Hey all, I was wondering if the game could possibly support having multiple Factions in one POI. My reasoning here is it has the potential to greatly enhance POI raids. Imagine you're raiding a POI and the streams of enemies are just too much. What if you were able to hack (some sort of mini-game, specialised tool or just finding the right switch) the POI's turrets to be on your side, eliminating the enemies for you - or at least trying, enemies can shoot back after all. Even something as simple as gaining control over a Door, to keep the enemy at bay and give yourself a secure place to hide and heal up. This would be GREAT in an "infested" type scenario, where Aliens have taken over a base. Usually in such cases - Reforged Eden - the bases turrets seem to always be on the side of the invader, not the player who's come to "liberate" it. I've "simulated" this in some POI's I know well. I basically take out the Core without taking out the entire POI, this leaves many enemies still wandering around. I then place my own Core and Sentries are then allied with ME and start shooting the remaining enemies - a great help. There could be various uses for this, from changing the allegiance of Sentry Turrets, to perhaps even "reconfiguring" spawners, so allied troops arrive rather than Zerax and they then fight for you.... or at least against the current POI inhabitants. The issue here is that POI's all appear to be aligned to one Faction, simple as that. Spawners and Turrets will be aligned to the same faction. So I don't know if it's even possible to have different alignments at all, let alone dynamic ones, based on a player action. How I'd see this work - no idea if at all practical with how things are implemented currently - is that the Player might gain some sort of "hack" tool, either via lucky loot, buying from a dodgy faction or even perhaps being able to craft it, with the right materials. They could then "hack" certain terminals in a POI that control certain groups of Sentry Guns / Spawners / Doors and change their allegiance to the player, or even that of another Faction (say Polaris or even Pirates if you wanted to help them out). POI raids can be fun, but I feel there needs to be more than simply going from room to room shooting stuff. The cheesy surprise of an enemy spawning in behind you after you've cleared a room or dropping on your head (from nowhere) as you enter is a pain too. Imagine if you could genuinely secure areas in a POI by hacking, so the turrets in that area are on your side now, so the streams of enemy reinforcements are just facing a lone player any more. I suspect something like this would require quite a rework to the game mechanics. However, being able to secure a POI in stages, rather than only when the Core is replaced, would be dead cool. I can imagine that POI designers would have an absolute field day if such a thing were possible. What do people think?
Ok, so spawners (that create the NPC's) could in theory Spawn NPC's of a faction that are hostile to the Turrets in the very same POI? I wonder how that could be exploited to give some variation to a POI? I.e. the player activates a "hidden" spawner that brings in a load of Cyborgs loyal to the player. Shame we cannot influence the alignment of turrets, but something interesting might be possible with Spawners... It would be good if Eleon considered allowing something along the lines of what I suggest, as it really would change the current dynamic for POI's and lead to some interesting scenarios. It'd also be good to know what can be done within the current framework.
NPCs don't do a very good job fighting each other last I tried. Ranged enemies will occasionally shoot at other NPCs, but melee enemies will completely ignore other NPCs. Things may have improved since I last tested though.
That would likely make it even more entertaining... You're right though, the AI needs to be improved before something like that would work well in-game. Such a shame Turrets can't be taken over, as they're pretty good at shooting targets.
Now that is a game mechanic I could get behind. The ability to hack turrets. What a game changer that would be!
Indeed. As suspected, and largely confirmed by ravien_ff, unfortunately the current game mechanics can't support this. However, if the alignment of individual devices could be changed, I feel it would open up a vast number of options. Of course the balance of this would likely be something that would require some serious thought. While the idea of hacking my way through an entire POI appeals, I suspect there needs to be some effort expended here. Perhaps your basic "Hacking tool" can handle non-armoured doors (so the player can open them) and allow the player to use previously restricted devices such as O2 and Healing for example. A more advanced tool might be needed to hack your basic Sentry Turret... Perhaps a POI's level might also influence what's required to hack what. Regardless of eventual balance an gameplay implementation, having the core functionality in place so this is a possibility is key. I wonder if the devs would be receptive to this idea? I imagine it'd need a lot more traction to become a thing.
There are other games that do this and could be used as a balancing template. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind immediately but also older games like Shadowrun and to a lesser extent the Fallout games. In 2077, your ability to hack the environment and enemy cybernetic is tied both to the Cyberdeck (the hacking tool) you have equipped and your character build (skills/perks). So a character that specializes in stealth or melee but has a high end cyberdeck can still be a reasonably dangerous hacker but a character that specializes in hacking with a high end cyberdeck is like some sort of invisible, malignant god; opening doors and forcing their enemies to attack each other or causing them to spontaneously combust, all while they sit back and watch the havoc through a security cameras and giggle. The point is, its not always a bad thing to feel overpowered as long as you had to work for that power. Not that any of that really means anything right now but I can dream.
This game already does that, forgive as I cannot remember if I was in a vanilla game or Project Eden. But one of the large spacestation I went to had Polaris and Pirates inside the same base. And the outside turrets belonged to Polaris and the inside area where the Pirates where, turrets belonged to them. Totally caught me off guard, was very fun though.
iirc, with 1.10 if a turret is set to 0000 you can take control of it if you can touch it. I haven't tested it though, and should return to normal control once you stop controlling it.
Swing by Sigma Fulcrum in the 1.10 vanilla game. I just ran that last night and the armed NPCs it usually spawns are spawning as enemies that the turrets are happily mowing down. Of course, it's an Admin core POI so even though the NPCs fight back, they can't win.
That's certainly interesting, though, taking control of a turret (that's trying to shoot you) in order for your to have it shoot other enemies (which are trying to shoot you) likely wouldn't go so well lol. That said, if you could access the turret from the other side (deployable Sentry) to have it shoot stuff in the next room, that would make for an interesting tactic. That'd be interesting to see if nothing else!
