An idea on how to rework Haven raiding and Diplomacy to make it more intuitive

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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And less susceptible of being abused by the player.

What I suggest is that hostile actions by the player against a Faction should follow a “3 strikes policy”, so you get 2 warnings and then it’s war.

Right now you can balance wrongdoing against a faction by doing wrong to the other factions, abusing the system to fast forward diplo relations with all the factions and to gain massive amounts of resources.

IMO, the worst thing of the current diplo system operating on the basis of abstract rules that make no logical sense is that it prejudices the new players (who don’t expect - or I didn’t, at least - that the fastest road to being loved by all the factions is to be as much of a di** to them as possible in equal measure), or those players who don’t bother doing the meta maths.

What a reasonable person expects is that attacking a Faction, especially repeatedly, will lead to worsening relations and, pretty soon, to war.

So what I suggest is that attacking a faction once will reduce the diplo rating and provoke a response in the vein that “we hope this was a misunderstanding.” The second attack will cause a bigger penalty to diplo relations, and the response will be “this is your last warning”. A third attack will mean war.

What this means is that now as the player you have some interesting choices to make: you have 2 “free” attacks against each faction, will you use them to improve diplo relations with other Factions, raid for resources, or steal aircraft? You can’t do all without going to war.

IMO, this also corresponds much better to player expectations.

Thoughts?

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Definitely better than what currently is in the game :+1:

Some questions:
What happens if it is war with a faction? Get you also attacked by them?
And when it is war, then you can freely raid them (no further consequences, war is war)?
Will the raids then harder, maybe almost impossible?

I never was at war with any faction, so I really don’t know what happens actually, but I’m also interested in what do you think how it should be.

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AFAIK you can’t get attacked by them atmo, but it is happening eventually.

I was at war with NJ once, but that was before remote base activation, so I didn’t need resources and I didn’t do raids, except for technology and aircraft. I didn’t enjoy the experience at all tbh, particularly the raids for tech (the mission to steal the aircraft is fun though).

On my next playthrough I think I will go to war with one of the factions to see what actually happens.

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All I’ve ever seen from being at war with Anu nearly all game was having them occasionally become an enemy on scavenging sites and an ambush I think. I thought they’d attack my base and LoA sites but I was only ever attacked by Pandorans about 7 times.

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Sounds like a traditional reputation system problem. Another traditional solution is tracking positive and negative reputation sperately.

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I have this canny post on the subject:

I created this a while ago, before coming here to the forums and having played only one or two campaigns, none to completion. My suggestion was basically to raise the reputation loss significantly and also having worse consequences if doing it again or if doing it against an ally, because then it would be a treacherous attack.

However, a 2-warns system is fair game too. I’m only not sure about not being able to revert it… I guess some cases should be reversible, although with a lot of effort. Maybe after going to war there could be no alliances anymore but at least you could make peace and get to trading and recruiting again.

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And about war, I’ve also never seen what happens but I guess the player should be attacked. Not non-stop like factions do between themselves, but probably one or two attacks per month, while the haven still has aircrafts? This way the player could basically end base attacks by stealing all enemy aircraft?

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I also think that it should have massive consequences if you’re at war with one faction.

Even if they introduce some changes to get more reputation loss by raiding heavens (like @VOLAND suggested on the OP) , as long as it has no real bad consequences you can then go on raiding this faction to no end. It can’t get worse …

But I have also no idea beside that raids should be not longer that easy if you at war with them. But how this can be explained? They are highly alarmed and armed because PX is on war with them? On the other hand, are they less armed, even when they are at war with other factions? That makes no sense all in all …

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That’s the easiest part. When not at war PX can land at the Haven and go where they please, the security doesn’t expect them to suddenly shoot up the place. But once at war, as soon as they spot PX aircraft it’s alarm, battlestations, etc.

However,

TBH, I think that it’s not that important… Because my guess is most players will avoid going to war with the factions. They will do their 2 free attacks and stand down from doing the 3rd one.

(the main exception being those players who really hate all things Anu :slightly_smiling_face:)

I expect some better interactions among humans at some point further down the line (and this is pure speculation on my part, just based on my perception that these interactions have been given lower priority), but the point of my OP is that right now attacking factions works towards improving your standing with them. It’s the wrong consequence for the player’s actions - the right one should be war. That war is not really fleshed out atmo is a separate issue, imo.

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Your suggestion is definitely much better as it is now, no question. I only thought a bit further :wink:

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I wrote a lot about haven stuff in this large proposal: Feedback & propositions for managing multiple teams

Might wanna read it. Your proposition makes it slightly more intuitive but overall sadly lot of the issues remain unaddressed and gameplay-wise nothing changes for most people - you just go to war with a specific faction much quicker once you start assaulting them after getting 25 rep with each.

System as it is, pretty much results into war as you start attacking them repeatedly. I mean you might have a more robust idea with them but as you laid it out, I’m not seeing much of a difference. I.e, is the three strike system ever even reset? Because if it’s not, then it’s pretty much what you already have with quicker path to war.

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I did read it at the time, and I just reread it now.

A lot of stuff there, some I agree with, some not :slightly_smiling_face:

Some things I think can’t be done within current design parameters (for example, passive income is something that is avoided on purpose).

However, I would dispute the main premise - that raiding Havens is in fact necessary: IME it is not. I have never done it, and I have never felt the need to do it. (Same with commodity arbitrage, btw).

As I have said elsewhere, I’m not happy with current resource procurement systems, not so much because there aren’t many different ways to obtain a lot of resources, but because it’s not intuitive/fun. I would want armors to cost much less and scavenging missions to yield more resources (200 per crate instead of 100), but that’s a different issue.

I think not, but the special missions where you have to attack a faction would not count towards the three strikes; some wording would have to be inserted in the briefings explaining why there won’t be any diplo consequences (for example, the attacked faction would rather deny the attack happened, or they will not know who did it).

I don’t see how, tbh. Right now you can do sabotage missions against all factions to increase standing will all of them. The more you attack all of them, the happier they are with you. And even putting aside the nonsensical sabotage missions, you can raid them as much as you want provided you also protect their Havens and destroy Pandoran bases.

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I was afraid of this, and it makes me kind of sad. I genuinely think that the resource economy is the biggest long-term weakness of Phoenix Point right now, and if the devs are determined to keep the current model of “stuff is expensive so you have to keep doing missions until you’re rich enough to afford it” then I don’t see any way in which it can ever get solved.

Are the devs actually happy with the way the game economy works at the moment? Where the easiest way to get to a winning position is by generating huge amounts of resources by repeating the same task over and over?

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Yeah, I know what you mean…

Tbh, I’m not sure where the devs are on this. If I had to guess, I would say they will make adjustments here and there (for example, the low penalties for raiding are definitely on their radar, they acknowledged as much on Canny), see what happens, etc.

It’s also tied to the pace on the Geoscape (the war against the Pandorans shouldn’t be over in 6 weeks - 2 months), and that is definitely getting a pass.

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You can do sabotage missions with all of them but the local havens on the other hand will get pissed and if you go down this path, eventually your capacity to interact with factions (trade food / get rookies) is going to be limited by defense missions you get for specific havens. Honestly, you’re right in the sense that you’re not going to be really bound by local haven rep until it matters, but also… there ain’t really much of a downside in going to a war with a specific faction because then you can spam steal tech missions and get SP by completing it in one or two turns or alternatively by evacing.

Well, to be honest, there is a slight benefit to getting allied with each one as I believe there’s couple specific techs only obtainable by being allied (like +2 STR for everyone with NJ), but that’s about it.

On the other hand, if the issue is that you can stay good friends with all of them while raiding them all over the place, I think that’s a whole other issue that they should rework entirely personally. Even if you go to war with a faction, it’s a silly design that only purpose of that faction is for you to siphon off resources and you only defend them for this purpose. That essentially means that, in some ways, your game design is a huge mess.

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Not for very long, it goes up again after a while even without any defense. It seems to me that any reputation in heavens is tending to roughly half the reputation of its faction (I think it is more, but I don’t know how much exactly, maybe 2/3). If you do a heaven defense, it’s reputation gets a bigger boost than the faction’s, but after a while it goes down again. The same goes for sabotage or raids. After a while, everything will be fine as long as the faction’s reputation is high enough.

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If the pp game was a history book, we would see px as great as…le. You are about ten men group who kills people for their resources or techs. You sabotage them with endangering thousand of life’s, for some gains. You are just mercenaries which is doing anything to get what you or others want.

Then you kill the virus but sacrifing tons of life’s and you became absolute leader of the few people left.

Saviour of the earth? Maybe the old px project but not the new ones for sure…

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I have to correct this.
Actually I explicitly take a look on heaven reputation in my campaign and in fact, they tend to go to the same reputation value as the faction has.
But it takes some time, I have all three factions on 100% and many heavens from NJ and Synedrion also, these two factions I had as first on 100%. Anu heavens have something in between 92-98%, I hit their faction’s 100% maybe 1-2 weeks ago (ingame time of course :wink: )*. I think the increase/decrease of heaven’s reputation values is probably slowing down when they come close to the faction’s reputation value.

That said, the whole reputation system is mostly a free card to sabotage every one against each other and then simply wait on single heavens to get their heaven reputation up again. But because there are enough heavens out, you can mostly do this endless over and over again against different heavens.
Edit: … WITHOUT ANY LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES!
(sorry for capslock, but, well, I’m not really amused to this mechanic).

Edit*:
I’m in mid February and only did 5 sabotage missions in the first two weeks in the game, 2 each for NJ and Synedrion and 1 for Anu and no other raids or stealing aircraft or research. The heavens I’ve sabotaged have actually not really much lower reputation than the other ones, maybe 1-2%, but definitely not that much of a difference.

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I am a bit bias, I don’t like/do raid missions, just dashing and using stealth, reaching specific tiles in a few turns, and suddenly all frozen, you win, it is a bit silly

But I envision aggressions as act of war, two warnings is too much,
one warning and massive lost of reputation -20 is my suggestion,
and if you attack an ally to raid/sabottage/steal aircrafts that means war.

About diplomacy, I have REP 100 with all factions easily because destroying lairs(+10) and citadels(+15) provides too much REP points, well, I could avoid diplomatic missions, stopping it, I will try next time. But it would be ideal if you have to choose only one faction for alliance, blocking the others.

Attitude in havens right now is irrelevant, they don’t have own mind, if they are pissed off, very, they should attack PX bases, or if they are very grateful due to repairs, PX choices in POIs or multiple haven defence they should offer armor/weapons, and very advantageous trades

I don’t understand why you have to lose REP with other factions(hostile or at war) if you defend another faction, and factions total war in March is a pain, but I suppose is the way to accelerate HPC going down and putting pressure in PX.

And new Ancient sites should be tradable, factions need power to fight Pandorans (and other factions) so you can trade those under PX control, you get resources and they get new tech, making them stronger.

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At least it should be blocked between factions that are on war. Then you have to chose one side and not have an alliance with both or even all.
And if you’re allied with one faction before it comes to war with another than you should also automatically have war with them or you have to leave the alliance to stay more or less neutral.

Supportive and maybe also aligned should probably have no consequences when it comes to war between factions, but when you’re allied with one then definitely in my opinion.

To the rest of your suggestions: :+1: