Alpha Centauri 2010 [Archive] - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

foolish icarus

May 29, 2009, 12:04 AM

I've expended some thinking on the matter and mulled over a few different ways it might be done, and I've come up with the outline of an AC game I'd be keen on running.

Here's what I've provisionally arrived at.

The Setting and General Atmosphere

The scenario would be an immersive story set in the fictional world of Alpha Centauri and guided in plot by the players and moderator. The main conventions will be those of the contemporary-traditional NES—a historical-minded, civilization-wide investigation into the efforts and conflicts of entire societies. AC's established dramatic conceptualization makes appealing the opportunity to also shape the aspirations and fates of the canonical cast and those new characters you will have the opportunity to come up with.
I hope to stay close to the ethos of SMAC gameplay and the in-universe details presented in AC material while creating plenty of chances to break into the unexpected and head off in new, intriguing directions. Participants need not ever have played the computer game! It's fun, simple stuff, easy to pick up even for neophytes, and there are plenty of experienced people ready to enthusiastically talk your ear off with useful information if you give 'em half a chance.
Finally, this scenario intends to start in the early years of humanity's presence on Chiron (colloquially known as Planet) and really dig in to the rich early- and middle- periods of development. We may very well eventually get to the late era of Transcendence and Singularity Engines and PlanetBusters, but that will take a while, so settle in and enjoy the gritty early days of cold-blooded probe teams, intrepid deep-wasteland scout rover crews, and the quiet revolution brewing in the genejack factory.

Assumptions

Here is the background we will be using unless there is a competing consensus:

-Official Map of Planet.
-Start year 2131 (30 years after Planetfall).
-Three year turns, though that can be adjusted as necessary.
-Original seven factions. Two or more willing players may cooperate to lead a single faction ('subfactions'). These subfactions might be allowed to split off entirely (for example, forming one or more of the Alien Crossfire factions or another unique new faction). No Caretakers/Usurpers will be active, though Progenitor technology, monoliths, et al might be discovered.
-Most or all factions by this point have comm frequencies with everyone else.
-The factions' locations are spread over some but not all of Planet (ie, probably one and possibly two of the three main continents), and will have potential for growth as well as early contact/competition.

Updates

I'm going to try structuring the updates more by topic than by faction. Every update will have the typical explanation of major events and developing situations, but beyond that will have one or two rotating 'themes', such as 'In the Holo-theatres' or 'Beyond the Sensor Grid' where we can learn what factions are like in a side-by-side comparison of a particular important or interesting development. This is where you can occasionally get useful information that's too bulky to go directly into the stats, such as raw numbers about terraforming or hab facilities and so forth.

The Stats

Here's an example of the portion of the stats that will be public:

Gaia's Stepchildren
>>Population (Adults) : 41 thousand;
-Drones [ 2 % ]
-Citizens [ 74 % ]
-Specialists [ 19 % ]
-Talents [ 5 % ]
>>Net Resource Consumption (Annual);
-Population [ 80 k ]; Per Capita [ 1.95 ]
>>Science and Industry;
-Explore [ Early Fission ]
-Discover [ Early Fission ]
-Build [ Nascent Fission]
-Conquer [ Nascent Fission ]
>>Material Culture (Private // Public);
- Sparse, green consumer products; Nutrient-rich health and diet and biome-systems; // Cramped and poorly laid out but clean and sturdy habitation facilities, chronically energy-short; A few recreational parks and arbors; Low-intensity terraforming; Somewhat efficient recycling systems
>>Intellectual Culture (Artistic // Scientific);
- Rooftop hydroponic frescoes; Biodegradable sculpture; Weather-noise remixing // Pursuit of green and ecologically sustainable industry and habitation; Non-intrusive study of Planet's ecosystems; Working towards stable hybridization of Planet-compatible terran flora/fauna seed species
>>Social Culture (Civics // Values);
- Hierarchy of ecological-minded governing councils; Formal protection for individual petty property and intellectual freedom and political petition; Limited police presence and informal emergency-response military; // Cautious, carefully checked industrial and population growth to maintain sustainable, nondestructive interaction with native ecosystem; Neighborhood-based social structure; Somewhat pacifistic and communal tendencies; Fairly low economic privilege disparity across the board

Stats Explanation

Population includes all adults except those elderly who are too infirm to participate in society, also counts foreigners with long-term residency and citizen expatriots who maintain ties with the homeland.
Drones are the disaffected, the rebellious, the ill-educated, the underprivileged, the riotous dissidents. They have their purposes...so long as the citizen does not sympathize with the drone, feels himself to be in a safe and separate world from the drone, then these malcontents can be used for the difficult and unpleasant and dangerous work that no one else will take and to which they have grown up resigned. But then, beware the drones who have grown in number, in organization and influence, who have nothing to lose in rising up...
Citizens, “The Salt of Planet”, those rough and ready pioneers of a new life, are the mass that propels your chosen people into the daylight of two stars, the hands that till the clay, the backs that bear up under any struggle, the throats that clamor to keep mankind alive.
Specialists have the skills and education to build a society and keep it running. Your science, industry, and social services will grow or crumble based upon the expertise and diligence of these men and women. Specialists maintain the cultural matrices, counteracting faction decay stresses.
Talents are perhaps the most crucial tool at your disposal. They are supremely competent and bold visionaries, dedicated to their causes. If you can bring their ambitions into line with your own, they can propel your faction to unmatched pinnacles of human achievement. To respond to a crisis or create fundamental shifts in your cultural matrices requires the energy and drive that only a cadre of Talents can put forth. If your faction cannot produce enough talents, it will stagnate and crumble; if you lose their trust and obedience they will fall back to quiet lives of citizens and specialists, or worst of all, turn into the most dangerous drones that seek to tear your faction asunder and reassemble it in their own image.
Net Resource Consumption measures the Nutrient, Mineral, and Energy products that come out of the labor of your workers and industry and are directly used by your faction. Some will go to Maintenance and State Needs to keep your bases and militaries operational. Some will be lost to Inefficiency. What is left will be consumed by your citizens, largely determining material quality-of-life considerations.
Scientific and Infrastructure Development is divided into four categories and four ages, each age with four sub-stages. The categories are Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer. The ages are Fission, Fusion, Quantum, and Singularity, with sub-stages Nascent, Early, Middle, Late. I've got the reference list for what tech/facilities/unit upgrades belong to which stage already started.
The Cultural Matrices describe the broadly ingrained characteristics of your faction. One of your most important tasks may be utilizing and changing these characteristics to succeed in whatever you define as success for your faction in your struggles on Planet.

Orders

I will, at least at first before I start to regret it, be fairly flexible in how I accept orders.
I am looking for orders that, simply put, give clear and concise direction to the ethos you wish to make your faction embody for the coming turn. I do not expect or want you to write reactions and contingencies for every conceivable situation that might come up, but rather let you submit something that you will have fun writing and will clue me in to the general way your faction leadership will respond to situations and engineer progress within your civilization.
Orders at their most basic might consist of only two things: Initiatives and Policy Actions.

Initiatives are the efforts of your Talents that produce enduring social or material effects. Don't worry about basic stuff that every society engages in, such as “increase nutrient production to feed population”. That kind of thing is automatic, unless you're aiming for something like, “increase nutrient production to extravagant levels to encourage habitual gluttony as a point of factional pride”. You will maintain a fairly static list from turn to turn. Please number them from most important to least important. Each number should have a one or two sentence description of the what and how of your cultural revision. Your list can have as many items as you want, but it's roughly a queue—only the first two or three at any given time are eligible to ascend to the cultural matrix, thus actually coming into effect and each one usually takes a few turns to do so, so it's probably in your best interests to keep it short. Any new initiative has to be added to the end of the list, but you can at any time send any unwanted initiatives to the recycling tanks to give other lower initiatives their chance to shine.

Policy Actions are one-time responses to specific issues. Use Policy Actions as a direct answer to a crisis or development that has just arisen and that you expect will be resolved within one or two turns. It is acceptable and indeed preferred for you to be brief in your descriptions. Policy actions do not carry over for more than one or two turns at most, so for longer-term efforts use Initiatives. Indicate, in order, which are most important to you, and limit yourself to two or three efforts, as your Talents likely will not be able to effectively tackle more than that.

Qualitative descriptions of the size and nature of a faction effort are all that you'll ever need. You can say “spend 40 thousand minerals on X and 30 thousand energy on Y” if it makes you feel better, but it's not going to really matter at all.

If you want to take an even more hands-off approach, that's fine too! Don't feel like sending orders? Post a story or two in the thread, and I'll extrapolate from there. If you're more interested in the narrative than the governing side of things or vice versa, consider teaming up with another player to handle different roles in one faction.

Oh! If you're sending orders, or just writing stories, or hell, even just a dedicated lurker I guess, consider sending me a PM with Style Nominations see below. Sending Nominations is optional, but encouraged.

Style Awards

These are basically story bonuses with a few twists.
These games are given strong foundations by modeling agricultural yields and the march of industry and the like, but, deterministic pretensions aside, it's what the people do that captures our interest and respect, yes? We are here to say that history is made of more than rainfall and commodities exchange; that the choices a few individuals can make are levers to make mockeries of the previous course of nations, religions, ecosystems.

Thus, Style Points. Let your characters be clever, dramatic, flawed and ambitious! Do something worth talking about, and you get these quaint little intangibles. I will keep a secret tally based on what I see, and I will also award additional Style Pearls to your Mysterious Stylometer based upon the nominations that The Other Players include in their orders.
That's right folks. Now you, too, can reward your fellow players for their dashing heroism and/or crooked villainy.
Nominate as many players for Style Points as you believe appropriate: There are only two tiers of points; the first tier is for receiving one or two nominations, the second is for three or more. Within these tiers, is doesn't matter whether someone receives 3 nominations or 10, it comes to the same numerical boost to one's Style Reservoir, so don't be afraid to nominate everyone you think deserves it. Err, except yourself. Nominating yourself doesn't count, but I hand out nominations, too, so your good efforts won't go unnoticed and unrewarded even if you've managed make Vendetta on every one else on the forum ;)

Note that Style is believable: it is justified, fair, generous, and subtle. It needs a chance to breathe, and good pacing will get you more in the long run.
Oh, but what does the good water in this elusive Chalice of Style grant you? Aside from the satisfaction of doing something fit for the history books and barroom chatter alike, this blessing will shore up the spirits of your most important people in their supreme moment of gambit. Style, unfortunately, does not make your crops grow or your factories churn out more guns'n'butter, but anyway what is that paltry strength in steel compared to the steady will of the hand that wields it? This extra bit of vitality may not necessarily win you the day, but at the least, if utilized with appropriate parts zeal and discretion, will net you more Style. I think it is a desirable feedback loop.
...Not to overstate the importance of all this to the rules as opposed to the atmosphere. Your factions will still rise and fall based largely upon the sweeping factors and so forth. This just might add a little extra bounce.
I'm going to backtrack a little bit. There is one area where Style provides a big extra bounce: see below...

Secret Projects

O! those projects of Great Secrecy! How we scheme and struggle in their pursuit...
If you want one, you will need a few things to get one.
1. The appropriate technological background (Science and Industry Rating).
2. To put it in your Initiative List (at the end, like everything else) and wait for it to get to or force it into the top two or three.
3. To have elements in your Cultural Matrices relatively conducive to completing the Secret Project you are pursuing in a timely and effective manner. This isn't a strict requirement, but if it is a close race between factions, this can break the tie.
4. To have Style Points. You'll all have at least some, but the more you have, the faster your project may get completed. If someone else finishes before you, your own attempt, sadly, get stricken from your Initiative List and goes into the recycling tanks. All is not lost, because whoever finishes the Secret Project successfully uses up some or all of his current Style Points, whereas no one else expends any at all (though they will have wasted turns with a Secret Project on their Initiative List that might have been filled with something else).

And if you get a Secret Project, it goes straight into your stats (for all purposes it is a part of your Cultural Matrices, though it will be listed separately for organization purposes) and you may bask in the adulation of your own faction and the envy of your rivals and generally swagger about with a big shiny feather in your cap.

Areas of Concern

The map is going to look terrible unless and until I manage to wrangle it out of its civ-style cylinder format into something more appropriate OR determine that such a task is unfeasible and just go ahead and clean it up in its present form.

I'm not quite sure how to handle espionage. I'm thinking a faction's propensity for using and resisting probe teams will be just another part of the Cultural Matrices, and I can send secret probe team reports for special occasions, and if you really want to you can order super-daring and outrageously sneaky infiltration missions under unusual circumstances in your Policy Actions.

I think I'll take a similar approach (as espionage) to warfare. Build up a martial culture (or don't) with Initiatives, and tell me in Policy Actions if you want to get into a war. Unless there is a compelling reason to, I don't intend to track individual 4-1-2 Impact Rovers and Needlejets and so forth beyond having a crude idea what a military's basic strengths and weaknesses are, but feel free to include fluff about rover charges and plasma steel sentinels on the perimeter defenses and I'll try to work that into the update.

I'll be writing the initial stats, fortunately there aren't very many factions and mostly it is straightforward so it won't be too bad at all, but you are encouraged (not obligated) to submit suggestions for what your starting Cultural Matrices might look like.

Suggestions on any and all of this welcome!