How do you design factions?

[MysticWind]

My Second Ship- factions were designed entirely around my ideas behind their different stories, but I made changes in detail along the way with balancing out their qualities. I'm guessing that I'm the only one who's ever had story in mind first.

How do you design yours? Do you have a set of qualities in mind for your faction that you frame your story around? How do you start?

[Chaos Theory]

For a scenario, I created a faction reminiscent of samurai-era Japan and the Legend of the Five Rings setting. I wanted this faction specifically because of its attitude towards merchants and commerce - merchants are half-people and commerce is tolerated only so far as necessary.

Then, I made its traits. This faction was designed for an AI to play, so I balanced it with respect to other pumped-up AIs. Some of its bonuses would need to go to be played by a PBEM-level player, and some penalties could be added or magnified.

First, the faction's attitude towards commerce:
-1 Economy
-10% interest
-1 Commerce
Aversion: Wealth

Next, the veneration of the samurai and the quest for an honorable death:
MORALE, 0 (blocks negative morale effects - not fully sure what this does)
Fanatic
+1 Morale

The common drone can be cut down at a warrior's whim - they must tread lightly and treat their betters with respect. All they produce can be taken from them for the good of the faction, though the warrior class has an obligation to look after the welfare of the lower classes:
+1 Support
Free ability with tech: nonlethal methods
+1 Police
Preferred government: Planned
Free tech: Social Psych

And a few more things to increase the power of the faction and help keep the AI from killing itself:
+1 Industry
Robust to negative efficiency

[wgabrie]

MysticWind,

Good question, I've also been wondering about this. If anyone has create a faction, with ideology in mind, is there an easy way to pick realistic traits?

Also, when designing a faction, is it easier to start with the ideology first, then try to fit the plus/minus traits, or start with the traits and then try to find an ideology?

[Corvi #6]

I always create factions 'story-first', and it often takes me weeks of revisions to get a set of traits that is both balanced and fitting. I find doing it one change at a time works best, following the principl of a benny then a slap.

I often find that the traits I end up with are miles away from what I first selscted, as diffrent aspects of a faction's story come to prominence.

[Darsnan]

Re: How do you design factions?

Originally posted by MysticWind
How do you design yours? Do you have a set of qualities in mind for your faction that you frame your story around? How do you start?

The only real Faction Creation I've done is for replacing the 8th Faction, and it all started with me just experimenting one night with giving IoD's the Marine Detachment capability and discovering that IoD's (and Sealurks) could utilize the Marine Detachment capability! I then sat down and thought about how to logically utilize this concept (i.e. the Marine Detachment for the 8th Faction) in an SP Challenge, and as usually happens in my mind several divergent ideas meshed into something logical and viable as far as a Faction is concerned. In this case how to explain Fungal Pops was the problem, and the idea that meshed with this was from the Fredrick Pohl book "The coming of the Quantum Cats" where a civilization from one parallel universe staged an invasion of another parallel universe. In the ensueing conflagaration many parallel universes were either directly or indirectly involved in this parallel-Universe war, with one of the side-effects being "recoil" (which was simply the natural balancing of energy and materials into parallel universes). Thus from this meshing of ideas I developed a species that was invading a planet from a parallel universe. This also explained neatly how units from the 8th Faction "magically" appeared, as they were simply entering this dimension via a portal from a parallel universe, and the Fungal Pops were simply recoil from these events.
From here it was just a simple matter of manipulating graphics. There is a hidden graphics icon available in the game that I used to replace both the Fungal Towers and IoD's with. These then became land and sea cities respectively for the new Faction. The Sealurk accepted regular graphics, and so became a regular naval unit for this Faction. The same can be said for the Spore Launcher, as it became a rover unit. The MW had an alternate graphic available which I used as a new land unit.
The one final hurdle remaining was how to place them in the existing Alpha Centauri Universe (i.e. how to logically and realistically place them into the existing framework of Factions). I had previously thought of how to develop a SMAC sequel based on the idea that one of the Progenitor spacecraft that was "destroyed" in the battle in the intro movie to SMAX could possibly have crashlanded on a nearby moon/planet (much like the Unity wreckage crashlanded on Planet). Humans could recover this wreckage to include the ability to clone the hyperdrive as well as the spacecharts from the Progenitor vessel, thus giving the humans knowledge of both how to leave the Alpha Centauri solar system, as well as of where were the best places to go in this segment of the galaxy.
But where to go? Here again divergent ideas meshed to provide a cogent answer. After scanning the plethora of Progenitor mapped solar systems the Humans, after cloning the Progenitor's hyperdrive spaceship, would go to a solar system that was idylic to the humans, but where the Progs, based upon "sketchy" records, had failed to establish a colony. And here is where the "mesh" comes in: the Prog colony originally failed because the aliens from the alternate dimension were staging their invasion into our dimension via this planet! Thus the human colonists to this planet were walking into a trap from which they would once again have to struggle for the very existence of survival, and against a new and very formidable foe!
The actual scenario that I developed from these concepts can be found here .
And all of this from one simple experiment into if an NL could utilize the Marine Detachment capability or not!


D

[Corvi #6]

okay, ive tried about five times to join that stupid forum, and everytime i try to dl your file, it asks me to join again!!!!

could you pls mail it to me instead at corvi6 AT excite.com? thanks in advance

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Corvi #6
could you pls mail it to me instead at corvi6 AT excite.com? thanks in advance

OK I tried to send it to your account but I got the following message

reason: 550 Error: Your mail was returned due to the following: Attachment type not allowed. File "feb cgn c... "zip". Please try compressing your attachment or renaming the file extension if you wish to resend.)

I'll attach here for you.

[Darsnan]

Heres the game

[Corvi #6]

Cool, thanks Darsan. ill try it out right away!

Yeah, excite doent like zip files. you can just change the ending to .doc, tho and it never suspects! stupid thing!

[Corvi #6]

HEY! How come I'm a chieftan???? I liked being a settler, dammit!

[Maniac]

If you want a title change, you can PM Ming.

[Corvi #6]

I just tried it out... MAN, it's SO COOL! You da man, Darsan!

just a quick question: can this scenario be run in multiplayer? which factions are most 'balanced', do you think? Are you still working on this mod, or is this a one-off? If you are, I'd love to help anyway I can!

(Okay, so more than one question technically. So sue me)

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Corvi #6
I just tried it out... MAN, it's SO COOL! You da man, Darsan!

My handle is actually "Darsnan". FYI for the future.

Originally posted by Corvi #6
just a quick question: can this scenario be run in multiplayer?

According to mart7X5, why yes, it can. Essentially you'd have to create a subfolder off of your Saves folder in your SMAC subdirectory, drop the modified alphax.txt file into this subdirectory, and then place all of your game turns into this specific subdirectory as well.

Originally posted by Corvi #6
which factions are most 'balanced', do you think? Are you still working on this mod, or is this a one-off? If you are, I'd love to help anyway I can!

The Factions that are the most balanced are those that have no Planet rating. Factions that have a Plus Planet rating are easier, those that have a Negative Planet Rating are harder to play. I work on this mod from time to time, as the ideas come to me.
Anyways, the next time I start to work on this I'll see if your still interested. Regardless, thanx for the positive feedback!


D