Proposal: Micromanagement
I was talking to mist the other day, and it got me thinking about how we play this game. As it stands its just a glorified database – number of ships, their stats, roids, co-ords etc are just numbers. I was also thinking that we don't actually spend much in the way of time playing the game itself – once you've ordered more ships and checked the gal status (heh), that's it for the hour. Whilst the former (glorified database) cant be helped much, I was starting to think about how we could make the game more interesting between ticks, but not making it too important so that people don’t have to sit in front of their planet all day.
As a bit of a warning, the more I thought about this, the more I realised that the game itself would need to be changed. Thus, people who say 'but its not really Planetarion!’ and so on, I don’t particularly care at this stage. At the moment, I'm trying to bash out an idea. Besides, the PA as we know it is dying/dead already – appealing to a new audience whilst keeping the existing playerbase would be a Good Thing ™ I believe.
The idea started with separating the game into Internal and External Affairs. External affairs are how the game is currently played – interplanetary war, alliances and the like. However, Internal Affairs is where the micromanagement kicks in.
Internal Affairs:
In this section, I thought of a number of things that could be displayed/monitored:
Government:
At startup, along with a race-choice and naming the planet etc, a player would select the type of government that s/he wanted to participate in. I envisaged four types of government, with a certain bonus allocated depending on race – ie Xandathrii and Totalitarian would go together and give a certain bonus. I haven’t really thought much about the different types of Government, but I was thinking perhaps a monarchy, oligarchy, totalitarian and some other (not democracy – would you loose control of your planet if you were voted out? Should players ‘die’? – I wouldn’t have thought so.) The type of government that is selected is important, as you will see later.
Economy:
In the “real world”, the military does not receive 100% of government spending – and this spending doesn’t represent the entire economy’s output (unless you live in North Korea – heh). I was thinking that this could/should be reflected in the game.
Here, you would select a type of economy – Communist, Central or Capitalist. A totalitarian/communist planet might have an advantage as they seem to go hand in hand, and an oligarchic/capitalist planet might also receive a bonus.
I envisaged that a player could set a certain tax rate on his/her economy, which would then translate into resources to build ships or scans etc. Clearly, a low tax rate would, initially, give the player fewer resources than a high rate, but in the long term permit the economy to grow at a faster rate.
Furthermore, the type of government would also effect the manner in which your economy operates – a totalitarian communist type economy would grow slower than a oligarchic capitalist economy, but is less likely to fall into recession (and if it does then it would be a smaller recession), and a sudden reduction in population would not affect the economy as much. Ie, its more shock-proof. And vice versa.
The game decides when you fall into recession using a formula that I haven’t thought up – however the idea is that it is cyclical. Ie, the economy grows quickly, then slows down, then falls slowly, then plummets, then recovers, and grows quickly. Players can, however minimise the loss and maximise the gain by adjusting their level of taxation at certain times in the cycle – high taxation during booms and low taxation during busts, or delegate the role to a Council of Economists (this is really for those people who do not either understand and/or have the time to stuff around with their economy – think of it as an autopilot. The Council would stop disasters but not perform as well as ‘correct’ human intervention).
You can also alter your economy’s efficiency by allocating resources into ‘productive activity’. These resources would come out of your taxation revenue, and in the long term increase growth rates. Clearly a communist economy would not receive a bonus as high as a capitalistic economy, however a totalitarian government would receive a higher bonus than an oligarchic government (totalitarian government has more control over people’s activities etc).
The Role of Asteroids in this proposal is that each one contributes a certain amount to your economy. Lets say that the economy is measured in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and each roid gives you 1000. Your economy starts off at a number (lets say 10 000 units), and can grow on its own from anywhere from –5% to +10%. Asteroids would then contribute 1000 units of GDP to your economy. With a tax rate at 20%, your resource income for Tick 1 (without any roids) would be 2000 credits (10000*0.2), which you can then distribute to ships, scans, productivity, police etc. Note that for this to work Metal, Crystal and Eonium will have to be merged into one unit otherwise it would further complicate matters. This one unit could simply be called Dollars/Euros (though any name for money would be ok). I'm not very sure about this section of the proposal, I think it needs a lot more work – specifically the value of asteroids decreasing as time passes is a bad thing.
Subsection: Population
This section I am also not sure about. Your planet could display a population size that would have no impact on scoring etc, but rather is solely for your economy. Population could be another link between internal and external affairs (along with Taxation) insofar as Enemy Ships could kill people (read: Structure Killers) – these people would then not be able to work in the economy and so GDP would fall. Although I'm not sure how much each person is worth (it would be tiny), a Communist economy would place less value on a person than a capitalist economy. Population could also determine when Micromanagement would actually kick in (read the Post Script). Thoughts?
Internal Security:
This section would micromanage domestic security. In all societies the people can protest/demonstrate/revolt etc – and the resources that you put into security would limit the damage caused by a general strike or by a revolt etc. The idea behind this was that top 100 ish planets would suffer more domestic problems (storyline: their populace is arrogant or whatever), and thus players would have to worry more and more about the situation on the home front whilst also fighting their normal wars. This is designed to be a limiting factor – resources into security would not be used for building ships and the like, thus keeping the top planets from growing exponentially.
What I would like to see with this feature is that top planets would, because of their dominance, become unstable internally. Then, external enemies could take advantage of this and attack this top player. Depending on the system of government and some random factor, the people (after the attack) could either unite and become stronger or die (meaning reduced total output and/or become less efficient, making the economy grow less and thus less taxes for ships etc). This last bit ties in with the type of government – a communist state would have more people dying but it would matter less than the other forms of government (yes, I am callous
).
As with the Economy, player intervention at this level would either reduce the occurrence and/or reduce the severity of damage caused by these uprisings. However, as mentioned before, allowances have to be made for those players who cannot micromanage – and so this section’s autopilot could be a Police Commissioner. I don’t actually know how a player could intervene in this section, like maybe hunting down ringleaders only or shooting people who are revolting on sight? (Edit: lol - if you shot everyone who was revolting then it would improve the gene pool!
) A pull down menu of actions or something? Ideas anyone?
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, a player would select their type of government, type of economy, set taxation rates, allocate resources to efficient behaviour and allocate resources to internal security. So, whilst I’ve done my best to make it sound complicated, it isn’t really all that hard – and it has the added advantage of significantly increasing the importance of strategy into PA. Strategy including; “Do I set a really high tax rate and benefit now, or set a low tax rate and let my economy grow faster?” Or, “Should I throw resources at productive behaviour or build more ships?” Or, “My planet is in revolt – how should I end it so I loose the least?” and so on.
So, whinging about it not being PA aside, what do you think?
PS: mist mentioned that PA is hard enough to learn already, without having to describe these changes to them as well. He suggested that, after a certain point was reached, that these features then became available. I agree. I was thinking that once a planet approached a certain level – say half a million Population – they could receive a message from the Intergalactic Council mentioning something along the lines of; “We have noticed that your planet will soon develop to a size where micromanaging your planet will become necessary. We suggest that you read the following material to give you a basic understanding of micromanagement. Enjoy.” After two days or so, the Internal Affairs listed above become available.
Looks like Tactitus might get his much vaunted Sim Planet after all!
Re: Proposal: Micromanagement
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