Meta Game Story Examples

Faction vs Faction Stories

When I envisioned the meta game, it was to tell specific kinds of stories. Because I have an interest in international politics, it was made to tell stories of large scale conflicts. Not so much hot wars, but cold wars. It was meant to model the kind of low level conflicts that reduce countries to anarchy and trap them in that state.

I want to pick several example stories, and show how they are (or can be) modeled by the meta game. Many of these examples are taken directly from the background documents created by Hot4Darmat.

Collapse of Government

Empires falling is a great SciFi tradition and I wanted to make sure it was represented.

Every star system has a single government administration station. When that station is destroyed, the system reverts to anarchy. The government stops rebuilding, and all smaller government stations are abandoned. Government fleets will still operate in the system, fighting to the bitter end. If a government construction fleet still survives, it can attempt to rebuild the destroyed station and restore the government.

Using this model, governments fall one system at a time. A national government will not be destroyed until every system is conquered.

Because the destruction of a government is tied to a station, it is possible to collapse the government in many ways.

An outside invasion can destroy the station. Hostile navy fleets have the best chance of defeating the local defenders. Setting up an invasion needs two hostile governments. Invasion fleets must be created with specials scripts.

A local rebel faction can destroy the government. While it is not likely that a rebel faction could amass enough forces to wipe out a major navy presence, it is possible. And very possible if local mega corporations or mercenary forces shift alliance and begin to fight alongside the rebels. Setting this up requires setting the faction standings of factions in the system to support the rebels. This can be done without changing the mercenary or megacorprations to hostile toward the government. Rebels can recruit mercenary and mega corporation security forces. This leaves the government with little way to destroy the rebels. Kronholm against the Leung Empire is a possible location for this story.

Pirate forces can take down a government. Again, not likely, but a weak new government without any defense and police stations could be destroyed by pirates. Also a fringe system of a major government could be overwhelmed. Setting this up requires placing enough pirate bases in a system that the pirate fleets can defeat the local navy. Penda is a possible location. And so could be a system in The Caliphate (attacked by the Takanan Raiders).

Bitter Anarchy

Anarchy is meant to be unpleasant for everyone. The Navy forces are much stronger one on one than any pirate fleet. Pirate fleets do not survive for long in the government controlled systems.

Pirate Warlords

The pirates have little trouble taking over a system in anarchy. Independent Factions do not have any kind of attack fleets. They rely on governments for defense. Failing that, they find allied megacorporations or mercenaries to defend them. And if there are none, then they must make peace with the pirates. Pirates, like all other factions, grow when left alone. They will soon expand to fill a system. Pirates charge tolls, and raid cargo. Independent factions hostile to the pirate will be destroyed. The remainder will be paying protection. This can bring a semblance of peace to a system, as the ruling pirate fleet can wipe out any upstart factions that attempt to make trouble.

Lombard in The Barrens is an example of such a system. The Drozniac have such a strong hold on this system they have enforced a kind of peace. And the Drozniac are the only thing protecting the Independents from the ravages of The Brethren raiding from Ripon and The Gargoyle pirate clan raiding from Epitaph.

Private Wars

Wars between rival pirates or mega corporations are the most devastating part of anarchy. As the Independent Factions must pick sides to survive, they also suffer from attacks of the opposition. In these conditions, new stations are difficult to build (construction fleets destroyed).

Such a system requires two major criminal factions to be warring over control of the system. Akra in The Barrens has more than two waging a private war.

Rise of Governments

Governments can also be created. If a rebel faction is able to build a government station, then it turns into a government. It is also possible that a destroyed government is rebuilt by the Independent Factions that support it.

There are two major setups discussed in the background documents that can be modeled by the current system.

Establishment

Several factions are attempting to band together to form new governments and bring peace to several of the systems in anarchy. These factions are typically opposed by the larger nearby powers who either covet the systems directly, or who are using the systems as battlegrounds for proxy wars with other major powers.

The Aikenites in Lombard and in Akra are one such group of Independents. This effort is opposed by the CMC, who wants control of those systems. And by the Pirates who rule them now.
There is a loose group of “local leaders� in The Dead Reaches that would also like to form a government. The Emerald Alliance is supportive, but would rather the systems join the alliance. And The Leung Empire is directly opposed, because it wants control of the systems.

Overthrow

The other major use of rebel factions to form governments is to simulate overthrow. In The Leung Empire, the peoples of the Kronholm system would like to break away. This can be setup in the meta game by creating a Rebel faction for the new leadership, and by creating an independent people to represent the Kronholm citizens. The faction standings are adjusted so the Citizens have a neutral standing to the Empire navy, but have a friendly or allied standing to the Rebel faction. That is all is required for the seeds of rebellion and overthrow to be sown.

Proxy Warfare

Larger powers do not often fight directly, the damage would be too severe. Instead, they fight a cold war though proxy factions. Megacorporations and Mercenary Factions are perfect for this kind of fighting. The HQ stations of the proxy can stay safely in the government protected systems, while the war rages in the anarchy systems.

Emerald and the Leung Empire are fighting a proxy war in The Dead Reaches. Neither will commit a Navy invasion, but both hope to gain control of the systems. Both field mercenary forces. And both support megacorporations that are exploiting the mineral resources.

This kind of proxy warfare is devastating to the local population. They have no way of amassing the resources to drive out the proxy fighters. And the supporting governments don’t feel the pain of the war and have no reason to stop fighting. This kind of fighting can trap the systems in grinding poverty.

Culture vs Culture Warfare

Cultures of people are modeled in game by Independent Factions. These are separate factions from the governments that represent the Navy and Police. There are many different cultural groups in the Middle States. Independent Factions are the only factions allowed to own Habitats and Settlements. Those stations represent the civilian population. Genocide is modeled by the destruction of those habitat stations. When the last habitat module of an Independent Faction is destroyed the faction is wiped out forever. No other faction can recreate a culture.

Setting up a culture war requires two Independent Factions that occupy the same system(s) and are hostile to one another. However, these factions do not field war fleets. So the Independent Factions must be given allies who are governments, mercenaries, pirates, mega corporations, or rebels. It is those factions that do the actual destruction.

The Independent Faction supports its allies by rebuilding any HQs that are destroyed.

So, my impression is that these events are triggered by some single recurring random event check. Am I right?

You know, if it's possible it would be VERY neat to have these as "scenario" options. Sure, have them occur in the "main" game randomly but also have small scenarios starting with any or all of those plotlines... It'd at a lot to eventual replay value, IMHO.

Events happen as a result of the meta game. Not so much random, as automated. The best analogy is to think of fleets as individual ships. They fight each other. The outcome is not totally random, it is based on weapons, and armor, and shields, etc. The better equipped ship (or the largest number of ships) is going to win most of the time. The meta game is the same way. If you ran the same cluster a few dozens times, it would most likely end up with the same result. It is really a matter of setting up faction positions, and starting stations. And most importantly, faction relations. Unless factions are Hostile (hot war) they don't destroy each others stations. Hot wars are just too costly.

This does open up a chance for "scenarios". Essentially, each start could have differing faction relations. Or some script that changes relations during a "story line". And that changes the whole game. For instance, you could easily script up a slow rise in hostilities leading to a cluster wide war. Having unique starting positions for the player is something we are working on. Those, we hope, will encourage the player to side with one faction or another, and thus get to experience the cluster from several vantage points. Not always the winning side. FireFly was a good example of a story where the main character was on the losing side, and how that changed his life.

If we can get the whole system working as GrandpaTrout envisions, it would really allow for almost unlimited setup scenarios. Everything would come down to the initial factions standings, and the relative strengths of each faction. There after as the game progresses events occur as a kind of chain reaction, unless certain things are done intentionally via scripting, such as setting two factions to a 'hot' war. There is also the possibility, only discussed, that the player might be able to instigate certain events, or for certain, make an impact on the consequenses of others.

Anyone who delved into the game could set up a scenario based off of our code, simply by tweaking a few ini files. So if you wanted to make a big brutal war between the Emerald Alliance and Leung Empire right from the beginning, it would just be a matter of doing it. Heck, the result could even be shared as a sub mod.

I think.

We could move all the critical files into the cluster map folder. Then you could switch between mods, just by switching the cluster map folder.

That is not a bad idea, considering future test needs. We may want to test the meta game in smaller pieces where it is easier to understand what is happening. And so it would be nice to switch all the critical files at the same time. Especially the faction_info.ini file that sets up the reputation bits. The player starting control files could be moved over as well.

A few fun mods I would enjoy seeing are an "EoC 2" mod, minus aliens, where you drive the corporates back to Earth (as Steve once said was the original idea). And "Indy War" that takes us back to Iwar 1 and lets you play as either side, with the Meta game handling the fight between the Independents and the Navy.

Oho! Yeah, that's the chicken... I'd suggest, however, that any mod based back in the EoC/IWar 1 setting should have the original access to armaments and such.

So, in effect the relations between any 2 factions is just set on a sliding scale..? That's handy.