Here's An Idea...

mrxak

For those of you looking for ideas (and I know there aren't many of you), I just came up with one I'm not going to need for anything I'm currently working on. I'd really like to see it happen though, so maybe it'll inspire somebody and I can play this plug-in someday. And yes, I know this kind of topic is usually not encouraged around here all too well, but I think I'll bend the rules a bit for myself in the hopes that somebody picks this up.

Okay, basically you're a warlord. You start the game in a very powerful ship, an enemy of many systems around your mini empire, and collect taxes from your initially-dominated planets. Assassination attempts will be somewhat frequent, both from inside and outside your space.

So you're powerful, but where's the fun? The fun happens when you actually run your empire. You can go to a planet you own and through the BBS and other areas, you can order your people around. Want to raise taxes? Do it. You'll get angry citizens who are more likely to revolt and invite your enemies into your space, or some wealthy individuals might hire some mercenaries to go after you. You want to order your war minister to attack another government, go ahead. You can send fleets at your enemies and attempt a takeover (random ncb setting will make your success more, well, random), or of course you can lead your fleets from the bridge of your own ship at risk to yourself (demand tribute). Do you want to get your people to build you a new ship that's better than your original one? Well, you'll have to fund research and development, or create trade alliances with other governments with better technology.

To fund your war efforts, and other projects, you may decide to down-grade your ship. This increases your risk ("hey, the warlord is weaker, now's our chance!"), but also your available cash. Decisions like that would help make it a fun and interesting game to play.

Now of course you'll have to defend yourself and your empire. Attack your neighbors and they'll be sure to retaliate and attempt to steal your own systems. Or they may just go after you. If you're strong enough and order your minions to build up your forces well enough (and exploit your newly dominated planets), you should be able to take over the entire galaxy. Of course, you don't have to dominate the galaxy, surely there are other things to do to keep your people and neighbors happy and prosperous. Nah, screw them :p.

And remember, if you anger people enough, there may be a bomb secretly placed on board your ship. Keep your escape pod handy.

Now, if anyone likes this idea, please use it. I have plenty of ideas on how implement some of these things, and plenty more ideas for other things to do with the concept. I'd be happy to do any extra writing, planing, or generating ideas on implementation. Obviously this would be a fairly complex plug-in, with many, many branches. Heavy uses of cröns, disasters, and randomized ncbs would be required. I want to play this TC so much that I'm willing to help out as much as I can if anyone needs it. And let's use this topic to generate some more ideas for what a warlord might do, and what problems he or she might face.

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 07-06-2004).)

Masamune

Man, sounds like fun... very doable. I had a Romance of the Three Kingdoms plug that worked like this (or very, very similar) but my computer was stolen and that was the end of it.

Somebody, DO THIS PLEASE!

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Nick Anderson

I love your idea! Check your e-mail.

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Arion

Sigh... sure sounds interesting. Too bad I can't do it. I'm lacking the flexibility and imagination. I have no idea how to do most of the stuff.
I assume taxes are the fees from dominated planets. How do you want to raise them? How much a planet pays is set in the spöb editor and can't be changed during the game.

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Mazer Rackham

Quote

You want to order your war minister to attack another government, go ahead.

It sounds really interesting, but mrxak, if you have a way to have governments declare war on each other, I would dearly like to hear it.

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(This message has been edited by Mazer Rackham (edited 07-06-2004).)

Ace3

Maybe a bit could be set when you except a mission to say lead a strike force into a government there by switching the Gov. to hate one another.

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Guy

Quote

Originally posted by Ace3:
**Maybe a bit could be set when you except a mission to say lead a strike force into a government there by switching the Gov. to hate one another.
**

That's the whole question. How do you switch a gov to hate one another?

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slouch

Each government would have multiple govt resources. You could also have all of their spobs, systs, fleets, ships, etc change to the alternate govt resource (with different allies/enemies defined) when the NCB is set. It can definitely be done. The difficulty would depend on the scale of the scenario and how much would have to change.

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WraithSniper

This sounds like a good idea, a little different from some of the existing Nova plugins, and, very possible to do. It would probably result in a very complex plugin, but still, possible. The fun would come from adding elements of turn based strategy games, like some of the ways you outlined. However, I think if you only did a plugin from this starting point, it wouldn't be as good as it could be. Instead, have a basic gameplay setup similar to what you outlined, and the option to play as one of several factions in the plugin, one of which could be a warload type character.
The real challege with a plugin with gameplay like this is, in order to really do it well, it could take a lot of missions, and of course, a ton of bits. That's the complex part. However, it sounds fun, and is certainly something worth trying, since it's rare to have a Nova plugin with that level of detail to what the player does, and how important he or she is. The whole, start as a trader and work your way up to master of the galaxy storyline can get a bit old; a storyline where the player starts out already in a position of power is a nice fresh take.
So, you don't mind if someone might take parts of this idea and made a plugin with them?
Wraith ponders....

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WraithSniper

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Originally posted by Guy:
**That's the whole question. How do you switch a gov to hate one another?
**

A cron, maybe. Or an action caused by the player. You could have something like a mission the player could accept, where the mission is basically a gift or bribe from another government that the player accepts, causing another governement to get angry and attack. Just a few mission bits set by accepting and completing the mission.

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Andcarne

It is a very good idea. May just be done. Perhaps.

Anyways, another big issue here, is that it would wreck havoc with any random destination missions, and be the only possible string, due to the large volume of missions/crons/bits needed to do this. The random destinations, of course would fail because of the duplications.

Add this to my dream-list of engine changes. In fact, I think thats the number one change I'd like. Random destinations to work fine with multi-version-planets. From a technical perspective, It shouldn't be too hard to implement. Course, it all really depends on Nova's source...

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WraithSniper

(quote)Originally posted by Andcarne:
**It is a very good idea. May just be done. Perhaps.;)

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**

Andcarne

True.

It's often nice to use random destinations though, from a programming-them-in point of perspective. Of course, Aftermath uses very few random mission destinations. Thats another thing to add to my wishlist.

A way to keep the same random destination throughout a multiple-mission-appears-as-one set. Seeing as virtually every other mission is this way....

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Guy

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Originally posted by WraithSniper:
**

Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
**That's the whole question. How do you switch a gov to hate one another?
**

A cron, maybe. Or an action caused by the player. You could have something like a mission the player could accept, where the mission is basically a gift or bribe from another government that the player accepts, causing another governement to get angry and attack. Just a few mission bits set by accepting and completing the mission.
**

So what exactly is it that causes the government to get angry? This would only work against the player though. You can't actually have two separate governments change their ally/enemy relationships without using up a ton of resources.

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mrxak

Hey, the government doesn't have to hate your government, only you. Add in some missions and special bit-activated düdes and it should work. As you dominate planets, you switch them to another s˙st/spöb. Since the only other faction that really needs to take over those planets are the original owners (with few optionally-implemented exceptions), the only real complexity comes in space you already own, which many different factions might conquer. However, following borders and well-scripted series of events (not to mention the fact that you're going to have opportunities to defend your space), it should probably work out well too. The engine doesn't have to be all that intelligent, it only needs a well-planned scenario. The player is still limited by the options he or she gets in the BBS. They should be plentiful, and branch out all over the place, but still predictable for the designer to create.

seant

Quote

Originally posted by slouch:
**Each government would have multiple govt resources. You could also have all of their spobs, systs, fleets, ships, etc change to the alternate govt resource (with different allies/enemies defined) when the NCB is set. It can definitely be done. The difficulty would depend on the scale of the scenario and how much would have to change.
**

Yeah. I mused on just such a subject on the Nova board:

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from yours truely:
**I find it super frustrating that one needs to make new systems, spobs, etc if a system changes govts. Let's imagine there are 3 govts in the game and that each govt starts out controlling just one syst. They can be all at peace, all at war, two allied against the third, all allied, or one (or both) can be conquored by the other.

My calculations could, and probably are wrong, but with 3 govts and three basic systems, one would need at least 45 s˙sts (though fewer govts) to get all the combinations or peace, war, ally and conquored that could happen. Remember, that's just with 3 starting systs. Imagine if there were 100 total systems. This doesn't even take into account things like settling of new systems by each govt.
**

So, while it is possible to have govts declare war against one another, its usability is limited due to resources limits.

-STH

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Phyvo

Couldn't you just have a setup like this for the governments?

GovtA: Is just it's usual self. Hates all govs of class 1, is class 4.
GovtB: Hates class 2, is class 5.
GovtC: Hates class 3, is class 6.

Now, here's the interesting part: With three factions, you'd need just two more duplicate govts to belong to each class the govt doesn't hate. i.e., for Govt A:

GovtA1: Belongs to class 4, hates classes 1 & 5.
GovtA2: Belongs to class 4, hates classes 1 & 6.

And so on. A cron, I suppose, could switch the use of the extra govt on or off. I guess you could duplicate all the govt ships too, and set the cron to toggle their OnAvail value (the dudes in each syst would already be set to have them. But they wouldn't be there all the time, since all the ships have OnAvail bits). By having only 3-4 ship types per faction (like in EV), the use of the ship resource wouldn't go overboard. Perhaps you could have 10 ships including varients per faction, three factions means 30 ships per faction, and that's 90 ships. I suppose you could go with four factions and 120 for a bit of variety, but I hope you get the point here... You'd still have room for independent ships too. You'd just have to deal with not having a million ship varients like EVN has, though.

Heh, I just realized a problem with my stratagy... It would reduce the number of different types of ships you could have in each system that could be "under attack" by the govt. Wide borders would solve this problem a bit, I guess.
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(This message has been edited by Phyvo (edited 07-07-2004).)

slouch

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Originally posted by seant:
So, while it is possible to have govts declare war against one another, its usability is limited due to resources limits.

Yes, creating a scenario that allows for all possible combinations would get out of hand very quickly. But, a scenario where the player is given a limited number of options with visible and lasting effects on the overall universe can be done. I guess we just have two different situations in mind.

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(This message has been edited by slouch (edited 07-07-2004).)

UncleTwitchy

I use something very similar to this with the Klingons and the Gorn in SFA.

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Ace3

All those ideas where along the same line as what I was thinking. I guess I'll just have to make my post more understandable.

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I am the Ace of games
I can out fly any comp