Dynasties! HUH! What are they good for?!

Rylek

Absolutely everything, if we give them the chance!

Dynasties are both promising, and in their current state, depressing. Here are some suggestions, requests, thoughts, hopes, and dreams relating to the good old fashioned future of the Dynasty.

-Currently, Dynasties have very little in the way of proper channels to spend marks. In fact, the Dynasty account holds very little purpose, the Dynasty leader could take donations and dole them out just as easily. Easier in fact, as they'd have no daily limit to withdraws. How can we address this? Tons of ways! Yay!
--Dynasty Ships. Let us build and maintain group ships. This can be done by allowing a Dynasty to 'lease' a ship to a member. Thus allowing us to reclaim the ship should said member disappear into cyro. This lets you maintain the 'one ship, one pilot' setup you have. Or, we could start moving beyond that really stupid setup, and allow members of a rank imbued with a certain power, the right to pilot Dynasty ships. Maybe limit it to Destroyer or lower, although I don't see why that's necessary.
--Dynasty STATIONS. OMG PLS. Let us build stations. Have it be a right tied to larger groups. Limit one station per sector, with an active upkeep or else the station collapses and someone else can build there. Don't allow PVP to ruin these, this is the non-pvp side of building a community. (Think guildhalls. You can invade 'em, but not destroy/capture 'em). Let us spend vast swaths of Marks to improve our stations. Let us add shops, chop shops, manufacturing stations, and so on and so on. Have it cost marks AND materials to expand and build. Could even copy the ship build system, and just have station rooms to use.

-Let the Dynasty have Storage for commodities. Let them put up work orders that pay from the coffers. Let them sell materials from storage. 
-Dynasty ranking! Install Dynasty ranks separate from positions. Let us promote/demote people to and from these ranks. This gives a better incentive to set up and keep people engaged with that sort of RP
-Dynasty Credits! Let us unlock getting a cut of membership sales similar to factions. It can be less, that doesn't matter. Just put it into a Dynasty coffer, giving us an even better incentive tool.
-Titling! Let us give and remove prefixes and suffixes at whatever milestone.
-Alliances! Let us set allegiance to factions. Let us build alliances between Dynasties. This doesn't have to be more than a line added into the INFO display.
-Logos! It could be a part of the Station chop shop actually, but if not, let us submit a log that any member can use at any chop shop for ships.
-Ship prefix options! Let us set a ship prefix that can be turned on/off by the shipowner. Possibly force apply it to any Dynasty owned ship (out on lease).
 

Yes, I do realize right now that you can wing it and manage several of these things. No, I don't see that as an excuse we shouldn't make it easier and better supported to do them. Right now, it seems like we have a real serious issue retaining new players. I, personally, feel like a big part of that is that we only have three real 'groups' and no supported sub-groups within that. Yes, you can join a Dynasty currently, but what does that MEAN? You can RP as much as you like, but it doesn't give people achievable goals with tangible returns. There's a reason guilds/houses in other IRE games are so important. They're smaller hubs of fairly intense RP when done correctly, and they have the tools to create and support that RP. I'd like to see that expanded to Starmourn, with a more player-driven and flexible approach to the mechanics behind it.

But it's possible that's just my singular opinion!

Slander

Unless it was changed at some point without me noticing there is a 100k withdrawal limit. Dynasty ships are something I've wanted forever. D'Erebus spent easily half a million on ships for people who disappeared. Overall +10.

Cubey

What I like:

-Commodity storage. Really good idea that allows a group of players to cooperate and create commodities together. Right now it's only practical on a faction level, but giving dynasties similar functionality will really enliven the game's economy, I think.

-Quality of life/RP fluff things: titles, alliances, logos, etc.

Like but with stipulation:

-Ships and stations. The former is easier to implement than the latter (especially if it works by lending the ship to a specific person for a time), but both should be introduced no earlier than shared ships and stations for factions.

Don't like:

-Dynasty credits. Too much of an incentive to recruit people en masse and then benefit from their credit purchases, and also a pressure to make folks join a dynasty because otherwise their credit purchases will be "wasted".

Steve

Dynasty ships are still a great idea. However, I think there's a bigger point to be made here, and it goes for factions, too: there isn't much to work towards, marks-wise, other than credits and ships, and organizations can't work towards anything for their own sake. As Slander mentioned, any such expenditures have to be directed towards individuals, and with that comes risk of people leaving.

Setting up dynasties (or clans) to own ships and even to run market orders/offers would be a good step in the right direction. While I'm saying that, I think factions really ought to be able to directly interact with the commodity market.

I don't want to derail a thread, so I'll end on this: I'd love to pool some Sol'lun resources and get a freighter or superhauler and make it into both the party bus AND the village bike... Oh. That's not what I meant.

Ikchor

Initially I came in here intending to slap down the idea of dynasties functioning as a guild. I've done it before, and I still stand by that attitude. Instead I want to suggest something - hopefully - mildly constructive that doesn't basically turn your hard earned dynasty into a mini faction (cause the factions may still have some niggling details but we're still in beta and there's bigger fish to fry).

Dynasty specializations.

This is probably going to take some time before this gets implemented, and I'm just throwing out ideas as they come to me but it draws on the idea of guild bonuses.
Your dynasty gets founded - or if already founded, you just retroactively get the option - and you get to pick from a list of things to invest in. One major, one minor let's say. Major grants you the full buff, whereas minor is 60% strength?
Choices are (and again I'm just pulling choices off the top of my head):

Industry: Encompasses mining, refining, and manufacturing (Dynasty level economy specializations basically)

Reduces the penalties for non-specialized activities (IE, you don't get as big a smack if you're a miner and opt to pick up some refineries).
Bonus: Increased personal storage - Can store up to 500 globally of each commodity/material before getting charged, incentive to go to those better refineries out in the boonies somewhere.
(I'm not sure what kind of bonus here, honestly)

Arts: Pertains to designs, maybe get a fixed discount on submission (not free like the artifact) and a larger markup on the royalty payouts for registering designs for third-party usage.
Bonus: Increased/unlimited dynasty design storage (if that isn't already the case), and automatically unlocks the ability to use it?

Technology: Increased research gain on mods, more parts gained (again not as powerful as the artifact options but still worth using) along with increases to hacking XP gain.
Bonus: Increased mod drop rate, affects only mods.

Astronautics: (working name) Reduced shipbuilding costs, increases to shipmod research/part gain (when that becomes available), increased captaincy XP gain, and your ship operates just a smidge better maybe? Better turning speeds, faster capacitor/shield regen. I dunno, something not wholly game breaking but at the same time completely worth the effort.

Bonus: Better junk from incursions, double charge on ammo??

Military: This one I am hesitant to envision, as anything to do with combat is invariably going to be mandatory, but here goes. Obviously a bashing XP boost, increased marks/influence gains from cosmpiercer payouts, better bounty hunting, and with maybe a reduced cost to cloning?

Bonus: ???

Social: Little more nebulous as it pertains more to group mechanics more than anything else. Increased XP/influence gain from quests, increased group bashing XP (only applies if you are in a crew and picking this locks you out of the Military option, and vice versa), reduced cost to write and publish datashards, and shorter performance cooldowns.

I'm not sure what kind of hoop to have you jump through to get these specializations. As I wrote those few ideas out I had some faint ideas come to me like:

- Admin approval based off listed dynasty info (No writing up a crafting/designing dynasty and getting a Major investment in Military for the utility of an XP boost. Yes, you may thematically be designing military gear but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a soldier yourself)

- Maintenance cost of some kind, maybe marks and commodities

- Player/dynasty level and player activity requirement, this dips too low, you lose your specializations.

- Tying your dynasty to a faction, limited slots in the faction to do so.