I like that phrase. We violent agree that we agree
Or, we agree that we violently agree
I was referring more the to whole paradox games discussion anyway.
Also sorry for the small misunderstanding about my posts, I decided to break my post in two because it was in my opinion too long, but then I reworked it and it took time, and you were already writing an answer while only the first part was on the forums.
1) It is a lot of work. <snipped for readability>
Note that this is actually the issue that I'm most concerned about from a game play point of view. Every decision to give up an abstraction in favor of player control without providing a mechanism for the player to put the abstraction back in increases the burden of playing the game. This is also the reason I'm so keen for the civilian sector - it abstracts away details I find un-fun. (In fact, I have a vague recollection that I might have been the one that suggested it oh so many years ago.)
Yes, this is a hard thing to balance. The problem in my opinion is that different people like different things. In an ideal world, every player would be able to choose what to micromanage and what not to. For example, I might micro the trade goods ferrying while you might might delegate it to the AI, etc. Realistically, this is not a sane thing to ask Steve to code. The question then is where to draw the line where abstraction is concerned. This is ultimately up to Steve, although we can make suggestions. (For the record, I LOVE micro-ing exploration for example)
To reiterate, I would not be against a civilian sector even a bit more developed than right now, just there needs to be at least some level of realism (size of the shipping lines, shipping lines requiring shipyards) and the possibility to direct the civilian sector towards certain outcomes/forbid certain systems etc. Like it is now, the state has basically NO saying in whatever the civilians do, and this is very much unrealistic in any kind of government that is not a Megacorporation Oligopoly or an Anarchy.
In my Galactic Empire, any civilian who gets out of the accepted boundaries is repurposed into liquid fertilizer.
2) The thing that first struck me when I read your post was "aha! And the civilization is a hive mind!". One of the issues with Aurora is having to roleplay fog-of-war; even if you're trying to, it's very difficult. I remember the days right after Steve introduced AI for the alien races - it was like night and day in terms of the level of tension in the game. Beforehand, you knew exactly what was out there in the strange unexplored system; afterwards it was more like stumbling around in the dark being afraid of being eaten by a grue. I just realized what I think is a great comparison: before AI aliens Aurora was basically like a complicated jigsaw puzzle - the trick was putting together the pieces in the right way (although there was random tension when rolling up the aliens the moment you generated a new system). After AI aliens it was much more of an adventure. A tough nut to crack is "how to let the player experience the adventure of the scout ship captain that's probing a newly discovered alien system" while at the same time avoiding universal omnipotence. This is actually one of the reasons I like to handle scouting myself - I always send in two ships and leave one at the jump point to roleplay being able to get the scouting information out.
Guilty as charged, I often play Hive Mind in Stellaris
More seriously, I would love to have Fog of War. However yes, it's very hard to achieve in game. Once again, where do I draw the line? It would be beautiful if we could build "relay stations". Systems and planets would be "instantly interconnected" only if all the systems in between the two systems have a "relay station". Likewise, actually seeing the results of, for example, geo surveys would only happen once a geo survey ship returns to an "instantly interconnected" system. Once the ship does so, you actually get the geosurvey data, while before that you do not.
This however poses problems. What happens if systems are not "instantly interconnected"? Obviously as a player I must be able to give orders to the ships and planets, else the game cannot work. Another possible example, fleet A, which is in a certain system, has no idea that the nation is under attack in system B because the systems are not "instantly interconnected". But should Aurora forbid me to move fleet A to intercept the attack unless the systems are in instant communication? I feel that in these cases, roleplay is really the only possible solution.
If something like this relay stations and instant connection of systems is ever implemented, perhaps for research and production penalties could be used. Systems and installations out of the instant connection network would have penalties, to model inefficiencies due to information asymmetry. This could be however very tricky to balance, quite controversial, and probably not easy to code.
One could also play the same game with officers - not know that one of them has a high political rating, but instead have it look like a high command rating would be a more realistic abstraction, IMO. This would better emulate the officer's superiors mis-evaluating him or her for command. The problem with adding this mechanism comes back to the cognitive burden issue: the player doesn't have enough attention to pay to every officer in the chain of command (or even a few for a significant amount of time outside of combat) to be able to discover the true information about the officer's abilities.
This got me thinking, I had not considered fog of war for officers. In my opinion, it would be possible and not too onerous. Not for the player nor for the coding.
- A new officer/scientist/governor, fresh out of the academy, is subject to fog of war. Instead of the real, actual values you see something like evaluations.
A governor could show something like:
Rank 4 (this is still needed for assignments)
Mining likely medium expertise, wealth likely low, shipyards likely very low.
And so on, even for officers and scientists. There is a low chance (maybe 5%?) that every single evaluation is just plain wrong, or that a stat is missing, because the character is untested in the field.
- After a term of duty, the mistakes are removed, and for the stats the officer actually has you see intervals. In the above example, mining 20-25%, wealth 10-15%, shipyards 5-10%
- After the second term of duty, you see the exact numbers. I think something like this could work.
