Hello there!

First of all: I'm registered for a long time now, but wasn't ever really active on the G2G Forums. What a big miss! After the Beer2Gether in Cologne during the Gamescom I took the Chance to revisit this Place and am pretty impressed about the Involvement of the community and the structure of information and discussion here. 

I'm really looking forward to the early access of ES2 like most of us here for sure and I wanted to take the chance and start participating on the differen topics here with the community!

For this I want to share a thought with you all and discuss it:

Gameplay elements for eliminated player

What does that mean? Well, in 4x games, we get plenty of options to win the game. A legitimate (if not easy) way to accomplish that is through extermination of other players!

But that can often result in one eliminated player waiting a long time to participate in the next game. 

But does elimination strictily mean being out-of-game or can't it be more interesting to give eliminated players tools to still participate and take influence from another spot?

Instead of just 'losing the game', elimination will push you to a spot, where you can't win anymore but still be active in different possible ways.

In my draft of this Idea, I expect the eliminatated player to be some sort of 'little game master' who got his own user interface with own options to interact with the Universe and it's inhabitants. Spawning events, crafting own Quests, giving slight buffs and debuffs. 

Another way to realize the Idea is a sort of 'elimination-trait' for the different tribes. This can be a trait which will be effective at the point, in which a player gets eliminated. 

Depending on which tribe is eradicated from the universe a certain trait will be effective and the eliminated player can develop this trait in his new position. 

Gameplaywise you will leave a mark, footsteps which will take their own ways and you can lead it to a certain degree. 

Let's make an example: You played a very agressive tribe like Carvers but wasn't successful in invading the Universe. You get eliminated and on elimination, your trait leaves a parasite behind which corrupts other inhabitants of the Universe. That way you can spread the disease and still generate units this way, which will harass the other Factions with the potential of being the tip of the scale to chnage the power balance. You still can't win, but staying in game after losing it by elimination will reward you to show the influence of the mark you left behind!

Watching to grow the disease, corrupted units harass systems and give a debuff on food and industry because the hunger is ceaseless.

Ofcourse, there has to be limitations in being influental on the overall game, but this opens up new design space in my opinion. Especially the Idea of a ghostly hand influenting the flow of the game can bring new dynamics into the gameplay. and keeps eliminated players busy instead being forced to watch the rest of the party playing.

I have to emphasize, that this gameplay mechanic should NOT discourage players to win by extermination. This idea ist not meant to completely punish someone who goes the extermination route (at least not at all ),  but to provide further gameplay experience in an innovative way to provide fun and excitement for everyone. :)

What do you think? Is the situation of being eliminated too much of a niche situation to take the work into that gameplay?
This is nothing but a rough draft of the Idea I had after many rounds of 4x games. I'm happ to read your thoughts about that ^___^

Thanks for reading!

I would prefer to have "little game masters" from the beginning. If a player is terminated, he should be "out of game" with the possibilty to watch further game development. But some kind of "hand of god", influencing minor factions, pirates and/or "random" effects/happenings would be really cool. And a system the players can "judge" about the quality of these "little game masters" - i.e. by points shown to community in a "little game master highscore list". Some kind of "Dungeon Master" feeling comes up in me.  

Really good (basic) idea SirCancelot.

If it is balanceable around people not killing you for killing them then I guess it's ok.

It should be meaningful yet not extremely impactful. Tough balancing.

It is true that 8 hour long games are crap when you get rushed out in 30 turns. There could be other solutions aswell - for instance offer a part of your empire and funds and make them a manager of particular sector or selection.