Intergalactic Civil War !!??

[Str8_Gain]

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Interesting insight Str8-Gain. I like the way you disected my reply !

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Yer welcome!

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The time it takes to warp between systems could Depend on the tech level of the warp and the distance between systems. Also, the computer should probably give an estimated time of arrival. And I don't think the warp drive should take up any more than 100K this way you only sacrifice maybe two missiles or something for instantaneous tracel.

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It'd make sense. 100kt is the same space that a GQR or GC takes up. This would automatically discount using Escorts or Frigates to give the AI a whomping very early on. A Destroyer hull would be the minimum size you could use.

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I figure the warp, at maximum, from one end of the galaxy to the other, should take no more than 6 or 7 turns at lowest level. Then as you increase up to the max level it gets shorter.

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Egad! Six or seven turns to traverse a huge galaxy? From what I see posted below, your intent seems to be that warpdrives are to be a beginning option for interstellar travel until you could build SM ships. If you did this, then researching SM to get higher levels of GQR would be worthless. With GQR I, to cross a huge galaxy from one corner to another would take six turns at a minimum (assuming the distance is 600ly). Better have Emergency Resupply Pods or a Quantum Reactor, now that the SM component supply bug has been fixed. Even with GQR V, it'll take two turns.

For a beginning level, I'd make the transit times a lot longer. Even at the top end of the tech tree for warpdrives, I'd say 6-7 turns should be the minimum for traversing a huge galaxy. Unless I'm totally misreading your intent, the warpdrive is supposed to be a slowboat inferior option to SM components.

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Also, (this is a far out one now) maybe there could be one of those hidden techs, you know massive ...., that would give you instant warp drives or even (this ones even farther out) a tech thank links all ships to one warp. Now i will wait for you to disect this one

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Destabilizing, unless the component destroys itself after use, like current SM components do. It'd give one pause before sticking a drive on a ship that can send it anywhere if they need to either use the existing warp points or stick another "instant warpdrive" on it so it can bug out if need be.

The "linked" warpdrive you're describing would be even more destabilizing, unless the travel times are made so they're not too fast or put a limit on how many ships can be "linked" to one drive. In a sense, this is what I do with SM ships now, except there's no limits on how many ships I can send through (one ship to open points, all ships go through, then my other SM ship closes the point behind them).

Overall, I do like this idea, and I do like "outside the box" thinking in general. What I'd like to see is a)playtesting on this concept, and b)an option to turn this off for those that don't want to use it.

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Oh and by the way what do you think of the civil war idea? good or bad? What are your thoughts and suggestions?

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I'm pretty familiar with this from playing Freeciv (Linux clone of Civ II). It's one of my favorite ways to totally fubar large AI rival empires, since the AI there is tough, even at "normal" difficulty levels. At a minimum, any conquered races should rebel if they make up the majority of the population of a system. If a system has a "mixed" population of your race plus conquered ones, there should be a chance that the planet(s) populated by your race in that system will join along with the rebellion.

Reservations: the Palace facility that's being bandied about should be invulnerable to the Industrial Sabotage intel operation. Mabye a new intel op should be added, with a higher price tag, if you want to take out a Palace and throw an entire empire into a civil war. Puppet Political Parties should not work against your homeworld, or whatever world you have your Palace on. Modifiers, such as a planet's mood, or the presence of your fleets in the system should be taken into consideration.

As far as their affiliations, conquered races should resurrect their empire (lending new meaning to "Though we fall now, we shall rise again!"). Planets populated by your race should either join a resurrected empire, an unconquered empire, or build their own, with preference given to building their own empire. And to add more insult to injury, have your race break up into multiple empires.

Again, I like this idea, and I'd like to see playtesting on it. You shouldn't be able to turn it off, IMHO, since it would pretty accurately reflect what would happen if somebody decapitated an empire's top leadership.

[chewy027]

At least we agree on the tonnage Str8_Gain .

I really hadn't thought that 6 or 7 turns would be that long. But if you make comparison to the wormholes then (hit to my pride) I must admit you are right.

However, if the wormnole prevention facility being discussed in Capt_Spoogy's interesting new things thread was instituted then warp tech would be essential. Either way I don't really care if warp tech is implemented (although it would be a nice feature along with the wormhole facility) it was just an idea for the solution to neutrals as i said before.

What I'm really interested in is the Civil War feature. And I agree with every thing you stated below.

"Reservations: the Palace facility that's being bandied about should be invulnerable to the Industrial Sabotage intel operation. Mabye a new intel op should be added, with a higher price tag, if you want to take out a Palace and throw an entire empire into a civil war. Puppet Political Parties should not work against your homeworld, or whatever world you have your Palace on. Modifiers, such as a planet's mood, or the presence of your fleets in the system should be taken into consideration."

"As far as their affiliations, conquered races should resurrect their empire (lending new meaning to "Though we fall now, we shall rise again!"). Planets populated by your race should either join a resurrected empire, an unconquered empire, or build their own, with preference given to building their own empire. And to add more insult to injury, have your race break up into multiple empires."

All these comments are great and add to the ideas polish. The only thing I don't understand is the very Last sentence, "And to add more insult..." Do you mean if an empire goes into civil war it breaks up into more than two? Or are you reaffirming the Civil War idea?

I too played civ all the time and that is where I stole this idea from I figured if it can be in a great game like civ why not in an even beter game like SE4

disect away!

[Str8_Gain]

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At least we agree on the tonnage Str8_Gain .

I really hadn't thought that 6 or 7 turns would be that long. But if you make comparison to the wormholes then (hit to my pride) I must admit you are right.

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Hold yer head up, man! Nothing wrong with coming up with new ideas. I'm glad this is a game where we can even entertain the thought of making changes to it. The tweaking would have to come in to ensure game balance isn't totally trashed. As I said, it'd probably need to be playtested to see how well it works and to work the kinks out.

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However, if the wormnole prevention facility being discussed in Capt_Spoogy's interesting new things thread was instituted then warp tech would be essential. Either way I don't really care if warp tech is implemented (although it would be a nice feature along with the wormhole facility) it was just an idea for the solution to neutrals as i said before.

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This would be a way around the objections that some have posted (that I agree with), namely that an empire could get away with the "isolationist" approach and thus become unconquerable. If no path exists to link your empire to theirs, you can't even use intel ops to try to take out their facilities with Industrial Sabotage.

Incidentally, if such specialty facilities as "wormhole prevention facility" and the "palace facility" are added to the game, there should be some way to tell your intel dudes to go after it specifically. Industrial Sabotage for now works totally at random, although you can narrow it down to a specific planet. You just can't tell it "Okay, I'd like to blow up the Wormhole Prevention Facility on planet XXX". Some sort of modifier system would have to come into play (if it doesn't already) to give the chances of success based on what sort of facility it is. Bumping off a low-security resource facility should be much easier than trying to take out a high-value target like a Resupply Depot, or a Medical Lab, or a Massive Planetary Shield. This could probably be the subject of a whole 'nother thread, since there's bound to be differences of opinion on what constitutes a "high-value" target.

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What I'm really interested in is the Civil War feature. And I agree with every thing you stated below.

(snip)

All these comments are great and add to the ideas polish. The only thing I don't understand is the very Last sentence, "And to add more insult..." Do you mean if an empire goes into civil war it breaks up into more than two? Or are you reaffirming the Civil War idea?

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Yes, it does mean that there should be a chance, albeit a small one, of your empire breaking up into more than two factions within your own race. More than a couple real-life civil wars involve(d) more than two factions duking it out. It'd also make reunification of your empire a bigger challenge if you have to bring multiple factions back into the fold.

[chewy027]

We just keep going back and forth don't we

I suppose there should be the small possibilty of breaking up into more than two. This WOULD be more realistic as long as the rest of the SE4 community agrees with that. And they start posting replies and suggestions to this topic.Along with this Str8_Gain - Chewy027 merry-go-round.

So how the heck do we get playtesting to be done on this. Would SE4 have to make a beta and then have testers go at it?

Thoughts?

[Str8_Gain]

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We just keep going back and forth don't we

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That's what this board's here for!

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So how the heck do we get playtesting to be done on this. Would SE4 have to make a beta and then have testers go at it?

Thoughts?

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Well, a lot of what's been discussed below would require hard-code changes to the SE4 executable. Wouldn't hurt to suggest it to MM, although the gist I get from this board in general suggests that Aaron has a helluva workload already. It'd probably have to wait its turn to be implemented, along with the other good ideas prevalent on this board.

At any rate, I gotta bounce. My head's about to hit the keyboard here, since it's way past my bedtime. I'll be back tomorrow.

[dogscoff]

This is gonna be another too-long post. Sorry.

I think the civil war idea is the best suggestion for hard-code changes I have seen suggested so far. More sophisicated civilian management (rather than just as a portable workforce with a "happiness" score for each planet) would really improve the depth of the game. After all an empire is not a purely military entity (that comment will start debate) - the purpose of being in charge of one is to bring happiness to your population, not just to squish aliens and conquer the universe for your own ego=-). If the game motivated you more to keep your population happy it would improve realism / atmosphere enormously.

I think the idea of a capital city/ homeworld as a centre of civic order is a good one, and I like the idea of local government as well - doing the same job on a smaller scale. I suggested something along these lines in the pirate thread as a way of
seperating space-borne races (nomadic, pirate) from "settled" ones (everyone else), by not allowing the nomads & pirates to have these features.

As for the implementation of it... since we are talking about MM making hard-code changes I don't why these government centres should be facilities.

How about if cities were to grow on planets automatically, without any direct influence from the player? Each colonised planet would have a city, rated from "Outpost" to "Metropolis". This status would not be a simple factor of population but would be influenced by things like space ports, security, planet population, system population, breathable atmos, colonised moons, racial diversity, proximity to warp points and diversity of facilities/ industries.

High-status cities would give back huge benefits in production, pop growth, troop defence and maybe even extra facility space or something. Government and capital cities would have even better benefits. This would have the added advantage of forcing the player to consider stability - Picking up 80 million people and taking them away, or suddenly redeploying the massive fleet stationed in orbit would have a major impact on a planet's city. Gradual changes would be better, just like in real life.
Of course the AI will hate all this=-)

Local government cities and Capitals should have a "Minimum Status", as follows.

A system with a tiny population has no local government of it's own, but is a dependent of the nearest system with local government. Once the dependent system has a city of minimum status or higher, it gets it's own local government in that city.

A player can transfer a government centre/ capital to another city but the nw city must be of minimum status. The transfer also costs time and resources.

When a government centre is destroyed, or falls below minimum status the player can select another city in the system to be the government centre. If there is no city big enough, then the system becomes dependent another system. Transferring power from city to city or systm to systm takes time, however, and all the while civil unrest is growing. Civil unrest can lead to insurrection in the affected system and it's dependent systems in the ways already thouroughly discussed.

Capital cities work in a similar way, except the effects are empire wide rather than system+dependent wide. Capitals can be moved anywhere within the empire, at a cost. When a capital is destroyed or shrinks to below a minimum statusthe player must select another city to transfer power to. If there is no other city of minimum status or higher civil unrest will grow across the empire until either another capital can be built or the empire bcomes a protectorate of another empire.

This is the clever bit: Minimum status for a capital would be tied it to the overall empire size: A huge empire requires a city of status "Massive City" to be it's capital, but a small empire needs only "Large Town." Local government minimum statuses are scaled accordingly. Therefore, if an empire's minimum status for capital is "massive city", and it does not have a city that big, unrest will grow until part of the empire breaks away. The first empire is now smaller and therefore has a lower minimum status, enabling it to build a capital and restore order.

This would restrict the speed of empire growth, but would make the game far more involving. It would make targetting specific planets and systems far more meaningful, and would make use of the near- redundant protectorate treaty.

Just my two pence worth (with interest=-)


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There is an exception to every rule. Including this one.

[chewy027]

Dogscoff that was a big post but it was full of good stuff .

"I think the civil war idea is the best suggestion for hard-code changes I have seen suggested so far."

Thanks for the support!

"How about if cities were to grow on planets automatically, without any direct influence from the player?"

If MM would put this in I think we should still be able to pick what facilities are built. The govt. buildings In my opinion should also still be facilities. I mean we should be able to decide what planet will be our regional capital. I like your idea though because it forces you to look more at the pop happiness. Although I think the civil war feature could still be implemented quit nicely without the automatic city growth.

Lets see what everyone else thinks