make that much sense within
the larger scheme of things --- it's essentially yet another form of
influence, except with a much higher wall and not-as-obvious mechanics.

@jonasan: I think my first few games went to hell quickly enough that this
wouldn't have been a huge factor. What I'd guess, though, is that I
wouldn't have even founded a federation my first few playthroughs with
it like this, and that (along with the pure waiting game it introduces) would
have been frustrating, especially because there seem so few ways of impacting
it at present.


As an alternative (and depending on what problem this is supposed to address),
why not have an "alliance influence" value for each race and alliance that is
the average of the influence values of each of the member races (including the
player)? The idea here being "well, I really like the Peltians, but I can't
stand the Skylaxians...  but that Hydral dude's been my best buddy since day
1..."

The influence of other alliances (and non-allied races) could be weighed
against that --- if they get tilted heavily in one particular direction, then
that race will essentially join the alliance out of its own volition. For
example (continuing from above), "... aaaand the Thoraxians scare the living
daylights out of me... aaaand that's their fifth military station. YEP
FEDERATION SOUNDS GOOD." This could let you create a high-risk balancing act
of helping a particular race become a credible enough threat to "encourage"
membership without them roflstomping over the very people you're trying to
bring in --- or worse, the federation as a whole.

Personally, I think this would be a much more interesting mechanic than the
current "loading Federation.exe, please wait... 4hrs 10min remaining" case,
especially because it avoids really introducing a new number that players have
to keep track of and instead uses numbers that are already front-and-center in
the player's mind.

Thoughts?

Offline GC13

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2014, 04:30:23 pm »
I think the problem was that trade grinds inter-racial reputation far too quickly, and it did allow people to get a federation going both quickly and easily. However, time-gating the Federation like technology really hurts gameplay.

I've gone ahead and put in a ticket for this issue on Mantis. I'd roll back to 1.004 if I could play my current save on it, but that won't work. I simply don't want to spend fifteen more years twiddling my thumbs hoping nobody gets bored and kills somebody, just to finally start forming the Federation in a year that's normally after I'd have beaten the game.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline jonasan

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2014, 04:48:18 pm »
...What I'd guess, though, is that I wouldn't have even founded a federation my first few playthroughs with it like this, and that (along with the pure waiting game it introduces) would have been frustrating, especially because there seem so few ways of impacting it at present.

my thoughts exactly.... :)

as far as i know the whole idea of FP was to try to force a more complicated game onto players who were figuring out optimal quicker ways of putting a federation together and thereby (to an extent) trivializing the rest of the strategic game. The point being that they were missing out on the late game content, the highest level tech, the huge armadas and wars - all of which they were never seeing due to breezing through the strategic game too easily.    [if thats not right i'm sure someone can correct me? ;)]

I for one was finding that the strategic side of the game was lacking in challenge at this moment, even on so called 'hard' strategic difficulty, and i have found that the FP add a welcome complexity to that side of the game.

I think of it 'lore wise' as some kind of measure of how long it would take one lonely hydral, an individual of a race of oppressive dictators, to convince the newly freed races that some kind of larger system wide political structure is really a good idea..... not an easy task given their total mistrust of the other races present in the system and the crazy idea of forming a federation based on faith in the goodwill of those species.

What i found was that the game i played this afternoon would have been beaten fairly simply with 6 races remaining if i had been able to form federations based on relation alone (as in pre 1.05)... but instead i had to fight to maintain the situation i wanted while the FP ticked up slowly and be careful my actions did not set back the counter even more. Inevitably things got out of hand as the counter slowly crept up. Trying to hold back the Acutians from their expansionist tendencies was in the end impossible. i was close to keeping everyone alive but as the relations started to spiral the costs of 'stop attacking' etc. got too high and i had an acutian fear empire on my hands. Then, realising how long the FP was going to take to tick up, I had to choose sides and work hard to keep alive my chosen thorax and skylax to one day form my federation... the acutians took out the andors and the evuks as well and things looked bad, but concentrated effort got me to the breaking point and it was very satisfying to finally broker the federation - even if they were going to be facing off against a 6 planet fear empire.

it was a new challenge to have to play like this... and now the game is poised to show me all new content in the late late game, which i have previously never seen due to usually beating the game with a unified federation much earlier.

i do agree whole heartedly with what chemical_art said above... another counter/number is not really what the game needs to achieve this goal. structured content would be much better, not a simple gating clock mechanic. it would be all together better to have interim partnerships, necessary technological steps to be achieved and other minor interim goals before a federation could be formed - thereby achieving the same thing in a much more 'organic' way (nice choice of words by chemical_Art) that is more fitting for the game as a whole and would add so much more story to the experience of TLF.

However, while this is surely the way to go, such things are going to take a little more time and effort from the Arcen folks.

I'm really confident that all of this will come in time but i can see a place for this FP mechanic in the mean time as an unlockable game start option for those that want it - just to fill the hole until other content makes it obsolete. It could definately be tweaked a little as we have talked about above, but for right now its doing a job for me and has got me excited about returning to my game this evening and seeing if i can get my poor little federation to face down this huge fear empire - and i reckon thats a good thing.

EDIT:

hmmm, or alternatively you could just take this mechanic out completely and put a few achievements in the game about not forming a federation until year X, Y and Z and then i could just choose to play that way myself if i want :) I'm not an achievement hunter really but i think it might have inspired me to play this way on my own accord to make things harder... it wouldn't be the same though and i'd personally prefer a slightly more reactive/influencable FP system to choose at the start of a game. However, i can see how if this was only for a minority of players then perhaps arcen's time would be better spent elsewhere.

thing is though, there is something here that i reckon works in the sense of extending the game experience and increasing the challenge, because i found it more satisfying to pull off just forming a federation today in the FP game than forming a unified fed and winning in any of my previous games.... felt more strategically satisfying to have kept things from disintegrating completely before i got my federation started, and i still have so much story left to play out in that game with a federation i really care about and worked so hard to pull off.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 05:04:34 pm by jonasan »

Offline contingencyplan

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2014, 05:20:47 pm »
Two quick thoughts as I head out:
 *  I think what I dislike most about this is it creates a sense of "waiting"
    for the clock to wind down rather than "striving" towards an end goal.

 *  I agree that trade escalates too quickly --- in my pre-1.005 game that I
    loaded, there were races with 900+ influence with each other that couldn't
    join my federation. That seems very counter-intuitive to me (though it was
    a late-game situation when the FP got brought in). If trade is the
    problem, then why not just slow the trading down a notch or two (or
    better, make that one of the custom game options?)

Offline chemical_art

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2014, 07:09:46 pm »
...
    problem, then why not just slow the trading down a notch or two (or
    better, make that one of the custom game options?)
..

I like the idea that for "advanced play" slowing down relations game.

Of course, that is what higher difficulties are for. But having this...mechanic thing on your foot-horned in just ruins immersion for me.  It is nothing but a gate. Pass/fail. Not good. Completely inorganic, which considering the overall game of influencing a simulation just doesn't work. I'll say again (in case a dev reads it)

In the 3ish years I've been following Arcen games, it is a shame the worst "feature" of their games (federation points) follows their best game since AI wars. It is bad. Period. There are no redeeming factors. It is a bandaid for players doing what players SHOULD do, which is optimal play. Repackage it, remove it, whatever. Anything is better then the trash that exists right now. I was going to play on my weekend, but no longer.
Life is short. Have fun.

Offline Misery

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2014, 12:18:02 am »
Far as I know, one of the biggest problems with the game up to this point, and I'm guessing one of the main reasons for this mechanic, is that there seriously were a bunch of ways to rather easily just grind the game to death, and be able to ignore 95% of all of the strategic stuff.

When I see players give bad opinions to this game, that typically is the core reason.  Something like "The game is claimed to have all of these extremely deep strategic and tactical layers, but in reality it really doesnt, because most of the stuff you can do is trivial and unnecessary to win.  It's a very simplistic game pretending at being strategic".   And if strategies like grinding are viable, then I can see where they're coming from.  I personally dont play it that way, but alot of players tend to gravitate towards whatever seems the most simple.... and if that option is extremely broken and requires no thought, they'll assume the worst about the rest of the game.  This very definitely needs addressing.


As for the federation points themselves, I have no judgement on them yet.  Need to mess with them more.

Offline GC13

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2014, 12:26:37 am »
Well, you'll never find me saying that game balance doesn't need to be given love. Trade routes are too good, and need to have their effectiveness at boosting attitude turned way down so that other methods of getting races to like each other can be created, and that have various strategic tradeoffs. +RCI missions also need to get some love, as they feel like filler at the moment.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: Gaining Federation Points
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2014, 07:21:21 am »
GC13 heroically mantised this.
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.