Internal Politics in Star Traders 4X

[GANK-STER]

I have just purchased 4X having LOVED Star Traders RPG and I am concerned and disappointed with the basic premise.  Having the player control 3 of the "factions" is cumbersome and simply makes no sense.  This system is akin to playing a game of "Master of Orion" and having the player control more than one race.  In my opinion, far better would be to have the player control one faction, with an AI controlling others (a selectable amount based on map size) and the aliens/Xenos could be like the Antarans in Master of Orion III, a "third party" so to speak, hostile to everyone regardless of other treaties made.  This would also make much more sense between the story and the game.  In the game, the player is the Templar, which guide the different factions, and yet while they can control the destiny of single ships and colonies, wars and trade agreements are beyond them and happen outside of their control, which is a contradiction.  I also believe this goes far better with the theme of the original Star Traders.  In Star Traders, you were a single ship, battling for survival among the factions who were all striving for supremacy.  It would make much more sense for the "Empires" version for you to be in command of one of those factions, continuing that same battle for supremacy while having to deal with the other factions and the Xenos.  It is quite disappointing to me (since I loved the original game so much) for the 4X version of the game (which I have been waiting for a decent 4X type game to be on Android for a LONG time) to be so confusing and cumbersome to play when just a few changes would have made it much better IMO.  Id love for others to comment if they agree (or disagree) with me or have any additions to make to my proposal.

[peely]

I'm a massive fan of MoO, myself, but I think there's a danger in just wanting 4X to become a clone of MoO, rather than something a bit different. Given that we play the role of a Templar who, as far as my limited knowledge of ST lore goes, are supposed to be neutral defenders of humanity, it wouldn't make sense for us to control only one faction against the others. Instead we are supposed to be guiding all of the represented factions through a time of extreme danger, making decisions for the greater good.

I would, however, like to see greater diplomatic involvement, either with less hostile xeno societies (although I suspect this would go against lore) or with other human factions. It would also be nice to see a bit more variety from the xenos that we fight. I believe there are differences in the AI for different xeno races, but it would also be nice to see some variation in ship design and technology.

I would also enjoy the addition of a "Big Bad" like the Antarans from MoO. Perhaps it could take the form of the Narvidian fleet, pursuing the fleeing Start Traders. You could start off with a few scouts, forming the vanguard of the fleet, arriving a few years in before slowly building up to the main body of cruisers, battleships and hives, starting at one side of the map and moving slowly across. It would certainly give a strong focus to the early years as you prepare for the invasion, but it would be a major change to the nature of the game.

Another thing that I've thought about is that, in reality, as soon as things became fairly settled, you'd expect that the factions that we, as the Templar leader, are guiding would start to exert independence. While we control the fleet, the vast majority of your ships end up coming from faction worlds with faction crew, so would owe loyalty primarily to their home faction, rather than the Templars.

I suspect that this would be difficult to include, but it would be interesting to see a faction break away from your control if it grew to the point that felt it didn't need the Templars any more. In my current game the large majority of my fleet and probably about half of my colonies are Cadar and I could imagine them starting to resent Templar control when they see themselves as the main military and economic power in the union. I'd be in a pretty sticky situation if they decided to break away, particularly if they then turned their ships on their erstwhile allies.

[GANK-STER]

I agree with you that just becoming a MoO clone would not be the best thing (although since there arent really ANY MoO type games on Android that are any good it wouldnt be the worst thing) my whole point about the problems with being the Templar is that there are too many inconsistencies with the game play. I, as a Templar, can "force" (or guide if you prefer) which planets are colonized, where ships go, what research is done and all that, but a solar war or trade agreement happens completely randomly (or at the VERY least by chance from a "trade summit" but at the core it is still a random mechanic) and outside of my control. That to me is just bad game mechanics. It would be like playing an RPG where you control your character, buy and set his equipment, choose a quest to go on and move him to a particular area, but then when you get into combat, when he attacks or defends and what attacks he uses all happen randomly. If, as a Templar, you cant precisely control when Solar Wars break out or when trade agreements are formed, then how are you controlling where a faction establishes a colony or what ships they build a fleet with? To me it just doesnt make sense from a gameplay/lore perspective. IMO controlling a single faction would make much more sense. They could even keep nearly all the game mechanics identical, and just add an AI for the other factions.

Your idea about a faction "breaking away" is an interesting one. My only problem with that is what is the fun in playing a game where your character can randomly decide to stop letting you control him? There is no point in playing a game where you dont have absolute control over whatever the subject material is (a character for an RPG, a civilization for an RTS, a plane/space ship for a simulator, etc). The whole point of a game is that you are in control. You are supposed to BE whatever the game is about. If you could lose control of him/them, then there isnt really a point to playing.

[xdesperado]

It's like raising children.
You guide them, train them and at times have to try and correct their behavior.
Regardless of how strictly you watch your children and structure their lives at some point they will misbehave, either in a small way, i.e. spy war, trade embargo, or in major ways, i.e. trade wars and solar wars.
When these happen you have to discipline them using your political actions to correct those bad actions.

A number of other games have had similar semi random unfavorable events in them that could throw you for a loop messing up your carefully laid plans and forcing you to adjust your actions to overcome them. If the factions all did exactly what you wanted all the time much of the fun and challenge would disappear from the game.

It shouldn't be a case of the game sucks because I keep getting these bad political actions that mess up my plans, but rather, what can i do to lessen the likelihood of them occuuring, how can I overcome these challenges to achieve my final objectives, am I setting myself up not just to face down and crush the Xenos but also to limit the damage of my wayward children's latest antics or am I missing the tools needed.

Yes bad politics can ruin a game, but often with careful planning and perseverance you can overcome them and may even find yourself in a better position.

Embrace the unique challenges presented by ST4X instead of crying foul, no other 4X has done this!
Heck I applaud Cory Trese and fallen for finding a new way to challenge us veteran 4X gamers. Keep thinking a bit outside the box TB!

[En1gma]

I completely, but respectfully disagree with the OP. I have played many 4x games, and ST4x stands apart not in spite of, but because of the removed feeling you have from the three bickering factions. This detached political engine makes me just envision the Templar Command sitting around the table scratching their heads at the factions. Making this game just like all the other 4X games out there would be a huge mistake- that's not what TB Games are for.

[Cory Trese]

I appreciate the feedback. Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts about Star Traders 4X.

We intentionally deviated from the standard 4X mechanics in an effort to create a unique game. My goal was to develop some new mechanics that I had not seen in other popular 4X games -- specifically, your diplomatic control over a fractured empire made up of unique political entities. This was both an effort to create a new type of 4X and to create an empire building game that emulates the political climate found in the other Star Traders games.

I appreciate that this type of game will not be perfect for everyone. I'm sad to hear that you feel the effort resulted in "bad game mechanics" and I wish I could do something to convince you otherwise (aside from throwing out months of work and starting over, which we just cannot afford to do.)

It sounds like you have played Star Traders RPG, which leads me to believe that you're familiar with the formalized forms of warfare that Shalun Law allows in the setting. For the 4X game to be coherent and consistent with the RPG game, the concept of battling with the other Factions would be, I'm afraid, an even worse game mechanic. You'd be unable to invade another Faction's worlds meaning the game would rapidly stagnate early in the progression.

In Star Traders 4X you control a council of Faction leaders, the Templar navy (made up of Faction manufactured ships) and the diplomatic corps. Thousands of merchants, smugglers, pirates and explorers are not shown on the map -- those ships are everywhere in Star Traders RPG but hidden in ST 4X. You control them as a swarm via political actions and placement of your navy ships.

Given the fact that I am unable to completely replace the basic premise of the game -- what other ideas would you put forward to improve the game mechanics? This is a good debate and I would like to hear more.

[peely]

Personally, I would enjoy some diplomacy with external factions. I like building an alliance with another race or society and even enjoy the feeling of righteous indignation when they break the alliance and I'm forced to punish them

I tend to agree with Gank-Ster that while my suggestion of factions breaking away may be reasonably realistic, it wouldn't necessarily be a lot of fun. It would encourage you to try to keep the faction representation in your navy and colonies well balanced, so that one didn't end up with the upper hand, though. I'd imagine it would be rather tricky to implement.

It would be good to have some more differentiation between xeno factions: different ship art, perhaps some alternative weaponry. Having a species that focuses on boarding and capturing ships would be interesting, as would be the ability to capture xeno ships and break them up for resources and possible research gains.

[Cory Trese]

Next time I have the money to build a 4X game, I will include some diplomacy with external factions.

The political system strongly encourages you to try to keep the faction representation in your navy and colonies well balanced -- if you don't, expect a storm of wars and jealousy from your Factions.

So far, we have two major differentiation between Xeno Factions -- unique ship artwork, 12 different AIs with strategic differences and weaponry. As we continue to update the game and expand the playable levels of Xeno hostiles, that differentiation will continue to grow.

[huckleberry]

I have to admit at first I was a bit confused by the fact that you are controlling all of the humans and wasn’t sure about the concept but I have come to appreciate the way it was implemented. The main reason is I believe it has allowed for more varieties of game play and specializing, while keeping it a relatively simple concept and avoiding the feeling of making the “perfect combination”. The differences and bonuses in the grand scheme of things are fairly small, but they are enough that even before the game starts they influence your strategy. Additionally as the game progresses the decision you make regarding factions seem to change. Early on you may be wanting to make sure that you have a faster building tahlos or cadar colony near the front lines while keeping a slower to build economic planet farther back. Later on that +2cp may not be as critical when you start with a starport 3, but you now are more focused on keeping the factions balanced and happy so that you have enough trade to fund your armadas and so ships can repair at all planets. The only other way I have seen this type of dynamic is when you have subservient races that you control (e.g. MOO3) but that quickly becomes more complicated and confusing.

That being said there are still a few things I would like to see to improve the interfaction diplomacy to make it more of an aspect of the game and less of a background feature that feels mostly lucked based.

1.     increased visibility on the relations, whether this with a love/hate bar or a place to hear rumors on the relations between two factions. Now I understand if you don’t want to show us "do this and increases chance of an agreement by x% chance", but at least something showing if we are on the right track or shouldn’t even bother spending money on summits. At times your impact currently feels limited, political events feel luck based or overruled by invisible factors, you can do 10+ trade summits with no agreements, but do something like rapidly colonize or keep moral high and everybody jumps into alliances. In other games I have had certain factions always in a war of some type and others always in an alliance or agreement. Again anything that makes this feels less random while adding character to the universe without upsetting game play is always nice.

2.     Add special “election” events – Add random or annual event where the faction leaders vote. Could be based off of planet populations or each faction/planet gets 1 vote and you get a tie breaker vote. This is another area the above mentioned faction relations would come into play without needing a war or alliance, but still have the smaller factions working together to stop the growth of the third or possibly voting to try and improve relations. If this was implemented I am sure you could fill a thread of suggestions that add spice to the game but some quck examples:
a. Penalize one faction or planet – limit number of colony ships, tax one turn of CP, lower pop migration
b. Special events or impact on a planet – trade fair (extra tp or $), prison planet (low morale extra labor), build a statue (improve moral or relations?)
c. Impacts all – limit total TP for a time period (some factions sick of having to do all of the fighting while others get rich), focus on research (or happiness/espionage/production/commerce) (% of CP or TP goes towards other resource )

3.     Disconnect faction relations from other game successes. It feels like in early game or when I am in a desperate situation is when faction relations are at an all-time low and wars will happen arbitrarily, but is also when I need the money the most and have the least options to try and improve things. Whereas when your economy is already running a surplus and everything is awesome you don’t even need to run events and you still get trade alliances. I am kind of torn on even suggesting this, I like good faction relations as a reward for keeping a balanced universe. Ending the solar wars helped but you still can feel like you get in a death spiral where you need ships and improvements but can’t raise the money because moral is dropping and you still have spy wars and no trade agreements. Again this is not necessarily a bad thing and maybe shouldn't change, I think if you had more visibility as already discussed it would help show root causes and would mitigate the feeling the universe is against me.

[slayernz]

There is a community game going on for ST4x right now. If you don't appreciate the absolute spectularness of having 3 separate factions, check out the community thread. We are running as the three houses, and are all trying to work together for the end goal, but we are also acting in the best interests of our own houses, and because of that, there are mini debates on everything from "I want that planet" to "We need to focus on scouting or research or ... YOU BUILT THAT?!?"

It's very cool - and if you are bored, you are welcome to join in. The game is still pretty fresh and we would always invite more in. This isn't a derail by the way (I see your eyes looking at me fallen) ... on the contrary, it's probably the best way to help the OP in seeing the game work sorta as designed

[Officer Genious]

Oct 6, 2014 17:32:10 GMT -5 slayernz said:

There is a community game going on for ST4x right now. If you don't appreciate the absolute spectularness of having 3 separate factions, check out the community thread. We are running as the three houses, and are all trying to work together for the end goal, but we are also acting in the best interests of our own houses, and because of that, there are mini debates on everything from "I want that planet" to "We need to focus on scouting or research or ... YOU BUILT THAT?!?"

It's very cool - and if you are bored, you are welcome to join in. The game is still pretty fresh and we would always invite more in. This isn't a derail by the way (I see your eyes looking at me fallen) ... on the contrary, it's probably the best way to help the OP in seeing the game work sorta as designed

Most definitely this! And the role of a Templar Commander in this game is more akin to a modern-day western President than an all-powerful old-school dictator, which is a nice spin on things-- the one thing about Age of Empires for example is that no matter what form of gov you choose, you just controlled everything. Which is most certainly not how ruling works, even in serious dictatorships). Dealing with the factions is a lot like dealing with the US congress-- you have quite some power and leeway, but you actually have to do some politicking to get things done. Now if I can just get my politics to succeed, I'd be golden.

But this is the real world, as far as videogame politics go-- the factions are just cats in a too-small box who will happily shred the hand that guides them to expand their cardboard empire just a tiny bit more...

[slayernz]

Javat isn't complaining too much ...

[En1gma]

(WHERE DOES HE FIND THESE PICTURES!!!!!)

The community game is a ton of fun, and as far as role-playing goes- a great way to see just what poor Templar Command has to deal with on a daily matter.

[fallen]

@gank-ster - thanks for sharing your opinion. The internal politics of Star Traders 4X Empires is one of my favorite parts of the game, and I think is a unique part of the Star Traders story we are telling. It fits the hand like the glove, if you look at ST RPG.

slayernz / En1gma - for some reason, hanging around this forum really makes me want to get a cat ...

[Jacob]

fallen: As somebody who grew up with two cats (parents got them a few months before mom got me out of her womb) and carried it to its grave, I have to say: DO IT!! These fluffy felines are such loveable furballs... Only thing to really mention: Hold your cat under a motor and power it up, so that it knows that it should fear it.

Hell, slayernz is one of the reasons I'm still here after... 3 years by now? Almost three, I think.

Sent from my rooted Falcon