1. Phidi currently gain bonus morale from markets due to their enthusiasm for and expertise in trade; possibly this might also be appropriate to apply to Spice Mongers?
2. Is there any particular reason that Ashdar splinter colonies use 'standard' Ashdar population rather than a refugee variant? I'd expect it to at least be possible for scattered Ashdar colonial populations to be in a similarly dire state as scattered Human populations. If the answer is 'at least they preserved an actual industrial base', then maybe the Human splinter colony variant that can be found with an operational Factory on a Garden world should be in better shape than other Human splinter colonies, and start as normal Humans?
3. Last I checked, Viscids and Gaiads are counted towards the population requirements for staffing planetary improvements. Given the lack of participation of either in the general labor force of the planet, I believe they should almost certainly be excluded somehow. At least for other primitives, it can be assumed they contribute to staffing by filling all the unskilled support positions in the general economy needed so that it's easier to recruit more specialists from the advanced colonial populations on the planet.
4. Obviously, 'Ecoterrorism' and 'Crime Spree' disasters are yet to be implemented, but I think I recall hearing they could cause casualties in the population of the planet. I know that 'arbitrary mass murder of unwanted populations' is deliberately excluded as an option for rulers, and understand why, but I suspect that not having any means to retaliate or protect against the Gaiads or Scavengers responsible will probably be extremely frustrating for players once those are implemented. I should think having some option to allow local surface forces to engage in retaliatory crackdowns in response would probably be welcomed by some players (while still, obviously, stopping short of genocide, as fits the design goals of the game).
5. Tinkers cannot be enslaved under the current model because they cannot be coerced, because of their lack of individual will. This makes sense enough to me. That said, how do non-Tinkers conquer Tinker populations without coercing them? I'd expect Tinkers to likewise be willing to fight to the last to defend their worlds, uncaring of their own personal safety. Even assuming you can capture key points that cut off them getting instruction in what to do, I'd at the least expect them to suffer far higher casualties on a planet before the planet falls.

I'm interested in any answers or thoughts from the devs, or in thoughts in general from other members of the playerbase.

nweismuller wrote:1. Phidi currently gain bonus morale from markets due to their enthusiasm for and expertise in trade; possibly this might also be appropriate to apply to Spice Mongers?

Sounds reasonable.

nweismuller wrote:2. Is there any particular reason that Ashdar splinter colonies use 'standard' Ashdar population rather than a refugee variant? I'd expect it to at least be possible for scattered Ashdar colonial populations to be in a similarly dire state as scattered Human populations. If the answer is 'at least they preserved an actual industrial base', then maybe the Human splinter colony variant that can be found with an operational Factory on a Garden world should be in better shape than other Human splinter colonies, and start as normal Humans?

The art assets were created first, and I made a sexy human refugee icon (as one does), and Sven coded up a mechanic for refugee assimilation. I never made one for the Ashdar, though I think you're right that they could have a similar mechanism. I'd like to revisit the "minor faction" mechanisms at some point.

nweismuller wrote:3. Last I checked, Viscids and Gaiads are counted towards the population requirements for staffing planetary improvements. Given the lack of participation of either in the general labor force of the planet, I believe they should almost certainly be excluded somehow. At least for other primitives, it can be assumed they contribute to staffing by filling all the unskilled support positions in the general economy needed so that it's easier to recruit more specialists from the advanced colonial populations on the planet.

I don't think that any "discontent" population should be staffing improvements, and so if they are, that may be a bug. (Though, at my last job there were a lot of organisms filling cubicles that were about as productive (and attractive) as Viscids, so maybe that's not as unrealistic as I thought.)

nweismuller wrote:4. Obviously, 'Ecoterrorism' and 'Crime Spree' disasters are yet to be implemented, but I think I recall hearing they could cause casualties in the population of the planet. I know that 'arbitrary mass murder of unwanted populations' is deliberately excluded as an option for rulers, and understand why, but I suspect that not having any means to retaliate or protect against the Gaiads or Scavengers responsible will probably be extremely frustrating for players once those are implemented. I should think having some option to allow local surface forces to engage in retaliatory crackdowns in response would probably be welcomed by some players (while still, obviously, stopping short of genocide, as fits the design goals of the game).

The lack of current player options to deal with such problems is a major reason why they haven't yet been implemented.

nweismuller wrote:5. Tinkers cannot be enslaved under the current model because they cannot be coerced, because of their lack of individual will. This makes sense enough to me. That said, how do non-Tinkers conquer Tinker populations without coercing them? I'd expect Tinkers to likewise be willing to fight to the last to defend their worlds, uncaring of their own personal safety. Even assuming you can capture key points that cut off them getting instruction in what to do, I'd at the least expect them to suffer far higher casualties on a planet before the planet falls.

I think perhaps a better way of looking at it is that the Tinkers cannot be enslaved because they are already essentially slaves. We could make them so they can't be captured (and so are useless to you), but that doesn't seem like much fun.

I like all your responses and essentially agree. What I'd do for the Tinkers is not make them unable to be captured, just make it so they have higher resistance to being captured- in that I assume they'll fight to the last until the local command network is downed and they're no longer getting instructions to resist. So, basically, on average it's harder to capture Tinker populations more or less intact.

Well, that still boils down to having to kill them all. The invasion mechanics are fairly simple, so there's not really much of an opportunity to employ a special mechanism that would be both significant lore wise and meaningful in gameplay terms.

Fair enough. I'm not entirely opposed to 'kill (nearly) all the Tinkers to take their worlds', but it's your call.

The discussion on the Tinkers actually raises a question for me that I can't currently answer- can species that have access to Forced Labor and Experiments (not sure, for that matter, if that's tied to Slave Collars tech or to 'being Gremak') currently spend Tinkers on Forced Labor and Experiments? I know that the Tinkers themselves can. If Tinkers are already functionally slaves, then I'd think slavers without the compunction to spend their people that way would certainly be able to spend the Tinkers that way.

(For that matter, it does emphasise that it's rather odd that Gremak can't currently enslave Algorians and Lummox- if anything, I'd expect the reflexive behavior of Gremak overlords towards such primitive subjects would be 'mass enslavement'.)

nweismuller wrote:The discussion on the Tinkers actually raises a question for me that I can't currently answer- can species that have access to Forced Labor and Experiments (not sure, for that matter, if that's tied to Slave Collars tech or to 'being Gremak') currently spend Tinkers on Forced Labor and Experiments? I know that the Tinkers themselves can. If Tinkers are already functionally slaves, then I'd think slavers without the compunction to spend their people that way would certainly be able to spend the Tinkers that way.

I don't think so; I think only a Tinkers player with a working local machine altar can spend Tinkers population this way. Tinkers population under the control of a foreign faction are Disconnected; they're not free, but they're not being directly controlled. It's a simplification, to be sure... having slavery and harmonization as different types of states would, I think, overcomplicate what we'd like to be a relatively simple mechanism.

nweismuller wrote:(For that matter, it does emphasise that it's rather odd that Gremak can't currently enslave Algorians and Lummox- if anything, I'd expect the reflexive behavior of Gremak overlords towards such primitive subjects would be 'mass enslavement'.)

The reasons why native population can't be enslaved have more to do with gameplay than lore. Making native populations enslavable would increase the number of art assets required, and it would make it trivial for players to simply execute any native populations they considered to be undesirable.

Understandable it's for gameplay. I still hold out hope for seeing more 'flagrant evil' from my Gremak competitors over the course of the game.