10/9/2023 - devlog
This week Michi switches back from a long phase of translating to development again.
Michi (molp)
The last weeks have been characterized by the translation process and its preparations. This week hasn't been any difference for the most part. On Friday though, Martin and I had a chat about the upcoming Politics feature and the necessary groundwork to make it happen.
As you might recall from devlogs or livestreams, we want to change the way politics work in the game quite a bit. We are moving away from single players being governors to a system that has parliaments. These parliaments can have multiple members of parliament (count depending on planet population, elected by the local players) that form the local government. All activities of these governments have to go through a voting system based on motions. That way the activities of governments are far more transparent for the inhabitants of the planets than with the current system.
Right now, being the governor of a planet is a tough job, since APEX doesn't provide them with the proper tools, for example to manage funds. All fees that a governor earns are being transferred to and divided amongst the members of the governor's corporation. Since there is no separation between the accounting of a company and the governor, most players form a new corporation, specifically while they are in office.
To combat that, we decided, a long time ago actually, that governments need their own accounting and other systems. In order to make the accounting system independent of the governor's company accounting we can implement it in two ways:
a. Have separate commands for everything a player does when acting as governor.
b. Allow a player to switch between several contexts (company, government, ..) and re-use the existing commands.
Obviously we decided to pursue option b. Here is how we envision it:
Once a player gets voted into office a new context is available (think 'Government of Promitor', for example). The context can be changed via a drop-down menu, similar to the existing screens drop-down. Once switched to the new context, a default screen greets the new member of parliament. The company-related screens are all hidden, instead the player can create new screens that are relevant for the given context. Using an existing command, for example FINLA, will not show the player's liquid assets, but rather the ones of the government.
I hope you can see where we are headed with that!
We also have a new economic report for you. I almost forgot to release it, so thanks for reminding me!
Click the image for the full report
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!