Better Unrest Mechanics

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I never like it when games have an unrest mechanic that can be managed by garrisoning troops. Generally army men are terrible at policing the populace and using them in such a role often does more harm than good. They aren't trained in police work after all, they're soldiers trained to kill. I know in Aurora its said they're presence is not to police but to reassure the public they're protected from outside threats, but its functionally the same thing and it doesn't make sense when you haven't discovered any threats yet.

There are two things I'd like to see added:

1. More sources of unrest at the local and empire level
2. More ways to reduce unrest

Here are some ideas for local sources of unrest:

- High unemployment
- Large amount of non-imperial citizens relative to imperial citizens
- Large minority species populations (effect scales with the xenophobia of each species)
- Proximity to threats (only unrest military might alone can manage)
- Overcrowding
- Too many non-MP soldiers garrisoned relative to population (might be controversial...)

Sources of unrest felt throughout your whole empire could be:
- High casualties
- Loss of a planet (scales with population of planet)
- Discovery of alien life or precursor civilizations (depends on xenophobia)

Examples of ways to manage unrest:
- Naturally draw citizens into the police force via civilian jobs (similar to agricultural jobs and such) to keep unrest stable assuming no other outside factors.
- Build-up State Police Headquarters (your Empire's equivalent to the FBI or other top-level police agency) to augment existing unrest reduction (either by a base value or percentage, not sure which would be better). Also draws from civilians to staff and only accepts imperial species.
- Technology that increases effectiveness of police
- Military Police: Specialized infantry units that have MP training (similar to terrain or boarding training). Provides a base value of unrest reduction per unit. Less effective pound-for-pound than civilian police and State police, but can rapidly respond to problem areas if there is a sudden flare up anywhere in your empire.

Only Steve would know, but I hope these additions employ the existing mechanics of the game enough to be somewhat simple to implement.

Thoughts?

[nuclearslurpee]

I never like it when games have an unrest mechanic that can be managed by garrisoning troops. Generally army men are terrible at policing the populace and using them in such a role often does more harm than good. They aren't trained in police work after all, they're soldiers trained to kill. I know in Aurora its said they're presence is not to police but to reassure the public they're protected from outside threats, but its functionally the same thing and it doesn't make sense when you haven't discovered any threats yet.

There are two things I'd like to see added:

1. More sources of unrest at the local and empire level
2. More ways to reduce unrest

This would make sense. The reassurance idea doesn't match with how PPV works in Aurora nor with how unrest actually occurs, so effectively ground unit garrisons are already being used as police. While we can always say that INF+PWL are light military police I too would support more options.

Here are some ideas for local sources of unrest:

- High unemployment
- Large amount of non-imperial citizens relative to imperial citizens
- Large minority species populations (effect scales with the xenophobia of each species)
- Proximity to threats (only unrest military might alone can manage)
- Overcrowding
- Too many non-MP soldiers garrisoned relative to population (might be controversial...)

Sources of unrest felt throughout your whole empire could be:
- High casualties
- Loss of a planet (scales with population of planet)
- Discovery of alien life or precursor civilizations (depends on xenophobia)

I never like the suggestions of unemployment == unrest when they come up. On one hand, I don't think that workers which aren't employed at a built installation are necessarily unemployed, particularly if you're RPing a post-scarcity economy and the "unemployed" people may be finding other uses of their time to contribute to the betterment of society - the arts, for example, don't really fall under the agriculture+manufacturing+services umbrella of Aurora. On the other hand, mechanically unemployed workers are often necessary (and, incidentally, are present at the start of every game with default installations), for example you often need to build up a population on a future mining colony before Earth runs out of minerals so you can immediately ship a lot of mines very quickly and they will be worked right away.

Issues of citizenship and xenophobia make sense but I think we cannot have multiple species in a single colony, so this should be global rather than local. Human populations might be annoyed that Imperial resources are diverted to the filthy xenos even if they're several systems away.

Non-MP soldiers causing unrest I think would be a bit pointless as they should also suppress unrest just fine. This also would conflict with having a strong planetary defense which I think most populations will appreciate once the news of alien species in the galaxy gets out.

The rest seem reasonable in concept.

Examples of ways to manage unrest:
- Naturally draw citizens into the police force via civilian jobs (similar to agricultural jobs and such) to keep unrest stable assuming no other outside factors.
- Build-up State Police Headquarters (your Empire's equivalent to the FBI or other top-level police agency) to augment existing unrest reduction (either by a base value or percentage, not sure which would be better). Also draws from civilians to staff and only accepts imperial species.
- Technology that increases effectiveness of police
- Military Police: Specialized infantry units that have MP training (similar to terrain or boarding training). Provides a base value of unrest reduction per unit. Less effective pound-for-pound than civilian police and State police, but can rapidly respond to problem areas if there is a sudden flare up anywhere in your empire.

Only Steve would know, but I hope these additions employ the existing mechanics of the game enough to be somewhat simple to implement.

Thoughts?

I specifically like the idea of a police HQ installation. It should be more effective than ground troops, but of course provides no actual defense against aliens. I particularly like this as an alternative to ground units as it gives the choice of using factories, consuming valuable economic production, or using ground training centers and diverting valuable training capacity which could be used to build more offensive units for invading the NPR next door. These would also have a required population to work the HQ which could conflict with other manufacturing jobs in a population crunch situation.

I'm not sure technology is needed but if it was a small %boost to all unrest reduction I would be supportive, mainly what I don't want to see is a tech that changes the balance between police HQ and garrison units as the game goes on which would likely make the decision trivial at some point. Similarly I don't think specialized ground unit capabilities are needed, due to the way ground unit costs are calculated this would either be pointless or unbalanced.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

snip

Unemployment
To me unemployment is unemployment because if they were 'unemployed' by choice to do art or something they wouldn't automatically drop what they were doing and sign on to the first job available. I hear you about such a feature messing with fledgling colonies; I imagine that unrest will only kick in when you have 10 million people as it does currently. Generally speaking, I think keeping your pops occupied should be a minor concern for the player and hope that unemployment will factor in other things like colony migration.

I hope one day the game will go more in-depth into civilian policies so we can actually make our societies post-scarcity Star Trek utopias at a cost instead of just RPing them as such. There is so much potential in expanding the civilian/government side of the game.

Garrison Unrest
I think there should be a cost to creating a 'fortress world' with a disproportionate amount military units present. Its too easy to give every colony a large garrison of cheap infantry units whose sheer numbers combined with entrenchment are enough to at least stall the enemy. You should have to consciously scale up and expand the garrison in line with the planet's growth OR lay down the anti-unrest infrastructure to make a 'fortress world'. Otherwise civilians aren't going to like living under a society dominated by military concerns they didn't sign up for.

MP Ground Units
MP Ground Units would be very useful in situations where you have to occupy a recently conquered planet or respond to a sudden but temporary flare-up of unrest. Their strength is how easy it is to deploy them wherever you want and how they don't draw from the civilian population. They're like Construction Brigades for unrest. Civilian Police only cover the bare minimum unrest reduction that keeps things civil when all else is stable. State Police HQs are a long-term solution to keeping things stable when things get bad but are expensive and too large to really transport. MPs are for when smeg hits the fan and you need a rapid reaction for to stabilize things NOW without worrying about efficiency.

[Froggiest1982]

snip

Unemployment
To me unemployment is unemployment because if they were 'unemployed' by choice to do art or something they wouldn't automatically drop what they were doing and sign on to the first job available. I hear you about such a feature messing with fledgling colonies; I imagine that unrest will only kick in when you have 10 million people as it does currently. Generally speaking, I think keeping your pops occupied should be a minor concern for the player and hope that unemployment will factor in other things like colony migration.

I hope one day the game will go more in-depth into civilian policies so we can actually make our societies post-scarcity Star Trek utopias at a cost instead of just RPing them as such. There is so much potential in expanding the civilian/government side of the game.

Considering the current mechanics I would like unemployment to cost wealth in the form of subsidies that the government will have to spend to maintain such people and families.

I know that they already cost wealth as they do not produce wealth, but I still think that wealth is something that later in the game you don't even consider anymore because the chances that you are in red are quite low.

Eventually, as at beginning population is scarce you will not be affected by heavy wealth expenditures while later when the population is largely abundant you will have the wealth penalty.

Just a thought.

[nuclearslurpee]

Unemployment
To me unemployment is unemployment because if they were 'unemployed' by choice to do art or something they wouldn't automatically drop what they were doing and sign on to the first job available.

I'm not sure I buy that, frankly, I think at the level of abstraction Aurora works at it's fairly reasonable to say exactly this. By the same token, I can drop a newly-constructed mine on a planet surface and it will instantly fill all 50,000 job postings in a nanosecond. I can even drop a mine on a planet, load up a financial center, and all those Wall Street accountants will instantly transform into West Virginia coal duranium miners. The abstraction of the Aurora job market is I think a working assumption here.

I hear you about such a feature messing with fledgling colonies; I imagine that unrest will only kick in when you have 10 million people as it does currently. Generally speaking, I think keeping your pops occupied should be a minor concern for the player and hope that unemployment will factor in other things like colony migration.

I do also want to note again that the start of every game, unless you customize the number of installations, will feature several millions of "unemployed". To me as a player, this is an indication that some amount of unemployed population is expected and a "good idea" - a fact which, incidentally, matches with real-world economics as a certain unemployment percentage is necessary for a healthy economy (in a developed country with unemployment payments at least) as it correlates to overall mobility of skilled workers.

All to say, I really don't like "unemployment == unrest" suggestions as it only constrains player agency both mechanically and in RP terms, in my mind.

Not-Edit: @froggiest's suggestion of a wealth cost makes a lot more sense, I actually like this a lot as it represents an investment into sustaining small colonies which are not economically viable as well as social programs in developed populations. Perhaps with a small +% boost in starting financial centers for early game balance, otherwise a great idea.

Garrison Unrest
I think there should be a cost to creating a 'fortress world' with a disproportionate amount military units present. Its too easy to give every colony a large garrison of cheap infantry units whose sheer numbers combined with entrenchment are enough to at least stall the enemy. You should have to consciously scale up and expand the garrison in line with the planet's growth OR lay down the anti-unrest infrastructure to make a 'fortress world'. Otherwise civilians aren't going to like living under a society dominated by military concerns they didn't sign up for.

Why not? Granted, many people have ideological issues with military presence and buildup, but having a military presence also requires a population to support it - not necessarily in terms of raw production (which would be forge worlds, to continue the RP analogy) but logistically - food, housing, facilities for shore leave... if a population is not ideologically opposed to a military presence which is appropriately managed, the economic benefits are arguably net-positive for that population.

Obviously your RP might differ, but that's rather my point - I'm not a huge fan of a mechanic that restricts RP, frankly. Garrison spam already has significant costs in not only GU maintenance but also opportunity cost as you really want to dedicate most of your GU production to offensive units as the army sizes required to conquer an enemy race are quite large.

MP Ground Units
MP Ground Units would be very useful in situations where you have to occupy a recently conquered planet or respond to a sudden but temporary flare-up of unrest. Their strength is how easy it is to deploy them wherever you want and how they don't draw from the civilian population. They're like Construction Brigades for unrest. Civilian Police only cover the bare minimum unrest reduction that keeps things civil when all else is stable. State Police HQs are a long-term solution to keeping things stable when things get bad but are expensive and too large to really transport. MPs are for when smeg hits the fan and you need a rapid reaction for to stabilize things NOW without worrying about efficiency.

I should clarify that I'm not as much opposed to the principle of the unit, rather how it fits with the existing units plus the suggested police HQ installation. If we have a balance between PWL infantry and police HQ installations which is in large part based on relative costs, how does a new MP capability fit in? Either it multiplies garrison efficiency proportionally to cost, in which case it's basically pointless, or it does not in which case MP capability is either pointless or strictly superior to "plain" INF+PWL. Given that INF+PWL are already the garrison/MP unit of choice, depending on how you RP it, I don't see why we need a redundant specialized unit.

[Garfunkel]

Just to highlight an issue with the idea that populations are automatically against military units or vice versa, is that we currently have both issues existing.

Example 1 - Japan+Okinawa
-Despite the military protection and economic stimulus that US bases and troops bring, most Japanese people and especially Okinawans would rather see them go.

Example 2 - South-Korea
-Koreans are largely in favour of US troops to give additional safety against invasion from North but there is a loud minority that protests American presence but hardly anyone protests the Korean military itself.

Example 3 - Germany
-The vast majority of Germans have been happy to see military bases being closed and NATO troops move elsewhere as well as the ending of national service and diminishing size of the Bundeswehr.

Example 4 - Finland
-Having military bases and exercise areas almost everywhere in the country and having to see soldiers on leave every weekend, and something like 95% of Finns still love and trust their armed forces. Probably because of national service so soldiers are not seen as 'a breed apart' from civilians.

But what's my point? Thanks for asking, it is that if such mechanics are added, they need to be accompanied by some sort of political mechanism, even if it's just taking into consideration the militancy of a race and/or galactic situation, so that presence of military is not automatically only negative or automatically only positive.

It would be fantastic to get more sociological, political, and economical options in the game, don't get me wrong!

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I've never lived close to a military base so I might be talking out of my ass, but I assume that in a community where the the military is disproportionally represented military issues start to have priority over the civilians living there.

So more and more land is cordoned off for military use, civilian movement is restricted due to military activities, the social 'divide' that exists between soldiers and civilians starts to become more prominent, and military commanders will generally have more of a say over things that effect everyone compared to civilian admins. I just assume that living in an area where military concerns are more prominent would be somewhat hard to accept for a civilian. A fortress isn't exactly comfortable.

And I honestly do believe in the garrison penalty as a balancing tool to encourage an organic buildup of military forces as a planet grows or paying a price in unrest and enforcement.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I should clarify that I'm not as much opposed to the principle of the unit, rather how it fits with the existing units plus the suggested police HQ installation. If we have a balance between PWL infantry and police HQ installations which is in large part based on relative costs, how does a new MP capability fit in? Either it multiplies garrison efficiency proportionally to cost, in which case it's basically pointless, or it does not in which case MP capability is either pointless or strictly superior to "plain" INF+PWL. Given that INF+PWL are already the garrison/MP unit of choice, depending on how you RP it, I don't see why we need a redundant specialized unit.

Perhaps you are right here. I originally envisioned MP training to take such a long time that it'd be inefficient to train all garrison units as such, but that might not matter so much as garrisons aren't usually a 'need this now' sort of deal. I'd personally restrain myself from making every garrison unit an MP just for RP, but you can't expect everyone to have such restraint.

An alternative would be to make MP capabilities equipment instead (riot gear for instance) with combat capabilities matching Light Personal Weapons but costing and perhaps weighing as much as Improved Personal Weapons. That way MPs are not as effective in combat and cannot totally replace normal, non-MP guardsmen. 

[Dawa1147]

RE whether the garrison should/could generate unrest, this might be solved via a mix of the militarism and xenophobia attributes, since they could reflect both the acceptance (or desire) of large militaries themselves, and the desire of PPV/system defense forces