Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#31 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 3:26 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 amsupply == commercial power
If so, then the planets with more supply should be the ones with more population (and maybe growth specials) rather than the smaller ones.
I thought supply == cost to send stuff into orbit.
Supply == -(cost to send stuff into orbit) == commercial power in space/across empire

At least for my understanding. But all of this is a matter of interpretation, and borders or arguments from "realism". A more in-game reason is to increase the value of smaller planets, as big planets are already much more valuable to players than smaller ones. Making smaller planets more ideal sector capitals only helps to balance them out.
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 am(Supply) It increases with your tech, so your sectors will have higher reach and contain more systems/planets later on --> decreases the number of sectors necessary --> decreases management
That sounds like I need to get a tech to reduce management effort. That does not soun freeorion.
Also, if I can build one building per sector, no more to avoid spaming buildings, so sectors are a way to control building spaming that happens because it is an advantage to spam such buildings, but then you get less sectors (less advantage) the more tech you research, you won't want to get that extra research.
This is why I am in favor of a set size for sectors. Currently this is proposed at 4 jumps form the sector capitol. Supply would be used to decide "disputed" edge-case systems that could fall into one sector or another.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#32 Post by Ophiuchus »

labgnome wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 4:32 pm Supply == -(cost to send stuff into orbit) == commercial power in space/across empire .. But all of this is a matter of interpretation, and borders or arguments from "realism".
That is also how I imagine supply.
Oberlus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 3:26 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 am(Supply) It increases with your tech, so your sectors will have higher reach and contain more systems/planets later on --> decreases the number of sectors necessary --> decreases management
That sounds like I need to get a tech to reduce management effort. That does not soun freeorion.
Well of course having a tech which reduces management effort is a good thing for freeorion. But is has a design smell - if there is such a tech there are two questions:
  • is the management effort too high without the tech? If it is too high, then that needs to be addressed in the basic mechanism; tech is always considered optional, so it can not be considered a successful fix
  • if the tech provides less management, why not provide it earlier, without the tech? so this needs a good reason; e.g. managing rarely changing focus of a hundred planets is not a problem - but maybe rarely changing focus is a problem if you have a thousand planets, so it is fine to provide a better mechanism at a certain point (but in this case you probably would "force" the player to research that better tech by making it a requirement to make profit from a thousand planets; e.g. a special "managed" focus which has a lower influence upkeep)
Oberlus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 3:26 pm Also, if I can build one building per sector, no more to avoid spaming buildings, so sectors are a way to control building spaming that happens because it is an advantage to spam such buildings, but then you get less sectors (less advantage) the more tech you research, you won't want to get that extra research.
There are multiple solutions to this:
  • make the bonus provided by the sector relative to the number of planets (planets, population or similar), so a growing sector is never worse than before (e.g. research focussed sector)
  • do not directly restrict the number of possible sectors by supply bonus. E.g. one simplistic example - if you can always have a maximum of ten sectors in your empire bigger reach of the sectors is always better (e.g. once-per-sector-shipyards, interspecies academy); sometimes you would move your sector capitals. We could scale the number of allowed sectors with the number of systems currently in our supply.
Note if you are moving sector capitals/changing sector borders or grabbing buildings from enemies you still need to enforce the once-per-sector constraint. Grabbing an enemy's building is also an issue for regional effects - the easiest solution is making once-per-sector buildings self-destruct on conquest. Starlane construction might also violate number-of-hop constraints for both options.

Another sanity option is proballistic destruction; E.g. interspecies academies have a 30% self-destruct chance if there is another academy of the same species in your empire.
Oberlus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 3:26 pm This is why I am in favor of a set size for sectors. Currently this is proposed at 4 jumps form the sector capitol. Supply would be used to decide "disputed" edge-case systems that could fall into one sector or another.
Non-growing regions or sectors apparently do not have the mentioned issue, but edge-cases may flip, distances may change (e.g. by creating starlanes) and acquiring buildings via conquest have the same issues. Also if you measure distance by supply reachability, a blockade interferes. Probably other mechanism I forgot about also interact with this.

So I think this needs to be addressed anyway for both regional effects and sectors.


I think complex regional effects will create hard UI issues (nobody said "Hooray for interspecies academies" as far as I am aware of) and that UI for sectors is easier to solve. But if we do not make sectors immutable, regional effects are more stable because the sector might change more often than the distance between two planets.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#33 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 3:04 pm
labgnome wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 4:32 pmThis is why I am in favor of a set size for sectors. Currently this is proposed at 4 jumps form the sector capitol. Supply would be used to decide "disputed" edge-case systems that could fall into one sector or another.
Non-growing regions or sectors apparently do not have the mentioned issue, but edge-cases may flip, distances may change (e.g. by creating starlanes) and acquiring buildings via conquest have the same issues. Also if you measure distance by supply reachability, a blockade interferes. Probably other mechanism I forgot about also interact with this.
So long as flipping isn't occurring too often I am not overly concerned by this. Acquiring buildings through conquest, could potentially disable the buildings until one is destroyed. Blockades could create problems. The system does have potential weaknesses true, but I think as far as sector modeling systems go it's the most in-line with KISS design principles.

I am debating weather or not sectors are necessary, or at lest are a good idea at this point right now. I like the idea, but the more this discussion goes on the more I wonder if it's actually a good idea for Free Orion.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#34 Post by Ophiuchus »

labgnome wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 4:34 pm I am debating weather or not sectors are necessary, or at lest are a good idea at this point right now. I like the idea, but the more this discussion goes on the more I wonder if it's actually a good idea for Free Orion.
Yes, that is what i am trying to find out right now. But if in another thread you proposed
labgnome wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 1:32 pm ..to stop the spamming of shipyards. .... Secondly, I think we should have a distance requirement for shipyards, either a jump-range or one per sector (if we do get sectors).
This jump-range is exactly what has the same issues as sector has. So either we find a better way of reducing spamming of buildings or we need the discussion if we want jump-range distances or sectors.

From those two options I still think sectors are the better choice.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#35 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 8:05 pm
labgnome wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 1:32 pm ..to stop the spamming of shipyards. .... Secondly, I think we should have a distance requirement for shipyards, either a jump-range or one per sector (if we do get sectors).
This jump-range is exactly what has the same issues as sector has. So either we find a better way of reducing spamming of buildings or we need the discussion if we want jump-range distances or sectors.

From those two options I still think sectors are the better choice.
Using jump ranges would work better if we wanted to have more granular control of building distribution, like say if we wanted to make the jump-range of Shipyards 3 jumps apart and the the jump-range of Sensor Arrays 5 jumps apart.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#36 Post by Ophiuchus »

labgnome wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 8:54 pm Using jump ranges would work better if we wanted to have more granular control of building distribution, like say if we wanted to make the jump-range of Shipyards 3 jumps apart and the the jump-range of Sensor Arrays 5 jumps apart.
Yes, but I am pretty sure we do not want that kind of control. Such things mean that you start building a "network" of those thingies and if you try to maximize the number of buildings, you have to figure out the best jump-ranges for each of these numbers (e.g. here 3 and 5).

The main reason is that I think UI will be horrible. Currently you would have to either look at a planet if you can build there or you have to check all the planets to see if the building is already built.
If you start doing specialised UI - how do you show those networks to the user?

If you start meddling with jump-ranges by creating starlanes, the network there will break down. And an optimal network will suddenly be completely different. How does AI handle such cases?

So maybe you start destroying those buildings and rebuild somewhere else to create an optimal network for your purposes.
If you have multiple different jump-ranges you will have (re)think for each of those.

The create-starlanes case would be easier to handle in case of sectors, i think the only the sector borders would move. So if the borders moves over a once-per-sector building, you have to relocate only that building and it will not create a rippling effect.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#37 Post by Oberlus »

For sectors we'll need some changes to the UI, to show their borders. Maybe short segments perpendicularly crossing the starlanes where the border is, with the colour of the empire, all sectors same colour (should we need to identify each sector somehow, problem).
I would discard jump-based building placement for the issues you've pointed out.
For distance-based building placement, we could use changes to the UI to highlight the systems already covered by instances of a given building, the same way we show the detection range from every planet. And using distance-based building placement the creation and destruction of starlanes would never disrupt preexistent networks.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#38 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:37 am For distance-based building placement, we could use changes to the UI to highlight the systems already covered by instances of a given building, the same way we show the detection range from every planet. And using distance-based building placement the creation and destruction of starlanes would never disrupt preexistent networks.
Euclidian distance-based is definitly more stable than jump-count distance as a base, so that is really good.

But UI is just partly solved by range-circles. Lets say we have three different types of buildings. How do you choose which types of buildings you show? Hardcoding one button for each type in production window for toggling on/off? Different colours?
Choosing the building type by right-clicking in production item list (which is especially hard if the building is unavailable)?

So this looks there is not a solution to prevent spamming of different building types but rather for a few cases where this is a must-have feature. So what are those cases where this is really necessary?
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#39 Post by LienRag »

I guess it's a bit pretentious to say that but imho you're looking at it from the wrong angle...
When I read Ophiuchus' proposal I immediately thought of Ancien Egypt Nomes and I very immodestely think it is actually the way to go.
Especially if we use too the concept of "frontier space" that Labgnome mentioned, and which I like a lot since it imho fits extremely well with an epic space-opera grand-tactical game universe...

I was (or am?) very wary of the mechanisms that are discussed about planetary revolts under enemy influence as they could easily get either boring or very tedious, but Nomes and frontier space is imho a way to make them actually fun and strategic.
I mean, in frontier space everything can happen, matters are resolved by force (either military or covert influence), probably on a planet-by-planet basis (even if domino effects can be fun if well implemented).

This while Nomes represent the progressive civilization of frontier space, and is one of the way to manage influence and influence costs: there would be two strategic decisions with high impact to be made, one at the establishment of a Nome and one that can be done each turn (like planet focus settings, it offers fine-tuning ability but doesn't produce micro-management if well implemented).
Basically, creating a Nome near your Imperial Palace guarantees control over it (it won't be at risk of falling to enemy influence projects) BUT means that either you won't extend very far or that you'll have a lot of unruly frontier space beyond your Nomes.
The opposite choice, creating Nomes further away, gives you more control over a vaster territory, but the Nomes themselves will become more vulnerable to enemy influence (probably at Nome level like it was proposed).

Number of Nomes (depending on the Nome capitols built) would depend on the Empire might, either via skyrocketing production prices for building them (not being able to build more than one at a time seems reasonable to me and takes care of the problem of when to apply the augmented price) or via a hard limit depending on technology.
I think that it's important that the only distance factor that impacts Nome loyalty is the one towards the Imperial Palace, not the one towards other Nomes (i.e building new Nomes gives you control over the planet that are in the new Nome and which may have been unruly before, but doesn't give you any supplementary control over farther Nomes).

The second mechanism in which Nomes would help manage influence is influence costs: the more leeway you give a Nome, the less it costs you influence upkeep, but the less you control what it does (obviously) and the more it is prone to enemy influence. Instead of having only vassal and protectorate planets as it was suggested there would be too vassal Nomes and protectorate Nomes and semi-independant Nomes and autonomous Nomes and semi-autonomous Nomes or whatever makes the game interesting to play.

It's to be used both on a per-Nome basis (but giving autonomy to a Nome would make other Nomes long for the same autonomy, maybe depending on their ties to the Imperial Palace, and reducing happiness in the Nomes that do not get what they want) and at a policy-level: this would work very well with policies imho, general policies defining the respective influence costs of each control level over the Nome, the effect on other Nomes with less autonomy, and what happens inside autonomous Nomes (a Centralization policy making giving one Nome autonomy quite costly politically).

I'm not in favor of having autonomy waste ressources, rather use them with more autonomy: building their own projects, setting their own foci, etc. Maybe even having preferences for a specific ship design (and not caring what the Empire builds). This should be done in a predictable way, so as to be potentially included in one's strategy (OK I know these Kilandows will put outposts on every Asteroid Belt in their Nome if I give them autonomy, I can live with that and it saves me a lot of influence points /vs these Trenchers will Terraform everything into Barren planets if I let them, I can't afford that, damn the influence necessary to keep them in check).

Because yes, choosing which Specie will get to have the Nome Capitol should be a strategic choice with consequences too: it could affect general Empire-to-Specie dynamics (what are you saying your specie is discriminated against? You have two Nome capitols out of five!) but more importantly, most Specie-to-Specie dynamic should happen at Nome level (Eaxaw could maybe think about considering to begin to bear being part of a non-Eaxaw empire, but certainly not being part of a non-Eaxaw Nome).

I am in favour of Labgnome's proposal to have specialized Capitol buildings that give a small boost to specific meters (supply, ship speed, defense, research, production...) in the whole Nome, but I'm not convinced that Nomes should have their own focus (Capitol choice is strategic planning, not management).

Changing Nomes organization should be possible, but quite expensive (not only building a new Capitol in a nearby planet to replace the one that was just scraped, but also getting a permanent happiness malus to the planet that lost its Capitol).
Changing a Nome's autonomy level should be easy if it's to give it more autonomy, quite expensive the other way: probably high influence costs and a happiness malus to all the planets of the Nome, and more so to its Capitol (albeit not a permanent one this time). This should mix well with policies adjustment: reducing a Nome's autonomy should be cheaper if it's done as a consequence of a general Policy/Civics change, and/or if it's working towards more coherence with the Policy/Civics that the Empire follows (i.e. if the Empire has a Centralized policy, any autonomous Nome should know that it may lose its autonomy and so the Influence/Happiness cost of doing so would still exist, but be lower than with a Decentralized policy).

As written earlier, all planets outside of a Nome (or direct control from the Imperial Palace) would be Frontier Space, but distance from a Nome capitol would affect their unruliness, so that building Nome capitols affects directly planets under Nome control (I think 4 jumps have been proposed?) but also indirectly other planets that are not part of another Nome. So if Supply goes beyond 4 (which it often does at least with my playstyle) there could be parts of an Empire that are well inside its territory but are still quite unruly, maybe being easy targets for deep-infiltration influence projects.

Nomes may too be an answer to the exponential colonization problem: yes one can colonize everything that orbits, but without careful strategic planning and adequate Nome placement the results will be a lot of unruly planets prone to rebellion under the influence of other Empires or even of Native planets.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#40 Post by labgnome »

LienRag wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 11:07 pm I guess it's a bit pretentious to say that but imho you're looking at it from the wrong angle...
When I read Ophiuchus' proposal I immediately thought of Ancien Egypt Nomes and I very immodestely think it is actually the way to go.
Especially if we use too the concept of "frontier space" that Labgnome mentioned, and which I like a lot since it imho fits extremely well with an epic space-opera grand-tactical game universe...
First question, who call them Nomes (an unfamiliar name to most people) rather then Sectors? What makes "Nome" a better descriptor then "Sector", a staple of sci-fi and something most players are going to initially posses a basic grasp of. I think calling them Nomes is unnecessarily obtuse.
Number of Nomes (depending on the Nome capitols built) would depend on the Empire might, either via skyrocketing production prices for building them (not being able to build more than one at a time seems reasonable to me and takes care of the problem of when to apply the augmented price) or via a hard limit depending on technology.
I am weary of a "skyrocketing" price increase mechanic for Sector Capitols, as I am in favor of a constant sector size and the number of sectors you want to have is very dependent on galaxy size.
I think that it's important that the only distance factor that impacts Nome loyalty is the one towards the Imperial Palace, not the one towards other Nomes (i.e building new Nomes gives you control over the planet that are in the new Nome and which may have been unruly before, but doesn't give you any supplementary control over farther Nomes).
So you are proposing constant loyalty/stability/happiness across Sectors?
It's to be used both on a per-Nome basis (but giving autonomy to a Nome would make other Nomes long for the same autonomy, maybe depending on their ties to the Imperial Palace, and reducing happiness in the Nomes that do not get what they want) and at a policy-level: this would work very well with policies imho, general policies defining the respective influence costs of each control level over the Nome, the effect on other Nomes with less autonomy, and what happens inside autonomous Nomes (a Centralization policy making giving one Nome autonomy quite costly politically).
This sounds overly complex and prone to micro-management. Those are both things we want to avoid in Free Orion.
As written earlier, all planets outside of a Nome (or direct control from the Imperial Palace) would be Frontier Space, but distance from a Nome capitol would affect their unruliness, so that building Nome capitols affects directly planets under Nome control (I think 4 jumps have been proposed?) but also indirectly other planets that are not part of another Nome. So if Supply goes beyond 4 (which it often does at least with my playstyle) there could be parts of an Empire that are well inside its territory but are still quite unruly, maybe being easy targets for deep-infiltration influence projects.
Are you proposing that sectors be immune to influence projects? Because I would have to give a hard no to that idea and say I am strongly opposed. That directly obstructs a potential angle of game-play that I am very interested in.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#41 Post by LienRag »

labgnome wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:48 pm
First question, who call them Nomes (an unfamiliar name to most people) rather then Sectors? What makes "Nome" a better descriptor then "Sector", a staple of sci-fi and something most players are going to initially posses a basic grasp of. I think calling them Nomes is unnecessarily obtuse.
Well, Ancient Egypt historians call them Nomes, and maybe ancient egyptians did too, I'm not sure (I'm under the opinion that it's a greek name?).
I don't know if it's a better descriptor than Sector, I know that since you call yours Sector and I offer a slight variation it makes things clearer if yours and mine do not bear the same name (basically, Sectors are the elementary management unit of a unified bureaucracy, while Nomes are the elementary political unit of a fragmented Empire), at least until a choice is made of what is taken from both angles into the final FO design.
(and yes, I do like this "Space Pharaoh" ring, I admit it shamelessly)
I am weary of a "skyrocketing" price increase mechanic for Sector Capitols, as I am in favor of a constant sector size and the number of sectors you want to have is very dependent on galaxy size.
The number of sectors you want to have yes, but the number that you can have? I'm not sure the answer is the same...
And that may be another difference between going the Sectors way or the Nomes way.
Besides, with a great galaxy comes a great responsability a great lot of ressources so it's still possible to have more Nomes than in a small galaxy, just not proportionnaly more.
Remember that my Nomes have effects, if not direct control, over planets outside their borders - so having more scattered Nomes allow to control more planets, even if it comes with a price.



So you are proposing constant loyalty/stability/happiness across Sectors?
English is not my first language, so I'm not certain whether "across Sectors" here means:
- "for all planets belonging to the same Sector", which I'm quite agnostic about (actually, I believe that one loyalty/happiness factor should be constant for all planets in the same Sector, while others - like the specie relation to the Empire and/or to the Capitol - should vary between planets of the same Sector).
- "for all sectors of the same Empire", about which I clearly wrote the opposite, namely that it should vary according to distance from the Imperial Palace (and other factors unrelated to distance, that I leave to the collective discussion).


This sounds overly complex and prone to micro-management. Those are both things we want to avoid in Free Orion.
Complex: a little bit, but I don't see how to make political decisions not complex at all.
Prone to micromanagement: I don't see how nor why, especially with the penalty described for changing autonomy status too often.

Are you proposing that sectors be immune to influence projects? Because I would have to give a hard no to that idea and say I am strongly opposed. That directly obstructs a potential angle of game-play that I am very interested in.
I do think that most of the influence/espionnage should occur in Frontier Space, yes. I am not opposed to have Influence projects work inside/against Nomes (except for those close to the Imperial Palace) but not as easily and maybe with different rules (especially in the sense that many actions allowed in Frontier Space would not be possible inside or against a Nome; and maybe that influence projects inside Nome space should target preferably the Nome itself rather than individual planets like in Frontier Space).

Basically, in Frontier Space you do shoot-outs, in Nomes you do shindigs : both can leave blood on the dancefloor but the later usually does it in subtler ways.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#42 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2019 2:08 am
labgnome wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:48 pmFirst question, who call them Nomes (an unfamiliar name to most people) rather then Sectors? What makes "Nome" a better descriptor then "Sector", a staple of sci-fi and something most players are going to initially posses a basic grasp of. I think calling them Nomes is unnecessarily obtuse.
Well, Ancient Egypt historians call them Nomes [...]
I am sure labgnome was saying that using in FreeOrion (a space opera game) the ancient Greek term for the ancient Egyptian concept of "regions dominated by a city-state, in turn subordinated to a supraregional state government" is not the best choice, unless you really like the Stargate saga :D

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#43 Post by AndrewW »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2019 6:43 am Well, Ancient Egypt historians call them Nomes [...]I am sure labgnome was saying that using in FreeOrion (a space opera game) the ancient Greek term for the ancient Egyptian concept of "regions dominated by a city-state, in turn subordinated to a supraregional state government" is not the best choice, unless you really like the Stargate saga :D
Also the original Battlestar Galactica had a bit of an Egyptian theme, but neither used the terms.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#44 Post by labgnome »

LienRag wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2019 2:08 am Well, Ancient Egypt historians call them Nomes, and maybe ancient egyptians did too, I'm not sure (I'm under the opinion that it's a greek name?).
I don't know if it's a better descriptor than Sector, I know that since you call yours Sector and I offer a slight variation it makes things clearer if yours and mine do not bear the same name (basically, Sectors are the elementary management unit of a unified bureaucracy, while Nomes are the elementary political unit of a fragmented Empire), at least until a choice is made of what is taken from both angles into the final FO design.
(and yes, I do like this "Space Pharaoh" ring, I admit it shamelessly)
I still think that there isn't a reason to call them something different. The differences you present aren't really significant enough from what has been proposed to warrant a different name. Especially if we are going to be taking elements from different proposals for our sector (or whatever we are going to call it) system, we don't need different competing name proposals as well. At the very least, if you really, really feel you must call it something different then why not something familiar like "province" or "state" or "territory". Also just because you might also want to play "space pharaoh" in all your games doesn't mean that's something everyone else is going to want to be cornered into.
I am weary of a "skyrocketing" price increase mechanic for Sector Capitols, as I am in favor of a constant sector size and the number of sectors you want to have is very dependent on galaxy size.
The number of sectors you want to have yes, but the number that you can have? I'm not sure the answer is the same...
And that may be another difference between going the Sectors way or the Nomes way.
Besides, with a great galaxy comes a great responsability a great lot of ressources so it's still possible to have more Nomes than in a small galaxy, just not proportionnaly more.
Remember that my Nomes have effects, if not direct control, over planets outside their borders - so having more scattered Nomes allow to control more planets, even if it comes with a price.
This is still something I very much dislike. Galaxy size is highly variable, and so any system for sectors should be able to accommodate large galaxy sizes.
English is not my first language, so I'm not certain whether "across Sectors" here means:
- "for all planets belonging to the same Sector", which I'm quite agnostic about (actually, I believe that one loyalty/happiness factor should be constant for all planets in the same Sector, while others - like the specie relation to the Empire and/or to the Capitol - should vary between planets of the same Sector).
This. I think that @Ophiuchus and I are on similar pages in that stability/happiness/loyalty should be based on distance to the sector capitol. You seem to be proposing, if I understand correctly that it would be constant across the sector, but vary between different sectors based on the distance from the capitol/core sector. This I think will only greatly encourage small, compact empires, and will discourage distributed empires.
Complex: a little bit, but I don't see how to make political decisions not complex at all.
Then maybe it's not a decition we should have in the game. In order to adhere to KISS design principles we cannot have everything we would like in a game.
Prone to micromanagement: I don't see how nor why, especially with the penalty described for changing autonomy status too often.
I don't want to have to set the autonomy of each sector I create and keep tack of that. There is already the planetary foci to keep track of. If there is a sector-level autonomy mechanic I'd prefer it to be more automatic. Plus you would need a whole UI just to set sector autonomy if it's going to be done individually.
I do think that most of the influence/espionnage should occur in Frontier Space, yes. I am not opposed to have Influence projects work inside/against Nomes (except for those close to the Imperial Palace) but not as easily and maybe with different rules (especially in the sense that many actions allowed in Frontier Space would not be possible inside or against a Nome; and maybe that influence projects inside Nome space should target preferably the Nome itself rather than individual planets like in Frontier Space).
Firstly there is more to influence projects than just espionage, there is also propaganda and terror projects. Also,here again you seem to be making things more complex than they need to be. I also don't think that proximity to the capitol should preclude the ability to perform influence projects. Now if we do adopt sectors, sector targeting influence projects should be a thing, and maybe planet targeting projects that target planets inside of a sector should cost more or take longer, but you should still be able to do them.
Basically, in Frontier Space you do shoot-outs, in Nomes you do shindigs : both can leave blood on the dancefloor but the later usually does it in subtler ways.
The whole point of influence projects is that they are "subtler ways" of doing things. Most of them will not be leaving "blood on the dance-floor",and those that do, part of the point is that they are meant to disrupt the comfortable lives of the citizens they target.
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Oberlus
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#45 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:51 pm[stability] would be constant across the sector, but vary between different sectors based on the distance from the capitol/core sector. This I think will only greatly encourage small, compact empires, and will discourage distributed empires.
If that is true, that would be good. Currently, there is little to none profit from playing compactsmall empires. Although that must be look at once influence upkeep is in place.

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