Governing on a system wide scale for a grander strategy game

[Adolf - Finite War]

Considering how micro intensive stellaris has become and to some extent always was
I think it's time to consider governing whole systems/sectors instead of everything within it. Now some might say restore&improve sector AI and we can have that but I want to illustrate things beyond that with this thread.

1. Roleplay
With systems and varying decrees of autonomy governers become much more fun to interact with, traits like corrupt actually start to matter. Your pops ethics also become more important as the will decide whether a military academy, a temple or a robot foundry is more important to them.

2. Economy - Independence, Ownership & Agency
One big problem for ruler style games like Tropico 3-6 is that the player owns everything and thus the population has no real agency. Now with independent mining/trading/slaving/tech-companies factions in the game have agency through the means of wealth they are creating and can become an actual state within the state unlike the neat civ-picks that some of them are now.

3. System Development
I find the idea of a system developing through indirect inputs much more interesting than building everything myself and it also scales much better with larger galaxies, see 3.1. Think about privately owned shipyards that grow because you allow/encourage space tourism/trade or even the export of warships in addition to just having the option of upgrading a starbase and building some modules.

3.1 Total Utilization
Having to manage several planets in a system is very micro-intense add to that a few habitats and you still haven't utilized half of what a star system can offer - Moonbases/prisons, Asteroid facilities, cloud cities on gas giants (Bespin) or noxious worlds with thick atmospheres like Venus, facilities on molten worlds...

4. Espionage/Diplomacy DLC
It's just a matter of time till it's released and it will work much better with the aforementioned things - somewhat independent systems rather than one solid empire - having to send inquisitors/Gestapo around to make sure nothing is brewing in your sectors.

5. Total War - Medieval 2
A strategy game staple yet it did a very poor job of portraying feudalism. One problem of most strategy games is that you snowball. France gobbles up modern day france's territory then spain, italy, the hre... In reality systems don't grow like that it's much to easy to expand without loosing any influence even on the furthermost reaches of your empire.


I'd much rather spend my time taxing systems to have funds to build my fleet and major projects, dealing with events and do some actual governing rather than telling planet A to build a city district, planet B to build a commercial district and system C to build mining stations for the 1067-time.

 

[KingAlamar]

I'd have disagreed with you three months ago. Given the reality of 2.2.x I suspect I need to rethink a lot of my earlier positions. While nice on paper [IMHO] a lot of the new systems are way too micro-heavy for my tastes. If we don't get tools to automate a LOT of it then maybe taking a step back would be better.

For example for "piracy prevention" I've posted that I'd like to see us assign one or more piracy prevention fleets to specific sectors. Then each of the sectors can handle the individual patrols themselves. Maybe the "sector governor" could let us know when [for example] the fleets aren't large enough any more so we could decide to assign more resources [or not] to that specific sector.

While I haven't played a lot of 2.2.x games to date I'm sick of the:

• Manually scan all planets to keep Encourage Growth [or other decisions] going
• Manually scan trade lanes for piracy buildup
• Manually scan planets for amenities / housing / jobs availability
• Non-stop resettling [that I feel punished if I don't do]
• Manually scan underutilized jobs because auto-promotion doesn't actually promote workers to higher levels
• Figuring out what to do about mystery pops that go unemployed during upgrades or sometimes for no reason that I can easily determine

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

While I haven't played a lot of 2.2.x games to date I'm sick of the:

• Manually scan all planets to keep Encourage Growth [or other decisions] going
• Manually scan trade lanes for piracy buildup
• Manually scan planets for amenities / housing / jobs availability
• Non-stop resettling [that I feel punished if I don't do]
• Manually scan underutilized jobs because auto-promotion doesn't actually promote workers to higher levels
• Figuring out what to do about mystery pops that go unemployed during upgrades or sometimes for no reason that I can easily determine

Naming the things you don't want is likely to end up in a quicker fix than posting your fantasies (not as rewarding though)
so I'll thank you and add to your list (that I totally agree with).:

• Check if planets don't have too many domestic servant pops only doing household chores instead of producing ressources
• Asigning research ships to add planetary research/determining the planets with most of your research
• Removing leaders from the rooster via hire and fire
• Science ships not automatically using their experimental subspace navigation to avoid getting killed (like the enigmatic cache)

 

[KingAlamar]

Fantasy-land:

If empires were more similar to a loose association of sectors then that would open up interesting avenues. For example if a sector rebels it would be interesting if that sector could get support EITHER from other sectors in your empire OR from other empires entirely. While thinking along those lines it would be interesting if you could "join in" on a declared war for one side or the other. Perhaps you get nothing out of it BUT it would add opportunities for role playing.

I'm not quite as sure that I would like "companies" that become a state within a state. It would be interesting if Egalitarians had to deal with workers unionizing and either going on strike or trying to get a better deal for themselves. For example I'd hate the Trade Unions going on strike -- no alloys OR consumer goods. Yuck. But it would make the market perhaps a little more necessary and useful. Would have to be SUPER careful not to create "the most hated feature in gaming" though

Growth through indirect means [like creating tax breaks for civilian industries] or promoting tourism to increase trade value is interesting in principle. Once again the devil would be in the details. A bad implementation would be REALLY bad. A good implementation would be interesting though.

Sending around the Gestapo ... or having war games exercises in the sector that's on the point of rebellion as a show of strength would be potentially interesting and would give fleets more to do other than patrolling for pirates or sitting in space dock.

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

Fantasy-land:
I'm not quite as sure that I would like "companies" that become a state within a state. It would be interesting if Egalitarians had to deal with workers unionizing and either going on strike or trying to get a better deal for themselves. For example I'd hate the Trade Unions going on strike -- no alloys OR consumer goods. Yuck. But it would make the market perhaps a little more necessary and useful. Would have to be SUPER careful not to create "the most hated feature in gaming" though

Firefly, The Expanse and Dark Matter most recently have had their influence. Having a tech corporation that does some shady shit like creating synths, gene-engineering, using human brains for computing, searching for (precursor) artifacts for their own purposes would make for nice events though companies shouldn't all be nefarious.

As for having less control over sectors - that would mean a better use not just for your fleets but also armies and you would have to decide to what extent you'd allow them to arm themselves to deal with piracy/keep pops in check.

For a repressive systems to become interesting pops should have a way to flee the evil empire and do things like create colonies outside your control poor telepaths fleeing from materialists ending up becoming the Advent (from Sins of a Solar Empire).

 

[KingAlamar]

I can see some possibilities. Too bad that not a lot of other folks have joined in on the fantasy-land discussions. While I'm calling it fantasy-land stuff for reference I do believe the ideas have enough merit to be considered at least.