I have a small suggestion to make for this remarkable game. Every time a playfield becomes active through a player warping in(or any other trigger) provide a small chance for a battle to spawn. Say for example the zirax warps in with one or two cvs heading for polaris ships or structures. You as a player gets a notification. Providing you with an opportunity to prove yourself to one of the factions. Lets say for our scenario where zirax attacks the polaris in their territory. You can choose to assist the raid, defend with the polaris or just do nothing. Let's say your choice and reputation a affects your reward. Doing nothing brings no reputation gain or loss for either of the factions. But helping the zirax for example you gain additional zirax reputation. And depending where you stood with them before affects the reward. Maybe if you where unfriendly before you only gain reputation. But being honored you get a good amount of credits. So the idea behind this is more for playfields where we dont have missions. Allowing way more end game fun. When survival mode becomes empty with nothing really to do besides building. This could definitely work in multiplayer under the following 2 conditions. A playfield is not in a mission and its pvp. Just imagine the fun of joining for example the polaris and mid way through the battle another player warps in and chooses to be zirax. You will then need to face that player or warp out Maybe this is more applicable in contested orbits belonging to no faction. And can even be implemented in territories. So in conclusion the summary of the logic. Trigger(random and small chance) Choice(random faction 1 and 2 in contested. And attack defend scenario in territory) Battle(random condition and set time limit) Reward(depends on current reputation of choice) Example Small chance of trigger --> player gets notification and can make a choice --> choosing not to do anything let the 2 factions battle it out | choose a side --> temporary become friendly with chosen side and unfriendly with the other --> to battle --> if for example time limit has been reached or a different condition has been met and chosen side loses no reward and reputation gain | or lets say you meet a condition in a certain time then battle ends --> attacking faction warps out and you get reputation gain and your reward. Thats it its over and you continue your way.
I like it, "Random Encounters", and expanding this, we would have different types of encounters, these that you have described are battle encounters, but we would to have mysterious encounters too, where you have the opportunity to explore a ship derelict for example, or to help a unknown ship on reparations / cure a disease or something like that. Call it Random Encounters or Random Events... whatever... I like it. Good idea.
