The Aurigan Coalition and Taurian Concordat are both constitutional monarchies and the Magistrix is an elected position (though one that essentially functions as a constitutional monarch. The magistracy is fighting its inherent sexism, too). The Coalition is closer to a dictatorship than its neighbours are, but Arano came to power on a platform championing the rights of her citizens and was contrasted by an outright fascist dictatorship. Your people have political views, sure, but they also believe in nuance.
That said, depending on what you actually do, they may be restless but ultimately willing to wait and see.
They are that in name only. The Protector hold almost unlimited power in the TC and so does the Magistrix whole while officially a elected position is always passed to the designated Heir of the current leader. They still also the leader of their nation control almost every major decision that is taken as well. And yeah Arano is wanting to protect her people (same as we would demand of whoever we help on Caliban) but that doesn't change the fact that the government structure didn't change between the Directorate and the new Coalition with her being in control and being the supreme commander of the whole military as well. The Houses in the Reach had those placed under the Coalition command. It is good that our people understand nuance since that means they aren't naive.
Okay, it would actually be kind of useful to get other people's opinions on this as you'll probably see flaws I missed or areas that could be folded in. Does this shit work for you as a way of representing internal (and, to a degree, external) politics? Annoyingly, I only just became aware of Greg Stolze's REIGNS, so I can't steal from it wholesale even though I'm totally ripping off its mechanics for companies next time I do a civ quest.
Influence
Influence is used to convince your people of things (E.G annexing a star system, colonizing a planet without internet, working longer shifts at the dockyards to build more warships this year than last, declaring war on someone, etc), and deal with external powers (E.G continuous trade deals, defensive pacts, etc).
You gain 3 influence base per turn.
You can gain additional influence by courting internal factions. E.G Interstellar Aid to space Afghanistan makes the Progressives happy and will result in gaining extra influence per turn if they like you enough. Factions may occasionally do stuff on their own like setup wildcat colonies. Punishing them will make them mad while supporting them will make them happy.
Influence costs can change based on circumstances.
Influence caps at 100 for now.
Goals
Every 5 years the players pick 2 goals and are assigned 2 goals from their population (1 from each of the top 2 most popular factions) to represent the objectives of the new government and the mood of the public. These goals can be super specific (I.E build 2 squadrons of warships) or super broad (promote internal growth). Achieving goals grants influence depending on what is done as well as whatever effect the goal would have (E.G more warships means fewer pirates, and influence for making people feel safe).
Failure to achieve goals results in some kind of penalty. This can be as simple as a minor loss in trade income to outright loss of stability. If you're going to fail a goal, you can spend an AP the turn before to minimise its penalty, though it won't reduce it to 0.
Larger goals get larger rewards and larger penalties
Goal completion is evaluated before assigning new goals. A good faith effort to complete a goal may result in citizens deciding you did alright. I.E saying "No child will go hungry in the Republic" but only making it so that poverty is reduced by 30% is pretty fucking good and people will see that and decide you get some benefit.
Annexing systems
You can annex systems after a war or after they decide they like you. Congrats. More importantly, annexing systems costs influence to achieve as you need to convince your people that it's a good idea and nations outside your own that you should have it.
Certain goals and costs can lower the cost.
I.E if your goal is to contain the Federated Combine, an expansionist empire lead by Victor Davion-Kurita, and you come to the aid of your ally, the Taurian Concordat, then your people will likely be more open to annexing systems due to your goal and the Concordat will be okay with you annexing more systems due to you coming to their aid.
Additionally, annexing planets may impact your stability. Forceful annexation is going to be a lot more expensive than a peaceful one, though the exact costs depend on the circumstances. Unlike influence, stability loss is done in one chunk rather than on a per planet basis and the cost is not visible beforehand.
Revision 2: Annexation Cost
The influence cost of annexing a system is done on a case by case basis to account for all the variety that can occur. Annexing a swath of uninhabited systems after a war may cost nothing, while annexing a single well-developed Lyran planet may cost 30 influence.
Annexing influence costs:
The cost of annexing a system is determined by the highest value of its Socio-Industrial Level ranking. Annexing non-connected territory costs 5x as much as annexing connected territory to represent it being a galaxy-brain move.
The cost of annexing a system is determined by the highest value of its Socio-Industrial Level ranking. Annexing non-connected territory costs 5x as much as annexing connected territory to represent it being a galaxy-brain move.
Under this list, the willing annexation of a developped nation would cost far more influence than just doing a space colonialism and bullying some less developped worlds. With the politics of the Helgans, you'd expect it to be the other way round.
You'd also expect worlds that are heavily dependant on outside aid to cost more influence than more self sufficient worlds, because significant amounts of resources will need to be sacrificed to help them.
Under this list, the willing annexation of a developped nation would cost far more influence than just doing a space colonialism and bullying some less developped worlds. With the politics of the Helgans, you'd expect it to be the other way round.
You'd also expect worlds that are heavily dependant on outside aid to cost more influence than more self sufficient worlds, because significant amounts of resources will need to be sacrificed to help them.
You want to take into account the value of high population in already well developed world's. The kind of population that we can't easily grow to those levels in a short period of time.
Under this list, the willing annexation of a developped nation would cost far more influence than just doing a space colonialism and bullying some less developped worlds. With the politics of the Helgans, you'd expect it to be the other way round.
Selling people on annexing the capital of the Capellan Confederation is a lot easier if you border the planet and have ships nearby than if it's 100-lightyears from the nearest Republic world and surrounded on all sides by the Federated Combine. Also, it's game balance and keeps the borders neat.
More dependant systems are also worth less to other nations so it's easier to argue you should own them, though obviously if you grab 50 F level agricultural planets you're punching yourself in the face in a number of ways.
I don't have the exact number in my head, but Goals are going to award sums of influence among other things. Taking the food security example further, depending on how bad the problem is, you may gain 25 influence or more the moment you achieve it because you rendered starvation a non-issue for your people.
Annexing influence costs:
The cost of annexing a system is determined by the highest value of its Socio-Industrial Level ranking. Annexing non-connected territory costs 5x as much as annexing connected territory to represent it being a galaxy-brain move.
Not sure this works out too well. Since certain levels on the scale are very different outcome. A planet with A food levels but low everything else shouldn't cost the same as a A level in output factory/material dependence. Especially since those levels are also scaled to the population size of the planet. Only technology level and Industry level should matter as those are the two that aren't scaled to population and actually represent how valuable a planet is. A high level of TECHNOLOGICAL SOPHISTICATION and INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT means they can create and develop a higher level of technology and items. It is why not a single planet in the Aurgian Coalition is above a C in either of those levels.
I mean, I could just lower the individual costs and sum them up per system, or just go by the mode. It wouldn't get rid of the issue of bullying smaller systems, but if you have a majority of your pop in the progressives you'll make them incredibly mad and impact your stability/influence.
Edit: If we went by the mode and rounded up, we'd end up with the following
Mechdur -- Mode of B -- cost 8
Panzyr -- Mode of C -- cost 5
New Avalon -- Mode of A -- cost 13
Misery - Mode of D -- cost 3
Not every planet has an index, sure, but I can't see a much neater way without devolving to flat costs or throwing it all up in the air.
Huh, I thought it was pretty clear in the description of the states (though maybe I hid it a little too well). The Khan is an autocrat who has an advisory council she doesn't necessarily have to listen to but often does due to politics, while the Prospero Pact are a collection of city-states with a franchise limited to perhaps 30% of their population at most (landowning, male, citizen). Which one is better depends on your point of view, I suppose, but both have adapted to the harsh conditions of their planet for better or worse.
Neither one is acceptable as a republic member state.
It would be incredibly naive to assume we can simply integrate a polity like that without it causing major problems down the line. Say, the Khan plays ball, and becomes the local ruler of the "Khan Protectorate", or whatever, and from now on the people of the Khan Protectorate get to to vote for a representative to send to the Republic parliament. What if the Khan then decides the local representative really ought to champion her policies in parliament? What could an unchecked autocrat with absolute power over local governing structures possibly do to influence the election process or put pressure on local political parties, or directly influence the representative's personal fortunes?
For that matter, what happens when the Khan's people look at the rest of the Republic and ask why they don't have the same rights and civil liberties as other citizens? What happens when the various autocrats we allow into our republic start feuding with each other, or worse, forming coalitions?
Allowing non-democratic member states into the Republic is a recipe to becoming the Holy Roman Empire in space. Or as it's known in the Battletech universe, the Free Worlds League.
I mean, I don't live in Queensland, but if the Premier there had supreme power, I'd be rather concerned. Heck, battalions worth of people volunteered to fight against the Directorate.
Indeed. Those systems of government just aren't compatible. We can peacefully co-exist, we can have trade or even alliance if the circumstances are right, but that's about it.
For a world like New Avalon, this strikes me as entirely too low a cost. I don't know the exact population figures of those planets, but I'm pretty sure in the case of New Avalon it would be enough to make the Helghan a modestly-sized minority in their own republic. I don't see that working, even discounting all other factors.
Oh, and before I forget:
[X] Plan Research, Construction and Energy Shields
There are four. You can go to the top right and bring up the tally to see which are available.
As for the rest of your post we have gone over why that is not fully the case and just why your scenario would not work out for the Khan. Our people would quickly make up the majority on that planet and more importantly to get our help the Khan and anyone else would be forced to accept our standards and rights for their people. So the people would not be anymore deprived than anyone else in the Republic. The same thing that is set up in the USA the Federal Government has a set of laws and rights that no matter what the states try cannot be broken or subverted. The Khan would be required to maintain that or be taken out. Our people will not care so long as the rights are protected.
No, it's a math term that no one ever uses except for statisticians and mathematicians. It means the most common value in a set of values (E.G the mode of the set 1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 is 1). I use it so little I got it confused with the mean which is the average of all the values.
by rounding up I meant "if you have multiple modes (a thing you can have) go for whichever is highest"
Neither one is acceptable as a republic member state.
It would be incredibly naive to assume we can simply integrate a polity like that without it causing major problems down the line. Say, the Khan plays ball, and becomes the local ruler of the "Khan Protectorate", or whatever, and from now on the people of the Khan Protectorate get to to vote for a representative to send to the Republic parliament. What if the Khan then decides the local representative really ought to champion her policies in parliament? What could an unchecked autocrat with absolute power over local governing structures possibly do to influence the election process or put pressure on local political parties, or directly influence the representative's personal fortunes?
For that matter, what happens when the Khan's people look at the rest of the Republic and ask why they don't have the same rights and civil liberties as other citizens? What happens when the various autocrats we allow into our republic start feuding with each other, or worse, forming coalitions?
Allowing non-democratic member states into the Republic is a recipe to becoming the Holy Roman Empire in space. Or as it's known in the Battletech universe, the Free Worlds League.
Indeed. Those systems of government just aren't compatible. We can peacefully co-exist, we can have trade or even alliance if the circumstances are right, but that's about it.
For a world like New Avalon, this strikes me as entirely too low a cost. I don't know the exact population figures of those planets, but I'm pretty sure in the case of New Avalon it would be enough to make the Helghan a modestly-sized minority in their own republic. I don't see that working, even discounting all other factors.
Oh, and before I forget:
[X] Plan Research, Construction and Energy Shields
Yeah, it's definitely an issue. The problem is that there's so many god damn solar systems in Battletech so crappy ones need to be cheap but certain ones need to be expensive.
No, it's a math term that no one ever uses except for statisticians and mathematicians. It means the most common value in a set of values (E.G the mode of the set 1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 is 1). I use it so little I got it confused with the mean which is the average of all the values.
by rounding up I meant "if you have multiple modes (a thing you can have) go for whichever is highest"
Something I've been considering, how likely do you think it is that the three states directly north of us might decide to expand a little bit, in the face of the new HPG being set up in Portland? We know that a lot of those planets north of us used to be incorporated, and Comstar has indicated it's planning to focus on reconnecting the wider communication network. I wonder if more secure lines of communication will make them decide that a little bit of expansion is viable.
Yeah, it's definitely an issue. The problem is that there's so many god damn solar systems in Battletech so crappy ones need to be cheap but certain ones need to be expensive.
Perhaps a few other factors should be taken into account as well?
How distant is the system in question from Republic core space?
How large is its population compared to the Republic's population? For the purpose of this comparison, only count populations that have been part of the Republic for at least one generation or more as Republic population.
Do any other interstellar polities make a claim to the system in question, or is ours uncontested?
How similar is the system culturally?
Do they speak the same language?
What's the current political climate in the Republic when it comes to expansion by annexation?
Etc, etc, etc... to be honest, I think it might be better if the influence for annexing a planet cost were to be determined at the GM's discretion on a case by case basis.
Something I've been considering, how likely do you think it is that the three states directly north of us might decide to expand a little bit, in the face of the new HPG being set up in Portland? We know that a lot of those planets north of us used to be incorporated, and Comstar has indicated it's planning to focus on reconnecting the wider communication network. I wonder if more secure lines of communication will make them decide that a little bit of expansion is viable.
I wouldn't bet on it, but it might happen. If it does, it's probably a good thing for us.
I feel that our first mid- to long-term priority when it comes to interstellar diplomacy should be to broker a defensive alliance between all the major periphery states in this area of space, meaning the Taurian Concordant, Canopian Magistracy, Aurigan Coalition, and of course our own Republic.
Perhaps a few other factors should be taken into account as well?
How distant is the system in question from Republic core space?
How large is its population compared to the Republic's population? For the purpose of this comparison, only count populations that have been part of the Republic for at least one generation or more as Republic population.
Do any other interstellar polities make a claim to the system in question, or is ours uncontested?
How similar is the system culturally?
Do they speak the same language?
What's the current political climate in the Republic when it comes to expansion by annexation?
Etc, etc, etc... to be honest, I think it might be better if the influence for annexing a planet cost were to be determined at the GM's discretion on a case by case basis.
Something I've been considering, how likely do you think it is that the three states directly north of us might decide to expand a little bit, in the face of the new HPG being set up in Portland? We know that a lot of those planets north of us used to be incorporated, and Comstar has indicated it's planning to focus on reconnecting the wider communication network. I wonder if more secure lines of communication will make them decide that a little bit of expansion is viable.
The planets in the frontier have all mostly been independent. Only the planets of the Aurigan Reach are ones that were part of a greater whole and that was between the CC and TC. The rest are just planets that were more or less always as they are right now. As for expansion, the TC is already in the middle of several colonization efforts so won't do much. The AC is busy getting things fixed up and internal restructuring to expand our way. The MoC doesn't really care to expand like that and won't try anything until the war against the CC. As for the Great Houses none of them but the CC would care to expand into the Periphery and the CC is way too weak and exposed to make a move.
Every 5 years the players pick 2 goals and are assigned 2 goals from their population (1 from each of the top 2 most popular factions) to represent the objectives of the new government and the mood of the public. These goals can be super specific (I.E build 2 squadrons of warships) or super broad (promote internal growth). Achieving goals grants influence depending on what is done as well as whatever effect the goal would have (E.G more warships means fewer pirates, and influence for making people feel safe).
Failure to achieve goals results in some kind of penalty. This can be as simple as a minor loss in trade income to outright loss of stability. If you're going to fail a goal, you can spend an AP the turn before to minimise its penalty, though it won't reduce it to 0.
Larger goals get larger rewards and larger penalties
Goal completion is evaluated before assigning new goals. A good faith effort to complete a goal may result in citizens deciding you did alright. I.E saying "No child will go hungry in the Republic" but only making it so that poverty is reduced by 30% is pretty fucking good and people will see that and decide you get some benefit.
How will the leading factions change because if it is like it was before every action we take will only apply to make the main faction stronger and nothing we did will help anyone else.
The planets in the frontier have all mostly been independent. Only the planets of the Aurigan Reach are ones that were part of a greater whole and that was between the CC and TC.
When you say the Aurigan Reach, do you mean the entire area of space between the Magistracy and Concordat, or do you simply mean the area that is, or was, part of the Aurigan Coalition?
Because there are quite a few worlds that were never part of the Coalition, but were, in fact, controlled by either the Magistracy of Concordat at some point. Rockwellawan comes to mind, for example. IRRC Magistracy and Concordant were even involved in at least one border conflict with each other.
How will the leading factions change because if it is like it was before every action we take will only apply to make the main faction stronger and nothing we did will help anyone else.
I reckon spending influence to grow faction support would work. If not, I can steal from Stellaris some more and just list out things each faction likes and when you do them they gain support as people shift to join the winning team.
I reckon spending influence to grow faction support would work. If not, I can steal from Stellaris some more and just list out things each faction likes and when you do them they gain support as people shift to join the winning team.
The second option is better because we wouldn't be inclined to spend influence points on things like that when they are better served in making larger actions.
When you say the Aurigan Reach, do you mean the entire area of space between the Magistracy and Concordat, or do you simply mean the area that is, or was, part of the Aurigan Coalition?
Because there are quite a few worlds that were never part of the Coalition, but were, in fact, controlled by either the Magistracy of Concordat at some point. Rockwellawan comes to mind, for example. IRRC Magistracy and Concordant were even involved in at least one border conflict with each other.
And what are you talking about that world was only a TC world not a MoC. The Battletech game took a lot of liberties with most of these worlds. And the war was over four worlds Detroit, Herotitus, Portland and Spencer which were either independent worlds that the TC wanted to claim or they already belonged to the TC. Spencer is the only one that might have been a MoC world but it is only acknowledged as independent or as a part of the Fronc Reach.
