Rebellion 2: Help!

[DavidAdas]

Okay. So I've got the building part of the game done, and I go to build my first building and what do I discover? Whoops! I don't have my raw materials set to anything, so obviously I can't fork the credits for it. So I best get the initial raw materials generator up so I can have that ready to go as well.

 

But then I think about it -- and I decide I really kinda dislike the old system of mines and refineries. It wasn't very intuitive and very hard to calculate on hand. Thus, it needs modifying, and that's where I need you.

 

So if you guys could, hit me with some ideas. Anything at all. Try to be simplistic though nothing too fancy -- remember we don't want to give the player TOO much to micromanage!

[Evaders99]

I don't know if this is any simpler... in fact, it isn't. But for another example:

 

Sins of a Solar Empire uses

credits, minerals, and crystals

 

Credits are generated through population and extra trade ports, lowered by fleet overhead % and planet underdevelopment.

Minerals and crystals are mined from fixed amount of generators around planet, can be increase mining rate by research and building refineries

 

There is a global ship support count along with a capital ship count. These can be upgraded by paying resources, but also add to the fleet overhead.

[Slocket]

That is a pretty good system. I may add the effect of popularity to mining output. The more popular you are, the more you get. Plus I would make the mines so they can be destroyed through a sabotage mission. So there would be a reason to watch them with troops.

 

Maybe require certain planets make certain parts for ships. Say some planets have Tyberium gas for fuel, some have DuraSteel for the hull component, etc. That way each planet has some personality and uniqueness so they are not all the same vanilla planet. Star Empires.

 

Having a certain planet for Empire or the Rebel will confer a small bonus to production at that planet. EaW.

 

I do like the requirement of maintenance points, so the bigger your fleet, the more it will take to maintain. That way if a person is totally war like and not using diplomacy or missions, they could be counter acted by such. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. So if you are losing via small number of planets or fleet, you still have a chance to win if your planets are well developed -good research level -good mission strategy. Economic game balance to prevent "Tank Rushing".

[DavidAdas]

Hrmm, I had once considered population as a variable of some effect in game. It didn't seem right that some planets, totally worthless in their own respect, should have just as much to offer as highly populated ones.

 

I think that is definitely worth implementing. I think that would really add some depth to the game that it seemed to lack previously. It would take a bit of time to implement properly though, so for now I think I'll just set the player's funds to 5000 and work on the random generators which produce your start-up units and planets and the like.

 

A lot going on. It's hard to believe I've been working on this for a solid year straight now!

[DarthTex]

If you don't like the simplicity (or non-reality) of the current system of mines & refineries, then you're going to have to do something more interesting, realistic and/or complex. Maybe just adding "credits" to the current configuration could be enough. Otherwise you'll need mines and/or refineries for a combination of critical components: durasteel, ferrocrete, copper, tiberium , silicon, gold, energy, foodstuffs, etc. This may make things quite abit more complex than you really want. It just depends on how much you want to manage. Good Luck.

[DavidAdas]

I've been looking into many different option and I know for a fact, though, that population WILL be a game factor either way. I think the Civilization and Total War series knocked it right on the head. "Occupy Settlement/Install new Governor"/"Exterminate Population." Population will definitely help production in some way and will also determine how easily you can sway a planet to your side after you've captured it.

 

This is going to take quite a bit of thought, though -- so I've put that on hold for now, though, and am working on implementing missions and some of the game windows (to test the missions). I'll come back to this though. That should give you guys some time to come up with whatever other ideas may hit you

[justabloke]

Ok, one of the things I think I like about Reb1 is that it isn't too complex, especially from a resource point of view. That said, there is probably room for improvement.

 

So if we use the Movies/Clone Wars TV series as our canon we see that most people will accept Credits, even Luke was paid in Credits on Tat when he sold his speeder. That might be a period thing, the Empire forced Credits as a standard. We also know that taxation was a major sore point with some people, enough for them to sign up with a Sith Lord...

 

So I reckon that the Galactic monetary and economics system probably isn't all that different to our own.

 

• People pay tax.
  
• The more people on a world, the more tax income it generates.
  
• The higher standard of living, the more tax people can pay and are expected to pay for that standard of living.

 

Planetary loyalty should affect what percentage of tax goes to which side. I wouldn't make it a straight split, but lets say a World is 60% Alliance, they should get 60% of the tax income no worries, and should also get a percentage of the 40% that supports the Empire (say 60%) again. So the Empire would get 40% of 40% of the tax income from a world via smuggling, direct donations, etc. It's like people living in the West giving to "charities" in Third World nations that are really fronts for military organisations.

 

Planets also produce goods and services.

 

So now we get to the point, what does a player need to support his ambitions of galactic domination. He needs money and resources. Money to buy people, goods and services, resources to build things or sell for money.

 

So almost everything costs and maybe it costs more than just money, maybe you need the materials to build a ship, you can't just buy the resources directly...

 

It comes back to the Sins of a Solar Empire method, which I think is probably a good model. It just needs to be tweaked for Star Wars.

 

I need to think about this some more. I play Reb on and off but it has always been installed on every puter I've had since it was released, I even take it on holiday with me.

[DarthTex]

... Planetary loyalty should affect what percentage of tax goes to which side. I wouldn't make it a straight split, but lets say a World is 60% Alliance, they should get 60% of the tax income no worries, and should also get a percentage of the 40% that supports the Empire (say 60%) again. So the Empire would get 40% of 40% of the tax income from a world via smuggling, direct donations, etc. It's like people living in the West giving to "charities" in Third World nations that are really fronts for military organisations ...

I beg to differ on your interpretation. If the Empire controls a system, no matter what the loyalty is, they aren't going to have "taxes" go to the Rebellion. Using your example: a world is 60% to the Rebels, but let's say controlled by the Empire (militarily there is a garrison), then how do the Rebels "collect their cut"? They can't unless smuggling is going on (when this happens with the planets resources, then it will happen with $). For the Empire, they would collect 40% easily because that amount of the populace supports them, thereafter they would only get a percentage from the Rebel populace (maybe 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 the percentage of Rebel popular support). As diplomacy increases support for the Empire, then tax collections would go up; and vice versa if support declines. So unless planetary support is really low and smuggling is going on, the "controlling" powers get to collect, it's just a matter of how much percentage wise they can collect.

[Khanti]

I like actual Reb economy system, although it's too simple for me. It could be wise to make little more connected with SW reality.

I see two limiting factors which were important during civil war: money and resources.

Money are credits payed by population to ruling government, resources are precious metal needed as material for building warships.

 

Credits are simple to understand and implement.

Resources are little more complicated. But we can assume that there are only ONE significant resource type, so it will be also very easy.

I would like to have many different resources, as it is always more fun, but let's start with simple one type.

 

CREDITS

People pay tax.

The more people on a world, the more tax income it generates.

 

So we need population factor on planets. Let's say if there is one facility on planet = 1 population. If there are four facilities, then we count is as 4 population.

There should be [or NOT should be] max number of facilities buildable on every planet.

 

Every population pay taxes, no matter they support actual government (loyal) or not, unless they are rioting (no taxes). Military presence allows avoiding riots, so taxes are collected fully.

 

Then if planet has significant loyalty to ruling government then it can support additional credits.

 

Examples:

Planet has 6 population, that is 6 credits daily. Planet is controlled by Empire and supports Empire by 80%. Then it pays 6 credits + 4.8 credits (80% of 6) for a total number 10.8 credits daily.

Planet has 6 population, that is 6 credits daily. Planet is controlled by Empire and supports Empire by 20%. Then it pays 6 credits + 0.0 credits (0% of 6) for a total number 6 credits daily. It could pays nothing but garrison prevents it from rioting, so it pays all that must be paid (but nothing more).

 

CREDITS and LOYALTY

Planetary loyalty should affect what percentage of tax goes to which side. STRONGLY NO! It is impossible in real world, and remember Cloud City when Lando didn't like Vader but was forced to Vader's terms.

 

RESOURCES

Planets also produce goods and services. Some planets has better resources than others. It should be possible to build mines, refineries, whatever to excavate those resources (for later use for building ships).

 

Examples:

Planet has 6 population and 4 mines built. Then it produce 4 resources daily as all mines have population (workforce).

Planet has 6 population and 14 mines built. Then it produce 6 resources daily as only 6 of 14 mines have population (workforce).

 

RESOURCES and LOYALTY

Again loyalty should not affect it, but you can arrange a bonus with loyalty.

Planet is controlled by Empire and supports Empire by 80%. Then it produce 6 resources + 4.8 resources (80% of 6) for a total number 10.8 resources daily.

Planet is controlled by Empire and supports Empire by 20%. Then it produce 6 resources + 0.0 resources (0% of 6) for a total number 6 resources daily. It could produce nothing but garrison prevents it from rioting, so it produces all that must be produce (but nothing more).

 

 

SW examples:

RESOURCES: Victory-I class Star Destroyers were being upgraded to class II in Kuat during the time of building second Death Star. This was a time when all precious metals available for Empire were directed to DS. So Kuat lacks doonium for armour. Then admiral Kendel choose havodu instead of doonium (which was far more difficult to produce and more costly). About 100 ships were upgraded this way, but havond caused them to look pink. And they were called pink ships.

 

CREDITS: During the first years of building star destroyers Mon Mothma said that: "Half the budget is going to the production of these enormous new Star Destroyers." which is second limiting factor. You can't build it if you don't have money (budget).

 

I will set maintenance as only credits, but producing as credits+resources.

 

Cheers.

[Slocket]

I would like to see smuggling and work slowdown also to be kept from the original game.

 

I do like the idea in vanilla Rebellion of a percentage of credits/and or resources being smuggled to the Rebels if the planets loyalty to the Empire is low.

 

This way the Rebels (or I guess the Empire too) can have an income to maintain their ships even though they may not even 'own' a single planet, just the fact that the galaxy may not like an Empire that has very little popular support, thus giving it away to the other side via smuggling.

 

In game, that smuggling can be stopped if you maintain enough military presence around that planet. That is done also in the vanilla Rebellion. In that way, being unpopular and ruling with a heavy hand is going to cost you and tie up military assets.

 

I also like the way resource was produced additionally in original Rebellion. If your are not very popular, the refineries slow down production of refined materials. A silent protest, at worse -slave labor which is never as productive ( I suppose that can be argued considering 'Vader-like" incentives to work hard anyways).

[DarthTex]

... There should be [or NOT should be] max number of facilities buildable on every planet...

The maximum number of facilities is limited by the system energy available

[DIREWOLF75]

But then I think about it -- and I decide I really kinda dislike the old system of mines and refineries. It wasn't very intuitive and very hard to calculate on hand.

I will have to disagree there. The Reb1 system is very simple and easy to calculate once you had read the one line where it says how maintenance is generated from the owning of both at the same time while mines produce raw materials, refineries turn the raw into useful material, and "factories" turn refined material into finished products.

Its even reasonably realistic on the abstract level that Reb1 uses. The unrealistic part is maintenance production, but with the limited amount of planet "energy", there´s no room for something further...

Of course there could be now.

 

I would suggest you keep the original as the "basic economic model". Then add to it(or even make it an optional selectable per game addition).

[chrisb2244]

At the risk of sounding boring, I agree with direwolf, and feel that excessive development of the economic model, such as the creation of multiple "materials" used in the production of armour, etc, would only create more micromanaging than is really in keeping with the game (reb1).

 

Of course, im not developing the game, and so please do as you wish, but it seems that other game areas need improvement more urgently than the resource system.

[ToBad]

I agree in the risk of micromanaging. See the game armada 2526. Fun to play with 3-7 planets. Micromanaging is ok in singel played games. Try to avoid: Get i new simple planet and start to build all buildings. Ok in the start of the game (possible to build around 5 buildings) but after some turns you have developed new buidings and need to build a lot of buildings on new plantes.

 

The funny in a game sholud be the strategy against other players and not to build up your kingdom. Many strategy games hade this problem.

 

1. The game is starting.

2. All players are building and building up the kingdom (turn 1-30)

3. Then players have all buildings the start to build a army. (turn 31-40)

4. Fight (turn 41-43)

5. Many players lost the army and drops the game (turn 44)

6. End (turn 45)

 

The game is exciting in 3-5 turns but you have played in 40 turns before the exciting part = To much work to have funny and big disappointment after buildings long time. In the game http://www.spaceraze.com we are working to expende the game with more buildings, research , trops but i don't know if the game is more funny now or not. Lucky to us we have more gameworlds and some is more easy and fast to play.

[Markus_Ramikin]

Hm, I am really quite happy with the way Rebellion handles the economy, it's simple to understand and in fact the Manage Production option with the droid is pretty useful too. I don't think there's a good reason to deviate with too many things like that, unless you're not making a remake but just a "vaguely related/inspired" new game.

 

Merely my $0.02 of course.