(this is obviously written under the influence of current events, going on in the game)
To balance out current political system, I think we need a way for players on the planet to be able to have some influence on the government of the planet. One of these ways should be some kind of a revolt that a player can do if they dislike the direction the politics is moving in.
My suggestion is that every player is able to put their base on a planet into a “rally”/“strike”/“revolt” state. Such a base would:
cease paying any production fees,
not get the CoGC bonus,
receive workers with lower priority (i.e. all normal bases get their workers first, then the remainder gets redistributed among the “revolting” bases),
maybe get some other production efficiency debuff.
Also if a significant (let’s say, 50%) amount of bases on the planet goes into “revolt” state, it should automatically start new election cycle immediatelly.
This is a rather big feature to implement, but I tried my best to keep the potential work as minimal as possible. I am not completely sure it will help the current situation either, but having a way to start a preterm election will definitely be a very powerful tool - although a dangerous one too.
A potentially simpler system would be to add an impeachment/vote of no confidence system that the players on planet can trigger.
I will say, I would switch one thing: make the revolting players have priority with population. This hurts the government, as they now need to make sure they have enough pops that revolting players won’t siphon too many off.
Here’s how I see something like this working the best:
Have it so players with bases on the planet can push a button in the ADM - like running for election, or voting, but it’s a vote of no confidence [as we have parliaments]. Once a certain threshold gets reached, an election will start - maybe even a shorter election [like the ones that occur when you make an ADM.]
I feel like this should be based off amount of bases on the planet, parliament size, and a mixture of those. I do not know the best way this could be implemented, but having some sort of mechanic to recall an unpopular administration could be a neat thing.
i think the addition of vote toggling will add in an element where it will be harder to do takeovers. could even make it a small fee (hiring someone to vote for you lore wise). Basically while the vote is toggled, it will drop your vote in for the toggled person/group on that planet only just before voting ends. If you manually vote, it will overwrite your toggles for that voting period. This should help voter fatigue, increase voter turnout, and make takeovers much harder. The only times you would need to interact with your toggles is when you need to change them from a loss of confidence, player quitting, player leaving that gov, or a new player you want in gov showing up.
I love your idea, but I believe the “priority system” needs to be revisited. Yes, not having one, or having one where rebels are at the top, means that players may abuse the system, but with a priority system with rebels at the bottom, all the power goes back to the government. I’ve never been part of a government, but to my understanding population limits are tweaked based on necessities. What stops a government from tweaking them in order to leave the bottom half of players in the priority list without any population?
Tbh I am not sure if a “toggle” voting (with check for account activity) would be needed if CoGC would be moved to being a gov motion if a ADM is present. This would reduce the amount of votes per gov term from 5 to 1 and would add a topic to make politics about. Most of the time these votes are seen as useless as the result is always the same so people just stopped voting.
And another thing would be an update to the election system so that it isn’t “winner takes it all” but different political parties (represented by a single candidate each) working together in parliament to get motions through. Currently it is just always the same group of players that wins which feeds into the “nothing changes so why vote” problem again.
And with an updated election system this “vote of no confidence” couldd be activated through a motion which only needs 20% “yes” which then leads to a countdown to a new election in 3d or 7d. During that time motions need for example 70% to pass to ensure that normal planet operation can continue but no. The “vote of no confidence” motion can then not be used for the next two terms to avoid abuse.
Example for new election system:
every player has one vote
a candidate with X votes has X weight in motions (X / all votes)
Voting rights can stay unrestricted—let a dictator stack a dozen CMs to vote for themselves if they want—but citizens must have the power to impeach the government when bad motions are pushed. Impeachment weight would scale directly with workforce size, total production output, and COGC matching.
If the dictator lacks the workforce to block the impeachment, the pending motion is voided. (We should also enforce a 24-hour delay before any motion takes effect—regardless of when voting closes—to give locals enough time to react, along with a limit of 2 active motions per government).
If the impeachment weight reaches a critical threshold, the government is instantly dissolved. This levels the playing field for defenders. Invaders usually lack local manpower and rely on surprise snipes because they can’t win in a fair, open election. Tying impeachment to workforce puts raiders at a massive disadvantage—they can’t instantly spawn workers to block an impeachment. Even if they try to impeach an incumbent government themselves, they’d have to build facilities and wait for population growth, drastically inflating their time and cash costs.
The big problem here is that Euu has proven that temporary wins can drain planet accounts and benifit the temp winners. The vote toggle is my suggestion to prevent the whole situation of temp winners and overturning the win. Currently any money left in a government account is at risk.
Well that will probably changed to "after you drop your base you will have to wait for the next election to vote. That will make it way harder and especially more expensive (one vote for 28d is 1-3M)
That will kill the mass base drop at last second strategy. To help with the current situation it may be good to set a planet to max settlement tax during voting periods.
only suggesting it as a interm fix till molp releases a longer term fix. And the lockdown will only be during voting periods, the community will just have to make it clear thats what is happening to prevent last second takeovers.