Idea for a new Modpack/Ruleset to encourage cooperation

[Tankh]

What about a modpack or a ruleset together with modpack that focuses on giving players a certain role/expertise on a server. Each player would only have access to one or a few mods only, and that would be their "profession". They would have to cooperate somehow with other players to get to other tech.

For example: one guy who is specialized in project Red, and only he can access that mods stuff, so people would either have to acquire cables and wires and such from him through trading something, or maybe give him the raw materials for it and he could craft it for you.

This would encourage some sort of cooperation:

• People would build bases together and be responsible for creating/building certain parts
• People would build bases separately, but had to do some sort of trading to gain progress
• A combination of both where you have maybe 3 people building together but still need something from an other group of players.
• Trading hubs could appear where people set up their shops and supply it with goods from their factories

Some cons are:

• You'd have to play at the same time. Basically you need better organization of when to play so that you can access the mods you need.
• Some stuff might get very frustrating because you can't access something tiny from a different mod.

It wouldn't be quite as casual gaming as an average FTB Monster server, but people play games together on a more scheduled basis all the time, like raiding in WoW, doing ops in EVE or playing huge battles in ArmA 3 like ShackTac.

The modpack could be tweaked a lot. There could be a base set of mods that everyone has access to from the start so you at least could get going.
The problem of having to play together could partly be solved by some sort of trading/store mod where you can sell/trade your specialized products even when offline.

There's a lot to think about before it would work smoothly and make it fun to specialize in a mod and not just feel too restricted because you can't access anything you need, but I just came up with the general idea of it and felt it could be worth exploring.

I haven't searched too much for something like this that already exists (but it feels like someone out there must have already tried something of the sort), so if you know about anything like it, let me know.

TLDR: Modpack where people can access only one/a few mod(s) each and has to cooperate to progress, either through trading, or just working together.

Edit: I don't know if this would could as a "Mod Suggestion" since I feel it's more vague and serves a bigger purpose than that, but sorry if I didn't post it in that forum

 

[malicious_bloke]

I suppose you could try and tweak worldgen so that certain ores would be absent from certain areas.

If someone built their base somewhere with no uranium/pitchblende/yellorite, for example, they'd need to trade with/steal from someone who had a supply of it if they wanted to get into any mod with nuclear reactors.

Or restrict certus quartz ore spawns to certain zones to restrict access to AE.

That sort of thing.

Of course this can all be bypassed with a bit of exploratory cave-diving or BEES, but that's another problem entirely

 

[Tankh]

I suppose you could try and tweak worldgen so that certain ores would be absent from certain areas.

If someone built their base somewhere with no uranium/pitchblende/yellorite, for example, they'd need to trade with/steal from someone who had a supply of it if they wanted to get into any mod with nuclear reactors.

Or restrict certus quartz ore spawns to certain zones to restrict access to AE.

That sort of thing.

Yeah that would be another way to go at it. Feels like it would be harder to restrict certain resources for players though as it would involve areas in the world.
Maybe you need a profession of prospecting uranium to be able to find those deposits, and also mine them. That way you still couldn't get to the ores even if you accidently stumble across a deposit unless you consult that "expert", or maybe you can mine it, but the ore is unidentified to you until the expert can identify it for you. If it should costs anything is up to him. (Yeah sure I can take a look at it if I get 10% of it)

Of course this can all be bypassed with a bit of exploratory cave-diving or BEES, but that's another problem entirely

Yes, some mods might have to be banned entirely or tweaked a lot depending on how they work.

 

[Hambeau]

Why restrict resources? If you can make them obtainable but not craftable by certain "professions" they still have a good use as trade goods...

 

[YX33A]

Why restrict resources? If you can make them obtainable but not craftable by certain "professions" they still have a good use as trade goods...

Agreed. Even bees are something that, while insanely powerful in the right hands, maybe should only be allowed into a few select hands. Don't ban bees! They are pretty much the only way to have a decently renewable source of, well, anything/everything.

 

[Tankh]

Restricting resources wasn't part of my original idea anyway, so that would maybe be a second iteration of the modpack if that would be neccesary. Just brainstorming a little
I just like the idea of building your factory/system/whatever so you can produce a lot of something that you know others will need but can't get on their own.

Doing it that way makes bees totally legit, and you just have to find a way to refine the resources and get something useful out of it. Maybe someone has set up a factory to let you produce what you need, and only they could have set up that factory because of their profession.

 

[Hambeau]

Kind of like going to your friendly local power specialist to get the Turbine/Dynamo combo you need to generate power? Or the Metalsmith who is the only person allowed to make/use a smeltery?

I can see a whole co-op economy growing around such a concept. I just cannot think of a way to selectively load specific mods to specific players... Everyone will need all the mods loaded.

I think it will have to be done, perhaps in a similar way that HQM restricts and modifies AgSkies, perhaps even having a new player select a starting book that determines the activities allowed by their "career" selection, assuming that multiple books could be possible with HQM.

At some point perhaps the book contains all "career" possibilities with success for activities based on having a higher tier in the specific career?

Interesting possibilities to think about.

 

[KillerRamer]

Honestly, I'd start with HQM in party mode so folks are more likely to delegate tasks. And with Modjam's new mod starmall it might be more feasible to create an economy of sorts.. (but that depends what version your modpack is on) Also ATG I think it was did something with ore variation... I'm not completely sure... maybe it was highlands... It's going to be fairly difficult to really get folks to stick with the concept... Goodluck with your endeavors.

 

[Tankh]

Yeah it's hard to select how many mods each player should get, and which ones to distribute. This comes back to the organized play. You would probably need a core bunch of people who together have all the neccesary mods distributed to them at the start.
New players would be hard to integrate because all the mods needed are then probably already distributed to the players on the server. The new player would either get a mod that isn't that essential and thus it's not so fun for them to play, or he could get same mods as someone else but then effectively starting a competition between them. That doesn't have to be bad though. If one player can't play as much as the others it would make sense that a new play get the same mods as him to cover up for that.

There is some level of organizing involved in this whole thing.

It could absolutely be so that you also don't get access to all the stuff in your selected mod instantly and had to advance in tech, or that you start with only one mod and then get other mods. The core point about the modpack is that a single player should never be able to access all, or even the majority of, the mods himself.

HQM could indeed possibly be the tool needed for this to work, with different tech trees to choose from. Maybe a tech tree would be locked for everyone else as soon as someone picks it, to help with the organization of things.

(but that depends what version your modpack is on)

This "modpack" or whatever one should call it, is way above specific versions atm. It's a loosely defined idea at best

 

[KillerRamer]

Yeah it's hard to select how many mods each player should get, and which ones to distribute. This comes back to the organized play. You would probably need a core bunch of people who together have all the neccesary mods distributed to them at the start.
New players would be hard to integrate because all the mods needed are then probably already distributed to the players on the server. The new player would either get a mod that isn't that essential and thus it's not so fun for them to play, or he could get same mods as someone else but then effectively starting a competition between them. That doesn't have to be bad though. If one player can't play as much as the others it would make sense that a new play get the same mods as him to cover up for that.

There is some level of organizing involved in this whole thing.

It could absolutely be so that you also don't get access to all the stuff in your selected mod instantly and had to advance in tech, or that you start with only one mod and then get other mods. The core point about the modpack is that a single player should never be able to access all, or even the majority of, the mods himself.

HQM could indeed possibly be the tool needed for this to work, with different tech trees to choose from. Maybe a tech tree would be locked for everyone else as soon as someone picks it, to help with the organization of things.


This "modpack" or whatever one should call it, is way above specific versions atm. It's a loosely defined idea at best

I feel like restricting might be a bit much... Maybe keep yourself from writing questlines for the mods that are commonly used, and keep questlines in to cover mods that players may need more explanation for. It's an excellent mod for tutoring players in mod use when set up correctly, but it has it's limitations...

When something new holds incentive to learn such as a reward bag, a player will jump on it to learn it.

Though now that I thought about it.. What if you made several "tickets" for each questline... and you could only pick one ticket... It unlocks the first quest in all of the book, but then you use your ticket to unlock one, and you go from there... With Exact mode it's very possible to make five unique pieces of papers with specific names, that corelate to a questlines required item... Then when you click the accept, it gives you some bits and bobs to get moving on with the mod..

 

[Tankh]

I was targetting semi-experienced players with this idea, so you have a gang of maybe 10 people starting a server together, and when they all log in together the first time they each decide which profession to take, and work together from there on out.

Maybe some derivative of the idea could be targetting people who want to learn new mods through progression. It is a bit overwhelming when you search for a mod in NEI and get three pages of machines and you have no idea where to begin.

 

[AlCapella]

"My avatar is made by me, using only Paint." << Is that so? That's pretty neat!

 

[Strikingwolf]

I would love this, but know no way to implement it

 

[Tankh]

"My avatar is made by me, using only Paint." << Is that so? That's pretty neat!

Hehe indeed so. It's very visible on some parts because I was a bit sloppy, but it works excellent as a tiny avatar image

 

[Azzanine]

This is not a new idea, a server I used to play on had a system much like what you desribed. They used group permission plugins to make 3 guilds; One was a MJ focused mod I think was called Machinist or Industrialist, another was EU based mods which was Techy/ Scientist and the last was looked difficult to balance content for the mage guild, at the time they only really had thaumcraft as this was 1.4.7 and they where mostly unaware of Ars magica and Withery I don't think existed yet, Blood magic was considered too imba for the type of server they wanted to build. So to beef up the content for the mages they made them the only guild to be able to use tinkers construct and even restricted vanilla enchanting to them (you couldn't access enchanting tables unless you where a mage).

This system worked for a little while, you saw balanced 3 man teams everywhere but this came with the side effect of teams not getting any bigger then 3 as why do you need 2 mages in a team or two of anything for that matter. Also the team I had was going really strong until one of the players got sick of the game and our little town died.
So class/ guild systems can entice people to cooperate but such ideas are not without some pretty heavy drawbacks. Also it's a pain in the ass to administrate and requires a deep knowledge of cross mod interactions, you need to think about every way your restrictions could be bypassed. The admins of the server I spoke of where dealing with closing up a loop hole at least once a week also tinkering with plugins and configs.

 

[Qazplm601]

This is not an New idea

FTFY

 

[Azzanine]

FTFY

Ohh... lol, and this is a genuine FTFY and not just a sarcastic response either.
I kind of typed the opposite of what I meant...

 

[Tankh]

This is not a new idea, a server I used to play on had a system much like what you desribed.

Yeah I didn't think it was new either, I just couldn't find anything about it so I reckoned it wasn't that common at least

They used group permission plugins to make 3 guilds

any idea which plugin/mod?

This system worked for a little while, you saw balanced 3 man teams everywhere but this came with the side effect of teams not getting any bigger then 3 as why do you need 2 mages in a team or two of anything for that matter. Also the team I had was going really strong until one of the players got sick of the game and our little town died.
So class/ guild systems can entice people to cooperate but such ideas are not without some pretty heavy drawbacks. Also it's a pain in the ass to administrate and requires a deep knowledge of cross mod interactions, you need to think about every way your restrictions could be bypassed. The admins of the server I spoke of where dealing with closing up a loop hole at least once a week also tinkering with plugins and configs.

Those drawback all sound like what I expected actually, but could still be worth it while it works.
Were there any people playing solo and trading with each other anything, or was it all teams of all classes?

This idea would likely encompass more than 3 classes/professions, but that could depend on how many people that will start on the server.

 

[Azzanine]

Yeah I didn't think it was new either, I just couldn't find anything about it so I reckoned it wasn't that common at least

It's not common becasue it goes against the usual playstyle of most players. But if you find a dedicated core of say 15 players you will be able to make some fun from it. But don't expect a 50 strong server as that kind of playstyle is very niche.

any idea which plugin/mod?

I'm not sure exactly, I think it was a house modified version of a GroupManager style mod, but frankly I don't know.

Those drawback all sound like what I expected actually, but could still be worth it while it works.
Were there any people playing solo and trading with each other anything, or was it all teams of all classes?

This idea would likely encompass more than 3 classes/professions, but that could depend on how many people that will start on the server.

There weren't many playing solo becasue when they tried they raged and then never came back to the server. Then again the server also had a MyTown based tax system linked to some economy mod, so maybe they left becasue their town couldn't be sustained by themselves.
Also you may want to factor in that this server was based in NZ, and you can count the number of decent modded oceanic servers on one hand... This might skew the player numbers around a bit.

This class guild thing is a good idea but you better be willing to put in some hard yakka to actually pull this off.