On game design

[george moromisato]

The post about what should happen when you kill a Black Market station has made me think a bit about game design.

1. In general, I want the game to present situations in which the player can take the "safe" path or the "risky" path. Obviously, the safe path is safer, but the risky path has higher rewards. The Invincible shield is a good example of the risky path. Killing friendly stations is another example of the risky path.

2. The rewards side of the equation is obvious. But how do we increase risk? I think there should be many ways, depending on the situation. One of the easiest ways to increase risk is to increase the power of the opponents. For example, if you choose to advance to the next system before you're ready, that's a risky move that forces you to confront more powerful enemies (but also greater rewards).

3. Another way to increase risk is to introduce non-linear results. For example, as you add more powerful devices, you consume more fuel. That's a linear relationship: the amount of fuel consumed is proportional to the power of the device. The safe path.

But once you approach the limit of your reactor, the relationship turns non-linear. An extra 5 MW of consumption suddenly turns into a damaged device--the relationship is no longer proportional.

4. The punishment for destroying a Black Market station is also non-linear. As long as the player does not dock, only bounty hunters attack; if the player docks, it can mean death.

5. The whole idea behind the safe vs. risky path and the linear vs. non-linear rewards is to present the player with meaningful choices. One important aspect of a game is the "illusion of winnability". This means that the player should always believe that they can win, if only they avoid making mistakes. Every time the player dies, he/she should be able to say, "next time, I'll do xyz and I'll win."

If the player can't figure out what xyz is, or the player thinks that xyz is impossible, then the game will not be as fun.

6. Note: None of the above necessarily means that the current risk/reward of Black Markets is correct--I think we can argue about how to improve it, but I just wanted to give some insight into how I'm thinking about the problem.

[Betelgeuse]

I think destroying the corp stations are a great example of risk vs reward.
It denies you from many later useful stations such as the factory and the trading station plus it gets rid of a great source of money (it is much better to sell to the corp) and fuel stations.
What it gives you is some great loot and it calls the corp cruiser. This gives skilled players access to higher level items much earlier in the game.

Contrast that to killing commonwealth stations. Kill them and get little loot and denied equipment and reactors early game and most missions later in the game. It is basically there is no risky path in this case everyone will take the safe path due to the reward makes the game harder right away and never gives you an advantage.

Black market is a bit different. Early game the only point of black markets is to get money due to the military stuff they sell can't be used until you can get better military stuff. So you can get a good influx of credits both from killing them or not. You can give you a boost early game by killing them and dealing with the hunters. That denies you access to the black market shipyards but that isn't something that can't be gotten else ware with a bit of work. I think it is a bit to easy to destroy the black market but if the black market shipyards had something unique and useful it would solve that problem.

[Burzmali]

Think about the BM like this. If they were red stations, would they be balanced? The answer is obviously that they would not be. Not a single enemy station in the entire game can reliability generate as many goodies as a BM station, especially shipyards. And, being greens only makes them easy to kill.

The Risks:

Bounty hunters show up one at a time with a shield that has 80 hp (100 vs. lasers) and regens 6 hp (8 vs. laser) per second against a player who will most likely at least have a weapon that does 48 laser damage a sec (on average) if they have any skill at all.

Station guards are worthless, as long as a player targets them and not the station itself.

Stations are equipped with Slam Cannons, which are high damage, but usually easy to evade a 60 ls. Heck, if the player sits on the station itself, an Invincible-class shield gives them at least 20 seconds to kill it.

Docking is an insta-kill if you aren't loaded.

The Rewards:

A conservative estimate would be 40,000 credits worth of Illegals.

At least 2 Military devices, conservatively worth 10,000 credit a piece, and could include Invincible-class shields, Akan 600 Turrets, Katana Star Cannons and Hanzo Blasters which are some of the prime mid to late game equipment.

I would seriously consider increasing the number of bounty hunters generated at a time as a player's bounty goes up and improving their weapons loadout as well (at least better mags). A couple of other suggestions would be to have every BM station have a designated rabbit that runs off with the stations stash of illegals if the station is damaged beyond 50%, and to have BM stations start to equip their wares during <OnCreate> as the number of destroyed BM facilities increases.

[Betelgeuse]

the problem with any ship attacking you as punishment you can farm them for money or equipment. So once you have destroyed a black market station you get a steady stream of credits even not counting the loot you get from the station itself.

[Burzmali]

leavesWreck= 0

[F50]

Make the guards increase in difficulty (with the leaveswreak thing). Up to full VI or perahps even full VII equiped bounty hunters could be something nasty. The current bounty-hunters are just an annoyance. Having bounty hunters with are both annoying AND dangerous would be nice. If you made it so that they appear in EVERY system just more in the systems with a BMS I think it would warrent them going to red color (so that your autons/companions automatically react instead of having to press "ffqt" with Rama as companion).

Giving extra loot that isn't sold or just a cash card with a relatively large amount of credits (5-10k?) on it would help bring the CW into the equation assuming you have somwhere else do dcok like the ringers.

Station guards are really worthless if you sit on the station itself. Station guards and revenge ships should not be able to shoot friendlies (thus allowing them to shoot over the station at you). This is really needed with the Ranx and Ares statinos. Corp Cruisers and the Iocrym should be able to shoot over planets as well.

[goat not sheep]

You know, reading this gives me an awesome idea. When you kill a black market station, and you dock on it, I don't really like the fact of instant death. How about some kinda mission to make it against commonwealth...like... sell these slave coffins to victoria nightclub, or something like..."I need to confirm your trust. do me a favour and give me XXX. Blow up YYY to get XXX."

[Burzmali]

If the BM were red, they would change from being a useful ally, to the most generous enemy in the game...

[darksider]

Some ship ideas;

- some stealthy mine layers, instead of fighting directly against the player - the static mine can be truly nasty if you fail to notice
- use some sort of illegal autons which do suicide-bombing with nuclear/radioactive explosives
- some more powerful hunters which sometimes use the scramble cubes against the player (BTW, maybe it's time to make some cyber-defense devises?)

Anyway, my conception here is that they must use every sort of dirty tricks to eliminate the player if the player is a major threat.
(like, buy or threaten the corporate guys and tell them not to sell anything to the player, set some fatally-trapped ammunition box in their station, try to assassinate the player in pubs and restaurants, etc...)

[FAD]

...have every BM station have a designated rabbit that runs off with the stations stash of illegals if the station is damaged beyond 50%...

That and setting the rabbit with leavesWreck= 0 would solve the easy BM farming, but then it would negate the need for bounties since the player would quickly learn there's no profit in it and not destroy BM's.

Perhaps replacing the BM stations slam cannons with heavy slam cannons would make it a little harder to farm them? Increase the risk.

[kaypy]

That and setting the rabbit with leavesWreck= 0 would solve the easy BM farming, but then it would negate the need for bounties since the player would quickly learn there's no profit in it and not destroy BM's.

A few things you could possibly tweak to get around that:

1) have the rabbit generated and get loaded up over a second or two- if you get it fast enough, theres still stuff left on the station

2) rather than have it leavesWreck=0, have it leave a possibly boobytrapped wreck, some will be fine but some will, when you try to dock:
* become radioactive
* explode like a mininuke
or
* EMP you on contact

[OddBob]

That and setting the rabbit with leavesWreck= 0 would solve the easy BM farming

So don't set the wreck to 0. Problem solved.
I like the rabbit idea - it makes it possible to get the stuff, but you have to leave the station and hunt the rabbit down. Now when you get back the station is repaired again and backup is waiting for you. (I'd say put about 50% of the stations good on the ship).

[Sponge]

I think the trick of would be making more than one ship leave the station. Maybe a group of freighters undocks, all in different directions. Really only gives you one chance to hunt down and destroy the rabbit ship. You have to take a guess and hope you get lucky. Since the station isn't completely dead, you've got frag rounds and slam cannons all over you making it even more difficult to find the real rabbit.

[Burzmali]

I figured that the rabbit would be a T31 Armed Transport that "hung out" around the station (i.e. visiting stations within 100 ls like the outlaw convoy does) and once the station was down to 50% health, they would dart in, dock, and make off with the illegal (not military) items and head for the nearest gate.

[F50]

I never take the illegals in anyways. I like the Rabbit thing as well. If there more rabbits that take one millitary item each but these having 100% leaveswreak that would also be interesting. That way, every ship is the rabbit, you just don't know what kind.

Definitely upgrade to heavy slam cannons for shipyards. Not sure if I would be happy about them on regular stations though.