Behold, fellow AWACS/ISO members!

[spiritplumber]

From my (limited) understanding, the AWACS were trying to do something similar to the UBW only on a smaller scale. Since Gemini Sector is pretty much run on unmitigated capitalism, they decided to adopt a Soviet milieu as part of forming their identity as an opposition movement -- I get the idea that part of it is fairly tongue in cheek.

[powell99]

Well,
Do what you want. Frankly, I don't care. I am trying to give some direction. It seems like most of this forum is devoted to "hey I have an Idea" and "WCnews sucks" threads. Really though go with Peoples Army of X. It just sounds tough. I know alot about WC, if you ever want help I am wiling to give a hand. I really hope your project goes well.

[klauss]

Really though go with Peoples Army of X.

I like it.

For me and the people I discussed it with, we feel that Space Soviets, while fun (anyone remember Activision's Battlezone) does not keep with the WC feel. Afterall WC wasn't politicaly oreinted.

Now, that's more like it. That's quite agreeable. Even if I don't agree: I think just like Fireskull.

And... since WC is dead and the community is out to revive it, we might as well revive it by introducing politically oriented plotlines... might we not?


powell99, we're not arguing your knowledge of WC. We're arguing your opinions on what feels WC-like. That's subjective, and very little people seem to agree with you, if I may say so.

I agree with mkruer's favourite strategy: the KISS strategy. But more factions don't have to complicate things. I already gave the freelancer examples. AWACS can be thought like that... just another meaningless faction around (as long as they don't have their own plot ).

[spiritplumber]

it's not that wcnews sucks... they're a VERY valuable resource to keep the community together & for the sheer amount of info. I don't like their forum because

* they ban people for no reason, including me

* the forum administrator has done something to me which is potentially dangerous, esp. in a red state.

[powell99]

Well as I said good luck with your mod. I have to go to Geometrey

[mkruer]

Spiritplumber I think I know your major error occurred with the creation of AWACS faction in WCU. It all boils down to what you wanted to do with it. Not the fact that you created it in the first place. If you place AWACS under UBW, as some hippie touchy-feely extremist group I think that you could have gotten away with it, and no one would have cared; yet another nut group on the Terran side. But when you insisted on making them control a system(s) and being capable of capturing or influencing other systems, and or influencing of the known factions, you crossed the line.

Look at the black lance they were not a faction but a group underneath the Confed faction. If AWACS was strickly to drive the plot then I can see it but you are making them more then a plot device. I would highly recommend you establish in hard fact (messagin) what your intentions for the AWACS are. You keep on saying they are not a faction, yet you are giving them the same ability as faction. Reading some of your posts, the AWACS is now larger then the Retos at this point. This is crossing the line.

So far what I have heard form Chuck in Priv3, the AWACS can be replaced by just about any other UBW group, and there is little compelling reason to have AWACS even listed as a sub faction. You could essentially delete the AWACS missions and have little affect on the overall storyline.

Every story that I have ever written or helped out with, I have gone out of my way to make it as transparent as possible to the WCU, whether it be new subgroups, new ships, new anything to drive the plot. I would expect you would have the same courtesy when you come up with any not already established in the cannon of WCU .


This is just from what I have read. If you think otherwise prove it!

[spiritplumber]

I didn't create the AWACS. They came with Priv Remake 1.1 and I just didn't remove them. I would however like to move them to another sector, since right now we only have plots happening in Gemini.

The Retros own 1 system, are a "rabble" faction for almost everyone which means they have the ability to spawn from systems they don't own (retros, pirates, merchants and hunters do this), and have a 0.04 spawning rate. AWACS own 1 system, are a "territorial" faction (they're nobody's rabble, so they can only spawn from their system) and have a 0.015 spawning rate IIRC, so no, they're definitely "smaller" than the retros

I also think that pirates, retro and AWACS have a really shitty siege rating, so they're very very unlikely to conquer systems... right now the AWACS get along decently with most human factions except the hunters. I think that the original idea was to have a anti-hunter faction.

I suggest you look in modules/faction_ships.py and modify it according to your preferences, then let everyone try it ^_^; remember to delete the corresponding .pyc file if you change the .py as this tells vegastrike that it has to recompile that module.


If we keep these guys, they should get a name change, especially since we have the Prophecy SWACS in the game

[blue_paladin42]

What is wrong with AWACS controlling a system?

[Spaceman Spiff]

What is wrong with AWACS controlling a system?

I really have to agree... I mean, there are merchant systems.... he?.... What are they doing? Do they fight confederattion when taxes and labor costs rise?
ha... LOL

There is so much stuff which doesn't make sence that it seems really senceless to discuss abou removing a (maybe bad) campaign to stick without any campaign...

[mkruer]

I think what need to happen at this point is we as a group need to radically redefine what is and what is not a Faction, and what is a Group.

Right now in the Engine it is either you’re a faction or not there is no other option. This is logicly flawed on a number of levels. But there is a solution, and that is to have two levels of definition. First level say who owns the space, next level says who can live/operate there legally or not.

Factions of the Terran Race would be: (predefined by cannon. Ex: Confed “Ownsâ€

[blue_paladin42]

To Mkruer: Heeeeeey. Thats kinda spiffy. So AWACS could be a "group". They could spawn ships and such, and be included, but not be a major government. Actually, come to think of it, what you define as "factions" are all actually governments. Mabye instead of "factions" and smaller "groups", you have "governments" and then smaller "factions". Also, the Kilrathi would be the "government" and the individual clans and the like would be the "factions". It comes out exactly the same as what you wrote, but with somewhat more sensecal(sp?) terminology. I actually just thought of that as I was typing this. Also, you forgot Exploratory services, even though they can't spawn ships, they DID give you jobs in the plot, and they exist in the background, so they should atleast get an honorable mention.

[chuck_starchaser]

@mkruer:

We have to be careful about the concept of "ownership", though. Object oriented programming style is well utilized when modelling objective things, but it becomes a trapping if you model subjective things with it. Ownership is a subjective concept, without any objective reality. Dictionary definitions of 'ownership', attempting some objectivity, fall back to the concept of 'control', but then you suggest "Confeds own... regardless of who controls...", which lends credit to my fears the whole thing could fall on its face. "Ownership" is just a mental state, on the part of an individual or collective, and it would be best modelled as a mental state, rather than as an objective reality. Thus, the confed collective may think that the political map of the galaxy looks like such and so map. The kilrathi's idea of the political map may contradict the Confed's idea, though.

IOW, we should have as many political maps of space as there are factions, accept discrepancies between them, and avoid the trapping of thinking of ownership as an objective reality "out there, in space".

We have many words and concepts for things that don't exist, like ownership or sovereignty, and should avoid hard-coding them. Take for example a small hypothetical country in the caribbean, 90% of whose land is owned by a foreign food corporation. Does the country own itself or not? If not, which country does own it? The country that hosts the headquarters of the corporation? What if the corporation ONLY has its headquarters in that country, which amount to a receptionist, and a server allowing its board-members to net-meet virtually? Does the host country own the corporation?

I totally agree that the concept of 'faction' is overloaded. I don't agree, however, with that the imperative is defining it. It can't be defined. We should have races, countries, corporations, ideologies, groups, flight-groups, fleets, professional associations, and maybe sports-teams, but forget the whole idea of "factions". Just erradicate every piece of code with the keyword "faction" in it, and start afresh, IMO.

I can see where the concept comes from, historically: There were probably nations, originally; then someone said "but pirates are not a country", so they decided to change the word to "faction". Bad idea, IMO; mixing concepts is not good. It's like class "unit", in the engine, which can be anything. The righ way would have been to create a number of abstract classes for various concepts, such entities that have a location in space, entities that are self-propelled or not, and so on, and use inheritance for concrete types, rather than use flags to indicate the type of unit. Same goes for faction, and even more so, because a distinction by race or national citizenship is a different distinction as your profession or ideology. Distinct distinctions.

And you can see the problems it has led to: If I wanted to have a plot include Firekkan pirates, I'd have to create a new faction; wheras I should be able to just say that the flight group is Firekkan by race and nationality, and pirates by occupation, without having to invent a new faction for them. Same goes for Kilrathi Insys, or Kilrathi Merchant, or Kilrathi Rebel... They are all Kilrathi by race; Insys and Merchants are professions; Rebels are so by ideology (opposed to Kilrathi racial supremacy). But the mixbag that the concept of 'faction' hardwired into the engine is forcing to make these into groups as distinct from each other as Human and Nephilim. And we might ask, do retros have a nationality? Do they have day jobs? Right now they can't.

[spiritplumber]

hmm.... after repeating that "faction" is a purely SCRIPTING term, I generally agree with chuck. Right now if I had to spawn some firekkan pirates, I'd spawn a flightgroup of firekkan, make it hate you, and call that flightgroup "Pirates", and hope I get away with it

[klauss]

A "faction" of name X is a group of units that are able to spawn in selected systems, grow, control and conquer systems (as in taking control of their bases), show up as members of X ingame and all share a "factional" relationship with members of other factions. With (ideally) any of those abilities optional. Notice that the name X needs not be unique. The name is for user inteface, so the scripts would use an internal name. That's not even present in the engine, I think. That should be fixed. That way, you could have groups within factions: firekkan_pirates would spawn as normal factions, but it would show up as faction "pirates". In fact, when you check your relations with "pirates" you would be checking against a lot more "subgroups". How to do that user interface, we should think about.

That's all it is. That's what spirit means when she says it's a scripting term.

Thing is, right now, very few of those abilities is optional. Factions should be able to own no systems. Pirates, for instance, would own no system. AWACS, also, wouldn't own any system. IMO, system ownership and conquering ability is what separates groups from factions, in mkruer's post.

Also, right now, it's very inflexible the way in which the "set of controlled systems" and "set of spawnable systems" is specified. IMO, there should be a few parameters:

a) an explicit set of controlled systems, each with an attribute: static or dynamic. Static systems won't be conquered ever. Dynamic ones could. Funny thing if two factions control a system... we'll have to decide what to do in that situation, or even whether to allow such a situation.

b) an explicit set of spawnable systems. Each system, possibly, with a spawn rate.

c) an implicit set of spawnable systems. That means, a set of flags for: spawn at controlled systems, spawn at system controlled by factions of X (with X being a set), spawn everywhere. Each flag, possibly, with a "spawn rate".

d) an explicit set of unspawnable systems. That's useful for exceptions in c.

e) Ship production / Commodity production stuff. I would tie ship production with commodity production. ie: produce 5 ships per "cycle" statically, 5 more per controlled system, 1 more per N units of commodity X, M units of commodity Y, etc... with a maximum of Blah. A simplified economy. Ship production should be able to be 0 without affecting "rabble" spawning. For this, each spawning rate would be bipartite: "stock spawning" and "rabble spawning".

f) Siege rates... when conquering is decided, siege rates come into consideration. The usual stuff. Only it should be bipartite: "Control siege" and "spawn siege". If a "battle" ends up being won at "spawn siege" but not at "control siege", then spawning increases in that system, but bases are still owned by the other faction. Basically, it's because there are two sets of ownerships: "spawnable" and "controlled". Kind of "control against ownership" in mkruer's post.

Ok... what do you think?
I don't think it needs to be any more complex than that.
And it's close enough to the current system... which is only missing flexibility and separation of concepts.

[chuck_starchaser]

Sounds good, but wouldn't it be better to use like a grid system? Instead of each nation having to repeat subgroups like militia or pirates, have occupation be separate from nationality?

I mean, if I need a a firekkan pirate I could go

Code: Select all

<
  Race=Firekkan,
  Nationality = Firekkan,
  Occupation=Pirate,
  Ideology=None,
  Religion=None,
  ProfessionalAssociation=PanGalacticPiratesBrotherhood
>

[mkruer]

In the WCU DB I already have a solution for the multi faction/group systems. Each system has a simple rating that defines the amount of ships in the system, (System Level; 1-5), but also who is occupying that system. You can have virtually unlimited groupings within the system, but at the end of the day, all groups inside the system total 100% of level.

Ex. System level 2 say that the system is explored, but not populated by any bases or planets, and has a 10-20% chance coming across a ship. As such Pirates and Confed Occupy the space in 70-30 split. This means that if you do come across a ship there is a 70% chance of it being a Pirate ship and a 30% chance of it being Confed. however there is only a 10-20% chance that you will even come across a ship in that system.

In a nutshell its system splitting and it can be divided up any which way we see fit.

Perhaps it’s better to say Controlled and Occupied vs. Owned and Controlled.

For two warring controlling factions/groups. The system would be listed as disputed. Or could be give to which ever system has the more Occupying forces.

[spiritplumber]

mkruer: the problem with that is that ships in VS move around, they don't just spawn at a system and disappear when jumping.

[mkruer]

chuck_starchaser

Your code breakdown is a little excessive.

Code: Select all

<
  Race=Firekkan,
  Nationality = Firekkan,
  Occupation=Pirate,
  Ideology=None,
  Religion=None,
  ProfessionalAssociation=PanGalacticPiratesBrotherhood
>

Race is obvious
Nationality would be who is controlling the system, the “what government do I support belong toâ€

[mkruer]

I misspoke on that System Levels do not directly relate to system activity.

Each Group would have to occupy at least one level 3 system have at least one “port of callâ€

[klauss]

What are you saying, mkruer?
That the current system is flawless?

I diverge. For the same reasons I exposed earlier, it lacks flexibility. Other than that, it's not a bad system.

[chuck_starchaser]

@mkruer:

I did not do that in order to microdefine individuals, though; and on filling out the fields for a flight group you could assign None or Dont_matter to some of the fields, as I showed. My whole point is that if you are flying missions for a sub-plot in Landreich, --or in Kilrah, for that matter, there should be militias and military and hunters, and merchants, and pirates, just like anywhere else. If we don't separate occupation from nationality or race, we'd need a huge number of factions: a cross multiplication of nationalities with professions, as it's already starting to happen... Kat Insys, Kat merchant...

KISS.

[mkruer]

A "faction" of name X is a group of units that are able to spawn in selected systems, grow, control and conquer systems (as in taking control of their bases), show up as members of X ingame and all share a "factional" relationship with members of other factions. With (ideally) any of those abilities optional. Notice that the name X needs not be unique. The name is for user inteface, so the scripts would use an internal name. That's not even present in the engine, I think. That should be fixed. That way, you could have groups within factions: firekkan_pirates would spawn as normal factions, but it would show up as faction "pirates". In fact, when you check your relations with "pirates" you would be checking against a lot more "subgroups". How to do that user interface, we should think about.

Exactly, but most of this would be handled by how each groups interacts with other groups. i.e. all pirate groups would form an strategic alliances. If we could figure out a way to script that.

Thing is, right now, very few of those abilities is optional. Factions should be able to own no systems. Pirates, for instance, would own no system. AWACS, also, wouldn't own any system. IMO, system ownership and conquering ability is what separates groups from factions, in mkruer's post.

Again right on,

Also, right now, it's very inflexible the way in which the "set of controlled systems" and "set of spawnable systems" is specified. IMO, there should be a few parameters:

a) an explicit set of controlled systems, each with an attribute: static or dynamic. Static systems won't be conquered ever. Dynamic ones could. Funny thing if two factions control a system... we'll have to decide what to do in that situation, or even whether to allow such a situation.

This is sort of the idea with my System levels, however unlike a static system, the levels can be programmed to fluxuate depending on the era.

b) an explicit set of spawnable systems. Each system, possibly, with a spawn rate.

Again mostly the same with the current DB except that you cannot directly say this system can spawn x number of units, instead it’s a function of the system level and how large the occupying force is. This does do things first its now impossible to have an occupying spawn more ship then the system allows. Second because all forces share resource within a system one planet can spawn more then one type of group.

c) an implicit set of spawnable systems. That means, a set of flags for: spawn at controlled systems, spawn at system controlled by factions of X (with X being a set), spawn everywhere. Each flag, possibly, with a "spawn rate".

Covered above.

d) an explicit set of unspawnable systems. That's useful for exceptions in c.

Covered above. Unless you specify a system units cannot spawn there.

e) Ship production / Commodity production stuff. I would tie ship production with commodity production. ie: produce 5 ships per "cycle" statically, 5 more per controlled system, 1 more per N units of commodity X, M units of commodity Y, etc... with a maximum of Blah. A simplified economy. Ship production should be able to be 0 without affecting "rabble" spawning. For this, each spawning rate would be bipartite: "stock spawning" and "rabble spawning".

Easy enough to do with a sight tweak.

f) Siege rates... when conquering is decided, siege rates come into consideration. The usual stuff. Only it should be bipartite: "Control siege" and "spawn siege". If a "battle" ends up being won at "spawn siege" but not at "control siege", then spawning increases in that system, but bases are still owned by the other faction. Basically, it's because there are two sets of ownerships: "spawnable" and "controlled". Kind of "control against ownership" in mkruer's post.

This one I will have to think on, there might be an easier way of doming it.

Ok... what do you think?
I don't think it needs to be any more complex than that.
And it's close enough to the current system... which is only missing flexibility and separation of concepts.

For the most part I agree with everything you said. I am just trying to do it with as few of variable as possible. Sort of the same as Chuck having 6 definitions defining an individual when 3 will work just as well.

People tend to forget that having 5 groups with 5 sub options each with 10 choice gives you a total of 2500 possible combinations.

[mkruer]

What are you saying, mkruer?
That the current system is flawless?

I diverge. For the same reasons I exposed earlier, it lacks flexibility. Other than that, it's not a bad system.

What I am saying is that you don’t need 50 variable to define an individual when 10 would work just was well. I.E. KISS. As to Chucksfisrt crack half the options that were listed are pointless other then "would it not be cool to know" category. If this is not the case then you would end up with subcategories of subcategories of subcategories which violates the KISS rule. If someone is going to go to that much detail to define a miniscule part then it should be its own group, and subject to what powers a group can have. If take to the extreme with chucks definitions, then there aren’t enough systems to cover even half the possible combinations.

If there was to be some crusade, then guess what, THAT is a new group and that new group may on may not cause other groups to act for or against them. and is subject to spawing rules

Groups do not have loyalty to factions.

[mkruer]

@mkruer:

I did not do that in order to microdefine individuals, though; and on filling out the fields for a flight group you could assign None or Dont_matter to some of the fields, as I showed. My whole point is that if you are flying missions for a sub-plot in Landreich, --or in Kilrah, for that matter, there should be militias and military and hunters, and merchants, and pirates, just like anywhere else. If we don't separate occupation from nationality or race, we'd need a huge number of factions: a cross multiplication of nationalities with professions, as it's already starting to happen... Kat Insys, Kat merchant...

KISS.

My point is that they would be their own Group end of story.

Example: you say;

Race=Firekkan,
Nationality = Firekkan,
Occupation=Pirate,
Ideology=None,
Religion=None,
ProfessionalAssociation= Pan Galactic Pirates Brotherhood

The “Groupâ€

[chuck_starchaser]

But that doesn't work. Kilrathi pirates are kilrathi, have kilrathi faces, and fly kilrathi ships. You're saying pirates are pirates are pirates. But it isn't true.
Firekkan pirates would have bird faces, and so on.
And you're forgetting the fact that if you're enemies with kats, you're friends with kat rebels, and you might be neutral with kat pirates, who knows?, even if you're enemies with human pirates. Enemies of your enemy...
And if you're shouting at me, don't.
And if indeed it were the case that "only one thing matters" about this or that group, it might just be the present situation; it might change in the future; and it may not be good enough for some other game. We're trying to improve the engine, not simplify it down to uselessness. KISS my ass!
The goal in software is to make it clear, intuitive and maintainable.
And what simplicity are you aiming for? Programming simplicity, or use simplicity? The two are most often mutually exclusive.

Distinctions need to be made about groups. If those distinctions lie on different, unrelated dimensions, such as nationality, profession, religion; there's no reason why they should all be thrown together into a jumble. Prove to me that a jumble is simpler than calling things what they are.

Programming-wise, what I'm suggesting is something like a pair of classes GroupClassification and GroupCategory, say. So then we can create objects that implement classifications:

Code: Select all

GroupClassification Nationality("Nationality");
Nationality.add( GroupCategory ("Firekkan") );
Nationality.add( GroupCategory ("Landreich") );
...
GroupClassification Occupation("Occupation");
Occupation.add( GroupCategory (Insys) );
Occupation.add( GroupCategory (Pirate) );

That way, anyone coming up with a new mod can create any kind of categorizations, including un-related classifications without forcing you to cross multiply.
But if just having a single table of "factions" is all you want, you can just write,

Code: Select all

GroupClassification Faction("Faction");
Faction.add( GroupCategory (Retro) );
Faction.add( GroupCategory (Pirate) );

and so on.

Flexibility.
What's so complicated about it?