Dynasty and Clan Ideas

Matlkael

1. Can we get project functionality? For those unaware, it's essentially F/DHELP files except you can designate a specific person to be able to edit it without giving them access to edit the entire list of files.

(that's all I have, but I'm sure people have more ideas!)

Minion

The tough part about Dynasties is that 1. You are paying for them and 2. There is no guarantee that anyone will want to join them. This makes it so that you are going to be fighting an uphill battle against very general dynasties if you want to build something very specific.

I like the idea of dynasties and the power gained by amount of membership but, I do think that instead it should have more of an influence system rather than pure amount of members. Certain perks should be earned by your activity score similar to (but certainly not identical to) Lusternia's family system. If you have 40 members but 2 active members you should have less influence on the universe than someone with 10 really active members.

Maybe things like:
- xp bonus
- hacking xp bonus
- captaincy xp bonus
- small stat bonuses
- etc.

The above might cost dynasty influence to activate and are limited time bonuses.

Also things like:
- increased dynasty design capacity
- discounts for ship components and superstructures
- increase power for shop listing investments (instead of that silly artifact)

These would be gated behind dynasty influence totals. The idea being that the more influencial your dynasty is, the more neutral organizations will want to pander to you.

Just some ideas, feel free to refine them.

Arsentar

What about lets not? That kind of influence system would just reinforce people just joining where everyone already is instead of doing something novel.

Minion

So we end up with 200 dynasties with 2 active members in them. If you want something novel, you will have to work harder regardless to gain and keep membership or use a clan and save yourself a lot of marks and headaches.

EDIT TO ADD: Also, they are not doing guilds because they see the detrimental effects of spreading out the p-base more. As a whole, the game world gets smaller the more you spread opportunities for division.

Minion

Also, doing an influence system would help smaller dynasties that are very active because they can access things even if they can't get the numbers. A Tukkav only dynasty would likely never gain enough ground to have a bank account on sheer numbers alone but 5-6 active members could generate enough to buy that feature.

Matlkael

My idea for that: make it cost marks to unlock Dynasty perks, and make it a recurring cost per IG year. This means it'll make it possible for everyone to unlock them, but it'll be easier for larger dynasties (if your members are the participatory kind), plus it's another mark drain.

Paqu

Well for RP purposes, perhaps make it possible to transfer CLAN ownership to the factions? Like if the faction started an endeavor - such as an Academy for newcomers - they can make that clan an agency for the Governing body of the faction without the need to rely on the leadership of another player to maintain it. Not that there's a problem with that.

For Dynasty and Clans, perhaps allow other players to deposit marks to it? Specially for clans centered around a business model or something.

Cubey

Arsentar said:

What about lets not? That kind of influence system would just reinforce people just joining where everyone already is instead of doing something novel.

This. Not everyone wants to be a part of a big happy family uwu. Let us misanthropes stay out of dynasties and not get punished for doing so.

Minion

I can understand that. Honestly, I'm glad that they aren't doing the guild split. I do think that small, unique dynasties are at a pretty distinct disadvantage. The current system only really facilitates the idea that everyone should group together and nothing small can really function well as a dynasty.

The bonuses are probably a bit much but I  do think that dynasties should be able to purchase things with some sort of currency. Influence made more sense to me as we have a lot of mark sinks already.

Desmond

--I seem to be filtered out for moderation Hopefully it works this time --

Yeah, dynasties seem to want to be guilds the way they're made right now, even though the game doesn't have guilds. The fact that perks are unlocked through number of members makes things a bit eh... It'd be really great if perks could be unlocked through other mechanical ways like @Matlkael suggested because I see it getting really hard for dynasties that come later in the game to be able to amass numbers in the front of more established ones.
You aren't really encouraged to play a small-knit family kind of thing, even to play a small business, since you need 15 members to unlock the marks account and 20 to unlock designs (which by the way still don't work, you can designate designs to a dynasty but nobody can access them), both of which I find to be really basic stuff. Clans have accounts from the get-go unless I'm mistaken.

While I can't deny I would like to have more mechanical perks to dynasties, if we get some of the stuff that @Minion suggested, I fear it would make Factions redundant. Faction chatter has -really- died down since most people have taken their day-to-day talks to their dynasty channels and I'm not sure how I feel about this really. Barring a few mechanics, I feel like I can accomplish so much more with the Dynasty than I can with the Faction and people tend to be more loyal to their dynasties than their faction. Currently, factions only have cosmpiercers as a hugely different mechanic, but considering the state cosmpiercers are in, we can easily do without them in dynasties.

Minion

I think a big part of why faction chatter has died down is because of the way people have policed faction chat. And, inevitably, there will be people on faction talk that you don't want to interact with. City chats and the like are just not that popular anywhere when you give people the ability to tribalize even further.

Faction, particularly in the case of Scatterhome isn't as distinctly important to players right now as it might be in other IRE games. There is SO much more freedom to establish unique identities that you don't need them. Dynasties are naturally where you will put your loyalty whether as a family or business or something else.

This is really just nature taking its course.

Matlkael

Additional idea: (also a bump for Tecton, now that he's back!)

Can we also get a SECRET setting for dynasties/clans?

For those unaware, it makes it so that most members, when speaking, will see this instead of your name:

(Clan): Someone says, "Blah blah."

Anonymity is cool! Maybe make it cost marks (mark drains are also cool).

kamyr

Dynasty stations. Preferably out in those boonies on the starchart.

Ikchor

Dynasties-as-guilds I think is a holdout from those of us who are used to the medieval fantasy formula, or just some real concrete structure. Scatterhome, for example, was a volatile mess the first three weeks after launch cause there was no one leading, and no one was allowed to be de facto leader (unofficial 'pillars of the community' outside of the nominated positions not withstanding). The complete freedom to do whatever you wanted because no one else has done it yet is probably alot to process for some people, veteran MUD player or not. I don't imagine Song or Celestine being much better as we all came to terms with what the faction commands actually did, or if they actually worked as they should. (Looking at you Call Glitch)

This is just my own observation based on my limited experience reading MUD forums over the years, but players tend to err on the familiar over the new, even if they vehemently state they want 'new', as 'new' is weird, unfamiliar and you may not be as effective as you once were because it is new territory, and that doesn't jive with the power fantasy of being in BEAST armor. Guilds for a number of players were the focus of a lot of their RP, which tended to spill out into the city they were part of but it was much easier/clearer to jumpstart that RP when it was clear what you were was based on your membership to whichever guild. So, yes. Tribalism is going to happen, it's human nature, I suppose.

It is also boring, but developing completely new ideas is extremely difficult as anyone who has experience running RP events or plots can attest to. So, there's the gravitation to a familiar framework, thus dynasties-as-guilds. The mechanical limitations imposed on dynasties right now can probably just be slotted under 'slowing you down until we get more important kinks ironed out' category for the devs. Which is fine in my opinion, since if they get too many fires to put out Tecton or someone else on the team might just spawn a supermassive blackhole in every faction's sector and start over.

Do I really wanna try and do something new with the fancy things I can do? Yes. It's part of why I've avoided joining any other dynasty, they're either trying to be a guild in a worldspace where we really don't need guilds in the way we're used to seeing them (more on that in a second) or they're just another chatbox. That's the feeling i've gotten so far.

I'm not knocking the idea of using one's dynasty as a guild, but I do want to suggest instead of making it a guild with clear lines of progression, rules, ceremonies, rituals, ranks and (space Cthulhu forbid) essays on what makes you a good [class name here], but more of a group of like minded individuals who pool their resources and try to make their fellow members the best [class name here] they can be. Not so they can rise in the guild and lord over the noobs in their ranks more like just 'I have a membership to this gym'.

Alot of the things I can come up with could easily be done with an IC-mandatory clan, so I can't really suggest dynasty ideas. But some of the things I want to do (if anyone wants to pluck an idea to explore):

Xenobiology: Studying racial traits and morphology of other races, NPC or otherwise.
Astrophysics: Science-ing the hell out of the science the devs have given us.
Culinary Science: Does it hypersquare? Should it hypersquare?
Void/Star Study: Could there be anything beyond what the devs say the kith is possible of doing?
Nanorobotics: Self explanatory I think

Psychology in Space: What are some of the mental affects of prolonged journeys in space or repeated void gate usage, if any? (space madness, exploring the psyche of those who occasionally go OOC publically)

Alot of it is theorycrafting/lore-speculation or just seeing how hilariously broken the physics are of the game. I'm not one to take everything about a game as "It Just Works", I wanna see if i can find a reason, even if it turns out to be bonkers and shouldn't work. Like for example: how does Scatterhome life support work? What powers the thrusters that give the asteroid's gravity? Could Scatterhome use those thrusters to move?

Ikchor

Committing the sin of forum thread necromancy. Don't @ me, or do. I won't read it anyway.