Social engineering

**Social engineering** represents the ideology of your faction and the characteristics of its society. Indicators show the cumulative effect of your faction's characteristics and selected policies on society. Every faction starts at zero, with modifiers from:

* Faction characteristics
* Policies
* Secret projects
* Other variables

These are computed into the final result. Consult the table below for more details.

## Society indicators

* ECONOMY: Represents the raw strength of your society's economy. Increasing this value will increase your energy flow.
* EFFICIENCY: Represents your society's ability to function without waste and mismanagement. If this value falls too low, your bases will begin to lose energy to inefficiency (see article for details). Also affects the number of bases beyond which extra drones begin to appear (bureaucracy, see article for details).
* SUPPORT: Affects the support costs of military units. The lower your score here, the more of your units you'll have to expend minerals to support.
* MORALE: Affects the training and determination of your military. A higher score here translates directly into morale upgrades for your units.
* POLICE: Represents your society's tolerance for police control and restrictions on personal freedom. A high score allows you to use military units as police to suppress drone riots. A low score will cause increasing tension when your military units are away from home.
* GROWTH: Affects your population growth rate. The higher your score, the fewer nutrients your bases will need to grow.
* PLANET: Represents your society's sensitivity to the ecology of Planet. A low score indicates that ecological damage will occur more quickly
* PROBE: Affects your vulnerability (or strength) on security issues. A high score will help prevent enemy probe team attacks.
* INDUSTRY: Represents your manufacturing strength. A high score reduces the number of minerals required to build units and facilities.
* RESEARCH: Affects your technological progress. A higher score will increase the rate at which you make breakthroughs.

### Priorities

While some of the modifiers are self-explanatory, some require additional explanation:

* Efficiency brings with it diminishing returns, as inefficiency is inevitable due to distance from headquarters. It's much more important to keep it above negative values, than maintaining a very high efficiency rating: At -2 the losses from distance are doubled, while at +5 the losses are reduced by only 65%. Efficiency is much more important when it comes to drones, as it defines the base limit above which you get one extra drone *per base*. An efficiency of -4 generates one extra drone for EVERY base you have at Standard Planet size (3200 squares), regardless of difficulty or efficiency rating. -3 creates the baseline limit (4 at the two easiest difficulties, 3 at the two middle ones, and 2 at the two highest) that's multiplied for every point above -3 (i.e. at 6 efficiency, ten levels above the baseline you get a 40 base limit, 10 x 4, at the easiest difficulty). With a large territory and faction, losing efficiency can have murderous consequences, in the form of drone riots *every* turn.
* Morale is highly context-dependent. In peacetime, although a -3 penalty seems crushing, it is easily minimized to just -1 with a command center, naval yard, or aerospace complex. Combined with bioenhancement center, you always get a +1 morale upgrade even at the lowest morale values. Similarly, focusing on morale just for the +3 modifier might result in waste, as combining any of the above with the bioenhancement center will result in all units being produced at Elite morale levels at +2 Morale already. In wartime, the situation is a little different, but the real dealbreaker is anything below -1, as combat modifiers are halved at that point.
	+ Note that secret projects have an outsized impact on Morale: The Command Nexus, The Maritime Control Center, The Cloudbase Academy, and The Cyborg Factory count as free command center, naval yard, aerospace complex, and bioenhancement center at *every* base, allowing any base to produce Hardened units even at -1 Morale.
* Growth is rendered irrelevant if you have The Cloning Vats.
* Probe rating is only a problem if you do not control The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm (which autokills probe teams whenever they try to perform an action on your forces) or if you're not playing The Lord's Believers (who have a lite version of the Hunter-Seeker as a faction bonus).

## Politics

The Politics social category allows you to choose your basic political system.

### Frontier

Frontier politics represent the informal governing arrangements made in early colonies, before populations reach levels requiring more advanced forms of government. Frontier politics provides no bonuses or penalties.

* Prerequisite: NONE

### Police State

Police States use oppression to keep their citizens in line, and allow their leaders great power over military decisions. But oppression of this type also decreases economic efficiency.

* Effects: +2 POLICE +2 SUPPORT -2 EFFICIENCY
* Prerequisite: Doctrine: Loyalty

### Democratic

Democracies allow citizens to participate in government, and forego oppression and the stability it confers in favor of growth and efficiency. But citizens remain suspicious of large military deployments, and civilian oversight creates large military bureaucracies, so military support costs increase.

* Effects: +2 EFFICIENCY +2 GROWTH -2 SUPPORT
* Prerequisite: Ethical Calculus

### Fundamentalist

Fundamentalist politics unite a society behind a strong, dogmatic religion. Evangelizing the populace can create loyal, even fanatical military forces, and tends to immunize citizens against (other forms of) brainwashing, but technological research tends to suffer under the continual assaults on intellectual integrity associated with such regimes.

* Effects: +1 MORALE +2 PROBE -2 RESEARCH
* Prerequiste: Secrets of the Human Brain

## Economics

The Economics social category allows you to control the way your economy is managed.

### Simple

Simple Economics describes the informal, ad hoc economy which develops in the early years of planetfall, before more organized economic systems can be put in place. Simple Economics provides no special benefits or penalties.

* Prerequisite: NONE

### Free Market

Free Market Economics turns market forces loose in your society. Unfettered market economics can produce great wealth quickly, but in the context of Planet's fragile emerging economies can also lead to extremes of pollution and ecological damage. Also, citizens rendered suddenly poor by the actions of unscrupulous moguls may revolt against their energy-fattened masters.

* Effects:+2 ECONOMY -3 PLANET -5 POLICE
* Prerequisite: Industrial Economics

### Planned

A semi-market economy kept in check by fierce governmental regulation, Planned Economics promotes stable industrial and population growth, but sacrifices efficiency.

* Effects: +2 GROWTH +1 INDUSTRY -2 EFFICIENCY
* Prerequisite: Planetary Networks

### Green

Green Economics strive to integrate sentient progress with the needs of the biosphere. Green economies use resources efficiently and tend to avoid the excesses of industrial development which could provoke Planet's native life, but population growth necessarily suffers for lack of space.

* Effects: +2 PLANET +2 EFFICIENCY -2 GROWTH
* Prerequisite: Centauri Empathy

## Values

The Values social category allows you to set major priorities for your society.

### Survival

Survival is of course the all-encompassing first priority of early human or Progenitor space colonies. "Survival" as a priority provides no special bonuses or penalties.

* Prerequisite: NONE

### Power

Leaders seeking Power build strong, well-paid military forces to enforce their will. But Economic and industrial infrastructure may suffer from bloated "defense" budgets.

* Effects: +2 MORALE +2 SUPPORT -2 INDUSTRY
* Prerequisite: Advanced Military Algorithms

### Knowledge

Leaders seeking Knowledge and intellectual enlightenment will pour resources into research and education. They will also tend to promote the free exchange of information, which increases efficiency but also carries greater security risks.

* Effects: +2 RESEARCH +1 EFFICIENCY -2 PROBE
* Prerequisite: Cyberethics

### Wealth

Leaders seeking Wealth will concentrate on building economic and industrial infrastructure rapidly. They achieve rapid growth and development, with possible side effects being decadence and moral decay.

* Effects: +1 INDUSTRY +1 ECONOMY -2 MORALE
* Prerequisite: Industrial Automation

## Future Society

Future Societies show speculatively how society may evolve in the far future.

### None

None, or no Future Society, simply means that your society has not yet evolved to a far future society. No bonuses or penalties apply.

Prerequisite: NONE

### Cybernetic

In the far future, citizens may turn many of the tasks of governing society over to artificially intelligent computers, increasing efficiency and freeing individuals for more creative tasks. But will workers displaced by computers sink into despair, poverty, and possible unrest?

* Effects: +2 EFFICIENCY +2 PLANET +2 RESEARCH -3 POLICE
* Prerequisite: Digital Sentience

### Eudaimonic

Perhaps the most pleasant to contemplate living in, this far future society takes its name from an ancient Greek word for fulfillment and happiness. Eudaimonic society encourages each citizen to achieve happiness through striving to fulfill completely his or her potential. Population, Economy, and Industry all experience healthy growth. Violence fades as society grows more tolerant and just, and even when this society's hand is forced it often shoots to subdue rather than to destroy.

* Effects: +2 GROWTH +2 ECONOMY +2 INDUSTRY -2 MORALE
* Prerequisite: Eudaimonia

### Thought Control

The ultimate in "Big Brother" methods, Thought Control effuses subtle neurochemical triggers into the atmosphere to render its population obedient, loyal, and resistant to outside ideas. But significant resources are required to maintain this level of control.

* Effects: +2 POLICE +2 MORALE +2 PROBE -3 SUPPORT
* Prerequisite: The Will to Power