Factions OXP

Factions adds a point of interest to multi-government systems:

OK, what is this OXP? Well, multigovernment systems exist in a dynamic ooniverse; things change, and the government type is merely a label, representing nothing more than a snapshot in time. In practice some multigovernments might be relatively stable, others might be spiralling towards anarchy, and yet others are shortly about to attain the nirvana^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrelative stability of outright communism, dictatorship or feudalism. This OXP scenario is just one of many possible mechanisms of making that transition.

Or . . .

Do you harbour secret annihilation fantasies, or perhaps even fancy your chances as a mercenary? Step up commander, 100CR bounty for each of these vermin, it will be well earned!

The Warring Parties

At higher techlevel systems, the only factions with the means & motivation to take on Galcop are the Communists & Dictatorships. At lower tech level systems the cost of entry (level of Galcop resistance) is lower, allowing Feudal & sometimes even local warlord militias to participate. The warring parties have already infiltrated the system and are waiting somewhere near the space lanes for all their enemies to turn up. Therefore they have more important things on their minds, and will all ignore you, unless you become an irritation or worse . . . On the other hand, there is a reasonable bounty available, so if you have previously toyed with the idea of becoming a mercenary, here's your chance. Be warned though, they are professionals and will robustly protect each other from ambitious part-timers . . .

The Galactic Navy

Obviously the Navy need to nip this kind of behaviour in the bud (they prefer these things to be done via the "official" channels), but will prioritize their efforts on defending high tech level systems so at the lower tech level systems their presence might be nominal at best. The Navy contingent, on learning about the imminent unrest, will enter at the witchpoint and make their way towards the planet (frequently hindered by pirate activity). Whether they make it in time and in sufficient numbers is down to chance (and you!).

Pirates

This is a multigovernment system, so don't think you can run & hide from pirates amongst the melee; they will still hunt you down like a dog. There is an outside chance they will attack the warring parties, but don't rely on it. They will also slow the progress of the GalCop task force, so your behaviour towards them can influence the result of the conflict.

You

Well, you can treat this as a tourist attraction or as assisted suicide, the choice is yours! Make full use of the colour-coded scanner displays and the ident/targetting info and choose your response wisely. How many factions do you want to tangle with? A friendly suggestion: zero or one . . . ?

What this OXP does, in English: The idea is to add a point of interest to Multigovernment systems, since they have been a bit neglected ;) The whole shebang unfolds in real time, creating up to 30 mins of fighting time until the eventual confrontation with GalCop, if they get that far! You have time to dip in, fly through, dock & return if you want to . . .

1 Teams from each of: anarchy, feudal, dictatorship & communist systems approach the midpoint of the space lane and start fighting, They only fight with ships of opposing factions (!). 2 Each team member can call for assistance when its energy is low, this depends on how occupied the other team members are at the time. 3 The player being may opt to express its political views by attacking ships from one or more of the factions, they will remember this for the duration of the run only. Whether you pay the ultimate price depends again on how busy the particular faction member are. 4 If you kill one of them (or their father), prepare to die! 5 There are funky colour-coded scanner displays to help you sort out who is whom. 6 That's it, I think.

Danger Level

0-{{{2}}}

This OXP does not in itself add to the danger level, that is purely up to the player. Of course, you will be in a multigovernment system so the danger level is already fairly high!

Other Uses

During play testing it also occurred to me that this code would be useful for ship combat/uberness testing too, eg. a team of stock NPC cobras vs your brand spanking new ship. There are lots of good stats available from the extensive debugging I've built in too. Anyway, here's the code, you need the systems dependencies (or you can edit shipdata.plist to taste) and CCL. I use colour coding for the scanner so I know what's going one, see script.js for colours. Logging is enabled, and script.js has some other config points to look at.

Dependencies

• Oolite 1.75 or later
• Cabal Common Library v1.2 or later (for random integer fuction)
• Anarchies, Commies, Dictators, Feudal States, Galactic Navy, and your choice of either Behemoth or ADCK's Behemoths

Copyright & License

Factions is © 2011 m4r35n357 (Ian Smith)

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Revision History

Version 1.11 (05.04.2012): Mercenary immersion enhancement: the various participants might just recognize you in future battles if you annoy them enough. Reduced the default odds of a battle to 25%, tune to taste.

Version 1.10 (29.07.2011): Even better confinement of combatants, more ship types for commies & dictators, fixed bug where player enemy status was remembered until game exit, fairer starting conditions, dictators can't race to start & ambush everyone now

Version 1.9 (22.07.2011): Better confinement of combatants, easier to use uber mode

Version 1.8 (04.07.2011): Fix obscure escort bug, remove automatic flee response, but let non-ecm ships still flee

Version 1.7 (27.06.2011): Various AI tweaks, add a GalCop task force

Version 1.6 (13.06.2011): Comms messages between faction members, plasma-equipped NPCs avoid friendly fire, number of factions dependent on tech level, others

Version 1.5 (31.05.2011): Removed unused shipdata entries

Version 1.4 (30.05.2011): Commies now have Giant Rays available, GalCop can now have a Transport or Behemoth instead of the Frigate

Version 1.3 (25.05.2011): Start factions further away from battle site to allow player more time to see the early stages

Version 1.2 (24.05.2011): Add licence to README, add danger level to README

Version 1.1 (24.05.2011): Raise faction membership to 16 (+ any escorts), make it more dangerous to kill a faction member

Version 1.0 (24.05.2011): Botched first release

Download

Version 1.11 from box.com