Xenophobic trait issues

[wobbly]

And save the harassment effect for a policy.
Seems good.

Could be an effect on racial purity, which doesn't do a lot right now. Also might be worth moving harassment to a stability penalty too.

[wobbly]

Another thought on this: Give both playable Xenophobic species great stability, but penalize them for neutral/other empire neighbours. So that they start with a bunch of "slack" to absorb the penalty and have some incentive to go forth and eliminate.

Edit: also remove any disliked buildings (except stuff like interspecies design academy) and disliked policies (except stuff like diversity). The core of their stability issues should be other species.

[LienRag]

Interesting...

[o01eg]

Another thought on this: Give both playable Xenophobic species great stability, but penalize them for neutral/other empire neighbours. So that they start with a bunch of "slack" to absorb the penalty and have some incentive to go forth and eliminate.

Edit: also remove any disliked buildings (except stuff like interspecies design academy) and disliked policies (except stuff like diversity). The core of their stability issues should be other species.

Would be nice, I'm trying to play single species xenophobic empire and lack of way to make Trith happy affects my empire.

[Daybreak]

Suggestion for distance-based xenophobic maluses:
MAX_MALUS / (2^distance)
So the denominators depending on distance are:
- 0 -> 1 (100% of MAX_MALUS)
- 1 -> 2 (50%)
- 2 -> 5 (25%)
- 3 -> 10 (12.5%)
- 4 -> 17 (6.25 %)
- 5 -> 26 (3.125%)

Then, you'll need 32 different-species planets at distance 5 to get the same malus than having a single different-species planet in the same system. Letting yourself colonize at 3 distance from other 4 planets of different species you'd get 50% of whatever we put as MAX_MALUS. Do you think that would be easier to balance than current system?

+1

[Oberlus]

Let's try to get this fixed before next release.

RFC

I'm thinking of starting from this:


For Eaxaw (and maybe some natives):

Xenophobic species trait:
- Stability penalty to that species based on distance from other visible species (owned or not). This can imply losing PP and RP bonuses from policies and techs, so I think this trait doesn't need any specific production malus for the xenophobic species.
Maybe max(0, 5 - jump distance), that gives us -5 in same system, -1 at four jumps. Or max(0, (6-jump distance)/2), that gives us -3 at same system, -2.5 at one jump, -0.5 at five jumps.
- Xenophobic Harassment effect: Same stability penalty to other species, owned or not. This trait affects both the species and others, it's intended to make it suboptimal to get into alliances (but not impossible, with a policy), to encourage different gameplay.

Racial Supremacy policy:
- Stability bonus to capital species. +5?
- Stability penalty to non-capital, owned species. -10?
- Enables conc. camps.
- For xenophobic capital species, removes the stability penalty from the xenophobic trait from nearby owned, non-capital species (so only different species from other empires or unowned still annoy them). This enables this species to keep different species in the empire without having to kill them (can be kept in a form of slavery, just less stable so less bonuses from policies) and to be in non-intertwined alliances, as long as the buffer between the xenophobic species and the allies is not filled with the xenophobic species (use the "slaves" there, that can be exobots and the species gifted by the allies or captured natives).


For Trith (and maybe some other telepathic natives):
Brainwave Allergic species:
- Stability penalty to that species based on distance to detected, non-telepattic species (owned or not). Not sure about the formula.
- Population malus?
- No malus to other species. This trait is only bad for who has it, which for Trith, is a telepathic, self-sustaining species. and the trait is to balance the species as well as to give it interesting lore and gameplay.

Maybe: Add to the Collective Network building an effect to half the stability penalty on Brainwave Allergic species in the empire. Or add it to Pure Energy Metabolism. Or a bit on each.

[wobbly]

Racial Supremacy policy:
- Stability bonus to capital species. +5?
- Stability penalty to non-capital, owned species. -10?
- Enables conc. camps.
- For xenophobic capital species, removes the stability penalty from the xenophobic trait from nearby owned, non-capital species (so only different species from other empires or unowned still annoy them). This enables this species to keep different species in the empire without having to kill them (can be kept in a form of slavery, just less stable so less bonuses from policies) and to be in non-intertwined alliances, as long as the buffer between the xenophobic species and the allies is not filled with the xenophobic species (use the "slaves" there, that can be exobots and the species gifted by the allies or captured natives).

So currently the xenophobes are Great Stability (+5) to give them something in return for what you lose as a single species empire. Maybe it would be better for the policy to boost influence instead of stability? Trith are bad influence and single species Trith will not be able to use a good influence species.

[Oberlus]

I think Trith should be "good or great influence from their telepathy", rather than "bad influence just-because plus a bonus from becoming the total jerks to other species".

[LienRag]

I think Trith should be "good or great influence from their telepathy", rather than "bad influence just-because plus a bonus from becoming the total jerks to other species".

Interesting...

(no, I'm trolling, I agree entirely with you)

[Oberlus]

So

Trith
- Great Influence.
- Average Stability.
- Good Detection.
- Good Stealth.
- Good Ship Shields.
- Brainwave Allergic.
- Telepathy.
- Telepathic detection.
- Self-sustaining.
- Starts in a medium planet.

Eaxaw
- Great pilots.
- Xenophobic.
- Good or Average Stability.

[wobbly]

This is the current effect of racial purity:

Racial Purity.png (142.62 KiB) Viewed 585 times

My suggestion:

-10 stability to non-capital species
-1 influence to influence focused non-capital
+1 influence to influece focused capital species
no RP or IP penalty (stability handles this)
cancels xenophobe penalties (they are slaves and slave colonies have the stability penalty)
allow concentration camp
Residual stability penalty( if scriptable), to prevent single species empires (everyone at start) just adopting it. 10 turns to remove the -10 stability penalty

[wobbly]

Note: I'm fine with the guts of the idea. If you can get something reasonable and testable with enough time to test before release you have my +1 and then we can tweak from there.

[LienRag]

My suggestion:

-10 stability to non-capital species
-1 influence to influence focused non-capital
+1 influence to influece focused capital species
no RP or IP penalty (stability handles this)
cancels xenophobe penalties (they are slaves and slave colonies have the stability penalty)
allow concentration camp
Residual stability penalty( if scriptable), to prevent single species empires (everyone at start) just adopting it. 10 turns to remove the -10 stability penalty

Interesting...
But the last point is problematic to me.
Not the residual stability penalty, but that the Policy could be gamed.
I'm not against gamable Policies when the fluff agrees with it (like removing Bureaucracy and then getting back Centralization and Bureaucracy - it's a chore and micromanagy, but it more or less makes sense) but for Racial Purity I don't believe it should be gamable.
So there should be more reasons for Empires to not adopt it (like, not having it at start).

[Oberlus]

the Policy could be gamed.
I'm not against gamable Policies when the fluff agrees with it (like removing Bureaucracy and then getting back Centralization and Bureaucracy - it's a chore and micromanagy, but it more or less makes sense) but for Racial Purity I don't believe it should be gamable.

Sorry, what does it mean to game a policy, or that a policy is gamable?

[LienRag]

I mean, that it can be used in a way that was not anticipated, and which brings results way more powerful than how it was supposed to be played.

Racial Purity is supposed to be played as a xenophobic empire, if everybody plays it before invading their first natives (or enemy planets) it's not how it was balanced to work.