Post by wali on Oct 20, 2019 23:31:07 GMT -5
For me, personally, ST: Frontiers has been a step up from the original in just about every way. One limitation that has been bugging me, however, is that it is no longer feasible to try and side with Independents.
That's largely down to 3 factors:
- no access to medical facilities [healing] at Independent outposts
- no way to hire or replace key crew members that require access to certain Contact types
- no access to advanced ship modules
My suggestion would be to alter existing code from the Coalition arc to allow players to do the following:
Complete missions for the Hunna Collective which result in additional Contacts being placed on Independent worlds. This would result in a major standing loss with the system's ruling faction.
As Independent settlements, by and large, are going to yield low quality recruits, I would suggest to convert the usual Faction standing bonus from "training" [level bonus] to "potential" [stat bonus].
Replacing dead crewmen is still going to be substantially harder for an Independent Captain, as he has to first run missions to place a suitable Contact and then level up the new recruit from scratch (as compared to: just do whatever, and let "Listening Post" sort it out).
Lore wise, it makes perfect sense that Independents lack the education and training offered by academies, but they're survivors under the worst of circumstances. There should be crewmen among them who reflect that in their stats, and a bonus offered by Hunna Contacts would do just that. (i.e. bring recruits from independent worlds in line with those from more suitable planets.)
Additional code would be required for the following:
The Hunna version of "Black Market access". Hunna contacts should be able to offer access to medical facilities and high quality starports via the card game.
- at the lowest access level, you are permitted to use the Hunna underground network's medical facilities
- the next access level also grants basic starport functionality
- second highest level is full starport functionality (starport/military 10)
- the highest access level grants access to the local faction's restricted military equipment, stolen and re-purposed by Hunna agents
This would add another dimension to the Smuggler profession, and allow independent Captains to actually outfit their ship - with a bit of luck.
Personal note: I wouldn't mind if the standing loss involved in all of this was so severe that I could only land on Indi worlds anymore. In fact, that'd be my desired outcome, pretty much. Just.. let me be a proper Hunna / Pirate.. and not some whimpy privateer. >.>
That's largely down to 3 factors:
- no access to medical facilities [healing] at Independent outposts
- no way to hire or replace key crew members that require access to certain Contact types
- no access to advanced ship modules
My suggestion would be to alter existing code from the Coalition arc to allow players to do the following:
Complete missions for the Hunna Collective which result in additional Contacts being placed on Independent worlds. This would result in a major standing loss with the system's ruling faction.
As Independent settlements, by and large, are going to yield low quality recruits, I would suggest to convert the usual Faction standing bonus from "training" [level bonus] to "potential" [stat bonus].
Replacing dead crewmen is still going to be substantially harder for an Independent Captain, as he has to first run missions to place a suitable Contact and then level up the new recruit from scratch (as compared to: just do whatever, and let "Listening Post" sort it out).
Lore wise, it makes perfect sense that Independents lack the education and training offered by academies, but they're survivors under the worst of circumstances. There should be crewmen among them who reflect that in their stats, and a bonus offered by Hunna Contacts would do just that. (i.e. bring recruits from independent worlds in line with those from more suitable planets.)
Additional code would be required for the following:
The Hunna version of "Black Market access". Hunna contacts should be able to offer access to medical facilities and high quality starports via the card game.
- at the lowest access level, you are permitted to use the Hunna underground network's medical facilities
- the next access level also grants basic starport functionality
- second highest level is full starport functionality (starport/military 10)
- the highest access level grants access to the local faction's restricted military equipment, stolen and re-purposed by Hunna agents
This would add another dimension to the Smuggler profession, and allow independent Captains to actually outfit their ship - with a bit of luck.
Personal note: I wouldn't mind if the standing loss involved in all of this was so severe that I could only land on Indi worlds anymore. In fact, that'd be my desired outcome, pretty much. Just.. let me be a proper Hunna / Pirate.. and not some whimpy privateer. >.>
