In our opinion, this limits a bit the ingame possibilities. In particular action only occurs when a player or alliance decides to go to war ; otherwise the game can become quite boring since nothing much has to be done on the empire management point of view.

What we decided to introduce is a set of AI controlled factions whose behaviour is associated either with a species or with a specific alignment.

For factions linked with a species, the faction is only composed of members of that species and its behaviour towards humans is associated with the characteristics of the species. For instance, the aliens living in nebulae don’t like their environment to be disturbed and go after whoever travels a lot in nebulae.

For factions linked with alignment, several species can be represented but the group share a common goal which is represented by an alignment. The alignment of each faction is of course a complex set of values along a few alignment axes. Each faction can control empires, fleets and so on.

What would be the effect? Each faction has then empires they like (because their alignments are compatible) and others they don’t like (because their respective alignments are incompatible). As such they either provide assistance to empires or harass them. The more extreme along alignment axes the behaviour of a player is, the more extreme the reaction of the concerned alien faction is.

Along with player controlled empires, we’ll then have faction controlled empire who will interact with players and as such bring more life and excitement to the game. Extreme behaviours will also come with a cost, the reaction of the factions, but also a possible high reward, which should bring some new interesting strategies.

Do you think having AI controlled empires could bring something to the game?

Do you think the categories of factions are adequate? Do you have other ideas of categories of factions than species or alignment related?

Do you think it’s a good thing to limit extreme behaviours with the reactions of alien factions towards players having these behaviours? Do you think everyone won’t try and have a very neutral behaviour to avoid being chased by any faction, thus getting the game static?

What do you think should be the compensation / reward for someone who keeps at having an extreme behaviour even if he is harassed by alien factions?

In most games like LegacyWorlds, it is very difficult to reach a good balance between ways of playing. By ways of playing I mean being an insane warmonger or staying put in your corner of the universe nursing your planets, etc. Indeed, some behaviours bring bigger advantages than others. In particular extreme behaviours, in conjunction with very high activity are often more fruitful than casual playing with a good balance between various attitudes.

Moreover the penalties attached to some behaviours are so little compared to what they bring that they end up being interesting to have whereas we might not want to encourage them. I think for instance of attacking young players as soon as they get out of protection, which is “fun” and gives Inflicted Damage Ranking points at little to no cost.

In this context, alignment is considered as a way to classify players according to their ingame strategies. However we don’t want to define a value judgment on behaviours. Therefore the classical alignments with classes like good / neutral / evil isn’t appropriate.

The alignment axes we chose to consider are a bit more complex. The tolerance axis expresses how intolerant or tolerant an empire is and is linked for instance with oppressive or xenophobic attitudes towards the empire population. The war axis expresses how brutal or fair an empire is and is linked with the size of attacked empires compared to the considered empire for instance. The environment axis expresses how mechanist of environmentalist an empire is, with evaluation associated with the use of biological or mechanical devices, etc. The honesty axis express how open or sneaky an empire is, and is associated among others with the use of spies or propaganda.

According to his ingame actions the empire of a player then shifts along these various axes. The alignment of a player is then used to calculate ingame reactions of other entities, topic which will be described in more details in another post.

In your opinion, will this bring interesting features to the game?

Do you think the alignment categories are adequate?

Would you have other axes ideas?

What game parameters do you think should be impacted by an empire’s alignment?