Now I like this idea. One thing I think can be done, that has been kinda mentioned, in a way, is make things more free-form. To do this, the factions are no more than names really. They can then make decisions on what to do, who to include, etcetera, that determines what their faction is. Guess it would work similar to NationStates. That way you could overlap philosphies and would make building a faction much more interesting. Alliances could change as your philosophy does. But that's just my opinion.

Quote:

Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by TechnoGoth A good topic to discuss so here are my thoughts. :) Thanks for the great detail! Quote: Influence: The faction’s ability to influence events. - Local - in the current city. - Solar – in the current system. - Galactic – in the galaxy. The greater a factions influence the more control they have on events and their ability to aid or hinder the player. For example getting out of favor with a faction with high galactic influence rating could make things very difficult for the player. Great addition. How do you think this should work faction vs. faction, though? Let's say that a Local influence faction ticks off a Solar faction. What does influence give either the solar faction or the local faction?

Well it depends on how you decided to handle factions is the local chapeter of galatic faction a seperate faction with connections to a larger faction?

Well when it comes to factions dealing with other factions the influance values would depend on the scale they interacting on. So if its a solar interaction then their solar influence would be used. This means that a faction such as the Pirate guild might have great deal of solar influence but may have very little if any influence on a given planet.

Quote:

Quote: PowerBase: The Factions resources pool. - Armaments –Rating reflecting the number of and level weapons the faction possess. - Wealth – Rating reflecting the amount of liquid assets the faction has accesses to. - Fleet – Rating reflecting the size and power of the faction’s fleet if it exists. - Resources – The special resources the faction has access to. - Structures – The structures the faction controls. - Followers - Rating reflecting the number of people who are active members of the faction. - Popularity – Rating reflecting how popular the faction is with the people. - Supporters – Rating reflecting the number of non-faction members who would support the faction or rally to their cause. - VIPs – The VIPs in the faction. These are important individuals in the faction who also exist as game entities that can be interacted with. VIPs also control a percentage of the faction’s stats. If a VIP is lost the faction looses that percentage of its stats, like wise if a faction gains a VIP it gains what ever percentage of the other factions stats the VIP controlled. This is a much better definition than Strength. Do you think that all should be equivalent? If a faction loses popularity, is that the same as losing supporters? Or if they gain structures but lose resources are they pretty much net.

Well diffrent stats for diffrent tasks. Expending resources to build a structure is usually a good thing.

Quote:

I think that VIPs should be a multiplier in both positive and negative ways. Maybe you have a VIP who's great at fundraising, so he multiplies the faction's Wealth; whereas a great military leader could multiply Armaments. Then, if you kidnap or kill them, you take a multiplier away from the faction.

That all goes down to how you want to represent a VIP is a vip a leader who gives a bonous like you suggested. Or is a VIP like I was thinking in that someone who like faction onto themselves and who adds their powerbase to that of factions when they ally themselves with it.

Quote:

Quote: Traits: Traits are special tags that a faction posses that determine special abilities, and how the faction is seen. Any faction can acquire a trait, but some traits are unique meaning that only one faction in a city can possess it. In order to gain a unique tag that is already been assigned the other faction must take it from the other faction whether by force, subversion, or popularity. Example Traits: - Police force - The faction is the local force in charge of law and order. - Religion - The faction is considered a religion in the eyes of the people. - Government - The faction governs the city. - Rebel – Faction is seen as an enemy of the local government. - Hate Group – Faction opposes a particular race and violently lashes out against them. - True Faith – The faction is the main religion in the city. - Smugglers - The faction deals heavily in black/grey market goods. Much more flexible! I was searching for a way to have a situation where, say a religious faction is trying to be the de facto law versus the police faction. By making it so that any faction can acquire a trait, you could have a see-saw conflict between the zealots and the cops, with the mantle of "police force" changing hands from time to time. This makes me think: What qualifies one to have a trait? I keep going back to ownership of structures and resources as requirements. If you own churches or places to practice rites, you're a religion. If you have a jail and weapons locker and handle citizen complaints, you're a police force. But what if you're a police station AND temple, as with a religious police? It seems to me the components of a structure confer some of the traits in some cases; but actions (like the hate group) confer trsaits in other cases.

Well each trait should have a number of requirements when the faction has all the requirements then they can perfrom an action to aquire a trait while some traits are aquired automatically. For instance in order to gain the trait government you don't need any buildings you have to take it from the existing government. So how do you aquire the government trait? A sufficent number of supporters and either a sufficent number of armements or popularity.

Quote:

Original post by sunandshadow I would say that corruption causes rebellion because a group which can't rely on the government will create it's own mini-government to protect itself (a gang, a militia, a mafia...) and ths government will naturally wind up in conflict with the original government and other mini-governments, resulting in coups, civil wars, and rebellions. Your example of the guilded age had unions and strike wars.

Interesting, and you're right, the guilded age helped beget experiments in the US with socialism. But would you say then that a corrupt government can't last decades or centuries?

I do like the idea of citizens responding by building up parallel structures to do what the government isn't. I suppose you can have corruption that inspires rebellion, and then set the system up so that if there is a huge amount of military power to crush the citizenry (with the military well bribed) then you could create a corrupt but enduring government.

Quote:

Original post by Texas Brigade One thing I think can be done, that has been kinda mentioned, in a way, is make things more free-form. To do this, the factions are no more than names really. They can then make decisions on what to do, who to include, etcetera, that determines what their faction is. Guess it would work similar to NationStates. That way you could overlap philosphies and would make building a faction much more interesting. Alliances could change as your philosophy does.

Are you saying that the corporate, military, police and religious factions could all be capable of each others behavior?

Hmmm... it would upset your expectations of how things are supposed to work, but that's partly the point. Many huge churches in America actually are corporations; a corporate military would be a mercenary force.

As a player you might have a rough time keeping straight who's who because a faction name is like a black or white hat on a bad guy. So I'm not sure about this, but I do like the idea of making them freeform.

I guess what could work would be to define the philosophies, which are represented as behaviors, into different camps, some of which could be mixed, others which would be impossible (no mercenary good samaritans, IOW).

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth Quote: How do you think this should work faction vs. faction, though? Let's say that a Local influence faction ticks off a Solar faction. What does influence give either the solar faction or the local faction? Well it depends on how you decided to handle factions is the local chapeter of galatic faction a seperate faction with connections to a larger faction? Well when it comes to factions dealing with other factions the influance values would depend on the scale they interacting on. So if its a solar interaction then their solar influence would be used. This means that a faction such as the Pirate guild might have great deal of solar influence but may have very little if any influence on a given planet.

Okay, you were thinking as influence as in the domain of influence? I was thinking about this as in scale of power, i.e., Galactic beats Solar beats local. If you have Galactic influence, you should already have solar influence and city influence, IOW.

That may not be the case, though. Just because my government might have influence over events around the globe doesn't mean they control everything in my home city. But the point is that they probably could if they wanted to. Galactic influence should be more powerful than local influence, shouldn't it?

Another way of breaking this up might be to say that the faction has a set of territories and a level of influence throughout each. So a syndicate might own the drug trade in 4 cities, at the city level, but have no influence in space at all.

Quote:

Quote: I think that VIPs should be a multiplier in both positive and negative ways. Maybe you have a VIP who's great at fundraising, so he multiplies the faction's Wealth; whereas a great military leader could multiply Armaments. Then, if you kidnap or kill them, you take a multiplier away from the faction. That all goes down to how you want to represent a VIP is a vip a leader who gives a bonous like you suggested. Or is a VIP like I was thinking in that someone who like faction onto themselves and who adds their powerbase to that of factions when they ally themselves with it.

Okay, both could work, but your method would allow the VIP to split off and operate on his own, so I think it's better.

Quote:

Well each trait should have a number of requirements when the faction has all the requirements then they can perfrom an action to aquire a trait while some traits are aquired automatically. For instance in order to gain the trait government you don't need any buildings you have to take it from the existing government. So how do you aquire the government trait? A sufficent number of supporters and either a sufficent number of armements or popularity.

Okay, imagine you have a city with 2 factions that both want to be government. Both have arms and popularity. In this case should both be considered governments? Maybe to be a government you must have a certain percentage of the population? Or maybe you must have no challengers / threats to government.

Quote:

Original post by Wavinator Okay, you were thinking as influence as in the domain of influence? I was thinking about this as in scale of power, i.e., Galactic beats Solar beats local. If you have Galactic influence, you should already have solar influence and city influence, IOW. That may not be the case, though. Just because my government might have influence over events around the globe doesn't mean they control everything in my home city. But the point is that they probably could if they wanted to. Galactic influence should be more powerful than local influence, shouldn't it? Another way of breaking this up might be to say that the faction has a set of territories and a level of influence throughout each. So a syndicate might own the drug trade in 4 cities, at the city level, but have no influence in space at all.

I see where your going and agree to some extent but it depends on whether you want influence to be a measure of power or control. If its power then with out a doubt have galatic influence means you should be able to crush any petty local faction. But if its control then a galatic faction may not have much control over a small remote planet.

Take the case of the western town you mentioned earilier.
bandits - L = 30, S=0, G=0
texas rangers - L = 5, S=50, G=1
US Army - L= 0, S=10, G=100

Now in the small town of dodge city the bandits have the greates influence they can pretty much do as they please, while the texas rangers have some influence it is negligable. However if the texas rangers mobilized all their forces they should be able to crush the bandits. But the question is when would they? What would the bandits need to do to cause the texas rangers or for that matter the army to respond with forces beyond the local level?

But then again I might be talking in circles. Perhaps what is needed is territories like you said. For instance our solar system might be made up of a territory for each planet, one for the asteriod belt, one for the outer solar system and one for the inner for a total of 12 territories. Now pirates might control territory 11 and 12, while minners control territorty 10 and the earth government controls territory 3. So while the pirates have a great deal of influence on interplantary travel and trade they don't have any influence on earth. Like wise the minners control the asteroid belt have some solar influence because of their trade routes and a tiny bit of galatic influence for being the members of a trade guild. Which following your logic means that if the minners could convince the trade guild to send in an armada to eliminate the pirates the pirates would stand very little chance.

Which brings another question, how are you planning on handling allies and associations?

Quote:

Okay, imagine you have a city with 2 factions that both want to be government. Both have arms and popularity. In this case should both be considered governments? Maybe to be a government you must have a certain percentage of the population? Or maybe you must have no challengers / threats to government.

Well if one tried to aquire the trait government then the other could respond by trying to stop them. They would then enter a competition to become the local government until one emerged on top. Think of it like this you have two political parties with 50% of the votes only one can become the government and the only way to do that is take the votes from your opponent. You could make minium diffrence requried so in order to be an elected government you need 20% more supporters then the nearest rival.

The VIP idea is great as it is intermediate between group and people levels
With VIPs you could model corruption :
* either on a task base level :
faction X pays the VIP for doing/not doing something or for information
* or in a loyalty level :
faction X pays the VIP for secretely switching loyalty

VIPs would need a pseudo hierarchical status in faction, perhaps as simple as a hierarchy top proximity or a real hierarchical position chief, advisors, wich could allow to set up abilities depending on the position (ex. the chief can declare war on another faction, the accountant can raise fund for a task...)
Positions can be : elected, designated, hereditary, buyable

This way the philosophy of a faction could depends on the VIPs philosophies, with a tendancy to elect VIPs with same philosophies

VIPs could also have their own agenda, some could have several loyalties (double agents...) others would wants some specific positions (mayor...)
With this approach, addictions becomes easier to implement
for example an addicted gambler will needs lot of money, so he will be easier to buy

You could also model a darwinian approach, big factions eating smaller ones with small factions being generated (perhaps according to unhappy VIPs)
This is interesting only if the timescale is big enough

moreover a big faction could create/finance a small one to impediment an adverse faction without creating an alliance

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster For each of an entities (persons) membership in your factions you will have to have some degree of emphasis/influenve of the individuals behavior for that faction. You will need to resolve conflicts between the influences of the multiple factions followed (probably on an action by action basis). The individual would also have its own tendencies and preferences that would shape its adherence to each faction. (It may turn out that the individuals making up the factions shape operations/relations of the faction and could shift as the membership supporting it does).

I overlooked this idea: Factions being influenced by VIPs and VIPs conflicting with each other within the faction. What I really need to do is set up rules for actions, which dovetails with goals. As suggested, this needs to factor in mood and personality.

Yeah, this is going to be messy before I can come up with some decent meta rules.

Quote:

Patterns of reactions can vary, with some being slow to react and others easily triggered. The reactions themselves may be made up of a spectrum of actions (some actions being allowed and others not, while others only becoming usable with the higher level of mood is reached).

I like the idea that moods are locked to actions, and this could vary somewhat for either faction or some notion of the VIP personality. So getting to murder is easier, moodwise, for the pirates than for, say, scientists.


Lots of good notes, thanks!

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth I see where your going and agree to some extent but it depends on whether you want influence to be a measure of power or control. If its power then with out a doubt have galatic influence means you should be able to crush any petty local faction. But if its control then a galatic faction may not have much control over a small remote planet. Take the case of the western town you mentioned earilier. bandits - L = 30, S=0, G=0 texas rangers - L = 5, S=50, G=1 US Army - L= 0, S=10, G=100 Now in the small town of dodge city the bandits have the greates influence they can pretty much do as they please, while the texas rangers have some influence it is negligable. However if the texas rangers mobilized all their forces they should be able to crush the bandits. But the question is when would they? What would the bandits need to do to cause the texas rangers or for that matter the army to respond with forces beyond the local level?

Good question. I see your point. If the big faction always squashes the little faction then there's no point for the little faction to ever mess with them.

Quote:

But then again I might be talking in circles. Perhaps what is needed is territories like you said. For instance our solar system might be made up of a territory for each planet, one for the asteriod belt, one for the outer solar system and one for the inner for a total of 12 territories. Now pirates might control territory 11 and 12, while minners control territorty 10 and the earth government controls territory 3. So while the pirates have a great deal of influence on interplantary travel and trade they don't have any influence on earth. Like wise the minners control the asteroid belt have some solar influence because of their trade routes and a tiny bit of galatic influence for being the members of a trade guild. Which following your logic means that if the minners could convince the trade guild to send in an armada to eliminate the pirates the pirates would stand very little chance.

Yes, I think what helps is to represent the territories around bases or strongholds, starting at the galactic level. This gives a natural power radius / geometry. The influence level represents the power / chance to encounter the faction within the territory.

Each map would have a global territory type, meaning everywhere. At the galactic level, this would mean that the faction isn't restricted to some galactic area, but is everywhere. For a system or planet, though, the global territory type would mean either planetwide or systemwide. Whether or not its global or locked to a territory would be determined by the counter-influence of enemy factions. So a pirate faction that roves a system freely but can't touch a fortified planet would have a global value for the system but no global value for the planet.

For testing if a faction responds, the influence values of the two territories are compared. If the influence is high enough, the faction does something; if too low, there is more of a chance that they do nothing (because it's on the border of their power). The exception might be VIPs, which might be responded to by their rank.

Quote:

Which brings another question, how are you planning on handling allies and associations?

I'm trying to keep this somewhat abstract. Maybe something like 1/2 the faction's allies power is added to their power for an endeavor. Or maybe there are levels of alliance (close, convenience) and this modifies how much influence they can apply.

Quote:

Well if one tried to aquire the trait government then the other could respond by trying to stop them. They would then enter a competition to become the local government until one emerged on top. Think of it like this you have two political parties with 50% of the votes only one can become the government and the only way to do that is take the votes from your opponent. You could make minium diffrence requried so in order to be an elected government you need 20% more supporters then the nearest rival.

Okay, I like this. Just have to come up with the many rules for competition. [smile]

Quote:

Original post by DungeonMaster The VIP idea is great as it is intermediate between group and people levels With VIPs you could model corruption : * either on a task base level : faction X pays the VIP for doing/not doing something or for information * or in a loyalty level : faction X pays the VIP for secretely switching loyalty VIPs would need a pseudo hierarchical status in faction, perhaps as simple as a hierarchy top proximity or a real hierarchical position chief, advisors, wich could allow to set up abilities depending on the position (ex. the chief can declare war on another faction, the accountant can raise fund for a task...) Positions can be : elected, designated, hereditary, buyable

Interesting possibilities! I like the idea of the philosophy / personality of the VIP influencing the faction, more strongly the smaller the group. This way you'd have a goal of playing politics, helping certain VIPs who you think might rise to the top and act the way you want.

Quote:

You could also model a darwinian approach, big factions eating smaller ones with small factions being generated (perhaps according to unhappy VIPs) This is interesting only if the timescale is big enough

Not bad. Also, factions of the same level should be able to merge and split.

Quote:

moreover a big faction could create/finance a small one to impediment an adverse faction without creating an alliance

Sneaky, I like this. I'll have to make this an ability of certain covert factions.