Faction/Gang System in the game

Today, I want to delve deeper into the gang/faction system in our game, as it is the most crucial aspect of gameplay. Additionally, I will explain a couple of the design choices I've made.

Gangs, Guards, and Territories
Players must continuously strategize, expand their faction's territories, and take control of trade to survive. Initially, I planned for dynamic gameplay within the gang system, allowing NPCs to band together, form gangs, and challenge rival territories. While this concept was exciting, it introduced significant problems due to the game's scale. The game can support a maximum of 220 prisoners (Not exactly hard limit but there are 10 prison block and each block can house 20-40 prisoners) Also In reality, not all prisoners will opt to join a gang some are docile and prefer to avoid participation, meaning each gang could at most have only 4-5 members(with a gang structure consisting of a Leader, Lieutenants, and Soldiers), which doesn't seem realistic. For this reason, there will only be three different gangs that control the entire prison. Players can choose to create their own faction or join one of the existing gangs. As indicated in the screenshot, each territory is marked with the corresponding gang's color.

The Gang Hierarchy
Each gang operates within a hierarchy of Leader -> Lieutenants -> Soldiers. The Leader assigns territories to Lieutenants who manage and control contraband trade in their area and also recruit Soldiers.

The Guards’ Gambit
Guards are not just obstacles they're opportunities. They tend to overlook minor scuffles between prisoners. Players can earn favor and even bribe them. Each zone in the prison has a different captain assigned to it. Bribes, favors, and threats are how gangs control captains when planning to raid another territory. This creates interesting dynamics, as some captains are loyal to certain factions and will reject any takeover attempts.

Contraband Trading
The gang that controls a zone also oversees the trading within it. Some contraband items are only accessible in specific territories. Merchants operating in these zones must pay taxes to the controlling gang. This setup creates a dynamic market simulation, which I will elaborate on in another blog post.

Alpha Testing
I want to apologize for the delay with the alpha release. I'm using Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), and it doesn't scale well with low-end hardware. The yard scene in the game is big with different area's, while other scenes like the prison block, dining room, or various workshops are smaller. However, if we look at recent releases that utilize Unity and HDRP, you will notice that the performance has been poor. I'm trying to resolve this issue, but it has necessitated adding loading screens when players move from one place to another. While these transitions are extremely fast and don't take much time, I am trying to find workaround. If I remove loading screen it will increase memory consumption