Revv up the Senate

I think the Senate is one of the best, most under utilised features of the game. Many other Strategy games have varying government types with their associated advantages/disadvantages but none of them have a living, breathing senate where you are forced to get enough votes to maintain your hold on power.

So here is my suggestion in order to make the Senate more of a 'living' experience rather than, 'oh, it's election time, better press the Vote button', three-second-interval, passing-thought that it is at present.

The idea is pretty straightforward (and easy to implement, so says I) but the subtleties require some explanation so bear with me.

When the first Senate election is held the game ticks over as normal. 'Yep, we just got re-elected. Yee-haa! Good to go for another twelve months (how long is a senate election time cycle in the game, 12 or 6 months?).' Well, not quite. You are controlling the Senate but they - and politics - are an unpredictable bunch and who knows what might happen between now and the next election?

At the completion of the first election the game rolls a couple of die. The first one determines if there is going to be a 'senate incident' and if so, the second tells it in which particular week of the coming election time cycle (eg. time till the next vote) it will occur in.

Now a senate incident forces you into making a decision so you would want the occurence to be high enough to have an impact (and give the sense of a living senate) but low enough that it's not going to overwhelm other aspects of the game. I'd suggest the chance of generating an incident would be something like Interstellar Republic 30%, Democracy 40% and Federation 50% (It's a lot tougher to control a Federation senate than a Republic one). If an incidence is generated then it can occur in any week between now and the next election (second die roll).

So what is a senate incident? Well you'd get a pop-up box telling you that a party, say the War party is 'stirring' and is insisting that as the price for it's continued cooperation in the senate you have to increase your level of military spending.

You would then be offered three choices. One would be to keep the good 'ole boys of the war party happy and accept whatever restriction that is placed on you, eg. Military Spending Slider cannot go below 50% (but only until the next election occurs).

The second choice would be to tell the Crew-Cut pencil-necked Rednecks to take a long walk down a short plank. In which case they (the war party) receive a bonus vote boost at the next election (say between 1 and 4 votes, randomly determined. Note that half of these additional votes would come from the other parties and half would come from YOUR tally.)

The third option would be to 'Buy them off'. Here you could elect to spend a certain sum of money (not a lot as it would negate the advantage of having a higher form of government in the first place), say 500 bc and buy each and every one of the hard-headed men in the hardest, baddest party a personal soft and cuddly playmate in return for senatorial peace. The catch being that there is a chance, say 50% that you are found out doing dodgy backroom deals and your party suffers a PERMANENT 1% loss of approval rating ('reputational loss').

That in a nutshell is the basic idea. Each election cycle there is a chance of a single 'senate incident' occuring at a random point. A particular party tries to tie you up with it's own political agenda (eg. a restriction of some form on one or more of the spending sliders. Isn't politics always about money and where it's being spent?) which is in place (an efforced by the game) until the next vote comes around. You are offered three choices. Go with it, ignore it (and face a tougher election) or buy your way out of it (and run the risk of getting a 'bad boy' reputation).

An example of what thinking and game impact this would have could be as follows. I'm playing the Drengiuns and I'm busy ramping up my military so I can whack the bugs (torians) over yonder. Due to my chronic financial state I've had to change to a Stellar Republic in order to get enough money flowing into the coffers to pay for the fleet. Lo and behold I get a senate incident. It's the goddammed Universalist party who are insisting (wimps, you don't 'insist' anything in this universe, you 'take it') that no spending slider is set to more than 40%. The pop-up box informs me that the next election is 6 weeks away. Given that my military slider is currently way up the far end of the scale (which is only right and proper for a dominating race such as I) this would be a significant set back. I'm currently having to tax my population pretty hard and my approval rating is bumping along the 55% mark so I can't afford to ignore them and, besides, paying off a bunch of hippies isn't in my playbook. Six weeks of a reduced military spend, huh? I can, barely, live with that. And the hippies can all present themselves for missile quality testing duties forthwith. Assholes.

The subtleties are as follows.

1.The party that causes the incident (any except your own, naturally) is randomly determined but it is proportionally weighted so depending on how many votes each party got at the last election. Eg. so the parties that polled the most votes last time are the ones most likely to generate the incident. This gives you a reason to pay attention to how the voting went.

'So the technologists got that many votes did they? Mmmm. If an incident occurs I'm liable to be dealing with a bunch of nerdy nutty scientists...'

2.The effects are all related to the spending sliders. Either a max or min setting on a slider or sliders or perhaps a range. Each party would have it's own simple logic here. Eg. the war party aren't going to be interested in anything other than ramping up the military spending slider. The overall impact on the sliders is initially low but it can increase if the same party continues to generate incidents.

3.At the next election if you chose to ignore the incident/noisy-party-in-question then the bonus votes are added after the normal vote counting determination. As mentioned half are subtracted from the other opposition parties and half are taken from your own votes before they are added to the total of the party in question. These extra vote could be critical for a relatively strong party or irrelevant if the party in question isn't polling much in the first place. Even so they have a definite impact on your overall ability to control the senate because whatever happens you are effectively losing votes that you would have otherwise won.

4.If further incidents occur with the same party then the effects ratchet up. The second time around the party is no longer 'insisting', it is 'demanding'. The third time around it is 'laying down an ultimatum'. With each level up the consequences ramp up as well. At the 'demanding' stage the cost in votes jumps from a RDM 1-4 to a RDM 1-8 and if you ever reach the third stage, RDM 1-12. Also the chance of a 'reputational lost' in the case of a pay-off jumps from 50% to 70% to 90%.

Additionally the pay off cost goes up for each and every incident (like the starbase construction costs), but not excessively so. The main deterrent is the 'reputational loss' that, while it starts small, can gradually build up.

5.To make the system work a small refinement would be needed in the vote calculation algorithim. At present, from what I can see, it's just a bunch of votes randomly allocated to each party. You'd probably need to tweak it a little so that the parties that polled strongly last time have a higher probability of doing the same next time. This would give a logical narrative to the whole process and make the incidents flow more naturally. Eg. the Federalist party had the most votes last time and it was they that generated an incident. Because of the escalating nature of successive incidents from one particular party you are now going to be keeping a very close eye on how many votes the Federalists poll in next election.

6.You'd probably need a check box in the Options screen for "Allow Active Senate" as some players may not appreciate this extra dimension to the game.

7.To avoid players gaming the system (ignore any incident and then the week before the election drop taxes to zero) you'd need to make the election week variable. Eg. if the pop-up box gives six weeks till the next election then make the actual election week plus or minus two weeks on that.

So that's the idea. In essence it's taking information that's already provided by the game and making it more meaningful and, hopefully, fun. Now excuse me while I go and kick some hippy-ass out of the nearest airlock...

Cheers,
ZebbedeeX