Empire Tech Levels: The Dirt Farmer's Plight

[Tyrel Lohr]

In addition to rating an empire's advancement in each individual tech levels, empires in 2E will also be rated as to their Empire Tech Level. There are five distinct Empire Tech Levels: Pre-Industrial, Industrial, Interplanetary, Interstellar, and Ancient. Progression from one Empire Tech Level (ETL) to the next is determined by the amount of technological research that an empire has performed, so players do not need to commit Tech Points separately to increase its ETL but rather must research the required technologies that will allow advancement to the next available ETL.

I need to revisit my notes to give a full overview of what each of these ETLs provide, but here is an overview:

Pre-Industrial
* No Population Growth
* Cannot purchase or liquidate infrastructure; receives enough Agriculture infrastructure to survive
* No Economic Output; relies on Militia units for defense if invaded
* Receives X Tech Points per campaign year, where X is the empire's current Census

Industrial
* Population Growth, but accrues Population Points at half the normal rate (round down)
* Empire receives first Productivity upon reaching Industrial ETL
* Economic Output 1/4 of normal
* Receives X Tech Points per campaign year, where X is the empire's current Census, until the empire builds its first point of Tech infrastructure

Interplanetary
* Normal Population Growth
* Economic Output 1/2 of normal

Interstellar
* No Special Rules

Ancient
* Bonuses and penalties not yet defined, but likely a +50% economic output bonus; possible penalties to population growth (to represent a dying power).


Essentially, a Pre-Industrial power is going to have minimal effect on a game unless they are already very close to becoming an Industrial power. The requirements for transitioning from Pre-Industrial to Industrial is to unlock the basic ground combat technologies (working from memory): Attrition, Mobility, Anti-Ground, and Command. This will allow the empire to begin producing actual ground combat units, which marks the beginning of the empire's industrial age. The minimum cost to unlock these technologies is 100 Tech Points each, for a total requirement of 400 TP. Thus, it would take a 3 Census Pre-Industrial empire 134 YEARS to develop these technologies if starting the game with no previously-completed research.

Industrial powers have a bit more versatility, and can always produce basic ground combat units. They will generally spend their time developing the basic technologies required to move into space, including Defense, Anti-Ship, Anti-Fighter, Sensors, Engines, Shipyard, etc. There are also additional ground technologies, such as Anti-Air (which unlocks Aircraft, the ground-based equivalent of Flights), that need to be researched. Once these technologies are unlocked, the Industrial power is capable of building Starships and becomes an Interplanetary power.

Progression from Interplanetary to Interstellar has a few requirements. The most obvious one is the development of FTL dive technology that allows it to build vessels capable of interstellar travel. However, the power much also increase a set number of existing technologies to TL 1-2 before they can achieve Interstellar ETL.

The majority of an empire's game time will be spent as an Interstellar power. These empires suffer no penalties to game play, nor do they receive any bonuses, either. Advancement to the next ETL, Ancient, will only occur once the power has increased a set number of technologies to the TL 8-10 range (still has to be defined).

The intent of Empire Tech Levels is to provide a way to handle each level of technological sophistication within the scope of the normal tech advancement rules. Before, in the 1E Companion, each of these development states were handled using their own set of rules that had no relation to the normal tech rules. We are hoping to correct that with 2E, and make it easier to handle these types of empires.

The various penalties and limitations applied to the lower ETL powers is meant to limit their inherent capabilities while also making advancing to higher ETL's an attractive option. In previous games, Interplanetary powers in particular had little natural impetus to develop FTL and expand into the galaxy, because they could sit at home and build massive defense fleets that could outclass their neighbors. While the same scenario can play out in 2E, it is in the Interplanetary power's best interests to advance to Interstellar in order to remove its economic penalty that halves its economic output.

Another interesting element related to this change is that it allows Industrial powers to be a bit more interesting to interact with. They can design and build basic ground units and, after some research, even some primitive Starbases or Satellites. Sure, a single high-tech Heavy Cruiser could probably roll in and eliminate the orbital defenses, but the Industrial power still at least has the possibility of defending itself from outside attack.

I would welcome any feedback from players as to elements of this system they like or dislike, so that we can address the concerns before the dirt farmers of Trata Kam are forced to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. After all, it is hard advancing from a subsistence agrarian culture to become masters of a vast interstellar empire!

-Tyrel

[wminsing]

Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier, but I have some thoughts on it.

First, I like the clean civilization split and how advancement is tied into the tech system. The various restrictions for the levels of civilization seem about right- year upon year of unending change for a pre-industrial civilization, followed by a gathering momentum once you hit industrialization.

Second, I think the idea of an 'Ancient' race getting a population growth penalty is a great idea, and very flavorful since many sci-fi settings use a similar concept.

Third, would FTL be automatically gained on reaching 'Intersteller' or would it have to be researched to TL 1 to become Intersteller?

I do question weather tying in advancing to 'Industrial' to ground combat techs makes the most sense. In a standard game the planet starts unified and an industrial power wouldn't need to be building ground units unless threatened with invasion. But I suppose it does serve as a useful abstraction of 'modern warfare' requiring things like production lines, industrial scale food production, mass transit, etc. So I guess it is more a sense that you are unlocking these tech fields via researching the industrial abilities that make modern warfare possible, rather then researching just more advanced weapons,etc.

Also, one thing that just occurred to me- since agriculture is not being split off into it's own thing, what exactly does 'Carrying Capacity' represent. Is it just the raw amount of living space? That means that a place like Mars would actually more Carrying Capacity then Earth, since without oceans there's more surface area. Even the Moon could hold a *lot* of people packed in tightly enough. So what does capacity really represent now?

-Will

[Gareth_Perkins]

Pre-Industrial: Why no population growth? I could understand quartering the growth rate (or worse), but zero growth seems odd? Why no economy (simply making their output very low would seem acceptable)?

Similarly with industrial/interplanetary, it's not like their output is going to be great, so why restrict it further (unless it's to artificially retard their tech growth, but that could be done by making the tech target higher instead)? And their combat units can be restricted by the tech available rather than the low EP counts?

[Tyrel Lohr]

First, I like the clean civilization split and how advancement is tied into the tech system. The various restrictions for the levels of civilization seem about right- year upon year of unending change for a pre-industrial civilization, followed by a gathering momentum once you hit industrialization.

That is the idea. Pre-Industrial civilizations won't be very interesting, as they can't do much more than conduct limited research until they finally undergo an Industrial revolution.

Second, I think the idea of an 'Ancient' race getting a population growth penalty is a great idea, and very flavorful since many sci-fi settings use a similar concept.

After posting this, I conferred with Jay and Charlie and started discussing whether there shouldn't be a mid-way step between Interstellar and Ancient. In B5W parlance this step was called "Midborn", and represented that the empire had achieved high enough technology so as to be on the decline. My current thought is that a Midborn power would have its population growth halved, while an Ancient power would either quarter its growth or experience no population growth at all (which seems more consistent with the truly "Ancient" species in sci fi, that have stopped growing at all).

In return for the population drop off, the Midborn/Ancient powers could instead receive a bonus to their economic output, making them even more powerful from a production perspective, but given their limited growth potential they would be effectively "in decline" for the rest of the campaign. That means that, if the campaign lasted long enough, the Ancients might be forced to pull back to their core territories in order to prevent the loss of their extremely valuable (and possibly irreplaceable) Census.

Third, would FTL be automatically gained on reaching 'Intersteller' or would it have to be researched to TL 1 to become Intersteller?

One of the requirements (the final one, really) for moving from Interplanetary to Interstellar would be unlocking FTL drives (FTL TL 0). The empire would have to fulfill a few other tech requirements before they could research FTL, but once those earlier prerequisites are complete they can finish up the research and make their entry into the galactic community.

I do question weather tying in advancing to 'Industrial' to ground combat techs makes the most sense.

It is a necessity born from the lack of any other techs that make sense. As you keenly noted, the ground techs tied to the transition are intended to ensure that a power would achieve basic ground combat capabilities at the start of their Industrial age. Similarly, the jump from Industrial to Interplanetary is tied to the empire developing the techs necessary to build Starships -- it makes a bit more sense, but is still driven by the necessity of needing some sort of rulestick to gauge technological advancement.

Also, one thing that just occurred to me- since agriculture is not being split off into it's own thing, what exactly does 'Carrying Capacity' represent. Is it just the raw amount of living space? That means that a place like Mars would actually more Carrying Capacity then Earth, since without oceans there's more surface area. Even the Moon could hold a *lot* of people packed in tightly enough. So what does capacity really represent now?

Carrying Capacity represents the amount of accessible living space available. A planet with a low Carrying Capacity stat might be quite large and have a lot of surface area available, but most of it is mired in storms, bad terrain, or is affected by other environmental conditions that make habitation impossible. There is still a general link between planetary diameter and Carrying Capacity, but it is not a 1:1 relation.

While it is a completely subjective analysis of the situation, when looking at examples in our own solar system I tend to divide a planet's equatorial radius (in km) by 1250, then multiply the result by 2 to see roughly how much Carrying Capacity is available. So Earth has about 10, Mars has about 5-6, and the Moon about 2. I then adjust from there based on the surface conditions, with hostile planets getting less Capacity (Moon to 1) and more habitable planets getting a bump up (up to 2 for Earth, possibly a 1 for Mars).

Now, ~70% of Earth's surface area is covered by water, but that isn't factored into Carrying Capacity, admittedly for convenience sake and for game play reasons.

-Tyrel

[Tyrel Lohr]

Pre-Industrial: Why no population growth? I could understand quartering the growth rate (or worse), but zero growth seems odd? Why no economy (simply making their output very low would seem acceptable)?

Pre-Industrial populations don't experience meaningful levels of population growth, and the levels of population growth they might experience prior to becoming Industrial would be so low as to be little more than a headache.

As to why they have an economic output of zero: what goods and wealth they are producing in their economies is meaningless to the standpoint of an Interstellar power, or even an Industrial power. Sure, the Pre-Industrial powers might be making pretty trinkets, nice iron weaponry, and mighty seafaring galleons... but does not compare to tanks, aircraft carriers, or space ships.

Also, Pre-Industrial powers have nothing they could spend economic points on, so earning economic points would be a bit meaningless.

Similarly with industrial/interplanetary, it's not like their output is going to be great, so why restrict it further (unless it's to artificially retard their tech growth, but that could be done by making the tech target higher instead)? And their combat units can be restricted by the tech available rather than the low EP counts?

It is more to create a distinction between the two levels and make things more interesting. I could see waiving the economic penalty on Interplanetary powers, but I like the idea that it shows that achieving Interstellar status has a profound effect on an empire's economy. Retarding the tech growth at that point is also a benefit, as it prevents the massive buildup of Tech infrastructure early in the game.

I will admit that the Interplanetary/Interstellar gap is a personal decision, and one that may or may not change. I have had some issues in 1E with Interplanetary powers being too powerful, with Interstellar-level economies concentrated in a single star system.

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

Does that not also tie in with tech levels?

From a personal perspective, I'd feel pretty hard done by if I had high tech levels in DV, AS and Hull Sizes - but was penalised for not researching FTL (I forget the exact categories)?

I guess there's an argument that improvements in medicine and life expectancy improves along with era, which accounts for the census restriction (although that's a fairly human-centric view, and even then doesn't account for the lowered birthrate experienced in more advanced earth-cultures), but I guess I'm just a little unhappy with the growth being zeroed, rather than simply heavily restricted,

As an alternative, would you consider (even if it's optional) adding an "Industry" and "Healthcare" tech field which advance alongside any other fields and improve census growth and revenues? (These could perhaps be given arbitrary bonuses upon achieving a different era (+2 for Interplanetary->Interstellar perhaps, etc). Growth and economy count be set to one tenth x tech level or something?

[wminsing]

I guess there's an argument that improvements in medicine and life expectancy improves along with era, which accounts for the census restriction (although that's a fairly human-centric view, and even then doesn't account for the lowered birthrate experienced in more advanced earth-cultures), but I guess I'm just a little unhappy with the growth being zeroed, rather than simply heavily restricted,

Don't think of it as 'zero', think of it as 'too slow to model in a campaign'. Remember that most campaigns will cover 10-20 years of 'real time'. No pre-Industrial power is going to experience enough growth to be worth tracking in that time period (unless they breed like tribbles).

Also, I wouldn't sweat it too much, as how many players are going to starting with a Pre-Industrial power anyway? Unless they are a solo campaigner and a glutton for punishment, that is. So these rules are mostly for CM's to provide them a framework to handle low-tech NPE's. If a CM decided a pre-industrial power was experiencing a population boom and gives them an extra Census (and agriculture point) then I think that would be fine. But the CM doesn't need to really know the simple herding folk of Beta Ceti IVA are gaining 1/100th of a population point every year.

From a personal perspective, I'd feel pretty hard done by if I had high tech levels in DV, AS and Hull Sizes - but was penalised for not researching FTL (I forget the exact categories)?

I think that's something Tyrel is trying to avoid though, having a player hole up in their home system and research their techs to really high levels and then start exploring the galaxy.

In return for the population drop off, the Midborn/Ancient powers could instead receive a bonus to their economic output, making them even more powerful from a production perspective, but given their limited growth potential they would be effectively "in decline" for the rest of the campaign. That means that, if the campaign lasted long enough, the Ancients might be forced to pull back to their core territories in order to prevent the loss of their extremely valuable (and possibly irreplaceable) Census.

An intermediate step makes sense, though since this is right at the top of the tech scale that level of detail might not be that critical. I do think restricting 'Ancient' races from reproducing at all adds an interesting element of play, and stops them from simply steamrolling the opposition. It might also change the objectives of a player, and good scenario design could making playing an Ancient Race extremely interesting.

Actually, I just had an interesting thought about a possible campaign. Each player starts with a standard Interplanetary/Interstellar power, and plays with them until they reach 'Ancient' status. At that point they hand that race off to the CM and start with a new younger power. Victory is determined by a scoring system, and a player gains points for ALL the races they play. So it would a bit like the game Brittania, in which the player represents multiple civilizations over a long period of time. Like Brittania, one of the major decisions they face is when to let their now-elder race go into decline and ride a vibrant newcomer to victory. It would take a very long campaign though!

Now, ~70% of Earth's surface area is covered by water, but that isn't factored into Carrying Capacity, admittedly for convenience sake and for game play reasons.

Fair enough- it does make sense that even on Hostile worlds colonies could only get so big before things like life support and transport infrastructure was taxed too the limits.

-Will

[Tyrel Lohr]

Don't think of it as 'zero', think of it as 'too slow to model in a campaign'. Remember that most campaigns will cover 10-20 years of 'real time'. No pre-Industrial power is going to experience enough growth to be worth tracking in that time period (unless they breed like tribbles).

This is pretty much it, on the nose. The population growth for such a civilizations would be negligible; I think 1 population point per year would probably be overstating it. They could still experience population growth via random events, but otherwise their population sizes just won't grow to any large extent before industrialization sets in.

Also, I wouldn't sweat it too much, as how many players are going to starting with a Pre-Industrial power anyway? Unless they are a solo campaigner and a glutton for punishment, that is. So these rules are mostly for CM's to provide them a framework to handle low-tech NPE's. If a CM decided a pre-industrial power was experiencing a population boom and gives them an extra Census (and agriculture point) then I think that would be fine. But the CM doesn't need to really know the simple herding folk of Beta Ceti IVA are gaining 1/100th of a population point every year.

This is a very good illustration of the situation. You could give Pre-Industrials some level of population growth, but it would be so sleight that it would end up just being busy-work for the CM to track. Tracking fractional population points, too, opens up a can of worms I am not sure we want to address in 2E.

The conceit in 1E was that Pre-Industrials are not really expected to advance on their own to Industrial without some sort of outside influence. If they were extremely lucky, they would start the game with most of the research complete, and could then achieve Industrial status, at which point they can rapidly advance from there.

From a personal perspective, I'd feel pretty hard done by if I had high tech levels in DV, AS and Hull Sizes - but was penalised for not researching FTL (I forget the exact categories)?

I think that's something Tyrel is trying to avoid though, having a player hole up in their home system and research their techs to really high levels and then start exploring the galaxy.

To address this point, I have to say that both of you are correct. First, this rule does penalize empires that opt not to research FTL in preference of other technologies and thus remain a high-functioning Interplanetary empire. However, given that this is a game of interstellar conquest and diplomacy, the economic penalty is meant to serve as an incentive to increase your empire's ETL to the next level. Also, as Will pointed out, the rule is also meant to penalize a player that just wants to sit in their home system and build up their forces and tech before marching into the universe.

The VBAM economic system ensures for game balance reasons that most homeworlds have roughly the same potential economic output. The difference between an Interplanetary empire and an Interstellar one is that the latter's ~60 EP per turn has to finance not just the homeworld but also a growing array of territories and colonies; the former has no such issues. Left to their own devices, the Interplanetary power will be able to build up a highly-concentrated force that is virtually invincible to any empire that has a similar economic size and technological level. The Interstellar power will only become successful after it has managed to develop a large number of colonies.

In VBAM 2E, this issue is exacerbated by the fact that more populous empires pay more for tech advances (by design; otherwise the player with the largest empire will win by default due to exponential tech growth). The one-system Interplanetary could just sit there and crank out tech advances at a cost roughly half that of an empire with twice its population.

There is also the fact that Interplanetary powers have less to spend their money on, which means that they need fewer EPs to really operate.

I will admit I have an obvious bias against the "stay at home" Interplanetaries. I ran into one Interplanetary in a solo game that was able to consistently defend itself against other, much larger empires simply because it had enough concentrated economy to do so. I have no problem with Interstellar powers doing that, but take umbrage to a "low-tech" empire being all but immune to attack.

An intermediate step makes sense, though since this is right at the top of the tech scale that level of detail might not be that critical. I do think restricting 'Ancient' races from reproducing at all adds an interesting element of play, and stops them from simply steamrolling the opposition. It might also change the objectives of a player, and good scenario design could making playing an Ancient Race extremely interesting.

This was my thought as well. The ceiling for becoming an Ancient would have to be set fairly high, but I think it would keep Ancients from being able to completely overrun the opposition. It would also make it easier for lesser empires to hurt them, as eliminating an Ancient's Census would be a major loss that could not be replaced.

Actually, I just had an interesting thought about a possible campaign. Each player starts with a standard Interplanetary/Interstellar power, and plays with them until they reach 'Ancient' status. At that point they hand that race off to the CM and start with a new younger power. Victory is determined by a scoring system, and a player gains points for ALL the races they play. So it would a bit like the game Brittania, in which the player represents multiple civilizations over a long period of time. Like Brittania, one of the major decisions they face is when to let their now-elder race go into decline and ride a vibrant newcomer to victory. It would take a very long campaign though!

That would be an interesting dynamic for a campaign, as succession from one empire to another would be wholly dependent on tech development. It would make for a very long campaign, I imagine, so a special rule to reduce tech costs would probably be needed (maybe assume that each campaign turn is a year instead of a month, to make the rapid tech advancement make more sense).

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

I will admit I have an obvious bias against the "stay at home" Interplanetaries. I ran into one Interplanetary in a solo game that was able to consistently defend itself against other, much larger empires simply because it had enough concentrated economy to do so. I have no problem with Interstellar powers doing that, but take umbrage to a "low-tech" empire being all but immune to attack.

To be blunt though, its economy shouldn't be able to compete with an interstellar empire in any realistic way (one planet vs. twenty planets means a much smaller economy),

So arguably if they are fending you off it's either because they are not "low-tech" (other than a retardation in FTL tech - they are beating you off after all, so in all likelihood they either have a higher tech base, or are a very militaristic nation) or that the interstellar empire is simply not trying. And in either of those instances they kind of deserve it, no? (especially given the new proposed tech system - how are they realistically competing with the interstellar culture for tech advancement when you need planetary tech stats to advance?),

I'm not sure that players turtling is to be encouraged (and hopefully it can be managed by assigning goals, etc), but I'd hate to totally focus advancement on FTL tech to the point that non-FTL cultures are just an easy means for interstellar powers to acquire census (which is pretty much what industrial and pre-industrial cultures are),

Census is so crucial to most games that my gut feeling is that you should have to work hard to acquire bonus "free" points (especially as an interplanetary culture will likely come with some free productivity, etc and likely as not a decent homeworld),

This has the added side-effect that players are less likely to bomb civilian populations from orbit because they want the living bodies working their fields!

[wminsing]

To be blunt though, its economy shouldn't be able to compete with an interstellar empire in any realistic way (one planet vs. twenty planets means a much smaller economy),

The flip side of a much smaller economy is much smaller tech costs- and with no colonies to establish, develop and defend the single-system power can plow a lot of cash into rapid tech advancements.

It's somewhat an artifact of the way VBAM handles tech costs, but the alternative (run away tech advancement by the biggest economy) is no fun either.

But I hear you on not wanting non-Intersteller powers to just be 'Free Census' for a player. That might be better addressed by rules for making integrating alien worlds into a player empire harder, rather then beefing them up so that are harder to conquer.

-Will

[Charles Lewis]

I can't remember off the top of my head what the rules were in 1E, but I think Morale for a colony captured by another Empire should immediately plummet to 0 or even go negative, so that if the conqueror wants a quiet peaceful world, he's going to have to invest - troops for peacekeeping and ultimately some Intel ops to boost morale and convince the locals that they are going to be ok even though they are now paying taxes somewhere else.

Maybe add a rule that a conquered Colony has an artificial cap on Morale that will ensure that it's never truly happy about being under new management.

[Tyrel Lohr]

To be blunt though, its economy shouldn't be able to compete with an interstellar empire in any realistic way (one planet vs. twenty planets means a much smaller economy),

When considering mature empires, this would be the case. However, in a "start from the homeworld and expand kind of game" it takes a substantial amount of time for an empire to build enough Census and infrastructure at its colonies in order to equal that produced by its homeworld on day one, and therein lies the rub. In 1E, all homeworlds more or less seemed to start with 60 EP in output. A good sized colony emerged at Census 3 / Productivity 3, and most planets averaged 3 RAW, giving these colonies 9 output. It takes seven of these decent sized colonies to equal the output of the homeworld. This creates a situation in which an Interstellar empire could have eight star systems with an output of 123, while the Interplanetary empire would control one system with 60 EP.

So the Interplanetary power in this example has a little under half the economic potential of the Interstellar power, but it is highly concentrated: 60 EP per system vs. the Interstellar power's 15.4 EP per system. The Interstellar power will also be paying more in maintenance because it has additional systems and colonies to protect. This means that, given equal maintenance costs per system, the Interstellar power will be paying eight times the maintenance that the Interplanetary power will (albeit for eight times the military units, which is an important distinction).

Even if the Interplanetary power started with less infrastructure on its homeworld, the fact that it only has one planet to build up whereas the Interstellar player has eight would equalize that difference fairly rapidly. However, lower infrastructure might be a better balancing point overall than artificially limiting economic output for Interplanetary empires.

So arguably if they are fending you off it's either because they are not "low-tech" (other than a retardation in FTL tech - they are beating you off after all, so in all likelihood they either have a higher tech base, or are a very militaristic nation) or that the interstellar empire is simply not trying. And in either of those instances they kind of deserve it, no? (especially given the new proposed tech system - how are they realistically competing with the interstellar culture for tech advancement when you need planetary tech stats to advance?),

The low-tech power was winning by sheer attrition. They could devote their full economy to building swarms of cheap, replaceable defense units that could not be destroyed fast enough by the attacking warships. The larger empire didn't have the luxury of concentrating all of their forces together because of the size of their empire, while the Interplanetary power did not have this problem.

As you have pointed out, the new tech system should equalize this to a large degree, so it may not even be an issue anymore -- and starting new Interplanetary empires at lower infrastructure values might suitably do the trick.

The tech advantage that an Interplanetary power would enjoy is that its Census would stay small, so that it would probably be paying the minimum (10 x TL) x 10 tech advancement cost instead of the full (Census x TL) x 10 cost other empires would be paying. Going back to the previous example, the Interstellar empire would have (10 x 1) + (7 x 3) = 31 Census under its control, so its tech cost formula would look like this: (31 x Census) x 10. In other words, tech advancement for that power would be three times as expensive for that empire. Leaving that stat hanging like that is disingenuous, however, as the larger empire would also have more opportunities to plop down Tech infrastructure, including at 0 Census colonies, so its Tech Point production should be probably three or more times that of the smaller power.

I will have to admit, Gareth, you are starting to twist my arm as to removing the economic penalty from these empires, but I am going to have to do some testing on both to see how things turn out.

I'm not sure that players turtling is to be encouraged (and hopefully it can be managed by assigning goals, etc), but I'd hate to totally focus advancement on FTL tech to the point that non-FTL cultures are just an easy means for interstellar powers to acquire census (which is pretty much what industrial and pre-industrial cultures are),

Pre-Industrials will almost always be "freebies" in that regard, unfortunately. However, some diplomatic penalties will end up being introduced in 2E that should provide at least some reason for an empire to not going around kicking over low-tech ant hills for the free Census.

Industrials will be more robust in 2E than before, and although still not very powerful they will have a limited economy with which to build up some limited forces. They will possess enough ground combat technologies out of the gate to at least be a nuisance, and possibly not worth dealing with. Also, if they have completed some of their basic space combat techs, they could even design and build some simple orbital defenses that would deter opportunistic attacks.

Interplanetaries are thus left as being a middle-ground step between the Industrial and Interstellar ages. The economic penalty provided more "flavor" to them, but if that is removed then the major defining factor for Interplanetary powers will be that they will have to achieve a certain level of technological sophistication, which will then allow them to unlock FTL tech. I still worry that a lack of a "carrot on a stick" to prod these powers into researching FTL could be a cause for concern, but then again it might not. Over the course of a typical VBAM campaign, too, it may never be a concern.

This has the added side-effect that players are less likely to bomb civilian populations from orbit because they want the living bodies working their fields!

I haven't run into many situations where players did want to bomb the planet from orbit just to kill people. The only times I remember seeing that behavior is when a player knew he wouldn't be able to hold a system long term and just wanted to do as much damage now before his forces were either destroyed or forced to fall back to a more defensible position.

I think I have mentioned this before in this or another thread, but one other change coming to ground combat is that conquered populations do not instantly convert over to being docile, happy citizens the minute after they are conquered. Rather, the colony receives the Conquered trait, which indicates that it has not yet been pacified and integrated into your own empire. While a colony has this trait, it is subject to Morale penalties. This means that an empire could quickly conquer a number of enemy worlds, but it might take a year or more for order to be restored.

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

Cool,

Good to hear that you're thinking in terms of morale and diplomacy too,

While the morale drop for invading was large in previous games (3pts IIRC), it didn't scale with colony size (big colonies where less of a problem, not more when invading because they where less likely to revolt) and the morale drop only happened 50% of the time anyway. Plus of course, a few turns with troops on planet, or a few intel missions and morale suddenly wasn't a problem,

Given how you seem to be rewriting morale, hopefully resolving these issues into something game-worthy won't pose to many problems,

[Tyrel Lohr]

Good to hear that you're thinking in terms of morale and diplomacy too,

We're trying to be a bit more inclusive with some of these elements, and to try to repair some of these niggling issues. Integrating a revised version NPE diplomacy rules as standard in 2E looks to solve many issues that couldn't be meaningfully addressed in the 1E diplomatic model, such as applying modifiers to invasions. In the example of the "we invade lesser empires for Census" problem, in 1E all we could do is provide breaking modifiers. In 2E, we can use breaking modifiers and/or modify Relationship values, and vary the results depending on the results of a diplomatic check. And since everyone is subject to the Relationship rules, a player might find himself unable to sign any new treaties with another "allied" player (metagame ally, not in-game ally) simply because of the heinous acts his empire has committed.

Given how you seem to be rewriting morale, hopefully resolving these issues into something game-worthy won't pose to many problems,

I am glad that so many players pointed out that they didn't like the existing morale rules so that we could get those rewritten. It is now on a 0-10 scale, with break points included for Secession, Rebellion, Unrest, and Good Order. I was also able to salvage the morale check rules I already had written so that they could still be used. The ability to have four separate results for each morale check makes those rolls more interesting, and the scaling difficulty of Intel: Propaganda missions should make it harder to use Intel to push Morale up.

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

Quick question indirectly relating to this:

This creates a situation in which an Interstellar empire could have eight star systems with an output of 123, while the Interplanetary empire would control one system with 60 EP.

Does this mean that the "Wartime Economics" rule is being shelved (as with it the income imbalance in the buildup to war is likely to be roughly 30-92EP as the Interstellar Empire ramps its economy up to invade the Interplanetary faction)?