Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Diplomacy: Alliances

Alliances are different from MDP, in that an Alliance is more like a 'Team' instead of just an agreement between 2 empires. Of course, it will need some mechanism to determine if an empire will join an alliance...much like the biases already in existence. For AI purposes, it would almost have to be set up in a way that would tell the various AI empires which alliances they are more likely to join. We could even pre-define some alliances...Say the Shaktur Alliance and the Freedom Alliance that certain races would be more likely to join. (IE bugs for Shaktur and Human, Kaidan, Ackdarian for Freedom).

This would be most useful for custom themes where the designer can define up to any number of difference Alliances that can either start already allied, or be joinable depending on the diplomacy choices of the AI and player.

If we have a simple text file like the biases that is simply names each empire down the left side and allows you to define any number of alliances along the top by number, with the alliance name listed below the table. A simple yes/no check in the races file would determine if the race in question is locked to a particular alliance, or just heavily biases toward it. IE Shakturi would ALWAYS be part of the Shaktur alliance, but the Boskara would only be likely to join, but could be convinced to join a different alliance via diplomacy. Also in the biases file, certain races could be defined as nuetral (say by using a 0 for preferred alliance). These empires would have to be wooed via diplomacy.

For an example, a theme designer wants to make a theme based on the Star Wars universe. And lets say he wants the following factions represented: Galactic Empire, Rebel Alliance, Corporate Sector, and Trade Federation. With the Alliances bias, he can define all 4 factions, and take each race and define the faction it will be part of OR the faction(s) it is likely to join. In other words, races should be able to be biased to more than 1 faction. Imperials would or course be locked to the empire, while a race named simply Human could join either Empire or Rebellion (IE if you have two Human empires in game, they may both join the same faction or one join faction X and the other join faction Y).

Alliance rules/perks:

-- Must have positive relations with all members to join, unless defined as always member in races file
-- Automatic MDP, fueling rights and mining rights between all members
-- If any member goes to war with another empire, all members automaticallya declare war (doesn't matter who starts the war either)
-- Boosted trade income and tourism income between alliance members
-- Small research bonuses (no more than 10% so we don't completely unbalance the game)
-- Small mining rate boost (again no more than 10% for balance)
-- Harder to sour relations between members
-- Once joined, it would take a lot to make a member switch sides, but not be impossible (IE the reliability gets boosted once the race has joined a faction)
-- Empires that fall below a certain relations thresh-hold with other members would leave the alliance...this would take a lot of work by other empires or the player to sour relations to this point though

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dotdotdot

Rather than have defined sub-roles, CodeForce should use a generic sub-role system.

I.E: Instead of having Escort/Assault/Hunter, you'd have Escort (Sub-Role 1), Escort (Sub-Role 2). You could rename the roles as you please, but a Sub-Role 1 ship will only retrofit to an upgrade of Sub-Role 1, and so on and so forth, unless the player changes their settings to allow sub-roles to retrofit outside of their upgrade path.

quote:

ORIGINAL: arkhometha

Well, Shark7, I agree with your wishes until Diplomacy: Alliances. I found your definition of alliances too... strict. For example, I don't think allies should be forced to go to war. Backstabbing should happen, nobody should be forced to automatically declare war. They should be asked if they want to go to war. I also don't think there should be any other benefits from alliances, like military or economically. Maybe some increased immigration, espionage chance between allies and maybe tourism, as you suggested. Allies relations should be good but they should deteriorate normally and there shouldn't be too much pre-definitions. Like, a pacific and a aggressive race shouldn't normally ally but there should be no problems between bugs and humans, or a "neutral" race to ally with aggressive or passive races.