[deccan]

Leaders

I believe that a good model would be the leaders system in Medieval: Total War. Leaders should have a definite physical presence (as opposed to being an abstract package of game effects as in MOO3). As such they can be killed when the ship / base / planet / ground troop unit / fighter group etc. they are on is destroyed, assassinated, take time to move between locations etc.

There should be no practical limit on the number of leaders per empire, although you might specify that there can only be one "active" leader per ship / base / planet / ground troop unit / fighter group etc., and the rest are only passengers / cargo so their bonuses don't apply.

Leaders should have some basic stats, such as Space Combat Command, Ground Combat Command, Acumen (efficiency at being a bureaucrat), Dread (efficiency of keeping troops and population under control), Loyalty (resistance to being bribed), Toughness (resistance to assassination attempts, personal proficiency in ground combat) etc.

They also have special "Vices & Virtues" that are generated randomly / gained through events and have in-game effects. For example, a leader who you consistently assign to a fighter group and excels at it (wins many battles) will eventually gain an "Expert Pilot" trait, a leader who retreats from combat a few times gets a "Coward" trait, a leader who governs a planet that builds a few large-scale infrastructure projects get the "Master Builder" trait and so on. There should be a maintenance cost for leaders as well that goes up as they become more powerful. Oh, and of course, they can have any kind of special ability you want, example if piloting a cloaked vessel, increase the effective level of cloaking ability by some set amount etc.

You get leaders from random events, by building some special buildings (training academies, universities) that add to your pool of recruitable leaders, popping up from un-led ships / units that excel in combat, by bribing enemy leaders, by capturing enemy leaders and turning them to your side etc.

Each empire should have a number of Posts / titles that it can award to leaders. More Posts / titles can be generated by building special one-per-empire buildings. Example: build a one-per-empire StarFleet Command Headquarters to generate the Fleet Admiral post. Award that post to an existing leader to vastly increase his Space Combat Command ability and so forth. Other Posts / titles can be generated by building special one-per-system or one-per-planet buildings, example, build a System Seat of Government to generate a System Governor post. In general, giving Posts to leaders increases their loyalty. Stripping them of Posts vastly reduces their loyalty. In M:TW you had to physically send an emissary to the leader to strip his titles. I don't believe that this is necessary here, you might make it so that leaders with relatively low loyalties already have a good chance of rebelling if they are stripped of titles, perhaps taking ships, troops or planets with them.

For even more fun, make it so that keeping your Fleet Admiral at StarFleet Command Headquarters gives a slight bonus to all of your deployed fleets while assigning him to one specific fleet gives a vast bonus to that specific fleet alone.

Posts / titles available and the buildings that generate them should be race / empire specific. Also make the ability to attract wandering leaders a race / empire trait.

Finally, should the emperor himself be a physical leader as in M:TW? I don't believe this to be necessary. It made sense in M:TW because of leaders riding into battle, princes as successors and so on, but I don't believe it makes sense in terms of an SE game.