Drop Dust and Influence for Resonance (I wanted it to be FISH but Harmony as a resource would have been confusing).

• Resonance is roughly the Harmony equivalent to Dust, Influence and Approval but doesn't globally accumulate or have a cap. The planetary focus for this resource is stronger on Temperate planets and weaker on Fertile ones. Maintenance for improvements is paid with it and star systems with a negative Resonance balance will have their most costly improvements deactivated until there's "room" for them. 
  • Every unit of foreign population creates 1 Disharmony.
• How Dust is translated:
  • Dust from planets and populations always becomes 1:1 Disharmony (a synonym for -Resonance).
    • There should be an unlockable technology for converting population-based Dust into Science.
  • Dust can't be traded in Diplomacy.
  • Trade (and activities like raiding ships or anomalies) translates Dust into an even mixture of Food and Science.
  • Dust can be cleansed from planets inside the Terraforming tab. Other factions can likewise reseed Dust on such.
    • This is intended to go with a non-affinity trait that disables regular Terraforming.
• How Influence and Approval are translated:
  • Population Influence and Approval becomes 1:1 Resonance.
  • Influence from planets becomes 1:1 Resonance, Approval effects mean nothing.
  • Laws don't require any maintenance and have their local effectiveness multiplied by how much of a particular star's Harmony balance is Resonance.
  • Influence from events and loot become 1:3 Science.
• NO MARKETPLACE! (unless you win as a Defender?)
  • A planetary focus can be used to build Luxury Resources into Spire-type ships that can be "parked" inside a star system where they function as removable development levels.

Well, it's certainly interesting. Is it an Idea yet?

Blandersnatching wrote:

Well, it's certainly interesting. Is it an Idea yet?

There's no intent to, this is more like a mod concept by someone who's not interested in writing the actual storyline or code.

Well, I lost everything I was writing due to a misclick, so... whatever. Here's round 2, bigger and better than before:

I like these ideas, and it's good to write them down even if they most likely won't be acted upon. Resonance seems like a faithful representation of how the Harmony worked in ES; of course, given that the devs wrote that they didn't want to do the Harmony as they were (no Dust, Heroes or marketplace) there would have to be some changes. It would be neat to use this thread to brainstorm Harmony ideas, if you are amenable to that idea.

If I may -

I don't think that foreign pops should necessarily provide Disharmony; instead, what about Harmony pops each providing +1 Resonance (or some other appropriate number)? Makes sense that the more Harmony on a planet there are, the more... harmonious things will be for them.

If events such as pillaging and raiding generate science (a global resource) and food (a local one), how will that be handled? Will the Harmony have food stockpiles, as from EL, that can be applied on any of their systems? Or will such events just provide the food bonus to the nearest owned system?

Converting Dust from planets and population into Disharmony on a 1:1 basis seems like it would be REALLY rough for the Harmony, starting out; when paired with their malus of "improvements don't work unless the Resonance count is high enough to support them" then they would need early infrastructure to have zero Resonance upkeep in order for their colonies to function... and the "terraforming" process that reduces Dust pollution on Harmony worlds would have to be fairly cheap and available early.

Also, what about ship upkeep? Hero upkeep? I think it would make them somewhat OP if they didn't have any upkeep for these things, so in my mind it would be better if there were an empire-wide Resonance counter - or, perhaps, a galactic Resonance counter (you could spend Resonance to negate some amount of galactic Dust generation as their form of Economic victory, but also to hurt empires that use Dust). The Harmony are after all trying to purge the galaxy of the taint of Dust, right?

I like the idea of an ability to convert population-generated Dust into science, or some other Harmony-neutral resource. Perhaps it could be tied to one of their quest rewards - they gain the knowledge and ability to sway the locals to their point of view regarding Dust?

The moveable system development upgrades thing sounds really cool but I don't know how it would be implemented, how it would differ significantly from the current method, or why it would be important to do so for the Harmony.

Blandersnatching wrote:

It would be neat to use this thread to brainstorm Harmony ideas, if you are amenable to that idea.

Yeah, totally.

I don't think that foreign pops should necessarily provide Disharmony; instead, what about Harmony pops each providing +1 Resonance (or some other appropriate number)? Makes sense that the more Harmony on a planet there are, the more... harmonious things will be for them.

It's more of an internal consistency thing, the idea being that normal species would chafe at the idea of conforming to a borderline hive-mind.

If events such as pillaging and raiding generate science (a global resource) and food (a local one), how will that be handled? Will the Harmony have food stockpiles, as from EL, that can be applied on any of their systems? Or will such events just provide the food bonus to the nearest owned system?

My assumption was that food would go into supply ships, and maybe that direct control over civillians would be one of their non-affinity traits.

Converting Dust from planets and population into Disharmony on a 1:1 basis seems like it would be REALLY rough for the Harmony, starting out; when paired with their malus of "improvements don't work unless the Resonance count is high enough to support them" then they would need early infrastructure to have zero Resonance upkeep in order for their colonies to function... and the "terraforming" process that reduces Dust pollution on Harmony worlds would have to be fairly cheap and available early.

Also, what about ship upkeep? Hero upkeep? I think it would make them somewhat OP if they didn't have any upkeep for these things, so in my mind it would be better if there were an empire-wide Resonance counter - or, perhaps, a galactic Resonance counter (you could spend Resonance to negate some amount of galactic Dust generation as their form of Economic victory, but also to hurt empires that use Dust). The Harmony are after all trying to purge the galaxy of the taint of Dust, right?

Converting resonance into -Dust (perhaps at the cost of decreasing inflation for others?) makes sense. Carrying over to the earlier paragraph, maybe their gameplay curve should be "underpowered at the start, a unifying force at the end". Though that wasn't popular with Vodyani players...

The moveable system development upgrades thing sounds really cool but I don't know how it would be implemented, how it would differ significantly from the current method, or why it would be important to do so for the Harmony.

To carry over their themes of localized economies+collectivism, translate the +FIS from CP in the first game to a more interesting form and because there'd otherwise be nothing to do with extra luxuries. What Industry:Science ratio sounds good for recycling stuff?