Mega-feds, and war levels

ok, this is more of a jist type thing, rather than exact

what if feds where player based, rather than country based. if they where limited to like 4 players, and when a player joins, all their countries join. no switching, moving.

this would mean you couldn't stack up all the best players into a fed with several wings. players would have to search out the best allies they can, in their own region, and would, in theory, prevent mega-feds, with all the best players dominating a world

as a secondary thought, that may or may not go along with the first.

what if feds had war levels. not sure whether that would be instead of player levels, although it could be.

Hey Josias, didn't see this until now.

Countries which are associated with feds should have a standard war level so that every country can respond if a member is decc'ed by an outside party. My understanding (from a year ago) is that some players couldn't declare war on an attacker because of war level restrictions, which basically made Feds somewhat redundant unless everyone was the same war level.

I agree - every nation in a empire should be a part of the same federation.

By the way, what is the current political situation of the game? Are there lots of players and feds atm? Just wondering because the forums seem kinda empty.

well, my idea would have the effect of counter attack, but its not really the purpose. my thought, is, well, i'm as guilty as any one. but we have a tendency to load up all the best players in a single fed, and just create "branches," to include every one. it makes it easy to dominate a planet, that has a snowball effect of every one trying to get into the same fed. with the #2 fed usually lagging badly behind.

as far as current, i'm out of the loop. but yea, the political/forum end of the game, is a shadow of what it once was. my thought is that if the power base is de-centralized, it would create more opportunities for in game competition, rather than just score.

If a fed could only recruit a couple of regional power-houses, and had to fill the rest of their spots with local mid-range, or newbs, it would create more of an opening for regional based wars, and possibly even localized trade, or resource gathering.

I was thinking of creating a Simcountry subreddit on Reddit and try recruiting people to the game. It could work at getting some more interest.

Well the idea is logical, indeed it is. It would accommodate premium players by inserting their countries into a single fed to protect their countries.

As well as this, increasing the limit would make sure Superpower Feds would not have much power.

Another idea would be federation dedicated Air Defense. This would automatically move the Wings to designated areas in which the Chairman of the federation could do. Of course, with Federation dedicated Air Transports. In order to create one, they would just press a check-box and confirm.

Space no offense, b/c I like the concept, but the GM will say its redundant since war treaties, depots, and units can defend the Federation. I think auto response would be better than the chairman. I would like to say I think its a great idea to allow the federation to spend into the federation for aid and defense. I think the issue is you have to create a new type of economy in the game to allow feds to do such. I think the GM might have an easier time to add a auto response unit type or option like you said a check box. I think auto response would have flaws but go over better with players. Yea its redundant to what you can already do, but I like the Idea of one more layer of defense added to feds, it needs more options in game.

@ josias - We base our Fed off the concept of Empires vs single countries. Yea it makes sub feds alot when a few empires grow beyond the limits. I also agree with your basic concept, that would be a nice option next to the one about control the empire from less screens vs flipping from screen to screen.. or the merge into one concept mentioned on the forum often. I think another click box option would be nice consider empire and it keeps it the same but all fed and CM stuff goes to all join. But I think you can still create alliances and it will flaw the concept. We base the fed on a 6 - 10 player model. we had 4 but it was too quiet. I think 6-10 is best as a cap if you went all in type feds. would it create 2 federation types? Maybe the GM keeps it the same since you can always forge outside alliances and have separate feds banded together. The key goal is defense for most in the fed as space alludes to.
At the end of the day would it make a difference since the game is open enough you could do lots in the open-ended part of the game itself? Limits may just be speed bumps in the road vs any real limits towards limiting power of a federation. How about Security Council options towards Federations? I know that is still flawed as well. I'd like to hear more about your concept.

the number in a fed isn't that important, just so long as a fed can't recruit most of the planets power base, thats the thing i'm really going after. and get players to keep their countries more together, and locally, as opposed to a handful of players dominating a world.

the 4 number i grabbed, can from another game. when 600 people would sign up for a game, a 72 hour ticker would start, then it was a free for all, with max 4 players per fed, when 60 players where left standing, a 72 hour ticker would start, then the game would end. just surviving was an accomplishment, let alone winning, or high rank!

sim country doesn't need to be that cutthroat, but if all the power is in the same fed, it doesn't really offer allot of growth for lesser feds. often, when a lesser fed gets far enough along to be "respectable," they get clobbered. i'm plenty guilty of this, i once had a very respectable fed, literally shoot everything they had at me, and it was barely a dent to my reserves.

if it becomes more difficult to attract all the best players into a single fed, forcing them to create regional feds, and recruit from their area, to help fend of invasions from the next area over, i think that it will help improve the fed/political game.

yes, feds could still ally with each other, but thats part of the beauty of it!

as far as a dedicated "fed defense," that would be a bit difficult, where do these come from? players donating? that could be abused. but i'm not against the concept. i've seen similar things in other games. namely the first online real-time strat game i played, had a common defense, with several ministers that could operate it. it was wonderful!

I think there should be 2 things that slave countries cannot do which are......

Cannot create or join federations, only the leader countries should decide that while the slave countries automatically become a part of whichever fed the leader country decides on, just like you mentioned here.

Cannot create its own armies as I think all the armed forces should be all controlled and paid for by the leader country, which could mean generally smaller armies for players in the game since they likely can't afford their leader country to maintain and pay the expense for such huge armies.


But the question is, how would this affect the gameplay elsewhere? would it be a good thing or a bad thing?

@josias: I understand, I think with the open ended side of federations it would not matter much size of federation. You can forge allies and link together the feds of 4 making the same effect. It would make you have to work harder to do so, right?

I think they should add some basic diplomatic in game options to make these official and have an actual in game effect. ie peace treaties, SC aid, and war/defense treaties. Of course without closing off the open political side of the federation. I also think it might be nice for individual countries/empires to have some expanded options in game. It would be nice to be able to program in some ally options, like 25% defense or a war treaty option. It would be nice to find a way to have in game functions that would be more productive.
If they added some functions like the SC council has, plus auto disaster teams from the fed level, and maybe defense it would allow for more solid automatic time saving help to be shared with your friends in the federation, which allows to add more disaster types without making us upset.
I would assume how to fund the federations if you choose these voluntary options it would be shared between all countries in the federation or maybe a set amount for membership per GM. Of course this would be a voted item and not just forced out to someone. For active federations that like politics, it could open up some nice in game official votes and political debates. I would not expect you would be required to do any of it, but nice to have a choice. What is missing is a way to define your federation and make them a little more attractive to each player with more effective ways to operate it in game. I guess if you don't want to fund a common shared fund and vote on those items, then create your own federation. I assume it would be spelled out when you asked to join or was invited on what is required. what would a few 100 mil or less a mo really do against you if it could provide some in house support? I guess you could make it voluntary like the war treaty. Of course it might not be fair at times, that is why you vote on resolutions to be passed.
@james I do not think that burdening the main with the extra defense spending would work very well in game unless the slaves pay for the defense as well. It would be best to go with the merge option to bring all countries together as a group, but that would have effect on secured mode. secure it all or remove it all together? lose all your countries in one swipe. I would, rather, like to see more empire options added but not sure that putting all the eggs in one basket is the way to go with the army and slaves. maybe one offensive force for the whole and defenses that are shared among them all? ahh, still not sure about that one yet.

the real question is, don't we need some more in game options that are custom to the fed members preferences by their choice? There are a lot of ways we could pool together more options to make the federations more viable and exciting. maybe it will help some more federations to evolve to levels like mentioned.

I think there needs to be an actual reason for people to join federations. At present, there are no incentives except for defence, which can be handled alone if one doesn't go up in war levels or simply keeps their arses out of trouble.

I think Feds should begin trying to promote themselves as beneficial for member nations for a variety of reasons. Something like, "if you join our fed, my exclusive enterprise will build in all your nations." Players would absolutely love that, especially new ones.

I also think older players need to start using Feds in order to retain beginners and help them through the learning curve of SimCountry, and this could be done easily through an effective Federation.

I agree with the player idea over country.
I think feds should be built to protect 8-10 players per fed, all nations in the empire would be protected.

Also heres a CRAZY idea
When in a fed if a player signs the war dec, they will auto dec anyone reguardless of level.

-If i sign the war dec and my buddy at level 3 gets attacked, I at 11 should be able to assist him.
-If i get decced at 11 and my buddy at 3 wants to help, HE SHOULD BE ALLOWED.

I vote that the current limits stay in place to protect noobs from the higher players, but at the same time we need to loosen the requirements. If the Requirements where removed for DEFENSIVE auto decs only it would go along way to helping feds.

I also definitely agree that it should be player based rather than country based, so if one of your countries is declared on, the rest of them should join in too which would make much better sense.

drys0013, in terms of making federations more viable or even exiting, we could have a few different types of feds such as this idea below.


Alliance
An alliance would work in the same way it does now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_security#Collective_defense


Protectorate status
With this option, this will work very similar to how an alliance works, except declaring war on someone would have to be approved by your protector first (or the chairman of the federation), before declaring war on that player.
This could work by you selecting a country to declare war on like you would do normally, except you would have wait for your declaration to be approved by your protector first (chairman of the federation), in which they will receive a message to say yes or no to it.
A protector will always protect you if you are declared upon by others as well as supporting you in your wars that have been approved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectorate#Foreign_relations


Annexed status
This idea I thought, could work of where you would be like a slave country to another player with you being in control of it. With this option you are protected and cannot be declared upon by others, but you cannot declare war or attack other players since you have surrendered your sovereignty. It's basically like secured mode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation


Maybe adding these 2 new functions could help make federations more viable again, but it's only just a thought though.

Agree with the idea that every country a player has must be in the same fed. I have noticed some players have countries in several different feds which I find to be a huge conflict of interest. If two players from these feds go to war who are you going to support if you as a player have a country in each fed? or will you just stand aside and watch? are you really apart of that fed and their interests or are you only serving your own by joining as many feds as possible hoping no-one will go to war with you?