Abandoning a Planet

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quarague
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Abandoning a Planet

#1 Post by quarague »

So one of the new features of 0.5 is that sometimes if you conquer an enemy planet it is very hard to keep it due to happiness. So even if you can take and keep a colony militarywise you can't always integrate it into your economy. In general I think this is a good feature, it does make the game harder to master.

In most situations putting it on protective focus makes the happiness positive so the locals won't rebel but then the colony doesn't produce anything useful for you and still costs influence. So if you have some solution for the happiness but it will take you a few turns this works great.

If you have access to concentration camps that can be a way to utilize a colony you can't or don't want to keep.

But if you don't see a way to get happiness positive in the long term and don't have concentration camps you are sort of stuck. My understanding was that the 'Planetary Independence Decree' is meant for exactly this kind of situation. If you just bit of more than you can chew this is a way to cut your losses. If you took the planet from an AI or opposing player turning it native could still be a deliberate strategy. Unfortunately the Planetary Independence Decree costs 20 production to make. Now the 20 doesn't sound to bad but the issue I ran into was no supply connection. So I have zero production at that colony, I can't build a Planetary Independence Decree.

I guess I could deliberately not use protection focus, let the happiness go negative and after a bunch of turns eventually the rebel troops will win against the imperial troops. But if I as the human player already decided I want to give up the colony it feels strange that I have to wait a bunch of turns until the rebels win out, I want to let them win. Additionally if I only come to this conclusion after running protection for a few turns it takes even longer because happiness has to slowly decrease to zero.

I guess I would prefer a Planetary Independence Decree to cost 0 production so you can always build one but I don't know whether a zero cost building causes weird glitches somewhere.

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Oberlus
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Good point.

You could try changing cost to zero as suggested, in default/scripting/buildings/COLONY_INDEPENDENCE_DECREE.focs.txt

Code: Select all

buildcost = 20
If 0 PP causes weird behavior, then 1 PP should be doable (one can use "stockpiling project" to deliberately put PPs into stockpile, and a couple of turns should be enough to draw that 1 PP).

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Grummel7
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#3 Post by Grummel7 »

Well, you could use stockpile to build on a planet with no production, but that might take some time.

I agree that the independence decree is a bit weird. Especially when there are already rebels, why can't you simply withdraw your troops and let the rebels win? And if it has a cost, why does it cost twice as much as evacuation and four times as much as concentration camps? Same for abandon outpost, btw. (well, except for the rebels ;-)

quarague
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#4 Post by quarague »

Using stockpile is a good idea at least when combined with reducing the cost to 1. I only had 40 or so empire production per turn so building something for 20 out of stockpile would still count as a big project but with cost 1 it is easy. Then it only becomes an issue of the player being sufficiently aware of the game mechanics to figure out that solution. Maybe one can write this as a direct hint in the pedia description of the Independence Decree.

Ophiuchus
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#5 Post by Ophiuchus »

I am pretty positive the cost was mostly there as one guard against making denial strategies too cheap (so one needs time and resources to deny a winning enemy a planet).
PP cost means denial slows down when the attacker is able to cut off supply.

maybe the timing guard and no-battle-here guard is enough.

everybody rethink and comment
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Oberlus
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#6 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:54 am I am pretty positive the cost was mostly there as one guard against making denial strategies too cheap (so one needs time and resources to deny a winning enemy a planet).
PP cost means denial slows down when the attacker is able to cut off supply.
What does abandoning a planet have to do with denial strategies?

Ophiuchus
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:18 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:54 am I am pretty positive the cost was mostly there as one guard against making denial strategies too cheap (so one needs time and resources to deny a winning enemy a planet).
PP cost means denial slows down when the attacker is able to cut off supply.
What does abandoning a planet have to do with denial strategies?
the enemy can not use an abandoned outpost as refuel station.

but, yes, the original topic was independence decree. it probably is as easy to conquer the neutral colony. so probably nothing to do with denial in that case.

maybe i mixed those ideas up when implementing.
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quarague
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#8 Post by quarague »

If I want to abandon an unmanned outpost, I agree there should be some PP cost involved if abandoning means it does not exist anymore afterwards (maybe rename it from abandom to destroy). This means if I have an outpost that I believe will be conquered denying the enemy the outpost should come with some cost.

But if a populated planet is declared independent it is still there afterwards and it gets to keep its defenses. So for a denial strategy this doesn't change anything, the attacker needs to overcome the same defenses. So this does not provide an argument for a PP cost for a Planetary Independence Decree.

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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

quarague wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 2:14 pm So this does not provide an argument for a PP cost for a Planetary Independence Decree.
you are correctly restating what i wrote
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Grummel7
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#10 Post by Grummel7 »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:06 pm
Oberlus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:18 am What does abandoning a planet have to do with denial strategies?
the enemy can not use an abandoned outpost as refuel station.
I think the correct answer is: an abandoned outpost cannot be conquered. So if you see troopers approaching, you could abandon the outpost, now the enemy needs to build an outpost ship instead.

I wonder whether it makes sense to turn such a planet into a neutral outpost, that can still be conquered. So maybe players have two options:
  • Dismantle all the outpost infrastructure, which takes several turns. It shouldn't cost 20pp, I think.
  • Simply remove the people and turn it into a neutral outpost that can be conquered or settled by who ever comes first.

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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#11 Post by Ophiuchus »

Grummel7 wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 6:55 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:06 pm
Oberlus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:18 am What does abandoning a planet have to do with denial strategies?
the enemy can not use an abandoned outpost as refuel station.
I think the correct answer is: an abandoned outpost cannot be conquered. So if you see troopers approaching, you could abandon the outpost, now the enemy needs to build an outpost ship instead.
to prevent that there are some guards; e.g. you need at least four turns to abandon an outpost.
Grummel7 wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 6:55 pm I wonder whether it makes sense to turn such a planet into a neutral outpost, that can still be conquered.
"neutral outpost" does not exist in the game.
  • neutral planet with zero population == empty planet
  • planet with zero population with an owner == outpost
  • neutral planet with population greater zero == natives
  • planet with population greater zero with an owner == colony of that empire
so to not simply take away the option of conquering, we introduced the guards

there is somewhere a long thread about this
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wobbly
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#12 Post by wobbly »

There is the old abandoned outpost special that could be repurpused in some way. It wouldn't register as a neutral outpost without backed changes, but perhaps there is some other way.

Ophiuchus
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#13 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 6:34 am There is the old abandoned outpost special that could be repurpused in some way. It wouldn't register as a neutral outpost without backed changes, but perhaps there is some other way.
In that case, if we had out-of-supply building we could allow cheap building of an outpost on planets with such a special.
So you could use your stockpile to reestablish it. Or if we had more generic ship/fleet action buttons we could give add some PP to the stockpile when outposting an abandoned outpost with a ship.

yet another side track: In general I like the idea of recycling going to the stockpile, maybe give 10-20% build cost when scrapping buildings/ships (maybe more on a environmental policy?). This gives a slight incentive to use it for non-stockpiling empires.

We could also instead change the definition of outpost on FOCS side. E.g.
  • 0.0 pop with owner == abandoned outpost (can be invaded, only minimal troops, but only by enemies; has -1 supply) allows a cheap "reestablish outpost" building
  • >=0.01 pop with owner == outpost (provides supply for refuel/fighters etc)
  • >=0.1 pop with owner == colony
i think though that currently <=0 supply still would do a refuel (early outposts and the Sly needed that). we could (re)introduce a notion to distinguish between 0 supply and negative supply (no refuel/restock) and explicitely set negative supply on colonies to zero.
there is though weirdness about owning something abandoned (outposts could be gifted to friendly empires).

yet another side track: note we could also squeeze in specialized outposts between outpost and colony level; like military outpost (troops like on a planet), research outpost (some way to earn RP, maybe in combination with exploration policy), mining outpost (some little PP), enclave (generates some fixed amount of influence), black ops (stealthy).

or we add the outpost concept in the backend.

but... i do not see a reason. why again would we need this?
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defaultuser
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Re: Abandoning a Planet

#14 Post by defaultuser »

I haven't really looked into the new features, but relevant to this situation is there a potential action for self-governance? Something like, the empire doesn't get anything or pay anything or not much, but the self-governing former colony is allied to the empire so supply would propagate.

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