quote: Original post by Goragoth
(both the politician and General would have to agree to attack another nation).

This constraint is the complete antithesis of what is being strived for.

Let''s take what you just said in another context - and think carefully about this.

Both the politician and General would have to agree to attack another nation, if they have agreed that is how their governing system works, and they both adhere to it.

quote: Original post by thelurch
Perhaps I should also clarify one other thing, I tend to see each player in the game as a person Not some God or power entity that can see through the eyes of every character under him.
If one of his factories burn down, he will be totally ignorant of it until someone actually calls him to tell him or he starts to wonder why he hasn''t recieved a report from them and sends someone to investigate or he goes there to award the employee of the month.
So the game can actually be played from a first person point of view, a man in his office, with his maps, charts, videophones etc which are only updated when he (or his secretary) gets the information and feeds them into the system. He can travel from place to place, make calls etc. but at any point in time he is only aware of what is directly under his five senses!

This is a very salient point that I assumed everyone understood to be true. And let it be known that if that factory burns down, there actually has to be another player (or group of players) to get that information to the factory owner. The only other way the player would know about the factory burning down is if the player installed a video camera on the premises, or was physically there.

How that news gets to the factory owner might be through an aid (another player) who reports on the activities of the corporation. Or it might be as a news blurb written by another player, and the factory owner happens to subscribe to that news service.

Just to clarify what I meant by both the General and politician would have to agree to attack another nation. I did not mean that the game would put up that constraint, not all. A General could attack without being told to but he would not be in charge of political inter-nation dialogue and would most of the time not have the overview neccessary for such an action. Besides, once the "government" finds out what happened there would be hell to pay. In real life that''s how it works and that should be reflected. The politician has to order the person in charge of the army to do an attack though and can''t do it directly (unless he is also the General in a military dictatorship, which should be possible but difficult because of the complexities of managing both aspects). Confusing stuff. It should be possible to combine career choices (these may be predefined or more freeform) but there should be a penalty for doing so (this need not be a built-in limitation as such but could be simply the complexity of doing so). I''m thinking something like D&D where its possible to combine classes (eg Fighter/Mage) but there are penalties in that you are never really good at one thing. Don''t take this the wrong way that I think there must be clearly defined careers or anything but you must not be able to do everything but I also think that there shouldn''t be tedious micro-management either because that isn''t fun and what''s the point in a game if its not fun?

quote: Original post by Goragoth
My bad. I''ve been thinking inside the box again, such a common plague these days

Sometimes all you need is a little nudge to see the light (tongue firmly in cheeck )

quote: I can see that there are two sides here though, the people that want military action included and those that don''t (at least not much).

I wouldn''t say that. I definitely believe a military is a necessary component of any nation. If was to subscribe to the notion that there are two major camps here, I''d say that one is comprised of players of current RTS games, and they are ebing overly influenced by the primarily military focus of such games, yet intermingled with enough "social micromanagement" as to give the illusion of being politically strategic to the casual observer. The other camp is comprised of people who, whenever they played an RTS (which was rare, along with FPSes, RPGs and the majority of "hit" titles), always asked the question "why can''t I do that?" - and no one ever had a good answer.

quote: ...but military dictatorships that harrass other nations should also be possible (although you do want to avoid any player amassing an army and wiping out everyone else).

Avoid, maybe. Prohibit, maybe not. If the other players are dumb enough to let one guy amass enough military force, etc to overpower everyone in the geographical vicinity, then they deserve to lose and start over. And the lack of guarantees is part of what creates constant tension in the game.

quote: Something that should be avoided is a power hirachy where newbies are delegated to menial micro-management tasks, people won''t put up with it.

It should never occur. Every player is a productive entity on a cooperative scale, ie not "a single person sweeping the hall" or running errands, etc. Each player is in a position to provide corporate services and compete with other service providers. So while a newbie may not be wealthy and powerful, he/she is not subservient to any other players either - unless he/she willing decides to submit (military service, for example) to another player.

quote: The system should only report information on the immediate sorroundings (not 1st person style IMHO but more abstracted to mean the city/nation/planet you are positioned in or depending on the scale of the event perhaps...

That, and news feeds from any subscription services you have signed up (and paid!) for.

quote: And now to be annoying again Why do you need strict rules? Same reason why communism and anarchy don''t work. People aren''t inherently good and need rules or things break down.

There are some humans who advocate both communism/socialism and anarchism in real life. If certain players want to try it out in this virtual environment (creating a chaotic state), let them.

Fundamentally, this game embodies the principle of "with power comes responsibility" or "actions have repercussions." We don''t prevent the player from engaging in any action whatsoever, but we don''t prevent (extremely) severe repercussions from occuring either. Grief? You''ll probably be assassinated/decimated by war. PK? Ditto. We don''t care; choose your actions wisely.

Shucks I have to rush.

Umm, The issue of Assasination, stealing, some types of spying and basically anything that involves sneaking around will be very dependent on our representation of the physical wrld.
First I really don't think dice rolls, or simple statistic comparisons will do them justice becuase the success of these acts should be mainly dependent on the effort that was put into planning them (getting security plans, causing diversions, walking quietly etc.) I seriously doubt this can be implemented to the level possible in say a first person shooter becuase of resources invovled, however we can try to implement a simplified version that still rewards careful planning. There are obvious advantages in using a First person 3D view for this, but it might make it necessary to be extremely exhuastive in our modelling of property. e.g. diskette(chips), computers, rockets etc. and these add no value to any other part of the game except espionage so the advantages of such detail are questionable. Perhaps if the game only had indoor environment- player moves from car to building to car to anther building it might help, but I'm still not sure about that. An isometric view might do it, but I can't see how that will smoothly switch into the office communication scenes which actually comprisse most of the game for most people.

Let me repeat myself just in case I didn't make my point clear.
An action like assasination involves getting a gun, moving to within sight of the target, aiming and shooting, while trying to hopefully avoid notice. Sabotaging a rocket launch say, might involve climbing over a fence, sneaking around a compound, and attaching a bomb to the launch cone(or a transmitter to the nose etc.).
These are very physical actions and how they are percieved is dependent on how they are modelled.
The model doesn't have to include all the tiny parts involved but should still give the feeling of having overcome necessary obstacles, and if you fail you should believe it was due to your mistake or inability.

So does anyone have any ideas how they should be modelled?

[edited by - thelurch on November 4, 2002 12:18:07 AM]

This isn''t a video game. Finger twitching skills aren''t necessary. Assasination and spying happens when planning, money and conspiratorial discussion make it happen from outsourcing such jobs.

quote: Original post by thelurch
An action like assasination involves getting a gun, moving to within sight of the target, aiming and shooting, while trying to hopefully avoid notice. Sabotaging a rocket launch say, might involve climbing over a fence, sneaking around a compound, and attaching a bomb to the launch cone(or a transmitter to the nose etc.).

Pay someone else to do it. You''re too busy with strategic issues to also be a field operative.

Just a quick question...how...um..alien will the alien races be?

realistic and plauseable type aliens? (like the ''strange'' type scientist and sci-fi authors like A. C. Clark describe)...Or the more pop-culture type aliens? (as seen in Star Trek, Star Wars, and even in the Aliens series of films)

I honestly haven''t thought about aliens. I suppose there could be aliens, and players could even be different aliens, but that whole idea isn''t really relevant to the game concept, which could work in any contemporary or futuristic society composed of humans alone or humans and others.

quote:
Original post by Oluseyi

Precisely, which is why the player should look to delegate or outsource as much operations/responsibility as possible without it becoming a strategic liability, which is the incentive to leave non-hostile parties be. Furthermore, overly aggressive behavior is likely to make the news which will hurt chances of cooperative relationships with other existing powerful entities. The in-built checks and balances are the competitive and compassionate aspects of human nature; there''s no reason to incorporate artificial limits to constrain gameplay possibilities.

Note that my preference would leave the possibility of a player "griefing" wide open, but would also make the in-game retribution for such a player likely very severe. The newbie can find recourse by telling his/her story to the media corporation ("GNN Exclusive!") which will galvanize many others to action...

You assume the world starts out as a peaceful civilised society where acts of violence are considered an outrage by the general public. I believe this assumption is incorrect. The players will start out with a stone-age mindset and will hopefully evolve to perhaps somewhere in the middle ages. If I have a small neighbour next to my empire and killing him off would add another world to my domains, I would do so instantly. Of course, I would never start a war against another empire simply because they misstreat small players and I would cancel my GNN subscription if all they broadcasted were "newbie x got killed by evil empire y".

quote:
For some reason, I find the idea of a player even controlling a planet ludicrous. It''s one of those sci-fi (completely distinct from science fiction)/fantasy space opera ideas that really holds no water, and is not reflective of the state and/or rate of human social (d)evolution. Given the population size of a planet and the possibility of other ambitious indegenes, holding on to power on one planet alone (without supernatural "Force" powers) is sufficiently difficult to make the need for one-planet limitations unnecessary. And if a person can control more than one planet, more power to them. It''ll be a great media story when they fall...

Being used to control empires with many star systems, I find the idea of controlling one planet adequately modest. If the game mechanics you envision make controlling one planet very difficult in an universe with many planets, that is enough of a limit to me. As long as vast empires controlled directly through the game interface by single players are not a likely (or stable) occurance, I''m happy. I''ll note that I can''t think of a game where controlling more increases in difficulty with the size of the controlled assets (micro-management time notwithstanding).

quote:
"Must"? There is no "must" in this game. We don''t "must" nothing. All entities eventually fade. Chaotic entities fade faster because they feed on themselves, because the lack of rules and order and hierarchy lowers efficiency and overall productivity to the point where self-sufficiency is no longer possible. Let players do as they please; it''ll be an interesting civics lesson and may even end up as a classroom tool for social studies/political science professors.

Again, I can''t think of a game where entities fade away eventually. While I agree this is a good goal for a political game, the game mechanics that insure this are in no way obvious.

quote:
Diodor:

I meant direct physical power, defined by the forces a player has direct control of through the game interface.

quote:
Oluseyi:

There are too many military-minded people around here. Military force solves nothing. It never has, and it never will. It only serves to keep violent expressions of convictions at bay, at tremendous cost to all. Physical power will always be overwhelmed by socio-political power (you''re commander-in-chief, but I convince your soldiers to mutiny... you''re suddenly commander-in-chief of nothing).

I am convinced the opposite is true. While history offers plenty of examples for the use of a military force, it is arguable that socio-political power could exist without military backing.

quote:
I don''t believe in limits for anything, and I think "game balance" is overrated. Some games should be inherently unbalanced, ie some roles in the game should be obviously more difficult than others, but more rewarding upon success.

The outcome in the average RTS/TBS the likes of Civilisation is fairly predictable. At start, the map is divided between many little players. As time goes by, the little players are destroyed, freeing the land for the larger players, until only one remains controlling the entire map. Changing this state of facts is a tough challenge and requires plenty of game balance. There can be no negotiating, no politics until the physical forces are balanced.