Determinism, or the belief that everything is calculable according to mathematics, is a prevailing viewpoint in modern Western humanist philosophy. People like determinism because it is predictable. It allows people to feel like they can control the universe. This feeling of control makes them feel more confident of future outcomes and thus better able to deal with abstract circumstances.
Most games are deterministic, at least on some level. Determinism in games implies that the use of pseudo-random number generators (PRNG) is minimal. It means that when you attack the same problem with the same solution you will always get the same result. This plays into players' expectations and behavior in that they will typically only move when they know they will win. For some games this is a positive trait to breed into players, while in others it produces boredom and monotony. In the case of an MMO, the inherent irrationality of players produces some randomness, regardless of whether the game itself is deterministic or not, so the need for non-determinism is less necessary. For FATES, most of this game will be deterministic. If you build a farm on a given planet multiple times, it will produce the same amount of food for a given employment and power level. If you design a starship, it will cost the same amount of resources (excepting currency) to produce every single variant of that starship design.
However, determinism is boring. It also doesn't allow us to experiment in the fields of artificial intelligence and statistical system control, and part of the reason for the existence of our company is to allow us to provide funds for our team to improve their knowledge of every area that interests them. So, in FATES, there will be a number of non-deterministic pieces. For alpha, there will be no non-deterministic features, because that makes debugging significantly harder, and we want to produce a bug-free game for trustworthy alpha testing. However, by the beta phases, we will be introducing a non-deterministic engine into the combat mechanics. This is the 'black swan' event generator that I described in the combat mechanics post earlier. This event generator will fundamentally rely on a pseudo-random number generator with a low-probability, high-impact outcome to randomly modify the combat losses on both side to redetermine the outcome. This will add some non-determinism to the game, and make it more interesting.
For now, the combat mechanic event generator is the only planned non-deterministic feature. I expect that the markets and diplomacy will exhibit non-deterministic behavior simply because people and their choices are deeply involved, but these will not be possessed of non-deterministic design.
Hopefully, this improves your understanding of the role of fundamental philosophy in game design and allows you more insight into our design decisions going forward.
Until next time.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
26 April 2016
19 April 2016
Where We Are Now: April 2016 Edition
Hey all.
Brief update on our progress lately.
We are still plugging away at the alpha client and have had a couple of major architectural changes. First, we migrated the server-side cache from ConcurrentHashMap to Redis. That was the easy part. Second, we migrated the chat system from a polling AJAX to WebSockets. This has proved much more difficult and tricky, but after several weeks of work should be done.
So our Alpha 1 feature list is looking like:
Alpha 1 mechanics:
Fun times!
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
Brief update on our progress lately.
We are still plugging away at the alpha client and have had a couple of major architectural changes. First, we migrated the server-side cache from ConcurrentHashMap to Redis. That was the easy part. Second, we migrated the chat system from a polling AJAX to WebSockets. This has proved much more difficult and tricky, but after several weeks of work should be done.
So our Alpha 1 feature list is looking like:
Alpha 1 mechanics:
- Stars and galaxy - DONE
- Planets - MOSTLY DONE
- Planetary cities - DONE
- Starship design - DONE
- Starship production - DONE
- Fleet creation - MOSTLY DONE
- Research tree - MOSTLY DONE
- Fiat currencies - DONE
- Sovereign debt market - BEING DESIGNED
- Galaxy chat - DONE
- Technology tree - IN PROGRESS
- Fleet travel between stars - MOSTLY DONE
- Fog of war - DONE
Fun times!
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
12 April 2016
Culture, Sway, and Discord
The economics of FATES has already been addressed, but I wanted to address in more detail the non-combat mechanics for changing planetary ownership. The three primary factors in determining civic planetary ownership are culture, sway, and discord.
Culture, in FATES, is an abstract representation for the racial properties of a given player's populace. Racial properties such as individualistic, industriousness, taxonomy, and subterranean dictate what types of planets that player empires can colonise and how their populace grow and develop. Since the culture is both a physical and abstract property, players will have the option of eventually ending up with mixed culture empires, or they can maintain the cultural purity of their own racial archetype. Each option will present opportunities and challenges. If the player pursues a multicultural strategy, they will suffer from increased discord on planets not in line with the dominant culture in the empire due to sheer cultural differences. However, one also gains the benefits of additional culture's positive and negative attributes at those same planets. Player's who retain cultural purity will have much less discord to deal with due to uniformity of thought and action, but they also lose access to any of the traits from foreign cultures. As a physical property, players will also be able to trade planets or colony ships with your particular culture to other players in order to allow them to colonise non-optimal planet types in their region of space.
The discord factor, mentioned briefly before, is a key game mechanic that allows planets to change allegiance between various player empires in the game. Discord is a measurement of a planetary population's unhappiness with the current regime. The discord exists to enable non-military options for transferring planetary ownership in lieu of raw military invasion and takeover. The discord is tracked as a whole number ranging from zero to one hundred. The discord matters most significantly when it exceeds 80, since that is when a planet will officially begin a revolt to divorce itself from the present owner. When the discord on a given planet reaches 90, the planet will swap allegiance to the next highest sway player empire and significantly reduce the discord to give that player a chance to stabilize the political situation on their newly acquired planet. The factors that get fed into the discord number include things like taxation rate, food rations, proximity to allied and friendly planets, presence of allied or friendly troops or fleets, presence of allied or friendly counter-intelligence officers, presence of subversion agents, sway divergences, economic prosperity, unemployment, and military conflicts taking place near or at the planet. All of these factors will play into a planet's discord and thus into the ability of enemies to flip planets' allegiances. The discord will also play into tax compliance, with the tax compliance decreasing as the discord exceeds 40.
The prime determining factor when a planet changes allegiance due to revolt is sway. The sway is a measure of the relative cultural and political influence of a given player empire on a given planet. The sway exists to incentivise territoriality by increasing the difficulty of maintaining far flung colonies away from a player's main territory. The sway is calculated at every point in space and radiates out from each planet that a player owns decreasing exponentially with distance. The sway values for each planet will overlap creating increased sway within a player's territory and making lone colonisation efforts difficult for enemies. This should encourage player's to keep their territory as contiguous as possible and prevent enemies from dropping hostile colonies into the middle of any given player or federation's territory. The sway divergence, as a factor in the discord, will eventually cause such a lone planet to revolt and join the dominant empire of the area, unless it is supported by significant military forces to enforce law and order of the enemy empire. One of the properties of a federation, with regard to sway, is collectivised sway values that operate at a multiplier for all federation members. The amplified federation sway will help to maintain order within a federation and disincentivise players, especially key members, from leaving a federation. If a player is deep within a federation's territory and leaves the federation, their planets on the borders will suffer from increased discord, potentially revolting from them and joining the nearest federation member.
All of these factors should allow the non-military player to wield leverage over militaristic players, and help them to compete on par with the military play style paradigm players.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out
The discord factor, mentioned briefly before, is a key game mechanic that allows planets to change allegiance between various player empires in the game. Discord is a measurement of a planetary population's unhappiness with the current regime. The discord exists to enable non-military options for transferring planetary ownership in lieu of raw military invasion and takeover. The discord is tracked as a whole number ranging from zero to one hundred. The discord matters most significantly when it exceeds 80, since that is when a planet will officially begin a revolt to divorce itself from the present owner. When the discord on a given planet reaches 90, the planet will swap allegiance to the next highest sway player empire and significantly reduce the discord to give that player a chance to stabilize the political situation on their newly acquired planet. The factors that get fed into the discord number include things like taxation rate, food rations, proximity to allied and friendly planets, presence of allied or friendly troops or fleets, presence of allied or friendly counter-intelligence officers, presence of subversion agents, sway divergences, economic prosperity, unemployment, and military conflicts taking place near or at the planet. All of these factors will play into a planet's discord and thus into the ability of enemies to flip planets' allegiances. The discord will also play into tax compliance, with the tax compliance decreasing as the discord exceeds 40.
The prime determining factor when a planet changes allegiance due to revolt is sway. The sway is a measure of the relative cultural and political influence of a given player empire on a given planet. The sway exists to incentivise territoriality by increasing the difficulty of maintaining far flung colonies away from a player's main territory. The sway is calculated at every point in space and radiates out from each planet that a player owns decreasing exponentially with distance. The sway values for each planet will overlap creating increased sway within a player's territory and making lone colonisation efforts difficult for enemies. This should encourage player's to keep their territory as contiguous as possible and prevent enemies from dropping hostile colonies into the middle of any given player or federation's territory. The sway divergence, as a factor in the discord, will eventually cause such a lone planet to revolt and join the dominant empire of the area, unless it is supported by significant military forces to enforce law and order of the enemy empire. One of the properties of a federation, with regard to sway, is collectivised sway values that operate at a multiplier for all federation members. The amplified federation sway will help to maintain order within a federation and disincentivise players, especially key members, from leaving a federation. If a player is deep within a federation's territory and leaves the federation, their planets on the borders will suffer from increased discord, potentially revolting from them and joining the nearest federation member.
All of these factors should allow the non-military player to wield leverage over militaristic players, and help them to compete on par with the military play style paradigm players.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out
5 April 2016
Play Style Paradigms
As with all 4x games, FATES: Carpe Moerae will support the orthodox military strategy of domination by raw force, however I want to address in more detail some of the other play style paradigms that FATES: Carpe Moerae will be designed to support. In many 4x games , the non-military paradigms are often papered over and released with little strategic depth, and this is an area where FATES: Carpe Moerae is being designed to shine.
The first paradigm that FATES will be designed to support is the economic powerhouse player.
This empire will be the financier of the galaxy and will be first and foremost marked by excellent management of their fiat currency to be the most valuable fiat currency in the galaxy. A single unit of this player's currency will buy hundreds to thousands of other player's money, allowing them to finance wars and buy and sell favors for pennies on the dollar. This paradigm will also be marked by extensive trading of resources and other player's sovereign bonds in order to create and retain leverage over every other major power player in the galaxy. The support of this player will mean a sure path to victory for their allies or minions and ample resources for waging galaxy spanning wars. However, following a purely economic power broker paradigm will force reliance on others for raw security where economic leverage alone fails. This paradigm will be well integrated into the galactic system, possessed of immense resource storage and shipping capacity, and well-ingrained into the political wrangling in the galaxy. These players will be the Rothschild family of the galaxy, always in the backdrop pulling strings and financing allies and enemies alike to achieve their own or their federation's ends.
The next paradigm that FATES will be designed to support is the Mr. Universe player.
This paradigm will be marked by extensive intelligence capabilities allowing this player to be the closest thing to omniscience that will exist in the galaxy. This player will know everything that goes on. All of the backroom deals, troop deployments, fleet movements, dossiers on every governor, admiral, and player in the galaxy, and a myriad of other useful and salable information. The juiciest bits and bytes of galactic gossip will be available for the right price. However, this paradigm will go well beyond simply information. Need an admiral assassinated just prior to a crucial battle? A somnambulant public awoken to rebel against the newly minted tyrannical image? Sabotaging that pesky hypergate ferrying your enemy's armadas to your front door? The legion of agents at this player's disposal will make all of these actions possible to well-financed buyers. The line between shadow and truth will be adroitly walked and yield profitable returns for elegant and silent solutions to pesky problems. This player can either run completely independent of any federation, working for the highest bidder, or operate as the intelligence arm of a galaxy-spanning federation.
The third paradigm that FATES is being designed to support is the cultural power player.
This player will be focused on enhancing cultural influence in the galaxy by means of political sway with nearby star systems. The culture player will be hallmarked by cultural relics and treasures that are the envy of the galaxy's civilized population. When other empire's fail to meet their populace' expectation of leadership, this player is ready to fill the lives of those lost souls with cultural meaning and galactic significance. The cultural power player will acquire new planets by leveraging the discord of nearby enemies and allies systems; and when secessionist movements arise, they are the next most significant influential empire and welcome the new people with open arms and competent political leadership. The culture player will still need to focus on self defense, or rely on a federation for defense, but they will remain mostly neutral in nearby wars, seeking only to pickup the pieces left after conflicts. This player can either be a solo pacifist, seeking only to make their own way in the galaxy or a member of a federation serving as a buffer zone to acquire malcontent enemy worlds that secede due to nearby federation conflicts.
The final play style paradigm that FATES will support is the technological player.
This style of play will revolve around copious numbers of research facilities and personnel. The technological player will advance in the sciences quickly, creating new ways to leverage high technology solutions to social problems and galactic conflicts. The technological player will seek to be years ahead of competition technically, both in civic and warfare technologies. Presently, technology transfer is going to be limited, but the technology player will be able to trade away already produced advanced ships and planets for use by allies. This will allow the technology player to maintain technical dominance and still supply advanced technology to friends, allies, and minions in order to maintain technical leverage to affect outcomes in their or their federation's favor.
In all likelihood though, players will not cleanly fall into one category or another but the paradigms that are described here are extreme cases that FATES is being designed to support. Players will very likely employ a wide variety of paradigms with several more focused than others. There have been other paradigms tossed around in various discussions, but these four are the primary ones that are clearly defined right now.
Hopefully, you can see yourself in one or more of these paradigms and think in relation to the others, as each of these paradigms will be necessary for a federation to succeed in FATES: Carpe Moerae.
Until next time.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out
The first paradigm that FATES will be designed to support is the economic powerhouse player.
The next paradigm that FATES will be designed to support is the Mr. Universe player.
The third paradigm that FATES is being designed to support is the cultural power player.
The final play style paradigm that FATES will support is the technological player.
In all likelihood though, players will not cleanly fall into one category or another but the paradigms that are described here are extreme cases that FATES is being designed to support. Players will very likely employ a wide variety of paradigms with several more focused than others. There have been other paradigms tossed around in various discussions, but these four are the primary ones that are clearly defined right now.
Hopefully, you can see yourself in one or more of these paradigms and think in relation to the others, as each of these paradigms will be necessary for a federation to succeed in FATES: Carpe Moerae.
Until next time.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out
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