Wiki / Factions

Factions

Sides in Nova Protocol are deliberately minimal - three states, no alliances or reputation. It is just enough to tell friend from foe from furniture.

The relation model

Every ship carries an allegiance - Player, Enemy or Neutral - and any two things resolve to one of three relations: Own, Hostile or Neutral.

Retaliation

One exception rides on top of the side-only model. An armed Neutral ship that is hit answers whoever hit it, whatever that ship's side: the two read Hostile to each other, and only to each other - everyone else still reads the shooter's and the Neutral's own sides as usual. A later shot from a different ship replaces who it answers.

It shows up everywhere relation is read: acquisition and sensing, the allegiance marker over the Neutral's hull, the target viewfinder caption, the Map contact kind, and the threat-lock audio cue. The committed torpedoes either ship fires count as their owner: the other ship's point defense engages them, and one from a ship answering you gets a HUD edge arrow while it is off screen. A dock request reads it too - see Docking port.

What allegiance drives

Relation is the switch behind most of combat:

• Projectile allegiance - a round copies its shooter's side at launch and keeps it even if the shooter dies, so your torpedo stays yours and never hits your own hull.
• Targeting - what you can lock and what the AI will attack keys off relation and radar signature.
• AI hostility - enemy ships engage hostiles, remember who shot them, and raise their weapons only when they have a hostile target.
• AI flight - an enemy flies its fight on the same flight computer you do. It asks the computer to HOLD a velocity - closing while it is outside its standoff, circling once it is inside - and to keep its nose on you while the computer holds it. The standoff is the clear space it wants between the two HULLS, not between the two centres, so a large hull is fought at the same visible distance as a small hull instead of being crowded by its own size. Both speeds are read off the ship in front of you: it closes only as fast as its live drive can still stop it, and circles only as fast as that drive can hold the turn and its nose can track you, so a heavy hull flies its fight slower than a picket does instead of both moving at one number. Both are speeds relative to YOU: it matches whatever you are doing and flies its fight on top of that, so running in a straight line does not shake it off the ring. So an enemy at its standoff is crossing your bow with its guns still bearing, and it lights only the engines that burn for that; it swings the hull off you only for a correction big enough to need the main drive, and comes back when the burn is done. Put your guns on it and it weaves: three legs, each flown until the ship has actually carried its whole hull clear of the line you were holding, so a large ship's weave is slow and wide and a small ship's is a flick. Its nose stays on you through the weave. A hull with its engines shot off, or with its flight computer dead, stops maneuvering at all - it cannot weave either, so it fights on straight.

Reading it on the HUD

The HUD reads allegiance two ways. An allegiance marker - a small filled triangle above every ship - is coloured by side (green ally, red threat, grey neutral) so you can read a whole brawl at a glance; your own ship shows none. Up close, the target viewfinder's faction caption carries the same relation (hostile red, own green, neutral steel) rather than tinting the reticle itself. A player ship spawns Player and an AI ship spawns Enemy automatically - the allegiance rides along with the ship marker at spawn. A scripted SetAllegiance re-alignment changes a ship's own side for good and recolours its marker on the spot; retaliation is different - the Neutral's side never changes, but its marker still reddens for you while it is answering your fire, and returns to grey once it lets go.