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Sci-fi Setting: Concepts for a Sequel

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I like the idea of all-in-one sentry station with various upgrades.
Although I like the idea of being upgrade temples with their own uber point defenses in case you really have a fight over one.
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Your suggestions seem perfectly viable, but I was thinking that the impact of different factions could be a little more diverse. For example, the Initiates could 'upgrade' your Artificers' Facilities and Artilect Posts, but the Shapers might provide free biosculpted housing for your Freeborn and new crop species to grow, while the Collective might create gardens and improve water-reclamation, or the KotSF would upgrade your power stations and mining facilities. As in, the effects of a given faction wouldn't be limited to just the one structure type, but actually pervade the settlement as a whole.

I mean, the thing that always struck as me odd in the original Majesty was that you could get these bright, cheerful, colourful buildings like the royal gardens and straw-thatched cottages in the same settlement with temples to Fervus and Krypta. They didn't match at all!

Ooh- a few further things.



Music
This is a subject on which I'm really woefully ignorant, but for what little it's worth, I would make two main suggestions:


1. Have a strong basic theme. Majesty had this, and though it showed up very little during actual play- which is a pity, because it's the best music in the game- It really summed up what the game was about better than a thousand words on the subject, and helped to give a sense of structure to the other pieces.

For what it's worth, I reckon there ought to be a single piece of music that really communicates the overall 'feel' of the game to the player- and you can then produce variant riffs on that theme to cover different situations/contexts/eventualities. So, just a thought.


2. It might be possible to vary the music depending on what the curently selected character is doing, and/or what faction they belong to, and/or what's generally happening on the screen at the time. I think this kind of context-sensitivity might encourage or reward the player for following the lives of individual characters.

For examples of 'tone', I'm mainly pulling music from Bear Mcreary's work on BSG and the work of Yoko Kanno because... I'm clearly a dangerously obsessive fanboy. ...But also because they've probably produced the best SF soundtracks in recent memory.
That said, although I think these could be useful as a source of inspiration, these are mostly a tad too too 'heavy' for a game in the relatively light-hearted spirit of Majesty, and their overall 'mood' might need to be leavened considerably? Anyways. Yoko Kanno is awesome.

Large Scale Combat- Destiny.
Stealth/Deceit/Subterfuge- Gina Escapes.
Manufacture- possibly Fingers?

Peaceful- We're the Great. For an exceptionally large, well-developed and content settlement, maybe Some Other Time. Yes, there should be peaceful interludes in a Sim-style game. (How else are your characters going to shop, rest, hold conversations or have any sort of personal lives without looking like oblivious morons?)

The Initiates- Flesh and Bone, possible combined with some of that eerie-ass monolith singing from 2001.
The Spacers- Something Dark is Coming (actually rather meditative and beautiful, IMHO.)
The Collective- Something halfway between Pegasus and Monochrome, maybe?
The Shapers- Surf, I think.
The Jovians- original theme to Ghost in the Shell. Haunting, alien, cyborg wierdness. Perfect!
The Krech- maybe Cats on Mars?

...Again, these are mostly a bit 'heavier' than is really suitable for a Majesty-style sequel (BSG, after all, is definitely darker than you'd want.) I reckon the trick here- as with the game in general- is to inject a sense of levity and playfulness that doesn't undermine the integrity of the world.


Voicelines

There are potential complications here. If you abandon the idea of One Character One Class- which is basically neccesary in order to have heroes with multiple lifepaths or even basic 'class upgrades'- then you need to keep the same basic voice for different voicelines.

The brute-force approach, which is probably most practical, is to have, say, a dozen different basic voices, and have each of those speak the voicelines for every possible class/lifepath (possibly with some minor variations.) Then, if you have a character who's a Freeborn/Physician/Artificer (Gaius Baltar, perhaps?) there's a random chance of him/her speaking a suitable voiceline from a given lifepath during a given situation.

It's possible that certain lifepaths wouldn't have any dedicated voicelines for a particular activity- e.g, an Artificer or Physician probably wouldn't have any witty catchphrases concerned with combat- in which case, the character defaults to the voicelines available from other lifepaths.

The non-brute-force approach is to use voice synthesis technology, but the results generally aren't great. Maybe in another ten years...


Other Possible Inspirations

Basically, imagine that you took Crusader Kings, set it in space, gave it a sense of humour, and focused primarily on individual settlements rather than the inter-kingdom map. ...That's sort of my 'pitch' here.

Fable 2, naturally the Sims, maybe the Citybuilder series, and perhaps closer to home, Deadlock, Hinterland or Depths of Peril might well be worth looking at. Or the original Stronghold.

From an aesthetic perspective, Myst, Riven and their sequels could actually be very similar to the overall 'look and feel' between the different factions, and very similar to the Dune universe- You have native tribes and alien species, a mixture of arcane technology, stately architecture and organic biosculpture, plus commentaries on ecology, family dynasty and the use and abuse of power. Well worth a look.
 
Alfryd. I have been reading this thread right along, and I wanted to say, in my clumsy way, that I am deeply impressed by the amount of work you put into this. And don't try to brush that off by saying you're just borrowing from other people's work -- this must have taken a great deal of time, and you synthesised it flawlessly. (Besides, all fiction consists of borrowing and reworking other people's ideas, so.)

I haven't commented earlier because, hard science fiction isn't my thing. And, I must confess, I'm not a fan of Dune. Even so, if a game based on these suggestions was ever made, I'd probably buy it.

I ... did have an idea about a Wizard equivalent. You have Gifted sorted into Palatines and Xenopaths, but why not have some Gifted that didn't like the idea of being used by either faction and set up their own group? I don't know how well they would equate to the lovable senile spell-casters, but it's an idea.

Alfryd said:
Your suggestions seem perfectly viable, but I was thinking that the impact of different factions could be a little more diverse. For example, the Initiates could 'upgrade' your Artificers' Facilities and Artilect Posts, but the Shapers might provide free biosculpted housing for your Freeborn and new crop species to grow, while the Collective might create gardens and improve water-reclamation, or the KotSF would upgrade your power stations and mining facilities. As in, the effects of a given faction wouldn't be limited to just the one structure type, but actually pervade the settlement as a whole.

I mean, the thing that always struck as me odd in the original Majesty was that you could get these bright, cheerful, colourful buildings like the royal gardens and straw-thatched cottages in the same settlement with temples to Fervus and Krypta. They didn't match at all!
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I know exactly what you're talking about. One of my fondest wishes for Majesty II was that your settlement would be influenced on the one hand by the religion you chose, and on the other hand by the race you allied with. E.g., an Elven settlement would have blue-roofed houses, and Elven exotic goods for sale at the Marketplace, etc. With a setting like this, the effects should be even more pronounced -- you mentioned the nanobots "infecting" all energy-sources in a city, and it's pretty obvious to me that the Shapers would probably reshape the entire area (partly accidentally).

An interesting mix would be Shapers and Krech together, since the Shapers engineered them in the first place. Did I mention i love the Krech?

Interesting music, by the way.
 
Flammifleure said:
Alfryd. I have been reading this thread right along, and I wanted to say, in my clumsy way, that I am deeply impressed by the amount of work you put into this. And don't try to brush that off by saying you're just borrowing from other people's work -- this must have taken a great deal of time, and you synthesised it flawlessly. (Besides, all fiction consists of borrowing and reworking other people's ideas, so.)

I haven't commented earlier because, hard science fiction isn't my thing. And, I must confess, I'm not a fan of Dune.
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BURN THE INFIDEL! Also, we can't be friends anymore.
*turns back on Flammifleure*

I might be jumping the gun here, but I reckon people get turned off Dune because of the whole 'feudalism in space' deal, but in it's own way it's actually a very logical setting. (You know how, at the end of Battlestar Galactica, humanity basically renounces technology and vows to return to a simpler, pastoral/hunter-gatherer mode of existence, because of their war with the cylons? Well, Dune is basically the aftermath of that.) So then I basically thought, 'why not take that and crash it into the Foundation universe?,' given Asimov's canon is basically thematically opposed on every single level:

Robots are essentially benign guardians Vs. Robots are the frakking devil
Prediction of the future is essential Vs. Prediction of the future is a nightmare
Humanity needs peace and order Vs. Humanity needs strife and chaos...

I have about a billion other leftover quotes left to fit in somewhere. Oh well... some other time, perhaps.
I ... did have an idea about a Wizard equivalent. You have Gifted sorted into Palatines and Xenopaths, but why not have some Gifted that didn't like the idea of being used by either faction and set up their own group? I don't know how well they would equate to the lovable senile spell-casters, but it's an idea.
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It seems perfectly possible, in principle. (The way I had imagined things was that Gifted don't so much choose as much as they're essentially forced to pick one or the other eventually- the Logicians either hunt them down and recruit or brainwash them for the Greater Good, or they find refuge with the Shapers, or they wind up destroying themselves because they can't control their powers.) But it should be easy enough, in principle, to find a third option of some kind- if nothing else, if the game features a full-blown reproductive cycle, you'd get 'naturally gifted' children popping up within the settlement, who could theoretically join whatever class they wish...

I mean, there are actually a lot of parts that could be adjusted or re-arranged here... You could quite plausibly swap around the Spacers and Initiates, for example (making the former enemies of the Collective and the latter enemies of the KotSF,) while the various 'mundane' classes definitely have room for re-classifications. I just wanted to give a broad idea of the sheer range of sci-fi tropes that are out there, and how they can cross-pollinate in interesting ways.
I know exactly what you're talking about. One of my fondest wishes for Majesty II was that your settlement would be influenced on the one hand by the religion you chose, and on the other hand by the race you allied with. E.g., an Elven settlement would have blue-roofed houses, and Elven exotic goods for sale at the Marketplace, etc. With a setting like this, the effects should be even more pronounced -- you mentioned the nanobots "infecting" all energy-sources in a city, and it's pretty obvious to me that the Shapers would probably reshape the entire area (partly accidentally).

An interesting mix would be Shapers and Krech together, since the Shapers engineered them in the first place. Did I mention i love the Krech?

Interesting music, by the way.
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Thanks. :) Yeah, a Shapers/Krech/KotSF settlement could look very much like a giant anthill. ...In a good way!
 
Nerdfish said:
I'd like to recommend the style of this track for large epic battles - especially sieges or vehicular / ship to ship combat
Summoning the Soul Dragon
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It's good stuff. Again, a little darker than is really ideal, but might be useful for ideas...
Homeworld had a generic voice system where every unit had the same set of voice. although that'd not work here. this project however, could have several set of generic voices.
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That's more or less the idea. Hire a dozen different voice actors... or, to save time, just George Ledoux... and have them speak the respective lines for every class in the game. Then combine them as the situation demands!

Working out different conversational options could be a rather interesting exercise in itself. I mean, what does a praefect say to bluff his/her way past a man-at-arms currently on patrol...
"CK421, do you copy?"
"Don't mind me, I'm just an innocent bystander!"

...heh.
 
I might be jumping the gun here, but I reckon people get turned off Dune because of the whole 'feudalism in space' deal, but in it's own way it's actually a very logical setting. (You know how, at the end of Battlestar Galactica, humanity basically renounces technology and vows to return to a simpler, pastoral/hunter-gatherer mode of existence, because of their war with the cylons? Well, Dune is basically the aftermath of that.)
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Technology meltdown is not very likely because population can collapse very quickly as the result of that. If our technologies failed now, most of the planet would starve to death. But scifi is as much about fiction as it is about science. and Feudalism isn't particularity advanced form of government, and scifi fans probably don't like it as much.

Evolve to better take advantage of technology is as viable as restricting its growth (or in the extreme case, abandoning it completely). In my scifi setting, humanity essentially fused with synthetic technology to develop a civilization capable of expanding through space (and is much less likely to backstab itself to death out of sheer stupidity, get destroyed by astronomic accident, or get stepped on by aliens)

Feudal future is a good setting for a indirect control game. Although a federation, or a nation under copyright work just as well. In the latest case, you would have contractors and employees. Contractor go chase flags, employees get paid a salary to do your dirty work.

Working out different conversational options could be a rather interesting exercise in itself. I mean, what does a praefect say to bluff his/her way past a man-at-arms currently on patrol, and so forth...
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And oblivion mudcrab convocation.
 
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Technology meltdown is not very likely because population can collapse very quickly as the result of that. If our technologies failed now, most of the planet would starve to death.
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...That's not neccesarily such a problem if your population has already been thinned by the aforementioned robot apocalypse. The main point is that you'd need to have a rather dogmatic and authoritarian culture in order to maintain the use of at least some technology while ensuring that automation and electronics don't advance to the point of self-awareness again. Hence, a technophobic feudal autocracy (which also turns up a lot in the Foundation series.)
The only reason the Republic can avoid this sort of barbarism is because they're much better at manipulating people by subtle methods (i.e, psychohistory, subliminal conditioning,) and because they've found a way to allow human intelligence to compete with computers, so that AIs don't pose such an immediate threat.
 
The main point is that you'd need to have a rather dogmatic and authoritarian culture in order to maintain the use of at least some technology while ensuring that automation and electronics don't advance to the point of self-awareness again. Hence, a technophobic feudal autocracy (which also turns up a lot in the Foundation series.)
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Such system have zero competitiveness against external threat. But your setting did address that but having the republic defeat the empire.

Realism aside, feudal future could take more artistic licenses. cutthroat capitalism tend to remind players how they are treated at work. :D
 
Alfryd said:
BURN THE INFIDEL! Also, we can't be friends anymore.
*turns back on Flammifleure*

I might be jumping the gun here, but I reckon people get turned off Dune because of the whole 'feudalism in space' deal, but in it's own way it's actually a very logical setting. (You know how, at the end of Battlestar Galactica, humanity basically renounces technology and vows to return to a simpler, pastoral/hunter-gatherer mode of existence, because of their war with the cylons? Well, Dune is basically the aftermath of that.) So then I basically thought, 'why not take that and crash it into the Foundation universe?,' given Asimov's canon is basically thematically opposed on every single level:

Robots are essentially benign guardians Vs. Robots are the frakking devil
Prediction of the future is essential Vs. Prediction of the future is a nightmare
Humanity needs peace and order Vs. Humanity needs strife and chaos...
Click to expand...
Ahaha ... jumped the gun indeed. : p Feudalism in space is one of the good things about Dune. In fact, it seems to me to be the only viable option -- apart from mass hypnosis, trust is the only way to exert any kind of control over the numbers of people spread across the distances involved in an interstellar setting.

Also, I have no idea really what you're talking about, having never touched Asimov or Battlestar Galactica except at third- or fourth-hand. Like I said -- I don't do science fiction. Apart from reading the first Dune novel (and trying, and failing, to read the sequel), my acquaintance is with Star Wars, Warhammer 40000 ... and Starcraft. Sort of (I never did finish the game -- RTS isn't exactly my thing either).
 
trust is the only way to exert any kind of control over the numbers of people spread across the distances involved in an interstellar setting.
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Providing that you need to exert control over people. In some interpretation the government is a tool a communities (of individuals or communities) uses to organize itself. (According to Hobbes, people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order. - wikipedia) obviously, this interpretation isn't as fun to play as a game (unless the game is dedicated entirely to that)

It wouldn't be efficient to rule billions of people by fear. A large amount of resource would be required to enforce the feudal system. Economic efficiency can be much higher if the communities largely maintain autonomous and central government only need to oversee legislation, trade and military. See United Federation of Planets. (or European Union, for that matter)

I considered this problem in great length while working on my own setting. It has an feudal empire as well, however the empire isn't really a match for the federation in any aspect - It seemed that Alfryd and I stand in agreement over this issue.

The only difference seemed that my interpretation of the republic is more libertarian and a lot more aggressive.
 
Alfryd said:
It seems perfectly possible, in principle. (The way I had imagined things was that Gifted don't so much choose as much as they're essentially forced to pick one or the other eventually- the Logicians either hunt them down and recruit or brainwash them for the Greater Good, or they find refuge with the Shapers, or they wind up destroying themselves because they can't control their powers.) But it should be easy enough, in principle, to find a third option of some kind- if nothing else, if the game features a full-blown reproductive cycle, you'd get 'naturally gifted' children popping up within the settlement, who could theoretically join whatever class they wish...
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Well, you've talked about characters developing down multiple classes, so you could have a "Gifted" class that can be converted into the Logician or Shaper-allied Gifted once you invite one group or the other into the settlement. You could even use this to represent the Logicians hunting down the Gifted, making having both in your settlement at once an unstable proposition.

Flammifure said:
In fact, it seems to me to be the only viable option -- apart from mass hypnosis, trust is the only way to exert any kind of control over the numbers of people spread across the distances involved in an interstellar setting.
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Depends on how "hard" the setting is - if those distances are easily crossed (by communications if not by transport of people and materials) an overall government can work. The Warlock of Gramarye series in fact goes into exactly this - an interstellar setting in which democracy simply Doesn't Work because it requires a strong degree of communication to operate... except that in that setting psychic powers can provide that communication link.

Without that, though, what you're essentially looking at is a loose federation of semi-independant allied worlds with their own governments. Feudalism can be one way to work this out, but isn't necessarily the only solution.
 
Ahaha ... jumped the gun indeed. : p Feudalism in space is one of the good things about Dune. In fact, it seems to me to be the only viable option -- apart from mass hypnosis, trust is the only way to exert any kind of control over the numbers of people spread across the distances involved in an interstellar setting.
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Feudalism could be described as lot of things, but I would say it's based primarily on fear rather than 'trust'. Historical feudalism tended to be a fairly brutal business as far as the common people were concerned.

I would say that one of the few benefits of feudal government, however, is that it does scale easily- it's essentially a 'tree structure' after all, with relatively little exchange of information (people, goods, information) between the mostly self-sufficient 'branches' or nodes of coordination (i.e, individual estates/Duchies/fiefdoms.) Hence, it *should* be theoretically possible to extend to large numbers of people almost indefinitely.

The real limitation here is in maintaining lines of communication and transport, but that's where the Spacers come in- they're able to traverse vast distances safely, as long as the destination is familiar. That's why they're so vital to government, military and commercial operations in general, and why the Logicians have tried hard to maintain good relations with them.
It wouldn't be efficient to rule billions of people by fear. A large amount of resource would be required to enforce the feudal system. Economic efficiency can be much higher if the communities largely maintain autonomous and central government only need to oversee legislation, trade and military. See United Federation of Planets. (or European Union, for that matter)
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I'd actually take the opposite viewpoint- feudalism consists of appointing semi-independant vassals (Dukes, Earls, Counts, Knights and so on,) who take care of the finer details of small-scale governance for you- including military levies and labour- so feudalism is, by it's nature, highly decentralised. It's a socialist government with strong economic planning and systems of wealth redistribution that incurs high administrative costs (which, in modern-day societies, are offset by hybridising with varying degrees of free trade and economic competition.)

The other thing to bear in mind is that while the Republic is certainly better able to mobilise it's resources, the Empire has or had the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and one of the major challenges the Republic faces is trying to retain central control over a prize as vast as the former Empire without compromising it's core values. This is the main reason why the Republic has made significant political concessions to the nobility and is still on speaking terms with the Initiates- they need the co-operation of the Empire's former administration or their own resources will be hopelessly overtaxed in their efforts to suppress rebellion.

The Republic managed to beat the Empire mainly thanks to the understanding of psychohistory- it's ability to predict, pinpoint and exploit social, economic and psychological 'weak points' within an opponent. It's economic, organisational and technological advantages, while significant, would have been nowhere near enough to secure victory- I mean, this is (almost) comparable to the Federation vs. the Imperium of Man. What terrifies the Logicians is that some splinter faction within the Empire will officially take sides with the chaotic Shapers and thereby render the predictive abilities of psychohistory useless against them- and the Initiates have been making overtures to the latter for precisely that reason.
 
Alfryd said:
Feudalism could be described as lot of things, but I would say it's based primarily on fear rather than 'trust'. Historical feudalism tended to be a fairly brutal business as far as the common people were concerned.
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But the whole basis of feudalsim is the oath of fealty, which requires a certain level of honour in the society. Of course, abuse of this system would occur as it would in any system, but trust is still woven into the underlying fabric.

This hardly excludes it being brutal as well. Though in my opinion the main source of fear for the common people would not be their own overlord, but outside forces -- rival fiefs, barbarians, and predatory beasties.
 
Again, I'd have to question this. The hallmark of feudal government is the institute of serfdom- a system of modified slavery whereby peasants are forbidden to leave their lord's lands and must labour on his behalf. If commoners were more afraid of external threats than higher authority, why would such injunctions be neccesary?
There were exceptions, of course- a middle class of freemen and tradesmen, particularly in the towns and cities, who often had a right to political assembly and self-government, etc, but once those conditions spread to the population at large, the feudal system per se (though not neccesarily the monarchy or hereditary nobility,) tended to break down with it.
 
Actually...I don't think serfdom was actually the basis of feudalism as you say, but more of an abuse of the power that feudalism allowed.

Like any government system, a feudal lord can keep his people either through application of a stick or a carrot. Serfdom was, essentially, the stick, through the threat of dire punishments if people could get away. However, from my understanding (although this comes with the caveat that I haven't studied this in detail) that serfdom largely collapsed after the Black Death, where lords were more concerned with having enough people to continue to work their land than to maintain the institution of serfdom, and those that survived largely did so by encouraging those who ran away from other lords to resettle on their lands and on making it so their own people were less likely to want to run away. The rest of feudalism, however, lasted until around the 1700s, with the substitution of the scutage for military service from the nobles.

Really, feudalism is pretty much like any other dictatorship - how good or bad it is depends on the attitude of the local lord.
 
Alfryd said:
Again, I'd have to question this. The hallmark of feudal government is the institute of serfdom- a system of modified slavery whereby peasants are forbidden to leave their lord's lands and must labour on his behalf. If commoners were more afraid of external threats than higher authority, why would such injunctions be neccesary?
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That serfdom is modified slavery is precisely the point. The serfs were slaves working the villas of the Roman gentry. And of course the "Roman gentry" became barbarian or half-barbarian military officers, and the villas became semi-autonomous villages. And concurrently with the process (for reasons I won't go into here), the slaves ceased to be strictly possessions of the lord to be disposed of how he wished, but rather attached to the land. The lord still owned them in a sense, but he could not dispose of them.

Also, when i said commoners, I was including the freeborn.

Anyway, I maintain that serfdom per se is not technically part of feudalism. And I cite this:

wikipedia said:
Feudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders. In its most classic sense, feudalism refers to the Medieval European political system composed of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. Although derived from the Latin word feodum (fief)
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Though the article (feudalism) does go on to say that the word is sometimes expanded to include serfdom. It also says that some scholars object to the term being used at all, so.
 
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I still believe that federations are more effective then the feudal system. A system that has built in separation of power (and in this case, at each level) is much less vulnerable to abuse of power.

The federation relies on legislations, rather then authority of individuals. Basic set of rules and means of enforcement can be adapted to optimize efficiency of each territory, making it cheaper to maintain, in practice, then feudalism.

Some scifi speculated a system where large corporations behaves has states. However, certain things a state does, e.g. wellfare, isn't profitable. However, corporations can't be count on to do things that don't turn a profit - their entire purpose is to produce a profit.

IMO in a scifi setting, perhaps the player should be allowed to choose their form of government (like civilization or rise of nations). You can choose to run your colony like a business, a feudal kingdom or modern democracy. You can even choose to dissolve the colonial government so you don't have to pay upkeep and your advisors don't bother you with annoying side missions, but there should be serious side effect for doing this (e.g rule by biker gangs). Dissolving the government, however is the only way to pick a new system.

So here we go:
Government Systems
Republic
Bonus to: Research and Culture
Upkeep: Moderate
Effects: Player have little direct control of government function. Everything from tax rate to urban development is automatic. The player cannot even directly declare war on any faction that is not openly at war with them. Under this government the player does not have a household, in compensation there will be initiatives - heroes will often help defend the colony and preform other tasks free of charge in order to increase their political influence. The senate is formed of characters with most political influence and runs everything - it can even pay out of player treasury for whatever endeavor it deem appropriate.

Corporation
Bonus to: Economy
Upkeep: Absorbed by the economy
Effect: player have a say in most things depending on the balance of the treasury. Wealthy heroes are promoted onto the annoying board of directors which will most likely act in behalf of the colony's interest (and often not your) The board of directors can post flags, change tax rates and research funds, and can even strike down a player's flag if it has more combined wealth then the "royal" treasury. In return to having to put up with the board of thorn, the Corporation government have an extremely powerful economic bonus that can be applied to any field - the choice of the field would depend on the player, the board and whoever have more money at the time. Further more the upkeep is paid out of tax rather then player treasury.

Feudalism
Bonus to: Military and Religion
Upkeep: Low
Effect: Player have manual control over nearly everything. Unfortunately not much happens without supervision. Players can promote heroes into household. Which will perform tasks for free but must be paid a wage. The household can occasionally come up with some advices but cannot do anything on its own. The feudal government applies a morale bonus on the field of battle, especially to the household. It also accelerate of spread of religions of choices. The most powerful ability of a Feudal government is the ability to issue direct orders at the cost of morale - without a chance of being countered by the government.
 
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Falotar said:
That serfdom is modified slavery is precisely the point. The serfs were slaves working the villas of the Roman gentry. And of course the "Roman gentry" became barbarian or half-barbarian military officers, and the villas became semi-autonomous villages. And concurrently with the process (for reasons I won't go into here), the slaves ceased to be strictly possessions of the lord to be disposed of how he wished, but rather attached to the land. The lord still owned them in a sense, but he could not dispose of them.
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Fal, I still think you're missing the point here. A system of government based on trust rather than fear would not need to immobilise people on a particular estate and compel them to labour using threat of force. That serfdom was technically a minor improvement over slavery doesn't mean it wasn't pretty damn bad. Again, I'm not saying that the condition was universal, and various medieval states gave their peasantry a better deal than others, but to the extent that serfdom was repealed or rolled back in a given state, the feudal system tended to recede along with it.

If you abolish serfdom, systems of private property and the free exchange of goods and people make it almost impossible to keep your vassals neatly herded on particular estates and reliably extract certain quotas of labour from them- if they don't like the deal you're giving them, they'll simply move elsewhere. Conversely, if you impose those duties upon the peasantry, the only way to maintain some degree of economic flexibility and initiative is by subdivision of authority, and the imbalance of power between rulers and ruled, plus the lack of direct legal oversight, soon promotes serfdom. If you have a strong central administration that can impose fair terms and conditions of occupancy from the top, then you no longer have a weak monarchy- and hence, don't need a feudal hierarchy in the first place.
draxynnic said:
Actually...I don't think serfdom was actually the basis of feudalism as you say, but more of an abuse of the power that feudalism allowed.

Like any government system, a feudal lord can keep his people either through application of a stick or a carrot. Serfdom was, essentially, the stick, through the threat of dire punishments if people could get away. However, from my understanding (although this comes with the caveat that I haven't studied this in detail) that serfdom largely collapsed after the Black Death, where lords were more concerned with having enough people to continue to work their land than to maintain the institution of serfdom, and those that survived largely did so by encouraging those who ran away from other lords to resettle on their lands and on making it so their own people were less likely to want to run away. The rest of feudalism, however, lasted until around the 1700s, with the substitution of the scutage for military service from the nobles.

Really, feudalism is pretty much like any other dictatorship - how good or bad it is depends on the attitude of the local lord.
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A possible added element to the equation in this particular setting is that the nobility have easier access to mild forms of genetic enhancement: in other words, that they form the topmost rung of a caste system where they serve as the military elite (again, perhaps similar to the Clans from Battletech.) If the nobility were *genuinely* physically and mentally superior to the commoners, and *genuinely* bore the brunt of physical endangerment in defence of the realm, it would go a long way to securing their position over a relatively free peasantry.

The Clans might also be a useful template for adapting flag mechanics, now that I think of it, since they actually employ a 'competitive bidding' system to accomplish given military operations with the minimum of available resources. In addition, quasi-ritualised inter-fiefdom warfare might well reinforce Fal's suggestion that the peasantry are more afraid of external dangers than higher authority- or, conversely, more endeared to their lord than to external clans. Anyways- just a thought.
 
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Nerdfish: One thing that strikes me is that your vision of feudalism seems to be assuming that the top level has a lot more control over their subjects than they actually do. Sure, a local lord is a dictator over his own estate, but as you climb the rungs you end up with an increasing amount of territory in a time period when the fastest means of communication was by post horse. A working feudal system is probably one that has the most autonomy of all, since most issues that crop up will be expected to be dealt with by the local nobility with only the issues that are of national significance working their way up to the top unless it turns out that a given issue is well beyond the ability of a local lord to deal with. What you seem to be thinking of looks more along the lines of a dictatorship with feudal trappings (which, admittedly, is a state of affairs that often did develop as communications technologies improved) rather than a true feudal system. Now, when you consider an interstellar empire, I expect those same communications constraints will apply.

An actual simulation of a feudal system, I expect, would be similar to a corporation with a military bonus instead of an economic one. The colonial dukes and earls won't actually countermand an order from the throne (unless their loyalty drops to the point of rebelling), but have full freedom to do what they like around those orders (and from their own personal treasuries) even, if not watched, potentially to the point of feuding with other parts of your empire. What you describe as feudalism would, more strictly, be a dictatorship.

Also, as another comment:
Nerdfish said:
I still believe that federations are more effective then the feudal system. A system that has built in separation of power (and in this case, at each level) is much less vulnerable to abuse of power.

The federation relies on legislations, rather then authority of individuals. Basic set of rules and means of enforcement can be adapted to optimize efficiency of each territory, making it cheaper to maintain, in practice, then feudalism.
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There are a few commentators who've said, and I agree with them, that a benevolent, enlightened, and informed dictatorship is probably the best form of government there is. The problem, of course, is making sure that you get an altruistic and competant dictator every time.

The advantage of the democratic system is that it has built-in checks to power to stop an incompetant or corrupt leader from doing too much damage (at least in theory). The problem, however, is that those same checks apply to truly inspired leaders and can prevent them from doing as much good as they could if given free rein. Human nature being what it is, the damage-prevention in a democratic system probably more than counterbalances the handicaps, but there's nothing inherently superior in the system apart from that.
 
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