Allow build evacuate system on outpost

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jinlanid
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Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#1 Post by jinlanid »

More stars means more colony upkeep right?
Sometimes when I occupied an outpost, I want just lose it, I totally don't need that star, and it rise my colony upkeep.

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One more thing, in this game, I'm exasw, but I can't build concentration camp, is that a bug?

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Or, maybe we can make it, if a star have 0 population, it don't use upkeep.

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Oberlus
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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Yes, we need a way to get rid of an outpost. Evacuation won't work (it just zeroes population).

jinlanid wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:10 pm One more thing, in this game, I'm exasw, but I can't build concentration camp, is that a bug?
Playing recent version with influence and policies? You need to adopt certain policy (Racial Purity IIRC) for conc. camps.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#3 Post by Ophiuchus »

Allow building a "Give up outpost" building when population is zero. Maybe allow queueing it also if you evacuation building is in the queue. Should be easy to implement.

This maybe should not be possible if enemies are too close (so one can capture outposts). The prohibiting condition could be "combat in the system", and/or "not enemy supply" in the system, or maybe even "no-enemy-ship-two-or-less-hops away". Or the enemies are expected to bring their own outpost ships
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Krikkitone
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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#4 Post by Krikkitone »

Making the abandon outpost building cheap, but take many turns (say 5). Possibly have it lose all progress if it doesn’t get any (to stop the “ deprioritize with one turn to go micro management”)

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#5 Post by Ophiuchus »

Krikkitone wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:44 pm Making the abandon outpost building cheap, but take many turns (say 5). Possibly have it lose all progress if it doesn’t get any (to stop the “ deprioritize with one turn to go micro management”)
The loosing progress does not exist and does not fit well into the game. And it also does not solve that micro issue. Instead of pausing you would constantly remove it from the build queue and restart the process. The building could add a special with a timer (so once you start it you cant stop it) but the special would also have to be removed on successful invasion. Still very ugly and hard to communicate to the player.

That is why i didnt suggest multiple turns.
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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

I implemented this using a building "Abandon Outpost System" similar to what we have for evacuation, see PR-3328.

The building takes a single turn to build, but it needs two turns to prepare the abandoning. If the preparation is finished, the planet may become unowned again ("erasing" the outpost), but only if there is no battle in the system.

You receive useful sitreps during the process.

So an enemy not further than four turns away can keep you from removing an outpost.
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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#7 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:14 am only if there is no battle in the system.
I think it makes sense to do the same for evacuation, not sending refugees when the planet is attacked.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#8 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:56 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:14 am only if there is no battle in the system.
I think it makes sense to do the same for evacuation, not sending refugees when the planet is attacked.
Maybe, but that would be another not really needed nerf for evacuation (as opposed to concentration camps). Or we remove that battle stopping abandon outpost and just have the timer (and increase that by lets say two turns).

Some ideas to about evacuation
  • with influence limits you will probably want to relocate population from one planet to another because the other planet is better suited - so evacuation should not cripple output in the process
  • do not cut resource output completely but lower targets (e.g.late scaling 50%, maybe faster decliner, and/or make evacuation a focus)
  • make evacuation a focus so you have to choose between defense/influence/supply and evacuation. also gets rid of the building.
  • if battle does not stops evacuation, you would probably first have defense focus until your defense is mostly broken (so the defense focus does not help anymore) and then switch to evacuation to save some of the people
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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#9 Post by Oberlus »

IMO, abandoning outposts to not let the enemy invade them is less onerous than evacuating the population of a colony to not let the enemy get a new populated colony or new species.

Concentration camps are less of a problem now that they require a policy. Plus it is not a tech unlocked at start. Evacuation is available to everyone from start, it's even common in multiplayer games.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#10 Post by wobbly »

In my view we need to work out what a reasonable time frame is for invaders to get troop ships to an attacked colony/outpost. You don't want to end up with a situation where its never worth invading because the defender can pull up stumps too quickly. It generally takes more resources to build an invasion fleet then it takes to build colonies, it's not going to be worth the risk if there's no return. Then we can balance evacs and concentration camps around that time frame and also look at adding a delay to pulling down buildings.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#11 Post by Oberlus »

wobbly wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:02 pm In my view we need to work out what a reasonable time frame is for invaders to get troop ships to an attacked colony/outpost. You don't want to end up with a situation where its never worth invading because the defender can pull up stumps too quickly. It generally takes more resources to build an invasion fleet then it takes to build colonies, it's not going to be worth the risk if there's no return. Then we can balance evacs and concentration camps around that time frame and also look at adding a delay to pulling down buildings.
+1

My 2 cents:
Time varies with detection range and investment on scouting. Early on an enemy fleet can pass from outside your sight to blockading a colony in 1 turn, usually 2, 3 o 4 with good scouting. Late game you can see enemy coming several (5-15) turns in advance.
Late game you also have more planets and the actual target of enemy's invasion is less clear, but also you know that in general they want all your planets, so if you have to send some to oblivion to avoid reinforcing you enemy, then you probably want to send all your planets to oblivion and concede. Do we want to care about deleting-empires-before-concede issue too?

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#12 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 12:33 pm
  • make evacuation a focus so you have to choose between defense/influence/supply and evacuation. also gets rid of the building.
I like it.


Imho the burned ground approach doesn't actually add to the gameplay.
We should allow evacuation of colonies and outposts only for strategic reallocation of planets and it should come at a cost (so "colonize everything and evacuate later" is not a no-brainer). It should be impractical to do that during a war.
Taking like ten turns to evacuate an outpost and costing one Influence point the whole time the evacuation building is in the queue (to prevent the "queue the building in every outpost" should be a good way to achieve that.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#13 Post by Oberlus »

I only know three purposes of evacuation:

1. Saving the people of colony from getting into enemy's hands.
It is a good role-playing element, and makes sense strategically, it would be bad to remove it. But it is also a problem in the scorched earth strategy being OP (mostly because of conc. camps, but that's another thing, see later).

2. Give a planet a different species.
We need that function in the game. Whatever works to make evacuation-vs-invasion not OP, will work for this, but in extremis we can change the mechanic: allow colony buildings in populated planets and make them remove population from the planet at the same pace it is completed (so when building is at 80%, there is 20% population left to evacuate). The high PP cost means it will never be used for scorched earth, nor will be possible to complete quickly when the planet is blockaded.

3. Accellerating population growth of new colonies (by sending population from fully populated planets).
This function is minoritary but useful. Should be implemented via policy (no need to build and destroy buildings) and wouldn't depopulate planets, just equalize populations, so it's not a problem here.


With influence fully implemented, conc. camps won't be a competitor for evacuation in any of these purposes, it will be a tool used only by "evil" empires and only on certain species or types of planets (e.g. a democratic federation will have just forbidden to use it, imcompatible poicy; a enslaving empire won't have problems working to death their slave worlds, but will get into serious troubles killing its own citizens, in the form of bad stability -> colony outposts malus, and big influence expenditures).


So, we just need to make evacuation-for-saving-people possible with enough time but the enemy must be able to stop it even without troops.
Evacuation takes 2 pop per turn. A 3-pop planet depopulates in 2 turns after evacuation building is finished, 20-pop in 10 turns.
Should we make it slower for small planets? Because those are the ones easier to depopulate in the time the enemy needs to get to the system. The big planets need so many turns that they would not need even halting evacuation when blockaded.

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Re: Allow build evacuate system on outpost

#14 Post by Ophiuchus »

1b. Saving a species from falling into enemy hands
This is slightly different from saving population falling into enemy hands. High pop means high resource output. But often simply adding a species to your gene pool is the bigger goal. For that a minimal population or 1-pop for further colonization are important. Higher numbers are just a nice-to-have. To prevent the defender from taking the price it is enough if low-pop evacuation gets delayed.

4. depending on influence upkeep formula: free up a planet so to keep influence cost low. This might be necessary because you populated too many planets by mistake (better UI should also help here not to do that in the first place), because policy change changes upkeep or you want to settle another planet which was not accessible before (lack of knowledge, lack of tech, new planet added by invasion).
The new planet could be settled by the same species (so migration part of evacuation is intended) or not.
For this also a different mechanism could suffice: e.g. give independence to the colony/make it unowned

If we remove the scorched-earth part in war (e.g. stopping it if battle occurs), we should also remove it from concentration camps i think.

We could make evacuation simply slow down on small population e.g. add a 2-turn timer when population < 2 and only evacuate 1 pop if population is less than half of max population (combined that means 5 turns instead of 2 for the population to drop from 2.5 to 0). Or another variant: evacuate only 1 per turn if population <4 and evacuate only 0.5 per turn if population <2.

Another thing: evacuation targeting should prefer less-than half populated planets i think

edit1: one another idea - make evacuation speed dependent on available settling space. so difference between population and max population of that species. in a defensive scenario, you may for a short time have space available, but if the attacker presses on, you will run out of empty places fast. for non-defensive scenarios it is legitimate if evacuation is "fast".

formula would be something like:
free_space(species) = SUM_FOR_ALL_YOUR_COLONIES_WITH_NON_EVACUATING_SPECIES(species) { sum += (maxPopulation - population) }
evac_population(species) = SUM_FOR_ALL_YOUR_COLONIES_WITH_EVACUATING_SPECIES(species) { sum += population }
evacuation_speed(species) = ( free_space(species) / evac_population(species) )

with this if you have double as much free space as population to evacuate, you have the current evacuation speed of 2 per evacuating planet.
if you have exactly enough free space to settle the evacuees, you have a speed of 1.
if you have no free space you cant evacuate.

Of course one could add a multiplier (e.g. 2 times the evac speed) or offsets or minimum evac speed (e.g. 0.5).
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