Politician Archive
Thread: Politician Top-Five for official submission:
Greetings fellow Politicians!
I am very pleased to find this list, and agree with everything that Bajeezus included. Most everything was addressed in the list, except Delegation.
After all, what must a Politician do in order to effectively govern a large city? Communicate and Delegate. The "militia" does not provide even the same level of delegation that any Guild Leader enjoys. We need a set of permissions which can be granted on a case-by-case basis, at the very least as sophisticated as that available to Player Associations. My city has MANY resident PA's and they must wonder why the more we grow, the more we plummet into chaos.
Not being able to remove militia members (perhaps unless they are in the room with you, by the city terminal) has made it impossible to restructure the guild following the removal of /citywarn. When it became clear that it was an unrealistic goal to attempt to maintain law and order in a game that favors faction conflict (we are a decidedly Neutral Commercial city), many of the militia became concerned that they might end up fighting the battles of the various resident factioned guilds in the course of their police duties.
Now, back to Communication. I am very much in favor of the suggestions already on the list for this category, but I noticed that nobody seems to have a good answer regarding the Trainer Dilemma. We get only 15 (while cities like Coronet somehow manage 2 or more of each!). One of the biggest problems we now must somehow overcome is the dismal state of trainer coverage on our planet, let alone in our city. I feel the list overlooks a persistent planetary channel which only city mayors can access. The Planetary Council idea may include this, but the need for effective communication does not end there.
We are in serious need of a simple means of disseminating information, both to our citizens and to our city's patrons and visitors. Especially in the case of commercial cities is this vital.
One method for solving this problem might involve building some radial menu functionality into architect-crafted Data Terminals. Make them configurable by the owners with basic functions, such as a simple database which could list trainers and locations, or several data fields. Customizable as multi-purpose community terminals. Public or private flag could be set, or just give the thing an admin list if you have data contributors and wish to keep management of the data terminal private but let the public use it to obtain local information.
Another method is the simple PRINTING PRESS. Give us paper (parchment?), let us write decent-sized news or articles or information of any kind (city newsletter, secret plans, etc), and give us a device to duplicate the finished paper product....with words on it! I don't mean to be crass about this, but if you've tried working around SOE's neglect of Politician's communication and delegation skills by setting up external forums, then you probably know the pain of trying to drag 130 players out of their immersive 3D world to slog through some forums. You know how small the actual ratio of players who post on the forums is. You know how much smaller still the active poster to passive browser ratio is in these forums.
Still on Communications, I'd like to know what you mean by a City MOTD. Would this message of the day be in email form to citizens only? Or would it be something everyone sees when they enter the city limits? Visible to visitors?
Clearly the Mayor needs to be able to use a simple MAIL ALL CITIZENS button. Using the Treasury Withdrawal once per day to send out a fortune-cookie-sized blurb is certainly raising more questions than it's answering. But there is a definite need for Mayors to have the ability to disseminate information to both Citizens and Visitors alike. I would keep both functions separate, but both are certainly needed.
Between having to micromanage my city by word-of-mouth, not being able to remove miltia or delegate authority except by a single catch-all militia appointment (which cannot be revoked once grainted in most cases), and having no way to get information to anyone about anything, and finally the crippling lag on Dantooine driving my most prominent merchants and citizens and visitors away, I'd say Politician is in fine shape. If your sarcasm detector is billowing smoke, there is a reason.
Thanks for your good work and everyone's input on this topic.
Arsheba Silmaril
Master Politician
Mayor of Sedoo
Dantooine, Flurry
#5 Resignation
The fact that default votes go to the incumbent makes it very difficult to arrange for a friendly succession from one mayor to the next. As long as there is at least one candidate in addition to yourself, you should always be allowed to remove your name from an election at the voting terminal.
Why not just put all candidates back to 0 if there is a challenger to the incumbent? This would actually make the "politician" be a politician. I recently ran for election against the incumbent, and let me tell you it was difficult, i campaigned vigourously and the incumbent did not because he knoew he would keep the votes form folks that didnt make it to the polls.
So, if the votes would go to 0 for each candidate when there is more than one, it would be a real election!
otherwise the wya it is set right now, as far as elections go, i thjink it is fine that the incumbent gets all the votes if he is unapposed.
Because if you set all candidates back to zero at that point, you are assuming everyone in the city will come out and vote, on time...
In games like this one, people can come and go, and vanish without a trace.
In SWG you can build a townhouse in the middle of mainstreet in a moment and then vanish without a trace and cause a lot of people a lot of trouble.
In reality you can't build a house in an inappropriate place, and certainly not overnight. And if you did, the city authority would find out who you are, and the police would hold you accountable.
The long and the short of it is that if votes didn't default to the incumbent, and every citizen had to vote every week, there would not likely be any city over rank 2, anywhere.
Arsheba, nice post.
I really like the idea of the data terminal holding a small database of info for visitors to browse. All too often I've wanted to see what a city has to offer. Sometimes cities have a building with a vendor dedicated to advertising the various city vendors. This in itself is a great idea, but uses up valuable resources from the individual who controls the vendor and building. The only problem here I find is it almost negates the merchant skill progression that allows for more sophisticated advertisment. I guess a way around this is to only allow a merchant with the right ability to advertise on the data terminals.
Your discussion of conflicts between city PA's made me think we don't really have any NPC's visiting our cities, at least none that I''ve seen. Perhaps with theplacement of recreational areas likegardens, their radius (defined by their cost) brings rise to visiting friendly NPC's. While in larger cities, the areas more remote to these gardens attracts less friendly more ciminally minded NPC's. This could lead to less favourable city areas and some action for the militia.
The Printing Press idea has some fantastic development ideas. Being able to 'write' downportable textoffers new opportunities to advertise, organise meetings/rallies, create player driven sub-missions, even create art. I met a guy in the Coronet cantina wishing he was able to writestory books and mass produce them! Sure this may have limited appeal to some, but I'm certain this would be a valuable addition to the SWG World. I may be going off topic here, but even Politicians could take advantage of a weekly news letter bought at the local press office vendor.
Thanks very much!
Another possible method to introduce a sort of Printing Press would be to simply turn Holocrons into what they actually are: data storage devices.
If their plan is to eliminate holo-grinding (and effectively turn our stocking stuffers into lumps of coal), then why not give us something worthy in its place like a free Press? No true government ever got off the ground without some form of press, free or otherwise. Plus, the vast potential for player-created content should be appealing enough.
Holocrons could be used to store data, basically like any piece of paper. They could introduce perhaps one other item like a Holocron Data Template, and one artisan recipe to combine a blank Holocron with a Data Template, and thus you've got something you could save to a schematic, and proceed to mass-produce your Data (newsletter, guide to the stars in your city, deli menu, whatever) in a factory.
Another idea is simply to give data storage capacity (text) to data objects in your standard Datapad, and make it possible to sell certain kinds of data objects on vendors, at bazaar, etc. Right now I can't create a waypoint and post it on a vendor, whether for sale as an information object posted only for player reference.
Either way, we are in serious need of some method of disseminating information in-game, to Citizens, Visitors, for Reference, Advertising, Training, whatever. The whole SWG universe could use this functionality, but it would seriously help Politicians in their Communication and Delegation struggle.
Arsheba Silmaril
Master Politician
Mayor of Sedoo
Dantooine, Flurry
One thing I notice with ALL profession correspondants is that they seem to CATER to the masses rather than fix the profession AS INTENDED by the DEVS.
In the Master Skills section you didn't even MENTION the intended...
Industrial Society- 200k cr / week An 'Industrial Society' gains the bonuses of both the 'Manufacturing Center' and 'Research Center' specializations. Master politicians get this.
Scientific Society- 175k cr / week A 'Scientific Society' gains the bonuses of both the 'Medical Center' and 'Entertainment District' specializations. Master politicians get this.