StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay, so I was bored at work when I suddenly had this bizarre brain storm wherein I dreamed up the idea of a new video game for 40k. Set up similar to the Total War series, you would take the role of a governor of a planet in the Imperium of Man, with a planetary map divided up into various provinces and you governing them all and working on the economy and deploying troops to the inevitable conflicts. But like in the more recent Total War games, managing the intrigues of your underlings and your successors will also be a major game element. And dealing with the rampaging enemies of man will not be the only problem either, for you have to keep the Imperium and other associated powers happy or get jumped on (and sometimes they have contradictory demands!), and you have to keep your citizens happy too.

Some of the basic stuff would be

*Each world would have a Contact stat, which determines how often you recieve contact with the Imperium. On the extreme low end a Black Ship might stop by ever century to pick up any psykers detained at the time and do a quick sweep for heresy and an assessment of if you're keeping your noses clean. Low contact with the Imperium means you can get away with more shady stuff, but if you get into deep trouble calling for help will be harder, and if you go too long without contact the potential for forgetting the Imperium and falling prey to rebellion and/or heresy, at which point you may discover a hammer with your name written on it. Conversely, frequent and regular contact with the greater Imperium means that you're much more closely watched and thus have to toe the line much more attentively, but you also get more of the membership benefits. Contact is determined both by random factors relating to Warp travel, your technology level, and your actions to get or avoid attention
*Each world would have a technology level that can increase or decrease depending on your actions and your contact with the Imperium. There would be a fairly simple tech tree ranging from 'flint weapons, feet and fire' to 'stable plasma pistols, hovercars and plasma reactors'. However, the technology requires maintenance, much of which requires attention from the AdMech. Maintenance would apply to both the know-how and the actual physical bits of technology. There would be certain tiers of technology, and if you can't meet the requirements for your top level tier there will be a chance every turn of your highest level technologies vanishing. You could import tech from off-world, but its expensive and the greater the difference the less you would be able to pay, and it would still decay if you can't maintain it. You could also engage in tech heresy to try and figure things out for yourself on some things, but if the AdMech finds out...
*Each world would have an ecological rating that is affected by the type of world, the technology level, and the choices you make for industrialization. Lots of Hives and advanced manufactories will tend to cause pollution, disrupting your ability to feed your people and requiring you buy food from off-world. Certain environment types will also affect how you can live, and even mandate minimum tech levels before everyone dies. So if you're living on a toxic hellhole, and you start losing the ability to make and maintain pressure domes, you had better start begging the outside Imperium for help
*Each world would have a semi-hidden piety-heresy rating that tells how devoted your people are to the Emperor and also how many Chaos or mutant or xeno-worshipping or genestealer cults are amongst the population and thus how likely an fleet of warships with an =I= on their side are to show up in orbit with an Exterminatus order. Unlike the others you can't get a census on this one, you have to deploy units to discover it through your provinces. Having a high piety is good because it also helps with the happiness of the planet, but get too many fanatics around and they might start complaining about the lack of anti-mutant pogroms
*A happiness rating for the citizenry of the planet. Low happiness = bad. Unfortunately so many things you can do have the potential to make them unhappy, including paying the Imperial tithe or that you're sending goods off-world to hire techpriests to set up shop and up your tech level when you could be building schools and hospitals

Of course, the sheer number of possible random events and their interactions could be potentially huge, especially if certain random events are reweighted in their possibility. I could see interactions like so

*Okay, so I've decided to start on a mid-tech world. Looks a bit like 21st century Earth, things aren't bad all around, the Imperium only shows up every ten years to pick up some troops and psykers but I'm not completely out in the boondocks. I've got some democracy going on here and the people are all really happy. Things aren't so grimdark now are they...
*Random event: Warp currents change, contact becomes unreliable. Huh... okay. Let's see what happens now
*Fifty years later and your governor is an old man, one of the last people who remembers the Imperium. He has a son who has been trained well, but the people no longer believe that the Imperium exists at all and parliament no longer wants to listen. Your tech has regressed a little, most of the fancier toys provided by the AdMech are gone, but you've still got slug throwers and internal combustion, with a few old but still good las weapons sitting around in armories
*Random event: political dissent breaks out! Lack of belief in the Emperor has led many to question state mandated religion and those calling for religious freedoms are now rattling the cage of the establishment. You could crack down, but that would cause massive unhappiness as you are in a democracy and the people won't stand for that. But religious freedom in 40k is like hanging up a 'Rape Here' sign for Chaos. Better go with the crack down
*Fuck, rebellion! Dozens of provinces have turned arms against you, along with a big chunk of the military. This is bad, this is very bad...
*Ten years later and your first governor has passed away and his son is in charge, and the war is going poorly, but you get another random event. The Warp routes are stable again and a ship has arrived to investigate. Things are looking grim, but you ask for help and hope it will arrive in time.
*Two years later and a small fleet with a few regiments of IG show up. It took them a little while to get around to you, but you still have the capital, and you're really glad you're hear now that the rebels have started cutting funny looking symbols into their foreheads. You quickly crush the opposition with lasguns, Leman Russes, and Earthshakers.
*Fuck you guys, its police state time. None of this 'popular demand for religious freedom' shit like last time. Okay, so you're all kind of pissed off what with all the damage from the war but we'll get all of this organized and...
*Random event: an Arbites sweep team that arrived to assist in the clean up discovers a genestealer nest; contamination from a regiment from off-world is likely. What the? FUCK! 'Stealers call down 'nids! Fuck! Fuck! Sweep the cities and provinces! Sweep 'em good!
*Rebellion again! You fuckers! Well, the Imperium left me one of the regiments to form into a new PDA, so this should be easier this time, and I managed to unlock 'lasgun manufacturing'
*Random event: psychic phenomenon attracts attention from the Warp. A Space Hulk emerges. Of fuck, what's on it this time? Orks?! Oh fuck no, fuck no. Well, at least the rebels are between me and the orks... and they appeared to have just blooded themselves on the bastards, fuck. Ummm... well, I still have those nukes laying around that I had avoided using in the main rebellion for fear of poisoning the environment, but I don't think reinforcements are going to arrive in time
*Okay... so we should rename this place Krieg 2 after that. I bet my fucking mutation rate is going through the roof. Better get everyone inside Hives, even though that will cause even more eco damage. Oh, and it looks like one or two feral ork tribes spawn in my less populated areas every turn now. Motherfuckers. Oh well, at least now I have a stable government with my military lieutenants serving as provincal governors.
*A hundred years later: FUCKING SLAANESH WORSHIPPING DECADENT NOBLE BASTARDS!
*Etc. A standard game could potentially be played from M41.000 to M41.999

As you might guess, if done right, this game would probably look like Dwarf Fortress in the late game. Starting conditions could be randomly generated worlds with different ecosystems, tech levels, and histories (for example, if you really want to fight the Eldar all the time, pick 'recently conquered Maiden World' and watch the pissed off elves attack you through their hidden Webway portals) or you could potentially play out historical campaigns like say the first Ork Invasion of Valhala, or Armaggeddon in M41. The possibilities are endless, and really just getting the random events and units suitably set up fluff and crunch wise would probably be the hardest part in comparison to everything else, which is really just Total War or Civilization with a different packaging.

So SDN, is this an awesome idea? And would we ever possibly see something like this?

Sort of like an updated, modernized, and expanded Final Liberation, yep.

Would love to see something like this again, but THQ has the 40k license and they're (understandably) moving away from 'risky' niche projects and concentrating on things with mainstream appeal.

You would need a crazy combat engine in order to properly handle the transitions from primitive to pre-industrial to industrial to full on M41 tech. Not to mention the sheer scale of a proper Hive invasion that would be hell to coordinate. Just thinking about the poor sods who would have to code all that makes me feel a bit ill.

Education might be an interesting system to look into, a combination of sliders and improvements tacked onto your Contact score. More educations leads to more tech and more savvy citizens and so might be a prerequisite for a lot of things, but you can also use it to determine just how much your people know about the galaxy outside their world and the chances they have to rebel. Even the most strict Emperor Fearing Schola still has a remote chance of popping out a heretic every now and then. Worse, too much repression and emphasis on the Bad Things in the universe leads to Monodominants and unrest. Come to think of it, it should be hard to STOP unrest without a large permanent garrison of Arbites types and some fine dancing around the numbers.

Vehrec wrote: Even the most strict Emperor Fearing Schola still has a remote chance of popping out a heretic every now and then. Worse, too much repression and emphasis on the Bad Things in the universe leads to Monodominants and unrest. Come to think of it, it should be hard to STOP unrest without a large permanent garrison of Arbites types and some fine dancing around the numbers.

Finally, an excuse justifying massive rebel armies and unrest popping up even in the heart of the empire . (As opposed to it being just a game mechanic )

Would love to see something like this again, but THQ has the 40k license and they're (understandably) moving away from 'risky' niche projects and concentrating on things with mainstream appeal.

Well, a game like this should properly be pushed as a 40k version of the Total War series or Civilization, which do have large mainstream appeal.

You would need a crazy combat engine in order to properly handle the transitions from primitive to pre-industrial to industrial to full on M41 tech. Not to mention the sheer scale of a proper Hive invasion that would be hell to coordinate. Just thinking about the poor sods who would have to code all that makes me feel a bit ill.

Well, you could have it so that you have several tiers, perhaps say: feral, medieval, gunpowder, industrial, Imperial Standard (average IG basically), and Imperial Advanced (skitari at the bottom, with Space Marines at the top). Within the tiers there could be variations, but generally the only way to beat guys from an more advanced tier is with ridiculously overwhelming numbers. I don't think real time battles ALA the Total War series system could be feasible and it would all have to be kept to abstraction due to the fact that running a real time tactical 40k game like that would be a whole other game to code on top of the strategic and logistical map.

Finally, an excuse justifying massive rebel armies and unrest popping up even in the heart of the empire . (As opposed to it being just a game mechanic )

Yes, the biggest challenge of the game would be keeping the population and your idiot commanders happy while also not having them fall into the sway of Chaos or xeno-worship. Calling on outside help brings in the big guns, but it also attracts other attention, attention you might not want.

Well, a game like this should properly be pushed as a 40k version of the Total War series or Civilization, which do have large mainstream appeal.

I hate to burst your bubble, but no, they don't. They've always been niche games, Civilization even moreso these days.

Halo 3 and World of Warcraft have mainstream appeal.