We have some pretty specific things in mind for a micro-expansion that adds more diplomatic features to Sins of a Solar Empire.
But before we talk about them, we'd like to hear - specifically - what you'd imagine seeing in a $10 diplomacy oriented expansion for Sins.
Although I've already posted a few ideas the one thing that you guys got me thinking about that I want most is for it to not be so easy to ally with everyone to take down only one empire. (No that wasn't a run on)
How about Vassal states? When you bring an enemy to the brink of annihilation (1-3 planets left), they will offer to be a vassal state. Vassal states are permament allies that give 20% of their income to you, make all ship, planet and vision abilities seen by you, and obey your orders without a second thought. They will still be controlled by AI, so its not like you gain control of the planets/units.
as for fleets I don't mind really.
O, I see... btw Enterprise fits (10 characters), but if you were to put USS Enterprise it won't
as to the above post where actions would dictate diplomacy, I don't think building any structure should dictate diplomactic stances, unless if built in gravity wells that have mutliple starbases (eg. act of aggression or alliance, etc),
I'd like a few minor UI updates:
Before I get farther into my Diplomacy suggestions, I'd like to bring up some suggestions regarding Culture and Independent worlds. Culture in SOASE is streamlined, but needs a bit more development.
Culture suggestions
1. Cultural broadcasts should affect planets belonging neutral and hostile empires as normal. However, when these planets fall to 0% Allegiance, they should become Independent Worlds, not simply disperse. For an instance, if your culture successfully decreased an enemy's planet to 0%, it will break away from its empire and will go independent.
2. An Independent World becomes a new, neutral mini-empire. The planet and its orbitals becomes controlled by the computer. Its starmap 'colour' is gray. It's icon or flag is new and selected randomly by the computer.
3. Independent Worlds (lesser states) are no different than the neutral planets controlled by independent militias seen at the start of the game. However, under the new diplomatic system, a player may diplomatically interact with them, and use cultural broadcasts to absorb them by decreasing their allegiance.
4. Neutral/Independent worlds successfully affected by your culture will JOIN your empire. They won't leave their planet; they join you. However, if the planet is not of your race, I don't think it's a good idea for you to gain access to their unique technology, orbitals, and ships. You just get their planet, which is occupied.
5. Cultural broadcasts successfully affecting a Neutral or Allied empire should slowly increase your relations with them. For instance, every 5 minutes of broadcasts striking a foreign planet might increase your general relations with that empire by 1%. The effect is stackable per affected planet.
6. Allied empires don't receive hostile cultural attack from other allies.
More about Independent Worlds
1. At the start of the game, when we encounter the neutral independent worlds (lesser states) guarded by militias, we need to see new ships. There should be at least one whole new fleet type that has 2 types of frigs, 2 types of cruisers, and 1 type of capital ship.
2. Aside from conquering them or assimilating them with culture, we should be able to have limited diplomatic relations with these worlds. They should also be able to ask for help.
It might be all too hard to program, but it would really flesh out the 'story' of each game.
Thats sorta like my idea, great minds think alike, i guess
Diplomacy, part 2
The Diplomacy Screen should be user-friendly, and yet stuffed with information and possible courses of action.
Diplomacy Screen
The new Screen shows your mutual happiness rating with each empire, the pending and established treaties with each, and other info such as pending missions, demands, requests, and so forth. Last of of all it displays a list of possible diplomatic and covert actions you can initiate with each empire.
The Actions
Treaties
Demands
Offers
Missions
Covert Operations
First up.....
1. Ceasefire. Basically this equates to SOASE's Ceasfire status. No other treaty can be established without first establishing a ceasefire.
2. Neutrality Pact. This is a slight upgrade from Ceasefire, although both parties agree to a status of non-aggression for 30 minutes game-time. Negotiation of the treaty upgrades relations by 5%. Both sides agree to stay out of the other's gravwells. The pact can be broken by simply canceling it, or by sending in scouts or fleets to penetrate the other empire's space. Either betrayal lowers relations by 20%. War of course nullifies the pact and relations naturally plummet.
3. Common Enemy. This is a limited alliance based strictly on cooperating to wage war vs another empire. Negotiation of the treaty slightly improves relations, and may set the stage for certain requests and missions that also can improve relations down the road. Once the war is prosecuted to your ally's satisfaction and a ceasefire is negotiated, the alliance is over. If you don't prosecute the war vs the common enemy to your ally's satisfaction, relations degrade and the alliance may prematurely be canceled.
4. Buffer Zone. This is a mutually agreed negotiation to keep a certain area of space de-militarized. Aside from Scouts and freighters and colony ships traveling through, en route to other areas, no military ships of either empire may enter the buffer zone. Neither colonization nor construction of SBs can be attempted either. If someone cheats, the computer alerts you automatically and the treaty is made null. Relations fall by a minor amount, perhaps randomly from 5% to 20%.
5. Trade Treaty. Same as SOASE.
6. Assistance Treaty. One mighty empire might choose to support another by giving it a small yet steady stream of resources. The empires must already have a pre-existing Trade Treaty. The "flow" is abstracted in credits. The flow each second can equal to no more than 20% of the sponsor's tax revenues. Cancellation of the treaty causes no negative diplomatic effects. (To manually give more stuff to other empires, see the OFFERs sub-group of actions, explained later).
7. Military Access. This allows one empire's military ships to freely enter your space, or vice versa, with no diplomatic consequences. Normally, without this 'Free Passage' treaty in operation, penetration of another empire's gravwell is considered a security breach and will causes a slight reduction in relations each time it happens.
8. Shared Intelligence. Roughly the same as SOASE's Ship Vision, and yet you only get vision of the other empire's ships within a limited distance to your empire.If you want more vision, you'll have to use technology, upgrade to a Grand Alliance, or send in spies.
9. Grand Alliance. Hard to attain, this forges a serious alliance based not only on strategic cooperation, but longstanding peace, affinity, and common goals. It takes a while for empires to get to this level of trust. They must first have long years of peace and increasingly good relations. Thus they must have negotiated previous treaties listed above to get their relations up towards 90% and beyond.
First, a member of a Grand Alliance receives unlimited Shared Intelligence. It gets info on all of its ally's fleet AND planets.
A member of a Grand Alliance considers an attack on an ally as an attack on itself. It will normally declare war, and will feel obilgated to attack enemies, and help the ally. The game screen will jump to the Diplomacy Screen, and you have 10 seconds to declare war. Otherwise, the relations fall fast.
During war, members of a grand alliance often send each other requests for help and missions to move against an enemy. The most common are missions to destroy "X" number of enemy ships, protect a certain friendly world under attack, or attack a specific enemy planet or orbital or capital ship.
A member of a Grand Alliance cannot outright sneak attack or declare war on another member. They have shared so much history and positive experience together that their rulers and citizens have become friends. Instead, the alliance must unwind through incremental degradation of relations. Once relations have fallen to 60% or below, there is enough sense of betrayal that the alliance may be broken and the option of war become available.
Diplomacy, part 3
These are warnings, threats, greedy arrogant requests, and other sabre-rattling messages made by one empire to another. Actions that fall under the Demand sub-group are for the players with pretensions of dominance. They are risky if you aren't dominant because someone might call your bluff instead. A Demand may scare an empire into heeding it, or it might lead to cancellation of other treaties and a degradation in relations. Most of all, a demand tells you something of about how another empire wants to deal with you.
An empire normally can only make a Demand to another empire every 10 minutes max.
If an empire actually wants war, even wanting to provoke one empire into attacking, then it makes Demands.
1. Demand Resources. This is a demand for either credits, metal, or crystal, framed in a threat. Failure to comply lowers relations.
2. Demand Tribute. This is a demand for a small, steady flow of credits each second from another empire. It's like an Assistance Treaty, except the lesser empire is the sponsor of the other's greed, and is more like a vassal. The flow of Tribute last for 10 minutes. If you want more, demand more. Not complying with the demand lowers relations.
3. Claim Neutral. By making such an official threat to another, the empire is saying that a specific neutral planet cannot be colonized. It's in their sphere of influence. A neutral planet that is claimed has a slight glow on the starmap, the glow the same colour of the claimant's empire. It has a special icon too that makes sure the claim is made.
A claimed planet must be adjacent to a planet already controlled by your empire. The power of the claim lasts for 20 minutes, or until the claimant colonizes the world, or until war breaks out. By respecting a claim, relations remains unchanged. By defying a claim, relations fall by a random 10% to 25%.
4. Evacuate Planet. This is a blunt threat made by one empire to another for the latter to evacuate a specific colonized planet. The planet in question must be adjacant to one of the threatener's planets. And it cannot be a capitol world. Failure to evacuate lowers mutual relations. An empire has 10 minutes to comply.
5. Demand Cease-fire. This is a threat designed to scare one empire fighting a third party into negotiating a ceasefire with the third-party. Failure to do so lowers relations. An empire has 10 minutes to comply.
6. Remove Ships. This is a warning made to another empire to remove its vessels from the threatener's gravwells. The threat's power is immediate. Any non-compliance within 10 minutes causes a drop in relations.
7. Remove Spies. A warning against another empire for it to immediately desist all covert operations. It's a clear message: we know it's you. Stop it or face the music.
but what are these covert ops? I want some SPIES MAN!!
This sub-group of diplomatic actions involves humble requests and offers. They are a way of helping and warming up to other empires, or asking for assistance, outside of the actions in the Treaty subgroup. Obviously if you give stuff, relations will improve to some degree.
1. Offer Resources. Like giving gifts in SOASE, except an empire will only give up to a maximum of 1/3 of its reserves of a particular resource.
2. Request Resources. It's like 'Demand Resources" except the requesting empire is a humble beggar. There is no threat or hint of consequences. You can only ask an empire every 15 minutes.
3. Give Planet. The process, if agreed to, takes 10 minutes, whereby the control of the planet slowly reverts from your control to the other empire. If the allegiance of the planet is already low, there's a danger that the planet goes rebel and becomes independent.
4. Give Ships. First of all, only empires of the same race may offer their ships. If the offer is accepted, you can give as few as 1 or up to 20% of the entire cost of your fleet to another. Capital ships and orbitals cannot be given. You have to have somewhat friendly relations and some treaties first.
5. Request Ships. Same thing, but you're not giving but requesting.
6. Give Technology. One empire may give one specific technology to another empire of the same race. For simplicity's sake, empires of a different race cannot share technology.
7. Request Technology. The same, except you're requesting instead of giving.
8. Request Starmaps. You ask for the specific knowledge an empire has of the phase lanes and planets they've encountered.
9. Give Starmaps. Same, but you're giving your knowledge instead.
I do too. Covert ops would be tricky to implement. It has to be interesting and effective enough to be worth pursuing. Any yet not as effective and crazy as to screw up the emphasis on the main aspects of the game. In realistic terms, and in game terms, covert action should be costly and limited in scope.
I recommend a streamlined system with only a few available actions, if it's implemented.
Ultimately this is a RTS game emphasizing fleet combat and empire expansion, so covert ops should only offer secondary possibilties to satisfy the large turn-based strategy crowd who are checking out this unique RTS that has aspects of a TBS game.
If Ironclad wants to include covert ops, they have 2 general options:
1). Make an abstract system directed mainly from the diplomacy/covert screens, possibly with some limited interaction with the starmap.
or
2). Conduct covert ops directly from the starmap -- with a new kind of covert-based orbital, and a similar kind of covert ship. Both of which could project intel and counter-intel abilities.
The latter system would be harder to implement, but perhaps more satisfying and hands-on in terms of game-play.
I rather like the idea of the 2nd, but instead you could have the existing civil orbitals have covert operations research, to allow production of 'spy scouts', which have NO INSIGNIA, TEAM COLORS, OR DEFINING MARKINGS. Basically, ambiguous ships. The only POSSIBLE problem is empire insignia when mousing over an object. I'm pretty sure that insignia is displayed when I mouse over enemy ships, and I KNOW it's displayed when I mouse over mine.
Anyhow, that's my $0.02 reply.
Isn't that already given when they say "Planet vision" or something like that?
technically. HOWEVER, what Sirth is suggesting would be enhancements to the diplomacy menu. That, and instead of 'offering' a treaty, you 'give' or 'request' it.
Well, the starmaps would give the planets that the empire explored but does not have any units in.
I'd like to have give other factions missions. I mean, why should I have to gain favor with them? Shouldn't they try to earn favor with me too?
that is something I think is a very key thing they should do. Sure, you can ping an enemy world and basically tell the AI allies you have to destroy it, but that's it. You should be able to request resources, and all sorts of stuff.
what about the "Ship vision"
I'd like some penalty or warning for when someone's breaking their treaty with you. Backstabbing is fun, but it's a little too easy to do it instantly in FFA. Give the guy who's getting backstabbed like 2 min to react to it.
in Entrenchment you actually have that when you break a CEASE FIRE or a Peace Treaty. In vanilla it's only with Peace Treaties I think.
stabbing in the back.
Not because the dying guy liked it in the back, but because he had no warning and no time to turn around and defend himself.
Here's what I would really like to see in the way of diplomacy:
1) Most games that have diplomacy break it down into two groups. Those things you can do with human opponents and those things you can do with computer opponents. Most of the time computer opponents can taunt you, blackmail you, threaten, etc., but you can't do any of that to them or if you can it has little to no effect. I would like to see this be more of a two way street. We need to be able to do the same things that our computer oppoents do to us and we should have at least a chance of having an effect (for example if I'm really powerful or have a big fleet near their system, they listen more).
2) Being able to share things with allies: Stuff like tech (especially if we are of different races), maps (vision), etc.
3) Spying. I want to be able to steal stuff from other races, know what their planets are like, what forces they have and where, and be able to sabotage stuff.
New Game Modes
One of my favorite things about Rise of Nations was the multitude of game modes. At the moment we either have preset teams, ffa, or potential diplomacy in an 8 player game with no locked teams.
You could add to this. One of my favorites was a game mode called Assassin. Each player has a target they need to kill and each player has their own assassin. The only person you could attack was your target, and the only person who could attack you was your assassin.
I don't know how well that would work in Sins. It would likely require a modifier in the random maps so that you could preset positions for people.
There's also the potential for pure econ games. I don't know how crazy about this one I am, but you could have a game mode where no one is allied, and the game is a race to see who can produce X amount of resources or build something in a certain amount of time.
I'd also like the option to have a timer that prevents combat in X amount of time. I could preset say 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 minutes that no one can attack anyone else. This would be a game mode meant to stop rushing, which imo is scaring a lot of players from online play.
Just a few ideas.
One thing that I requested before Entrenchment, and something you guys said you were working on: Fixing the map generator bug.
I want to see some real diplomacy upgrades. Right now an Alliance basically means we cannot attack each other for a few seconds. I want to see real advantages:
Trade: Trades don't care about war. They will trade with anyone of any species. You should be able to boost the trade by signing contracts and to lower the trade with embargoes against common enemies. Trade ships should be divided into 2 groups. Neutral freelancers that cannot be attacked by anyone but pirates and national traders that can be attacked by anyone. The neurals always visit all tradeports unless there is an embargo (depending on the number of players. If 3 Players have an embargo against 2 other ones(6 total) the neutral trade will be decreased by 50%). The national traders only visit own or allied tradeports.
Pirates: I agree that there is no reason why pirates should fight to the end. They should attack trade ships randomly for a couple of minutes in a system. As long the pirates are in this system no traderoute can pass. This also means that the "longest trade route" is disrupted. If the pirates are heavily outnumbered they fill flee to another system. They should prefer non-colonizable systems like nebulas and should not engage starbases. Priates have no Homebase and can only be killed if all pirate ships are dead at the same time(They replenish losses after a while and will try to flee before the last one dies). If they are driven to a planet they will sit at the edge of the grav well and hunt traders rather than assaulting the defenses.
Mercenaries: The repalcement for that what pirates are now. A powerful task to raid planets. The more money you give to them the higher the chance that the assault will be more massive. The mercenaries have a base that is defended by a powerful über-Cap consisting of salvaged parts of all three fractions(May be 3 variations of the ship). The ship will not be destroyed but will shut down after receving more than 90% damage and can be captured if the merc-planet is aquired. Before the mercs attack they will blackmail the current target for resources to attack someone else(expansive) Mercs will not attack traders as they are not mindless criminals.
Common technology: There should be a real advantage to have allies of a specific Type. For example technology transfer. An alliance between Tec and Advent could build a new medium Cruiser using strong weapons(TEC) and Psi(Advent) abilities. If your ally is the same species both parties get a small discount on their ordinary ships as they can produce in a larger scale together. The same would be possible with super weapons. For example a TEC-Advent alliance again. The planetshieldtech of the TEC combined with the superior understanding of shields of the Advend leads to the development of a Planetrary shield generator that absorbs 95% of incoming damage an renders it immune to planet cannons for the planet the generator is build on and all planets up to two phase jumps away. If the alliance breaks down the acquired technology will not be buildable anymore and will shut down after 10 min because of the lack of maintenance. The only way to prevent that is to reestablish the technology or to research a maintenance technology.
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