House-Rules: Sharing Systems; Scope
Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:02 pm
I'd really like to play a game where all Empires start as factions on Earth, with them sharing control of the planet itself. However, VBAM assumes that only a single empire has system control.
I know of Tyrel Lohr's Earth-Based, Politics Oriented Campaign thread, in which the separation of earth into different regions, each with different census/raw is proposed. That'd definitely be a possibility, but I'd like to use the same in other systems, too, ideally without (too much) book-keeping effort.
Meshing with that, I'd really like to have variable campaign scope. What I mean with that is that I'd be able to focus on some systems/planets, while abstracting others nearly completely. For example, Earth/Sol are a planet/system which is likely to recieve much attention with that campaign premise, therefore meriting a treatment in regions and planets respectively. Another system might, for a long time, be relatively unimportant (therefore being treated as a single, monolithic system) before suddenly (due to border displacement, for example) being far more important and therefore also meriting treatment in more detail. After a few dozen turns, that might change again (perhaps the border conflict is settled).
To do this, I'd need to find a way to "zoom in/out", that is aggregating and de-aggregating statistics for systems. I can just automatically generate systems in greatest detail, giving me body-dependant RAW and capacity figures. But I - currently - can't figure out how to elegantly go from a list of bodies with RAW and capacity to system capacity/RAW figures, nor how to go from possessions assigned to a system (Industry, Bases, Task Forces etc) to how these are assigned to the planets.
My current approach would be to introduce RAW in several steps - a system might then have 1 capacity with 3 RAW, 2 with 2 RAW and 5 with only one RAW. In this case, you'd have to note down where you build your industries/place your census (or just build/place them in order from highest RAW, which is what players are probably doing anyways) in system view, and when switching from system to planet view you'd have to assign industry etc in a way that the final production result stays the same. The system introduces additional complexity, however. Additionally, this does not solve my first point (sharing object control) except by expanding the scope.
To sum up, my current implementation of changing scope, while closer to my goal than the original rules, still lacks elegance, and I am not sure on how to improve them. My holy grail would be to include the scope- and system-sharing rules to dynamically zoom in and out of empires, keeping the systems currently at peace abstract and the hot-spots more detailed.
Do you have any other ideas, improvements, or obvious pitfalls I've missed? Thanks!
I know of Tyrel Lohr's Earth-Based, Politics Oriented Campaign thread, in which the separation of earth into different regions, each with different census/raw is proposed. That'd definitely be a possibility, but I'd like to use the same in other systems, too, ideally without (too much) book-keeping effort.
Meshing with that, I'd really like to have variable campaign scope. What I mean with that is that I'd be able to focus on some systems/planets, while abstracting others nearly completely. For example, Earth/Sol are a planet/system which is likely to recieve much attention with that campaign premise, therefore meriting a treatment in regions and planets respectively. Another system might, for a long time, be relatively unimportant (therefore being treated as a single, monolithic system) before suddenly (due to border displacement, for example) being far more important and therefore also meriting treatment in more detail. After a few dozen turns, that might change again (perhaps the border conflict is settled).
To do this, I'd need to find a way to "zoom in/out", that is aggregating and de-aggregating statistics for systems. I can just automatically generate systems in greatest detail, giving me body-dependant RAW and capacity figures. But I - currently - can't figure out how to elegantly go from a list of bodies with RAW and capacity to system capacity/RAW figures, nor how to go from possessions assigned to a system (Industry, Bases, Task Forces etc) to how these are assigned to the planets.
My current approach would be to introduce RAW in several steps - a system might then have 1 capacity with 3 RAW, 2 with 2 RAW and 5 with only one RAW. In this case, you'd have to note down where you build your industries/place your census (or just build/place them in order from highest RAW, which is what players are probably doing anyways) in system view, and when switching from system to planet view you'd have to assign industry etc in a way that the final production result stays the same. The system introduces additional complexity, however. Additionally, this does not solve my first point (sharing object control) except by expanding the scope.
To sum up, my current implementation of changing scope, while closer to my goal than the original rules, still lacks elegance, and I am not sure on how to improve them. My holy grail would be to include the scope- and system-sharing rules to dynamically zoom in and out of empires, keeping the systems currently at peace abstract and the hot-spots more detailed.
Do you have any other ideas, improvements, or obvious pitfalls I've missed? Thanks!