View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0015202 | The Last Federation | Suggestion | May 16, 2014 5:01 am | May 22, 2014 2:07 am | |
| Reporter | Ragwortshire | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.019 (Solar Wind) | ||||
| Summary | 0015202: Culture/Ideology system | ||||
| Description | This suggestion is intended to address the following issues: - Races lacking personality to some extent. - Attitude building mechanics being somewhat clunky and breaking immersion. I suggest that a new category of statistics be added for each race, namely "Culture" or "Ideology" statistics. These measure both how prevalent a certain phenomenon (e.g., violence) is in that race's society and how positively or negatively that phenomenon is viewed. These stats do not affect the race's economic or military performance directly. Rather, they contribute to how race attitudes develop with time. CULTURE STATISTICS: Each culture statistic ranges from -100 to +100 and can start positive or negative. Examples of culture statistics could be "Violence", "Mass Media", "Philanthropy", "Academia", "Social Services", "Discrimination", "Intrigue", etc. A positive score indicates that the phenomenon in question is an important part of the race's culture; a neutral score indicates it is not, and a negative score indicates that most members of that race highly disapprove of the phenomenon (for example, the Andors might disapprove of Violence and Discrimination, while the Burlusts might disapprove of Academia and Philanthropy). Each month, mutual race attitudes are modified by an amount proportional to the product of their individual culture statistic. So for example, with three statisitcs of "Violence", "Mass Media" and "Philanthropy", we could have: Andors: (-50, -10, 50) and Burlusts (50, -30, -25): Change each month proportional to (-50)*50 + (-10)*(-30) + 50*(-25) = -2500 +300 -1250 = -3450. This change should IMO be *slow*. In the example above, the coefficient could be 0.0001 so that the change per month is -0.345. That's about the same as a single negative attitude building, and for races that are pretty diametrically opposed. The reason I recommend slow changes is that they will potentially be in effect for the entire game! Starting statistics would be pre-defined for each race, giving them more "personality" without affecting their power levels, and would vary randomly over time. "Extreme" values (< -50 or > 50) would produce negative feedback effect, so that races are unlikely to become cariacatures. Some events (e.g., Coup, Mass Riots) could potentially interact with culture statistics, being more or less likely depending on how the society views the underlying phenomena. Ideally this would be "balanced" so that having a positive or negative stat would not give an unfair advantage. Potentially races could have unique events which reward them for staying close to their starting values, or penalise them for straying too far. Events (new and/or existing ones) could also have significant one-time effects on the statistics themselves. ATTITUDE BUILDINGS: Instead of modifying racial attitudes directly, Attitude buildings would instead modify the culture statistics by a small amount each month. Thus the effect of an Attitude building would be initially slow, but would continue to build up until the statistic in question hit +-50, at which point negative feedback would kick in and an equilibrium would be found. Thus the player would still have a decent amount of input, but the system would be less predictable and changes would occur over a longer time frame. In particular, if events which modified the statistics were introduced then the player might, e.g., make the Peltians more violent to improve relations with the Acutians, only to have the Acutians become pacifist due to an event. Of course the event frequency should be such that this does not happen often enough to cause frustration, but just often enough that it has to be considered as a possibility. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Missing from the above is how and where to display all of this information to the player? I suggest a screen similar to the current Race Relations details screen, but with a central line and positive bars to the right in blue, negative bars to the left in red. This screen would be accessible via buttons on both the Race Relations screens as well as the Planet Details screen and the Politics screen for each planet. |
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Consider a way to make the changes one-way. (This would require the player t build culture buildings on both planets, and could create more intereting relations - like the Peltians looking up to the Andor, but the Andor not seeing them as particularly special - or the Burlust despising the Andor, but the Andor still like the Burlust, etc) Also, what if, instead of dictating a static amount of change, it dictated a "target" net influence, and moved the appropriate relation towards that "target" each month. So, for instance, the Peltians might end up with a culture score of 100 towards the Andor. So any time the Peltian to Andor relation is below 100, it'd incease (and the increase would be greater the further from 100 it was) and any time the relation is above 100, it'd slowly decrease back to 100 (again with greater decreases the further from 100 it is). This would make developing culture an important aspect of federation creation. As you build buildings and do dispatches and resond to events or misisons to bring vastly different cultures to see eye to eye, so that they can slowly learn to respect each other. This "target relation" system means that the player and the simulation can do horrible or wonderful things to each other, but over time the memory will fade back to their cultural compatibility. So relation adjustments become more temporary and culture adjustments are more "permanent". Now giving the player control over culture (through buildings/dispatches/other political options-like sabotage) gives the player the ability to mould the "ideal", but the simulation still has more control over the actual influence levels, so that even if the player has made 2 races incredibly compatible, if they have long standing grudges, they might still not be getting along. So now the player has to take steps to end wars (or whatever other influence factors) and then give them time. This makes it so that the player's actions have more lasting effects (ie, all their work isn't undone in a signle decision by the smulation) and allows more immediate type actions to have a larger impact (since they aren't permanent). Anyways, here's the thoughts I had. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 16, 2014 5:01 am | Ragwortshire | New Issue | |
| May 16, 2014 8:06 am | Ragwortshire | Note Added: 0038135 | |
| May 21, 2014 2:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| May 21, 2014 2:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => considering |
| May 22, 2014 2:07 am | Drak | Note Added: 0038270 |
