An excellent set of suggestions, whether they agree with the developers' vision of the final release or not, I'd say.
A few thoughts of a very inexperienced player:
1&3, combined:
I think there is an easily controllable solution for ensuring limited influx of new high quality items into the game, consisting of two parts:
1a) add very rare components to their crafting requirements that can only be obtained in extremely, extremely limited amounts through trade with merchants (and I do mean really, really rare to find), and create "town-control" locations that provide, again, very limited amount of such a resource during control period.
Take for instance the Refined Uranium Ore that currently can be obtained through a transaction with an NPC. Instead, make the refinery a controlable territory, requiring a week of continuous control before production begins. Instead of immediate "transaction," limit the amount of ore that can be refined and add a delay to its production, therefore forcing the controlling faction to invest in protection of the territory (see below).
For Small Energy Cell, require the control of a "power station" that contains a special "workbench" that allows creation of the item (since the item is really an oversized battery, the energy stored has to come from somewhere). Same idea with the delay and control requirement.
For military-grade weapons using regular ammunition, and all "advanced" energy weapons, add another tier of required production component, such as "military-grade alloys," and "military-grade circuitry" (feel free to come up with better names
). As above, they would chiefly come, in limited amounts, from distinct controlled areas. These areas should also contain special workbenches for production of the weapons and their repair (see 1b)
1b) The second step, as important - make the special components a requirement of successful repair attempt for any military-grade or advanced weapons. In fact, the repairs should only be performed at the special workbenches in controllable locations. I am not yet familiar with how equipment of slaves, mercenaries, and hired guards is handled, but I think it would help if they also had to abide by the same conditions. A coding solution would be to have a flag to indicate if an NPC should require player-like handling of weapon degradation and repairs (slaves, mercs, hired guards), or not (NPC-controlled towns' guards and the like).
Combined, these two requirements would allow the developers to have input into the abundance of such high-tier items in the gameworld (who says, for instance, that the Refinery cannot be damaged during an attack and knocked out of production cycle for some time? Maybe even require special resources to be fixed). I realize there is a danger of a single faction dominating all the control-locations, but the spread of the requirements into a number of locations make prolonged attacks on such superiority possible. Also, the NPC merchants would still occasionally carry such high-prized items, so that with long-term planning and saving advanced weapons for the right moment others would have a chance to disrupt such dominance. With the current system, because except for the Uranium Ore crafting components are relatively easily procured, similarly domineering faction can still have superiority in armament in comparison to another with fewer members (or so it appears from posts of people who have greater experience with the game than I). It would quite likely require a number of false starts before becoming balanced, but I think it is a better solution than status quo.
I think that the resulting necessity of saving up the best items for just the right occasion is an inherent part of Fallout universe, that unfortunately was not as clearly presented even in the original. It seemed to be implied through the game, but all who played likely remember just how abundant ammunition for everything became toward the end - on the other hand, this time you are
not the Chosen One (I am. No, really).
2.There should be some kind of penalty for unwarranted aggression, banditry and theft.
I think this is the
biggest issue with how the game plays right now. Please understand that I am not advocating removal or limiting of PvP and stealing; however, I feel, and a number of people do as well judging from the forums, that the lack of repercussions for such hostile acts,
particularly taking under consideration the settings, is an issue.
A possible change to the current system would be making reputation gains relative to current standing (if that is not already implemented), to impart additional difficulty in making large reputation swings in relatively short period of time. In particular, reputation gains from killing opposing-faction "critters" could be weighted against current standing with whomever the resulting gain is coming from - a person with -100 standing would receive greater reputation improvement than a person with standing -200, and somebody with rating of, say, -500 should have very, very hard time to bring it to neutral (small communities make for long, long memories).
Also, each community would be considered to exert area of control on the travel map (say, one or two squares away from the settlement and any associated locations, such as mines),
as well as any area that is part of regular trade routes with other settlements (likely the shortest straight line to another settlement).
Any hostile action on another player (thievery or outright assault)
could result in additional reputation drop, as calculated through random chance modifiers - just because you do not see anybody else around does not mean a scout or patrol is not within binocular range. Perhaps the chance could be diminishing with the distance from a settlement or the trade routes.
This would add another degree of consideration when meeting other players aside from "how much worth is he carrying in gear." It could also be used to simulate the differences between various NPC factions - while NCR patrol would likely see gunfights within the territory they consider as theirs unwanted, New Reno goons might simply ignore the occurrence altogether. It would further segregate various areas of the game world, making at least parts safer particularly for low level characters - all without actually removing the ability to engage in such activities if that is a player's decision.
This also ties in, although in somewhat of a negative-reinforcement ways, with no. 4 of the original suggestion.
4B (since I really do not have much to add to the other points, and I think with the above changes the players' behavior in general would shift as well... hopefully
)
B. NPC-set bounty-hunter quests
Unfortunately, bounty-system is abusable. I have a bounty on me, my friend kills me and we share the reward. Cool ! =p
Not sure how much of the following is code-able, but here's my take on an automated bounty system: create the list of bounties based on reputation standing. If my suggestion in terms of "protection" of other players within settlement's area of control is implemented, notorious hostiles would end up on the list. Admittedly, as anything, the mechanics are abuse-able, but some tweaking with reputation standing and its effect on reputation gains and access to particular territory might at least limit the amount of robbery-based homicides
Also, make the bounties reliant on caps input from
players, where a person covering full amount of a bounty has an opportunity to select a particular one to be fulfilled for their caps. Also add the ability of players' paying in enough caps to indicate somebody not on the list - this likely needs work on figuring out reputation-checks and such to prevent people from abusing the bounty system in creating ones "just because."
I would further suggest that the bounty amount rely on both the "perceived" difficulty (largely level-based increase) and "notoriety." If their availability is dependent on players' paying in first, at least the abuse for monetary gain would be limited (most people likely would put together a set amount to indicate a particular name rather than pay in for random hits).
If there is no reputation gain from fulfilling a bounty (and, frankly, bounty hunters never had too good of a reputation, at least historically), the money is not automatically generated, and in all likelihood comes from people with actual beef against a particular person - I cannot think of a way to abuse such a system. Although I would be hardly surprised if it existed and be immediately put to use
5. See 1. Plenty of reasons for faction warfare
5A. Instead of bases, make the "control locations" required for production upgradeable, with
immense investment resulting in additional turrets, "minefields" around the location, etc. Also, require weekly "maintenance" in both caps and resources to retain such high level of defensibility - if balanced properly, it would produce a steady drain of resources needing to be constantly replenished, and would further make the control of ALL production locations less likely. If even an uncoordinated attacks from random hostile factions increase the drain on resources stockpiled, at some point, especially when spread among several locations, such constant assaults should exhaust even the most prepared faction - it is a matter of (admittedly, difficult to achieve) balance.
5B. Neh. Though I think that each faction should also have its own reputation table (extremely difficult to improve) that would modify each member's own reputation. Again, a matter of trial and error to make it work well.
5C. With the resource drain from 5A in mind, it might be beneficial for a faction to set up trading posts just outside of the controlled locations to promote influx of needed materials. And, who knows, maybe some factions would also release miniscule amounts of the special resources (or products based on them) to secure loyalty of non-affiliated individuals? (All right, all right, but it's a beautiful dream
)
If the "production facilities" are in hostile enough locations, they would not be an immediate consideration for most players, thus not overly impacting NPC town visitors count
5E. For mines with High Quality resources, it is an interesting idea. Whether the controlling faction gets a percentage in payment directly out of players wishing to utilize the location, or automatically generated set amount (possibly dependent on number of visitors?), it would add another strategic level to faction warfare. Although this would need careful tinkering to prevent avoiding automatic fulfillment of the maintenance factor for production locations mentioned above.
F. That opens up SO many possibilities, it's difficult to be against if it can be easily attained without undue wasting of the developers' time.
Wheew. I wrote my piece. And if anybody actually reads it all, they
definitely deserve a special in-game title
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