Eco News

Hey all, for this week I want to go into some big ideas we have for Eco 9 with levels of government.

We’re exploring ideas about how to bring multiple levels of government to Eco, and how their growing and combining would work within the game. Along with that comes a new approach to property. Check it out and let us know your feedback, this is an initial concept so lots more to be designed still.

Eco will be changed to have the following new features:

• Multiple governments will be allowed in tiers: individuals, towns, nations, global.
  
• Governments start bottom-up, with growing towns merging into nations, and nations merging into a global government.
  
• Property is controlled by the governments (no longer affected by reading skillscrolls).
  
• Multiple governments will compete for citizens, offering incentives when new players spawn into their region, or when other players move to them.
  

The results on the player experience these changes are intended to bring are:

• Players are ‘wanted’ in the world. Having more citizens in your town / nation / global community should be a big benefit. When a player enters the world other players should respond ‘thank goodness you’re here’. Mutual benefits to sharing the same town / nation / globe should abound, such that players will work to overcome their differences to better achieve their goals better and collaborate more effectively.
  
• The game arc will feature growing and merging governments. It will begin as a collection of individuals, with big events as they form towns together, then merge towns into nations, then merge nations into a global government. The same way that it’s currently an interesting event in the game when players move to a common currency, merging governments and building hierarchies of governments should be even more interesting.
  
• Conflict and resolution of ideas should be the ‘PvP’ of the game. In this way, it should be much better for both parties to resolve their differences and merge together, but if they can’t there will still be a prolonged/difficult/costly process to force another individual or group to your whim, such that both parties would much prefer a resolution. In this sense, it’s not the typical winner/loser pvp of video games; instead win/win and lose/lose situations are possible
  

New objects will be created for different levels of government: a ‘Town Hall’ for towns, a ‘National Constitution’ for nations (can replace the existing Constitution) and a ‘Global Charter’ for global governance. These objects will be known as Government Sources, each with a different tier of government associated with it. Additionally, a new ‘Home Claim’ marker will be used for each individual, which marks their residency, and is essentially a level 0 government containing just the player.

When placed and meeting building requirements, a Government Source will create a radius of influence around it, competing with all the other governments at the same tier.

Example: a couple individual plots in the world. The triangles mark where they have placed their home markers, and all their property must be contiguous with that marker.



The red player then builds a Town Hall at the starred location. This extends a circle of influence (yellow circle), which envelops part of the green player’s territory. The size of this circle depends on the housing value of the Town Hall. It encircles both the home markers of Red and Green, so they can both become citizens of Yellow Town.


The green player now has the option to become part of the shared town; the option appears on their home marker. If they choose to become part of the town, they will become members of the automatically generated ‘Yellow Town Residents’ demographic, which can be configured to give specific benefits. Many other benefits to being in the same towns will be added over time (knowledge sharing, boosts to skill growth, etc).

If they choose NOT to become residents, they will stay as an individual. The red player can force them to become a member of Yellow Town by paying a large cost (say, 500 wood), having a much more powerful town hall (housing value is a multiple of the housing value of green), having a larger town population (say 2 or 3 people), and waiting for a delay (a day or two).

In this case, we’ll say green decided to join the town voluntarily.


Now that the town is formed and has a population of 2, additional land can be claimed, and Red and Green have claimed more property. Each resident will have additional claims granted to them on their home marker, benefits from Yellow Town. As residents, they can claim property anywhere within the influence of the town, even non-contiguous blocks.

The number of land claims they get depends on the population and power of the town. As the value of the property in the town increasing (measured by housing value of all property) and as the population increases, more claim markers are released. This provides an incentive to players to increase the power and population of their town, with specific ‘immigration tools’ being introduced to help players find new residents.

Government is unlocked with the creation of a town, and the new government objects can now be placed (Bill of Rights, Election Office, etc), which will determine the town government, allowing laws that affect any player within the yellow radius (whether or not they are ‘residents’ of this town). The laws created will override some (but not all) of the individual rights of the town population (property rights will be meta-protected, so players can’t troll others and steal their property this way).

Later, a neighboring town is created, Blue Town:


They begin to push on each other’s borders, affecting what area can be claimed by an individual (although already claimed land won’t be lost by this pressure). They can either continue fighting for influence, increasing the value and populations of their town to exert border pressure on each other, or join together into a nation.

Yellow Town builds a National Constitution in a fabulous palace at the east of their property (which is still considered Yellow Town territory because Red Player is a resident of Yellow Town):


This creates a very large circle of influence, which envelops all of Blue Town. Just like with individuals, the government of Blue Town can decide to join the nation, or resist. If they resist, they can still be absorbed if the nation pays even larger penalties and has even larger influence/population as described above. For our example, blue town decides to become part of Gray Nation. Much rejoicing and celebration takes place. Festivals with fabulous elk tacos are thrown to welcome the two groups. Now all the area in the extra-large gray nation radius can be claimed, and residents of the nation will again gain extra claim papers.

Now laws of Gray Nation can impose restrictions on both towns. Gray Nation can even revoke laws and titles assigned by the town governments, as the nation’s government supersedes the town governments. It can also offer more powers not available to towns, like new kinds of laws (property revocation could be one, more kinds of tax, etc). Going up in tiers in government allows groups to have more powerful controls, and new types of government get unlocked at each level.

This process can repeat at an even higher level with Global Governments. These would envelop multiple nations, and have a large enough possible radius to cover the whole world, imposing laws and taxes worldwide.


The benefits to joining into towns and governments are:

• More claimable property per player for larger governments.
  
• More governmental powers are unlocked for upgraded governments.
  
• Wider influence of laws, more ability to control actions of the population.
  
• Shared benefits to residents – boosts to skill points for town buildings like libraries.
  
• Increased levels of trust between fellow citizens, promoting more shared work projects, which will be another area of development.
  

Governments will have their power grow with their populations, so having more residents will allow for more progress and upgrades. For example, a town will need a population of say, 10 people in order to found a nation (configurable). To incentive growing populations, towns can create ‘immigration centers’, which will provide resources and possibly land claims or land deeds to new joining players, communicated in the server browser, and available for selection on the spawn page (a new feature will be added to let players choose if they want to spawn in an available immigration center or in an unclaimed land somewhere). Note that governments won’t necessarily require greater populations to gain more powers, they can also be gained by more buildings and house value.


This feature would be a big addition to the game, and turn what was previously automatic (everyone is in the same society) into something that is built. I believe this will go a long ways towards shifting the game to a more collaborative one, where players are building trust and community through expanded growth, with interesting political maneuverings required at each stage of expansion. New debates surrounding immigration that mirror the real world will be added to the game, the tradeoffs between the additional resources required to support new residents and the benefits they provide. The conflict it introduces will add more complex situations to navigate, with complex solutions required that go beyond yielding a winner and loser. All within the high-stakes of a vulnerable ecosystem facing an existential threat from a meteor will create a very unique experience.

Hey folks, this week I wanted to show you the fancy new mining system we’re creating in Eco:



There are now three steps in processing ore from mines. Each step produces different products and byproducts, requiring different skills and equipment, and each creates various levels of pollution that must be dealt with. The new steps are crushing, which generates crushed rock and crushed ore, and concentration. Concentration produces ore concentrate, and either wet or dry tailings depending on the machine and ore. The step we’ve always had, smelting, will now produce slag as a byproduct instead of tailings.

With the addition of wet tailings, we have one of the most dangerous pollutants yet, which will be especially catastrophic if it leaks into the water supply. Concentrating iron ore without water will be an option, but gold and copper concentration will always produce wet tailings. The amounts generated here will be enough that a waste management plan will be needed to keep the surrounding areas safe. Since these facilities might be located in different places, transportation becomes in issue. In general this change will increase the depth and fidelity of processing mined ore, and set the stage for connections to other aspects of the game (skills, buildings, transport, pollution, treatment, and so on).

What's Next
We’re continuing on 8.2 which we plan to release ASAP, and will contain tons of performance updates as well as in-game voice! And after that we’re full speed ahead on Eco 9.0, which you can read more about the government update here

Thanks and as always let us know feedback on Discord, Github Suggestions, and email (john@strangeloopgames), great to have your support.

This week I’d like to dive into the core of Eco’s design a bit, and talk about the principles that guide the design and development of the game. These are things that go way back to the beginning ideas of what Eco would be, and are used to this day to determine what we choose to bring next in the game.



Eco’s design mission is to have players “Solve the Tragedy of the Commons,” taking place among real people. That means creating conflicts among people with the same end goals, where a collection of self-interests is not enough to succeed, you need some representation of collective interest.

To implement that, the game exists within the intersection of the game's design pillars: Economy, Ecology and Government.

The role of these pillars in the game is as follows:


Encompasses the efforts and progress of humans. Manufacturing, creating infrastructure, building, harvesting, performing research, specialization, trade. Collaboration and competition is a big goal of this pillar, to connect players together in productive (as well as adversarial) creation. The features of the economy should be grown to support these features, as well as influences from the other two pillars. Key goals of this pillar are:

1. Asynchronicity, allowing players to collaborate across time and space,
   
2. Discoverability, making it easy for players to find the information they need about how to participate in the economy.
   
3. Involvement, incentivizing players to work together, especially between different levels of experience.
   
4. Organization, allowing players to organize labor seamlessly through the interests of many parties, with lots of data on progress and economy state.
   

The substrate of the player experience, this is the ‘reality’ that they are forced to contend with. It is both the source of their solutions and problems. Our emphasis when building the Ecology simulation is a feature-set that both affects and is affected by human actions. That is, resources that are useful to the economy, and systems that are vulnerable to pollution and over-harvesting.

Beyond that, the ecology is a goal in itself, and the beauty of the ecosystem has natural value in the game outside of any human purpose.

Key goals of this pillar are:

1. Visibility, players should be granted powerful tools (the stats system) to understand how the ecology system works and how players are influencing it.
   
2. Impact, simulated features are highly reactive to the actions of players.
   
3. Diversity, promoting the usage or more far-spread regions of the world, increasing needs for transport and collaboration, and allowing for myriad complex effects from different biomes.
   
4. Existential Threat, the ecology needs to be capable of dying and creating a losing world for players due to their actions.
   

Government in Eco serves as a tool to manage and dictate the relationship between players in the economy, and between the economy and the environment. It needs to be powerful and flexible enough to express a rich variety of governmental structures, and still easy and fun to understand and build (I see these two goals as supportive of each other rather than opposites). Government must be necessary to win the game, allowing players to dictate the interactions that happen with the environment.

Key goals of this pillar are:

1. Ease of use. All players should be capable of understanding and using the system.
   
2. Power. Many different and deep structures of government should be possible with the system.
   
3. Created by Players. Government should be both run and constructed by players, allowing them to form it as a solution to their problems in the economy and in interactions with the ecosystem.
   
4. Meta-Game Support. Promotes the positive interaction of players in the meta game (active players coming and going, property arrangements, etc). Serves to handle problems that occur not just in the game but in the meta-game.
   
5. Transparent. The workings of government should be available and in fact highlighted for all players to see and participate in.
   
6. Iterative. The government should be expected to change throughout gameplay, not simply be created once and run forever that way.
   

The second mission of Eco is to build meaningful community, and some features may apply to this even if they don’t directly promote the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ goal. Examples of such features include:

• Meta-features for finding, hosting, and joining servers.
  
• Organization of server works among players
  
• Avatar creation and customization of appearance, custom animations for interactions
  
• Decorations and cosmetic buildings and clothes.
  

As we start to roll out our performance update for 8.2, we’re tasking out more features for 9.0, and we’ll be using this guide to flesh out the features and content we want to target. We’ll be putting it into a nice ‘Eco Tree’ that shows those parts visually and conceptually as they grow. The community’s feedback will factor in a lot to these decisions, so do share your feedback on our Discord, in our Suggestions Github Database, and via email [email protected]

Cheers and thanks for your support, looking forward to sharing all the new stuff we’ll be building.

- Team Eco

We have released patch 0.8.1.4 with the following fixes and improvements:

Fixes

• Fixed issue with elevator UI can't be opened (holding hammer in hands and pressing 'E')
  
• Fixed issue with non-working elevator buttons.
  
• Fixed issue with staring big old worlds in-game
  
• Fixed crash when fast moving items to storage from toolbar with no item selected (with mouse right button)
  
• Fixed rare server crash during building SkillTree
  

Improvements

• Added new admin command /teleporttodark - teleports you to the opposite side of the world
  

Eco is a game that has a huge scope, covering a massive section of human development and history, and through that time humanity’s powers have increased exponentially. That’s what we want the arc of Eco to be: the progression from powerless to massively powerful, and the increasing need for management of those powers to prevent them from becoming self-destructive.



The driver of this progression is technology, and as an Eco world advances in technology their ability to impact the world increases massively, for better or for worse. With each advance in technology, you gain the ability to do everything you already do in greater quantities. And with each step in technology, the challenges become greater, making those powers very necessary to continue advancing. This manifests in gameplay in the following ways.

• Gathering resources becomes faster. Your tools get more powerful and you can gather more. New resource types are unlocked like oil. You move from handheld manual tools to powerful machines and vehicles that gather for you. From axe to chainsaw, from shovel to excavator. By the end of the game you have the ability - and need - to move mountains of material. Massive quantities of materials will be needed for end game content, and you will have the ability to gather that. The impact it has on your environment will be equally as massive.
  

• Transport becomes more powerful. At the beginning you’re moving things by hand, and slowly you gain abilities to transform your world to make moving larger quantities of materials faster and more efficiently. What once were local villages (where trade happened only within them) become global networks connected by roads (and eventually, rails). The world becomes smaller, you’re no longer limited to your immediate area, and the world begins to be shaped by the infrastructure build to move resources around it.
  

• Building can be performed in bulk, with new construction equipment like the crane, and the ability to transport materials easily to new places with infrastructure. Soon the habitats and industry and commerce of humans are displacing the natural environments that once thrived there, and the byproducts of that growth can affect the surrounding areas in significant ways.
  

We’ve got the broad-strokes for the technology arc already, but it’s something we’re continuing to build through early access. Vehicles are a huge part of this, and with 8.2 we’re tuning up the use of the existing vehicles, and in future updates we will be adding more and making them more useful and flexible.

This growth in power will put enormous pressure on the ecosystem, and thus follows the purpose of the government, to regulate and decide as a group how those powers should be used. As your powers grow, so must your regulations, ideally leading that progress rather than playing catch-up, but that is not so easy. Government, then, is a tool to manage the powers you are gaining as a society and keep them pointed towards sustainable growth. Thus, there is an arc of government that mirrors the arc of progress: from free-reign at the beginning of the game when powers are meek, to complex regulations when powers are extensive. Going through this whole process should be an illuminating experience, and different every time, with tons of potential problems coming up that you’ll need to solve as a group. With our 9.0 government upgrades, the ability to do this will become much more flexible and powerful.




We’ll need the community’s help with this as well. When we get the 9.0 test server up we’ll need lots of feedback. And ideas you can submit to our suggestion database here. So many great ideas come from the community, and developing it in tandem with them has been a great experience. We also have a dev tier available on our website for those that want to dig into the code.

Thanks for following Eco and looking forward to lots more to come.