Command System idea

[Kuciwalker]

This would work best with my single star system idea, but can be adapted for multiple star systems.

Ok, the basic idea is that your communications will travel at a certain speed. So you can have "messages" (any sort of information, from locations of armies on a planet to umm... whatever) propogate from the point at which they were generated at a certain speed (in my single star system, the speed of light) and you only find out this information when the message reaches you (i.e. your flagship). Orders for units and production will be handled the same way, just backwards. This way, you CAN micromanage troops and production away from your flagship, just with a huge hit to efficiency, as the orders will be recieved to late to do anything (or would in fact harm you because the situation has changed in the time it takes the orders to get there).

For multiple star systems, it could be even more intricate. You might have to build relay stations for information to travel at anything approaching a decent speed - there would be fast communication between stations, but a simple "broadcast" transmission (NOT at light speeds; even it must be faster than that) would be much slower. It would take a while to get results from, say, scouting, because of this.

[Blake]

Your idea isn't entirely original

I thought of it a fair while back, I even worked out the event system required to propagate messages, and included "portals" that could teleport information FTL, for a relay system of sorts.

The technical difficulties are actually quite minimal.
Event happens at point eX, eY

Player is at point pX, pY

Each turn, until the message reaches everyone that cares, do the following:
Calculate the square of the distance between the event origin and player, which is simply:
d = (eX - pX)^2 + (eY - pY)^2

Calculate how far the message has propigated.
p = (c * t)^2

If p > d then player recieves the message.
(The squares thing is to avoid any square roots)

If FTL relays are used, then when a relay recieves a message, it creates a new message event at the destination relay(s), so this message is now propigated from two (or more) sources.

Even with a lot of events, and a lot of players that need to recieve those events, the computations would remain quite acceptable.

The only problem is having to use such a system could easily drive a player insane, or otherwise make it feel like the game revolves around fighting the SLT communication system rather than the other players

A comprimise may be possible, friendly worlds have "stargates" that can be used to transmit messages FTL, once a message reaches any stargate, it is available at any other stargate, so if you (your flagship) is currentely at a friendly world with a stargate, you can send instant orders to any other friendly world with a stargate.

This would mean the main time that the speed of light becomes an obstacle is when you send a battle fleet into the "shroud" (defintion of shroud is anywhere which isn't within a single light-turn of a friendly stargate, you dont know exactly whats going on in the shroud), the further they go into the "shroud" the longer it takes messages from them to reach you. If they are 10 ly away, it would take 10 years for you to learn of their victory or destruction. Likewise if the war was to end, it would take 10 years for them to learn that.

Or, prehaps the mission is so critical you go with the battlefleet. The deeper you go into the shroud the less you know of the state of your empire, if your 10 years into the shroud, for all you know your empire was obliterated by a hostile force 9 years ago.

Now that would be pretty cool and I think it would be managable for the players, because orders can still be given instantly to friendly worlds. Later in the game FTL communications could become more common.

Note: Players can cheat this system. Imagine an alliance of 2 players that trust one another. Their empires are mingled together and stargate networks linked. One player goes off to war with his battlefleet the other stays home. According to the game rules, Away player shouldn't know what is going on in his empire, however Home player can simply message Away player with updates of events as they happen (messaging could be in-game, e-mail, phone, etc). It's debatable if this really matters, we could even say that Friendly Aliens give each leader a special communicator, that allows FTL commincation to any other special communicator, so that messages between players are always recieved instantly, thus players sending other "shrouded" players updates would become legal gameplay and could be done through normal game channels, rather than needing to resort to e-mail or other external communications.
This concept could be embraced by allowing shared leadership of empires, so multiple players with their flagships form a real faction. That'd make for a nifty ORPG too.

[targon]

This is exactly that I tried to implement before I enlisted into StPDT. I strictly disregard FTL so spaceships travel STL and messages and orders exactly at "c". Each turn each unit send its status (coords/health/etc) to its commander, which accumulates that reports and sends its own report up the line. Total reports are shown to the player, and it may be reports form long-dead units in fact ;(. Player may order his/her units to do different tasks, this orders have to be dispatched at each level of command and units will try to employ it regardint their current state. In meantime, units may react accoriding to their own AI to occational attacks etc. Messages may be intercepted by (un)friendly aliens, decoded and (porviding they somehow managed to grok the language) translated, creating lot of work to spies (BTW, this messages may be from long dead civilizations if transmitter was really good).
Among other ideas I also meant different levels of civilizations playing in the same time. "God" level civilizations are completely ignorant to pesky little critters unless provoked (they're forced by game rules to do so). While the civilizaion evolves, it faces completely another ranges of problems (stabilizing the Galaxy core and later creating its own stars for example) and foes.
But all these stuff was hell hard to implement, that's why I'm here

[Kuciwalker]

Messages should originate on the planet and/or fleet level, and contain the information known on that planet/fleet. Btw, even "broadcast" transmissions should go much faster than light (unless we're using the single star system model, in which case the speed of light would work quite well).

One part of a factions "belief" or whatever (maybe social engineering) should be the level of autonomy. This would basically be "how much will my units do without my orders, and how much will they follow my orders if I'm not right there". The advantages to high autonomy is increased effectiveness of ground units (tactical autonomy), greater intelligence for your governors (in matters civilian and military), and better intelligence for your fleets not under your direct command (with your flagship in them). Downsides would be that if you happened to have a plan that required lots of coordination and such, you would have a much higher chance of your fleets not following your orders (not mutineeing, just doing what they think is best in the tactical situation). The exact reverse would be true if you went for less autonomy.