Ideas for a Council rework

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zgrssd
Posts: 4990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:02 pm

Ideas for a Council rework

Post by zgrssd »

I originally posted it over in Tech Support by accident. And since no Admin has moved it over yet, I guess I have to repeat it here. I also did some cleanup:

I have been thinking about how to rework the Councils a bit, to make them more even in power. The things that bug me are:
- some have 2 and others have 4 tasks. That makes it unessesarily hard to avoid the "more then 100 BP spend" treshold
- you can not do any work in some fields, without a council. Particulary with Models, Interior and OOB this can be very annoying
- some council tasks become simply unessesary after a while. Taxes and Tarrifs are the notorious example.

So here is my idea:
1. The Supreme Command Council becomes the National Budget.
It is capable of spending BP in every councils special jurisdiction to make some progress - but at much reduced performance (-50 to -75%) and a fixed 50:50 split. It might also be locked out of creating somewhat more advanced cards, wich would require a proper council
2. If you found a council, the SCC stops doing the work and the budgeted BP instead go into the proper council. Wich is more efficient by not having the penalty, hopefully has a good leader too and might also be able to generate more powerfull cards
3. There should maybe be some sort of "minimum spending" on each properly formed council (but not on budget entries without councils). Something like 5%. In turn, you should be able to disolve councils (meaning the SCC takes over that job again with the fixed split).
4. Each council has exactly 2 Jobs to split their BP between. This makes it easier to split the Budget, without running into the "too many BP in one area" issue. Most already fullfill this requirement. Councils that currently have 4 jobs would get split into two.
5. All councils should have one task with longterm benefits. The tech ones already do that (it is pretty lategame when you manage to finish all techs). But particulary Taxes and Tarrifs becomes 100% useless once you got all the cards (aside from maybe creating material for the scrap mechanic).

Optimisation as a Council Task:
I think some Optimisation Techs can be turned from a Technology into a council task. This can help pad out Council tasks where needed. And can give each council the above mentioned "longterm benefit".
The T&T Council for example would be a poor fit for keeping it around - after you got the cards to up the Taxes, you no longer need it. Unless 1 task was generating both kinds of cards, while the other was "Taxation Efficiency" - and thus defines how much taxes & tarrif money actually made it to your coffers. The Taxes & Tarrifs council is not just about making policy, but making sure policy is followed (properly).

Examples for splitting councils:
Economic Council could be split into:
- the Civil Technologies Council - which deals with Discovery and Research of Economic techs
- the New Economics Council, wich deals with Prospecting and Economic Policy Cards.

Interior Council could be split into:
- New Interior Council - deals with Human Resources and Interior Policy
- Taxes & Tarrifs council - Taxes and Tarrifs, repectively. But as I said above, the cards should maybe be compressed into 1 category but a longterm benefit should be added.

Military Research could be split into the 3 barnches, each dealing with Discovery and Development in one area:
- Land
- Air
- Sea

With the Staff Council I run into issues:
- the OOB Council is pretty easy (it is just a Discovery/Develop pair all over again).
- But Occupation and Governance + Postures do not make a good fit. Some things may need to be shuffeled around a bit.

Advatanges of this approach:
- you can always make some progress in a field, even without a dedicated council - you are just much slower using only the SCC for a task. No more "sorry, we can not make any combat armor for you - not without a Model Design council"
- it is much easier to avoid overspending on one area - as you only split stuff 2 way. Or mechanics like "need to spend at least 5% on each existing council" could also take over for this penalty.
- the national budget will stop gaining new entries, wich reshuffles the budget wildly
- some optimisation technologies that logically need permanent investment can become new council tasks, wich would in turn make those councils much more interesting to keep longterm

Possible Issues:
The biggest issue I can think of, is managing the additional exposure to mechanics. Having to do stuff like designing Models on turn 1 would be quite the challenge, especially for a new player.
- The part where without a council the split is 50/50 would help removing the Budget half from every Council Category until you actually found the council.
- Discovery+Development combinations will not need any interaction until they got at least 2 choices discovered
- the Model council could simply not ask you for a Model decision for the first 10 turns (similar to how you are only asked for the national and council budgets every ~20 turns) and invest everything into Discovery. Alterantively, maybe you could add default designs for each and every model? It is pretty annoying I have to design a Medium Tank that I plan to never use, just to develop heavy tanks anyway.
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Twotribes
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RE: Ideas for a Council rework

Post by Twotribes »

I always make new infantry and machine guns since I start on tech 5 and they start without armor
Favoritism is alive and well here.
zgrssd
Posts: 4990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:02 pm

RE: Ideas for a Council rework

Post by zgrssd »

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

I always make new infantry and machine guns since I start on tech 5 and they start without armor
That is more of a issue with Environmental Protection and Armor being entangeled when they should be parallel things - I made a seperate suggestion for that particular issue - but yes, having the SCC be able to work on model design for such minor changes would definitely help here.
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