FC Forums

It is pretty clear that Futurecraft will allow for players to organize themselves into factions.
I suggest in addition allowing factions to join an alliance (SDI, UGC, EC or GSI).
The current relations between the alliances would be controlled by the devs/staff and portrayed in a publically accessible and linked roleplay-blog.
If an alliance were to go to war with another alliance, it would result in all factions of either alliance automatically being set to war with any faction of the other alliance.
In order to give them benefits from joining the alliances (and therefore encouraging it), I suggest giving them access to alliance-specific signature tech. (which they have to unlock like any other tech through the tech tree for gameplay reasons, but the only other way to get them would be to capture the devices from aliance members and reverse-engineer the technology, which is much harder, especially with 'unusual' technology being additionally hard to reverse-engineer)
Signature tech would be Psionics for EC, Super-Stealth for UGC, Super-Shields for SDI and advnaced fusion/antimatter tech for GSI.
This would create a factor of specialization where players/faction owners can decide on whether they want to focus on offense, defense, stealth or unconventional technology (psionics).
Factions of the same alliance would not be able to go to war with each other and if someone is found stealing from, raiding or doing something else that would be a valid reason for war to an ally, it would be a major offence against alliance guidelines, resulting in that faction getting kicked out and set to war with the alliance for treachery.

I think players should form their own alliance/faction, as some would want to lead it themselves and be under their own banner as well.

I'm not saying it would be mandatory for a faction to join one of the alliances, but doing so would be a trade sacrificing some liberty in decision-making regarding politics/diplomacy in turn for (easier) access to advanced technology.

I didn't know we were making the Elder Scrolls Online in space.

I don't know about ESO, but if you're looking into the FC-theme-thread, appearently we are.

Seems pretty nifty, but what say prevents people from trading tech during a war? Everyone will just trade for super tech and get everything.

I personally am not in favor of making technology faction based. Or making predefined alliances whose allegiance with each other is determined by staff. Oh well...

You know, you should really keep the mod and the RP-section separate.

What happens in the RP sections stays in the RP section.

^, pretty much, what goes on there doesn't make sense plus not all factions that gonna join FC will have a faction in the RPs.

very good points there with keeping the RP in the RP-section
I guess that instead of making the alliances as choices for factions in the game, we could make those 'special techs' available through 'black market'-NPCs (or sometimes, though rare, intact salvage) only and not reproducable, disableing the reverse-engineering mechanic for them.

Or you could make such special techs be at/near the top of the tech tree and require maybe weeks to research, but shareable (I think almost all technology should both be shareable and losable). And why not let "Alliances" just be two or more player-made factions with an actual dynamic history, and not something as artificial as staff-controlled groups?

After rethinking about it, yes, alliances shouls be player-controlled groups of factions.
On the subject of special tech in the tech tree:
How about you actually need 'knowledge fragments' (something similar to those in Thaumcraft-2) in order to even unlock the tech trees.
e.g. in order to ever hope to research or reverse-engineer psionics, you first need to research 'psionic theory' which your scientists can't come up with themselves, so you need some documents, files or something similar that can only be gained through NPCs.
After your scientists basically figured out what psionics actually are in the first place, they can start reverse-engineering psionic devices in the hope to find out how to create, control and utilize psionic energy.
And THEN you can work your way up the psionic tech tree.

I'd say you can research it after the theory of, because hunting for artifacts that may not even exist in yoyr system is...

A tad unbalanced. So no reverse-engineering, or if there is, it gives no increase to research speed.

How about a 'breakthrough' system, where some technologies require a 'breakthrough' that can come at any time, with a certain chance, to any scientist you assigned to that research, and without that breakthrough that research won't progress.
I guess the first major breakthrough required might be the one for FTL-tech, and at least for special tech as well.