Elections
There are 4 political offices in the game, all determined in an election. Each colonist at a colony counts as a vote in the election. Here are the offices and the scope of their office:
Mayor: Individual Colony
Governor: Planet
Senator: System
Colonial President: All colonized systems
For the most part each role allows for the naming of their territory (colonies, planets, systems) with the following added duties:
Senators can place gates in their systems (that still need to actually be built)
The Colonial President needs to approve any gate connecting directly to the core.
The Political Arena
Any open politically-related information involving players and the election process is discussed in the Politics forum in a role-play (RP) format:
http://forum.thespacegame.com/viewforum.php?f=11
Role-Playing
Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role", in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses:
- To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting;
- To refer to taking a role of an existing character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice;
- To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game, play-by-mail games and more;
- To refer specifically to role-playing games.
Anything further then that is created mainly by us the community. Examples of community added politics are discussions on gate projects, proposals to Jam for elections and/or procedural changes, and many other forms of role-played (RP) politics. The basic premise is that all discussion be 'in character' of the political representative your in-game character reflects. When posting you do not post as a person playing a game or talk about game mechanics. If there is a bug, issue, or feature that affects your role play, try to explain the situation as an in-character politician.
In practice:
"I want to gate System X to Vulcan"
becomes:
"I, Senator Hubes of System X would like to propose a gate to link the good people of System X to Vulcan...etc, etc, other political motivation, blah blah"