First, the governor with a different faction than the colony they are on will have the chances of them being ousted "increase" as the political stability increases. Shouldn't a world with no stability be harder to control than a world without stability? This is compounded when the next line states that the stability will lower with a leader of a different faction. And then below 50% stability, the faction will change until the capital faction is randomly selected. This means that having fewer troops to enforce order will have an overall positive effect of converting a hostile faction.
I probably wrote the equation wrong...whoops. The idea is that a less stable colony is harder to control. that equation is too weirdly specific anyway. This was supposed to be a skeleton system...I guess my main point I wanted to highlight is that this would be easy to do with 2 variables that already exist (stability and reliability, both of which I sorta wish did more anyway).
Second, having different faction leaders running different worlds has been done in history successfully, and not all factions are diametrically opposed to each other.
Yeah, that is true. This is another place where I thought I'd sacrifice "realism" for simplicity. Please note that it's totally possible to have different worlds of different factional affiliation, as long as you keep SOME military there. Also, opposing factions need not be diametrically opposed, simply groups that don't work in concert. A more robust system could randomly generate degrees of separation, but my rule #1 was that I wanted to make something that would work with a large number of campaigns players would dream up themselves, so these factions were sorta deliberately bland (because not every campaign is going to have a secessionist group, or a mutant rights group, or a socialist group, or a monarchist group, ect)
Third, paying a corporation does not guarantee loyalty, much like bribing people does not guarantee theirs.
Yeah it doesn't here either. The "factional affiliation" of a corporation (and a planet, and a politician) represents the goals they are currently superficially serving in the broadest possible sense, so players can imagine what the shift in loyalty "actually means". Subsidizing the corporation has a chance of making them join up with you. See below for more of what I'm getting at.Also remember that subsidy provides a chance of changing, it doesn't guarantee it. Maybe loyalty isn't permanent either
Fourth, an entire PLANET does not change it's faction on a whim, and when the planet's stability is low, it does not all change and point in the same direction.
This simplified system was implemented to accommodate multiple political systems, to the reader's imagination. Obviously a 2-billion-man planet won't just change its factional affiliation overnight, and more than Wisconsin suddenly become a red state and then suddenly a blue state during the 2012 election cycle (despite the fact that the "reds" clearly had power in the first half of the year, and the "blues" in the second)...saying a planet's "faction" has gone from liquifactionist to imperialist or whatever can mean whatever the player wants it to mean: popular perception has shifted because of a particularly brutal crackdown, the high majordomo council has cast a vote officially changing their affiliation, whatever.
Factional affiliation changing wildly during periods of low stability does not necessarily mean everyone goes to bed one night as a Dominionist and wakes up the next morning as an emblamist...it just means the emblamists sieze critical reigns of power overnight, or win a significant election, or bribe all the right people, or otherwise become the dominant player on what is likely a very fractious field...but probably not for very long.
The easiest way would be to make a small part of the world secede instead of the entire world, and then have the governor flee, be killed or get captured and held by the enemy faction as a POW.
See but I'm afraid this is too complicated. One thing I like about Aurora is that the game "keeps on working" even if you ignore some mechanics that you might not be terribly interested in (IE diplomacy). This would be a massively disruptive mechanic, particularly if the ceding forces do become like, NPRs or something. I feel like this would be really really annoying rather than something that is fun to work around.