Rare Leader traits would make Leaders more exciting...

[Dalinski]

I can't help but feel that the Leader part of the game would be more exciting if they had rare traits.

Some samples.


- Famous Leaders that generate Influence
- Leaders that boost trust with a certain ethos
- Leaders that boost happiness for a certain ethos
- Leaders that come with their own personal strategic resource
- Leaders that come with their own personal Fleet or Army
- Leaders that come with a normal/rare technology or one time boost
- Leaders that cause threat with another ethos/species
- Leaders including Admirals and Generals that modified Ethics Divergence when stationed at a planet
- Rare Leaders that demand full ownership of a tile for the duration of their stay
- Admirals (Captains) that boost dramatically a small squadron of ships (Derrka Derrka's Hellroller Squadron )
- A leader trait that boosts debris scavenging

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

This reminds me of the leaders from the Master of Orion series.

 

[The Founder]

- Famous Leaders that generate Influence

We already have that with "Deep Connection" Rulers.

- Leaders that boost trust with a certain ethos
- Leaders that boost happiness for a certain ethos

Rulers in 1.5 will be associated with a certain Faction. That Factions Ethics will have higher atraction and the Faction might be happier (if a Xenophobe one).

It is possible the Factions will be later expanded to apply to all kinds of Leaders. As Faction happiness also dictates how much Influence that Faction brings, you would get Influence yields indirectly.

- Admirals (Captains) that boost dramatically a small squadron of ships (Derrka Derrka's Hellroller Squadron )

The game goes towards massive scale. So a small elite troupe would be mostly useless. We will have to wait for the planned Combat/War Rework before we can realy think of options for meaningfull Admirals.

 

[pheonicia]

- Leaders that come with their own personal strategic resource
- Leaders that come with their own personal Fleet or Army

The rest are interesting, but these two would be hard to manage since it would be impossible to plan for/around the first, and the second would just be annoying since any meaningful contribution would be overpowered, and anything else pointless.

 

[Dr. B]

This reminds me of the leaders from the Master of Orion series.

Oh yes.

The most fun leader(hero) system I have played is the venerable Master of Magic.

Of course, these are hand-crafted unique leaders (not randomly generated) but there were an element of randomness involved as well. These guys are what I still remember 20 years after. So many interesting traits: Noble, Armsmaster, Pathfinder, Charmed... and Warrax the Chaos Warrior.

I am going to play MoM tonight.

 

[chirale]

Very good idea Dalinski! It will add even more RPG elements and an even more immersive gameplay.

 

[Jerev]

I can't help but feel that the Leader part of the game would be more exciting if they had rare traits.

Some samples.



- Leaders that come with a normal/rare technology or one time boost

I like that idea. It could be a trade off: the scientist gives a significant boost to e.g. terraforning technologies but nothing else. Players would be able to spend influence for a certain goal. The leader candidates being random would prevent real manual technology selection via specialized scientists.

 

[The Founder]

The most fun leader(hero) system I have played is the venerable Master of Magic.

Of course, these are hand-crafted unique leaders (not randomly generated) but there were an element of randomness involved as well. These guys are what I still remember 20 years after. So many interesting traits: Noble, Armsmaster, Pathfinder, Charmed... and Warrax the Chaos Warrior.

Star Drive 2 had a few odd leaders.
Like Rambowl.
Zapp Groening, daring Idiot.
But my personal Favourite was propably Suji and her quest to add uplifted Elephants as species to your empire. Those pops were plain broken.

 

[Neodym]

I think that would be a great addition. At the moment the only really "unique" leader trait is the Dragonslayer trait.

I also had the idea of having some kind of happiness impact coming from dying leaders. It should not be very long, but could maybe scale with the amount of levels and/or traits the leader had (to mirror his grade of popularity among the people in a way). It could be something like -1% happiness per positive trait (+1% per negative trait) and the modifier stays for 3 months per leader level.
So for example the death of a level 5 enduring, spark of genius scientist would cause a -5% happiness modifier for 6 months.

This could be even further expanded with factions, i.e. an iron fist governor dying could increase the slaves' faction happiness....
Or there could be different modifiers for the type of leader: i.e. Admirals: death temporarily affects fleet cap (sudden lack of organisation); Scientists: research/surveying speed malus; Governors: happiness in the sector/planet.
So many possibilities there...

 

[Serenity84]

Diplomats as leaders with different traits might also be nice. Depending on the ethics of the other nation different traits can be advantageous. And there could be events about their actions like causing diplomatic incidents.

 

[Emraldis]

On a semi-related note, what about using randomly generated backstories for each leader, that could add some cool flavor things to leaders. Heck, you could even tie it in with some interesting events based on that backstory.

 

[chirale]

On the same path depicted by Neodym, it would be wonderful if the leader's mourning include new names for some object in the game in her/his memory.

Some examples:
1) Admiral: when a new ship, fleet or military station will be created, it will get the dead admiral's name
2) Scientist: a new science ship and / or an existing or a new science lab tile will get her/his name
3) Governor: a new asteroid or a new colony or a new sector will get her/his name
4) General: a new recruited ground unit will get her/his name

It would be interesting if the object will have some connection with the late, e.g. the ship he/she commands or the planet/system where he/she was born. I've no idea if a birthplace is drawn but it will be useful in this case: a scientist born on a planet can get a lab on that planet in his/her name, and a notification will tell to the player something like "People of *PLANET* renamed a research facility *BUILDING_NAME* into *LEADER_NAME* to remember her/his contribution to *LEADER_RESEARCH_FIELD*". Maybe the importance of the object should reflect the importance of the leader: a 1 star admiral can give his/her name to a corvette, a five star admiral shouldn't have nothing less than a Cruiser.

 

[Sibericus]

I think that would be a great addition. At the moment the only really "unique" leader trait is the Dragonslayer trait.

I also had the idea of having some kind of happiness impact coming from dying leaders. It should not be very long, but could maybe scale with the amount of levels and/or traits the leader had (to mirror his grade of popularity among the people in a way). It could be something like -1% happiness per positive trait (+1% per negative trait) and the modifier stays for 3 months per leader level.
So for example the death of a level 5 enduring, spark of genius scientist would cause a -5% happiness modifier for 6 months.

This could be even further expanded with factions, i.e. an iron fist governor dying could increase the slaves' faction happiness....
Or there could be different modifiers for the type of leader: i.e. Admirals: death temporarily affects fleet cap (sudden lack of organisation); Scientists: research/surveying speed malus; Governors: happiness in the sector/planet.
So many possibilities there...

I don't think we need the debuffs. There already is a research penalty in the form of a less skilled scientist or a massive penalty if they aren't replaced, and the loss of a good admiral already severely dampens fleet power and increases the maintenance, we don't need more on top of them.

 

[Dalinski]

A Leader that comes with its own energy income but also an insidious faction and perhaps later a game changing event.....

 

[Neodym]

I don't think we need the debuffs. There already is a research penalty in the form of a less skilled scientist or a massive penalty if they aren't replaced, and the loss of a good admiral already severely dampens fleet power and increases the maintenance, we don't need more on top of them.

Yeah, maybe that is too much then. But I still think a happiness penalty for just a couple of months would not hurt that much and would add a lot of flair.

 

[Sibericus]

Yeah, maybe that is too much then. But I still think a happiness penalty for just a couple of months would not hurt that much and would add a lot of flair.

Maybe the happiness penalties would work with the faction system, with the happiness penalties applying across an entire faction when their leader dies. Maybe egalitarians could get a happiness bonus when an authoritarian or imperial leader dies, with authoritarians liking it when democratic leaders die.

 

[Dalinski]

Revered: Where-ever this leader is stationed migration attraction is +20%. Armies have +5% morale.