Upping the Map Game

[Darth Bellum]

So I was kind of thinking on how to perhaps maybe 'spice' up some things for the map and interactions between factions. I like to see the map game a bit like Stellaris, in this manner where certain planets will have resources/exotic materials/etc. And for simplicity's sake we'll just say this applies to things that are of Limited-Mass Produced in nature for the following suggestion. So take that as you will and don't see this as an infringement on your ability to be a special snowflake with your Unique and Semi-Unique stuff.

One of the things that crossed my mind was the control of resource/infrastructure worlds. More or less resources that planets that had unique resources to them, or possession of a hex that contains a shipyard world to produce starships and such. This was more something that came up when a lot of the restricted materials were made openly available to everyone, and for no logical purpose or reasoning other than letting people make awesome or broken submissions. The thought was to basically add another layer onto the map game and reduce the mass production of things that would have otherwise difficult to acquire materials. Perhaps start some threads where you open up a trade agreement with other factions to acquire resources and materials that they might have. Because I'll be honest, it peeves me just a tad when I see someone outside the Mandalorians mass producing Beskar vehicles/equipment when possession of Beskar on that size or scale would be ridiculous, especially if said people producing things with Beskar are not on friendly terms with the Mandalorians. You get the idea on why that wouldn't make much sense.

Now before you go grab your torches and pitchforks and start a riot claiming that this is only going to make things harder for the Factory, stifling your creative freedoms, there is an alternative to this in the form of the Codex. If you don't have a planet that has a shipyard or an exotic resource, then go and make one as long as its reasonable. If anything, this encourages more creativity while providing your faction with a stable source of that resource/infrastructure to use.

The same really goes for shipyard worlds. It would make sense that a faction has a go to planet that would be a prime production for ships rather than them just popping up out of nowhere. And if you don't have such a hex? Make one, slap it in an empty hex you might want to dominion and then give yourself another neat little dominion objective.

This also would make for interesting invasion targets as these resource/infrastructure hexes can be used to cripple the means of production for a time being and add another layer of depth. It would stand to reason that they are more likely to be targets for invasion and should these circumstances happen, production of a resource/infrastructure might be halted/slowed. Now why do I bring up that last bit you might ask? Well let's say a faction only has one planet for a certain resource/infrastructure, it would stand to reason that if it were being invaded, or they lost that hex, it would be a pretty heavy blow to production, resulting in them not being able to produce stuff in the Factory for a time until they've regained control of that specific resource/infrastructure hex. While you won't have problems with some more freely available material like durasteel/duraplast/etc. this would more so apply to things that are more unique to a certain region of space or certain conditions.

For clarity here's an example with less words - If I have a faction that has one shipyard planet that gets invaded and I lose that hex, I won't be able to construct starships until I have regained control of that hex.

That more or less is what I'm thinking at the current moment, and for some of the higher ups to consider. And for those of you who really hate the idea, that's fine, but to me that just comes to an issue of a person being lazy, angry and not wanting to make a simple submission in the Codex designating X planet as something like an exotic resource planet or vital to a certain kind of infrastructure, whether it be droids, vehicles, starships, etc.

 

[Garza]

There was something like this for the Restricted materials like Beskar, and Phrik back in the day. Where you had to own the planet it was mined on, and thus controlled the market for it.

This idea sounds cool, and I would be all for it. Makes planet A worth more than Planet B. However, the hard part is implementing it.

 

[Redmond Geller]

I miss the old system, bring it back, or at least do it like this.

 

[Matt the Radar Tech]

Your hardest sell is to apply finite resources to a community used to clicking fingers and making them appear out of thin air.

An interesting notion.

 

[Luke Chungus]

I play the tabletop RPG "Edge of the Empire" and it's companion add-on expansions. Throughout the system, you find plenty of moments where the designers purposefully and transparently sacrifice hard number crunching for general ideation. For instance, instead of telling GMs to calculate this many rifles to that many people with this or that kind of armor and vehicle access, you lump them all into a general level of capability compared to the opposing side. So, you're rolling a few good dice versus bad dice instead of strenuously tabulating all the possible minutiae.

I like the idea of giving each planet a particular advantage/bonus, just like they did in Battlefront 1's galactic conquest. Here's one step better, though. Consider each faction having tracks that each encompass a particular aspect of galactic involvement. There's Commerce, Production, Military & Political. Based on the amount and types of planets you control, each track fills slowly over real time. Accomplishing appropriate, relevant objectives within a particular faction thread bumps that track up. When you max out a track, that's when you get to:

Military --> Initiate an Invasion
Political --> Initiate an Annexation (Essentially, an Invasion based solely on charm and wordsmithing IC. The defender's planet populace are now discontent and are pushing to leave your faction. Can only target a planet that is on its original faction's territory fringe, one they have an unimpeded, within-range connection to and is not a faction's capital.)
Production --> Produce a batch of items from a faction appropriate Factory submission
Commerce --> Strengthen populace popularity to block an Annexation OR bankroll a unique, high risk, high reward faction Mission.

I'm sure I'm missing some community context for this idea to be fully realized, but I hope it's still helpful. Just an idea.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

I'm down with this.

 

[Runi Verin]

Straight up, I do like this idea in theory. I was on a site that had a similar approach way back when and it was a lot of fun.

Saying that, I know that it was a logistical nightmare in terms of setting it up, let alone balancing and maintaining it going forward, and this was on a site much smaller and more narrowly focused than Chaos. I'm really not entirely sure if it is feasible here without a massive overhaul on nearly every level.

As for your suggestion that people can just submit new planets to the Codex to fill a need, this actually works counter to your idea as it stands. You're effectively removing the value of capturing resource rich planets - which is the ultimately the entire purpose of this proposal. Your idea would work best with a fixed amount of resources/planets (which was how it was back on my old site).

Limiting creative freedom isn't really the appeal of an open sandbox site like Chaos, however. Especially considering the site has been undergoing a mass deregulation in general.

So... Pass from me at present.