Alternate Realities > Endless Stars
Planets and Systems
Entsuropi:
--- Quote ---Entropy, that's a fantastic idea.
--- End quote ---
:D
--- Quote ---One thing...10 zones will be too much. Planets won't have that many troops usually. 3 to 4 is more like it.
--- End quote ---
Hrm, 3 - 4 zones doesn't really give that much possibility for variation I feel. After all, almost every world would end up being 1 agriculture, 1 heavy industry, 1 light and so on. I want there to be enough zones that it's more than just another set of buildings. It should be possible to really tinker how a world is, to the point of having slightly more industry and such. With 3 - 4 it's a very binary choice - is this world industry or not? Yes/no.
There is also the thing to consider that there is no real need to totally link zones of production to zones of attack. There can be two interlinked layers, 3 or 4 zones for the attack layer, and the production (with my types above) being nestled within it.
Let's say there is 4 zones on the planet (called, oh, arrakin). It has 3 continents, two small one big, and the combat zones consist of the two small continents and half each of the big one. Each of these zones can have 2 or 3 production zones within them. Maybe we can use the combat zones to show general climate as well (this area has temperate, so is better for agriculture. This is rocky, so it's crap at all but best at heavy industry. And so on). Each production zone can be placed wherever, but again, with the synergy bonuses (have an entire combat zone filled with 3 heavy industry and it counts as 4 heavy industry, or something like that) and you can really have the tradeoff between defencibility (you can lose any zone and still have a bit of everything) or sheer power (keep em together to get the money).
Note that I am assuming that ground combats will last long enough for this to be important. Ideally, I see ground combat as sprawling out over several turns, being more than just a afterthought addition to the space battles. I see it as you approach a system, fight a battle that determines what happens in the initial engagement, then land troops and have space and ground battles continue for several turns - will the defending player manage to rush enough reinforcements to the planet before the attacker overwhelms those few poor garrison infantry?.
The Jade Knight:
We need to figure out how planets are going to be handled in the real and abstract, and I'm not even talking mechanics so much as handling of geography/zoning.
Possibilities:
[*]Zones are abstractions. You list the zones on a planet, but don't touch geography. Geography doesn't exist except as a list.[*]Some sort of external "world creation" program is implimented to create varied worlds randomly and quickly, after which continents are mapped into zones to fit game terms, complete with pre-existing geography.[*]Some form of in-game geographic world-creation system is devised which allows for geographic zoning.[*]Some other alternative?[/list]
The easiest thing to do would be option 1 - just use abstractions and don't worry about specific continents/geography. However, we may want interesting rather than easy.
GorgonlaVacaTremendo:
I think the only geography that should be used is water-to-land ratio. Or Liquid-to-Land ratio. Roll a 100-sided die and you're done. I also think there should be certain benefits to having more water than land or having more land than water. Maybe certain buildings cannot be built under water, and water regions get a defensive bonus?
Mr_Pleasington:
Right now I'm thinking the zone thing may be a bit too detailed for this. I was thinking just that each zone equaled a large city or important site...basically they're the important battles of the planet ("You fought at the Massacre of Audbair City?").
We have to remember that we don't want to get bogged down too much in the details.
What I like about my original system is that it's abstract enough to be simple, but you can come to your own conclusions about it.
I like what Entropy's saying and I think we can use some of his ideas, but we've got to make sure this stays relatively simple. It's easy to lose the bit picture when there's all kinds of cool things we could do with the small picture.
For example, a planet with a capacity of 5 (randomly rolled with 2d6) isn't the most hospitable of planets. It could have a ton of water or a harsh environment of some sort as population is limited so much. With Terraforming you can increase it and imagine it however you want.
The Jade Knight:
So perhaps it would be best to not bother with geography so much as a list of "important places/sectors/sites/etc."
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