Discontent populations, staffing, Scavengers, and Gaiads

[nweismuller]

Do Scavengers and Gaiads count as 'discontent populations' for purposes of improvement staffing? If they don't, I suspect at least the Gaiads- who 'do not participate in alien economies' probably should.

[Arioch]

We're in the process of figuring out how to better implement the Unruly races. Whether they end up being able to staff buildings or not will depend on where the balance ends up.

[sven]

We're in the process of figuring out how to better implement the Unruly races. Whether they end up being able to staff buildings or not will depend on where the balance ends up.

That said, as of the current dev builds, the two 'unruly' races (Scavengers and Gaiads) do contribute to improvement staffing requirements.

From a lore perspective, I think there's certainly an argument to be made that several of the minor races shouldn't contribute to improvement staffing. (Should threshers really be able to staff your factories? Should Lummox be able to staff labs?) From a game design perspective, however, I think it's probably wise to be sparing with how often we deploy the "does not contribute to staffing" mechanic. That the staffing mechanics even exist is something that it's hard to communicate in the UIs, and as we start adding exceptions and special cases to a rule that's already fairly obscure, the game becomes that much harder to understand.

[siyoa]

if you ask me, what I find odd about these minor races is that they somehow mange to keep they population at 3 for hundreds of turns ... and then the moment major race colonizes the planet, they realize that they want to start multiplying like rabbits

[nathanebht]

Would be better if you could relocate all of the minor races. Just because your a plant doesn't mean we can't figure out a way to ship you.

We should also be able to attack a planet with a minor race to clear it out before we colonize it. Might be difficult with early tech though.

[nweismuller]

if you ask me, what I find odd about these minor races is that they somehow mange to keep they population at 3 for hundreds of turns ... and then the moment major race colonizes the planet, they realize that they want to start multiplying like rabbits

I sort of figured that was due to the transition from either a pre-industrial or precarious early industrial society to one with advanced medical and agricultural technology crashing the death rate. Not living on the ragged edge of survival does wonders for potential population growth, and, unlike current First World societies, the expanding empires of SiS have the sort of society that encourages positive population growth.

[akkamaddi]

My account still works!

I hope this isn't necro-posting.

I started playing again, and happily found that I can carry my personal tweaks and races into the game. My empire is a zoo.

Pardon my ignorance on the original topic, but I thought discontent races didn't work? Or was Nweismuller referring to a "socially disconnected" race, and not "unhappy and nearly revolting"?

Gaiads do not produce any economy or industry on their own. I'm not sure if this acts as a multiplier for factory output. So, a planet full of Gaiads produce corn cobs and test tubes, but no hammers or coins.

To Sven's post: I think there could be a simple fix that the "primitive" tag disqualifies a race from staffing labs. You could also assign or not tags for WorkLab, WorkFactory, WorkFarm, etc, to each race, but thinking about it, I see how that could make both coding and population management a chore.

As for moving the primitives, I think I've suggested the techs "padded transports" and "flower pots" that allow transport of unruly and sessile races, respectively.

And just getting rid of them, why not slavery? It may look a bit cheap, but a slightly darkened image with a shackle image overly could be used to indicate slaves of any race. If you don't like the Pell or Scavengers, just enslave them and experiment them into extinction. (Enslaving an unruly race should be fun.) I know there was something mentioned about primitive races not making good slaves or being protected under old treaties, but do you really think the Gremak would leave a population of Lummox alone because they are an endangered species?

For the Tinkers, I've suggested in the past that assimilating a minor race could just produce a Tinker, and there is not enough medical information to unassimilate them, just like you can't de-harmonize a tinker to the original race. (You're basically using Lummox and Pell parts to make a new Tinker.)

There is also the possibility of adding an "ethnic cleanse" action on a planet. Each round, two pop units (or portion thereof) gets deleted, and they have an extremely high chance of revolting. For Gremak, each round of an ethnic cleanse produces 10 food units and increases happiness by +4/-1 per round. (I'm still surprised Gremak don't have a "Render to Food' option for slaves.)

Also, don't forget, if you don't like a particular minor race, it's not difficult to edit out the planet that spawns them.

[Arioch]

Pardon my ignorance on the original topic, but I thought discontent races didn't work? Or was Nweismuller referring to a "socially disconnected" race, and not "unhappy and nearly revolting"?

Gaiads do not produce any economy or industry on their own. I'm not sure if this acts as a multiplier for factory output. So, a planet full of Gaiads produce corn cobs and test tubes, but no hammers or coins.

Discontent population don't yield any basic resources, but because of the way the population is counted in regard to building staffing, they do staff buildings. I think this is incorrect, and I think there's a fix for this in the works.

We are planning to add some interesting characteristics to the unruly races (Gaiads, Scavengers, Viscid) to help make them seem like an investment rather than a pure nuisance. Though they are certainly supposed to be a nuisance. They are placed on choice planets in lieu of some kind of orbital defenders specifically to reduce the value of certain plum planets.

And just getting rid of them, why not slavery? It may look a bit cheap, but a slightly darkened image with a shackle image overly could be used to indicate slaves of any race. If you don't like the Pell or Scavengers, just enslave them and experiment them into extinction. (Enslaving an unruly race should be fun.) I know there was something mentioned about primitive races not making good slaves or being protected under old treaties, but do you really think the Gremak would leave a population of Lummox alone because they are an endangered species?

We specifically don't allow you to enslave or exterminate undesirable native species because they are specifically meant to be a disadvantage to an otherwise very advantageous world. There is also the issue that we would need to add additional "enslaved" art assets for each minor race, but that is a secondary consideration. If you could simply enslave and execute every sub-optimal native race, then there would be no point in having them in the game at all.

We might add an extermination option if we are able to add a planned environmental damage model along with our revamped terraforming system. But this is still in the early stages, so no promises.

That said, we are talking about making some of the native races enslave-able, where it makes sense (Lummox, Wrem, Algorians, Pell). This consideration also applies to Harmonization, which in game terms is more or less the same thing.

[nweismuller]

That said, we are talking about making some of the native races enslave-able, where it makes sense (Lummox, Wrem, Algorians, Pell). This consideration also applies to Harmonization, which in game terms is more or less the same thing.

How about Spice Mongers, Threshers, and Tarib? None of those are 'nuisance' natives, and I can't see why any would be less enslaveable than Pell.

Speaking of harmonisation, it seems a little odd that when, as a non-Tinker, I conquer a Tinker world, the dissidents of a non-Tinker species that show up somehow deharmonise themselves without the benefit of the cybernetic organisms tech. It's really weird that I actually benefit by getting some of them freed from their 'borging early.

[akkamaddi]

We are planning to add some interesting characteristics to the unruly races (Gaiads, Scavengers, Viscid) to help make them seem like an investment rather than a pure nuisance. Though they are certainly supposed to be a nuisance. They are placed on choice planets in lieu of some kind of orbital defenders specifically to reduce the value of certain plum planets.

If you can keep Scavengers happy, They make an amazing workforce.

And I understand the thinking. If you dig in my mod posted long ago, the Bound Spectrals are the same way. I've seen AI empires land on that planet and get wiped out. Actually, I would like to figure out how to copy Capricious and make "Neurotic", so only bad modifiers are doubled.

We specifically don't allow you to enslave or exterminate undesirable native species because they are specifically meant to be a disadvantage to an otherwise very advantageous world.

Yeah, but... Gremak + Primitives = Nom Nom Nom ?

Viscids, I can understand that it wouldn't work for them. For Scavengers and Gaiads, I think a very high chance of revolting would be good.

Also, do Gremak on a diet eat Pell as a "salad"?

There is also the issue that we would need to add additional "enslaved" art assets for each minor race, but that is a secondary consideration.

Oh, I remember the rendering engine. Copied from the appendices of the Necronomicon.
That's why I suggested the shackle overlay.

If you could simply enslave and execute every sub-optimal native race, then there would be no point in having them in the game at all.

Ummmmmmmmm... Most of human history is exactly like that, sadly enough. If a race will enslave other species, then I don't see how such a race would look at Algorian or Lummox and say "Oh, no, they're too primitive."

It could also be a game configuration option: Protection of Minors. Give the minor races that can be enslaved the flag "MinorSlave=True". Have a description pop-up that Protection of Minors enforces the galactic treaties protecting non-stellar races from slave harvesting. If it is set to "False", as in you do not respect it, then MinorSlave=enslavable. That way the player will decide if the run-through will involve not enslaving the primitives, as is the case now, or if they will be ruthless and grind all other sentients into dust.

That said, we are talking about making some of the native races enslave-able, where it makes sense (Lummox, Wrem, Algorians, Pell). This consideration also applies to Harmonization, which in game terms is more or less the same thing.

I am really looking forward to seeing the Harmonized assets.

[username]

I find it odd that Scavengers can't be moved, even though Scavengers are explicitly non-native by lore and proliferate throughout places by getting moved.

We specifically don't allow you to enslave or exterminate undesirable native species because they are specifically meant to be a disadvantage to an otherwise very advantageous world.

That kinda creates this weird behavior where it becomes advantageous to intentionally give away or allow the world to revolt merely to enable the option to then nuke it from orbit, like the old MOO2 thing of giving away junk planets to enemies just so you can blow them up and rebuild them Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. It's really an unnecessarily daft way to have to go about doing things.

[Arioch]

I find it odd that Scavengers can't be moved, even though Scavengers are explicitly non-native by lore and proliferate throughout places by getting moved.

We specifically don't allow you to enslave or exterminate undesirable native species because they are specifically meant to be a disadvantage to an otherwise very advantageous world.

That kinda creates this weird behavior where it becomes advantageous to intentionally give away or allow the world to revolt merely to enable the option to then nuke it from orbit, like the old MOO2 thing of giving away junk planets to enemies just so you can blow them up and rebuild them Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. It's really an unnecessarily daft way to have to go about doing things.

The Unruly species are meant to be a disadvantage to a particular planet, in a similar vein as Mineral Poor. From a gameplay perspective, these disadvantages become irrelevant if you can easily remove them by simply glassing a planet before colonizing it.

I also think that from a practical perspective that it's very difficult to eradicate a local native species, especially if they have a particular talent for survival under harsh conditions, as the Scavengers do. Without destroying the local biosphere, anyway.

However, I agree that it doesn't work as well as we would like gameplay-wise, as it can incentivize some weird gameplay strategies, such as deliberately losing a planet so that you can destroy it and recolonize cleanly. That's part of why we want to introduce an environmental damage model, but also why we intend to provide more interesting interactions and incentives with the Unruly native species (Scavengers, Gaiads, and Viscid). These are both things that we are planning to include in the second DLC.

[nweismuller]

I'm honestly just glad if you do anything to make Viscids less unbearable. Their current implementation is just really, really annoying and jarring. Fine, they're agricultural pests, but they continually grow in population and choke out your own population, with absolutely nothing to show for it and with their fiction not really supporting either the tactical acumen or the moral consideration that would make extermination campaigns to cut back their numbers more troublesome for Scavengers or Gaiads. (Nobody's going to shed tears for dead agricultural pests, and they won't fight back well as their numbers are culled, even if you can't wipe them out.) I absolutely understand and support that Viscids are meant to be obstacles of sorts, but their current implementation is totally unsatisfactory to me in a way that Scavengers and Gaiads aren't.

[Dacarnix]

A tangentially-related element of gameplay is my increasing reliance on loading populations into transports and than scrapping those transports. Transports are so numerous and cheap by mid-game that it's often worth such a low cost to remove units of Humans, Gremak, Enfi, etc. in favor of races with better stats.

I think those three races in particular need a bit of a boost. It's pretty easy to argue that Scavengers are better than Enfi since 1 gold is typically valued by the game as higher than 1 production. And while Humans and Gremak are better than Scavengers, it's not by much.

Once you've got Cloning researched, I treat those three core races as pest species to be eliminated. In my last game as Humans, I had literally 0 units of Human population at the time I won the game.

(FWIW, I'd give Humans +0.1 in Food, Science, Trade, and Labor to represent their ability to improvise and adapt to tough situations. I'd give Gremak +1 Trade while the planet has at least one population unit of slaves. And I'd give Enfi a huge boost to population growth relative to other races, which admittedly only helps them function better with the slavery mechanics, but that fits their intended role.)

[username]

I'd say that maybe humans receive a flexible bonus divided proportionally by what the planet is producing, maybe like 75% of the value of a specialist species, but always there, so that humans become a generalist pop that functions well on a planet prone to priority shifts.

Gremak, on the other hand, are sort-of-fine where they are, but will be improved by giving us more options to commit atrocities, where other races would react badly to their empire behaving so poorly, but...Gremak have no empathy, so they just don't care if you brutalize the conquered, making Gremak able to extract more out of a mixed world than a purely Gremak or purely-other-race planet.

As it stands, however, slaves are just pretty bad, and so you're strongly incentivized to liberate all slaves, even as Gremak, which leaves Gremak simply as an inferior race in terms of productivity. If Gremak were better at being slavers and thus worlds with a mix of Gremak and slave races performed better than planets of purely that race, Gremak would serve a purpose rather than just being an unproductive race with no particular niche.

Of course, if you're not commiting atrocities, then Gremak are just vile, lazy creatures.

A tangentially-related element of gameplay is my increasing reliance on loading populations into transports and than scrapping those transports. Transports are so numerous and cheap by mid-game that it's often worth such a low cost to remove units of Humans, Gremak, Enfi, etc. in favor of races with better stats.

I do a similar thing, but instead of scrapping the transports, I charge them into battle against the enemy, because having a pop loaded still increases the transport's crew size, and this lets you use them to fill up the crews of your boarding ships. If they get exploded in the battle...oh, well!

Since you do not need boarding modules equipment to transfer crew to your own ships, a few junky, often stolen, transports can keep topping off boarding ships in this way.