Consider the RC2014 https://rc2014.co.uk I think it hits a bunch of these points. Also don't overlook the SpecNext https://www.specnext.com -- both have very active communities.
372 karma · joined November 5, 2013
But that doesn't make for a very interesting presentation, so it goes direct to Hot.
The dust coming up out of the bases (and to a limited amount, the other assets) are ABMs, trying to take out incoming ICBMs.
Goes to Defcon 2 on enemy bombers reaching city limits (the radius Cities and Bases are at).
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sage+computer
This thing was off the hook...
Each of the circle structures is a nation state.
It has a capital at the center (square, blinking). Defcon is the number in the capital.
Cities (circles) send people to work at factories.
Factories (triangles) make munitions and send them to bases
Bases (square) stockpile munitions (counts, clockwise from top right: icbms, abms (anti ballistic missiles), fighters and bombers.
Bombers are big and slow (triangles) that select a target (factory, base, city, capital in that order), fly to it and nuke it, reselecting a target if somebody else destroys it first.
As defence perimeters are penetrated, defcon gets more scary.
Fighters launch at Defcon 4 and attempt to destroy bombers.
At Defcon 3, Bases launch ICBMs a low probability amount of the time.
Satellites launch at Defcon 2, and can shoot ICBMs out of the sky, but have fire/recharge lasers.
When one of a nation's assets (factory, base, city) is nuked, they go to Defcon 1.
If your enemy goes to Defcon 1, so do you.
At Defcon 1, all ICBMs will fire.
When your capital is destroyed, it's Game Over.
The control panel lets you tweak the starting parameters. There are a lot more controls for all the actors (e.g, how close do bombers flock.) than are not exposed here.
When one of a nation's assets (factory, base, city), they go to Defcon 1.
If your enemy goes to Defcon 1, so do you.
At Defcon 1, all ICBMs will fire.
Bases are limited to how many the can have in the air at a given time.
Not realistic really, but never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn...
My config is here https://github.com/simonswain/dotxmonad
I'll revisit Deep Space at some point, there's a lot to do on it.
I have some other related but different I'm working on.
Hopefully I'll get the chance to talk about them somewhere (hint hint).
If you want to learn Emacs, just jump in head first. Try and use it like a native. Just for kicks I'm trying to do the same with vi by forcing myself to use it for anything vaguely sysadmin related.
The market economics part is interesting to me. I touched on it in the Q&A at the end of the talk. Initially I wanted to have ships trading to make up for deficiencies in their homeworlds (agriculture, raw materials), which would also help generate revenue, and lead to conflict. However it's not so simple (hey! let's build a functioning commodities market and HFT/algo trading system). The seed of this idea came from Traveller[1]. It's worth checking out the trade system in the first edition of that game.
The original planet sim was much more complex (along the lines of World3 [2]) and explored finite resources, overpopulation, technology growth and a whole lot more, but again, for the talk that would have been overkill. I think it's worth exploring this angle as it would provide a whole different dynamic, and would be great to see at huge scale (1000's of systems or larger) and playing out at a slower pace.
Also from Traveller, the idea that information cannot move faster than the speed of light, so it has to move at the speed of transport, which creates great dynamics for trade, and the command & control aspect of warfare. Centralized governments are not so effective. A treaty could be signed, but fighting forces will not know until the knowledge reaches them. A war can start and end before the seat of power even knows it had started.
There are so many things that could go in to it. Basically the presentation is a simple version of what I'd like it to be, but I stripped it back to the essentials (spaceships and lasers!) to make the talk interesting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game%... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3
A future revision of this was going to have Intents, so each empire basically did what you mentioned.
If it was going to be a game, the player would set the intent, or proportion of different intents, for their empire (eg colonize, trade), and not be able to micromanage specific plays.
Hostile or otherwise encounters with other empires would affect rules of engagement for future encounters.
Soon enough everything would get complex, messy and unpredictable and much more interesting to watch!
There are a couple of variations, and some tweaks like the ships accelerating perpendicular to the planets so they don't crash land.