The Food mechanics stuff does indeed exist outside of any sphere. Anything related to expanding habitable land is its own trait. Unfortunately, the Spheres system is a little imperfect when it comes to dealing with certain things. We'll find out just how broken it is as we go along (whoo, journey of adventure!). The upshot is that for every 5 points in a Food trait the amount of land in one hex type (Blue, Green or Grey) goes up by 1, increasing the max population of the hex by one. There are no specific rules about creating these traits, except that they are subject to tiering as well. Remember that you can use traits from other spheres to act as foundations.
Speaking of broken systems, a few thought experiments later I've come to realise that the Entity system won't work exactly the way I've tried to do it, so I'm implementing some changes to make it more solid and (hopefully) simpler and easier to work with.
First up, no more 'investing points in avatars' stuff. If you manifest an avatar, every action you take counts double, but if it gets vanquished you lose half your influence. End of story. Manifesting an avatar requires an action and isn't necessarily successful.
Entities act through their influenced units. The way I run calculations under the system for Species actions, attempted actions require you to risk a certain number of units on a task. The number of units risked generally affect the likelihood of success (the more, the greater chance). Species can risk as many units as they possess, but Entities can risk only units they have Influence over.
Entities acting through influenced units use the stats of the species providing them, plus their own stats. So military units with Act 7, React 5, Pow 2, Arm 3, when influenced by an Entity with Act 2, React 2, Pow 5, Arm 5, will have a total strength of Act 9, React 7, Pow 7, Arm 8. For entities with an avatar manifest and no influence, their own avatars count as one unit. Where entities attempt to act in spheres beyond their primary sphere, they can either still use units from their primary influence to do the job, but those units have effectively no points in that skill. Alternatively, they can act on the behalf of units from that sphere belonging to another Entity or to a Species and add their points as a bonus to their actions instead, in effect aiding them in an action.
Finally, let's change the way Entities gain power. Rather than being as fluid as it was, let us make it more akin to the way Species gain EP. Entities start with 10 points of skill (as they do now). Each turn, they gain one point for every five units of influence they have. Like EP, this cannot be taken away.
Okay. Do you think this works a little better?
We'll start once Gantolandon & Duke have posted species, since they've reserved posts for them. If anyone wants a particular starting hex, they should say so now. Otherwise I'll be depositing you all more or less randomly.
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Topic: Evolution Lite - A Supplementary Game (Read 51807 times)