Nothing from that thread (except a happiness meter that does nothing) has been implemented yet, but the time may be ripe for adding some of it soon.
* Ethos & Alignments = Offtopic
As cool as i think those ideas could be, they are complicated and abstract, and best if left to a later round of development, after other things have been established. The fact that we had such a hard time explaining our proposals for this to each other is a stong hint that they weren't KISS. Also, a much simpler system could possibly be devised to give citizens personality to replace Ethos & Alignments. Alternate, simpler systems for making certain species like or dislike an empire will be on topic.
* I'm going to use terms like "we". This means that i think there was general agreement on a point, but i haven't re-read the whole thread, though i have given it a good skim. It may turn out what i thought was "we", was actually just "me", so feel free to correct me.
Goals we had/have for the simulating citizens's system
- * To use the citizen (dis)satisfaction as the way to give personality to the empires, leaving the emperor free to focus on winning. The burden of pleasing citizens falls equally on AI and human players.
* To have a reason for unhappy citizens to riot/rebel at a particular planet, rather than a random planet.
* To enable espionage to incrementally undermine enemy colonies.
*
- * Each planet has a Happiness meter. If the meter goes too low the citizens riot/rebel which as best puts a hold on productivity, and at worst has the planet leaving the empire and joining another or forming their own. Happiness may be influenced by things like the following: EP of planet, connection to homeworld, blockades, population loss, etc.
* Each Species has an Allegiance meter for every (known?) empire. If the meter is high, they like the empire, if low, they hate it. Allegiance may determine how much of a fight they will put up against invaders (i.e. fight to the death against a hated empire, and quickly surrender to a beloved empire), how easy espionage missions are, and who rebel planets seek to join. Allegiance is at the species rather than planetary level to give each species a coherent personality, and critically to avoid having a bajillion different meters. Species seem to be something like "factions" in some other games (when "faction" doesn't equal "race").
* Species or planets have a positive reaction when you ally with Empires they have a high allegiance for, and a negative reaction when you ally with Empires they have a low allegiance for. Similarly they react when you go to war.
* Species level Allegiance and local Happiness have a strong effect on each other, (weather two-way, or one way, depends on the details).
There are a ton of reasons we went with the above, though i'm perfectly willing to throw it all out if something better comes along. Though if you want to propose something radically different, think it through and do your research, and most of all consider the consequences of the idea. We may not have a lot of patience repeating the objections to ideas that can be found in the previous thread.
I think the critical point to be decided is how does the player "manage" his citizen's happiness. The solution is likely not obvious -- Civ has famously had trouble getting this right -- though i think their recent solutions are pretty good. For FO, we should focus on a non-micromanagy solution that's easy to understand, rather than a detail simulation, which is easy and fun to make up in the forums.
So, i'll just finish off with all the ideas for things that reasonably could effect happiness and allegiance for all species. "Influence" not listed yet, but that should be somewhere.
Happiness:
- + + Citizen lives on a Gaia
+ Citizen lives on its homeworld.
+ Citizen is supply-connected to its homeworld (even if homeworld belongs to a connected ally)
+ Entertainment / Mind-control, etc. techs
+ / - Planet is of the EP (decreasing bonus or penalty the further from the EP the planet is)
- Citizen is part of a large empire (some increasing penalty as imperial population increases)
- Population loss
- - Planet is bombarded (big effect)
+ Empire controls their homeworld
- Empire contains other species (increasing penalty with additional species. Arguably this might not be a trait for every species, but arguably also arguably, if species Foo only lives in one empire, they will have a stronger connection to it.)
- - Empire X bombarded their planet
EDIT: Updated list is kept here.
So-- discuss...