Black--Snow, it may be best to try to write out an example of what you mean.

I think I might understand what you mean, but as I've already stated, The bigger a faction gets the more vulnerable it becomes because it depends on more elements to function.

A single player can't have much information or valuables stolen from them which can't be replaced. The same is not true with a large faction which is depending on trade routes, a military, research and manufacturing plants, among other things. These elements work together to hold a faction together. If one of these elements is crippled the faction could collapse into disarray and eventually dissolve.

Graf wrote:I think what he means is that he doesn't necessarily want a "tool" he can use against enemies. He wants mechanics that are general purpose that COULD be used to harm other factions. I.E Not having an "Attack Economy" button, but instead having goods be carried by ships. Destroying those ships carrying the goods does damage to trade, and then to the enemy economy, and is the result of mechanics that are tied into everything. He doesn't want the ways to take down a faction pre-defined. Have I got it right?

To keep with the hacking example, it's like having predefined "attack vectors" you can use versus having freeform "hacking", where you use the rules of the computing systems to attack each other. Having "ways" to take down an empire is off-putting because it makes it sound like those "ways" are only used for that purpose, rather than tactics evolving from understanding the mechanics of the game.

Personally, I want a battlefield to play on, not a set of paths to choose, so the more things that aren't set as particular attack vectors, the more tactical and strategic freedom.

But I get the feeling we all want the same thing, and are confused over the semantics of the concept. Is there a difference between attacking merchant craft, and clicking a button that says "Attack Economy" if they yield the same result? Or I am I confused about what we are discussing here?

I think you've clarified the situation quite well. I think both parties are asking for the same thing but using different words to get the same end result. We all want LT to have real depth where our actions affect those around us. No one is asking for an option to do damage to something in a way which doesn't make sense.

I think it helps to think about it from the position of the blob as well. Would a player that wants to build a big empire find it fun to do so if after a certain point all you had to worry about was flying your fleet into the next station? Probably not. We want it to be like in CK2, where having the largest army also means you have the largest internal struggles to deal with. As an empire grows, the players challenges change and evolve. Even when that player is an AI, and can't actually enjoy those struggles.

Unless Josh has made some major breakthroughs and his AI now have feelings?

I agree that any new mechanic, "rules", modifiers, penalties or anything like that would feel artificial and take away from the full simulation principle of LT.

Problem is, there exist some real life hassles, restrictions and soft factors that simply aren't implemented in most games. Things like diminishing tax efficiency in large countries due to increasing regional spending, corruption, cultural habbits, the populations passive resistance and reluctance. Also positive ones (in case of production capability and military might) like nationalism and the willingness to make sacrifices for a common goal.
Not all of this factors should or must be considered. But many games have this unrealistic display of large factions, whose strength is the combined power that all their owned territory provides.
In reality the "strength" of any society (with human like behaviour) is the above value, modified by those not measurable factors. In most cases they are likely to be negative. Meaning that an ever growing faction would normally get not evenly, but also ever growing handicap.

Mistycica wrote:The AI should be able to internally deal with blobbing, -and- deal with counterblobbing, among every other emerging situation that comes from faction play and economics.

I'd be pretty relieved if this is the case in a world where LT is finished
I don't have the slightest idea of AI coding and many games with "fake-simulations" (gameplay elements connected and deep only at first glance) may have dulled my imagination in this regard. But honestly, i don't think the AI will be that advanced. What Josh showed where "NPCs that seek ways to create value". That sounds like a world filled with turbo capitalists without any restrictions to me and brought the blobbing problem into my mind. If they are smart they will post missions for the ever greedy mercenary fleet to stomp any little saboteur-maggot wherever it may be hiding.
Of course it could also be the other way around and there are little (and boring) equilibriums of power because of an AI lack of ambition and erratic behaviour.

The best thing is: Now i find myself poking in the dark and can still enjoy the anticipation, because it's the No.2 upcoming game

Rene Farnham wrote:"NPCs that seek ways to create value". That sounds like a world filled with turbo capitalists without any restrictions to me and brought the blobbing problem into my mind.

someone hasnt read the rest of the story

"value" depends on the NPC, not just on cash.

for some AI the "value" lies in making cash, others just want to have the biggest and shiniest thing, others want to research, others want to explore.

(josh used the word "value" so often, that i either get all the posts or none, here is the best fitting post)

I would think of it less like huge mega-corps buying up everything, and more like a lot of smaller entrepreneurs collaborating to further all of their interests. Any faction that's large enough to blob has many AI that have other motives than making money. And there are lots of kinds of blobs. The actions of a giant merchant Corp blob may be entirely independent of the local government, or the military blob may not have an interest in filling certain consumer market niches. You could have blobs of all different types overlapping each other, because many different Smart AI will have different motives in the same area that won't always conflict. From what we've heard, the "I must own everything" AI will be much more rare by comparison to the "I'm good at this, and I'm interested in this, so this is what I'll focus on" AI.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:I would think of it less like huge mega-corps buying up everything, and more like a lot of smaller entrepreneurs collaborating to further all of their interests. Any faction that's large enough to blob has many AI that have other motives than making money. And there are lots of kinds of blobs. The actions of a giant merchant Corp blob may be entirely independent of the local government, or the military blob may not have an interest in filling certain consumer market niches. You could have blobs of all different types overlapping each other, because many different Smart AI will have different motives in the same area that won't always conflict. From what we've heard, the "I must own everything" AI will be much more rare by comparison to the "I'm good at this, and I'm interested in this, so this is what I'll focus on" AI.

not necessarily, though.

there wont be that many "strong" AI who have actual goals, and much more worker minions who just obey what they are ordered.

LT1.0 wont even have much in terms of faction play, as in "executives serving executives in a lasting agreement
interaction will be based on single run contracts and beyond them they all act on their own.

Cornflakes_91 wrote: not necessarily, though.

there wont be that many "strong" AI who have actual goals, and much more worker minions who just obey what they are ordered.

LT1.0 wont even have much in terms of faction play, as in "executives serving executives in a lasting agreement
interaction will be based on single run contracts and beyond them they all act on their own.

Ahh, you see, I was expecting that managing more than a handful of systems would need to be done through the contract system. I thought that since a salary is essentially a contract, that you could just hire on a smart AI and tell it to run your mining operation and pay it to do so. It would be able to come up with a strong strategy and build its wing of the corporation. Or does that count as a worker AI since it is more of a management role than a CEO role? That begs the question of how large the mining op is I guess.

So contracts will be based only on definitive commands like "bring X amount to Y" and not "Manage x assets for profit"? That's going to be a lot micromanagement I think, even with recurring contracts and such. Any links to info on how smart the workers are? Can contracts be recurring? Can they be commission based? Will you be notified when a contract is fulfilled, or goes unfulfilled for a certain amount of time and causes your operation to bottleneck? Can contracts have multiple conditions that need to be fulfilled? And are both the smart and the worker AI fullfilling contracts, or do the smart AI post contracts and the worker AI are just there to fill those contracts?

I think someone posted a theory on how workflow should work with contracts, but I can't remember who.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote: not necessarily, though.

there wont be that many "strong" AI who have actual goals, and much more worker minions who just obey what they are ordered.

LT1.0 wont even have much in terms of faction play, as in "executives serving executives in a lasting agreement
interaction will be based on single run contracts and beyond them they all act on their own.

Ahh, you see, I was expecting that managing more than a handful of systems would need to be done through the contract system. I thought that since a salary is essentially a contract, that you could just hire on a smart AI and tell it to run your mining operation and pay it to do so. It would be able to come up with a strong strategy and build its wing of the corporation. Or does that count as a worker AI since it is more of a management role than a CEO role? That begs the question of how large the mining op is I guess.

So contracts will be based only on definitive commands like "bring X amount to Y" and not "Manage x assets for profit"? That's going to be a lot micromanagement I think, even with recurring contracts and such. Any links to info on how smart the workers are? Can contracts be recurring? Can they be commission based? Will you be notified when a contract is fulfilled, or goes unfulfilled for a certain amount of time and causes your operation to bottleneck? Can contracts have multiple conditions that need to be fulfilled? And are both the smart and the worker AI fullfilling contracts, or do the smart AI post contracts and the worker AI are just there to fill those contracts?

I think someone posted a theory on how workflow should work with contracts, but I can't remember who.

I believe you can employ the smart AIs to "Make profit using X Assets with X Workers". Not sure though, don't quote me.

Black--Snow wrote: I believe you can employ the smart AIs to "Make profit using X Assets with X Workers". Not sure though, don't quote me.

Did you say something?



((Sorry I couldn't resist))

We won't be able to employ Executive NPCs until Josh does his second pass on them (v1.1 or so). This was stated in the kickstarter as a stretch goal.

BFett wrote:We won't be able to employ Executive NPCs until Josh does his second pass on them (v1.1 or so). This was stated in the kickstarter as a stretch goal.

Honestly, v1.1 may be out long before we reach the point of needing to employ executive AI. Even with a basic contract system, it should be possible to run a respectable operation without. I guess that makes the blood question scarier though... Since AI are better at micromanagement activities than human players, how will a human player keep up?

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:

BFett wrote:We won't be able to employ Executive NPCs until Josh does his second pass on them (v1.1 or so). This was stated in the kickstarter as a stretch goal.

Honestly, v1.1 may be out long before we reach the point of needing to employ executive AI. Even with a basic contract system, it should be possible to run a respectable operation without. I guess that makes the blood question scarier though... Since AI are better at micromanagement activities than human players, how will a human player keep up?

If not being able to employ executives is not an issue then you probably won't have any issues with the AIs micromanagement as you'll still be looking at a small scale.

Eh, you can buy worker NPC's, your usual RTS minions.
Why should that limit the scale of operations?

Cornflakes_91 wrote:Eh, you can buy worker NPC's, your usual RTS minions.
Why should that limit the scale of operations?

It wouldn't, unless you're like me and hate long term micromanagement.