My previous post was far FAR to long so this is updated to be shorter and to be clear about what I'm asking:
The theme of the game is that of Sci Fi archeologists like those in Iain M Banks' 'Against a Dark Background' but with a more competitive element between the crew. The galaxy has been seen glorious prosperity and many golden ages followed by crippling dark ages and is currently in decline with scavengers uncovering technology that has been long since forgotten. You are a team of such scavengers and you need to work together to complete expeditions and reclaim forgotten technologies for profit. However, you're all out for yourselves and cooperation only extends as far as it needs to to get the job done.
The game is based around cooperation vs non-cooperation. I am trying to create a system in which currency earned through helping others can be used to bid with. However, tying it to the theme, I don't want the cooperation to extend further then it needs to to further your own agenda.
Players are required to work through an event pile to reach technologies buried in the pile. These piles are themed around discovering the fate of a long lost technologically advanced civilisation.
Events are succeeded or failed by matching a player stat with the same stat on an event. Players do not have high enough stats to meet the stat requirements on an event. As such they must work together to succeed events.
If a player helps another player meet the stat requirement then they gain a favour token.
Favour tokens are used in a bidding phase at the end of each stage to secure stat enhancing technologies that can be kept or traded for Vps.
The strength of technologies are dependant on success or failure of events in the pile and can give negative bonuses as well as positive. They grow in power throughout the stages but are worth less VPs for trade each stage.
Players will have to weigh who and when they help another player succeed an event against how powerful the subsequent technology will be. The player asking for help will want to weigh who they get help from based on whether they are giving away too many favour tokens thus weakening their position in the bidding round.
There are four stages themed around different planetary expeditions.
In each stage the events are harder to succeed due to a scaling of the required stats.
Question:
It has been noted by Pastor_Mora that there is no element that stops unfair allegiances devaluating a social currency. This is a very good point but given the nature of the game allegiances must be formed for the game to progress, whether these be temporary or otherwise. As such preventing runaway teams of players would be a major issue in this system. Does anybody have any ideas on how to give players the power to control allegiances so runaway 'unfair' teams can be controlled from within the mechanics? I would love to find some way of strengthening the theme of 'cooperation, but only as far as it furthers your own agenda' rewarding an ultimately selfish 'piratey' mindset.
Also, if can point out any other inherent flaws with this system I'd be eternaly gratefull.
Sorry for the length of the post, I'm not used to posting in forums and I got carried away.
Thank-you for the feedback. I hadn't considered unfair allegiances though it seems very likely. Not sure where to start with research into this problem but research I shall do! I wanted the cooperation or non cooperation to a defining aspect of the game so it seems that this is either an insurmountable problem or I find some means of blocking overt favouritism or include tools for other players to use to make such alliances difficult. I didn't want to include action cards as it seems to make things more complicated then they need to be but maybe a set of actions that target social dynamics exclusively (such as 'If a player has recieved three or more favour tokens from a single player that player loses a favour token').
Not sure if abstracting the game strategies that might emerge naturally is such a good idea but it seems like it might control how players build their alliances. Alternatively hidden agenda cards dealt at the beginning could inform certain strategies and add a level of attempting to interpret a players motivations. This would move away from overt favouritism wouldn't it? I'll give it some serious thought and any suggestions are obviously welcome.
The final round VP scoring seems like a more surmountable issue as there are number of options for what the final discoveries could do. I agree that it doesn't fit with the scoring for the rest of the game though. More research!
Once again, thank-you for the feedback, this is exactly why I posted (at length) here.