Hello there!
The following is a rather large, but intertwined set of ideas for Stellaris that probably do better posted as a single thread, let's begin:
Making Subjects Fun
The current system takes a lot from EU4, you get vassals, and then you integrate them. Just another expansion strategy.
The idea of different subject types that contribute different things is interesting, so what could be done with that?
Subject Stats
Let's reimagine the Subject; instead of just contributing to either your navy, your income, or just being small and weak, we can make the entire system dynamic. My suggestion is that every subject will have three new variables, each ranging from 0 to 100%:
Finally, I'll discuss how subject integration and independence would work:
As the reader may have guessed, a subject's stats can be changed, mainly by the overlord, but the subject may demand autonomy as well (more on that later). This would work a lot like policies or species rights, where after editing something you have a cooldown before it can be edited again (though the cooldown would be faster).
An overlord might for example increase the tax rate by 10%. This would maybe cost influence, and the subject will be unhappy with that, additionally once you start taxing subjects at something like 80-90% their income will be so low that the overlord will have to invest into their subject's economy for it to grow (as you can see I'm borrowing a fair deal of inspiration from sectors).
This leads to the most important part of this paragraph: liberty desire.
No, it won't work like in EU4.
Just like in a trade deal, the new subject will be a sort of balancing act between pros and cons. A small empire with a weak military might be willing to give up a big chunk of their income in exchange for military protection, a young empire may seek technology sharing etc.
Different empires will value things differently, and so the entire subject relation will calculate a liberty desire for the subject, where subjects will be happier if they feel that the things they are sacrificing are worth it.
A subject with high trust/opinion would probably get a reduction to liberty desire as well.
A subject that gets too high liberty desire will seek either independence or greater autonomy, and there are several ways they can do this:
Subjects may for example have a setting among the other ones (military cooperation and all that) that dictates if the subject relation is voluntary.
Voluntary subjects are usually acquired peacefully and, unless this setting is changed by the overlord, can leave their overlord whenever they feel that they want to (though they will try to negotiate for higher autonomy first), while involuntary subjects (usually acquired through war) will have to fight a war of independence, which they will of course be unlikely to do unless they think they can win.
Any type of subject can try to renegotiate their autonomy. If a subject has high liberty desire (or is controlled by a player), they might for example request a 10% increase in technology sharing or some other stat change that would reduce liberty desire. If the overlord does not comply the subject will become even more rebellious.
A subject with all stats at 100% and with full cooperation in all settings will be integrated, a subject with all stats at 0% and no cooperation will become independent.
Making Federations Fun
The reader may now be getting an idea of why this is considered to be intertwined with federations. Let's explore this:
New Federations
When a federation is formed, it would probably work similarly to the current game, but instead of there just being a federation fleet, there are a bunch of stats, similar to subject stats, that allow for various mechanics changes. Technology sharing and military integration exist, but as of yet the tax rate is locked to 0%.
Federation Stats
Modifying these stats is done with a vote, and of course there's a liberty desire stat here as well (or maybe it's called desire for independence or whatever), and there is of course a "voluntary vs involuntary" stat that changes whether member states are allowed to leave peacefully or not.
A somewhat detached idea I have is that perhaps these federations would have some sort of possibility where all members can only have one planet, and all new colonies become independent members of the federation.
All members of a federation are subject to the rules of the federation equally.
Votes in the federation might be set to either 1 empire = 1 vote, 1 pop = 1 vote, 1 planet = 1 vote, 1 system = 1 vote, or something else.
Association status would now be a special type of member that has stats somewhere between 0% and the generally applied stats of the whole empire. If you have association status you automatically leave at 0% and you can ask to join fully if your stats are the same as the general rules.
A few suggested rules for federations:
Holy Roman Empire - in SPACE
You knew it was coming.
Any member of a federation may propose a federation capital, similar to the intergalactic market in the coming 2.2 update.
If it is voted through, then that planet becomes independent and the permanent federation president.
The leader of this small empire will be elected from all leaders in the federation, and every federation member can vote for various leaders.
It should be possible, somehow, for the player to become this capital, should they want to.
The president might be able to colonize planets (and either make them new members or part of the "federation core", but the most interesting thing is that the tax rate modifier is now unlocked.
The president/core territory can now choose to invest into developing members, or anything they want.
The "goal" for this core territory is of course now to centralize the federation in a way similar to vassalization, and slowly become a single, giant empire.
The centralized federation retains the ability to offer other empires association status, or enforce it, effectively working like vassalization.
This bring us to the final thing to discuss:
The Nature of Vassals and Federations
I've always thought it was weird that democracies could have vassals. A vassal is after all a feudal overlord who serves a despotic ruler.
That's why my final suggestion is that federations are for democracies and oligarchies, while vassals are for dictatorships and monarchies.
This works two ways; monarchies can expand by gaining vassals and integrating them (side note, only monarchies and dictatorships should be able to be vassals, there should be an ethics change if vassalization is enforced), but the monarchy can also shrink by being forced to concede to local overlords. They might even have to create vassals out of crown territory and give them autonomy, allowing for the type of decline tat happened in, for example, the Holy Roman Empire.
Federations can have this too. They can expand and offer more and more empires to join them, but if they are fraught with internal strife they may have to split up. A democracy/oligarchy that is not in a federation can for example (voluntarily, to role play as a more decentralized empire, and/or enjoy the benefits) federate, transforming into several smaller member states.
The final suggestion I have is a small one. A civic that represents decentralization. It could either be two civics, one for democracies and one for despotisms, or a single one, but what it does is it makes an empire more decentralized; for authoritarian empires this means every new colony becomes a vassal, and every time a vassal makes a colony it splits into two vassals. For democracies it means the same but you're a federation.
That's the general gist of my ideas for subjects and federations! I know it was long but I hope you liked my ideas.
The following is a rather large, but intertwined set of ideas for Stellaris that probably do better posted as a single thread, let's begin:
Making Subjects Fun
The current system takes a lot from EU4, you get vassals, and then you integrate them. Just another expansion strategy.
The idea of different subject types that contribute different things is interesting, so what could be done with that?
Subject Stats
Let's reimagine the Subject; instead of just contributing to either your navy, your income, or just being small and weak, we can make the entire system dynamic. My suggestion is that every subject will have three new variables, each ranging from 0 to 100%:
- Taxation rate
- Technology sharing
- Military integration.
- The taxation rate is fairly obvious. It would work much like how sectors work currently, with a 10% taxation rate meaning 10% of mineral and energy income going to the overlord. Perhaps one could separate the mineral and energy tax rates as well.
- Technology sharing works the same, with 30% for example being equivalent to a research treaty.
- Military integration would of course represent how much subjects contribute to naval force limit etc.
- The final list would be things such as military cooperation, which can be set so that subjects have no obligation to join wars, or are obligated to join. Perhaps it works defensively but not offensively, or the overlord guarantees the subject etc. The list may also contain other settable information which I will explore in more detail later.
Finally, I'll discuss how subject integration and independence would work:
As the reader may have guessed, a subject's stats can be changed, mainly by the overlord, but the subject may demand autonomy as well (more on that later). This would work a lot like policies or species rights, where after editing something you have a cooldown before it can be edited again (though the cooldown would be faster).
An overlord might for example increase the tax rate by 10%. This would maybe cost influence, and the subject will be unhappy with that, additionally once you start taxing subjects at something like 80-90% their income will be so low that the overlord will have to invest into their subject's economy for it to grow (as you can see I'm borrowing a fair deal of inspiration from sectors).
This leads to the most important part of this paragraph: liberty desire.
No, it won't work like in EU4.
Just like in a trade deal, the new subject will be a sort of balancing act between pros and cons. A small empire with a weak military might be willing to give up a big chunk of their income in exchange for military protection, a young empire may seek technology sharing etc.
Different empires will value things differently, and so the entire subject relation will calculate a liberty desire for the subject, where subjects will be happier if they feel that the things they are sacrificing are worth it.
A subject with high trust/opinion would probably get a reduction to liberty desire as well.
A subject that gets too high liberty desire will seek either independence or greater autonomy, and there are several ways they can do this:
Subjects may for example have a setting among the other ones (military cooperation and all that) that dictates if the subject relation is voluntary.
Voluntary subjects are usually acquired peacefully and, unless this setting is changed by the overlord, can leave their overlord whenever they feel that they want to (though they will try to negotiate for higher autonomy first), while involuntary subjects (usually acquired through war) will have to fight a war of independence, which they will of course be unlikely to do unless they think they can win.
Any type of subject can try to renegotiate their autonomy. If a subject has high liberty desire (or is controlled by a player), they might for example request a 10% increase in technology sharing or some other stat change that would reduce liberty desire. If the overlord does not comply the subject will become even more rebellious.
A subject with all stats at 100% and with full cooperation in all settings will be integrated, a subject with all stats at 0% and no cooperation will become independent.
Making Federations Fun
The reader may now be getting an idea of why this is considered to be intertwined with federations. Let's explore this:
New Federations
When a federation is formed, it would probably work similarly to the current game, but instead of there just being a federation fleet, there are a bunch of stats, similar to subject stats, that allow for various mechanics changes. Technology sharing and military integration exist, but as of yet the tax rate is locked to 0%.
Federation Stats
Modifying these stats is done with a vote, and of course there's a liberty desire stat here as well (or maybe it's called desire for independence or whatever), and there is of course a "voluntary vs involuntary" stat that changes whether member states are allowed to leave peacefully or not.
A somewhat detached idea I have is that perhaps these federations would have some sort of possibility where all members can only have one planet, and all new colonies become independent members of the federation.
All members of a federation are subject to the rules of the federation equally.
Votes in the federation might be set to either 1 empire = 1 vote, 1 pop = 1 vote, 1 planet = 1 vote, 1 system = 1 vote, or something else.
Association status would now be a special type of member that has stats somewhere between 0% and the generally applied stats of the whole empire. If you have association status you automatically leave at 0% and you can ask to join fully if your stats are the same as the general rules.
A few suggested rules for federations:
- Open/closed internal borders (works like a federation wide migration treaty)
- Military alliance (makes members automatically join each other's wars)
- Vote weight (as mentioned above)
Holy Roman Empire - in SPACE
You knew it was coming.
Any member of a federation may propose a federation capital, similar to the intergalactic market in the coming 2.2 update.
If it is voted through, then that planet becomes independent and the permanent federation president.
The leader of this small empire will be elected from all leaders in the federation, and every federation member can vote for various leaders.
It should be possible, somehow, for the player to become this capital, should they want to.
The president might be able to colonize planets (and either make them new members or part of the "federation core", but the most interesting thing is that the tax rate modifier is now unlocked.
The president/core territory can now choose to invest into developing members, or anything they want.
The "goal" for this core territory is of course now to centralize the federation in a way similar to vassalization, and slowly become a single, giant empire.
The centralized federation retains the ability to offer other empires association status, or enforce it, effectively working like vassalization.
This bring us to the final thing to discuss:
The Nature of Vassals and Federations
I've always thought it was weird that democracies could have vassals. A vassal is after all a feudal overlord who serves a despotic ruler.
That's why my final suggestion is that federations are for democracies and oligarchies, while vassals are for dictatorships and monarchies.
This works two ways; monarchies can expand by gaining vassals and integrating them (side note, only monarchies and dictatorships should be able to be vassals, there should be an ethics change if vassalization is enforced), but the monarchy can also shrink by being forced to concede to local overlords. They might even have to create vassals out of crown territory and give them autonomy, allowing for the type of decline tat happened in, for example, the Holy Roman Empire.
Federations can have this too. They can expand and offer more and more empires to join them, but if they are fraught with internal strife they may have to split up. A democracy/oligarchy that is not in a federation can for example (voluntarily, to role play as a more decentralized empire, and/or enjoy the benefits) federate, transforming into several smaller member states.
The final suggestion I have is a small one. A civic that represents decentralization. It could either be two civics, one for democracies and one for despotisms, or a single one, but what it does is it makes an empire more decentralized; for authoritarian empires this means every new colony becomes a vassal, and every time a vassal makes a colony it splits into two vassals. For democracies it means the same but you're a federation.
That's the general gist of my ideas for subjects and federations! I know it was long but I hope you liked my ideas.
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