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Author Topic: Audience mechanic for a space 4X  (Read 6133 times)

LordArchibald

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #30 on: January 14, 2016, 02:42:39 pm »

OK, I got an idea and started the implementation. Thanks for all (most :D) of the posts, it was helpful. I will post again once I tested it.

One idea for courtiers might be to set up Ministries (Trade, propaganda, military, navy, personnel, etc) within the imperial court. You would assign a leader of each ministry, and assign courtiers to each as underlings, and the courtiers would grant bonuses to that segment of the empire, add bonuses in relevant decisions, and potentially foment intrigue/storylines as they attempt to rise in their ministry's internal hierarchies. You might have ranks for the courtiers in each ministry so that the courtiers are constantly jockeying for position. Courtiers at the top might give higher percentages of their stats as bonuses, while courtiers at the bottom contribute almost nothing. You might even have courtiers who are bad at their jobs and decrease productivity, but must be left in place for political reasons.
Let's now pursure the official's management. Yeah, it could be in the form of ministries. Let's forge out details how it could work.

Points to take into account:
* interface wise it's best if there were 5 or 6 ministries; each ministry ideally if made of 12 people (but could be more if necessary but then it would require scrolling, so 12 is prefered), they would be displayed in two rows (6x2) just like the audience picture in the first post
* it does not have to be connected to audiences (but that would be a plus) since I have these (probably) solved
* I'm willing to get rid of the "Court" tab if needed. So don't feel limited by that one (actually if there were ministries all people there could be considered courtiers).
* I tend to favour a solution where courtiers are preassigned to a ministry and can't move between ministries (easier for the player to grasp the situation).

You can also check this wiki link to get into the mood :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_%28government_department%29
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Cruxador

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #31 on: January 18, 2016, 09:22:28 pm »

Quote
"Characters mentioned in events unrelated to gameplay" sounds much more appealing to me :)
You can have characters like that, of course. But if none of the gameplay-related characters are part of events, what's the point in having them?
They could give bonuses (like governors & admirals in most 4X). Actually, that's how it works now. You have planetary governors that grant bonuses to planets, officers that grant bonuses to military and courtiers that grant bonuses empire wide.
Bonuses for no sake other than bonuses have no point unless your game strictly needs those bonuses, and it doesn't sound like it does.

Quote
I was thinking along the lines: factions (abstract entities) have representatives (characters) that appear in events and audience, also factions appoint various lower rank officials (like governors, commanders) to the empire (those characters grant bonuses to the 4X side of the game). How many officials a faction has is a reflection of the faction's influence.
This makes sense, but I also think that the major players can fill the "courtier" role of providing bonuses to the empire. They could also provide penalties, according to the requirements of the narrative, but it should be mostly bonuses since presumably they're competent people and it encourages the player to foment a galaxy in which things happen; that way the player's goals and design goals are aligned.
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LordArchibald

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #32 on: January 22, 2016, 06:07:27 am »

Ministries
I have this plan for ministries. I'm especially looking for answers to the questions I included. Or other variants of this.

There are 5 ministries (defence, finances, justice, foreign affairs, internal). Courtiers are divided between ministries and are tied to these. Typically you have 12 people in a ministry (could be more/less sometimes but overall the game prefers 12). Each ministry have stats (competence, loyalty, corruption) derived from the stats of the officials in that ministry (high rank officials affecting it more). Those people have ranks (1-9) which reflect their rank in the ministry, in addition the player chooses one persona as the minister (is the player limited by their rank?), the minister adds unproportionally more to the ministry stats. Probably the player should have some way to affect the ranks of the officials, like granting a honourary title to a persona means +1 rank. Also periodically the player should have an option to fire those officials (but not every turn).

There could be audience events/options like "fire 2 most incompetent officials in the MINISTRYNAME" (like if there was a blunder in a ministry).

I wonder also how to replace/replenish officials. Maybe some sort of "imperial academy" where you have a pool of unassigned courtiers; you could have regular events like "do you want to include this batch of candidates to the imperial academy (list of people with stats) or that one (another list)"?

Other comments?



Quote
"Characters mentioned in events unrelated to gameplay" sounds much more appealing to me :)
You can have characters like that, of course. But if none of the gameplay-related characters are part of events, what's the point in having them?
They could give bonuses (like governors & admirals in most 4X). Actually, that's how it works now. You have planetary governors that grant bonuses to planets, officers that grant bonuses to military and courtiers that grant bonuses empire wide.
Bonuses for no sake other than bonuses have no point unless your game strictly needs those bonuses, and it doesn't sound like it does.
I see... Well, bonuses aside, I do need planetary governors. They add a lot to the overall feel (hordes of imperial officials) plus look awesome on the interface. Bonuses or no bonuses I need to incorporate them into the game somehow. Maybe not directly under player's control (since there are many planets, the player could just deal with the central government while the local one could be on auto or something).
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Mephansteras

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #33 on: January 22, 2016, 12:40:33 pm »

I think that you should let the player fire officials whenever they want. However, doing so should have a negative effect on the ministry for that turn as a disincentive. Doing so too often should lower the loyalty of people in that ministry for a while due to bad morale.

Basically, you can shake things up as needed to weed out the garbage ministers but trying to get a ministry full of awesome people should be very difficult to due and ultimately probably not worth it due to the consequences of mucking with the ministry too often.

Having events that let you clean stuff out without penalty could be cool. It'd also be neat to see events pop up where the Minister fires some people, at least ostensibly for a screw-up, but could be politically motivated behind the scenes.
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darkflagrance

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #34 on: January 24, 2016, 04:13:31 am »

I assume there will be the ever constant threats of rebellion, usurpation, invasion, or piracy? I would love a balance between the need to keep the empire outputting enough resources and happiness to barely keep from collapsing under its own weight, and the threat of any effective officials becoming influential enough to overthrow you and force a game over.
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LordArchibald

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #35 on: January 24, 2016, 05:45:04 pm »

I assume there will be the ever constant threats of rebellion, usurpation, invasion, or piracy? I would love a balance between the need to keep the empire outputting enough resources and happiness to barely keep from collapsing under its own weight, and the threat of any effective officials becoming influential enough to overthrow you and force a game over.
Got this idea. Each faction has 3 stats: support (how much they love the Emperor), power/efficiency (how many resources they have at their disposal and therefore how much they benefit the empire), political power (how much political power they have, if too much they don't need the Emperor anymore). The player would want the positive factions to be efficient but usually & typically increase of their competence/authority/efficiency also results in their increase in political power which means trouble later. So, they player might prefer to choose options that grant those factions not the most optimal efficiency boost which also don't give them too much political power (example: choice A: +10 efficiency & +10 political power; choice B: +5 efficiency & +2 political power).
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darkflagrance

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #36 on: January 24, 2016, 09:00:48 pm »

I assume there will be the ever constant threats of rebellion, usurpation, invasion, or piracy? I would love a balance between the need to keep the empire outputting enough resources and happiness to barely keep from collapsing under its own weight, and the threat of any effective officials becoming influential enough to overthrow you and force a game over.
Got this idea. Each faction has 3 stats: support (how much they love the Emperor), power/efficiency (how many resources they have at their disposal and therefore how much they benefit the empire), political power (how much political power they have, if too much they don't need the Emperor anymore). The player would want the positive factions to be efficient but usually & typically increase of their competence/authority/efficiency also results in their increase in political power which means trouble later. So, they player might prefer to choose options that grant those factions not the most optimal efficiency boost which also don't give them too much political power (example: choice A: +10 efficiency & +10 political power; choice B: +5 efficiency & +2 political power).

So once a faction has too much political power it will begin to usurp other ministries or the empire, or interfere with imperial decisions? I like the different factors ensuring that there is no best answer to a factional dilemma without the full benefits of hindsight, to even encourage the player to sabotage their own empire.
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Chiefwaffles

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #37 on: January 24, 2016, 09:16:31 pm »

Political power should, in addition to being dangerous, also help you depending on how high it is.  How much it helps you should depend on support and the faction's goals. Meaning that players can, if they want, carefully maintain the political powers of various factions high to reap the rewards, while trying to keep it from raising any higher and avoiding the consequences already present for the current political power level.

A faction's goals should also heavily influence support. They want peace with another race and you're upping the war effort or insulting that race? Expect little support. So if you do what a faction wants, it'll like you more and therefore help you more.
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LoSboccacc

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #38 on: January 25, 2016, 05:40:39 am »

Political power should, in addition to being dangerous, also help you depending on how high it is.  How much it helps you should depend on support and the faction's goals. Meaning that players can, if they want, carefully maintain the political powers of various factions high to reap the rewards, while trying to keep it from raising any higher and avoiding the consequences already present for the current political power level.

A faction's goals should also heavily influence support. They want peace with another race and you're upping the war effort or insulting that race? Expect little support. So if you do what a faction wants, it'll like you more and therefore help you more.


some random idea on top of this

political power should factor in power of friends. when a new politician is added to the pool, if he's very skilled, established ones might want to add it to their entourages, leaving you with mediocre, unconnected politicians or good bud dangerously connected good ones.
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LordArchibald

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #39 on: January 26, 2016, 04:59:15 am »

Another concept:

Ministries/courtiers (characters) management is separate from audience (it's just a mechanic to provide bonuses to the Empire).

But an event/storyline can put a maker on a character that this character is involved in the plot (positive - if that character is helping you undercover the plot; negative - if that character is doing something shady), you could see those markers (icons with a tooltip explaining it). Then, while you manage officials you might want to refrain from firing those involved positively in a plot and want to find an excuse to get rid of those affecting it negatively. Then the number of charcters that are positive speed up the plot while those negative add  higher chance to trigger bad events related to the plot.

In addition there could be events related to ministries (they want a raise, found an incompetent one, minister involved in a scandal, a plot to assassinate a fellow courtier).


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LoSboccacc

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Re: Audience mechanic for a space 4X
« Reply #40 on: January 30, 2016, 07:35:50 am »

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