Just expanding on a post I made in Biggee's Emp topic here.
Interested to see what people think of this idea.

Just a note, the purpose of this is to modify/expand/develop the existing races/factions/religions in game to create non-personal excuses for pvp conflict.

It's not a fancy new overhaul, just an idea that can be tweaked to work with the current system - giving centralised orders to target other players in low-risk/high-reward pvp situations.


RELIGION/FACTIONS

Develop three main pillars:

Ur'Qa – primary bonuses to offense
Paxian – balanced bonuses
adum – primary bonuses to defense

NOTE: I know the Ur'Qa and Paxian are races, I have used the names for reference.

NOTE: I use the term "religion" as everyone can associate with this word and it's meaning. The actual wording could be "sect" or "faction", just before people blast the naming. I am not religious, but I do not wish to offend anyone with this.

The basis of this idea is that (as human history has proven) religion causes conflict, virtual conflict is exciting, and we all like to be excited.

Choosing a religion should be carefully considered, as the proposal would offer noticable bonuses if you are committed to the cause. Upon entering a religion (maybe through a series of tests, or just a induction ritual) you receive 0% bonus. Over time, this builds up – reaching a maximum bonus after 6 months in the religion.

Within the religion, there can be three choices of path, with different names and specifics for each religion, but loosely based on the these three words:

“Scholar” - focus on learning the religion
“Priest” - focus on spreading the religion
“Warrior” - focus on defending the religion

Exactly what “learning” the religion means is open for discussion, but I would suggest it is something along the lines of uncovering ancient BPs, items, etc.
“Spreading” the religion refers to building of artifacts, converting colonies and boosting.
“Defending” refers to combat, getting more power to attack/defend. (Maybe a +% bonus to attack an opposition religion if “holy war” is declared)

Within a religion, you can advance based on your achievements within that religion and what you bring to the religion. For example, Scholars could advance through bringing rival Bps/items; Priests could advance through converting colonies, successful construction of artifacts; Warriors could advance through destroying opposing artifacts/players/AI etc.

Players can advance as high as “second-in-command”, i.e. enforcing orders from the “highest power”. (High Priest of adum, Grand Warlord of Ur'Qa, Wisest Scholar of Paxian)
At this level, the “higher power” will pump out orders, and expect you to do the bidding. Oh, you have to attack Ur'Qa artifacts in superior SP-owned space? Plead with adum, offer items/etc to have the order renounced, or face demotion/excommunication/etc. Or carrying out the orders, and receive a treasure trove of unique items/gear/ships to help you continue the path to enlighten others.

Colonies play a big part, and converting colonies to your religion is beneficial, while an “adum” aligned owner colonising a Ur'Qa colony, but making no effort to convert, could find the base stormed and captured by the rebellious colony – forcing the owners to fight for it back before Ur'Qa warriors arrive to claim the rest of the galaxy.

Expect fierce combat over colonies, as the religions fight to regain their people. An interesting bonus could be a “higher power” calling for a certain planet to be recovered. “High Priest, we must reclaim the Planet [x] in Galaxy [y]. There is a hidden relic of unknown power, claim the planet and the weapon/item/etc is yours. Conquest of the planet reveals a ridic overpowered weapon/item/shield etc.

At the same time, the religion controlling the planet would demand you defend it from adum attack. “Grand Warlord, Planet [x] in Galaxy [y] must be defended at all costs. We cannot allow the adumites to reclaim the techonolgy, hold it for one week. That is sufficient time for or scientists to destroy the technology.”

I've rolled this out as a way to increase conflict in the game, a way to generate more unique items and a refresher to current gameplay.

At the moment, attacks are taken personally. With the "higher power" ordering attacks - blame is shifted, and with the targeted religion offering bonuses for successful defense, there is much incentive to engage in the conflict.

Players that dislike pvp conflict, can easily focus on the non-combat specific paths - converting colonies, building artifacts, supporting the warriors etc.

I would intend this to slot in as part of the game, not to take over as the dominant reason to play the game.

tl;dr
I would highly recommend you take the time to read this, but here are a few key points:

- Three religion choices, offering varying bonuses
- Freedom to change religion, but longer in a religion = more bonus.
- Incentive for pvp conflict and "excuses" for pvp conflict.
- New items introduced to the game, unique items as religious rewards
- More competition over galaxies and colonies


These are just a few ideas I thought I'd put out there, any expansion on these anyone?

Why is there no Ivism?

Even if you did not mean for this, adum shall kill you in your sleep.

~Jasonr

Time warp, you disappoint. Think on what you have said. Paxians and Ur'Qa are races, not religions. By saying adum is stupid, you put down the one thing in all of SS that can actually be considered a religion.


Anyway, why make a new system when we already have Volcom/earthforce? Just expand on the factions we already have and then make new ones. (Like the Way of adum.) Races even work as factions and have pre-existing backstory. Where as with your idea, someone (maybe churchill) would have to come up with a buttload of backstory for each one.

Sounds like you bothered to read the notes unlike our arrogant aussie Time Warp.

The point is not to make them "religions", I just used this as an example of what I meant (a cause you have reason to passionately unite for). Building on the current factions would be a good idea.

Second point is that:


It's not about RACES, I expained I used the races as we could identify with them (Ur'Qa aggressive themed, Paxian not so much) it's more about creating factions.

I guess I need to make the point clearer - it's not about creating new races/religions; it's about creating non-personal reasons to have PvP conflict.

IMO it would be fun to build low-cost artifacts and then defend/destroy them. There is no risk of "losing everything" in BvB, and there is an excuse to PvP! The focus is on the fun of combat/strategy NOT the stress of risk.

1) I did use existing races....*looks at Paxian and Ur'Qa* and I added adum as a third to kind of round it off. It's more a discussion piece than a polished idea.

2) I only thought this could be useful as many people, including yourself, had complained about a boring lack of pvp. I'm trying to get a discussion going on ways to make fighting each other for a specific (and frequent) purpose. It's essentially an excuse to fight each other and get new items (very basic view of the idea). Any thoughts on that?

EDIT: And your hatred of adum is the perfect platform. Now you have an excuse to kill all the followers of adum!

Your idea is great, so people should attack it with criticism, not with that BS(battleshit) i've seen so far. Btw, i find it non-carebear, choosing a religion is voluntary, those who ain't religious ain't targeted, thus, non-carebear and also doesnt mass murder noobs.

Make it possible to affect what your god(faction) thinks. I know of a game where faction relations are determined purely by money, you can invest money to turn the relations towards war or peace. Also a nice moneysink for endgame.

I like this idea a lot, however there are still a lot of problems that need to be solved:

• Incentive:
  Why would you want to voluntarily enter a conflict? (Stat-)Bonuses are nice, but it's hard to outweigh the risks you are taking. Items bound to a specific Faction(/Religion) would be a possibility, but they would need to be very good and/or easy to get once you are in a Faction. A balancing nightmare.
  A possible solution would be to force everyone to choose a faction*, BUT:
• Seperation:
  Can followers of different factions be on the same team? Can they be in the same squad? The ideal situation would be complete seperation. No possible interaction apart from shooting eachother* would mean that doing pvp has almost no negative repercussions, which in this case would be a good thing. In my opinion, PvP will only work properly if killing and being killed is the norm, not the exception.
• Balance:
  My biggest concern. Every faction has to be absolutely equal, but entirely different at the same time. The whole system would not work properly if the majority of the playerbase joins the same faction. If that's the case, joining any other faction other than the biggest one would mean that you have a lot of enemies. Which is not actually the problem, hostile universe and all. The problem is that if you join the big faction, you have a lot of friends, which means the bigger the faction, the higher the incentive to join it.

All in all, I'm very much in favor of a system similar to the one you suggested, but hitting the right equilibrium in an enviroment that is already very established is incredibly hard. Additionally, I don't think SS has the critical mass of people required for a system like this to work yet. And don't forget that SS is SS because of its playerbase. (More or less) Forced seperation is a good way to promote pvp, but at the game's current state, it would hurt more than it would help

* (Ex-)WoW Players will have noticed that WoW pretty much does it the way I described. I like the system WoW uses a lot.