Some good posts (just in my opinion) from the
original thread to give the poll a little more context:
Poet1960 wrote:I dunno if it would really be practical, but from what I've seen so far, all the space traffic is either military or some kind of industry oriented. What about civilian pleasure cruises, or space buses, or just people moving around from planet to planet or job to job etc?
It might just be too much CPU overhead to implement, but it sure would make space seem alive. It would be interesting to see what kind of space traffic it could generate.
The reason I thought of this is because I was thinking of having a secret hideaway or something to that effect (think of your base in Independence wars II) someplace kind of out of the way. Except, what is out of the way, where is most of the traffic going? Main arteries of space travel? You first have to have main routes of travel before you could determine what was out of the normal space trading lanes.
Talvieno wrote:Hmmm... I love this idea, and I think it could be implemented very simply. Very, very simply - and even better, it would hardly subtract from the frame rate. Even better than that, it would have an actual effect on the universe, and introduce some new, if minor, gameplay mechanics. It would help the universe evolve. Best of all, it wouldn't be very difficult for our already overworked Mr. Parnell to implement, when he gets to that point.
Mechanics outline
As a planet's population increases, it demands more materials, but what happens to these materials? Right now, nothing. In the currently-planned future: Also nothing. However, if a percentage of these goods are allocated towards building ferry ships, luxury ships, passenger ships, etc., then you have something very real to do with the stuff your planets receive. I suggest that this is how these civilian ships come into being. The size of these ships would be semi-randomly determined and at least partially based on planetary culture and the planet's population. With this, you can have a planet that prefers large ships, a planet that prefers small ships, etc. You also get planets producing larger ships when they have a larger population.
What the ships do:
They transport exactly what it says they do: civilians and consumer goods, from planet to planet. The most interesting thing, I think, will be the passenger ships. Larger planets may also be able to produce "escort ships" that are automatically assigned as evenly as possible, with larger ships receiving better security details. Planetary culture could factor into this as well.
As to the purpose of the ships:
For each station and planet, you also include a value, ValueX. (Name to be determined. It basically represents civilian happiness: luxury, connections to the outside world, visits from family members, etc.) ValueX slowly degrades over time, with the degradation rate increasing based on the size of the population. When ValueX falls below 67%, your station's productivity begins to decline, starting with 100% productivity at 67% and ending at 0% productivity at 0%. (All arbitrary, changeable values). When ValueX falls below 33%, your population begins to leave (at a slow rate, starting slowly at 33% and increasing the rate of disappearance as it approaches 0%).
To balance this out, you give each planet a "faction" of its own - just the planets, though, and not the stations. These factions are controlled by a very basic AI - no goals, no projects, nothing like that. These factions are given the ships that their planet automatically produces.
The civilian ships and their security escorts are automatically routed towards the nearest location that has the lowest ValueX. In other words, the destination is the lowest (-ValueX% + Distance%). When the civilian ship reaches its destination, the ValueX is raised by a pre-set amount, depending on how large the civilian ship is. Then, it repeats the process and sends it to the nearest (-ValueX% + Distance%). You could also include enemy presence in the calculation, so they don't knowingly send ships towards enemy areas. At any rate, this keeps the planets from naturally having their happiness/ValueX fall too far - only a completely isolated planet, or one with its ships under attack, would really be at risk of growing "unhappy".
NOW: ONE FINAL THING:
Not all ships are sent. A small percentage of them (specifically passenger vessels) are stockpiled, with the combined capacity about equal to the planet's population, give or take planetary culture values. The only reason the planet starts sending them is if ValueX falls below 33%, meaning the population is extremely unhappy. The reason for this is that when you start on orbital bombing, making the population unhappy (I'd suggest orbital bombing push it into a "launch all ships" red zone), you get actual civilian ships fleeing for the stars, filled to the brim with real passengers. It's a real sci-fi style planetary evacuation, and it would be amazing to see - and fun for a sadistic player to shoot down - with some slight moral/gameplay implications.
The visual effect of this (besides planetary evacuations) is that you get civilian traffic on trade lanes, with more civilian traffic around larger planets and stations: They have larger populations, and therefore more civilian ships and faster happiness degradation. Civilian traffic will centralize around larger planets, with rare forays into the dark unknown to seek out that asteroid-based space station you've hidden.
The gameplay effect of this (besides planetary evacuations) is that if you destroy a planet's civilian ships, their population drops, and their happiness (ValueX) decreases. As the value decreases, their productivity drops, and if it falls too far, people start leaving. Protecting these ships could actually be a part of an NPC faction's goals. Destroying them could be a goal, too.
Anyway, that's my idea. Pick at it or discard it as you please.
Gazz wrote:Civilian transport that is not the typical Guns & Butter Express can definitely have an effect on ships, stations, or outposts.
Delivering the mail is important and has always had more importance in military supply then most would expect.
Luxury goods need to get delivered to stores, a group of exotic dancers needs to get to their workplace or continue their tour.
Soldiers have leave and visit their families back home. You don't send a shuttle when you can just book a cheaper civilian flight.
Reinforcements and replacements need to get around, too.
Last but not least, defending civilians from invaders or pirates is a big chunk of why a navy exists. Seeing the bustling civilian traffic means a job well done and reminds the soldiers of why they are doing this.
What could that mean in game terms?
IMO it's an issue of morale.
In detail that requires serious bookkeeping but in the abstract, it's one value per ship or station.
And civilian traffic - whether it docks or merely passes by - increases it.
How that would figure into the AI I dunno.
Flatfingers wrote:I don't mind gameplay ideas related to civilian ships, or to "cargo" civilians (as Hyperion neatly pointed out).
I also don't mind civilian ships (including miners) simply as a kind of dynamic eye candy for human players, making systems feel more alive.
But for me, the real value of civilians is as a kind of "
indicator species." Let me quote the first two lines from that link:
An indicator species is an organism whose presence, absence or abundance reflects a specific environmental condition. Indicator species can signal a change in the biological condition of a particular ecosystem, and thus may be used as a proxy to diagnose the health of an ecosystem.
In Limit Theory terms, think about when you jump into a new star system. The presence, absence, or abundance of civilian ships that you can observe will give you an immediate understanding of the safety and economic activity of that system.
That knowledge could let you prepare for trade deals, or even save your (character's) life. If you jump into a system and, after some safe passive scans, don't observe any civilian ships but see plenty of what look like armed vessels, that is a very useful clue that you might want to either raise shields and power weapons, or perhaps fly back through the wormhole you came from until you can bring some well-armed friends with you.
The utility of implementing civilians as an indicator species is not limited to human players. NPCs can also benefit from doing a quick scan, categorization, and count of visible ship types to plan their own actions.
Everything takes time when you're building a game. The value of implementing civilians has to weighed against the cost to do that.
These comments are intended to place an additional weight on the "value" side of the scales.