Uses for GOLD in Alliance.

[Richard LeMoon]

As pointed out in another thread, gold coins (War Chest) is boring, and seems pointless with the amount of points getting dumped in by deploying. So, what if we could spend those coins elsewhere?

A suggestion was to be able to spend them on going up a tech tree. I personally find this distasteful and not fitting with the game at all. There was a very good reason leveling tools was dropped like three day old roadkill.

So, what could we spend those bucks on? I have a few small ideas, and one REALLY BIG one. Let's start with the small ones.

1. One-off specials. These are like special abilities, but you can only use them one time. Then they vanish until you buy it again. So, Consumable specials. Unlike normal (heh) specials, these can be off the wall crazy.

2. Temp buffs. Ya, I said I don't want buffs on a tech tree. Well, this would be off a tech tree. Similar to consumable specials (Ultra Specials?), these would only last one match. More HP, faster fixing, etc.

3. Escorts. No, not that kind. Buy AI ships that will follow you around and shoot your pilot targets.

4. Gambling. What I win, I keep. What you win, I keep. Double those coins, or lose em all.

5. Banking. The safer way. Allows you to get more money than your War Chest holds. Save it for a rainy day.

Now for the BIG one.

The plan right now is to make Faction ships and guns unlockable through Faction progression. So, sort of a small tech tree. Not a bad idea for your Faction ship. The problem is that you need to progress through ALL of the factions far enough to get all of the ships and guns. This sets sour in the stomachs of many a diehard Faction member. How do we get around this?

We steal ships.

Yes, folks, you heard that right. You want that shiny new Crusader? You are going to have to go full Grand Theft Airship. Now, the factions are not going to sanction these actions, so you are going to have to fund the mission yourself. You take your coins and spend them to unlock a special map and mode, 'Raid'. Select the faction you want to relieve of a ship or weapon, and gather a team. 'Raid' is basically a super hard 'Infiltration' on a (hopefully) night map. Get in, wreck things without getting killed, and get to the shipyard. Then something fancy happens. Your ship explodes, and your crew is on the new ship! Too bad it has dummy guns in all its bays. Looks like you are going to run for it and hope your allies can cover your tail...

If you survive, the ship is yours from now on. Of course, that is just you. Now you have to return the favor for each of your crew members.

[Unarmed Civilian]

Why not melt it down and use it as ammunition? It's denser than lead. Or trading for dyes.

In all seriousness, the temp buffs sound the best to me. Like buffing the hull armor to give it passive regen or something.

[Solidusbucket]

I want to spend it on more moonshine.
.
.
.
And escorts.

[Schwalbe]

Yeah, let's make our own Alliance.

With moonshine. And escorts.

[Ava Gatling]

3. Escorts. No, not that kind. Buy AI ships that will follow you around and shoot your pilot targets.

I support this whole idea. Especially this. Specifically this. This.

[ShadedExalt]

I really like all of these ideas and would put my support behind any and all of them.

Yeah, let's make our own Alliance.

With moonshine. And escorts.

I cackled, salute

[The Mann]

I really like all of these ideas and would put my support behind any and all of them.

Yeah, let's make our own Alliance.

With moonshine. And escorts.

I cackled, salute

Will there be Blackjack and ... spectators...

[Hoja Lateralus]

You could spend them on one-time discounts in the store perhaps? Like 25% tops, if you really want to have some outfit you could lower its price.

Another idea would be faction collecting money for some purpose, like +1 of some resource in a province? This would require some balancing work. Or some faction-wide buffs perhaps?

[Richard LeMoon]

Investing in infrastructure in owned territories? Interesting. I know you can invest in the missions through efficiency (though I don't understand how it works). Being able to invest in other things could work. Like perhaps investing in quality of life would lower the cost of troops, or better roads would allow cheaper defense increase.

[Hoja Lateralus]

It could be interesting because it would fit into the GOIO's theme of teamwork and cooperation. You can do things on your own but you will be much more effective if you work together. And raising money for a certain goal, especially in times of war, is not uncommon among countries.

[Naoura]

Late to the party on this one, but I like the idea of infrastructure purchases. Much better than what we have now, I would say.

It'd be difficult to balance, but here's two options:

A) Ridiculous costs, requiring a good segment of the entire Faction to pour resources into the area, which would take a long, long time, but would make the area very, very valuable... and paint a huge target on the area for every faction to see. It'd have to last for a while, but it'd last long enough to make the buy worthwhile.

B) Gold increasing time and buffs for an area, so that pouring increasing amounts of gold into an area would increase it's buffs as well as the duration of those buffs. This would allow a single player to have an impact on an area if they were to grind out a good deal, but it would also mean that a faction could work together to make one area practically impregnable and very valuable, or could work together to make it's borders highly efficient and well defended.

C) Seperate buffs that you can buy at reduced prices, but at lower tiers, and with only so many you can have active at a time. For example, let's say you have three possible buffs, Cost Reduction, Resource Yield, and Defenses. When you go to a section to choose the bonus you want to spend gold on, you see which buffs are currently active, and how close another buff is to being 'bought'. You could only have 3 buffs active at a time, so you could potentially have one of each, two of one and one of the others, or else specialize an area for a very powerful buff. That would make it possible for 'infighting' amongst the factions, as competing leaders would try and make an area more efficient, make it easier to defend, or reduces the price of certain things when defending a nearby sector.

I kind of like the third option. It'd be fun to watch, and well organized factions would be able to pool their resources to stabilize their borders, or else make areas within their borders extremely valuable while they own it. I would say with the duration... maybe only until you lose the area? Since this is a war, and infrastructure would be destroyed, it would make sense, but some of the value might be recovered. Say you take an area with all three buff slots taken, a small amount of value would go to the conqueror.