Politician Archive
Thread: Politicians and Player Cities: Ideas for involvement in the Space Expansion
Bajeezus wrote:
What role would you like to see player cities play in the Space Expansion?... Do you have other concepts you'd like to share?
First, let me note that the Space Expansion is getting a lot of good general discussion over in the Core System forum (in the list of Professions forums). Threads I can vouch for personally include:
Core Systems 5072-- SE Starship Weapons?
Core Systems 4781-- Space Expansion: Proposed New Skill Trees
Core Systems 9512-- Space Expansion: Summary of Ideas
Core Systems 10329-- Space Expansion: List of Questions
Those threadsdiscuss a number of the ideassuggested here (and include the latest available dev info), but it'salso goodto have a thread like this one that focuses on how specific professions (in this case the Politician) and their skillscan be integrated into the Space Expansion (and vice versa).
To start with, let me say that I suspect the developers' intention is to integrate the existing ground game with Space Expansion gameplay, and fairly tightly. In other words, there won't be two games: one, the existing SWG, and two, the Space Expansion as just a new version of X-wing vs. TIE Fighter. That wouldn't make much sense for an RPG.
Instead, I expect the two games will be tightly integrated... which means Politicians may indeed have a useful role to play. Actually Iwonder ifthe integration might go so far as to not allow space stations at all, which would force players of the space game to land every so often to interact with the ground game. An argument could also be made for this approach that it simplifies coding (since it's one less feature to have to implement). So I'm not convinced that space stations will be included... but of course I won't be offended if they are. 
In fact,the rest of this messageassumes that space stations of some kind will be available in the Space Expansion.
That said, here are some other thoughts. First, I think Keth-Rian's concepts are great. The notion of existing player cities growing to incorporate space assets is brilliant. For one thing, it's wellsupported in science fiction andSF-basedRPGs (for example, Marc W. Miller's superb RPG MegaTraveller included orbital cities above ground cities). Even better, it's a completely reasonable approach to integrating the ground and space games in a meaningful and fun way for players.
There are a couple of ways to do this. One -- the easy way -- is to just make orbital cities notional. In other words, allow orbital cities and just say that each one is associated (by name) with an existing ground city. The advantage of this approach is that it's relatively easy to implement (assuming orbital cities are implemented at all). Travel between the two cities would be handled by simplyadding an option on the Starport or Shuttle travel menus. This wouldn't be fancy, but it would work.
The more interestingapproach would be to have art and gameplay features that more explicitly link ground and orbital cities. One example (used by SF writer Arthur C. Clarke) is the "space elevator." This is an elevator built from "smart" and superstrong materials that actually rises from a ground point to low planetary orbit, where it's attached to a large object like a space station. How cool would it be to be able to ride one of these elevators?How slick would it be, as you approach a groundcity,tosee such a system rising gracefully into the sky? Eveniftransferring between ground and orbitals cities isstilljust a loading screen, a "space elevator"art asset for the ground city could really help establish in the minds of players the relationship between a ground city and its orbital extension by literally tying the two cities together visually.
However, as interesting as this might be it's not required. Whether orbital extensions to player cities are implemented or not, I think most people want to see unaligned non-ground-basedplayer cities implemented. These would be cities that could be created in orbit aroundplanets or moons, or on asteroids, or possibly even in deep space somewhere, and would have their own mayors. Basically it has to be possible for more people to start their ownplayer cities.
One of the sillier ideas I had along these lines is this: suppose we're allowed to declare our multi-player ship to be our residence. Further,suppose that ships are allowed to have dockingports, and allowed to dock with each other (assuming faction rules are followed). Finally, allowsome ships (especially larger freighters) to have two or more docking ports. Ifall these featureswere implemented, it might be possible to create "ad hoc" player cities by simply joining player ships to each other. Ifall ship ownersset their options to allow anyone to enter, then as more and more ships dockedwe could see enormous, crazy-looking Habitrails in space that would function as player cities. And if the rules controlling ground-based player cities were enhanced to recognize the presence of many residential ships in the same small part of space, then I see no reason why this ad hoc community couldn't become a player city, complete with a Politician mayor.
(While I'm talking about new kinds of player cities, let me lay onelast concept on you. Buckminster Fuller -- the guy who invented the geodesic dome, among many other things -- once observed that the principle of hot air rising could be used to create cities that float in the air. The key is tobuild a sphere large enough to trap the required amount of air -- we're talking at least a mile in diameter. If you can heat this air sufficiently by day and night, not only will the entire sphere float in the air, you can actually regulate its height above the ground. Add some more size, and the sphere would be able to hold enough hot air to support an entire city built inside the sphere. Add some kind of engine to move the thing, and voila! a floating city. In the world of Star Wars, you don't even need hot air; you just use really burly repulsorlift engines... which is how Bespin can be a "city in the clouds." Perhaps floating player cities could be the precursor to implementing Bespin... hint, hint.)
With respect to the Politician profession itself: ifPoliticians wereable to place space-specific versions of existing buildings and trainers, that would be sufficient -- any new abilities in addition to this would be icing on the cake. But I imagine that folks here can think of plenty of interesting new space-specificstructures they'd like to be able to place.
And that's probably more than enough from mefor now. 
--Flatfingers
Keirsey: Rational | Myers-Briggs: INTP | Bartle: Explorer (100%)
Obi-Wan-Keneli wrote:
This is what i think, I think only scouts or rangers should be able to go into "uncharted space" in this Uncharted space they can discover new planets! Now the ranger can either NOT tell anyone or like register it for colonozation! Now after it is registered for colonozation it can only be accesssed by a poloticion! The Poloticion can now set up a small outpost and register the planet, as lets say Kashyyk. He may then charge a fee for people to come here, and he pays a high percentage to the explorrer! The planet is now on the map just like any other planet, the only difference is the Poloticion controls the whole planet! The polotcion can also grant other polticions the ability to make More outposts, or take over his outpost, because its hard work watching over 12 outposts. When a poloticion owns a planet he is called "king" Queen" or "senator"!
Planets like Kashyyk can only hold villiages, but more advanced ones can hold more advanced citys. So this is a way Rangers, and Poloticions can become rich, its not easy by the way to find and control planets. HIGH maintenance fees, wide range to cover, PLUS most of space is just space debris and the like, uncharted territory is dangerouse! Anyway thats my two cents, feel free to contradict me.. if u understand
/bump
Personally, I'd just love to see animations or videos of spaceships leaving or arriving on planets, little cut-scenes after we've boarded a shuttle, rather than the information guides during the loading screen.
I just played KOTOR and whenever you "jumped" from a planet to another planet there was a small sequence of flybys, culminating in a ship approaching your chosen planet. This wasn't specific to KOTOR in that in the movies, whenever someone arrived at a planet, it had a little ship flyby heading to the planet.
A touch like this would greatly add to the feel of the game, and tie things into the space expansion greatly. If we can see our shuttle arriving at the planet, imagine how psyched people will be when they see their OWN ships landing on a particular planet.
Avallach wrote:Has there been consideration of a planetary council which would negotiate trade/treaty agreements with other planets? I'd love to see Naboo able to say put a 10% tariff on all trade to/from Tatooine, for instance, in response to sheer d00dism. (I'm kidding, but the idea might work...)
Hmmm...what might be an interesting idea to facilitate this would be Governatorial Elections for the planets.
City Mayors would be eligable candidates and are voted on by normal player-city citizens. The winner would be elected Planetary Govenor for a term that is equal, or as longs as twice (this would be better, since a planetary campaign would be considerably harder to run then one for a player-city), as a mayor's term in office of a city.
This elected official would be responcible for trade tarriffs between planets (taxes on goods that are being transported in ship cargo holds..that's if we DO have cargo holds on ships that can store mass quantities of items--hey...that would be a GOOD idea, and could even make binary load lifters useful in the game. I mean, it would be a pain for a player to unload a ships cargo hold if cargo holds are somewhat realistic in their size. It would require grabbing a small bit of a stack, put it in your inv, run it to the vendor/purchaser/etc...and then run back for more. A binary load lifter, however, could carry considerably more in their lifts, thus almost a neccesity for any transporter. Uh...ok, back to my post...), placing/maintaining space stations in orbit and starports on the planet (radical idea with the starports...probably bad, but I like it).
Now, the biggest continuity problem would be that most planets have NPC Govenors already (jsut realized that, not editing the post to correct it) so, instead of "Govenor" they can be called "Trade Tzars" or "Secerity of Planetary Relations" or something that might actually be catchy.
--ddtd