 Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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I'm interested in exploring a game idea that would bring politics a little more to the fore, and would like feedback or expressions of interest in playing on the following rules, to work out whether to continue the idea. If there is enough interest, I'll run a game.
The basic idea is that one of the races (this would almost certainly be the host, I'd be willing to do this) is an old established but low tech empire that lets the other players (the new 'client' races) do all the work, and taxes this work to sustain itself. As the new races get more powerful, they may (or may not) challenge this regime. The Empire's role would be to try and keep the peace by persuasion, sustainable tax rates, threats, bribery, military action, etc., and the new races try and determine whether or when it is in their best interest to stay with the Empire or rebel. I kind of expect things to eventually go very badly for the Empire, but you never know ...
The game is set up so that normal players have very few special 'rules' they have to follow. The Empire starts very powerful, but has lots of rules.
Short version of rules:
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Normal non AccBBS Stars! game, except for the presence of a powerful neighbour who demands mineral taxes. Over time, the power difference disappears ...
Longer version of rules (this is only an outline, I can flesh them out later):
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There are three classes of race - the Empire, the Spacer Guild (tax collectors), and the client races. The Empire and the Guild would be played by the host. The Empire and the Guild would have a 100 year 'jump start' - every other race would start exactly as if the 100 years hadn't happened (i.e. population, minerals, defenses, and ships will be 'put back' to their 2400 values, and no research will occur).
The Empire would be a wide hab CA race that would start with several rules it had to follow:
(1) The Empire starts (after the 100 years) with no mines built, and also performs no remote mining or mineral alchemy. All minerals must come from taxes. (Actually, the Empire would preform MA (at the slow rate) after getting bio 26).
(2) The Empire may research bio freely, however for other techs, it must be presented with an item of a particular tech level before it may research to that tech. For example, the first time the empire is gifted a large freighter, it may research con to 8. It may also research to 26 once given the highest component that can be given in each field (such as the Trans-Star 10).
(3) The Empire starts somewhere near the middle of the map, and does not colonize planets beyond a predefined area.
(4) The Empire starts with a large but low-tech fleet of ships (enough to enforce it's will at the start of the game), except that it might also have some quite high tech scanners provided by the guild.
... and maybe some more restrictions in here, designed to make the Empire a race that can only be played with the help of taxes.
All these restrictions are lifted the moment that the Empire takes more than a certain amount of damage - it can then research tech and mine minerals freely.
The Guild would be a collection of races (possibly 5 IT, or 4 IT and one SS) who's only purpose is to smooth out the MM hell that the empire might have in revenue gathering. It has no restrictions on the amount of mining or research it can do (although if won't do any research during the 100 year 'start-up' - either that or SS would have to be banned as a player race), but the only minerals of gives to the Empire are collected taxes, and doesn't give the Empire any techs (unless both the Empire and Guild are attacked by the same player in which case they will co-operate). It's job is simply to collect taxes and transport any ships between the Empire and the client races (it will charge minerals from the Empire or anyone else for any other services). The rules for it are:
(1) They do not own any worlds except the ones it starts on, plus any worlds given by players. Even the secondary IT worlds are removed before play.
(2) They are very neutral and do not communicate with anyone - they do not attack unless attacked (the Guild is regarded as one race for this - they may all respond). Even if the Empire is attacked, the Guild stays out of the conflict.
(3) When collecting taxes, it is assumed that it has the technology to recycle ships at 100% technology (when passing minerals on to the Empire, it makes up the shortfall itself - that's just a game mechanics thing).
Rules for client races:
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Normal Stars! rules, plus the usual no cheats (chaff allowed). with the following exceptions:
(1) Race restrictions: CA (if allowed) most not have TT, and must not build Orbital Adjusters, SS must not have TT (because they will be getting a ton of free bio).
(2) Under no circumstances may a player transfer ships to any branch of the guild other than the one allocated, and the player may not transfer more than 4 (depending on number of players) different designs of ship in a year. (The whole point of this rule is to deal with the limitation of the 16 ship slots, and is why there are so many Guild 'races').
(3) Player races most start unpassworded (to allow setup), but any time a password is added or changed, the new password must be given to a third party I will specify in case the player leaves without warning.
Universe settings would be something like: Acc-BBS off (I like AR and HP races to be viable), Random Events on (or off if the players would prefer this), and Public Player Scores on (needed for scoring). About 30 planets per player, and a gen starting at 1/day (possibly not including weekends) and going to 2 or 3 a week (the Empire is a bit of work to play and I need a life too).
It would be a little foolish for a player to attack the Guild (thus offending the Guild, and offending the Empire by non-payment of taxes), but there is no rule against it.
Game End:
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The game ends when the Empire takes a certain amount of damage (loses half it's worlds including it's homeworld), or when 25% of the players have Nubian technology and there has been no war for 5 years.
Scoring:
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The game is won by the client race by having the largest _aggregated_ score when the game ends.
The Empire has a separate winning condition, depending on whether the game ends in war or peace.
Scoring would be done on average once every 5 years after turn 20. Scoring would happen when all the scores added up to a number ending in 2 or 7 (making it essentially random), or simply every 5 years (if I can be convinced that this predictability can't be abused to artifically inflate scores). Basically, the races score (or some variation thereof, such as just looking at resources, planets and tech levels to block certain types of abuse) is added to an accumulating score. the highest at the end wins.
In addition, something like 10%-20% of the total score would be allocated as the Empire see's fit (it rewards it's friends).
Also, the same percentage (10%-20%) is allocated by whoever the 'First Rebel' is - the player that has been at war with the Empire for the longest. (Note it is possible to sue for peace, so the First Rebel may change).
There are possibly other bonuses for occupying homeworlds, etc.
Managing the Empire:
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This is not in the rules per se, but more a guideline of how I see the Empire being run:
(1) It would expect regular mineral taxes that would be in proportion to score (an easy way to work it out), The empire sets the rate and the minimum proportion of each type of mineral (remember these are the only minerals it gets!), but it would aim for something like 10-15% of mineral output.
(2) The Empire prefers to have taxes delivered in the form of ships, particularly ships with interesting toys on them, although taxes can be provided as straight minerals. 100% recycling efficieny in converting ships to minerals will be assumed, and is credited regardless of whether the Empire scraps or keeps the ship. All taxes are paid to the guild.
(3) The Empire requires a sample of each new technology (presented through the Guild) before the race uses that component for itself. MT ships are exempt from this, MT parts are not. This doesn't mean it must be presented with a sample of each component type, just the ones of the highest tech (i.e if you give the empire a Galleon (con 11), you can use Crusiers, Large Freighters, etc because they are all lower tech, but not battleships). It likes things it can't build for itself - heavy mines, tachyon scanners, etc.
(4) The Empire has a complete monopoly on Orbital Adjusters and will never give them away, and will help it's friends.
(5) The Empire can't force taxes or technology samples, however there may be sanctions (political, military or reversing orbital adjusters) for defaulters.
(6) There are three basic levels of co-operation with the Empire:
(a) Pay taxes and give tech samples
(b) Tax defaulters
(c) Military conflict.
(7) The Empire has discretion about how it intervenes in conficts between client races, it will generally stay out of it as long as both sides are paying their taxes (or positively encourage defaulters to attack each other), but it will support (a) ahead of (b) ahead of (c) in the list above. The Empire may of course be bribed.
OK, any thoughts after all that?
[Update 20050102 - fixed some typos, added clarifications and simplified the player rules]
[Update 20050106 - removed some rules that are just confusing at first reading - they are details that can be sorted out as part of setting up a game]
[Updated on: Thu, 05 January 2006 21:16] Report message to a moderator
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