Faction Loyalties/ Alignments

[JarlWolf]

Since both the game and it's expansion deal heavily with philosophical and political subjects, and was intentionally made as so, maybe as a community based on this great game we also have a small little politico quiz.

The concept, is that there would be a series of questions regarding policy or other things aimed to determine our political standing and such. Certain answers lean us to certain factions, and at the end of the quiz the combined results determines our faction alignments. So say someone could be aligned with Zhakorov, or Morgan, or Diedre, Domai or Miriam, etc.

[sisko]

so, your proposal is to give up on the current postcount based membergroups, at least for those willing to take the 'politico quiz', and instead (or in addition) to create faction based membergroups with the faction leader icon replacing the current drone/citizen/specialist icon?

here is a faction selector along the lines of what you are describing: http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=alphacentauri
it has only the original 7 factions in it and i'm yet to find a way to make it a forum feature but anyway, it could be a starting point..

[JarlWolf]

so, your proposal is to give up on the current postcount based membergroups, at least for those willing to take the 'politico quiz', and instead (or in addition) to create faction based membergroups with the faction leader icon replacing the current drone/citizen/specialist icon?

here is a faction selector along the lines of what you are describing: http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=alphacentauri
it has only the original 7 factions in it and i'm yet to find a way to make it a forum feature but anyway, it could be a starting point..

In response to giving up post count member groups, not necessarily.
It'd be an addition and it'd be below your citizen/done/talent icon. And it'd be the faction symbol that would show up. It'd be a quiz including all the factions of both the original game and expansion.

So say my profile has my citizen icon with number of posts, what we already have, that all is kept. But below that we have our faction symbol on the side panel below the contact info bit It'd be an interesting mechanic I think.

[Menelaus]

I like it. Never much cared for the "elite members have twenty zillion spam posts to show their dedication model of forum management.

[Yitzi]

Most politico-style quizzes are either obvious (i.e. you're going to end up with whichever one you want to end up with, as it's obvious which answers will correspond to that), or tend to fail horribly when dealing with anyone who's substantially off the "main line" of things.
It might be possible to make a good quiz for factions, but it won't be easy.  Still, if someone can handle the technical stuff I may be able to get a decent approach at things.

EDIT: I thought about it more, and realized that I don't think I could write a good quiz.

[JarlWolf]

I think as long as the answers are not horribly biased in terms of selection it doesn't matter if it's a little obvious. The catch is that its not biased in any way, and the wording of the quiz is politically neutral.

With the mechanics of it, im not sure how to make them myself, but I think a good way to do this would be a sort x y axis chart where you have four quadrants splitting it into left, right, authoritarian and liberal sort of policies, though we could also make it differ from that as well. Have the respective factions on the chart at coordinates that correspond to where their ideal stands on the political graph, and then with the quiz, certain answers will push you around the graph. After all questions are asked, you look at the graph and you see where your position is on the graph, and see which faction you are literally closest to.

[Yitzi]

Poor idea, as the differences between the factions don't line up that well with left/right and liberal/authoritarian.  A better approach would be to do it based on the different social engineering values.

[Menelaus]

I'm with Yitzi here. The game is an equal opportunity criticism of all political views. It you build a quiz it has to be as multidimensional as the game itself.

[Green1]

There is also a lot of other things other than government style with the factions. Consider Yang. Some of the things Yang proposes is pretty neat. But, Yang himself is a monster. Lal is not immune either. Lal can never be voted out so does Lal REALLY run a true democracy? Roze is not "anarchist " enough. Maybe a combo of Roze/ Santiago/ Sven would be libertarian? The boundaries on some factions are just not as clear cut, either.

[JarlWolf]

Hmm. Fair enough. Though, maybe just as a panel thing people choose, no test? That can be added easily.

[Menelaus]

I am ok with that. The key is multidimensional. And that it be based on personal preference. Not some "yawn" optimal "boreing" strategies. The best games always allow multiple winning options. If you don't support that I can't be bothered. I like to win following several paths. Everything else is just boreing and in the end stupid.

[JarlWolf]

Of course, the original idea would be a multi dimensional test that judging by your answers it would determine which faction you align with the most. But the panel selection things seems a little more easy to do.