October 2014 FMR review - Hardcoded Politics

[Whis]

I've always been curious at a way to effectively put hardcoded politics in the game; anything from subtle things like color coded maps to hard pacts that aren't breakable on a whim.

I leave it up to you, my forum warriors, to take this curiosity and make it a possibility.

[Bruskie]

Horrible idea.

[Wlerin]

I think softcoded politics would be beneficial, i.e. political relationships that have cosmetic effects but no mechanical ones, like colour-coding guilds based on treaties. (But you can still attack allies, etc.)

[Hasdrubal]

Regarding hardcoded politics, I would first show the implication of the event that happened during the WW2 - attack on Pearl Harbour: Japan attacked USA without declaration of war which brought USA to war. However, if Japanese had time to organize declaration of war PRIOR to attack (a day, hour, even half an hour), the response from US public would not be that avenging, probably USA even would not be able to enter the war. But, late with decoding of own code, made Japanese diplomats messy and they were about one hour late with declaration of war. US representatives and president already knew that attack was delivered when Japanese diplomates brought the note with declaration of war, but, they played the game well and we know what were the consequences.

I would say, that, if war is not declared and one side is PH-ed during the new war, then all players would have some advantages when facing the attackers' fleets later in the game, prior to end of war. That advantage must be high enough to refrain possibility of PH, save if such attack would makes all later fights neglegible, i.e., PH-ed side would not have strength to fight back or the peace declaration is imminent.

Another approach is to have, or force, players to build fleets in the way that only one (or few) ship types would bring them upper edge in combats - like in Birth of Federation, where Romulans have ships with stealth ability, Klingons have ships with best attack but low shields and armor, and Ferengi have fast ships with everything else unimportant (thus avoid hits). In AE we could have, say, Defenders of Empire with focus on capital ships (everything larger that DN has bonus), or Raiders (focus on fast ships) or Merchants (focus on escort ships and, obviously, recyclers capacity), just to name few. Player chooses the type of play he feels that suits him, and it stays in his profile (not public). He can, then, join only the guilds with the same type of play, i.e. politics, as guilds should chose own politics or type of play as well.

[loshi1505]

guild alliances... mechanically can still attack one another but can use each other's JGs...

also customizable guild colors would be nice.

[Dr Rush]

*shutters at Hasdrubal idea*

Soft coded politics like color coding okay. Hard coded politics, no just no. Meta-game mechanics are both more flexible & more interesting.

[Vaters]

*shutters at Hasdrubal idea*

Soft coded politics like color coding okay. Hard coded politics, no just no. Meta-game mechanics are both more flexible & more interesting.

Both Wlerin and you have mentioned soft-coded politics, and I think that's a cool idea. It would make the interphase more friendly and help guild leaders keep their players in line. It'd be a lot harder, for example, to say that an attack was made by accident on an ally. Even something as simple as colour coded guild tags - Green for Allies, Yellow for unspecified guilds, Red for enemies - would be awesome.

I have never read about a form of hardcoded politics that I remotely agree with. The only one that I can even think of would be a very minor delay between dropping guild and attacking members of that guild. I want to say a five minute delay. But I can't tell if this is my unrelenting hatred of random suicides (taking down randomly chosen targets simply because a player is leaving the game) talking or an actual suggestion... The trouble is that I completely agree with the very valid strategy of tactical suicides... So in reality this suggestion is terrible, but it's least terrible suggestion for hardcoded politics I can feasibly consider.