Ministers / Advisors

[Method]

Originally posted by Leland
Does the Minister of Energy and Industry decide all by himself what the bases should be building? That gives him huge powers, because he can decide whether to build military units, crawlers, colony pods, or base facilities... then again, I suppose that if he cannot negotiate with other ministers very well it will be remembered in the next election.

i think that the directors of military, terraforming, and colonisation would request that certain bases build things, and the rest of the time, the director of E&I builds base facilities. Should we create a separate director for secret projects, or just leave it to the director of E&I?

[DeathByTheSword]

why dont we make a minister of defense (overall defense/unitdesign/unit building) and a tatical officier (moving the units in time of war)

and the M of E and I must not be the only one that make the building orders he says what he wants in with bases (buildings) and the others says what the want (M of D armyunits M of T terraformers) and the president or a poll decides what will be build in the cities that different ministers want to use....what about this?

[Method]

i think that everything relating to military should be left to the director of defence.

as for the I&E, maybe the president (or alpha talent?) should decide. right now they really doesn't have many decisions to make.

[DeathByTheSword]

i agree (but you could have read that already 2 replys up )

[Method]

oh

i only paid attention to poll part i guess.

[Anodyne]

Hmm.. and as for Lemmy's suggestion, that would make the game far too slow. Like pointed before, the commissioner of Defense can always ask for counselling concerning the units, and co-operation with other commissioners is always fruitful.

[Leland]

I think the Commissioner or Alpha Talent should have as little power as possible; mostly filling in what the Directors didn't anticipate or tell him. That's why it sounds better to have the directors capable of figuring out by themselves (with the help of the people, of course) what to do. I can see two possible solutions:

1) There could be one director whose job is to decide which "directorate" gets to decide what and where to build. For example if Director of Defence wants to build a Planet Buster and Director of Industry wants to build a tree farm, he can choose between the two.

2) Directors could negotiate and try to reach a consensus. I figure this work out somehow like this: all directors post their suggestions of what to build and where to the forum. Some bases might have only one build proposal, so in those cases there's no question about what to do. In cases where several directors want to build something in a base, a public vote is held and that decides. If there's no time for a poll or if the poll result is ambiguous, the Commissioner can improvise.

Uhm. Sounds kind of bureacratic.

[Anodyne]

Hmm... if Leland's suggestion #1 was used, then we might have the Commissioner to choose the VP for himself. But it has the danger of power shifting too much on one party.

[Method]

i like 1 better. maybe this new director is just the alpha talent? that way if we go with the runner up in the commissioner election, it would eliminate the problem with one party having all the power.

how did they do it in civ2?

[Anodyne]

OTOH, if it's the runner up and his views differ from those of the elected Commissioner, they might face conflicts that hinder the gaming process...

[Kassiopeia]

IIRC the procedure in Civ2 was to have the runnerup act as the Alpha Talent, erm I mean vice president. It's worked out pretty well. The Alpha Talent and Commissioner won't have such influence over things that they'd have problems with ideologues. Of course, if the system doesn't work then a new one can be implemented.

[Anodyne]

Hmm.
Well, I'm in for trying that. So, runner-up as Alpha Talent I say.

[Leland]

Wait wait wait... you guys want to have Alpha Talent decide when Directorate disagrees? That would give the runner-up practically the most power in the whole faction, I'm not really sure how it can work out.

[Method]

no, i meant what did they do in civ2dg to decide who built what where?

[Anodyne]

Built... you mean cities, city improvements or terrain improvements (by settlers in civ/terraformers in AC) ?

[Method]

no. we're trying to figure out who decides what the bases build. if the director of defence wants to build an impact rover, and the director of terraforming wants a former, who decides what to build?

[Kassiopeia]

Hoopla. That is the core question... the public? The Commissioner? What about a third Director involved in base structures who must support one or another?

[Method]

and i wondered how they did it in the civ3dg

[Kassiopeia]

Well I had no idea so I made a suggestion myself. I'd better look into it.

[Leland]

We could have a new elected official called "Director of Public Production" or maybe split the "Director of Economy and Industry" into two separate directors. Anyway, this new director (be it "Industry", "Production", or whatever) would be responsible only about deciding which of the other directors have the precedence in build queues. He'd also be the only one besides the relevant director who would have the right to abort or retool production. Sound good?

[Method]

hmmm. maybe, but why not just make it the commish or vice-commish? i ask about civ2dg because kass was in it. i'll wait and see how they handled it.

[Kassiopeia]

Or we could just shift the responsibility to the Director of Infrastructure, after all we'd have him voted out in a split second if he decided to start building Tree Farms when a horde of Impact Rovers are closing in.

[Method]

so a director who wants something built reports it to the director of infastructure, who then decides what is most important, and reports it to the commish?

is that what they did in civ2?

[Kassiopeia]

In Civ2, when I was in the Ministry of City Planning, we had polls to decide build orders for the towns... yes, it was rather tardy.
Then we refined the system a bit and IIRC started to have these pre-set build queus, like Settler - Warrior - Temple, from which to poll.

[Method]

ugh. i like the director of infastructure idea.

[Kassiopeia]

But I really think we can incorporate something better then the Civ2 system, something more streamlined and effective.

[Method]

i dont think there is a streamlined way to do this. maybe we could ask the civ3ers

[Leland]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Or we could just shift the responsibility to the Director of Infrastructure, after all we'd have him voted out in a split second if he decided to start building Tree Farms when a horde of Impact Rovers are closing in.

I don't like that, because then he could easily use his influence to blackmail other directors into building what he wants: "You can only get this build if you promise to build missile infiltrators, otherwise it's tree farms for you".

Also, I am against giving any power to the commissioner, much less his runner-up. I think that a separate director is the best way to go (it's not as if the Director of Economy and Industry doesn't have enough things to do already).

EDIT: oh wait, who exactly is the director of infrastructure? Just someone who decides general categories (facilities, military units, pods/formers, ...), or is he supposed to be responsible for something more detailed? If the former is the case, then I agree that we need one.

[Juliennew]

I would also prefer having a direcotr infrastructure. If he don't make a good job, he will lower his chance to be reelected

[Juliennew]

"You can only get this build if you promise to build missile infiltrators, otherwise it's tree farms for you".

I hope this kind of blackmail would be reported by the victim !! He has only to make a screenshot of his PM and to make the thread to make sure.
We had this case on a NES in CFC. Napoleon tried to blackmail the Tzar of Russia but the Tzar posted the screenshot of the PM Napoleon sent : It made a big scandal but it was fun