FreeOrion

Because good gameplay trumps realism-- and it won't be fun to irresistibly hemorrhage technologies to other empires just because you share some of the same species.
Though it is quite possible that a species who is present in more than one empire would provide a vulnerability to espionage.


The basic technologies idea is probably a good one.
But i disagree that natives should have the same AI and theoretical potential as the main playing empires. Then you simply have a game with very large number of empires, most of which have no realistic chance to compete. Diplomacy becomes very unwieldy with multiple dozens of participants, and the additional AIs could have a significant impact on the wait between turns.



Yes, but the Europeans and the Native Americans are/were the same species, with essentially the same brain-structure and intelligence. The Ravens, Otters, and Raccoons, on the other hand, haven't risen to the European tech level. And after all this time, neither have dogs, and cats.

It is entirely plausible that a species even though sapient may be inherent unable to assimilate a higher tech level. (not that i'm claiming any other earth creature is sapient-- at least not by my preferred definition)

But my motivation is gameplay simplicity. FreeOrion allows you to manage very large space empires. It would be unnecessarily confusing if species X on one planets had a tech level and had a different tech level on another planet, so that the focuses they could use would be different.

I'm not entirely against the tech level changing, but if it does it needs to be in a way that sensibly effects all members of the species everywhere in the galaxy.

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From a game mechanics perspective, I've been thinking that "natives" could populations of species that have just one restriction: players can't make ships that are crewed by natives. This includes regular scout/war ships, and colony ships, meaning natives can't be spread around by colonizing like normal playable species can.

If we keep the current mechanic that ships have the same crew species as the planet at which they are built, this would also mean that native planets wouldn't be able to produce any ships - possibly an interesting strategic issue.

Otherwise, natives could probably be treated mostly the same as other species. Players would conquer or convince natives to join their empires the same way as planets with playable species. Natives would have various effects that would determine their resource output.

Possibly, natives might not get focus options, to reduce player attention required / control over their planets, and to make them more distinct for gameplay, and to reflect their conceptual distinction from more-empire-suited species.

Empires would never start controlling just a native-populated planet, as that would make gameplay practically impossible given the above limits. There could be neutral planets with both native species and playable species throughout the galaxy, should that be deemed appropriate.

So to be clear, a native planet wouldn't be able to expand on their own either, right? A "native" is then: a species that will not, or cannot leave it's home planet.

+ Simple
+ Increases the specialness of individual native planets.
+ Species can have what would otherwise be very unbalanced bonus/maluses.
+ Over-all less balancing issues with major species, or the power of multi-species empires.
+ Potential Uplift/Education options can be sensibly focused on one location.
+ Can have more native planets without overburdening the player.

- Players who find a native species who fits perfectly into their empire will want more planets with them.

So at the very least, i think this is a good place to start.



I think some natives should have fewer or different focus options to reflect things that they simply cannot do, but having no focus options seem a little over-restrictive, especially since you might have conquered them by force and enslaved them.

I still think (at least if we are going to allow as many native planets as i hope) that native planets should not be a full member of the diplomatic community, in order to keep the number of diplomatic entities at a sanely managable number.


You mean "systems", right?

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Presumably, populated planets that are not controlled by an empire won't do anything, regardless of whether they are populated native or playable species. By "do anything", I mean produce ships or buildings, or change focus. They presumably would still be affected be normal game mechanics for food output and consumption, so might grow or shrink in population, or might stay stable until perturbed by some event.

It's possible a neutral planet populated by a playable species could form a new empire, thus allowing it to start producing buildings or ships or change its focus (or research techs, other player activities). All of these actions require issuing orders, which only empires - ie. human or AI players - can do.

It's a lot easier to make a species players will want if it doesn't have to be balanced. It's a lot harder to make a species that isn't balanced if it can be spread around as much as a player wants.


Presumably the "diplomatic community" would just be empires.

Individual planets could be manipulated by players through whatever means the engine provides, to join or leave an empire, "rebel" in some manner, or could be invaded. I consider this manipulation to be distinct conceptually and in game mechanics from empire-empire diplomatic relationships.

Not really, but sort of; rephrased: Neutral planets could have native species or playable species, and there could be neutral planets throughout the galaxy.

Ok, it looks like we're pretty much on the same page regarding neutral planets.

Ok, but we don't want neutral planets to be necessarily defenseless, right? (though i think some of them should be) Even if they can't build a fleet they could have planetary defenses and/or ground troops.
So either:

* the neutral planets are granted a set number of defenses/troops at galaxy generation, which cannot be replaced, or
* there is some sort of simple default routine that tries to maintain population and build/maintain defenses, or
* "militia" ground troops could be automatically generated from citizens whenever any planet is invaded, so there's no need for a neutral planet to do anything special to defend itself.

Very good point. My imagination is seeing lots of potential in weird 1-planet species.


Of course we'll be able to find out later, but my fear is that in the early game happening upon a neutral planet with a compatible "playable" species would be a very powerful advantage. But come to think of it, there's no apparent reason we can't have both your homeworld-bound, interesting, and unbalanced natives and my original, colonizable, less-powerful, less-interesting, sorta-balanced natives. But the homeworld-bound type is definitely the place to start.

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Once there's a ground combat system, the details will be clear, but yes, I would expect there would be some sort of planetary defense and ground troops that would make it nontrivial to capture any planet that's not a new colony for a player at the start of a standard game. If planetary ground troops are a meter, then they would be easy to generate with effects, and would likely automatically replace themselves over time. So would shields and planetary weapons (the shield and defense meters of planets). Population also automatically grows without the need to order it to do so, as long as there's sufficient food and capacity for growth on the planet.


Getting such a playable species to join an empire wouldn't necessarily be easy, especially at the start of a game. Short term, natives or playable-species neutral planets might be a disadvantage, in that you can't use the planet yourself by colonizing it.

If you are required to study the natives before you can communicate (and convince them to join you) then the cost (in RP or even minimum turns) of this could be made high enough so that a starting empire cannot easily do this. Possibily there should be some technologies to make this go quicker, so later on the study phase doesn't take as long. An outpost ship could be required to 'colonise' a native planet to set up the study team. We could have different kinds of outposts. E.g a research outpost for natives, mining outpost for asteroids, spy outpost to increase vision, supply outpost to increase supply lines by 1 etc. the reseach outpost would require an application to be researched, so would not be available to starting empires.

If there are enough different kinds of natives there is no need for neutral playable species planets to be placed at the beginning of the game. But maybe a possible outcome of a rebellion would be a neutral planet (though probably they would not be neutral to their original empire!). This would not be likely to happen at the beginning of a game, so again it would not be unbalancing.

If natives is a planet special then it could happen in a starting system or even more than once in a system. I don't think this should be a problem. If natives are placed in a similar way to staring empires, then a seperation distance (probably small) could be included in the placement algorithm (also the planet could be changed to suit them). I think having it as a planet special might be better, as they could be living on different sized planets - even gas giants or asteriods. The more random it all is the better - less chance for repeated species then.

If natives have more restricted diplomacy and construction options it will make them easier to include in the game - maybe at a later stage they could get more options, which would need more playtesting. The different tech levels of natives could also give different options to them - if they are found in the stone age maybe that is all they are capable of. The playable species could be somehow special in the storyline to explain why they are all able to form empires (and why they all start out equal).

Researching the language could provide a little speed-bump, but i think it would be very frustrating if it was a big speed bump.

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OK, so if we are or may break the connection between "native" species and "neutral" planets-- in other words if we can have a planet with a major species who is just chilling out and no doing all that empire-building stuff -- the term "native" could reasonably apply to both. So i think we need a new term more specifically descriptive of Geoff's new style "natives".

I suggest one of the following:

> Sedentary (Zoology & Anthropology inhabiting the same locality throughout life; not migratory or nomadic. Doesn't just mean, "couch potato")
> Stay-at-home
> Homeworld-bound
> Non-colonizing

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Not necessarily. There could be a planet that is colonized by a player with a playable species, which then rebels or is abandoned, and becomes independent (ie. not controlled by an empire). This wouldn't then reasonably be called a "native" species for that planet.


Maybe "Spacefaring" and "Non-Spacefaring"? Or "Planetbound"? "Sedentary" could work, but does suggest (to me) a behavioural trait of an individual organism, rather than the species.

Edit: We might also want to have a word for a species that can't colonize a planet, and only exists on ships. /Edit

We could just say 'They have gone Native!'

Even if playable species are never seeded on neutral planets at galaxy generation in a regular random game, it seems very likely that some campaigns/scenarios will start out with playable species on neutral planets. Scenarios will give this any number of explanations.

Expanded list, my preference in bold:

The species presented for you to choose at game start

> Playable
> Major
> Expansive
> Dynamic
> Imperial obviously what it means is potentially-imperial i.e. you can start an empire with an imperial species.

Any species not presented for you to choose at game start (besides custom species you might create for play)

> Minor
> Lesser

Species which cannot leave their homeworld

> Sedentary (Zoology & Anthropology inhabiting the same locality throughout life; not migratory or nomadic. Doesn't just mean, "couch potato")
> Stay-at-home
> Homeworld-bound
> Planet-bound
> Non-colonizing
> Confined gets to the heart of the matter without hyphen-mushing words together

species that can't colonize planets

> Space-bound
> Space-dwelling
> Void-dwelling slightly more poetic, but perfectly clear

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That's true, but my point was that calling every species on a planet that's not controlled by a player "natives" is misleading, as "native" implies that a species originated on a planet (ie. is indigenous or endemic to the planet), when there could be other means by which they got there.


I don't think "confined" is very clear or obvious about its meaning... If you don't like hyphens, then just "Planetbound" and "Spacebound" could be used.


Not perfectly clear... does "void" only include empty space with no star, or systems with no planets? "dwelling" is ambiguous about its restrictiveness; it could mean they prefer the void or are able to live in the void, but may still be able to live on planets.

"Imperial" is OK as a synonym for playable, as long as it isn't meant to imply neither spacebound nor planetbound (or equivalents), as one could conceivably have an empire started with a spacebound species, if we add ship-based resource output and production, which I'd like to do.

Species-specific Techs

There's been a good deal of back and forth over weather there will be any species-specific techs, i.e. techs that only certain species can have.

I think it is important that we treat custom player-created species as first-class citizens. In other words, we avoid don't cool stuff with the included species that custom species can't participate in. Keeping this principle in mind, we can still have "restricted" tech, if we base them on certain pics. For instance if we have a "Telepathic" pick. Then certain techs or tech branches could be unavailable to any empire that doesn't have a member species with the Telepathic pic. This would allow, for instance branches of the tech tree appropriate to Lithovores (if we have lithovores) that an empire wouldn't/couldn't research if it didn't have any lithovores.

Thus picks could become a little deeper, and custom species still get access to all the cool stuff that our pre-made species do.

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Limited-access techs have been repeatedly suggested, but I'm still not clear on why they are necessary, rather than making all techs always available (or equally available), but making the things that some techs unlock, or the effects of techs, only function for some species. Having techs be unlocked by species or similar would be like having a strategic resource that unlocks a tech, rather than having the tech always be available, but the ship part or building requiring access to the resource. The latter is standard in recent Civ games... Is there a reason to prefer tech unlocking in for species differentiation?