New NESes, ideas, development, etc

[spryllino]

You may not be here for realism, but that doesn't mean that no-one else is; in fact, plenty of us value realism, and feel that if a NES isn't realistic it doesn't make any sense, and if it doesn't make any sense in that way it isn't much fun. You and some others may not object to a tech tree on realism grounds; but many people do and will object, and this is ultimately likely to detract from how many people like your NES.

[Luckymoose]

There is a difference between realism and what we do. Realism is not a goal we can realistically pursue. We can do our best to simulate the simulation of reality, though, and I think anyone who believes we have achieved realism has a large stick up their butt.

[Eltain]

Spoiler for Map of as yet unnamed world::

[IMG]

This is during the construction phase, turn 13.

The ugly darkish splotches near the upper right center of the map are barbarian 'civilizations'. Other civilizations are represented with dots representing their concentration at the moment.

[Northen Wolf]

Originally Posted by Eltain

Spoiler for Map of as yet unnamed world::

[IMG]

This is during the construction phase, turn 13.

The ugly darkish splotches near the upper right center of the map are barbarian 'civilizations'. Other civilizations are represented with dots representing their concentration at the moment.

Me likey

[Milarqui]

@SKILORD, spryllino, North King, Luckymoose: well, damn, that is an interesting conversation you are currently having. Though, let's please keep it civil, 'kay?

Anyway, the question is: which system, according to you, is better?
- Fixed tech tree, like in the Civ games.
- Free-for-all, with each nation developing their own technology, and it slowly spreading around the world.
- A mix, with a few things in a fixed tech tree and the rest being developed individually.

[Milarqui]

This would be some more ideas about how stats would be handled in my possible future NES:

Nation/Player
Capital: self-explanatory. Losing it can cause problems.
Population: would start with 100,000 people (between the capital and surrounding places), growth would come from immigrants and natural growth.
Stability: the higher it is, the best. It can be increased through certain methods.
Culture: it measures how cult your people are. It can be increased with stories and other ways.
Economic Points: you can bank these. How many EPs per turn you get depends of your population, trade, projects and others. (Note: initially you would be getting EP=0.5% Population) Have yet to determine if the army and navy should have upkeep costs.
Research Points: cannot be banked. It depends on population, culture and projects.
Army: an army unit has four stats: Melée, Long Distance, Protection and Mobility. When developing an unit, each accumulative point costs 10*2^(n-1) RP in development, and the cost would be the number of points in EP. For example, a Swordsman with stats (8/0/4/2) would requiere 273 RP and 14 EP.
Army Quality: states the maximum points you can allocate in the development of an unit.
Navy: a navy unit has four stats: Power, Protection, Speed, Transport. RP and EP costs would be the same.
Navy Quality: the same as for Army Quality.
Air Force: an air unit has four stats: Air-to-Air, Air-to-Ground, Speed and Range. I'm having half a mind of allowing these from the start, which of course would be very limited in range and power, but could be quite useful for many things.
Projects: the objective of these are to allow you to improve your nation. Be it through the construction of Universities to get more RPs, Trade Houses to get more money from trade or Great Forges to get better units (these are just examples), there are many things you can do.
Research Projects: this will only show what techs you are researching or have researched. I am thinking about allowing players to make their own techs, as long as they can demonstrate they can research it with what they have. When one nation researches something, other nations will be allowed to copy it, but it will also cost RPs and will not get bonuses (or, at least, bonuses like the ones the original investigator gets). The front page would be showing which technologies are being developed, and who can access to them.

Opinions? (I know you will probably say something about it all, especially the air force and the money, but, well, these are my suggestions)

[Terrance888]

I like a Mix. I really enjoy how Amon has these unique techs in Motherhen, infact, on a pencil and paper NES I'm running, that's how I handle techs myself.

A very basic tech tree to represent simple bottlenecks of research (going form vacumn tubes to transistors and microprocessors? anyone?) with lots of open ended space for creativity.

Please accept these points of advice if you do so!
1) Be ready to quickly judge the costs of anything, familiarize yourself on the subject of the complexity of various things compared to their descendents.
2) Be ready to allow both narrow and wide interpretation of techs, and adjust costs necessarily. "Kopesh Swords" in the bronze age is rather narrow, and would definitely cost less than "Hammered Steel", which can be used from anything to armor, to weapons, early machines in the Iron age.

[thomas.berubeg]

I know I've started and abandoned a fair number of NESes over my time here, but what would people think of a Post ME3 Control Ending NES? Players would play as Isolated colonies of the various in-game races, or new races, trying to make their way in this new, Mass Relay Lacking galaxy. (Which would make it hard for Planets like Palaven, Earth, Thessia, Etc, to keep contact, especially with all the work needed to reconstruct themselves.

[nutranurse]

Originally Posted by Haseri

I've been thinking a lot about Stars Without Number recently, and I reckon you could play a NES with the faction rules.

The question would be, do we start off with all the factions on one planet or open up the whole sector?

Holy poo-poo, so I downloaded the pdf and read through the factions part and it seems like a pretty good system for a NES. I am in the process of tweaking the ruleset a bit and am considering opening a pre-thread that functions a lot like Eltain's current nes where players casually build up a world. Not that I am abandoning my current NES or anything (really, I'm not), just think it would be a great way to get a NES up and running lorewise at some point in the future.

[Terrance888]

Not that I am abandoning my current NES or anything

I think we heard this song and dance before, but I can't tell when.



I think its a good idea.

[Lord_Iggy]

You definitely want to put that in [SPOILER] tags thomas.

[Milarqui]

More ideas!
- Eliminate the Bronze Age/Iron Age/etc thing. It means nothing, and it is just a way to measure it according to RL parameters.
- Start in the Bronze Age. Agriculture, mining, fishing, hunting, animal husbandry, the wheel... those things are already known. You are already a freakin' sedentary, stable society! You SHOULD know these things!
- The fixed tech tree would just be formed of basic technologies. A nation would be free to go for each technology, as long as they got the previous techs. For example, we could start with Bronze Melting, Masonry, Writing and Sailing.
- Other technologies would be player-designed. You want to have a currency-based economy? Then you research Currency. You prefer to keep a barter-based economy? You don't research Currency. You prefer to have a mixed economy, with barter but also allowing the use of currency? You research Currency, and use your stories to reflect your choice. Great flexibility! So far, I have come up with the following basic techs: Bronze Melting, Masonry, Writing, Sailing, Iron Melting, Alphabet, Mathematics, Metal Casting. Don't know what else to put, but I think I can pick them out of MilarNES II's Tech Tree.
- Population: there would be 2 factors: natural growth and a random factor to account for immigration or assimilation of other people as your borders expand.
- Economy: the economic power you gain would initially be proportional to population, but as you develop new technologies or finish projects, there would be certain bonuses to that quantity. Trade would also affect this, but that is something I have yet to determine (I think it could depend on each countries' population...)
- Research: how much research you can do in one turn will depend on population, culture and any projects you may have finished that directly affect research.
- Culture: increases through stories and also from projects. Not sure of how to implement culture-flipping, or if I will actually allow it. I think that there could be some system by which the border between two nations would be subjected to changes due to culture differences until both nations agreed on a fixed border, which would not change unless there was war. Fixed borders would be marked, while variable borders would not be.

What is your opinion?

[Terrance888]

Trade should determine on the value/demand of trade goods.

A small country with highly valued trade goods will get much more money funneled to it than a huge nation with little-desired trade goods, despite size.

[hbar]

At the risk of sounding trite, I think there are two kinds of advances: revolutionary and evolutionary. The former is a serendipitous thing that can't be predicted or rushed. In human history, these things (alphabet, agriculture, the wheel, bronze working, etc) occur once, and then are spread through trade and warfare. Evolutionary advances are things that can be directed. Once you have agriculture, you can focus on improving yields, expanding crop selection, controlling pests, etc. Once you have bronze working, you can refine smithing techniques, create new alloys, focus on armor design, spear design, etc.

How I would translate this into a NES (granted, I've never run one) is this. Have the major discoveries happen semi-randomly, weighted towards appropriate player actions (arch keystones for builder types, ballistics for warmongers, cyphers for sneaky types, etc.). These techs, once discovered, would spread via tech diffusion, trade, and warfare. The players would be able to invest research improving the major techs they already know.

Players shouldn't know the major techs beforehand (other than the obvious known arc of history), and gaming the system should be discouraged (i.e. King Warmongerman declares that his people should gather tin and copper and mix it together to see what happens). I think this fits well with historical advances, since revolutionary discoveries by definition can't happen by design. But it still gives enough game elements to satisfy the tech-tree cravings some of us have.

[Milarqui]

Originally Posted by Terrance888

Trade should determine on the value/demand of trade goods.

A small country with highly valued trade goods will get much more money funneled to it than a huge nation with little-desired trade goods, despite size.

I guess that that would work quite well, although making up the trade goods, as well as production and cost, would be a bit tiring. Perhaps some trade goods would appear randomly, and other trade goods could be conciously made by the players.

Originally Posted by hbar

At the risk of sounding trite, I think there are two kinds of advances: revolutionary and evolutionary. The former is a serendipitous thing that can't be predicted or rushed. In human history, these things (alphabet, agriculture, the wheel, bronze working, etc) occur once, and then are spread through trade and warfare. Evolutionary advances are things that can be directed. Once you have agriculture, you can focus on improving yields, expanding crop selection, controlling pests, etc. Once you have bronze working, you can refine smithing techniques, create new alloys, focus on armor design, spear design, etc.

How I would translate this into a NES (granted, I've never run one) is this. Have the major discoveries happen semi-randomly, weighted towards appropriate player actions (arch keystones for builder types, ballistics for warmongers, cyphers for sneaky types, etc.). These techs, once discovered, would spread via tech diffusion, trade, and warfare. The players would be able to invest research improving the major techs they already know.

Players shouldn't know the major techs beforehand (other than the obvious known arc of history), and gaming the system should be discouraged (i.e. King Warmongerman declares that his people should gather tin and copper and mix it together to see what happens). I think this fits well with historical advances, since revolutionary discoveries by definition can't happen by design. But it still gives enough game elements to satisfy the tech-tree cravings some of us have.

While your idea is quite good and realistic, it would, unfortunately, make for a very slow game pace. It would require me to ascertain the probabilities of each nation to get a certain advance, based on all of their actions, and considering that all nations would start from scratch, it would become quite tiresome. Your suggestions are good for NESes where the scenario has already been established and when you can already do more things than just waiting for something to happen. I would be bored if I did it that way.

Why don't you try to do a NES where tech advance goes that way? Who knows, maybe you can make up a good set of ideas for it!

[North King]

I am struggling to understand why players will be waiting around to discover technologies. They surely would have a ton of other things to do: managing political factions, dealing with economic crises, rending off other peoples... You know, the things people dealt with in history.

[hbar]

Quick ideas to combat a slow game:
-Everyone gets a starting tech(s)
--Start off with some BT orders to determine what 'flavors' are granted
-Guaranteed minimum of one new major tech per update. This would encourage players to find as many neighbors to trade/war with early
--depending on geography, this should give every nation several major techs to focus on by update 5 or so
-have NPC with tech to steal
-allow nations to design religions off the bat, invest in them instead

About me running a NES? I barely have enough time to play in a single small NES. There's no way I would be a successful mod

[Milarqui]

Originally Posted by North King

I am struggling to understand why players will be waiting around to discover technologies. They surely would have a ton of other things to do: managing political factions, dealing with economic crises, rending off other peoples... You know, the things people dealt with in history.

My point is that it would mean a slow technological advance, which could mean that it could take a nation around two-three turns to even be able to actually work on doing things with bronze, and development of one "revolutionary" technology would require the mod to take into account a lot of variables.

However, as I have told hbar, if he feels he can do a good NES with that tech system, he can give it a try.

[Eltain]

Guys, look what I have just discovered.

makeagif.com. Freaking awesome.

[KaiserElectric]

That could have some practical uses. Could make seeing the growth of nations easier without shuffling through previous updates.