Cultures and styles of the Middle States

Hey Team,

Adjusting the code to reflect better the culture and style of the different groups in the middle states is a long term goal.

Culture is a very fuzzy concept, and it is best if we pinned down how to approach this issue early.

The main methods of making area seem different is through the type of ships that make up the traffic, and the kinds of text messages the ships use to communicate.

As an example, a if you go to hire a wingman patcom in the Leung empire, they would be flying a different ship than one for hire in the CMC or one for hire in the Sultanate.

And if a ship is attacked, it might give a different cry for help in the Leung empire than in the Sultanate.

If every faction had a unique cry for help, this would require 53 help crys, which seems like too many. If we wanted some variety, then it would be 53 * 3 different crys = 150 crys for help. Add in other messages and we have thousands of unique items. This would be way too much work.

Instead, what I would like to do is use a concept we had worked out long ago for ships. It is called a Fleet Style. A fleet style is basically a summery of a region. Everyone with the same fleet style would use the same ships, and the same speech.

Here are the fleet styles that I would like to see in game (and why). This list is open to discussion. Our goal is to settle on the very smallest list, that gives the greatest feeling of difference to the player.

Leung Empire (fleet style=leung). The empire covers the whole of the south. Much of the middle states purchases ships from Leung. And Emerald used to be part of the Leung Empire and still uses these ships.

Sultanate (fleet style=sultan). The other Empire to the north. Another source of ships for the cluster. Also includes the Caliphate and many mega corporations.

CMC (fleet style=cmc). The CMC used to own most of the center of the middle states. The ship yards that survived the war still churn out a large number of CMC ships. This fleet style basically represents the wealthy survivors of the war. Many mega corporations use these ships and hire people with these kinds of speech patterns.

The Barrens (fleet style=barrens). This fleet style represents the less lucky surviors of the war. They have rag tag patched together equipment and less educated speech. Many of the independents, aikenites, and pirates use this fleet style.

The Brethren (fleet style=brethren) The brethren are so unique, that it would not make sense for them to borrow anothers style.

The Machines (fleet style=machine). The defense machines of epitaph. Another group with very different ships and speech patterns than all other factions in the middle states.

If you think this list should be different, please post.

The code does not yet make use of these values, but it soon will. You can see which faction has which style in the MS_Mod_Main/faction_info.ini file.

This file is worth reading. It basically shows how the game understands each faction, which is often different than the background document. In the written world, a faction can be many fuzzy things. In the computer world, the fuzzyness must be replaced with crystal clear divisions.

I think this is a step in the right direction. I'll look over the info file carefully. In order to create a sense of regional uniqueness, you either have to go the clunky brute force route with thousands of different messages, or a shared ones used or mixed in different ways. The ship-type groups you have are good. Most players and those they encounter at first would be Barrens-related, so it would start out feeling pretty EoC-esque, but then they'd do some travelling, and get blown away by new ship types and skins. The only suggestions I have are as follows: Recall that the CMC is the remnants of an industrial power, and doesn't represent "wealth" do much as it does mining staying power. The Corliss Conglomerate would probably get lumped in with the CMC in the model you're proposed, but it is more commerce and free trade, and might need something different to give it that feel (consider giving them their own fleet style). Finally I would also consider giving the Takanan Raiders their own fleet style too. They are a former proud naval fleet, reduced to running and hiding and, in alot of cases, pirating for resupply. This is only worth considering if you feel that this color-element of the middle states is worth portraying with this much detail (I'm trying to think in terms of future traffic cripts here).

I have done a good chunk of work on textures for Fleet Styles already. The styles I have mostly completed and or made templates for are the Emerald Alliance Navy, the Sultanate Navy, The Leung Navy, the CMC, and the Corliss Conglomerate. Of course, I could make more styles, but for the time being these are the ones I have worked on.
However, I see that there is a disconnect between the fleet styles in terms of ships and speech patterns. Since most ships (for now) are based off of the same corporate designs, I don't think there would be any great difference in the appearence of ordinary (non-navy or major corporate) ships across the cluster. Dreadnaught Corvettes would be Dreadnaught Corvettes whether in the Dead Reaches or the Sultanate. If in private/minor faction hands. I would only expect there to be significant differences in 'paint' schemes between the major factions.
That being said, I think there would be major differences in speech patterns in minor or ordinary factions between the various regions of the Cluster. The peoples of the Dead Reaches would be much rougher and 'low' than the more cultured, and wealthy inhabitants of the Sultanate.

So, how could such differences be worked out in coding, or in our approach to creating fleet styles?

For our paint jobs, we could make an ini file for each scheme:

corp_cruiser.ini
corp_cruiser_cmc.ini
corp_cruiser_emerald.ini
corp_cruiser_leung.ini
corp_cruiser_brethren.ini

Ok, maybe not the Brethren with a cruiser, but you get the idea. And the default for the “generic� paint. (We could also use this opportunity to give some factions slightly faster/more powerful ships.) Then we use some code like this:

Basically, it checks to see if there’s an ini file with the style name appended, and if not there, uses the default style. So we only have to make ini files for our custom jobs, and not seven per ship.

Yes, once we separate speech and fleets, we have more flexibility in fleets. And if we use mdvalleys defaults approach, then each faction could have a unique fleet, but most factions would just use the default fleet.

We could still use a default based on fleet style. So each Leung Empire ship using faction could have a unique fleet, but most will use the default Leung Empire style of ships. The nice thing about the defaults approach is that we can grow the unique fleets slowly. At first, the cluster can use all the same 10 rebalanced ships (or some small number).

As we get more time, the INI file can be filled in slowly, adding more as custom ships are modeled and reskinning jobs are done on older models.

I like this approach a lot. I will work this into the ship selection code for US that I need for doing the simple cargo replacement traffic scripts. (Joco has been working these kinds of issues, and I need to revisit his work to see exactly how he structured it. It might do all this already.) Ok, assume we have a code method.

One thing that is helpful to know, is that the ships are not selected based on specific type. For instance, when an escort ship is needed for a freighter, the script asks for a “light combat ship�. Some factions return a Tug for this ship. Some return a Patcom. Some return a Corvette (the Navy tends toward overkill).

Our factions fleets don’t just have to differ on paint job. They can be very different in models. And I think they should be. I think that the barrens factions should be using converted miners and tugs and freighters as their combat ships. I think the Sultan should be using the newest patcoms and corvettes, while the Leung Empire should be using older dreadnaught corvettes. I am not heavily invested in how this turns out. If the team would rather all the ships be the same, or just differ by texture, that’s fine. This is an opinion, and it would be great to hear others views.

I think we should figure out what our approach should be and make up a plan to implement it. We do know that to make the US release we need a very small number of ships with rebalanced weapons, armor, and hitpoints to use in the new traffic scripts. And to give player owned freighters a fighting chance of survival.

Hot4Darmat once wrote a fleet styles guide. That guide suggested differing types of ships for different factions. I will try to find that and make sure it gets posted up to the Torn Stars web site.

If you can't find it, let me know, and I'll start rummaging around my HD for it.