spacer guild mechanic

[davidlallen]

In the civ abilities thread, Ahriman suggested the Spacer Guild should get a lot of economic bonuses like more/better trade routes. I agree with that idea, but I also want to add some kind of unique mechanic. I have a few ideas: spy satellites, paradrop troops, and "spice vision". I already discussed spice vision a little in the Reverend Mother thread, although I still don't know exactly how it should work.

Spy satellites: if they are in orbit, they should be able to see everything. In vanilla, there is a late game project which gives visibility everywhere, and an air recon mission which allows visibility in an 11x11 block within a few squares of the unit's base city. What I want is somewhere between, plus the ability to block visibility with bribes. As we know the Fremen bribed the guild to keep certain areas from being scanned. The satellites should not provide global visibility, and they should not be limited to near friendly cities. So I am thinking of an action button like an FFH worldspell, which can be used once per turn. It allows you to select any plot on the map and get maybe a 5x5 or 7x7 view area similar to a recon mission. However, other players can place a "bribe" unit on the map which has a high gold cost and lasts a certain number of turns. If the guild player chooses a plot which is too near one of these, then the recon fails and nothing is revealed.

Paradrop troops: if the guild has spacecraft, then they should be able to do orbital drops of their troops. Possibly the Imperium should have this ability also. One concept is that once terraformed terrain starts to appear, the guild should try to drop troops onto the nearby area and destroy the improvements. (I did not consider this when I did the terraforming victory. Perhaps I need to change the "pillage" button so that when clicked on a terraformed plot, it will reduce it one level.) I don't know what the exact game ability would be yet. If anybody out there plays Dawn Of War, the RTS game in the Warhammer family, I am thinking of the Deep Strike ability which teleports a unit anywhere on the map.

 

[Deliverator]

I'll repost the Homeworld idea from the Civilizations thread. Koma said there he'd get around to doing a proof of concept. The Leader Units/Regicide and this idea are the two features I'd really love to see in this mod one day. I have a post I'm planning to write about House Ecaz/Imported Goods, with ideas coming out of my Bonus overhaul work, that could flesh out the Homeworld idea further.

Guild mechanics, Homeworlds and Backstory

I've been thinking about mechanics for the Guild. It's hard to make sense of them as a Civ on Dune without other planets and their ability to fold space.

So I was thinking I would like all houses to be able to pay the Guild to get reinforcements from their homeworlds. Koma has raised the idea of immigration before. Also, he has produced some lovely Europe screens for Civ4Col. Image we have beautiful Homeworld screens for each Civ. The Homeworld screen has a finite supply of units and prices - a total rip off of the Civ4Col purchasing settlers system. The money paid for a reinforcement unit goes to the Guild civ. The Guild civ obviously doesn't get to do this. They'd also need a major penalty since they are getting paid from all quarters. So, we make spice yield little or no income for them since it is all needed for their Navigators to do the space folding trick.

I would love this because it would give us the concept of space existing beyond Dune, the reason why spice is so important and a much more complete portrayal of the Dune universe.

We make a post-apocalyptic backstory. There was a War of Assassins of Dune and something happened that wiped out virtually everyone. The reasons why technology is primitive is because of the extent of the devastation. However, importantly, the Houses still know that they are houses and that they have homeworlds. If they can get enough spice together to pay the guild, then they can get reinforcements. I like the idea of buying units, before you have the relevant tech to build that unit. You'd have to price everything so that it is very expensive to do that.

Of course it might not make sense for the Guild to be a playable civ if you went down this road, but overall I think it'd be pretty damn cool.

If it came down to keeping the Guild as a Civ or have something like this, I'd say scrap them as a Civ.

This was Koma's post:

I can give it a try. It will be very basic. Just a screen you can open up, order some units and a turn later they will show up in one of your cities. I think I can teach the AI to use it. Later we can add some more complexity to that concept. Don't expect any results soon...

 

[Ahriman]

Thoughts:
1) Its really never going to be worth paying gold to stop recon missions - or at least not reliably. I'm still not convinced that extra recon information is even very valuable to the AI at all.
This seems like a mechanic for bleeding gold out of your enemies.
I'd remove the bribery mechanic, I don't see it as being very strategic and the flavor value is minor.
If you really want to simulate it, just create a failure chance for the recon mission (say 20%).
2) Pillaging terraforming seems interesting. The thought I had was something like the UN forces in the Broken Star mod that guard the missile silos. If you capture a nuke, they start launching expeditionary forces to try and take them back. Similarly, Imperial forces could have some preference for trying to stop the terraforming process by pillaging.
3) Somewhat related and unrelated; I learned on the Warhammer mod that often the best mechanism for including flavor features are Events, rather than trying to literally code the mechanics into the game. So, for example, you could create an Event that spawns some barbarian Saudarkar (ie Saudarkar but pretending to be smugglers, a la Saudarkar pretending to be Harkonnen in the book) on or near terraforming tiles, with an apprpriate flavor message that the forces of the Imperium will not allow the spice to be destroyed.
I think there are a lot of other flavorful mechanics that are better handled through events than in-engine.
4) The Paratrooper mechanic is easily the best way to simulate drop pods. What I would do would be to give the Imperium some Saudarkar marines that are paratroopers with a large range paradrop, and you could give the Guild a UU *transport* unit with the paradrop ability (dropship), so it could load 2-3 units into it and dump them anywhere in a large radius.
This could be incredibly powerful with pillaging.
You could also give the guild a UB spaceport that let it airlift units to your other cities.

 

[davidlallen]

1) Its really never going to be worth paying gold to stop recon missions - or at least not reliably. I'm still not convinced that extra recon information is even very valuable to the AI at all.

If the guild has paradrop raiders that destroy terraforming, it seems like it would be worthwhile for the terraforming players to prevent the guild from seeing the terraforming spots. I'm not sure if the AI would use the satellite or a bribe, but I am pretty sure I could write some python to cause a city with a Reservoir and no bribe marker unit, to build a marker unit.

I think there are a lot of other flavorful mechanics that are better handled through events than in-engine.

Interesting thought. I have not worked with the random events yet.

4) The Paratrooper mechanic is easily the best way to simulate drop pods. What I would do would be to give the Imperium some Saudarkar marines that are paratroopers with a large range paradrop, and you could give the Guild a UU *transport* unit with the paradrop ability (dropship), so it could load 2-3 units into it and dump them anywhere in a large radius.

If you have infantry with paradrop, what is the addtional benefit of a transport with paradrop? It will be interesting to see if the AI uses a long range paradrop effectively. If not, I may have to build a separate mechanic. For example, the player may build a "deep strike" unit. This unit has an action button. When the action button is used, the player selects a square anywhere on the map. An infantry unit appears there and the deep strike unit is destroyed. The AI will be encouraged to build them, and any built deep strike unit can trigger a routine which selects a good plot and drops them there: something with visible, pillage-able improvements, inside enemy (or hated civic) territory.

 

[Ahriman]

If the guild has paradrop raiders that destroy terraforming

If they're raiders controlled by the Guild player, then you're going to have to distort their AI as well, which is weird - you're deliberately going to make an AI player act suboptimally? Much easier to make them barbarians.

But preventing recon runs isn't going to stop them from paratroop dropping troops; you can paradrop into fog of war.
I just don't see the bribery mechanic as particularly useful, the value of hiding enemy recon into your territory is just too low to be worth worrying about.
I guess you could link a barbarian spawning event to the presence or absence of a bribe marker, but the link will be too weak and confusing for human players.
Something which would capture flavor; an event where you pay money and all your territory becomes unexplored to all AI opponents (not sure if this is possible or not).

If you have infantry with paradrop, what is the addtional benefit of a transport with paradrop?

Only some particular UUs would paradrop, like infantry. These can pillage, but they're not going to take a city. But with a transport, you can load anything you like into it (including artillery) and then paradrop them.
This would be a very *very* powerful mechanic, particularly if you could get the AI to use it well.

I think the AI can paradrop. Talk to Maniac who runs Planetfall mod, I think he's been working on AI transport and paratroop capabilities.

I think even non-guild Civs should eventually get some airlift between friendly cities capability; it just takes too long to get between cities within your own empire because of the lack of roads/railroads.

 

[davidlallen]

If they're raiders controlled by the Guild player, then you're going to have to distort their AI as well, which is weird - you're deliberately going to make an AI player act suboptimally?

Thank you for the feedback, it shows I have not completely thought out the concept. Players who are terraforming are coming close to winning. So an action which makes it harder for them to win is not "suboptimal". However, pillaging a terraformed square with the 1.3.3 version doesn't actually prevent anything. The terraforming would just grow back later. So I need a different goal for the raider. Originally I wanted the terraforming to be an improvement, perhaps outside your cultural borders. This would be easy to raid and pillage. But after seeing what I could actually implement, it became a new terrain type based on city buildings. This is much less amenable to raiding. The only way to affect this is with spies, I guess, or conquering the city.

Only some particular UUs would paradrop, like infantry. These can pillage, but they're not going to take a city. But with a transport, you can load anything you like into it (including artillery) and then paradrop them. This would be a very *very* powerful mechanic, particularly if you could get the AI to use it well.

I think the AI can paradrop. Talk to Maniac who runs Planetfall mod, I think he's been working on AI transport and paratroop capabilities.

Oh, I get it. Yes, a paradrop transport would allow dropping any attack unit. I am pretty sure the AI would have no idea how to use this, it is basically an amphibious attack only with infinite move rate. Of course, a standard transport with a move of like 8-10 would do basically the same thing and the AI should easily use that. So that may be a lower effort solution.

Maniac has certainly helped us with the AI "all terrain transport", which he calls a dropship. I will ask separately about paratroops, after I try out some basic experiments.

I think even non-guild Civs should eventually get some airlift between friendly cities capability; it just takes too long to get between cities within your own empire because of the lack of roads/railroads.

This was also suggested somewhere else recently. Perhaps we should just add that to the spaceport building, or some building when you get the carryall tech.

 

[koma13]

This was also suggested somewhere else recently. Perhaps we should just add that to the spaceport building, or some building when you get the carryall tech.

That was me. I suggested adding the airlift ability to the palace. Carryall tech comes way too late to be a decent replacement for roads.

 

[Deliverator]

I think thematically the Spacing Guild being a military force is a bit wrong. Their monopoly over space transport means that they can stop any war they want to just by threatening to revoke trade and transport privileges on which everyone depends.

To be honest, I stuggle with them being a faction still. If the homeworld idea works out then I'd have no problem with them becoming an abstract game concept that you pay money to for units and goods. It would be a small loss for a much more accurate recreation of the Duniverse.

Read this summary from the board game thread:

Guild - Weak militarily, awesome capacity to move units around, including back off planet. Others pay the Guild to ship troops onto Dune (except Fremen) which makes the Guild rich. Weak leaders. Special victory condition that if no one else wins, they win as they want status quo. Ability to take their turn during game turn at any time, which means they usually go last and can react to attempts to win. Can suffer in a war of attrition. Capable of suprise victories and spoiling attacks.

 

[keldath]

hummm,
look here guys,

we can do this,something that will work like this:

almost everything in the game costs money:
units and buildings.

most factions will pay money in order to have units(see my power units -hire cost( maybe not for buildings though.
hammers just be set on how long it will take for you to get the unit?

the fremen for instance will not have to pay money for most of their units,

this way - solaris/money will have a whole new importance.
the economy levels will be raised significantly to meet with new req.
also -spice a massive source of economy.

just a thought.

 

[davidlallen]

I have done a prototype of a "deep strike" capability. See this thread for some technical details of how it works. Basically, it is an infinite range, one time paradrop. You build a unit called "deep strike module" in your city. This unit has a move of zero, but a special action button. When you click the action button, you can select any unoccupied plot on the map which is visible (not fog of war) and not desert. The deep strike module disappears and a standard infantry unit appears on the selected plot.

This represents using fast suborbital transport to drop a unit anyplace you have a forward observer. This would be a raider type unit. Now that I have (locally) changed terraforming to require some improvement, pillaging these will cause the terraforming to disappear. This still does not actually prevent the victory, but it prevents you from getting the water bonus.

Several people have commented that the spacers should not have military strength; so we could make this a UU for the Imperials, ie House Corrino.

Because it does require a forward observer, I am also thinking that the Imps should have a satellite observer mission and the Fremen should have a bribe mission to defend against the satellites. I will try this out to see if I can find a way to implement it.

 

[Ahriman]

What is the advantage of the deep strike module over a normal infantry unit with an infinite range paradrop?

Are you implementing something like the auto-pillage raider trait I mentioned? Otherwise, I think you're highly likely to see any paradropped unit be instantly annihilated by local defense forces (bombardment + medium or heavy hover = dead dropunit).

I am still pretty dubious about the value of trying to get an in-engine representation of Fremen bribery, but maybe you'll make it worthwhile somehow.

 

[davidlallen]

What is the advantage of the deep strike module over a normal infantry unit with an infinite range paradrop?

Sadly, this is the way I go about doing stuff "around" the AI. If I use a standard paradrop, I have to figure out how to change the existing AI routines that use paradrops, to merge in my new behavior. I did not mention in my previous post, but if I have a unit which nobody else uses, I can write AI to build it and move it effectively. This is how the sandworm and sandstorm units work. So I would divert part of the production of Imp cities into these modules, and whenever a module exists, the new AI would automatically pick a good target square and drop it.

Are you implementing something like the auto-pillage raider trait I mentioned? Otherwise, I think you're highly likely to see any paradropped unit be instantly annihilated by local defense forces (bombardment + medium or heavy hover = dead dropunit).

Perhaps the deepstrike module needs to have levels, where successive levels are successively more expensive and stronger units.

I am still pretty dubious about the value of trying to get an in-engine representation of Fremen bribery, but maybe you'll make it worthwhile somehow.

My concept is a bribe is a placeable unit on the map, which has no movement, and prevents satellite missions from succeeding if the plot picked is within 10. Probably I could do this with a building also.

 

[Ahriman]

But what is the real advantage to the player of preventing satellite missions - is the idea that it will prevent have drop module troops used on you? Will the AI be advanced enough to use satellite scans + drop mission?

I'm also dubious about the value of forcing the imperium to build drop modules and then just randomly throw those at terraformers. It seems like it would weaken them by diverting away a portion of their production that could be building a normal army and structures to little direct gain.
Is it possible to increase the economy value of pillaging done by a particular unit?

One thing I would do; make the dropped troops hidden nationality, so the Imperium doesn't have to be at war to do it.

The deepstrikers probably needs at least two levels, a strength 12 one and a strength 24 one.

 

[edorazio]

Such hidden nationality units could be useful to, say, drop on the water sources of a city and immediately pillage. This, in conjunction with espionage could perhaps throw a city into revolt. Actually, I haven't used espionage enough (other than the passive effects) to know if this is a even theoretically possible.

Otherwise, I wonder of the utility of a strength 24 hidden nationality unit. Obviously depending on the tech level given, it could be vastly inferior to other more specialized units. Even mobility is not such a great advantage (i.e. dropping a bunch on a weakly defended city) if you can't quickly reinforce the city. Which you could already do with a traditional invasion force.

I understand the primary motive is to prevent terraforming victory, but if you're going to make it a unique ability it seems like somewhat of a waste if its useful only for that narrow purpose (of course, I've already stated by dislike of any victory conditions in all civ games, but I KNOW I'm alone in that )

 

[keldath]

HEY,

how about - we make that all of the spacing guild unique units cost gold - and almost no build time?

can be nice huh?


oj yeah david is right, once your not freind with a nation - you wont get that bonus...so you van only use those you have...cool.


david...if we want our mod to be popular , we should let everyone play with the setting they like...we dont want to limit them...whats the fun with that?...

 

[davidlallen]

That may be a better approach. I did some prototyping of how deepstrike could work, but somehow it didn't seem "fun". I think I will give up on the deepstrike idea. Somebody could add a fast transport (like move 8 or 10 -- really fast) to capture the idea. That is just inside the xml.

 

[Ahriman]

I still think you could add 1-2 UUs that had paradrop, even if the AI wasn't terribly good at using them.

Also, your super-long-range transport could be a Frigate.

The gold-for-units stacks nicely with the financial trait.

 

[keldath]

ive made a nice paratroop unit for ecaz,

thanks for the advices - i will use it.