Ignoring for now the idea of sharing units, we could introduce a feature that allows empires to capture each other’s units in any battle. A secondary part of this would allow a percentage of captured units to desert their original empire and join their new empire. This would all happen within a single battle, with the end result being an exchange of units in either or both directions, depending on several factors:
Starving your pop
Overpopulation
Overbuilding
Low morale
These would all represent a “quality of life” between battling empires, with the one who scores lower being liable to lose more units to capture/desertion. This would also allow smaller empires the ability to gain enemy fleet while being attacked, forcing the aggressor to consider the effect of sympathizers within his ranks.
This would also indirectly penalize hyper-optimization of econ via pop and building, as a low quality of life would become a liability during battle.
I was thinking last night that this feature might work well as a general metric for empires to rank on, independently of battle.
So, everything described above would be still be true during a fight, but QoL might also have other effects outside of a fight:
Productivity: output penalty or bonus on production and science
Efficiency: speed penalty or bonus on building and unit ETAs
The really interesting one for me though, is the possibility for players to actually lose control of planets to players who offer higher QoL than they do.
This could be a method of expansion that doesn’t require fighting, but rather maintaining a healthy empire. This wouldn’t be by choice from either party; a planet from Player A would see its population declare allegiance to some other player in a way that can’t be predicted.
This could break up planet distributions and cause players to gain and lose planets without any attacks having ever taken place.
It would give non-attackers a way to expand, and give attackers an incentive to keep their empire balanced.
What I really like about this is that I’ve recently had this idea of massive empires becoming harder and harder to maintain. QoL may be a way to achieve this, if it becomes increasingly difficult to keep all of your citizens happy while also balancing massive econ.
What’s really exciting though is the inverse: a tiny empire would find it relatively easy to reach high QoL numbers because they don’t have much to manage. At the most extreme, it might work as a boosting mechanism for brand new players.
It’d be easier to grow if you’re small, but harder to maintain size if you’re huge. That might result in some interesting territory shuffling.
All that aside, having another rank to compete for would add some freshness too.
Really really like this idea.
Opens up many more aspects of gameplay to think about and gives family’s that are more or less dead early round a real good reason to stick around as they could catch back up easier.
The Borg had (by our standards) very low quality of life.
Howevs, they were pretty efficient.
In many fantasy utopian societies - breeding is either strictly capped, or the lifeforms have evolved so far that they self cap breeding. A good example would be the Vorlons of Babylon 5 - they freaked the fuck out when one of them died because it had been so long that one of them had procreated. Also, the “Asgardians” of StarGate lore had gotten to the end of their genetic manipulation and simply couldn’t procreate anymore.
As life get longer, so far even what we have seen in the human race - the longer that people live in various cultures, the less they breed.
If you want to compare ST to IC then consider this. A Borglike “race” would be powerful, yet universally despised and feared. They would be unable to ally with anyone. They would be a constant target. A successful op with only a handful of agents could take down a large portion of the empire with a virus, requiring years to rebuild. Your pretty much nonexistant QoL and high efficiency comes at a cost.
@I_like_pie this would be an excellent AI enemy for a co-op all against one galaxy
If I was a role play guy (and I am not really), I would say you would have just described the perception character I play in IC to a T.
Dafferz, you don’t need to code it, you just have to invite me, or @HydroP or @HellRaizeR to your Galaxy.
A WHOLE BUNCH of motherfuckers wanting to rule unopposed, take whatever they want, from whomever they want, and then paint the picture of how wonderful and happy they are with all of their wins against hapless opponents.
If guys like us don’t stand up once in a while and tell them to get fucked, and do it differently - why even play the game?
The real issue comes down to they all think their way is “the only way”, its fucking not.
AI?
“Bond Villain”?
Recent descriptors I have heard of my self / my play.
How about simply…
“Nobody’s bitch”.
People have themselves so convinced of their style of play is so advance, so perfect, so undeniable literally the owner of the game is forgetting there are others way - and is considering to changing the game to make it easier for them.
@I_like_pie
I am only exceedingly unusual because I refuse to be shouted down.
They fucking try man, every time, it’s always a gang fuck.
Muppets, MW68, The Munchers and there 1100 jock sniffers? … All of 'em.
Please don’t misunderstand I love the idea of making the game a more complex and deep experience.
With this great idea things will need to be considered.
If being “anit pop” is to be considered as a villain, or you are going to be penalized for it - a few things will need to be considered.
How insanely over-powered PAX’s are already.
The death of CF banking.
Intra family take over of attackers planets because of their pop players.
3b. Allies (if they are coming back) doing the same thing.
The death of NAPs because shares are free planets for whomever had more pop or QoL.
Just off the top of my head.
More interesting might be the suggestions I put forward about multiple paths to obtaining those Gold Silver and Bronze trophies in your permanente history.
Assume today I am not to killed at work, I will try to post it proper.
I think I am not doing suggestions correctly, and will have to go back through and read what Pid0e told me to actually do to get shit considered… that one time.
