Policy Cards Jumble

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

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#16 Post by labgnome »

Krikkitone wrote:I was talking about Choosing None as an imperial species. (essentially all species are equal) ...I was just mentioning that "None=Imperial species" wouldn't work with Xenocide (equally exterminate all species in your empire)
So this is exactly what Xenophilia would be. Right now the only capitol-linked, or species-specific bonus applied within your empire is the happiness boost form the capitol. Xenophillia just gives that same bonus to everyone. That is literally what it does. Now if there are any other capitol-holding species-wide bonuses that get applied, then they should also be spread to all the species in your empire by Xenophillia (unless there is a really good gem-mechanics reason not-to). This would even include things that might be given by policy cards or other civics.

The non-xenophillia options are specifically not egalitarian/equal. Your either treating other species as tools (Xeno-engineering), resources (Xeno-subjugation) or obstacles to be eliminated (Xenocide). The capitol-holding species should keep whatever benefits holding the capitol gives, because they are the "ruling species" of the society in question in all other cases. Xenophillia is the one that changes that. Mechanically Free Orion does not support mixed-population planets, so wherever you put your capitol is going to put it in the hands (or tentacles) of a particular species. Now deciding on your inter-species relations will determine what that really mean. So if you want everyone to be on equal footing, you pick Xenophillia. If you want them to squeeze resources out of other species, you pick Xeno-subjugation. If you want to have everyone specialize them for specific functions you choose Xeno-engineering. If you want them to eliminate everyone else you pick Xenocide.
Krikkitone wrote:It also wouldn't work with species at capital=Imperial species (unless perhaps it was a policy card)
Huh? I think there might be a part of the policy/government discussion I ma not privy to, because I'm lost again.
Krikkitone wrote:You should have the option to change the civics with an influence cost though (more expensive and longer than switching cards).
Ideally yes, however if we are going to make the government in any way "modular" like this, to allow for a mix-and-match approach here, changing already used civics should be a major undertaking. I also wouldn't see it necessary to implement this model. In fact part of the idea is that you wouldn't necessarily even need or want to "switch" you government as you could more directly and incrementally control what benefits and policy slots you acquired. It also solves the problem of say needing to switch to a "better" government, and whatever drawbacks changing a government entails, whenever new ones become available. IE: each Civic gives you a policy card and an additional benefit, and you can choose those according to how you are progressing. Now I do have ideas about how things like the number of what kinds of policy slots already have would effect the cost of implementing a particular civic, so that you're at least discouraged form getting say 6 economic policy slots and no open policy slots. Otherwise you should be free to build whatever kind of government you like, and suits your particular playstyle or however you are roleplaying your game.

These are also meant to be overriding top-level, structure-effecting long-term social policies of your civilization. So lower-level (and thus unseen to the player) government might work different. Also, they represent a widely accepted social ideology across your society, so they shouldn't be very "changeable". Instituting them as a civic represents your civilization fully realizing whatever that particular ideal represents and successfully implementing it. I am specifically suggesting something different from the Civilization model of switching out your government every so-often.
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3433
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#17 Post by Ophiuchus »

Geoff has an implementation branch PR-2045 for getting feedback, i commented there but the design discussion should happen in the forums so geoff "upgraded" this thread to be the design thread as policy cards and content is relevant.

I repost my original comment concerning that implementation
ophiuchus wrote:Its good to see which direction you want to go with the policies. I like the feeling of extra slots and policy unlocking. Choosing a policy was not possible yet, neither per drag'n'drop nor per double click. Design screen probably not the best fit but not enough policies etc to really say.
Improvements would be a category and info about unavailable policies and possible sources of extra slots.

I was thinking if i could do my species-based policies based on your prototype. Not sure if i can fit it in actually. So an implementation idea what would be necessary to make those possible, maybe these help define requirements for a flexible policies framework:

choosing species based policies means having for each species a fitting policy (so either these need to generated or policies need to be parameterizable)
unlock policies when you have a species in your empire (unlock gated by check for existing policy(?))
probably one slot type per government seat (i.e. at least six different types of slots)

For having different mixes of government functions like government seats

conditions which gate assigment of policies so i can prevent government seats from other government types showing up; this assignment gating conditions are able to query assigned slots
OR (government type) policies are able to add/remove slots

As a prototype I probably would add a species slot and generate for every species a outpost manning policy ('Outpost Staff: Etty', 'Outpost Staff: Human',...).

One general thing: if possible do not hardcode the slot categories. It would be great if that is scriptable.
Since then, geoff replaced hard-coded category slot meters with meters derived from parsed policies' categories.

To implement my species based policies (government functions), i could now generate for every better-than-average defense troops/stealth/detection species an Species Outpost Staff policy in the military category. I probably couldnt filter those by the species in my own empire though which sucks UI wise. I think I could restrict the effects to only apply if i have the specific species in my empire.
For doing something like packaging of government functions like with my government seats, this could be facilitated by adding a single-slot category for each of the government seats (but that meant many slots, and a big load of generated policies: number-of-seats multiplied by number-of-relevant species).

For design there are questions how flexible the policies have to be in terms of interdependencies.

The most basic example: policies should generally be just addable once.

For my species functions which are very redundant (you have a "Sly Outpost Staff Policy" and a "Etty Outpost Staff Policy") the only way to restrict it now are a single slot in an Outpost Staff category. Something akin to enqueue conditions or stackinggroups would be necessary if one wanted to use a multi-slot category like military for such outpost staff policies.

One simplistic way to implement such dependencies could be subcategories. So the policy slots restrict the number of policies you can choose from a certain category. And you can add only one policy for each subcategory. In my example, that would make it an "Outpost Staff" subcategory of the military category.

The generic way are to implement such dependencies would probably enqueue conditions (maybe per glob matching on the adopted policies' names). But if we have generic conditions we probably need an explanation module (tooltip) why a policy currently cant be adopted.

Note that if we do support interdependencies between policies, the number of policies to choose from (policy choices) can be smaller than the number of policies available.

Also one question is if policies should be removable from an empire or not. I think not. Maybe obsoletable policies would be ok.

I also would like the ability to have a lot of policies available. But that leads probably to UI clutter and makes filtering etc necessary.


So i think one thing which would be important to discuss is: How many policies, policy choices and categories do we want to support. Should it be 20 policies in 5 categories? Should it be 30 policy choices out of 600 policies in 20 categories? Answering that would help a lot of design decisions.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#18 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I think the number of "slots" should be limited to between 5 and 20

the total number of "cards" that are available at any one time (you could have cards that make older cards obsolete) should probably be in the range of 20-100 (something like 5-10 "cards" to start)

I think generally having a limited number of categories of slots is better than each slot being its own unique category.

For things that should be mutually exclusive (ie a specific Outpost can only be staffed by one species)... then some slots that don't use cards (instead just a drop down menu of the available options) would be better

[so you would have your more flexible part of your society.. cards and generic categories of slots] and other specific options [who is on my Outposts, For each species will I Terraform their worlds (Y/N) or Cyber engineer them (Y/N)]

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#19 Post by Oberlus »

Another Policy card idea (maybe already in Geoff's mind or github branch):

Each refinement weapon/armor/shield tech enables a choice between making the part:
- Cheaper (small increase of strength, decrease in PPs/part)
- Normal (as now, same price, normal increase of strength)
- Stronger (noticeable increase in strength and PPs/part).

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#20 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote:Another Policy card idea (maybe already in Geoff's mind or github branch)
There's presently no mechanism for policy selections being permanent, so such a mechanism that is a tradeoff between cost and strength of a part doesn't make much sense now.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#21 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote:There's presently no mechanism for policy selections being permanent, so such a mechanism that is a tradeoff between cost and strength of a part doesn't make much sense now.
Hmmm... I understand.
I see that making the choices temporal would be problematic. For example, I assume an empire shouldn't be allowed to produce many ships with cheaper-parts cards in effect and then switch to stronger-parts cards, wait a turn and see your whole fleet doubling its damage at no cost. A cheaper part must stay cheap (and weak) for this policy card idea to make sense.
However... I forgot about Influence (shame on me). Let me redo the suggestion with that in mind:

Somewhere in the government/policy-card system ('cause I don't know how slots and the such gonna be managed), the could be the (flexible) choice between making certain ship parts:
- Cheaper: smaller influence upkeep but downgrade all empire's spicies pilot trait by 1 (so that Misiorla would work as Muursh and Gysache as a VERY_BAD_PILOT species)
- Normal: i.e. no card, as of now or whatever becomes the standard way once Influence upkeep is in place).
- Stronger: greater influence upkeep but upgrade all empire's species weapons trait by 1 (would this allow Misiorla to be ULTIMATE+1 and do 50 damage per death ray shot or there should be a cap).

With this system temporality of the choices does not seem to pose a problem.

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#22 Post by Krikkitone »

Oberlus wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:There's presently no mechanism for policy selections being permanent, so such a mechanism that is a tradeoff between cost and strength of a part doesn't make much sense now.
Hmmm... I understand.
I see that making the choices temporal would be problematic. For example, I assume an empire shouldn't be allowed to produce many ships with cheaper-parts cards in effect and then switch to stronger-parts cards, wait a turn and see your whole fleet doubling its damage at no cost. A cheaper part must stay cheap (and weak) for this policy card idea to make sense.
However... I forgot about Influence (shame on me). Let me redo the suggestion with that in mind:

Somewhere in the government/policy-card system ('cause I don't know how slots and the such gonna be managed), the could be the (flexible) choice between making certain ship parts:
- Cheaper: smaller influence upkeep but downgrade all empire's spicies pilot trait by 1 (so that Misiorla would work as Muursh and Gysache as a VERY_BAD_PILOT species)
- Normal: i.e. no card, as of now or whatever becomes the standard way once Influence upkeep is in place).
- Stronger: greater influence upkeep but upgrade all empire's species weapons trait by 1 (would this allow Misiorla to be ULTIMATE+1 and do 50 damage per death ray shot or there should be a cap).

With this system temporality of the choices does not seem to pose a problem.
Also if it costs Influence to change/implement cards it would make sense.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#23 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote:- Cheaper: smaller influence upkeep but downgrade all empire's spicies pilot trait by 1 (so that Misiorla would work as Muursh and Gysache as a VERY_BAD_PILOT species)
- Normal: i.e. no card, as of now or whatever becomes the standard way once Influence upkeep is in place).
- Stronger: greater influence upkeep but upgrade all empire's species weapons trait by 1 (would this allow Misiorla to be ULTIMATE+1 and do 50 damage per death ray shot or there should be a cap).
It's an open question whether policies should generally be a combination of bonus and penalty, or generally all be mostly bonuses, but only usable if the player isn't using something else, due to the limited number of policy slots available. Civ6 mostly uses the latter, with strictly limited slot availability. A similar system to what you suggest here could be implemented with a "reduce ship upkeep" card and a "better pilots" card, which could be used independently or together, but at the cost of not using another card (and probably a cost in influence to make a policy switch).

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3433
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#24 Post by Ophiuchus »

From another thread for only applying the good_ and great_weapons bonus if building the ship on a friendly (i.e. at least adequate) planet:

To get the bonus you need to choose the ("Fleet Excellence" allows pilots to reach their full potential) policy for the "Surplus on Friendly Planets" category/slot type which applies effects only on friendly planets. Maybe there could be also "Fleet Excellence" for the general military slot, but then you cant use that (more valuable) slot for other policies.

I think the first "Surplus on Friendly Planets" slot should be low cost/achievable in the first 20 turns or already from the start.


@geoff Btw. did you make your mind up for slot-categories and/or other forms of parameterizable slots? (So in the example above there would be the "Fleet Excellence (Friendly Planets)" which could be plugged into the e.g. "Cheap Slots" slot type, but prevents other "* (Friendly Planets)" policy from being plugged in there)
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#25 Post by Oberlus »

Policy cards to increase growth rate of current meters:
- Defense strength: better resilience against siege (faster regeneration).
- Infrastructure: faster colony infrastructure development.
- Population: faster population growth (this policy is already implemented in the government prototipe).
- Same for Industry and Research, and maybe Influence.
- A specific policy faster repurposing of installations and personel when changing focus (similar effect as energy-force structures).

All this could or should come with a disadvantage. I can only think of per-turn influence upkeep (or even PP) or a direct counterpart for another meter: lowering the corresponding target meter (faster growth but capped max) or decreasing growth rate of another current meter (faster defense growth in exchange of slower infrastructure/industry/whatever growth).

Another idea, related to population growth and the evacuation "building":
- Faster colonisation: the government uses its influence to promote among the citizens of the older (more populated) colonies the beauty of living the life of the colonist, to help enlarge the empire blahblah. This boosts the population growth of colonies with current populations under 50% of target and causes the opposite on the rest of colonies (slow down growth), with no effect on the colonies with populations close to 50%.
I really have no idea what are the equations that control current population meter, so the following may be absurdly unbalanced:
The boost for colonies with populations close to 0 could be something like +100% growth rate, and for colonies with populations close to maximum -100%.
Or maybe better, it should be implemented as a balance account: apply some reductions to growth rate of very populated worlds (of species relevant for the ones underpopulated) and transfer the resulting absolute numbers to the candidate colonies (so if you have much more overpopulated than underpopulated colonies, the latter will get a huge boost, and the opposite would imply modest boosts).
But this one seems rather annoying to implement.

User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#26 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 4:45 pm Policy cards to increase growth rate of current meters:
- Defense strength: better resilience against siege (faster regeneration).
- Infrastructure: faster colony infrastructure development.
- Population: faster population growth (this policy is already implemented in the government prototipe).
- Same for Industry and Research, and maybe Influence.
- A specific policy faster repurposing of installations and personel when changing focus (similar effect as energy-force structures).

All this could or should come with a disadvantage. I can only think of per-turn influence upkeep (or even PP) or a direct counterpart for another meter: lowering the corresponding target meter (faster growth but capped max) or decreasing growth rate of another current meter (faster defense growth in exchange of slower infrastructure/industry/whatever growth).
I would agree that a per turn influence cost should be a cost. I don't know exactly what you are asking for except maybe for possible names for policies, so here are some suggestions from me:

-Defense
  • Mid Game: Defensive Logistics Programs
  • Late Game: Adaptive Defense Protocols
-Infrastructure
  • Mid Game: Galactic Infrastructure Council
  • Late Game: infrastructural Planning Algorithms
-Population
  • Mid Game: Reproductive Planning Agency
  • Late Game: Cloning Programs
-Production
  • Mid Game: Predictive Industry
  • Late Game: Galactic Labor Board
-Research
  • Mid Game: Universal Education
  • Late Game: Interstellar Research Networks
-Influence
  • Mid Game: Real-Time Media Analytics
  • Late Game: Subliminal Propaganda
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#27 Post by labgnome »

Personally I see policies as a way to handle many of the bonuses, here are some policy ideas for the starting and early game.

Starting Policies
-Economic
  • Socialist Planning: moderate pop-based production bonus at the capitol, low supply malus at the capitol
  • Capitalist Markets: moderate supply bonus for the capitol, low flat production malus at the capitol
-Academic
  • Research Programs: moderate pop-based research bonus at the capitol, low detection strength malus at the capitol
  • Sensor Network: moderate detection range bonus for the capitol, low flat research malus at the capitol
-Diplomatic
  • Active SETI: moderate pop-based influence bonus at the capitol, low stealth malus at the capitol
  • Encrypted Communications: moderate stealth bonus at the capitol, low flat influence malus at the capitol
Early Game Policies
-Economic
  • Cooperative Economics: low pop-based production bonus
  • Full Automation: low flat production bonus
  • Market Forecasting: low supply bonus
-Academic
  • Creative Commons: low pop-based research bonus
  • Research AIs: low flat research bonus
  • Regular Interplanetary Probes: low planetary detection strength bonus
  • Coordinated Deep-Space Telescopes: low planetary detection range bonus
-Diplomatic
  • Interstellar Information Network: low pop-based influence bonus
  • Galactic Broadcasting: low flat influence bonus
  • Orbital Signal Dampeners: low planetary stealth bonus
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#28 Post by labgnome »

So now that I have an idea of how the Policy Cards are supposed to work I have a big ol' proposal as per my idea over here. I hope I'm not getting carried away, but I have a whole bunch of proposed policies and an organizational system for them to boot.

Basically the policies will be organized into twelve ideals. The first 6 of the ideals are organized into 2 opposing triads, with each ideal in the triad corresponding to either economic, military or social policies. The other 6 ideals are organized into 3 opposing pairs, with each pair corresponding to economic, military or social policies. Opposing Ideals have corresponding mutually exclusive policies. Each ideal has at least 1 policy of each type and at least 3 policies of their corresponding type. When you have at least 4 policy cards of an ideal active for at least fifty turns you get a new policy slot of the corresponding type unlocked. Opposing policy ideals do not stack in effect as to limit the number of policy slots unlocked.

The first triad is Centralized, Decentralized and Secretive, corresponding to building tall, wide and stealthy respectively. The second triad is Authoritarian, Egalitarian and Meritocratic, corresponding for the conquest, diplomacy and technology victories respectively. The first pair is Capitalist and Socialist and corresponds to fast-expanding and supply-connected vs. slow expanding and disconnected. The second pair is Federated and Imperialist and corresponds to peaceful and defensive vs. aggressive and offensive. The last pair is Gestalt and Individualist and corresponds to Generalist vs. Specialist, but is also largely for role-play.

I spent a lot of time working these out in tables, but none of the numbers are final, and should only be considered rough guidelines. As it would be a bit overwhelming to translate it all into a forum post I am uploading it as a doc file for anyone to have a look at. If there is some other file format that would work better for you lat me know and I will oblige if I can. There are 117 total Policies in the proposal across all 12 ideals. I realize this is a whole lot, and we may very-well eliminate and or otherwise whittle-down the policies but I think this is a good starting place.

Free Orion Ideals & Policies.doc
(116 KiB) Downloaded 185 times
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#29 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 1:39 amI spent a lot of time working these out in tables
Oh, indeed!
I've placed them all in a single excel table and, unless I've done something wrong, you've got 117 different policy cards. I haven't done any numbers yet (and I certainly haven't read them all, just a few), but my first impression is that so many policies is overwhelming. It's like 10 policies per slot. 5 policies per slots already seem too much.

Real comments on the actual policies incomming, but IDK when I'll get the time.

User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Policy Cards Jumble

#30 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 9:34 am
labgnome wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 1:39 amI spent a lot of time working these out in tables
Oh, indeed!
I've placed them all in a single excel table and, unless I've done something wrong, you've got 117 different policy cards. I haven't done any numbers yet (and I certainly haven't read them all, just a few), but my first impression is that so many policies is overwhelming. It's like 10 policies per slot. 5 policies per slots already seem too much.

Real comments on the actual policies incomming, but IDK when I'll get the time.
If we go for a full 6 slots per category which we may be getting to, the number is closer 6 or 7 per slot. While 10 may too much, I don't think 5 is. I'd rather have a sizable number of policies per slot, making slots valuable, than say only 2 or 3 policies per slot so that policy slots are valuable and have weight. 117 might be overwhelming, but we may have something like 300 technologies when all is said and done so over 100 policies doesn't sound completely outlandish.
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

Post Reply