SE4 by Committee

[Dead Meat]

Sweet I like the idea SJ. Sign me up (Minister).

[Suicide Junkie]

As for the game setup:
- 3 planet start, to get things rolling.
- Low tech start.
- vast galaxy
- suggestions?

Signups:
#1: Geo. (Local Planetary Minister or General)
#2: Arckon. (R&D Minister)
#3: Matryx (General)
#4: Dead meat (Misc Minister (1st = Defense, 2nd = Construction))

Anyone want to be more specific?
Also, those who chose "Generic Senator", please speak up, so I can add you too.

Geo: Do you want to start as a homeworld minister, and then move to another planet or retire and get a new General character once there are some ships built?
Arkcon: Any particular minister you want? You've got dibs on non-planet ministers.
Matryx: What heroic traits would you like for General Matryx?
Dead Meat: What are your first choices for minister positions?

NOTE:
Generals can be considered "Minister of Tactical Combat"
An experience system for generals will be applied:
Something along the lines of:
+10% experience per ground combat.
+2X/Y experience per space combat. Where X = # of enemy ships, and Y = # of friendly ships.
+20 Starting Experience.

Each 2 experience points could be spent to boost one trait on your general by +1.
- Hitpoints (Starts at 1)
- Shields (Starts at 1/2 kt worth of current tech)
- Weapon damage, (Starts at 1/2kt worth of current tech)
- Leadership(Combat sensors/ECM, starts at zero)

Each General will be a 1KT Troop with a unique component, that will be modified as you gain experience.

[ December 17, 2002, 19:58: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[PvK]

Sounds like a good idea. The P&N mod might be a good idea. SJ could play a pirate race and a nomad race, and the mod has some small civilian ships in it and other colorful and interesting additions. OTOH, it might reduce the widespread appeal - probably worth another poll question.

As for the units for players - I'm not sure why they'd be entirely necessary - SJ could just track character positions on paper, which would probably be easier and more flexible.

How is character movement going to be carried out? If we want to travel from place to place, will we need to somehow get an in-game ship to move from planet A to planet B? If so, we'll probably want a lot of little transports... which would be neat, and probably best with a mod to add tiny cheap ones, although again it might be more sane to just have SJ track it on paper.

It would be more interesting if at least some of the opposition was potentially human. There could be a few adversary players, and/or SJ, and then just one committee empire.

PvK

[PvK]

I would suggest running a fairly large number of turns before starting the committee play, instead of a 3-planet start.

I'd also suggest a High research cost. I've played games before as a fleet commander, leaving the rest of my empire to the AI ministers, and with research faster than slow, the fleets tend to become obsolete as quickly as they are able to carry out missions and get refuelled.

PvK

[Dan C.]

I have often thought that the 4X games suffered from an abundance of information. Ye Olde Emperor who is 12 turns of movement from the front somehow knows that they need to buid a few more minesweepers because the enemny is now using mines in larger numbers.

Perhaps quick and perfect communication between all the somewhat developed worlds in empire is good/normal/acceptable, but when you send that fleet through the warp point, and they all get eliminated? Now there may be auto-launching flight data recorders or something, but I think there should be a much greater Fog of war.

How about this for a concept. Have one large central empire which is say the size of 5 normal empires. You have 5 players (or AI) competing against them on more-or-less islolated fronts. Assign one Imperial player as Military commander of each district, with control of all the fleets and some limited production, and then a Emperor (or council) which allocates the majority of empire builds and all tech advances etc. based on the written reports of each district commander (with perhaps a turn or two delay until the Messages are recieved)?

[Suicide Junkie]

PvK:
If I'm going to keep track of the stats manually, I'd be doing it in notepad, and if I'm doing it in notepad, its not hard to do it in the datafiles too

Plus your Generals can have an effect on ground combat, and the location information is tracked automatically.

I think I will run a few turns initially. Mainly to build all of the avatars, but I could throw in some orbital spaceyards too.
I want to do as few turns as possible before the committee is in full force.

Dan C:
Some of that may happen here, though the communication will still be instantaneous. Going through a committee to reallocate resources will provide that fog of war
Optionally, I can also not report information that should be lost, such as ships lost in minefields or black holes.

PS:
Regarding the voting system:
If only one Minister holds clear control over an issue, they recieve a 25% vote block, requiring a 2/3rds senate majority to be vetoed.
If two Ministers apply to a decision, the Primary minister will receive a 20% vote block, and the secondary Minister will receive a 10% vote block, requiring a 72% senate majority to veto two ministers in agreement.

An example of the second would be the Naming minister wanting to rename "Geo's Backwater Resort". As the local Governor being directly affected, Geo would be the majority minister with a 20% block. The naming minister is clearly involved, and so would be the secondary with a 10% block.

[ December 17, 2002, 19:54: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Arkcon: Any particular minister you want? You've got dibs on non-planet ministers.

Okay, I'd like to be Science Minister. I say I'd like that -- not sure everyone else would like my research choices.

I came up with something else, don't know if its too late in the planning to introduce another wrinkle...

Everyone who wants to join, gets a system to govern. You can appoint one of those system governers a minister at the start, but if there is a global vote of non-confidence, a minister can lose their position to some other system governor.

For example, "What, Arkcon spent 10 turns getting stupid drones? Lets vote him out and put Geo in, he'll know what to do."

By the way, I doubt I can be accessible enough to run a fleet. Most minister communication can happen by email or this forum, right. Else, I may have to pass entirely

[ December 17, 2002, 19:57: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[LazarusLong42]

Sounds interesting to me, though given my time constraints I'll be happy as a plain ol' senator. I will make two suggestions however:

1. Don't do it on the Shrapnel Forums. Unless you can get them to set up a special forum for you, the discussions and votes will get hopelessly muddled in one thread.

I'd be happy to host a forum for the purpose of playing the game.

2. Run the game on PBW, so that everyone can easily access it. We'll have to create a "public" user for the purpose, but I don't see a problem with that either.

Eric/LL

[Suicide Junkie]

Arkcon:
A 2/3rds Senate vote to expel a minister sounds good.
And yes, all open comms and votes will be taken via forum.

Only Generals engaging in tactical combat need Instant Messenger clients.

New players joining would have the option of taking any available minister slot, being a general or a senator, and would follow the same rules as players who previously died in game.

LazarusLong:
1) Seems fair enough. I wonder who is the person to talk to know that Richard's gone?
A dedicated forum would be nice, too.

2) No can do, PBW dosen't take sequential turn games, or tactical combat
I am going to be manually entering the commands, modding player experience in, and generating reports. I may just post the savegame for public viewing if its too much work to generate the reports...

Signups:
#1: Geo. (Local Planetary Minister or General)
#2: Arckon. (Science Minister)
#3: Matryx (General)
#4: Dead meat (Defense Minister)
#5: LazarusLong (Senator)

Minister jobs:
- Individual planets: small ones seem popular with RPers and those with little time to be in the spotlight. Manages ships in orbit.
- System lords: Rules all planets in a system that have no individual ministers. Manages ships making intra-system journeys.
- Political: One overall, or possibly one Minister for each race as an Ambassador.
- Finance: Watches over the budget and expenditures.
- Defense: Manages the overall inter-system distribution of warships.
- Economic: Manages resource generation, and general facility construction.
- Transportation: Manages the overall non-military shipping and travel arrangements.
- Colonization: Organizes colonization efforts.
Covered by Transportation if nobody claims the job.
- Science: Manages research projects.
- R&D: Designs ships.
- Covert Ops: Manages intel once researched.
- Construction: Decides locations to build at, and negotiates with local ministers.
- Naming Minister: Renames planets, ships, Design Classes.

[ December 17, 2002, 20:15: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Lemmy]

Sounds like the Democracy game thingie i posted a while ago, there have been games like this (community vs AI) on some civilization forums for a few months now..

ooh, i found my old thread..it seems i had some trouble getting the idea through to people link

I'm actually acting president for a SMAC democarcy game right now, it's fun, but also a lot of work...i'll post my experiences when i have read more of this thread.