Uplift

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Airshipjones
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Just so long as it works

#31 Post by Airshipjones »

We don't want another genesis device screw-up, now do we?

:)

marhawkman
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Re: Just so long as it works

#32 Post by marhawkman »

Airshipjones wrote:We don't want another genesis device screw-up, now do we?

:)
that's kinda the point. The race that had terraforming bombs could terraform planets they inhabited effortlessly and thus didn't need to use them on their own planets. thus they'd use them to foul up planets their opponents had.

But I really like the idea of having bombs in this game that can turn a terran planet into desert etc...
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Airshipjones
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Oh, I agree

#33 Post by Airshipjones »

Just so long as a megolamaniacal Warlord from several centuries ago doesn't get ahold of it and misuse it.

marhawkman
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Re: Oh, I agree

#34 Post by marhawkman »

Airshipjones wrote:Just so long as a megolamaniacal Warlord from several centuries ago doesn't get ahold of it and misuse it.
"misuse"? :?: I get the feeling you don't get the purpose. The idea is: I have the bomb. Thus if I attack an opposing planet I can make it less habitable by it's occupants.

Thus "misusing" it=using it properly.

BTW the way this game works it'd be best as a one shot weapon...
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eleazar
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#35 Post by eleazar »

(back to the original topic)
I enjoyed Brin's Uplift series as well (though the ending got weird).

Presuming that we don't have 1 race per empire like Moo1: (I prefer to winning without killing all other sentient life— it just feels evil)
There should be a much easier way to add new species to your empire— discovering a sentient, but technologically un-advanced species and teaching them. Species could reasonably join your empire much more quickly, then if you had to hack their genes to add intelliegence.

In fact i think it would be interesting if there were an equal or greater number of "native" species that "galactic empire building" species. The natives would improve their planet perhaps even explore their star system, but never learn to travel between the stars.

This feature once working could become the foundation for a more complex uplift feature. But i don't think we'll get aliens of any kind till much further down the road.

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eleazar
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#36 Post by eleazar »

Yeah, i know this is very premature, but i glanced at this thread before going to bed, and got some further ideas as i was drifting off to sleep. I've tried to reach the ballance between maximum strategy/roll-playing and minimum complexity. But i'd be quite happy if only the simpler to implement Sentients were included.



There are 2 specials: "Pre-sentient Indigene, Foo" and "Sentient Indigene, Foo" ("indigene" is the noun form of "indigenous", it sounds more sci-fi than "native") "Foo" throughout is used as the species name. Each indigene species will appear only once in the galaxy.

With both specials you have 3 options: (instead of colonize)
"Study Foo" "Exploit Foo" "Exterminate Foo." For sentients you have a 4th option, "Offer Citizenship to Foo."
For "Study" or "Exploit," a colonyship is required and used up to become scientists or conquerors. "Exterminate" requires any military ship. "Offer Citizenship" is possible with any kind of ship.

If you choose "Study" an item is added to the science que. (I also think it would be cool if you could "Study" a player race from captured ships or conquored planets to learn about them) Once a modest number of RP have been spent, you'll learn the indigene's racial pics. This is helpful even if you wanted to exterminate or exploit, because you'll learn how they might be exploited, or how much of a fight they'll put up if you try genocide. Sentient Indigenes will have overall better picks that Pre-sentients.

You still have the choice if or how to incorporate them into your empire. Strategicly Pre-sentients offer a small, immediate benefit if expoited v.s. a larger delayed benefit from Uplift. With Sentients the benefit of incorporation is about equal to uplift of presentients, but without the delay. However, Sentient exploitation is more profitable than exploiting Pre-sentients.

If you choose Exploit or Exterminate you have a chance of a ground war— a higher chance from Exterminate. The chance is based on how war-like the species is, and the compatibility of your Ethos, or some such not-yet-devised meter. With either choice your colonization begins immediately. Some mid-game bio-warfare techs may allow you to exterminate them without a fight.

Pre-Sentients:
• If Exploitation is chosen, once the indigenes are subdued, they become a planetary special "Pre-sentient Labor" that adds to max farming or mining (depending on which they were better at). Changing the EP will decrease the bonus.

• After the initial study is complete, and if the appropriate tech is known, an "Uplift, phase 1" option becomes available. (A term other than Brin's "Uplift" should be chosen.) If initiated, the player is offered the choice of removing a negative social pic, adding a social positive one, or perhaps changing an element of the ethos. This represents educating the species, not wholesale genetic reengineering. If FO allows genetic engineering of species it should also be possible to do it to your main or conquored races at any time, however, this is a different issue, and not addressed here. At the completion of "Phase 1" the player may include the race as a regular citizen of his empire, or continue to Phase 2 and 3, which are the same as Phase 1 but require many times more RP than the previous phase(s).

• During uplift the indigene's population increases at a slow rate. They put both foci on farming. The player has no control over the planet, except perhaps to build defences. Once uplift is complete, the pre-sentient special is changed to "homeworld, Foo." The new client race is managed the same (yet to be determined) way that other members of a multi-species empire are, but perhaps with a loyalty bonus for each phase of uplift completed.


Sentients:
Sentient Indigenes are (in Star Trek terms) a pre-warp civilization. More specificly, for whatever cultural, genetic, or situational reason they will never achive space flight on their own. However, their planet is already somewhat developed. Their racial picks may not be as good as player races.

• If Exploitation is chosen, once the indigenes are subdued, they become a planetary special "Sentient Labor" that adds to whichever meter they have the biggest advantage in. Changing the EP will decrease the bonus.
You also gain whatever infrastructure the indigenes have built, and the current meter status of whatever meter they effect.

• Unlike Pre-sentients, Sentients may refuse incorporation as citizens of your empire. This is based on the same social meters as their possible refusal to be exploited or exterminated. However, they are more tolerance of your differences if you offer them citizenship (obviously).
— * If they join, the Sentient special is changed to "homeworld, Foo."
— * If they refuse to join, you are left with the Exploit or Exterminate options, or simply to leave. If the player leaves them alone, another empire may come along and add them to itself.


Why add additional citizen races to your empire?
• From a funness perspective, federations of diverse alien species united in a single civilization is a staple of sci-fi. This is my primary reason for caring about this.
• Other races are likely to flourish on planets that your primary race finds inhospitable, which adds a big bonus to colonization.
• Other Races are likely to have advantages in production, warfare or research than your primary race doesn't have.

To offset these advantages,
• it should probably take more work to keep an empire of diverse species happy.
• It may provide an opportunity for espionage, especially if a race was incorporated forcibly.
• Some governmental pics or ethos would be incompatable with a multi-species empire.

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#37 Post by marhawkman »

nifty! *files with racial stat/bonuses* when are we gonna do it? hopefully sometime next year.
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eleazar
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#38 Post by eleazar »

marhawkman wrote:nifty! *files with racial stat/bonuses* when are we gonna do it? hopefully sometime next year.
*sigh* who knows? :?
I can only hope that future stages of development will be quicker as more of the groundwork has already been laid down in random brainstorming threads like this, and by past decisions in the DD.

Realistically i think v.4 is more work for art, code, and design than has gone into the whole project so far. However, it might be more focused work, and therefore more efficient work.

As an example for contrast Battle for Wesnoth (a much simpler game)reached 1.0 in 2-3 years, but usually with dozens of developers contributing code, art, and text simultaneously.

The thing is i really want to play this game!

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eleazar
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#39 Post by eleazar »

eleazar a couple posts ago wrote:Pre-Sentients
• If Exploitation is chosen, once the indigenes are subdued, they become a planetary special "Pre-sentient Labor" that adds to max farming or mining (depending on which they were better at). Changing the EP will decrease the bonus.

Sentients
• If Exploitation is chosen, once the indigenes are subdued, they become a planetary special "Sentient Labor" that adds to whichever meter they have the biggest advantage in. Changing the EP will decrease the bonus.
You also gain whatever infrastructure the indigenes have built, and the current meter status of whatever meter they effect.
After playing MoO2 a while and considering this aspect, i think the quoted sections are lame. Too much it resembles the MoO2 implementation of exploiting/enslaving Natives, which like Geoff, i think that is lacking. A more interesting solution that works within the bounds of "one planet, one species" has occurred to me that also would work when conquering planets of a player species.

A player that does not wish to exterminate/exile an indigene/conquered planet, but is also unwilling to incorporate them as full members of his empire, has one obvious option: Enslave the entire Planet!

The populace and labor would be entirely of the original species. Overseers, and the military would be of the conquering race, however, they have a small presence that does not effect the population meter.
An enslaved planet would produce less efficiently than a free planet, and would generally have a low loyalty, but it would be very hard to stage a revolt, unless another power eliminated the local military. Enslaved Indigene planets are however less prone to revolt than planets captured from PC races.

A key to the conquerors maintaining control over the less-technologically-developed would be to deny knowledge of advances.

• An Enslaved pre-sentient indigene planet would however only be able to produce food or minerals (and possibly trade).
• An Enslaved sentient indigene planet would only be able to produce food, minerals, and industry (and possibly trade) but not science.

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#40 Post by marhawkman »

erm... that works too. Though I kinda like the idea of them deciding to wipe you out. It's just the sort of twist that'd keep you on your toes.
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eleazar
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#41 Post by eleazar »

marhawkman wrote:erm... that works too. Though I kinda like the idea of them deciding to wipe you out. It's just the sort of twist that'd keep you on your toes.
:twisted: That's still part of my theoretical plan. I'm only altering the portion quoted above.

Revised presentation can be found here.

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Re: Uplift

#42 Post by TheHoneyBadger »

My thought on the whole race/uplift question is that things should operate on a "pyramid scheme" design. Your race, the species you start out as, is at the top of the pyramid. They're the "ancient, elder race", just one step in front of the "Precursors", or whatever background story you've set up.

Your race is not only sentient, independent, and capable of FTL travel, it has within itself all the necessary capabilities of a galaxy-spanning empire. It's got what it takes to rule and keep on ruling successfully for generations.

Other species may lack the ability, or the desire, to take over the galaxy, or be so aggressive they'd blow themselves up or continuously fracture, so there's a certain level of inherant ambition, caution, patriotism, and extrovertness implied. Maybe not a lot, but enough. You can add younger, milder, "lesser" races to your empire, but if the last true member of your particular race keels over, that's the end of the game. Another race-perhaps one you uplifted, or a mutant, might come along and restart the Empire-engine, but things just won't be quite the same.

Planets have biodiversity, and that's a good thing. It's still the same planet, it's just how many different varieties of life it contains. Empires, similarly, could have egodiversity.

The more, varied, races you include in your empire-whether they're slaves, uplifts, expatriates, conquered-and-incorporated, symbiotic allies, mutants, etc., the more varieties you have, the more egodiversity your Empire has. That should mean better research, greater resiliancy, an expansion of colonizeable planets, more diplomatic options, and also more vulnerability to espionage, diplomatic faux-pas, and revolutions.

You might also get bonuses to ground forces, and the theaters in which you can deploy ground forces might also expand.

Egodiversity should expand along with your empire, naturally, but also through the effects of genetic engineering/Uplifting, through adapting sentient races for different environments, and just over time, due to mutations caused by all the radiation and varied environments you're exposing your people to.

Xenophobia, itself, might become a major problem, if powerful members of your Empire suddenly become paranoid, and major revolts/revolutions might also shrink your collected egodiversity.

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eleazar
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Re: Uplift

#43 Post by eleazar »

TheHoneyBadger wrote:Planets have biodiversity, and that's a good thing. It's still the same planet, it's just how many different varieties of life it contains. Empires, similarly, could have egodiversity.

The more, varied, races you include in your empire-whether they're slaves, uplifts, expatriates, conquered-and-incorporated, symbiotic allies, mutants, etc., the more varieties you have, the more egodiversity your Empire has. That should mean better research, greater resiliancy, an expansion of colonizeable planets, more diplomatic options, and also more vulnerability to espionage, diplomatic faux-pas, and revolutions.
It sounds like you want to create an abstract measure of sapient diversity called "egodiversity".
generally i see no point in this. A species that's good at research should apply it's research bonus directly whenever it is researching something, and so forth. I don't see a need to measure and deal with total "egodiversity".

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Krikkitone
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Re: Uplift

#44 Post by Krikkitone »

Well a few points

All races should Play Equally
Any race you find throughout the galaxy whether

AI controlled Imperial Player race
Your Imperial Race
preWarp Native Race
Uplifted Race
OR
Genetic Engineering Race

should all be the same

If a Planet is controlled by an Empire, No matter what type of Race is on it, that planet should be capable of
1. Being exploited in such a way that makes them more likely to Rebel
2. Being treated well in a way that makes them less likely to Rebel
3. Building colony ships of the Local Race's population for colonization elsewhere
4. Rebelling to Join an empire
5. Rebelling to create thier OWN Empire which can do everything any other empire can do (with sufficient tech)

So the ways to "Get" a race
1. Imperial Race: one of the players chose it

2. Native Race: upon discovery can be dealt with like any other 1 Planet Empire (but they have almost no tech, and will probably join you)

3. Uplifted Race: a Planet with a Special allows you to essentially Create a Native Race, but allows you some slight 'modifications' to them in the process.

4. Sociobiological Engineering: Create a New Race that is a modification of a Race in your empire [probably mandate a Series of refinements, ie you only have One type of Psilon II either Combat+ OR Food+, PsilonIII can be Combat+AND Food+]
Your Psilon Population slowly automatically upgrades from Psilon I->Psilon II ->Psilon III
(different Empires that had Psilon planets would have different Psilon IIs and Psilon IIIs in them, since each engineered their Psilons the same way, but once they were in a particular empire, they would automatically engineer in a particular direction)

5. Artificial Consciousness: Creation of a whole new Race [enter Race Design Screen and Build a New Race.. then either pick a Planet to be thiers, or get a Free colony ship of that race to put down on a new planet]

Whether "Other Races" ie not your 'Imperial Race' are 'Enslaved' has nothing to do with whether they were uplifted or engineered not.... you can even 'Enslave' your OWN race by just having the proper Government.


If you want an 'uplifted race' to be worse as a potential 'Imperial Race' then give them more likelihood of certain negative picks... better economy worse combat/spy/diplomacy, etc. Some Picks will be better to have as your 'Imperial' Picks and others as 'Worker' Picks.

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Re: Uplift

#45 Post by marhawkman »

I like Krikki's version. that sounds both fun to play and codable. :)
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