Inter-nest diplomacy and War.
Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 10:31 pm
The long and short are as follows:
This post is made under the assumption that Alien Peace/Diplomacy (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3762) is implemented at some point, and has a number of assumptions that aliens start using resources similar to this: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3440
Short:
Nest clusters communicate with each other periodically, and on either on a random or per-resources available basis, nests will become friends, stay neutral, or become enemies with each other. The player can influence this if they become friends with aliens. If the player angers many nearby nests via pollution or destroys a large number of nest clusters, the biters of the world may band together to rush the player down.
Long:
Nest clusters send biters to "talk" to each other. Nests are generally given a bit more intelligence with their location, preferring to be closer to food and water sources, though this scouting range can be fairly small. Fewer nests spawn initially to allow this system room to grow. Once nests communicate, they will generally agree to a trade. If there is a resource disparity or one nest is chosen to randomly be more aggressive than the other, the nests may declare war on each other, though most of the time they will just trade. This aggression could be based on a form of stat, or just a random chance. After a time of peace, nests may agree to some form of pact, and become one larger nest, spread out across the area.
Here enters the player. Through the trade system outlined in the Alien Peace proposal, the player could potentially pay neutral nests or beseech friendly nests to attack neighboring nests. This allows the player to potentially widen their area of influence through not actually fighting.
Finally, Alien nest clusters may drop their disputes and fight the player as a coalition if the player demonstrates high aggression or causes large amounts of pollution. This may eventually grow out of control to army ant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_ant) sized affairs with the player fighting every single nest cluster in their sphere of influence, or perhaps the world if communication remains unchecked.
For this to work well I think Biter spawn rates would need to increase. Additionally, this opens a new endgame scenario, albeit the one that essentially means you failed, where you effectively just re-enact rocket defense and leave the planet.
Unfortunately the system might be taxing on one's processor, and it sounds fairly code intensive.
EDIT: I'd also like to apologize if this has been suggested before.
This post is made under the assumption that Alien Peace/Diplomacy (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3762) is implemented at some point, and has a number of assumptions that aliens start using resources similar to this: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3440
Short:
Nest clusters communicate with each other periodically, and on either on a random or per-resources available basis, nests will become friends, stay neutral, or become enemies with each other. The player can influence this if they become friends with aliens. If the player angers many nearby nests via pollution or destroys a large number of nest clusters, the biters of the world may band together to rush the player down.
Long:
Nest clusters send biters to "talk" to each other. Nests are generally given a bit more intelligence with their location, preferring to be closer to food and water sources, though this scouting range can be fairly small. Fewer nests spawn initially to allow this system room to grow. Once nests communicate, they will generally agree to a trade. If there is a resource disparity or one nest is chosen to randomly be more aggressive than the other, the nests may declare war on each other, though most of the time they will just trade. This aggression could be based on a form of stat, or just a random chance. After a time of peace, nests may agree to some form of pact, and become one larger nest, spread out across the area.
Here enters the player. Through the trade system outlined in the Alien Peace proposal, the player could potentially pay neutral nests or beseech friendly nests to attack neighboring nests. This allows the player to potentially widen their area of influence through not actually fighting.
Finally, Alien nest clusters may drop their disputes and fight the player as a coalition if the player demonstrates high aggression or causes large amounts of pollution. This may eventually grow out of control to army ant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_ant) sized affairs with the player fighting every single nest cluster in their sphere of influence, or perhaps the world if communication remains unchecked.
For this to work well I think Biter spawn rates would need to increase. Additionally, this opens a new endgame scenario, albeit the one that essentially means you failed, where you effectively just re-enact rocket defense and leave the planet.
Unfortunately the system might be taxing on one's processor, and it sounds fairly code intensive.
EDIT: I'd also like to apologize if this has been suggested before.