Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:45 pm
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:13 pm
What governments exist?
What effects (if any) do those governments have?
What and how many policy slots do those governments have?
None.
I'm going to presume this means there is a single "government", that is modified currently by what techs and building you have.
How do we get new policy slots?
Techs and buildings, currently. Slots are counted by an empire meter, so any content could add more, such as species or specials or fields or space monsters or ship parts or hulls...
I actually like this approach, as it jibes nicely with my idea for "modular" government system. Personally I would mostly stick to techs and buildings. I do have thoughts when it comes to species. Namely having telepathic species own the capitol should give at lest one extra slot. Also maybe having a starting slot or two for each of the starting species, something that could add flavor to their playstiles. Maybe the extinct species could each give a different policy slot. I could see some of the planetary specials possibly giving policy slots. The temporal anomaly comes to mind.
What types of policies exist?
How are these types of policies organized?
Economic, Social, and Military slots and policies. More can be added, but those seem to cover most of what a "government" does... Maybe something to do with espionage or foreign relations or species-government interaction, although most of that can fit into the other categories.
I'd keep it to three main categories. I would split any foreign policies between the existing categories, probably mostly economic and social policies. Maybe go with wildcard policies and/or slots for things that don't fit nicely into those existing groups.
However I should ask what areas of the game are covered by what categories? IE: I get that there are Economic, Social and Military policies. However, what is covered by Economic policies? What is covered by social policies? What is covered by military polices?
What gaps do you currently see in the system that you'd most like to see filled?
There's nothing to do with influence other than buy policy adoptions. There should be various influence projects as well, but that's arguably a separate subsystem to be worked on after. There are not enough policies or ways to get slots. Policies need to be balanced, with good effects, bad effects, situationally-dependent or weird effects, and adoption costs. Influence acquisition needs some balancing with policy adoption costs. Adoption costs should probably scale with population. It all needs testing and feedback. The AI interface needs to expose the info (working on this now). The AI needs to know how to produce influence, spend it to adopt policies, and to do so in a semi-sensible manner.
I started a topic focusing mostly on influence projects
here, feel free to have a look and give your opinion.
The gaps in policies is mostly what I was thinking of when I asked this question. I am sure there needs to be more, but was wondering if there were any areas particularly lacking that should be focused on. However taking a look at what you have I suppose the answer is "everywhere".
As far as policy slots go, I suppose I should ask how many policy slots you ultimately want the player to have. This is a balance concern as the number of slots will determine how valuable policies actually are and how they are balanced against each other. The fewer policy slots the more valuable policies are and the more that they just take up a slot counts towards the balancing of their benefit.
I think that once there are influence projects to consume influence, influence acquisition should be easier to balance. I would be hesitant to try to balance it with only policies, only to have to totally re-balance it later once we do influence projects. Especially if we are set on having influence projects as a thing.
For balancing I am thinking that maybe policies should have an influence upkeep cost as well in addition to an adoption cost.
I do agree that policy adoption should scale with empire size. I am not sure (and you say probably) that this should be population. Perhaps number of planets or specifically colonies owned.
What are design principles for this you see as essential?
Policies can be adopted and cancelled, so can have negative and weird effects, unlike techs, which can only have good effects. Players shouldn't be changing policies every turn. Many of the bonuses that are currently given by having a tech researched should instead be given by a policy that that tech unlocks. Many policies should be contextually but not always very helpful, or sometimes detrimental, depending on a player's game strategy.
I would like some clarification here: when you say can have negative effects, do you mean that they can sometimes include negative effects of that they should always include negative effects, because this was a point of debate previously. I personally think that there should be some objectively "good" policies, particularly later game policies, so that players are encouraged to switch out older policies for newer ones. However we need more policies first.
So maybe it should take multiple turns to change policies. I could see it being implimented as an influence project with the player being able to enqueue the adoption of an appropriate replacement policy once a cancellation has been enqueued first. However that would be dependent on an influence project mechanic being in place first, so maybe save that specific implementation for later.
So maybe we should focus on economic policies that replace the bonuses that techs currently give us. Personally I'd split your centralization policy into an "Industrial Centralization" and an "Academic Centralization" policy. I might also include a "Media Centralization" policy for influence as well. I'd make each one increase the construction by 2 reduce supply by 0.5 and stockpile by 1.
In line with policies being contextually helpful, I have been thinking that "Distributed Thought Computing" should be a policy and apply only to telepathic species. Maybe with "Divided Attenuation Labor" as a policy that gives telepathic species a similar latent production boost and "Subconscious Dream Network" as a policy that gives a similar latent telepathic influence boost. All three could be unlocked by the same technology "Distributed Psionic Networks" (just re-name the original tech and make it unlock the policies). Likewise, a conditional "Hostile Environmental Automation" for increased production on hostile environment planets, "Hostile Environmental Probes" for increased research on hostile planets and "Hostile Environmental Entertainment" for increased influence on hostile planets. I presume they would all be economic policies, and so would go in the same slot.
What are design principles for this that you'd like, but maybe aren't essential?
Species should have policies they like or dislike, and have happiness and empire opinions (or something similar) adjusted depending on what policies empires have in place and who controls their planet. Empires should be able to trade influence like a currency whenever a trade system is implemented.
Species having policies that like/dislike has already been brought up in the species values discussion, especially in relation to an opinion mechanic. I was already thinking of trading from the production stockpile and currently have a proposed influence project that would allow players to gift production from their stockpile to each other.