Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

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Sloth
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#46 Post by Sloth »

Here is my concept for Happiness and Approval:

What's the effect of Happiness:
- The Happiness of planets influences the Approval of the respective species (in both directions).
- Happiness will protect the planet from Espionage actions.
- Low Happiness will reduce Production.
- Very low Happiness will lead to a Rebellion.

What's the effect of Approval:
- Approval influences Happiness on planets with the respective species (in both directions).
- Approval will improve Espionage actions on objects with the respective species (enemy colonies/ships).
qsswin wrote:How would we prevent positive feedback loops? I.e., if happiness improves approval and approval is supposed to influence approval, we'd need some mechanic to prevent unlimited growth.
I think i found a solution that prevents feedback loops:

In detail (the numbers):
- Happiness has values between 0 and 100 (capped if target is greater or smaller).
- Approval has values up to 100 (capped if target is greater). No lower bound.
- Starting Approval (both target and current) of the starting species is 100. Other species start with 50 (or whatever).
- Colonies (colonized or captured) start with current Happiness equal to the Approval of the respective species.

Calculation of target Approval (each turn):
Target Approval is the mean current happiness of all your planets with the respective species, weighted by population. A = (H1*P1+H2*P2+...)/(P1+P2+...).

Calculation of target Happiness (each turn):
Target Happiness base is the current Approval of the respective species.
+ 10 for homeworld.
+ 10 for capital.
+ 10 for Gaia.
+ 50 Paradise Planet Focus (produces nothing).
+ X for ech Supply Line connected planet with Happiness Focus (X should depend on population).
+ X due to happiness raising techs/buildings.
+ 10 for Good planet.
- 10 for Poor planet.
- 20 for Hostile planet.
- 2 * starlane distance to homeworld (maximum -20, same for homeworld not part of the empire/ally).
- 2 * starlane distance to capitol (maximum -20, same for no capitol).
- 100 Concentration Camp (but no production penalty or rebellions).

Actions that change current meters:
- Bombing a planet with a species reduces current Approval by 20 (whatever). More for homeworld.
- Bioterror on a planet with a species reduces current Approval by 20 (whatever).

Thresholds for Happiness penalties:
- If Happiness < 10: Production of PP, RP, TP is multiplied with Happiness/10. (riots, strikes)
- If Happiness = 0: Target Troops is set to 0. (Rebellion)
- If Happiness = 0 and Troops = 0: Independence.
Last edited by Sloth on Tue Feb 05, 2013 7:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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qsswin
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#47 Post by qsswin »

eleazar wrote:I don't see or intend a "approval is supposed to influence approval" step in the process. Some older drafts had a circular structure, but i think that would be more confusing/troublesome that it's worth.
Er, sorry. I meant to say "approval is supposed to influence happiness," which makes sense (you'd think a species angry at you would be unhappy to be in your empire).

EDIT: And I didn't see Sloth suggest a way to avoid the problem I meant. Derp.

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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#48 Post by Bigjoe5 »

qsswin wrote:Er, sorry. I meant to say "approval is supposed to influence happiness," which makes sense (you'd think a species angry at you would be unhappy to be in your empire).

EDIT: And I didn't see Sloth suggest a way to avoid the problem I meant. Derp.
I don't think it needs to be quite that way - more like, approval is supposed to influence happiness, and various events or actions taken by an empire could influence both short-term happiness, and a species' approval towards an empire. There's no need for "happiness is supposed to influence approval."
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Sloth
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#49 Post by Sloth »

Bigjoe5 wrote:There's no need for "happiness is supposed to influence approval."
There is a need:

There needs to be a positive effect of happiness and no one came up with anything better.

In my suggested system it's not a waste to look after Happiness early on to not let your Approval drop (which might bite you later on).
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#50 Post by Dilvish »

sounds like a decent system, and "No one came up with something better" after ideas have been tossed around and percolating for a fair while, carries a fair bit of weight I think. Some of the details have me a bit concerned, but that's just a matter of refining it all.

How does Paradise Planet focus differ from Happiness Focus? Is it just whether or not you get the little bit of boost from PRO_SENTIENT_AUTOMATION and the like? Happiness focus won't be getting anything but those little tidbits, will it?

Thinking through the dynamics of adding new species:
Native
start at 50, +10 for homeworld, +10 for Good; I'm not going to be making it my capitol nor making it Gaia any time soon, so 70 is my basic target, if I want any better I'd best put that planet on Happiness or Paradise Juice.

First Captured from an enemy
Suppose the enemy treated the species decently, but this was a Poor planet and is 6 jumps from its homeworld, so current Target Happiness is 50 - 10 - 30 = 10, and suppose the current value is 30. If I acquire it my starlane hit will jump to max, so I'll be looking at a target happiness of -10, plus any adjustments for Supply of Happy Juice from the Happy Juice focus planets, or give this population full blown Paradise Juice to get up to target 40.


The numbers as they stand seem a bit too much towards discouraging invasion. I suggest reducing the starlane jump penalty to perhaps 2/jump, but also have a penalty for number of jumps to the empire's Capitol -- folks on the outskirts are less happy to be in the empire. Also.... I dunno, something :)

Seems like it could be a good starting point to build from.
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#51 Post by eleazar »

Sloth wrote:Here is my concept for Happiness and Approval:
...
One of the important functions of Happiness/Approval/Influence should be IMHO a counter against unrestrained growth. I don't see anything in your proposal that does that.

It is (or at least will be post 0.4.2) high time to consider some specifics, but see my previous, post which while less full of specifics, described the purpose and function of the mechanics. We shouldn't forget the big picture either.

Sloth wrote:+ X for ech Supply Line connected planet with Happiness Focus (X should depend on population).
That doesn't look like it would scale well. Much/most of the time all of an healthy empire's planets would be supply-connected with each other. The player should never be forced to count the number of jumps from A to B -- just look if there is a colored line connecting them.
Sloth wrote:- 5 * starlane distance to homeworld (maximum -50, same for homeworld not part of the empire).
This sounds annoying to worry about, and looks like it would make single-species empires pretty hard. I think a ranged-based limitation on happiness should only be considered if we come to the point where it is clear that it is too easy to expand all over the map.

Bigjoe5 wrote:I don't think it needs to be quite that way - more like, approval is supposed to influence happiness, and various events or actions taken by an empire could influence both short-term happiness, and a species' approval towards an empire. There's no need for "happiness is supposed to influence approval."
Lazily grabbed from the first post in this thread:
eleazar wrote:Ethos & Alignments
As cool as i think those ideas could be, they are complicated and abstract, and best if left to a later round of development, after other things have been established. The fact that we had such a hard time explaining our proposals for this to each other is a stong hint that they weren't KISS. Also, a much simpler system could possibly be devised to give citizens personality to replace Ethos & Alignments.

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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#52 Post by Sloth »

Dilvish wrote: How does Paradise Planet focus differ from Happiness Focus?
Happiness Focus will make all supply line connected planets happy. Paradise Planet will just make the one planet happy.
Dilvish wrote: Thinking through the dynamics of adding new species:
Native
start at 50, +10 for homeworld, +10 for Good; I'm not going to be making it my capitol nor making it Gaia any time soon, so 70 is my basic target, if I want any better I'd best put that planet on Happiness or Paradise Juice.
70 is the base target at the start. As long as this panet is your only planet with this species target Approval will raise to the current Happiness of that planet, meaning that Approval and Happiness will both slowly grow to 100.

If you settle this species on a far away hostile planet though, Approval will strongly drop. If half of the population has a Happiness bonus of +20 and half has a malus of -30, Approval will slowly sink to 20.
Dilvish wrote: First Captured from an enemy
Suppose the enemy treated the species decently, but this was a Poor planet and is 6 jumps from its homeworld, so current Target Happiness is 50 - 10 - 30 = 10, and suppose the current value is 30. If I acquire it my starlane hit will jump to max, so I'll be looking at a target happiness of -10, plus any adjustments for Supply of Happy Juice from the Happy Juice focus planets, or give this population full blown Paradise Juice to get up to target 40.
Yes, don't expect a newly captured planet to produce anything unless you support it with connected Happiness Focused planets.
Dilvish wrote: The numbers as they stand seem a bit too much towards discouraging invasion. I suggest reducing the starlane jump penalty to perhaps 2/jump, but also have a penalty for number of jumps to the empire's Capitol -- folks on the outskirts are less happy to be in the empire. Also.... I dunno, something
Yes, it would be a good idea to also involve the Capitol here. I will think about a both giving 2/jump.
Last edited by Sloth on Wed Feb 06, 2013 10:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#53 Post by Sloth »

eleazar wrote: One of the important functions of Happiness/Approval/Influence should be IMHO a counter against unrestrained growth. I don't see anything in your proposal that does that.
There are several factors that strongly discourage unrestrained growth:
1. The distance to the homeworld and capitol matter. [Alternative see below]
2. Each Poor or Hostile planet you settle on will lower your Approval in the long run. As each unhappy planet will drag down your mean happiness.
eleazar wrote: It is (or at least will be post 0.4.2) high time to consider some specifics, but see my previous, post which while less full of specifics, described the purpose and function of the mechanics. We shouldn't forget the big picture either.
I think i came up with a system that does what we want without Influence.
eleazar wrote:
Sloth wrote:- 5 * starlane distance to homeworld (maximum -50, same for homeworld not part of the empire).
This sounds annoying to worry about, and looks like it would make single-species empires pretty hard. I think a ranged-based limitation on happiness should only be considered if we come to the point where it is clear that it is too easy to expand all over the map.
Ok, an alternative would be to give all planets a Happiness malus based on total population in the empire:

+ 20 for homeworld.
+ 10 supply-connected to homeworld.
+ 10 for capital.
+ 5 supply-connected to capital.

+ 10 for Gaia.
+ 50 Paradise Planet Focus (produces nothing).
+ X for each Supply Line connected planet with Happiness Focus (X should depend on population). [maybe X = ProducingPopulation^2 / EmpirePopulation]
+ X due to happiness raising techs/buildings.
+ 10 for Good planet.
- 10 for Poor planet.
- 20 for Hostile planet.
- 100 Concentration Camp (but no production penalty or rebellions).
- 0.05 * total population of the empire.
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#54 Post by eleazar »

Sloth wrote:
eleazar wrote: One of the important functions of Happiness/Approval/Influence should be IMHO a counter against unrestrained growth. I don't see anything in your proposal that does that.
There are several factors that strongly discourage unrestrained growth:
1. The distance to the homeworld and capitol matter. [Alternative see below]
2. Each Poor or Hostile planet you settle on will lower your Approval in the long run. As each unhappy planet will drag down your mean happiness.
That doesn't so much counter growth in general. It just restrains growth in less habitable planets before you discover terraforming, or into new regions if there are no native homeworld nearby to use as bases for additional expansion.

I don't see how anything can work well, unless there is some non-linearly (i think that's the math term i want) increasing malus possibly per planet, but more likely per citizen in a empire, as you now list as an alternative. That penalizes exactly what we are trying to curb. Penalizing something else trying to curb large empires indirectly is too likely to miss the mark, at least some of the time.

Sloth wrote: think i came up with a system that does what we want without Influence.
Getting rid of Influence (which is intended to have other uses, in diplomacy and espionage), and replacing it with 2 non-resource producing focuses which aren't so easily to use for anything else doesn't seem like progress.

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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#55 Post by Bigjoe5 »

eleazar wrote:
Bigjoe5 wrote:I don't think it needs to be quite that way - more like, approval is supposed to influence happiness, and various events or actions taken by an empire could influence both short-term happiness, and a species' approval towards an empire. There's no need for "happiness is supposed to influence approval."
Lazily grabbed from the first post in this thread:
eleazar wrote:Ethos & Alignments
As cool as i think those ideas could be, they are complicated and abstract, and best if left to a later round of development, after other things have been established. The fact that we had such a hard time explaining our proposals for this to each other is a stong hint that they weren't KISS. Also, a much simpler system could possibly be devised to give citizens personality to replace Ethos & Alignments.
I don't see how that's more relevant to my statement that to any other mention of 'approval' in this thread.
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#56 Post by Sloth »

eleazar wrote: Getting rid of Influence (which is intended to have other uses, in diplomacy and espionage), and replacing it with 2 non-resource producing focuses which aren't so easily to use for anything else doesn't seem like progress.
Ok, i guess something has to boost diplomacy and espionage, so here is an update with Influence:

Effect of Influence:
- Increases Happiness on all supply connected planets by Influence/SupplyConnectedPopulation.
- Something with diplomacy and espionage (in the future).

Calculation of Influence:
Base is 0.
+ 20 Capital.
+ 20 Cultural Archives.
+ 1 per Population if set to Influence Focus (+- X by species traits)(+ X by Specials)(+X by techs/buildings).

Calculation of target Happiness:
Base is the current Approval of the respective species.
+ 20 for homeworld.
+ 10 supply-connected to homeworld.
+ 10 for capital.
+ 10 for Gaia.
+ 50 Happiness Focus (only helps this planet).
+ X from Influence by Supply Line connected planets.
+ X due to happiness raising techs/buildings.
+- X Species traits (maybe tied to conditions, for example don't like Black Holes, Tiny Planets etc.).
+- X Specials.
+ 10 for Good planet.
- 10 for Poor planet.
- 20 for Hostile planet.
- 100 Concentration Camp (but no production penalty or rebellions).
- 0.05 * total population of the empire.
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#57 Post by yandonman »

Starting to sound like a lot of background math... (a la MOO3)
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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#58 Post by Geoff the Medio »

At the risk of sidetracking discussion, one thing I'd like to propose is replacing "influence" or "trade" with "psi", or an empire pool of psionic power / potential. This would have all the functions proposed for influence, but also be plausibly useful for other things that make no sense for "influence" to do. With suitable technobabble to explain, it would also have all the sources proposed for influence, but would also be plausibly generatable in ways that don't make sense for "influence". Effectively it can act like sci-fi "magic points", merging resource-concepts of "culture", "influence", and any physically-manifesting psionic abilities. This is useful because it makes it plausible to use the resource in more ways than would make sense for "influence", and presently a problem I see is the lack of things to do with influence and thus lack of a reason to care about having it available.

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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#59 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:At the risk of sidetracking discussion, one thing I'd like to propose is replacing "influence" or "trade" with "psi", or an empire pool of psionic power / potential.
Industry is really a big grab-bag of different things, as is Research. We are just used to thinking of them together as a category.

Most of the things that could be accomplished with mundane social influence could also be accomplished with, or aided by Psychic powers. I'd define "Influence" to included "psi" along with more mundane persuasion, diplomacy, charisma, PR, blackmail, and brainwashing. Telepathic species would generally be good at generating Influence. And then whichever uses only make sense for psi powers would only be unlocked with a Telepathic species in your empire and/or research in Psi techs.

However, I don't think however that there are too few "non-magical" things to do with Influence. I see it:
  • Holding together large or diverse empires by keeping up Happiness
  • Persuading native planets to join your empire without invasion
  • Enabling PR attacks against enemy planets to turn them against their empire.
  • Possibly as a cost to engage in advanced diplomatic actions.
  • Possibly as a cost for many/most espionage actions
Some players may mostly ignore Influence beyond what it takes to keep their planets not unhappy. I think that's fine. It gives the players that prefer such methods a way of getting many things done without warfare.

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Re: Happiness, Influence, & Allegiance

#60 Post by Bigjoe5 »

eleazar wrote:- Citizen is part of a large empire (some increasing penalty as imperial population increases)
I'm starting to get very uneasy about this new "penalize the player for doing well" vibe that's been flying around lately... If we want having a small empire to be a valid option - which we do - then there are ways of introducing liabilities to large empires without the ugly kludge of a (more or less) direct penalty.

For example, I'm all for large empires being more vulnerable to espionage than smaller empires, but I'd prefer not to do that via a straight-up penalty to happiness for larger empires, which I think would just feel unfair and frustrating.

One thing in particular I'm thinking of is the difficulty of pleasing different species in your empire. Due to the variety of different EPs, large empires are likely to need several different species. I would even go so far as to not make hostile planets inhabitable, except maybe under maximum bonuses, to force the player to use different species if he really wants those planets. And yeah, keep it simple, I know, but to me this is preferable to giving a penalty to large empires.

Another thing I'm thinking of is methods of actually infiltrating an enemy empire with espionage. I'd like to see the possibility for a player to "infiltrate" an uninhabited planet, which would remain infiltrated when another empire colonizes it. Likewise for invasions - if I have spies on another player's planet (or even my own planet), and that planet gets captured, those spies should be able to do their work in the planet's new owner empire. This makes "reckless" expanders naturally more vulnerable to espionage. And yeah, there's no espionage yet, I know...

...so what do we do for now? I'd say stop worrying about the short-term balancing and start thinking ahead. Start planning the espionage and diplomacy systems. Implement a UI mechanism for activating ship and building effects. Get those fleets and planets windows operational. Otherwise we're just spinning our wheels here by messing around with temporary solutions.
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