[WIP] Diplomancy OXP

[Day]

Version 0.2: http://pradier.info/oolite.oxp.Day.Diplomacy.oxz
Same as the 0.1 version +:
- When docked in station, once every 10 frames, an action (event, response, etc) is realized. A 'turn' of events is allowed each jump. Before beginning a new 'turn', all the actions of the precedent turn have been realized.
- All the galaxies are managed, not only the one in which the player use the oxp for the first time.

Might be done in next version: an easy API to use the engine in other js files

[Diziet Sma]

Very interesting project, Day.. looking forward to seeing where it goes.

On a related note, if I were to design a real news system for a galaxy, there would be a delay in news propagation (something around: Sum on a road between 2 systems of ((period of max release delay) + (travel time between 2 intermediary systems)).
I wonder if this would be a useful game mechanism. I can't see how, currently. Maybe to avoid perfect planification by the player.

This brings a thought to mind.. there's never just 'news'... there's also rumour, and gossip. Containing varying degrees of truth and/or fact. And it generally manages to travel considerably faster than actual 'news'. If your mod could mimic this as well, it would add considerably to the overall atmosphere. For inspiration and perhaps even some useful code, see the bar-gossip feature in cim's New Cargoes.

[Day]

Very interesting project, Day.. looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Me too ^^

This brings a thought to mind.. there's never just 'news'... there's also rumour, and gossip. Containing varying degrees of truth and/or fact. And it generally manages to travel considerably faster than actual 'news'. If your mod could mimic this as well, it would add considerably to the overall atmosphere. For inspiration and perhaps even some useful code, see the bar-gossip feature in cim's New Cargoes.

Thank you.

Well, I was just considering that :

Code: Select all

// FIXME 0.n news, depending on player current system, player allegiance system, propaganda?

Some thingies:

- as a person, I don't like to deal with rumor, and it's the same as a player; so I guess I'm a little bit prejudiced against the use of rumors,

- that said, I do my personal news watch with a rss reader (aesthetics, economics, technology, politics, law, jobs, forums); maybe the right way is to generate LOTS of news and let the player register to those they want,

- my experience drives me more and more to consider all news as oriented, even if the reporter wasn't oriented himself; so rumor and gossip might be transfered to the player only if there is some powerful actor behind the general move; yet, in real life as in the game, how do you differentiate news from fake news if you don't have access to insider information and you don't have personal expertise in near fields? Hmm, maybe here you might have experience coming from the game itself, like having seen a Lave flotilla and comparing that with the info that Lave isn't trying to blockade the nearest system? But at this point, doesn't it stop to be a fun game?

[Diziet Sma]

- my experience drives me more and more to consider all news as oriented, even if the reporter wasn't oriented himself; so rumor and gossip might be transfered to the player only if there is some powerful actor behind the general move; yet, in real life as in the game, how do you differentiate news from fake news if you don't have access to insider information and you don't have personal expertise in near fields? Hmm, maybe here you might have experience coming from the game itself, like having seen a Lave flotilla and comparing that with the info that Lave isn't trying to blockade the nearest system? But at this point, doesn't it stop to be a fun game?

Well, if it's very obvious that it's just rumour and gossip anyway (and what else could bar-room talk be?), then the player knows to treat it with a healthy dose of salt. If the rumour subsequently gets confirmed in 2 or 3 other ways, then you might begin to take it seriously.. maybe enough to take a gamble on profiting from it.

So far as distinguishing "real" news from "fake" goes.. heck, much of what is generally accepted as "real news" is propaganda calculated to influence public opinion anyway. The slant of the presentation, the way the issue is divided into binary options (it's either 'this way', or it's 'that way'), shutting out other, more nuanced thinking, limiting the boundaries of discussion.. In the days since Edward Bernays started the whole thing off, manipulating public thinking to get people to go along with whatever you want has become an artform. One that governments and corporations have become exceedingly skilled at.

Bottom line, big business and governments lie to us.. all the time.. it's practically their stock in trade. As the old aphorism goes, "never believe anything until it's been officially denied." Further, the neatest definition of diplomacy I've seen is "The art of saying 'nice doggy' while you reach behind you for a rock to throw."

And your mod is called... "Diplomacy".

Where the 'fun' comes into it, for the player, is in trying to read between the lines of obfuscation, and determining where there might be a profit to be had. If the player is forced to only rely on 'official' channels of information, their ability to read between the lines would be severely limited. To compensate, your mod would have to introduce something that's never existed in reality.. an honest press. And that would take all the fun out of trying to figure out what's really going on, and where to make some money.

[Day]

Further, the neatest definition of diplomacy I've seen is "The art of saying 'nice doggy' while you reach behind you for a rock to throw."

And your mod is called... "Diplomacy".

I've just put it in my code comments to be sure to taking it into account when devising ideas.
I don't yet know if it will emerge enough for this sentence to be explicitly the oxp Motto

Where the 'fun' comes into it, for the player, is in trying to read between the lines of obfuscation, and determining where there might be a profit to be had. If the player is forced to only rely on 'official' channels of information, their ability to read between the lines would be severely limited. To compensate, your mod would have to introduce something that's never existed in reality.. an honest press. And that would take all the fun out of trying to figure out what's really going on, and where to make some money.

Yesss. Player's greed is the key. Thank you

[Disembodied]

Plus, it's worth remembering how much fun rumour caused in the original Elite - people hunted for Raxxla, and went looking for Generation Ships too, because they were mentioned in the manual and in "The Dark Wheel".

[Diziet Sma]

Another thought.. you might want to make use of the various news outlets in  Snoopers. It shouldn't be too hard to insert your own news into the feeds.. that's one of its purposes, to supply a newsfeed system for other OXPs to use, and even if you decide not to make Snoopers a dependency, you could make use of the names of the feeds.. save you from having to come up with your own.

Snoopers is an essential part of my day, in Oolite.. it would be fun to see the Diplomacy news and rumours coming through the same channels.

[Day]

Plus, it's worth remembering how much fun rumour caused in the original Elite - people hunted for Raxxla, and went looking for Generation Ships too, because they were mentioned in the manual and in "The Dark Wheel".

That's true
And yet, it must have a root of truth, hmm...

This is in my roadmap. It may be related

Code: Select all

// FIXME 0.4 storing the history
// FIXME 0.n what about the story of a war writing itself?

[Day]

Another thought.. you might want to make use of the various news outlets in  Snoopers. It shouldn't be too hard to insert your own news into the feeds.. that's one of its purposes, to supply a newsfeed system for other OXPs to use, and even if you decide not to make Snoopers a dependency, you could make use of the names of the feeds.. save you from having to come up with your own.

Snoopers is an essential part of my day, in Oolite.. it would be fun to see the Diplomacy news and rumours coming through the same channels.

Totally! I love snoopers
And that's totally part of what of I envisionned when I began this oxp.

That said, I must find the balance between too much news and not enough, not to annoy the more contemplative players.
Currently, I'm thinking along the "register" concept. Player would register with some news companies.
I'd add at least a news company for the citizenship system of the player, which would inform them of the attitude of other systems to them.

[Disembodied]

And yet, it must have a root of truth, hmm...

Not everything has to … look at all the conspiracy theories and bad science (or even just long-range weather "forecasts"*) that the media churns around. Great chunks of it have no basis in any sort of fact whatsoever - and most of that is just for clickbait, without any kind of agenda or purpose beyond making money off the eyeballs of rubes.

* There could be similar stories warning about upcoming solar storms, or even stars going nova - which would be nonsense right up until …

[Day]

Not everything has to … look at all the conspiracy theories and bad science (or even just long-range weather "forecasts"*) that the media churns around. Great chunks of it have no basis in any sort of fact whatsoever - and most of that is just for clickbait, without any kind of agenda or purpose beyond making money off the eyeballs of rubes.

Hmm, interstellar news could be expensive, and these conspiracy news relies on dirt cheap publishing system.
So, we would have a lot more rumors, fake news and legit tips on the planet itself.
Which would finally give me a reason to go to the planet itself

* There could be similar stories warning about upcoming solar storms, or even stars going nova - which would be nonsense right up until …

Idea noted for a supernova-style event, implemented through a quirium cascade mine.

[Day]

The 0.5 version is now in the manager
Mainly, there is now an easy API for oxp developers

Edit: no known bug

Disclaimer: It is STILL a Work In Progress.
In particular, the savefile format might change in the future; so it wouldn't do to expect a savefile from an old version to work with a newer version code.
If experimenting problems, the easy way is to edit the savefile and remove the lines including "Diplomacy". Then next start, the oxp will begin anew.

In the next version, the taxation might be calculated depending on the elapsed time, rather than a fixed amount each jump. (What, the universe economy doesn't depend on the player's impulsion to flee from system to system?!)

Changelog :
0.5 Bugfix manifest.plist for the oxz manager.
0.4 Put into the oxz manager.
0.3 New, oxp dev func: delivered DiplomacyEngineAPI for oxp developers, provided a dedicated readme file.
New, doc: provided a dedicated file DiplomacyRoadmap.txt
Improvement, code consistency: the Systems and Tax js script now use the API rather than the native engine calls.
Improvement, speed: optimized the loops in the engine
Improvement, logic: when starting, the player is docked, so we should process the saved actions.
Bugfix: solved a bug in the Tax script recurrent tax task after a savefile load.
Bugfix: the init action using the api wasn't working after a restore from the savefile.
Cleaning: log cleaning, file cleaning.
0.2 The actions are made progressively, one every 10 frames when docked, so as not to need more execution time than allowed at the same time, and to avoid slowdowns during the game.
0.1 First version of the Diplomacy engine. Systems are introduced as a type of "Actor". "SELFTAX" is introduced as an event for systems. Tax level and treasury are displayed on the F7 screen.

[Day]

The 0.6 version is in the manager.
2 evolutions:
- tech: a monstrous refactor to speed the engine,
- flavor: perceived taxes now depend on the time since the last taxation.

No known bug.
The event system is disabled in this version.

Disclaimer: It is STILL a Work In Progress.
In particular, the savefile format might change in the future; so it wouldn't do to expect a savefile from an old version to work with a newer version code.
If experimenting problems, the easy way is to edit the savefile and remove the lines including "Diplomacy". Then next start, the oxp will begin anew.

In the next version, it might be that
a) the event system is speedily working,
b) an event is implemented,
c) the base of relationships between systems is begun.

Changelog

0.6 Improvement, flavor: tax amount depends on the time spent since the last taxation.
Improvement, speed: major refactor to remove closures, dereferences, JSON (de)serialization special functions.
0.5 Bugfix manifest.plist for the oxz manager.
0.4 Put into the oxz manager.
0.3 New, oxp dev func: delivered DiplomacyEngineAPI for oxp developers, provided a dedicated readme file.
New, doc: provided a dedicated file DiplomacyRoadmap.txt
Improvement, code consistency: the Systems and Tax js script now use the API rather than the native engine calls.
Improvement, speed: optimized the loops in the engine
Improvement, logic: when starting, the player is docked, so we should process the saved actions.
Bugfix: solved a bug in the Tax script recurrent tax task after a savefile load.
Bugfix: the init action using the api wasn't working after a restore from the savefile.
Cleaning: log cleaning, file cleaning.
0.2 The actions are made progressively, one every 10 frames when docked, so as not to need more execution time than allowed at the same time, and to avoid slowdowns during the game.
0.1 First version of the Diplomacy engine. Systems are introduced as a type of "Actor". "SELFTAX" is introduced as an event for systems. Tax level and treasury are displayed on the F7 screen.

[tsoj]

This brings a thought to mind.. there's never just 'news'... there's also rumour, and gossip. Containing varying degrees of truth and/or fact. And it generally manages to travel considerably faster than actual 'news'.

"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and
the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing
travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception
of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel
people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were
powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and
were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere
that there wasn't really any point in being there."
- Douglas Adams -

[Day]

Interesting faction to implement.
Be part of it, and you may travel with jumps of 10 ly!
(But everybody will wage war on you as soon as they spot you)