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[LordArchibald]

I'm making a 4X where you play as a space emperor (grand strategy). Here is the main topic: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150517.0

I made this separate topic to discuss the audience mechanic. The idea is that every 12 turns (it's a 4X most of the time, with conquest, research, etc) there is an audience. Various people come to you with various issues and you make decisions.

So far I have implemented some mechanical stuff (select a bonus, select a grand project to start, sign a contract, select who the main enemy is) and some events (assassination attempt, bopmb in the palace), but... It kind of feels weak. I get an impression it needs some sort of storyline or a deeper plot. I don't know... Ideas how it could work? Especially how to tie it to the 4X gameplay?



Note: Yes, I have played CKII and I find their events system unsuitable. These merely are used to liven up the numerous characters cast. It's just like 5-8 events repeating over and over again for different characters (note it fits the CKII gameplay, but for the audience mechanic I don't see it working).
Note2: I have not played King Of The Dragon Pass but I'm familiar with it. I have doubts about replayability there, but yeah, it's much more suitable than the CKII system.

[BFEL]

Note: Only hire people with silver hair.

[Girlinhat]

Here I was hoping for a reality TV based 4X...

[LoSboccacc]

Currently they hate one big happy family. They need more internal variables (power lust, populism, connections) and factions (those are in, at least partially:industrial, military, traders etc)

Then you can make those fight each other and come to you for assistance, hence audiences. Removing people might be dangerous and cost you planet instability (populists) or faction hate (connections) and all could compound to make possible rebellions.

There need to be more power position tho, so governors, police chiefs, secret services, the more the merrier.

They could also get in the way of your edicts, if loyalty is low enough and their faction/populace support makes them bold enough.

[Knave]

What LoSboccacc said is key.

Make sure there are HARD decisions. being a space emperor should weigh very heavily on the player.

Outbreak of space plague on a populated planet! Governor is requesting immediate medical assistance, but maybe one of your chief advisor's is recommending you quarantine the planet and not risk this deadly plague reach the rest of the worlds. Who do you side with?

Head of the industrial trade guild is calling for more rights and protections for his workers. The nobles don't like this claiming it will ruin productivity and reduce your taxes.

Make sure you can't always make the "right" decision (There are only so many resources to go around). Some might understand, or some might hold a grudge.

[Viken]

I don't think it should be just an 'audience'.  The base mechanics of the system also seem suitable for receiving reports or the like, like a Council of Ministers that you attend to get a more indepth overview of the imperial situation, as well as story elements like infighting between the various ministers and generals/admirals.  That would fit well in the overall scheme of things as well.

As for suggestions, take your pick.  Refugees, pirate raids, plagues, planetary relief efforts, brokering trade deals with corporations outside of the empire.  Passing judgement on crimes that have gotten up to your level.  All sorts of things are available.

[LoSboccacc]

Speaking of which, I always wonder if this could be gamified  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php

[Zangi]

Taking sides in I guess factional feuds and what-not.  Considering that individual officers seem to only have 3 stat things and not much else to differentiate em.  That is if there is some sort of factional system.
Do officer stats change overtime?  Can you lower or raise loyalty/corruption/competence based on your decisions?

Your cast as far as I can tell from here are just nameless mooks with stats.  You ever play Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Nobunaga's Ambition? [To a lesser extent, dynasty warriors/samurai warriors.]  Sure, the characters are all based on historical people, but they mostly ain't mooks, everyone is someone, no matter how much they suck.  (Plus, in some of the versions, they also have their own skills.)
Noone is gonna care if nameless mook Commodore#321 dies.  Sure, maybe he has high competence and loyalty with low corruption, but does that mean much beyond losing a stellar mook that'll be replaced by another?

[Mephansteras]

Another good source of conflict and interesting decision is Policies, with different sides wanting you to implement various laws. For example, you could have some factions/planets want the empire to shift more towards freedom of trade while others want protective trade programs that boost their planets/factions. For the player this could be a question between increased taxes from the entire empire vs increased taxes and production on certain worlds. Might be worth going one way or the other.

Or you could have policies which improve/hinder the growth of scientific research in specific areas but limit/prohibit something else. For example, you could have a group which is morally opposed to Human Cloning and wants that technology banned, but in return you gain a morale/stability bonus on the planets with that group.

Also, if you have sets of factions you could have factional differences and politics going on. Keep it as a continuous background effect to the game, with factions growing/losing power and struggling behind the scenes. Having everything come out of procedural systems rather than being random 'event' style systems would help keep it from being the same things repeated over and over.

[lastverb]

Limit player to have X much power, few "power" resources for audience session maybe. Every visitor give few choices varying in usage of power and bonuses. Including negative bonuses, almost every 0 power one should be negative, possibly even deserting to another empire for high ranked visitors. Player should never have enough power to get pass all negative effects (at least minor ones).

Visiting (events) should be based on some conditions (so no previously mentioned deserting in hive-mind race). I've seen the other topic and this would be great way to minimize micro-management: your AI is not being good enough to keep this system fed - event create visitor with a way to resolve it (spend power). Basically whole even system condensed into audiences with way to resolve them.

Also if you are planning on longevity of such system, it would be nice to have it moddable (simple serialization/deserialization of xmls or other format).

[Chiefwaffles]

The various people could have hidden motives - things that they want to accomplish. Depending on other stats, their dedication and ruthlessness to achieving their goals should differ. Some guys will do anything to accomplish their goals, and some will just try to politely ask. They could also have other stats influencing how subtle they are in this.

For example, someone could have a motive to declare war on this other entity, so based on their subtlety, they'd try to gradually get the empire closer to war, and eventually have war declared. Pretty complicated but could make a bit of intrigue.

[QuakeIV]

Admirals could give you rough assessments of the situation, with the accuracy varying based off of their competence, and their tone varying based off of loyalty.  (disloyal officers start to whine if the war goes on for too long, loyal guys are excited to be killing for the glory of the empire).

Could just provisionally base that based off of what percentage of the fleet is in the repair yards due to damage.

[LordArchibald]

Plot vs characters based

That's the biggest dilemma I have here. I see two ways to approach the audience:
1) Plot based - the storyline is generated, then it's filled with personas if/when needed
2) Characters based - there is an existing cast of characters and then the game tries to generate a plot to fit those characters

Also I have a sight problem with characters. They are used as the plot devices (audience) and as 4X mechanic (governors giving bonus to planets, exactly 9 admirals one per fleet). And honestly that's kind of troublesome to me. Like a governor dying (4X mechanic) in a middle of a plot... I mean, the 4X mechanic and the plot mechanic is not the most compatible here and goes into way with each other. Like in the mechanic I can't have characters like "Chief of police" (there is no way I could implement police department mechanic and all other mechanics for other minor positions that do not relate to the core 4X mechanic) while in the plot there is no problem introducing such persona.
I'm thinking maybe I should split the cast, one group is the 4X personas (governors, commanders, admirals) and they can die etc, the other would be story cast (imperial court, factions, advisors) and they would be immortal and interact with story/audience part of the game only?

Limit player to have X much power, few "power" resources for audience session maybe. Every visitor give few choices varying in usage of power and bonuses. Including negative bonuses, almost every 0 power one should be negative, possibly even deserting to another empire for high ranked visitors. Player should never have enough power to get pass all negative effects (at least minor ones).

I was thinking of a similir mechanic (you can grant 3 audiences only out of 12 let's say), but there is a problem with an interface. You need a way to compare all isssues they bring to you, so you can choose. It's not doable without shuffling through all the proposals, which is terrible interface wise (a lot of clicking and you still need to remember the other choices that are on separate pages). It's much more convenient to have a single audience proposal with 5 choices and you choose one, then you move to the next proposal and again choose from the 5 choices, each time you see all available choices).

[LoSboccacc]

Grant temporary immortality to people in a plot for the duration of it. It would be extra strange for some characters to never die while others do. Or immortality to everyone (this can also be done just making turns last months - game is the same, life is much much longer for everyone)

[darkflagrance]

Conversely, what if a player is involved in a plot and decides to resolve the plot by eliminating key individuals outside of the audience event? That seems like a logical and reasonable solution to me; real concerns intervene and giving characters "plot armor" might reduce immersion.

That said, King of Dragon Pass handled their audience mechanic by anonymizing the population and making the characters mentioned in events unrelated to gameplay, so any one of your 12 warriors could be the special veteran who escaped from the south you accepted 6 months ago, and you'd just lose a warrior if she was killed in a subsequent by assassins from the king she abandoned.

If you are actually simulating characters, you might want your storylines to "emerge" from flags that track specific relationships and ambitions. Perhaps you might write an audience event chain for characters who select each other as rivals and share similar professions. Likewise, a resolved event might flag certain characters as having been characterized a certain way in the past to make them eligible to trigger future events.