The Hero Idea

[Disparat]

Just something I was thinking about after playing Disciples II (neat game by the way) is the idea of a Hero. I know Great Leaders have been mentioned to lead Armies and speed up Secret Projects, but I was thinking an actual unit perhaps. One that you can train, costs a lot of money, but has special abilities that can be gained or upgraded as he wins battles and gains experience. If we're going with a single player campaign with individual missions and objectives instead of one long game like SMAC (Which I don't actually know if we are. I'm a bit out of my scope here, lowly web designer that I am.) he could be able to be transferred over from mission to mission steadily becoming more powerful and important to your game. Other units would not be transferred from mission and would need to be re-trained as necessary.

Now, I have the feeling that this goes against all the long established game mechanics you've already decided upon, but it may serve as a basis for some ideas. Oh well. I try.

[Blake]

In StP the player will have an avatar which is a very good start towards a hero system.

The idea behind great leaders was that they would bestow certain advantages upon your faction, "Economic" GL's would do things like increase food/production/science at a planet (or city?), "Military" GL's, when combined with a fleet, provide bonuses to that fleet, at (or orbiting) a planet they could also give advantages to attacking/defending ground troops.

It's a small stretch to have "heros" with "skill points" that can be assigned in certain areas to give improvements, it would be interesting in a campaign for sure, you could focus on military (for the warmonger) or production (for the builder) or strike a balance. Interesting for sure.

[targon]

And possible introduce experience and skill points for factions themselves? By winning wars, diplomacy,trading, science, empire growth faction "quality" may increase displaying its growing ablilites, education level, great traditions etc.

[Kuciwalker]

Here's an idea - each time you build an army it get a "leader". This leader has a certain level of skill at different types of warfare depending on how much training he recieved and what type of force he leads. He gains experience in the different areas of warfare as he participates in them and fights in battles - win or lose. Leaders can be reassigned to a different army - or fleet, for that matter, but it might not be advantageous to switch his branch of service. Leaders are nameless unless you give them a name (if you really want to). Leaders can be given command of more than just an army - you can give a leader command of several armies, or fleets (space and surface), or some combination of them. A leader might be put in charge of a space fleet loaded with assault troops and be given the orders "attack system X, land troops on planet Y, secure beachhead". Governors are leaders. Leaders can be trained independantly of armies, and can be shot if you feel like it (this should be put in there, just for fun ).

[Vultur]

Read this thread.

[Kuciwalker]

That's a different sort of leader than the one I was talking about.

[targon]

OK, if you really want to use leaders, why do't add some more orthogonality in the game? For example, use leaders as local advisors, ambassadors etc. Something like Pax Imperia did, but with ToAn taste.
One sad thing: leaders are humans and hense have limited lifespan.

[Mark123jansen]

maybe governors can be like heroes, like in MOO2, if you hire/assign a certain governor to a city/planet that city/planet would have special bonuses

[Leland]

This is a scifi setting, so I don't think it's unreasonable to keep leaders alive for hundreds of years at least, if not indefinitely.

[targon]

Yes, say we have some life-forever vaccine but it's so expensive so we can let only the greatest ones to be cured. Or it is't any expensive and thus we can generate pop like rabbits.

[Blake]

Here's an idea - each time you build an army it get a "leader".

I'd actually go with the oppisite, to "build" or rather mobilize and army, you need a leader. This may reek of Civ3, but leaders should be a dime a dozen, good leaders being somewhat rarer, many of the poorer leaders would go unused, left to their fantasies of commanding and conquering.
To expand on skywalkers list, leaders should also be able to defect (prehaps bringing their army with them, if the cause is noble), or be killed in battle, throwing the army into disarray (it would get a new, fresh leader recruited from the ranks, meaning less combat effeciency), or even captured after a defeat, prehaps you can barter to get the leader back, or spring him from the rig where the enemy lock him up.

Also to expand on targons comment

"And possible introduce experience and skill points for factions themselves?"

it's something I like the idea of very much, it would be nice to model "Patriotism", which is how willing your people are to fight in a war and how loyal they are (if your troops are feeling patriotic, they wont defect with a crooked leader), things like a high standard of living (by not stifling the economy with military construction), rescuing PoW's etc. Another interetsing thing to try to model could be "Nobility" of your faction.

With leaders dying, I think they should. Actually not die, rather retire. Longlivity vaccine or not, few would want to lead an army forever

So some leader attirbutes could be:
Nobility (How inclined they are to put doing the right thing, above what they are ordered to do)
Loyalty (Pretty much what it sounds like.)
Age
Charisma (A charismic leader tends to be very popular. This can raise happiness and morale, colonists and troops alike will follow a charismic leader.)
Daring (A very daring leader is more likely to get killed in combat, escape from prisons etc)
Luck (Some sods are just unlucky. Probably a tally of lucky/unlucky things that happen to the leader, rather than actually effecting what happens to the leader...)
Leadership Skills:
These are areas where the leader has skill and experience, like colony managment, fleet admiral, army commander etc....

[Kuciwalker]

Blake - your way requires MM, because you have to train the leader, THEN you train the army. I think of it more as the army training with the leader. Every military unit is an army, not just combined arms ones.

When you have a mixed-branch leader (i.e. Governors, or the commander of an entire assault force), you have to have a leader for each individual army (or fleet) that's under his command. Also, the leader of the mixed-branch force could be the leader of one of the lower groups - the force commander could also be the leader of the space forces.

I think leaders should mostly not be an active concern of the player - they should happen in the background. However, higher-level leaders, such as governors, should be so. Also, leader should be able to be trained outside of creating an army.

[Kuciwalker]

Also, nobility should be changed to independence. The chance of doing the correct thing, tactically, rather than the what they were ordered to do, not the morally right thing.

I think skill should be from the positives to the negatives, with zero being "average" skill. Independence should be a multiplier to skill. If you really suck, and you disregard orders, you'll suck even more. If you really suck but you follow orders, the competence of those above you will negate somewhat your incompetence. If you are really good, and you are independent, you'll be far more effective than if you are good but still follow orders blindly.

[Blake]

Blake - your way requires MM, because you have to train the leader, THEN you train the army. I think of it more as the army training with the leader. Every military unit is an army, not just combined arms ones.

No the leader would just front up and say "Yo I want to lead an army", when you create/train an army, you choose a leader from the available leader pool. The longer he leads the army, the better he gets. Certain faction paramenters would improve the leaders in the pool, like compulsary military service would give a better chance of the natural leaders realising their skill.

The point of nobility is if you give them a dastardly deed to do, they dont do it. It's not about them being smarter than you are. It's quite different to them doing something different because they think it's the tatically best approach.

[Kuciwalker]

Blake - that's a) still MM, and b) impossible. EVERY military unit is an army. How would you have much of a military if you had to divide it into 20 groups only, across 5, 10 planets?

There should be Nobility and Independence, then. Nobility increases the chance that they'll think, say, razing a city is wrong, and Independence increases the chance that the leader violates orders.

I think that independence should be a probability from 0-100. When referring to skill, it works sort of like a weighted average. If a leader has 50% independence, then his actual skill is an average of his skill and "medium", or the midpoint of the skill. If he has 0% independence, his skill is exactly "medium". If he has 100% independence, his skill is exactly his skill. This means that independence is bad for low-skill leaders and good for high-skill leaders.