Hello everyone,
Unlike a lot of people on this forum my expertise isn't in STEM, but the humanities. Specifically I'm very interested in politics and political intrigue. Aurora is great because it leaves so much up to the imagination of the player, such that niche systems simulating things like elections and such aren't necessary but occasionally I wish there was some kind of factional political system.
The aim here is to create a system that "plays well" with current game mechanics, and that is important, but not so critical that it interferes with people that don't care about it. It should also be simple. It should also accommodate multiple playstyles and settings (so specific ideas like "there will be an election every 4 years" is not a good suggestion, because not everyone's playing in a democracy) Here are my proposed changes:
Military Leaders can become civilian leaders: Granted, this happens a lot less in "real life" than it used to, but there should be a way for a distinguished space hero to become a politician, or a rogue admiral to tyrannically seize civil power. Changing a military leader into a civilian one permanently deletes all his military-specific bonuses, and reduces his civilian-specific bonuses (mining ect) by 25%. Upon becoming a civilian leader, the military leader is randomly assigned a faction.
The faction mechanic: civilian leaders are generated with a "faction" as part of their identity. So are colonies with over 1/5/10 million people (or whatever) and corporations. Factions have no specific mechanics associated with them and are completely identical in everything except name. Names are nonspecific and allude to factions in si-fi novels and history (avantist, federalist, sedition, chaotic, ect). The name list should deliberately avoid grandiose names that might destabilize the flavor of certain campaigns ("Imperialist" is okay, "Galactic empire of Albarth" is not). There should probably be no more than 20. Civilian governors are generated with the faction of whatever colony they are generated on. Colonies are generated with the faction of their capital colony, but as you'll soon see, these can change.
Opposing factions: factions that do not match are "opposing"
- governors lose half their bonuses when governing worlds of a different faction
- governors of a different faction than the world they govern have a chance of being "deposed" every 5 day increment, equal to %(political stability)/2+2*(governor's political reliability bonus). Being deposed permanently retires the governor (can't think of a way to do anything more realistic simply)
- worlds of a different faction than your capitol lose a small amount of political stability every 5 day increment (not as much as an unprotected world would)
- civilian shipping lines make less money off routine trades with worlds of a different faction
- civilian shipping lines will not pick up or deliver installations to worlds of a different faction
Changing a faction
- Colonies with less than 50% political stability have a small chance of changing to a random new faction every 5 day increment.
- Colonies of a different faction than a governor have a chance of changing to the governor's faction every year, equal to the governor's political reliability bonus.
- Corporations have a chance of changing to the faction of the capital colony every time they are subsidized.
- civilian leaders have a small chance of changing factions randomly.
SM mode
Factions should work like character descriptions currently do, it should be possible to change the faction of a character or world.
Rather critically, it should be possible to punch in new factions by hand.
Advantages of this system:
- the game still works if you completely ignore it
- plays well with almost any science fiction setting.
- easy to understand and plan around, doesn't overwhelm the strategic considerations that will be more fun for most players (IE which fleets go where and look like what)
- adds a new element of randomness to the game that breaks up the relative monotony of aurora. New things to do and respond to, and not necessarily with force
- makes both political reliability and political stability matter a bit more.
disadvantages of this system:
- somewhat abstract, a necessary sacrifice for making a system that plays equally well in the "British empire in space campaign", "star trek ripoff campaign", and "Theodidactus' west wing in space campaign"
- somewhat unrealistic, deposed governors are erased from existence, this was done to make something that, given my knowledge of databases, would be easy to actually implement.
things that are both an advantage and a disadvantage
- factions can oscillate wildly if the political stability is low and the governor's political reliability is high. This is realistic and reflects exactly the sort of contentious political climate that you see in countries with low political stability.