Galaxy 4 (Angiana)

[Cholmondely]

Thanks to DGill and Alnivel, I've been pondering G4.

The oddity in the pack.



Only the 4 political systems.

Missing Corporates, Confederacies, Dictatorships and Feudals.



Caveat: How rigid are these definitions?
See cim's comments in his excellent Ship's Manual:

Planetary Governments
The Cooperative maintains a short summary of the government type of each system, and this is viewable on your F7 system data screen. For simplicity, governments are divided into eight broad classifications, each described in the following chapters. The government type is reflected in the number and size of police patrols in the system, with Corporate States generally having the most patrols (and the fewest pirates) and Feudal and Anarchy systems having the fewest patrols (and the most pirates).

The classifications are extremely broad, and many systems could arguably fall into two (or sometimes more!) classifications. There have been allegations, so far unproven, that some planetary governments have been bribing the Cooperative officials to grant a more pleasant classification, and funding additional patrol craft – and conversely that some systems which have been unable to keep up with the required payments under Cooperative treaties have been downgraded. This has all been strenuously denied: nevertheless, the government description is far more useful as an indicator of the environment in space than it is of the planet below.

The following sections give typical and atypical examples of the government types.
This is just one of his 8:
Communist Systems
The official description of a Communist system is “a system where the majority of the means of production are controlled by the state”.
Geonerbe in Chart 4 is typical of this government type, with private ownership of business on the planet's surface illegal. A single world government controls all production and most consumption, though some minor flexibility in personal consumption is permitted. A few independent businesses do exist off-planet, though many of these are also controlled by senior government officials. The appointment of government officials is by popular vote, though the Communist Party is the only serious contender for all senior and most junior government positions.
Argema in Chart 7 is a little different. A heavily forested world, it receives most of its planetary income from the tourist and logging trades, both of which are solely owned and run by the planetary government. Private enterprise in other areas is encouraged, though with few other natural resources these mainly reduce the system's dependence on industrial imports, and do not make significant profits. The government itself is almost plutocratic, with most senior government positions either held by the heads of the tourism and logging state corporations, or given to favoured friends of those individuals.
Xesoon in Chart 3 counts as Communist mostly because it had to be filed somewhere. The citizenry communicates entirely through poetry, and the Constitution is a fifty-thousand word epic. Government business is carried out through an annual song-poem, to which any citizen may append a verse to set out and approve of their business for the year. While private enterprise is technically allowed, the locals prefer to add their work to the song-poem, and outsiders who can compose poetry to the standards required to do business are extremely rare.

And his comment here:

may one then ask why it is that one of the most dangerous systems in the Ooniverse are Anarchy systems?

A few options there:
1) My preferred one: Actual well-disorganised anarchies get themselves filed as one of the other categories by the Cooperative's classifiers.

"So how many governments are there on this planet?"
"Around 1.6 billion. We don't keep an exact count."
"And do they all get on with each other?"
"Reasonably so, I would say."
"Okay, I'll put you down as a Confederacy for now."

It's not just anarchies which play that game, of course - to the extent that the classifiers are suspected of making the judgement by watching how many pirates their escort fleet fends off on the way in, and asking carefully leading questions to make the classification fit.
2) A consideration of the Cooperative's laws related to slaves, narcotics and firearms (especially slaves) leads to the logical conclusion that it is considerably more malevolent than the popular propaganda shows it to be. Of course if you stick your nose in trying to bring the Cooperative's rigid corporatist governance to one of the few free systems where slavery is illegal you're going to get it shot off.
3) Funding a bunch of pirates to ensure that Anarchy systems can't get essential components at a reasonable price and so stay poor and low-tech is a good way for the surrounding hierarchies to help encourage a change of governance.

A closer look:

Galaxy 4 contains only Democracies, Commies, Multi-Governments, Anarchies.

Commies are organised. The others are not. I would expect almost every G4 Democracy to contain at least one Communist Party, if not more (Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, Xiist, etc.). And the Multi-Governments to include Communist States amongst their down-planet countries.

Perhaps there are a number of genuine Confederacies present, but the Commies prevent them getting proper Galactic Police protection so that they end up with the Multi-Government style GalCop deal and with the lower police presence that entails.



Consequences

I would also presume that over time more systems become either Communist or Anarchic, due to the influence of Communist agents and the lack of any organised resistance (No wealthy Corporates to fight back. Or Dictators. Or impoverished Feudals.)

And that any seemingly neutral bodies (GalCop, Galactic Navy if present, etc.) will have been subverted to some degree.



OXP possibilities?

Currently 4 missions are set in G4:
The vanilla game one, Deposed, Love Cats & Trident Down

So I would presume that an OXP slowly turning the various systems into Commies or Anarchies over time could be relevant here. And maybe just a handful becoming one of the other missing flavours (but probably only briefly, before relapsing into one of the main 4 government types.

[Switeck]

This is a good resource to studying what can be found in Gal. Chart 4:
https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolit ... t/Galaxy_4

Not only are the government types limited to 4...
There are twice as many systems of each of those 4 government types than there are in any of the other Galactic Charts.
So you don't have to travel far to find examples of each there.

You better really like OXPs/OXZs that affect those system types, because you'll be seeing a lot of them!
For example... Random Hits OXP's Space Bar stations seem like they're nearly everywhere.

Another indirect consequence is Galactic Chart 4 is effectively "poorer" and lower tech than the others, although Galactic Chart 8 has even fewer tech level 14 systems.
There's no Tech Level 15 systems at all, so some super-equipment is unavailable.
There's more average and poor agricultural systems as well.

Overall, I'd say this hints at deprivations caused by war...probably fomented/perpetuated by Communist factions.
The big, expensive special stations found in other Galactic Charts should be far rarer in Gal. Chart 4 -- either destroyed or never built there!
And pirates everywhere in large quantities, (spread by the core game's own oolite-populator.js even if you don't have any OXPs/OXZs to increase that!)

And if you stay in Gal. Chart 4 too long, you risk getting dragging into a system-wide disaster...possibly triggered as a result of war.

[Cholmondely]

Some excellent points there, thank you!

And pirates everywhere in large quantities, (spread by the core game's own oolite-populator.js even if you don't have any OXPs/OXZs to increase that!)

But as regards the pirates, one could imagine two main tendencies
a) communist funded (and working towards destabilising selected opponents of the "Communist Ooniversal")
b) not in hock to the communists

So pirate coves could be dominated by one group or another. And communist agents would presumably get "free passage" from the communist-funded groups.

Reference:

Notable Organisations of Galaxy Four (Angiana)

The Comoonin
The '''Communist Ooniversal''' is the organization through which the many communist systems share the unique technology found only in those systems. The Comoonin is also rumored to be a coordinating organ for the effort to spread communism, fight (other) dictatorships and undermine capitalism. It is believed that their '''secret headquarters''' is located somewhere in Galaxy 4 - the only galaxy without any corporate states. See Worker's Commuter.

Executive SpaceWays
Executive SpaceWays, while still a fledgling company, have already made themselves a reputation for building high specification luxury passenger transport and escort vessels, which have a commensurately high price.

Based at Lavebe in Galaxy Four, the company maintains lavish offices and showrooms, befitting the class of clientele their ships' high cost and status tends to attract. Presently, the company's sales brochure details the H-4 Trident Executive Shuttle, the E-3 Gemini Escort, the E-5 Delta Long-Range Escort, the mighty H-7 Strelka CruiseLiner and their newest release, the P-3 Personal Shuttle. For more information, visit the company's information page or your local authorised Executive SpaceWays Dealer.

(note - ships designed by an ex-communist company in G8 - OKB Korshkov)

And also in G8:
Notable Organisations of Galaxy Four (Angiana)

KSR (Kosmicheskikh Slyushba Razvedki)

Added by Iron Raven OXP

The KSR is the interstellar intelligence-gathering arm of the Communist systems, an external counterpart to the notorious Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Service is known to operate residencies in most of the galaxy’s main space stations, with its officers gathering all relevant political, industrial and commercial intelligence while working under diplomatic cover.

And also this:

Yes, both the government and economy properties of systems are read/write.

Eeeex-cellent. <taps fingers Burns style>

... Hrm. Actually, I think I need to do some more reading to get a better feel for some aspects of the economic scales and spheres of Oolite systems. That is, if we're starting with an Anarchy, I want to figure out just how many opposing gangclan ships would need to be shot down, and/or how much money poured into one's favoured gangclan, and/or how many other kinds of missions could be done as a pilot, in order to bring the remainder to the negotiating table to set up a Multi-Government (possibly as a precursor to a Confederacy, or a Feudal system) - or to turn one's own gangclan's leader into a Dictator, or convince the people-at-large to self-organize into some form of communism or democracy, or convince external oligarchs that the place is stable enough to invest in a corporate state, etc, etc... all without losing sight of the fact that Oolite's basic philosophy involves chucking out realism for enjoyable playability when required.

Drawing a bit of inspiration from the new Home OXP, and starting with turning an Anarchy into an Archy, I'm guessing it would be simple enough to keep track of non-friendlies killed and cash donated, and when a tipping point was reached, the Politics gets switched. Maybe give the player some options in Mission screens about which direction to nudge that switch; maybe the ratio between kills and cash at the critical moment helps determine the method of the political upheaval and thus the result. Can anything think of a better model to try tweaking the details of?

Some shower thoughts:

It probably makes sense to assume that the player's pilot is a Protagonist, who happens to find themselves in just the right place at just the right times to be able to nudge various tipping points, so that their actions have a disproportionately large effect. That is: it could be perfectly okay to fudge the numbers, so that it only takes them a total of, say, ten million credits to lobby for a constitutional amendment, or a thousand kills in a single system to eliminate their faction's political opponents. (Please feel free to suggest better numbers. )

If a player starts getting involved in governmental change, I have an urge to throw in some reference to the original Iron Ass, Bolivar.

Some possible change methods:
Anarchy -> combat -> kill off opposing factions -> Dictatorship
Anarchy -> cash -> stabilize gangs -> Multi-Government
Feudal -> combat -> royal succession crisis -> Multi-Government
Feudal -> cash -> spreading the voting franchise -> Democracy
Multi-Government -> combat -> unification war -> roll the dice for the winning political form (if casualties are low) or Anarchy (if destruction becomes excessive)
Multi-Government -> cash -> PR campaign -> Confederate
Dictatorship -> combat -> kill off cronies -> Anarchy
Dictatorship -> cash -> buy off president, institute banana republic -> Corporate
Confederate -> combat -> sub-state privileges somehow get linked to inherited offices -> Feudal
Confederate -> cash -> lobbying for constitutional amendments -> Democracy
Democracy -> combat -> civil war -> Multi-Government
Democracy -> cash -> regulatory capture -> Corporate
Corporate -> combat -> Space-Boston Space-Tea Party and revolution -> Confederate
Corporate -> cash -> formalize and ossify family dynasties -> Feudal

A possible subset of this sort of thing: The player might get a chance to join a system's local chapter of the Industrial Workers of the Galaxy, aka the Wigglies, contributing cash and goods (and maybe busting a few union-busters' heads) to let them put together a system-wide General Strike, thus allowing for councils of trade unions to tell the government what to do instead of the reverse... and, as is customary in GalCop, to start plastering hammer-and-sickle logos on everything in sight.

[Redspear]

One way to think of the limited government types is that it's actually more likely in a small sample (approx 250 planets).

Our only true refernece (Earth) is a multi-government because people think differntly, live in different areas, develop different cultures and have different needs/interests.

While it's true that all parties could exist within one government type, just how likely that is across an entire planet is questionable.

Earth developed slowly however and colonial planets are likely to become established much faster, but who colonised them in the first place? Maybe it was precisely those who wished to leave the perceived tyranny of the government type of the world they left behind.

• The four types we have:
  
  • Democracies - ok, what we all have in common is that we hated the last one so lets vote (open cooperative)
  • Commies - lets be fair, we're all in this together (closed cooperative)
  • Multi-Governments - sure we all hated the last one but we go our own ways (closed uncooperative)
  • Anarchies - yeah, we're working on it (open uncooperative)

Pretty simplistic but then so are all of the models that are actually servicable in this regard.

Maybe galaxy four was actually found last and its number is due to it's location rather than age of inhabitation.

Galaxy of the refugees?

[Switeck]

Check the system populations...if it's not hugely different than other Gal. Charts, it's unlikely to be the most recently populated/founded.

[Redspear]

Most recently, not recently.

It's popular belief that the Americas were populated later than Africa but I don't think that's discernable from population size today.