Your ideal planetgame system | brainstorm

Pretend for a moment that our current planetgame doesn’t exist. No planetary AI, no having to walk the thin red line of tax/police/military ratings, no system of popular support.

If you could implement your ideal/dream planetgame system? What would it be? What would it include? What would be important? How would players and clans interact with the system?

Please try to keep this thread relatively focused on the discussion of the planetgame system. Don’t hesitate to start a spinoff thread for other good ideas!

I’m always in favor of tangible ways to capture planets, and always thought the current system was a little weird. Personally, I’d like to see clans have to spend credits to beef up the security of planets. Let them buy things like planetary turrets, multiple safety doors, actually dangerous NPC guards, etc, and once you destroy the fleet in the sky and take control of the objective, you control the planet. If you wanted to add another level of strategy, make multiple objectives.

Anything more involved and requiring more brains than the current 2am blockade/fleet destruction/capture sequence would be a major improvement imo.

Well, there are currently a few problems with it. “Good guys” having only propaganda, blockade and inspirecrime, while bad guys also have bombard, which pretty much lowers popular support by a lot.

I like Laudo’s idea too. Objectives, other than “Get pop support to minus, blow up orbiting ships, find command room”.

1.) More skills (or improved skills) to capture planets.

2.) The opposing clan should still have enough time to answer with a fleet or resistance.

3.) It needs to be faster.

4.) On that note, leadplanet could have many items for that matter. For example, leadplanet resist would slow down enemy progress, perhaps give some kind of resistance or a buff to popular support regeneration. (so it would rise 1% or more/less % per tick). Resist would of course have a 24 (?) hour countdown.

Rakun, how do you make it faster while still giving the opposing side to respond? More skills would be cool too…but do you have any ideas for that?

Laudo, guards would be AWESOME.

As for ideas that haven’t been presented, I’d like to point out consideration that the current planetgame is styled in a “King of the Hill” style match. Why don’t we add some interesting objectives to a few key worlds? Maybe a CTF “event” that players fight their way into a complex, that require a variety of skills to get through. The complex could be guarded like Laudo suggested. Players would have to fight their way through them, working in teams.  Controlling players can rig the room with mines, maybe even false floors that lead to pits…Rancor pits, maybe? Either way, these buildings should be fairly large and a solid challenge for 3-4 prepared combatants, plus some support staff if their skill range isn’t wide. In the end, the challenge is to get to a room and “claim” a “flag.” Getting the flag should, in some way, damage morale of the controlling clan’s hold on the planet. Not a huge jump, but a significant enough one to make the difficult challenge worthwhile.

While I’m considering ways to rip off shooters, why not give a morale penalty to the controlling player each time one of their guards are killed? This would have to be a very minor damage…like .1 or less if possible.

A few ideas like those would make assaulting worlds a little more interactive, and a little less of a huge, awful wait for morale to plummet. I couldn’t tell you the amount of hours I’ve sat blockading worlds, bored out of my fucking mind just waiting for shit to go down.

Laudo’s idea of controlling objective points on a planet seems like an interesting idea to look into. At the same time, a “king of the hill” perspective makes it hard for clans with less players to have the advantage if you are trying to control a point, and you are one against four or five.

Ideally, however, a system where you actually interact with the world is what I would like to see. A leadplanet revamp where the skill lets you actively affect the planet by interacting with NPCs to boost how loyal the people are to you and put a % of resist against initial attempts for someone to take the world.

Back to the current system, though…:

Implementation of a high level diplomacy skill along the lines of “incite rebellion” with a higher affect than “inspire crime” seems appropriate as well. It should only work perhaps once or twice during the day, but double the amount of rebel points available for x amount of time. Perhaps put it in as a leadership/diplo bonus or a feat of some sort.

Rakun’s idea of an improvement on the current system by having a “goodguy” skill for mass support lowering is something I would be interested in seeing. That, or as discussed at some point in the past, a permanent hit to the maximum support % for a world for each time you bombard it. Like 1% or something, to deter people from doing it just to drive worlds from enemy control within the time your battlegroup’s armament will let you.

A way to stall the progress of an invading force, like Rakun suggested, along with a nerf to bribe would be a good thing.

These are all fantastic ideas! I’m definitely cherry picking them into the new design.

Here are my personal goals for the planet-game design:

Create mechanics that increase the involvement in the planet-capture mechanic (mechanics that encourage participation from all classes and players)
Implement a dynamic cargo system that rewards players for active involvement (the player who doesn’t bot cargo, will get better returns)
features that give a player a sense of ownership over the planet they choose to invest into
Give Clans CHOICES that have noticeable, and worthwhile effects on a planet’s properties
provide opportunities for un-clanned players(and noobs) to be introduced to LOTJ’s meta-game

Areas I want your feedback on:

planet-management mechanics (clan)
planet-investment mechanics (player)
cargo mechanics (what can effect cargo prices? Can player-owned ‘virtual buildings’ effect the planet’s resources?)

Thanks guys!

Veska

Cargo: I don’t know. A good idea for that would be, as I’d assume there would be someone in any major ‘Government’ movement which would monitor what has and has not sold. Maybe ripping something off of there but a way to consider a good sign someone is planning to screw up the economy of a planet to be capped is to flood the market with worthless junk. (Example: Does Coruscant really need more ‘goods’ flooded into the system? Tatooine more spice?)

If you’re wanting to reward the non-botters, can you code in a random NPC on each planet which could notice sales of a certain type and suggest ‘deals’? IDK, like..a better return on a ‘Tibanna gas’ run from Corellia to Coruscant or something.

Buff Leadplanet some: Give better suggestions for the Police or Military support. If you fund more funds into Military, give examples for NPC OCS schools which would allow for a rougher class of NPC guards with an ‘officer’ to direct tactics. Instead of blowing up the Stormtroopers, ground forces would have to consider the fact there could/would be an officer providing a basic leadership buff on the group. Police would have stuff like the..hell..G.A.G. on Coruscant (Galactic Alliance Guard) to make those trying to ‘inspire’ crime or do other illegal activities have to pay attention to avoid hospital trips.

Final thought: Is there a way to cause problems for those seeking to capture a planet like slicing into Coruscant’s power grids, tampering with Tatooine’s Water collection systems, or sabotaging Naboo’s power generators?

Get ready for an effortpost.

Basic idea – I think planetary cargo should have two components. Planetary holdings and the actual movement of the freight. These systems should both be dependent upon each other and also dependent upon the background of the planet.

The big thrust of my proposed cargo system is the commodity system, which is split into two different kinds; Natural resources and manufactured goods. Natural resources will be based on planet, and manufactured goods will be based on player/clan planetary holdings. For instance: Kashyyyk has lots of trees. Because of that, they should have logs as a natural resource. Because it is a natural resource, the planet would automatically generate logs, but the price would start high, with it naturally going down as people build the ‘logging camp’ holding. It doesn’t make a physical structure on the planet, it would just go on a scoresheet somewhere, and it generates revenue every time a cargo hauler buys logs. Depending on the number of logging camps on a planet, the price will automatically go down or up.

The second kind of holding is a manufacturing holding. It takes natural resources and turns them into finished goods. So, let’s say you’re on Lorrd, and you want to build a ‘lumber mill’ holding. It will take the number of logs that have been moved to the planet and generate lumber, which will be a higher priced commodity. This is where things get more complicated when it comes to commodities. The players or clans would need to set a buying price on the logs, and then the average price of all the lumber mills on the planet would determine the buying price, with the price set for logs for each lumber mill determining how many logs are distributed to each lumber mill. At this point, the price of the lumber mills becomes more important than the number of lumber mills, creating the opposite and balanced situation to the logging camps.

I don’t know how lucid this was, but I think it’s an interesting way to create new non-governmental clans that aren’t just based on shipyards or making armor, and may bring some sanity to the cargo system.

I like your idea, Laudo, I’ll flesh out a response when I get home.

Just real quick – I’m at work so I can’t pull up the help file but take a look at HELP CITIZEN – is this something we’d want to see be a thing?

Cargo: I think what really should be worked out is some kind of banned goods list for certain planets. For instance, the Empire comes along and outlaws spice on all its planets. An “enterprising” cargo hauler could attempt to buy spice from one planet, or maybe even a minor clan, and sell it on another planet for a profit. Since the cargo shows up as banned, there would be a high chance of getting caught. If you do, an alert gets sent out to the clan in control of the planet, and the planetary AI starts hunting you down. If you don’t get caught, you just made a fortune. You could probably tie this into a new smuggling skill called “Smuggle” (imagine that). Banned goods would be on a planet-by-planet basis. The Empire might outlaw spice on all worlds, but might not outlaw weapons on all worlds. This would leave a planet like Alderaan that DOES ban weapons.

On that note, I would also like to see minor clans have more control over shipping cargo; especially engineering and service clans. They could have something like a cargo storehouse where pilots could land, grab the cargo, and ship it to certain planets. Kind of like the package quests except on a larger scale. I feel having more interactivity with Cargo Running would make it more appealing to people like me who hate doing it. Maybe also give the ability to haggle for better cargo prices.

Well, my idea, not going to write everything out in detail. It is not just planets though, it will also affect some other stuff.

Planet.

What does a planet have?

-Population

-popular support

-Government control

-Cargo

-NPC’s

-Planetary guns

-Planetary shields

-Governing clan, and a possible engineering clan/other service.

-planetary funds

Population is obviously the amount of  people on a planet, what does it affect?:  Amount of citizens on the planet, rate at which popular support goes down when citizens are killed(lots of citizens, the others don’t care if 1 or 2 die. Few citizens, and its a shock when some die) How does pop get increased: sufficient stocks of water/food, Immigrants/passengers(cargo).  How does pop get decreased: too few food/water(starvation),  immigrants/passengers, bombardment, killing of citizens.

Popular support: determines how happy the citizens are with the current government, on a scale of 0-100.  determined on the rate of police, military, crime, and tax. Popular support will try to find a balance. 100 can be reached by making an ideal situation (For example no tax, low military, low police, and no crime, and perhaps holiday.)  A planet with a 15% tax rate, 30 police rate, 20 military rate, and 0 crime might get 80 popular support, for example. At that point it will not drop or rise by itself. Now if members from the governing clan start doing things like propaganda, the support will rise again, but over a matter of hours it will slowly drop back to 80. If a enemy clan blockades the planet, popular support will not be affected much for the first few minutes/quarter, but after that will start dropping exponentially, especially when they run out of cargo(There should be some kind of invisible npc cargo system that supplies a planet with some resources for sustainability, so that a few hours of no player trade won’t turn coruscant into a graveyard for example, with a blockade this is lost) As popular support drops, the planet loses another certain attribute, but gains another. Patrioism: High popular support=high patriosim. calculation should be somewhere like [popular support above 60] * 2.5%. [Rebellion: popular support below 40]*2.5%].

What do Patriosim and Rebellion do? Arm da citizens! When people are really pissed at an attacking clan that has troops on the ground, Citizens may slowly start picking up weapons, form small groups, and attack/herass any enemy clanmembers, as long as they have a certain amount of members on the ground (like 4+enemy clanmembers) Not only is it severely annoying for attackers, but a group of citizens will certainly be strong enough to kill a singled out enemy(as they will get some kind of boost when they become patriots), and the extra fire certainly is nice for defenders. Rebellion will do the same, only then they will start attacking their governing clan and key objectives, loss of key objectives results in loss of government control, when government control drops below a certain value other clans can take control of the planet.

bored now..

Thanks for all the feedback guys! It really helps, and we are definitely going to cherry-pick your ideas into the new design.

What I need feedback on:

help citizen: What do you want to see from this feature? Thoughts: Should it be regulated? Should it be required when you roll? Can it change? Can a planet leader accept/deny citizenship requests? Should it be tied into any parts of the game, or should it be for RP only?

Criminal component: What kind of features would you like to be available to the CRIMINAL clans and players?
Player-owned planetary improvements: What kind of things would you like to invest credits into? how should it effect the game world? What kind of risk/reward should there be? If a planet is bombarded, should they be damaged/destroyed?

FEEDBACK!

As far as criminal elements goes, Miros’s stripship update is a pretty stellar idea.

Maybe we could look at some other classes for potential villainous roles, like the diplomat? Maybe a ‘bribe official’ skill that diverts taxes to your crime clan? It could be countered/stopped with leadplanet’s police rating somehow.

And I’m kind of thinking of stuff on the fly, but maybe we could look at giving espionage some abilities with the potential for an galactic politics. Particularly, with regards to conceal? I would like to see microphones flagged so that they’ll remain through copyovers and crashes if possible. Give the smugglers something to search for.

Bombarding shouldn’t destroy the planet unless it’s some serious damage. A single capital vessel bombing a planet and ruin a city, or even a large region, but not an entire planet. You’d need a large fleet. And as for destroying a planet entirely…superweapons.

I like the idea of help citizen, of being a citizen to a planet. That being said, the idea of “citizen join <comlink #>” seems a little… odd.  I have no idea what purpose that could logically serve. If someone wants to get in touch with the government they are a citizen of, they have the means already to do that. Having a list of all of the characters who are registered citizens of a world seems much more likely. If the senator/moff/whoever would like to get in touch with their citizens, they have a list and can send mail, which is much more efficient anyway.

The number of citizens a world has providing a slight boost to the overall material wealth of the world (more people working and producing should mean better goods, right?) would be an interesting side effect, so long as you had to be level 100 to become a full citizen of a planet. Perhaps the perk could be safeguarded even further by having it be  only the active citizens being counted in that number, similar to the active clan membership count. The boost could be resources 10.xx and up could be boosted .1 for every 10 active citizens? Anyone else have any ideas?

Criminal clans … that is tough. Criminal clans/their players should have a bonus to how effective is crime they can inspire. Aside from that, I will have to think on it and post again.

Items that could be acted on as planetary improvements would really have to be something dynamic,  something actively toyed with by a non-player for a player to interact with. Each planet is different, and as time goes on, there are different things that could be done to improve each planet. Someone is going to have to throw themselves at creating opportunities, either imm or player, and it could be potentially complicated, but worth it. Alderaan could have ecological restoration efforts, which could be destroyed by bombardment easily at a 70% chance. Lorrd could have new essential facilities to be invested into, which could boost the economic value of the planet, but only have a 20% chance of being destroyed.

All of that could be great… but let’s be realistic.

Breaking that down, investments could be simplified and made a template for each world.

Low -> high importance

high -> low chance of being destroyed during a bombardment

Ecology (plant trees, make a difference, bro)

Natural resources (cargo prices)

Community improvement

Economy improvement

Manufactured resources (cargo prices)

Economy stability (if this was effected, NPC stores would shut down until it was restored)

Essential outlets (if this was effected, a trade embargo effect could take place and all cargo stop running. Crime could randomly increase.)

Each aspect could be affected by each bombardment at a range, leaving the “operation” for each “resource” at a lower %. Improving % back up could only happen over time, similar to how you can only capture 2 planets a day. Depending on the investment area affected, a diplomat could require a .player of another main (science, engineering) to use a “planetary repair”-esque skill that takes credits, perhaps ~500,000.  If the diplomat was not accompanied, the affect would be much less. You can throw as much money as you want at something, but if you do not have an expert to consult, the overall effect will be much less. Economic stability/essential planetary functions would have to go below 30% to go out of commission, and go above 60% to reactivate them.

I really, really did not want to do work this morning. Hopefully something out of this procrastination might be remotely useful or at least interesting to you!