Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Blue? Green? Red? Refuse? It's time to talk about rules for a new community edition of the VBAM rules!
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Emiricol wrote:The other problem I'm running into is that, logically, it makes more sense to have a Tension value that ticks down over time than to have a Relationship value that ticks up over time.

Definitely. And a tick-down Tension rating makes Treaty Delay modifiers a possible rule or option once again. Aelius' thinking is very much in line with mine, too.
Agreed, if we have a ticking value it does make more sense for it to drop down towards zero rather than raise forever. That's why Jay's Tension concept for WAP seems to work better as a meter for tracking relationships between empires, because that way you can say that 0 Tension is a "perfect" relationship where there is no hatred or animosity. Then we can balance all of the treaty chances around that, and then simply subtract Tension as it rises.

I would also be tempted to take a page from WAP and say that if Tension reaches 100 then you're automatically at war. I don't think we'd see that happen very often, but it would make it very interesting to watch the Tension meter creep up until it reaches a point where no matter what players want they are going to be at war.

My biggest concern with the tick-down Tension is if there will be logical issues trying to figure out when it should be applied. That's why I threw out that idea of returning the most common die roll to being one that could cover that effect (or alternatively precipitate conflict!). OR, At a Crossroads could flip the logic, so that if you roll < Tension then it drops, or > Tension it rises. That would make it a bit more dynamic and act as a way to pull Tension back towards a median range. Admittedly, that works better when 50 is your balancing point rather than 0. But it would work if we wanted a median value rather than an extreme.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Emiricol »

Okay, I love the ideas in your last two posts, Tyrel. I think the concept played out very well in your example, and only makes me love Tension even more. Like Census being an abstract to reduce tedious recordkeeping, Tension simplifies things tremendously while *still allowing for AIX-like variability*.

-Crossroads on 7 adds variability at the cost of only a couple dice rolls
-Tension+treaty delay>100 to recall ambassadors is a blindingly obvious solution to treaty spamming.
-Failure to declare war definitely shouldn't lower tension, for the reason you state. I could thematically see it raising tensions, as the other nation "raises its DEFCON status" but I'm not sure of the ripple effects that could have
-Intel should be able to affect chances. Rather than retool the entire Intel system, I prefer the idea of each Intel point = 1% raise
-Regarding empire traits, while your example has a couple modifiers listed and hint that it could be complicated, I think that in all but the most extreme examples it won't be a problem, and even in the extreme cases, the net modifier only needs to be figured out once; it is the same thereafter, right?

EDIT: What if:
- We didn't bother with ticking down? Keep the 7 check for variability, but it otherwise doesn't change without a Diplomatic Intel mission, as someone suggested in another post?
- Treaties other than War had a "threshold" number, where if Tension is below X, then the NPE will automatically offer that treat or if the player offers, will automatically accept? It removes the "offering chance" rolls, which can get tedious (in 1E at least).
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Emiricol wrote:-Crossroads on 7 adds variability at the cost of only a couple dice rolls
I think we can build enough of a mechanism into Crossroads to make it address any issues we have with needing a bit more dynamism to the relationships or handling edge cases of one sort or the other.
-Tension+treaty delay>100 to recall ambassadors is a blindingly obvious solution to treaty spamming.
I think that is going to be the easiest way of handling that, and then the ambassador doesn't come back until after the treaty delay has ticked down a bit. That still leaves one counter we have to worry about, but it isn't that big of a deal, as there aren't any special cases -- you just go through and adjust them all down at the end of each Intel Phase.
-Failure to declare war definitely shouldn't lower tension, for the reason you state. I could thematically see it raising tensions, as the other nation "raises its DEFCON status" but I'm not sure of the ripple effects that could have
That's a good point. I worry about that becoming a runaway train in the opposite direction, though, where it becomes easier to just keep declaring war over and over again until it finally sticks because each declaration ratchets up Tension. I know sometimes I worry too much about the min/max issues.
-Intel should be able to affect chances. Rather than retool the entire Intel system, I prefer the idea of each Intel point = 1% raise
It keeps things fairly cost effective, and if you have enough Intel and economic points you can guarantee your success on anything, or push your acceptance chance high enough to be able to offer a treaty in that case. It also penalizes smaller empires because they just won't have enough Intel to be able to really support major diplomatic initiatives.
-Regarding empire traits, while your example has a couple modifiers listed and hint that it could be complicated, I think that in all but the most extreme examples it won't be a problem, and even in the extreme cases, the net modifier only needs to be figured out once; it is the same thereafter, right?
The empire trait modifiers are going to be flat modifiers to chances, and not every empire is going to have them. I suspect that most empires won't have any diplomatic traits, as they are going to be meant to demonstrate more extreme personalities. There are exceptions, like Romulans who might be both Ruthless and Xenophobic or Klingons being Aggressive and Honorable, but a lot of them are just going to be pretty much standard.

But even in extreme cases, you're probably going to have like a +-20% modifier here or there that you'll have to make sure to add, but it's not going to change the math at all. I have originally played around with doubling/halving effects with the diplomatic modifiers, but that leads to some pretty messy math and makes it more difficult to balance the rules. Once you have your "cheat sheet" for each empire's traits it will become easy to see what modifiers they have that would apply to a diplomatic action. Which is also why I want to keep the number of traits per empire to a minimum; I don't want a repeat of some of the 1E empires where you had a huge number of traits to wade through.
EDIT: What if:
- We didn't bother with ticking down? Keep the 7 check for variability, but it otherwise doesn't change without a Diplomatic Intel mission, as someone suggested in another post?
This would work. I would probably make it a special use of Intel rather than a straight mission if only because if it's a mission then being caught performing it would raise Tension. This is bad if you were trying to lower Tension, but is even worse if you were trying to raise Tension because you get a two-for-one special in that your mission might succeed, raising Tension, and then you get caught, raising Tension even more.

I think we'd still want a chance of success/failure, but it would probably be better to do either a percentile die roll or some scaled die effect. % is easiest, because then you could do like this:

Example: I am using 8 Diplomatic Intel to lower Tensions with the Kili. I roll "38" on the d100. 8 x 38% = 3, which reduces Tension by 3.
- Treaties other than War had a "threshold" number, where if Tension is below X, then the NPE will automatically offer that treat or if the player offers, will automatically accept? It removes the "offering chance" rolls, which can get tedious (in 1E at least).
I think we still need the acceptance checks for when a NPE is offered a treaty, but the offering checks would be gone. If the NPE has a positive chance for the treaty, then they'd be willing to offer it. That way we only worry about whether or not the NPE will accept it. This lets the rules stay consistent with the player diplomacy, as it would work about the same way (with the difference that they can always accept treaties where the acceptance chance is > 0).

We have to keep diplomacy a bit chaotic otherwise it's too easy to game the system and know that if I get Tension down to X with this NPE then they'll sign this treaty with me. That isn't terribly interesting, unfortunately. It can work in some games, like EU4, but it doesn't work as well here.

But the offering chance stuff is gone, replaced by the critical diplomatic shifts that make NPE diplomacy much easier to maintain. It can still get a bit crazy once you have a lot of diplomatic relationships to juggle, but it shouldn't be too bad. At least you are just rolling 2d6 and applying the results and only needing to do anything special in a limited number of circumstances.

EDIT: I wanted to add that, with the empire traits, I am trying to limit the alien empire rules to about 99 "core" empire traits. About 10-15 of those will be diplomatic traits that affect the diplomacy rules in some way, so we aren't going to have a huge number of modifiers running around.

The more extreme or special traits are going to fall into a "Rare Trait" class that only have a 1% chance of being triggered on a random roll. Those will cover the really special traits like mind control or assimilation. That way the traits will be there for players that want to use them to replicate their favorite sci-fi aliens, but they won't typically be in the standard trait rotation.

A consequence of the random generator is that aliens with extreme personalities like those generated routinely on the AIX scale are going to be a rarity. Most NPEs will end up acting "normally," with few special rules. But there will be exceptions, such as the aliens that roll multiple diplomatic traits and end up having extra modifiers to worry about.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Emiricol »

OTOH, since Tension is based off a single roll, you're as likely to get a 5 or 95 as you are a 50, so there will be extreme relationships even if extreme personalities are less common (and I like having the majority be basically normal, so the variability of AIX isn't so important to me). In fact, I'd be likely to houserule Starting Tension to be the average of NPE and Player Empire rolls, which skews things toward the middle while still allowing a higher chance of very low or very high Starting tension as compared to a "3d6"-style bell curve. Still a curve, as opposed to a single Starting Tension roll, but a somewhat flattened curve.

I see your point, where you've disliked some of these ideas. Removing one of the rolls from offer/accept treaties is also going to be a noticeable time saver :)

You know I resisted this whole VBAM Galaxy idea to begin with, but it's growing on me due to the NPE/Tech/Diplomacy changes.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Emiricol wrote:OTOH, since Tension is based off a single roll, you're as likely to get a 5 or 95 as you are a 50, so there will be extreme relationships even if extreme personalities are less common (and I like having the majority be basically normal, so the variability of AIX isn't so important to me). In fact, I'd be likely to houserule Starting Tension to be the average of NPE and Player Empire rolls, which skews things toward the middle while still allowing a higher chance of very low or very high Starting tension as compared to a "3d6"-style bell curve. Still a curve, as opposed to a single Starting Tension roll, but a somewhat flattened curve.
The d100 does completely randomize things, which might be a problem if you consistently roll high or low for Tension. But it was always a popular alternative to roll 2d100/2 to take the average and make it more likely that you're going to be middle of the road.
I see your point, where you've disliked some of these ideas. Removing one of the rolls from offer/accept treaties is also going to be a noticeable time saver :)
I don't think the offers are going to come very often now, either. Before you had about a 5% chance per turn, but now I think you're going to see it drop off to about 2-3% on average, with Crossroads being a wildcard where maybe there might be a treaty offer then, but maybe not. I think the way that Tension is shaping up it's going to be harder to hit the breakpoints where you could offer treaties, too. You're good up through Trade in most cases, but if Military is at 40 then you're going to need pretty low Tension to get to the point of making that a possibility. And NPEs aren't going to be that interested in signing those treaties in most cases. An Alliance especially is going to be hard to secure, which makes sense because you don't want a NPE to just jump into a new relationship willy-nilly.
You know I resisted this whole VBAM Galaxy idea to begin with, but it's growing on me due to the NPE/Tech/Diplomacy changes.
I think it's giving us a good opportunity to do a 2.5E revision of the 2E rules. We've had time now to see what works, what doesn't, and make changes accordingly. I would have liked to have got it right on the first try, but if we go this route at least we'll have hashed things out together and know where we should be headed for the future.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Image

Okay, here is my first stab at trying to balance the diplomatic action percentages for the Galaxies rules.

Offering a Treaty: Treaty Chance - Tension = % chance must be greater than 0 to offer.

Signing a Treaty: Treaty Chance - Tension must be greater than 0 to sign, or it becomes the % chance of acceptance for a NPE.

Breaking a Treaty: Breaking Chance + Tension = % chance of breaking the treaty

Declaring War: Declaration Chance + Tension = % chance of declaring war

There's some math hidden in the table, but after trying to figure out the best way to describe it I decided that just putting the chances into a table is probably going to be the cleanest way to communicate the chances. Then you just have Tension as the final modifier, with Tension reducing offering/signing chances, or increasing breaking/declaring chances. I think that is pretty logical, right?

For example, let's say that our buddies the Krogan ran into the Narn

Image

Image

They have a starting Tension of 25.

At this level, they could conceivably sign all the way up to an Alliance, although that is a bit precarious given their level of relations. That and if they are a NPE then you're going to get the treaty delay involved that is going to cause some issues for them, but I digress.

Let's say that the Krogans and Narn find a lot in common and do sign all the way to a Mutual Defense pact. Great!

It's been 10 turns, and their relations have soured to 37 Tension. The Krogans no longer believe that this Mutual Defense pact is worth keeping. They have a breaking chance of -10% + 37% (Tension) = 27% chance. They make an attempt and roll "97" -- big failure!

Now, this is where having some of those diplomatic modifiers from the empire/government traits would come in handy. A +20% here or there would have really increased the chances.

On the next turn, the Krogans spend 12 EP to use 12 Diplomatic Intel to get a +12% to their breaking attempt. This increases the chance to 39%. They roll a "69". Another failure of diplomacy. Sigh.

And declaring war at this point is almost impossible due to the starting chance being -80%. You'd have to be an insanely aggressive species or totalitarian government to pull off something like that. Even then, Tensions would need to be high. This demonstrates that it becomes very hard to declare war against someone that you have signed multiple high level treaties with, and you're going to need to be able to break those treaties before you can declare a war.

Luckily for the expansionist Krogans, they just made contact with a new species!

Image Greetings and various apropos felicitations! We are Pkunk.

The starting Tension is 97 (oh yes!). The Krogans can sense their destiny is at hand!

Empires start in a state of Non-Intercourse, and at that level the base declaration chance is 0%. That gives the Krogans a 97% chance of declaring war on the Pkunk! Oh my!

At this level of Tension the Krogans wouldn't even consider signing a Non-Aggression treaty (I may need to bump that treaty up a bit in chance, as right now it is a bit low). They hate the Pkunk far too much for that. The only real prospect is war!

# # #

I may need to adjust some of the treaties upwards a bit to make them more consistent with the NPE rules. For example, Non-Aggression may need to jump to 80-90%, to make it easier to sign for empires that aren't particularly peaceful. Trade could also move upwards. In 1E, the NPEs at 50 Relationship had about 90 for Non-Aggression, 80 for Trade, 60 for Naval (the Military equivalent), 40 for Mutual Defense, and 30 for Alliance. Based on that, I could definitely see moving Military, Trade, and Non-Aggression up because Tension is going to make it hard enough to sign any of those treaties with a NPE. And giving players with low Tension free reign to enter into treaties is probably fair enough.

The alien traits are going to give a +-20% swing to most of these, or at most +-40% if you have two modifiers that happen to stack (extreme cases!). A Xenophile would get +20% to Treaty Chance while a Xenophobe would get a -20% to Treaty Chance, for example. That adjusts the window in which the empire would be able to sign treaties. Similarly, an Aggressive empire would have a +20% chance declaring war and a -20% chance to signing armistices, while a Pacifist would have a -20% chance to declaring war and a +20% to signing armistices.

Then you have Charismatic, which makes it harder to break or declare with that empire. This works good for the Asari and maybe even the Federation.

# # #

Armistices are something I'm still working on figuring out. It's likely that two empires that are at war are going to have a Tension around 100. I'm not sure we want Tension to increase based on wartime activities (destruction of systems, bombardment), but it makes sense that an escalating border war could spiral Tension to maximum. I think we'd have to integrate the "war exhaustion" rules from the 1E NPE rules so that as you lose systems and colonies that you'd gain a bonus to your armistice chance. I think that was something like +2% per turn, and then you gained from friendly military losses and friendly systems conquered or lost from enemy military losses and enemy systems conquered. That way you had a bit of a see-saw effect. But that was a lot of extra tracking, and I'm not sure we really want to deal with that in the basic rules, but there needs to be some way to determine if a NPE is going to be willing to accept peace.

I think the bigger concern there is that Tension could just continue to build to maximum throughout the conflict and that you would need to have some outlet to allow two empires to reach a point that they are willing to accept peace.

In the simplest implementation, it might be a base chance of 100 - Tension, +2% per turn, -1% per point of construction cost of enemy units destroyed, +1% per point of construction cost of friendly units destroyed. Leave conquest of systems out of the equation completely.

Example: We have been at war for 10 turns. Tension is at 100. During that times I've destroyed 113 points of enemy units, but lost 70 points of friendly units. My armistice chance would be (100 - 100) + 20 + 70 - 113 = -23%. The war is going well for me, and I have no interest in peace.

Now, if the tables were turned, the chance would flip to (100 - 100) + 20 + 113 - 70 = 63% armistice chance. That means if I'm a NPE I'd have a nearly 2/3 chance of accepting any armistice offered to me.


This does illustrate that the modifiers are a bit one-sided, and it might be better to have a fixed armistice chance (separate from Tension) and have it tick up over time and only really be concerned with the comparable losses. I don't think we can get away with more than a +2% per turn, because at 5% per turn you end up with conflicts timing out pretty fast. Within a year you'd be at 60%, which is just too fast for most wars. The 2% puts it at 24% per turn, ignoring any other modifiers.

The biggest problem with checking losses against each other is that in a lopsided war, the winning side is unlikely to ever consider peace unless the war somehow is drawn out long enough to counter their gains. It's arguable if that is a bad thing, however, or just the system working as designed. It's definitely something we need to discuss and consider. It's less of an issue for players, because we can just handwave for them that they can offer and sign armistices at any time regardless of what is going on. But for NPEs it is more of a concern.

However, that being said, I would prefer if there was consistency there, too, so that the armistice chance modifiers from traits would affect both player and non-player empires equally. Given that they are tied to traits that already affect declaration chance they'll at least still have a chance, but I really like having consistent rules.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Emiricol »

In the simplest implementation, it might be a base chance of 100 - Tension, +2% per turn, -1% per point of construction cost of enemy units destroyed, +1% per point of construction cost of friendly units destroyed. Leave conquest of systems out of the equation completely.
This works well. Generally if the powers are conquering each other's systems there will be a commensurate loss of units. I like this idea a lot.

If that's not enough and people want system conquest to matter, then there could be a modifier equal to the difference in Capacity ratings of each side's conquests, if you see what I mean. So if I conquer systems with a total Capacity of 20, and the enemy has conquered 10 Capacity worth of systems *at the time of the check*, then I'd have a -10% to accept while they'd have a +10% chance. Either way, I'll likely just use unit costs in my games.
This does illustrate that the modifiers are a bit one-sided, and it might be better to have a fixed armistice chance (separate from Tension) and have it tick up over time and only really be concerned with the comparable losses. I don't think we can get away with more than a +2% per turn, because at 5% per turn you end up with conflicts timing out pretty fast. Within a year you'd be at 60%, which is just too fast for most wars. The 2% puts it at 24% per turn, ignoring any other modifiers.
I don't see how this is significantly different in practical effect, other than reducing the math by one calculation. But, you could make the Base Armistice Chance be 25%, which is roughly on par with 100%-Tension, as tensions are likely to be high if you're at war. That Base Chance might need to be fiddled with.
The biggest problem with checking losses against each other is that in a lopsided war, the winning side is unlikely to ever consider peace unless the war somehow is drawn out long enough to counter their gains. It's arguable if that is a bad thing, however, or just the system working as designed. It's definitely something we need to discuss and consider. It's less of an issue for players, because we can just handwave for them that they can offer and sign armistices at any time regardless of what is going on. But for NPEs it is more of a concern.
I don't see this as a bad thing. If my patriots are stomping the dog snot out of your villainous warmongers, I'm unlikely to stop just because you said please. Historically, the winning side in such a blowout tends to demand unconditional surrender.

However, if Tension doesn't modify based on wartime activities (preventing the double-whammy of modifiers from Tension escalating right along with modifiers from total unit costs), then perhaps there could be two kinds of war - border skirmish and all-out war.

In Border Skirmish, both sides are demanding the ceding of the other power's closest system. Victory is achieved (and system exchanged) by either conquest or the Armistice Check. If you conquer my system, the war ends. If I offer an armistice and you accept, the war ends and I cede that system.

The difference could be based simply on a Tension break. Perhaps if Tension at the start of War is 80 or less, it's a brushfire war, for example.

I kind of like that idea, actually, as I've never truly liked the "peace vs. total war" dynamic the old system created.

Also, if Tension goes over the break point due to Intel missions or normal random changes (since we're not using Tension to determine Armistice chance in this scenario), then perhaps it spirals into total war...
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The War Score system that the Paradox games use could be an interesting model to use. There you have a stated war goal, and the amount of war score you have dictates what you can take. The key difference is that in that system you just occupy territory and don't own it until you sign a peace, which doesn't translate as well into VBAM.

I think players are just going to do whatever they want anyway, so mostly this pertains to NPE and how they determine that they are winning or losing the war.

I do agree that keeping systems out of it is for the best, and just use unit losses + ticking war score.

Example: The Krogans and Pkunk have been at war for 4 turns (+8%). The Krogans are Aggressive and get a -20% to Armistice Chance, whereas the Pkunk are Pacifist and get +20% to Armistice Chance. The Krogans have lost 24 EP of units, while the Pkunk have lost 40 EP of units.

The Krogan Armistice chance is -20% + 8% + 24% - 40% = -28%
The Pkunk Armistice chance is +20% + 8% + 40% - 24% = 44%

The Krogans have not suffered hard enough losses to be willing to come to the peace table, whereas the Pkunk would enthusiastically accept an Armistice.

Another 7 turns later (11 total), the Krogans have lost 58 EP of units and the Pkunk have lost 82 EP of units.

The Krogan Armistice chance is -20% + 22% + 58% - 82% = -22%
The Pkunk Armistice chance is +20% + 22% + 82% - 58% = 66%

The war is still going in the Krogan's favor, but they've had a few setbacks that make it less likely that they would accept an armistice. The Pkunk are getting desperate and just want the war to stop.

If the war ground on for another year, and if the Pkunk's made some headway in equalizing the losses, the Krogans may finally be ready for peace. But right now they're pretty happy with the headway they're making.


If we wanted wars to be over faster, we could always go +5% per turn instead of +2% per turn, but that would cause the Aggressive Krogans to have a pretty high Armistice chance after only 11 turns, and that's with a -20% modifier! I don't have problems with wars wearing on long enough that eventually they choose peace. All it would take is one stunning upset, like the destruction of a Krogan supply depot, shipyard, or convoy (high value targets!) to turn public opinion around and make them more interested in peace.
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Re: Non-Aligned Worlds and Non-Player Empires

Post by Emiricol »

Perhaps for every rejected Armistice offer, the War Score tick goes up by +1% to a max of 5%. Their populace may tire of fighting if the enemy keeps offering peace. "Bring our men and women home for Christmas, Mr. President!" And race traits like Aggressive are already built into the War Score so nothing additional is needed there.

That would be for players who want wars to be shorter, of course. I like it because a lot of fiction has races with a history of fighting several wars within a generation or two, without annihilating one another completely.
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