Technology : Mass Suicide

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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em3
Vacuum Dragon
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#16 Post by em3 »

Xenophobic species could actually enjoy 'sploding conquered xenos worlds...
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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Krikkitone
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#17 Post by Krikkitone »

afwbkbc wrote:
But those techniques take time and resources to apply
Yes, both are included in RP cost.
Any empire having Concentration Camps or other tech at the level you propose for this Mass Suicide would already have Adaptive Automation providing more than enough PP to make the required building whether or not they were blockaded
It will still take many turns until population dies out entirely. But enemy troop ships may be just 1 turn away, so with Concentration Camps you won't prevent him from taking Mu Ursh and then destroying you with them.
That's what something like happiness/influence would be for. You make the Mu Ursh hate the enemy empire so they won't serve it (either through pro-you propaganda while you control the world or anti-enemy spy propaganda)

Ideally the enemy lands, and is killing off Mu Ursh rebels for the next 100 turns. (so taking the planet is actually bad for them.... they may decide to nuke the population themselves instead.)

and if the Mu Ursh hate you and are waiting for that liberating enemy force (because the enemy has better influence)... well that's what concentration camps are for.

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Vezzra
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#18 Post by Vezzra »

afwbkbc wrote:What? The game won't be ruined, it will just slowdown steamrolling.
As the others have already pointed out, there are other ways to achieve this. There are various mechanics planned which will serve exactly tha purpose (among other things).
And in tactical cases it will prevent enemy from taking important species.
Which is exactly what ruins the game. What you propose would make it far too easy to prevent valuable assets falling into enemy hands.

Yes, it should be possible to take measures against this. But it should come at an appropriate cost, have appropriate repercussions (depending on what means exactly are employed to achieve that goal), and definitely shouldn't be too easy. If the enemy manages to surprise you and ambush your precious Mu Ursh colony, they should have a chance to claim the price. If you have somehow managed to anticipate the attack, you should have a chance to prevent your Mu Ursh from falling into the enemies hands.

But with a Mass Suicide mechanic as you propose it, there would be no chance for an enemy to steal a valuable species from you. Because you could burn your colony faster than they can claim it, even if they manage to pull off the perfect ambush. Without you having to suffer any consequences other than loosing that colony, which would have happened anyway. That's not right, and not balanced.

The others have given some good ideas for alternatives. Basically, the quicker the method to remove your assets from an enemies grasp, the more severe the penalties/costs have to be. So, if we provide a mechanic that allows to burn a colony within a turn (which would make capturing impossible), the repercussions would need to be extremely drastic - e.g all your remaining worlds having a high chance of going into riot or something like that.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#19 Post by Krikkitone »

Vezzra wrote:
afwbkbc wrote:What? The game won't be ruined, it will just slowdown steamrolling.
As the others have already pointed out, there are other ways to achieve this. There are various mechanics planned which will serve exactly tha purpose (among other things).
And in tactical cases it will prevent enemy from taking important species.
Which is exactly what ruins the game. What you propose would make it far too easy to prevent valuable assets falling into enemy hands.

Yes, it should be possible to take measures against this. But it should come at an appropriate cost, have appropriate repercussions (depending on what means exactly are employed to achieve that goal), and definitely shouldn't be too easy. If the enemy manages to surprise you and ambush your precious Mu Ursh colony, they should have a chance to claim the price. If you have somehow managed to anticipate the attack, you should have a chance to prevent your Mu Ursh from falling into the enemies hands.

But with a Mass Suicide mechanic as you propose it, there would be no chance for an enemy to steal a valuable species from you. Because you could burn your colony faster than they can claim it, even if they manage to pull off the perfect ambush. Without you having to suffer any consequences other than loosing that colony, which would have happened anyway. That's not right, and not balanced.

The others have given some good ideas for alternatives. Basically, the quicker the method to remove your assets from an enemies grasp, the more severe the penalties/costs have to be. So, if we provide a mechanic that allows to burn a colony within a turn (which would make capturing impossible), the repercussions would need to be extremely drastic - e.g all your remaining worlds having a high chance of going into riot or something like that.
Actually... I can think of a good/fun penalty...
Every time one of your worlds mass suicides, all of your worlds gain a permanent 1% chance per turn of mass suiciding. (so you can do it... but you might just trigger an epidemic you trigger the first.. then a spontaneous one increases the chance to 2% per turn, another spontanteous increases it to 3%... and then your entire empire dies off in the next 10-20 turns)

so deny your enemy a particular species, and you may deny yourself any species :)
(mostly sarcasm... it would be interesting for a losing AI to do that)

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MatGB
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#20 Post by MatGB »

To clarify, when I said "ruin the game" I specifically meant that game being played at that time, not FO as a 'product'/series of games. One of the worst things in strategy games is when someone decides they've lost and tries to destroy everyone else's work/fun/plans just for the sake of it.

If we want to have individual species that might be prone to this sort of thing on occasions I'd be fine with that as long as it wasn't complete planetary collapse, but not as a strategic option for a player to initiate, that would simply suck.

If you want to quit, gift your stuff to a different player in game if you're worried about the balance of the game after you go. Killing your entire empire isn't something I'd ever want to see implemented.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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Gargamel
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Re: Technology : Mass Suicide

#21 Post by Gargamel »

And if the loss of a planet isn't going to hurt you as much as the other player gaining it, there's always the Nova Bomb.

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