Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea?

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Sabin Stargem -> Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/8/2011 5:14:25 PM)
This post combines two others from the "Tired of 4x" thread, with suggestions on changing the colony rush. The first is very much about the broad idea, while the other idea is the difference between governments on certain points that change how they approach the private sector. I am putting them into this for people to more easily find and comment on them. quote: POST 1 A pre-warp setting would suit the Solar Drive and commerce concept from awhile back, though I would like to add another element. Unfortunately, it feels a tad iffy to me. I don't think that I have heard of any 4X to try it. The basic idea is that in addition to not being able to directly manipulate the Private Sector, that sector is actually an Independent faction. Any worlds, mines, stations, and areas it claims is something that it owns. In fact, all of the Private Sectors for each empire owe the barest loyalty to their originating points (though the Loyalty attribute helps in reducing prices and preference), and will try to make as much money as it could and have the Empires buy things from them. The Private Sector easily expands to new solar systems and colonize worlds, and offers to sell them to the highest bidders at some point, or perhaps hiring out solar systems for limited times. To invade an Independent world, or Solar System, means that it is harder to buy things from the Private Sector, including worlds, ships, technology, or information. The Private Sector has its own techtree, separate from that of the Empires and is generally supposed to be stronger in the early and midgame, only losing dominance as the empires come into their own. People generally colonize places in order to fulfill their desires, be it wealth, Independence, curiosity, or for a new life - Empires can't really supply this early on, because they are rigid and stratified structures, unable to make the dreams of people come true. The Empire has no place in the colony rush, and tries to instead to get what it wants by selectively purchasing certain properties and slowly expanding, not via pure military strength, but from good economic choices and exploration. That isn't to say that Empires can't own worlds, but their efforts should be much more concentrated, while the Private Sector covers everything that the Empires are not focusing on. quote: POST 2 (Much like the post above, a bit iffy to me.) Yah, knew about the Empire selling ships to the Private Sector. It might actually be an interesting way to further separate The Way of Light and Way of Darkness extremes, by having the more "Open" governments possess a stronger Private Sector, while "Closed" Governments have more control, but has an weaker economy for it, in terms of expansion and how income is gained. Open Governments: +Buys various goods from Independent sources for excellent prices. +Has a better reputation with Free governments. +Gains the most income through tourism and promoting trade. +Private Sector expands quickly in regions surrounding Open Empires. +Increases maximum amount of Free Trade percentage. +Private Sector performs research at an accelerated rate. +The collection and trade of Luxuries is emphasized. +Obtaining a large amount of a race will significantly increase the volume and value of trade with Empires and Independent worlds that have that race. A multi-racial empire becomes stronger. +May license technology developed by the Private Sector for use, but pays fees per licensed component. Developing the technology afterwards will remove the fee. -Purchase of colonies, sources of material, and other things through a market. Open Governments are bad at the cutthroat ways of Closed Governments. -Doesn't make many sales through constructing ships for the Private Sector -Weak influence on Private Sector ship designs, which often goes for what is cheap or the highest quality vessels in the galaxy. Quite random. -Invading worlds will really damage this government's ability to deal with Independent sources. -Private Sector can't readily enter Closed Empire regions, especially for colonization purposes - they are apt to be blown to smithereens. -Negotiating with pirates would cost more and hiring them as privateers will incur a greater penalty. -Pirates will manifest along trade routes. Closed Empires +Tightly controls the ship market, so there are increased sales of starships within their region, and the designs more closely match what is mandated by the Empire. +Private Sector is very slow to expand, which gives more time for the Empire to colonize worlds and solar systems without having to deal with Private Sector. +Obtains more taxes from colonies, and has a higher maximum cap for taxation. (100% for Way of Darkness?) +Impressive migration rates, within the region. +Ships are more durable and perform better than that of Open Empires, due to the best materials being reserved for Empire vessels. +Invading worlds has little effect on interactions with Private Sector markets, due to pre-existing hostility. +Purchasing black-market materials smuggled from other empires is possible, dependent on Pirates occupying such areas. This includes technology, rare resources, maps, and so on. +Promoted Privateer activity doesn't particularly concern citizens, they already got other things on their plate, so they can't be concerned about what happens to other people. +Armies on each world provides a morale bonus. +Receives extra money from each convoy inspected within their territory - escorts and frigates will intercept convoys, board them, and retrieve what is deemed contraband. +The fewer races integrated with your Empire, the happier and more productive your primary race would be. Worlds will start becoming segregated, with minorities being shunted to worlds your race doesn't like. +Boosted research ability for Military Sector. +Collection and trade of Strategic Resources is focused upon. -Increased corruption. -Low tourism levels. -Little incoming migration from regions outside of the Empire's. Most of the migration is outwards, most likely that of people who don't want to be in the Empire. -Larger amount of pirates, especially around low-morale worlds. -Worlds without armies have lower morale. Systems with little or no navies have lower morale.

Shark7 -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/8/2011 8:08:01 PM)
The problem is that with 4X games, you almost can't avoid the colony rush. Of course, there might be one way...by taking colonizing out of the hands of the player and putting it in the private sector. Here could be the system: Empires do not build colony ships, they build outposts. These outposts have a small population (1-5k) and would be similar to a mining station in that you get the goodies. The Private Sector can build a 'Colony Ship' which is exactly as we have now. The difference is that the private sector only builds a colony ship at a colony when the demand is met. Planets grow until they start getting 'crowded'. Crowded can mean 75% of max population. At this point, people demand more space and endeavor to move to one of the outposts. The private sector AI then builds the ship, loads up some civvies, and ships them off to the best outpost planet you currently control. This is a possible way to do it...not one that I personally want to use, but it would definately take the colony rush away from the player and make it more important to develope your econmy and culture. I'd support it as an option, but not the default.

Sabin Stargem -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/8/2011 8:40:56 PM)
My idea is somewhat similar to yours, but with differences in scale and focus. The Private Sector is essentially a gigantic super-faction originating from every Empire, that isn't aggressive in military terms, but colonizes many worlds with smaller colonies, while Empires create colonies that are more sizable and powerful individually, but much rarer. This in part because the Empires have a lot more red tape to wade through to colonize planets, while the Private Sector eschews most concerns of safety or adhering to Empire policies in order to pursue whatever goal participants have. However, Independent worlds should have a significant defensive military, if only to dissuade Empires and players from invading their worlds for an early advantage. Empire - Quality, to ensure loyalty to the Empire's principles and getting a large cut. Probably close to the borders of the Empire, for control and defense purposes. Private - Focused on getting a finger in every pie, even if they are small pies. These pies are expected to grow large. Basically many separate entities that agree to work together in order to get to the same place. Has a strong military in solar systems, but generally colonizes systems that are far away from Empires, in order to avoid being under the yoke of such. In addition to this, perhaps Independent Worlds can colonize nearby planets in the same solar system in a way that is similar to the Convoy suggestion, where one or two population ships of the convoy are focused on delivering the initial shipment of settlers, then convoys afterwards would deliver goods and migrants to bolster those colonies.

kenata -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 1:21:04 AM)
I would like to say that removing colony rush from 4x has been something people have been talking about for ages, and the only games to have tried it use heavily gamey solutions which make colony rush so down right terrible that you just don't want to do it. For instance, Civ VI made it so that new cities began to cost an arm and a leg to maintain. In many ways, this upkeep made limited sense and felt contrived. For DW, I think the best solution would be something on the order of a loyalty rating for a planet. This would be similar to the current happiness rating, but would reflect a distinct set of conditions, not expressed by the happiness of the people. For Instance, this rating would start at 100% and could go down for the amount of non-empire populous to arrive or as a longer lasting result of unpopular wars, and could go up due to military presence or empire freighters delivering goods. The idea would be that planets on the far edges of your empire which have limited interaction with your empire might simply defect and start their own empire.

Lrfss -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 3:45:24 AM)
One thing that could help the Colony Rush factor could be more interaction within systems and or the planetary aspect? As opposed to having 10 Bil systems under your control and vagely so, how about having more interaction and control of those you have if you choose to do so? Food for thought! I mean if you want to have huge control of planetary or system aspects, you will be very occuiped doing such if the aspect was there without throwing out what stands as well...? This thought could go on forever and many have hit on this much, Leaders all kinds of stuff. All in all just making things deeper if so desired I guess...?

Data -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 6:55:32 AM)
this makes me think of MOO2...again at some point you've got so involved in planetary improvments that you could forget about the expansion rush...more so if the expansion would eventually lead you to war sooner than you're infrastructure was prepared for. So there was even an incentive to reduce the expansion phase and concentrate more on development.

tofudog -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 1:19:19 PM)
So, if we start to think of the private sector as a faction, how far is the stretch to want to play it? I could imagine controlling some empire�s private sector, without direct control over the military, having to bribe some secretary of defense to stage fleet manouvers in a system some rival #~!�$%& set up a mining operation that I want to have, or competing in the design contest for a class of frigates incorporating some yummy new tech, or being contracted to set up a colony on Boskara 4, or whatever. It would not be DW anymore, but it would fit seamlessly into the existing gameworld (Like: In an expansion?). but your topic really is the colony rush, if I read that correctly, and the private sector is just the vehicle you check for its utility in implementing it. The way I would expect settling the stars would work, is a growing independence and stronger focus on local issues the further away from Holy Terra (or whatever) a colony is. So you could have to choose between a nearby low-value world, that you could closely control, or a faraway high-value one, that would slip your grasp, but would become an ally, if you played your cards right. A little bit of that is already built into the corruption factor (And to my way of understanding such things the real world handles corruption the other way round, with frontiersmen being the honest type and the fine art of tax-evasion a metropolitan thing). As both turnbased and realtimepausables have no limit on the potential micromanagement (if the game modeled it, I could tie all my captain�s laces individually, EACH MORNING) an artificial limit on the amount of control you could assert over each world might be in order - something like the expanding zone of culture from whatsit*, it had an expansion called Dark Avatar, and that zone would determine if a colony would remain within your control, or if it would start its own cultural zone and become independent once you had invested a zillion credits in terraforming. So you could still colonize outside your zone, but you would only seed the galaxy with people of your race, who would still be independent, non-taxpayers and susceptible to assimilation by anyone. How is that?

LoBaron -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 1:51:36 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Shark7 The problem is that with 4X games, you almost can't avoid the colony rush. Of course, there might be one way...by taking colonizing out of the hands of the player and putting it in the private sector. Here could be the system: Empires do not build colony ships, they build outposts. These outposts have a small population (1-5k) and would be similar to a mining station in that you get the goodies. The Private Sector can build a 'Colony Ship' which is exactly as we have now. The difference is that the private sector only builds a colony ship at a colony when the demand is met. Planets grow until they start getting 'crowded'. Crowded can mean 75% of max population. At this point, people demand more space and endeavor to move to one of the outposts. The private sector AI then builds the ship, loads up some civvies, and ships them off to the best outpost planet you currently control. This is a possible way to do it...not one that I personally want to use, but it would definately take the colony rush away from the player and make it more important to develope your econmy and culture. I'd support it as an option, but not the default. Though a nice idea this simply would replace the colony rush with an outpost rush, correct? (I am assuming that empires cannot build colonies on planets with foreign outposts)

Raap -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 3:36:49 PM)
Well, one has to consider that most 4x games were pretty much designed for colony rushing. I mean, very few of them have had penalties for undeveloped colonies, and it's also usually very cheap to build colony ships. Population growth is also much exaggerated in these games; consider the western world today, where very many countries don't have any population growth at all except by immigration. In other words, it shouldn't really be difficult to prevent the colony rush if so desired. Or at the least make it far less beneficial. You'd pretty much have to create an entirely new early-game though, since you'd have to replace the colony rush with something else in order for the player to have something to do.

Data -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 3:38:19 PM)
I actually played a little GalCiv2 up to Twilight of the Arnor, tofudog, and I think it's way to easy to use your influence as a weapon and gradually take most of the worlds. You can win even without realizing it, not sure I like the idea.

Sabin Stargem -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 5:44:17 PM)
Part of why it is so easy to win with Culture in GalCiv II stems from the fact that it is something most games haven't tried. Just about every good game is built upon what came before and dissecting the elements of older games, so it is relatively easy to get pretty graphics, GUIs, and combat right. Concepts like useful borders, and hands-off management are wild frontiers, so it is up to Stardock and Codeforce to figure out the right way to handle such things. I like Tofudog's idea, in that colonies created by the government close to home are likely to be loyal, while most government-made colonies on distant worlds are likely to not be part of the empire for long. Between this and the concept of the Private Sector's colonial dominance, it ought to slow down the colony rush for a fair bit.

Shark7 -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 6:31:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LoBaron quote: ORIGINAL: Shark7 The problem is that with 4X games, you almost can't avoid the colony rush. Of course, there might be one way...by taking colonizing out of the hands of the player and putting it in the private sector. Here could be the system: Empires do not build colony ships, they build outposts. These outposts have a small population (1-5k) and would be similar to a mining station in that you get the goodies. The Private Sector can build a 'Colony Ship' which is exactly as we have now. The difference is that the private sector only builds a colony ship at a colony when the demand is met. Planets grow until they start getting 'crowded'. Crowded can mean 75% of max population. At this point, people demand more space and endeavor to move to one of the outposts. The private sector AI then builds the ship, loads up some civvies, and ships them off to the best outpost planet you currently control. This is a possible way to do it...not one that I personally want to use, but it would definately take the colony rush away from the player and make it more important to develope your econmy and culture. I'd support it as an option, but not the default. Though a nice idea this simply would replace the colony rush with an outpost rush, correct? (I am assuming that empires cannot build colonies on planets with foreign outposts) Think of the outpost as a surface based mining station. If the another empire lands a 30m colony ship there, what are the 5k workers going to do about it? Sure the empire losing the outpost will get mad, but 5k workers can't fight off 30m colonists. In other words, all the outposts do is mark planets to let the AI know that this is a desireable place to send a colony ship when the time is right. I would so far to say that multiple empires could build the outposts on the same planet...and whoever gets there first with a colonizer gets it in the end. And I was just throwing out an idea for the end of the colony rush. I actually like DW exactly like it is.

tofudog -> RE: Empowering the Private Sector - Bad idea? (2/9/2011 9:42:32 PM)
So it was GalCiv. I remembered that concept because I abused it to death, so yes, it was too easy to do just that. What I had in mind was a far less radical version, something that made it extremely unlikely for a developed world to change hands this way. It should always be far more likely for a planet to declare independence and strike out on its own, rather than hanging its fate on a different (and in all likelihood alien) set of faraway overlords, when its populace is dissatisfied. But making it likely that planets where only a few traders a year dock, or where a vast majority of trade is foreign get ideas might be a good way for a soft colonisation limit - you still COULD seed the galaxy if you were prepared to deal with the outworld coalition (or whatever) later. On the other tentacle, with a vigorous private sector you might destabilize the opposition by taking over their trade - you would not get the worlds that declared independence as a result of your dominance outright, you would still have to woo them as allies or conquer them in war, with all the acompanying hassle of rep hits making it more likely for the rest of the galaxy to band together against you, not to mention the unrest generated when you attack the nth independent world of the same race, maybe loosing all the single worlds you gained up to that point in one sweep as a combined entity. Being a galactic superpower is not supposed to be easy. @Raap: long live the time accelerator, that enables you to pass the years until your empire gets its butt in gear in a tolerable time, while still retaining control of what happens.

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