Orbital bombardment

[Rastaman]

How terrible.  

[Thiosk]

I should be able to turn my military divisions on the populace if I should so choose. My game of solitaire demands that the only cards left at the end are the diamonds.

Perhaps that would piss off all the other races in the galaxy should they have contact with the race I'm exterminating.

[sloanjh]

I should be able to turn my military divisions on the populace if I should so choose. My game of solitaire demands that the only cards left at the end are the diamonds.

Perhaps that would piss off all the other races in the galaxy should they have contact with the race I'm exterminating.

If you've conquered them, you should be able to access their population in SM mod.  You should then be able to set the population to whatever you want.

I would decide on a kill rate for each attack point of your ground units (with a penalty for low population, since they'll be harder to find), then drop the pop by the calculated amount every so often.  You could also put a suggestion in for Steve to put in an "attack civilian population" option for ground forces.  I'm not sure how he'd react.  On the one hand, it seems realistic to allow ground troops to commit genocide; on the other it smacks of GFFP.  I suspect that if he does put something in it will make it hard to actually eradicate the population (a planet is a big place).

John

[Shadow]

(...)on the other it smacks of GFFP.

How is that a bad thing, as long as it's balanced? As you said, it could take a long while (depending on available ground forces) to eradicate a significant alien population. Thing is, how do you integrate all the facilities assigned to it to your own population afterwards?

[dooots]

Could you just put a cargo fleet in orbit and use them to transfer everything?  I've never had two different populations on the same planet so I don't know.

Do Plasma Torpedoes cause problems like missiles do?

[Rastaman]

Could you just put a cargo fleet in orbit and use them to transfer everything?  I've never had two different populations on the same planet so I don't know.

Do Plasma Torpedoes cause problems like missiles do?

Afaik that depends on what kind of peace agreement you have, the nature of which determines how much of the loser's industry you take over.

[Shadow]

Could you just put a cargo fleet in orbit and use them to transfer everything?  I've never had two different populations on the same planet so I don't know.

Hmm. That'd probably work, actually. Not for all buildings, but most.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, you can probably do that and then abandon the alien side of the colony once you've extracted everything of value. That'll eliminate the alien inhabitants. I'd naturally prefer a less gamey solution, but you work with what's at hand.

[sloanjh]

(...)on the other it smacks of GFFP.

How is that a bad thing, as long as it's balanced? As you said, it could take a long while (depending on available ground forces) to eradicate a significant alien population. Thing is, how do you integrate all the facilities assigned to it to your own population afterwards?

Because if the mechanics aren't designed properly, you end up cheaply taking out their population without doing damage to their industrial base - this is the imbalance.

Now that I think of it, if I were Steve I would probably give a pure defence combat factor to civilian populations under attack (based on population size).  As you attacked the civies and got hits, they would die.  However, you would also get collateral hits on their industrial base.  If the defence factor were set properly, it would work out that all the industry would be destroyed by the time you got done killing the population.  So you'd get your empty planet, but wouldn't have all that nice alien equipment left over.

As for transferring between populations, I would just use SM mode - subtract from one and add to the other....

John

[Thiosk]

A long and laborious ground war should be less devastating to the planet's industrial base than sterilizing it from orbit.  But it shouldn't be a freebie.  As ground forces advance they occupy facilities, thus no longer shooting at them.  Destruction only happens when they push into a new region. 

[Sheb]

Well, I'd say the best course for genocide would be invading them, sending some bromine in the atmosphere to kill most of them (if they're pre-TN, they won't be able tod o much), then deport the rest of them to an asteroid somewhere.

[Charlie Beeler]

A little background.  Keep in mind that I'm trying to recall mailing list conversations from several years ago so the I'm probably going to have the details wrong.

When Steve was starting Aurora the base mailing list were diehard Starfire 3rdR players for the most part.  One of the things that had always been considered an imbalance was planetary conquest.  It was way to easy and profitable.  Don't get me wrong, most of us used variations on GFFP to further our Imperial expansion goals, it was still considered gaming the system.  The agreed upon goal for Aurora was that orbital bombardment for the purpose of genocide should have major negative benefits to future use. 

Out of those discussions it was determined that planetary invasion by ground troops was the preferred method of planetary conquest.  It helped that this was Steves' preferred method as well.  The result is that you can "bomb" a population into submission and have a planet your people don't want to live on, or invade and garrisson and have a useful planet and an increase (eventually) in imperial population for workforce and tax base.

[voknaar]

The only other thing i can think of that would be cool ( but unsure if mechanics allow) is to use genetic modification to turn them into humans...

[Starkiller]

Well, I conquered five alien races, three of them are Imperial Populations, and the other two are
Candidate Populations. Two of them have Populations at least twice the size of old Terra. They
increased my Tax Base and Productivity enormously, and enabled me to field two massive Battle
Fleets, and four Fast Reaction Fleets. Research is zipping along, and two of those alien populations
can colonize worlds that are uncolonizable by humans. So while I have utilized the "Shiva Option"
and left some planets as radioactive wastelands, my prefered method is conquering them, and
eventually converting them to the worship of the Immortal God-Emperor....er, sorry, wrong game.

Eric

[jseah]

In fact, I think the GFFP solution is already massively discouraged due to the time it takes to expand your economy. 

A major limiting factor for expansion is population.  I can build construction factories and research labs and components for ships faster than my population grows to support that expansion. 
 - 25bp per CF tech and a 50% governor + 45% sector governor bonus = 2.85 years construction doubling time = 35% annual construction growth (splitting equally between CF, mines and labs gives you 11.6% growth = 23.4% growth that requires population)
 - Maximum population growth is 10% for smallest populations, around 2% after bonuses for capital planets.  Your population growth *always* loses. 
 - Therefore you have roughly 20% of your production base growth unused because your populations can't grow fast enough. 
   - And this already assumes you have a large proportion of your population in the high growth 25mil colonies.  Which can't do anything effectively except mine.  (and if you're going for population growth, you need lots of colonies, which is difficult to find, much less find on planets with minerals worth extracting)

Integrating a second homeworld size population, with their attendant facilities, production and research, effectively increases your production base one fold. 
I would normally use GFFP in most 4Xs, simply because I cannot spare the attention span needed to build troops, transport, and invade.  And then deal with subsequent uprisings and other problems.  In Aurora, this is easy since your attention span is effectively as much as you want. 

[sloanjh]

A little background.  Keep in mind that I'm trying to recall mailing list conversations from several years ago so the I'm probably going to have the details wrong.

When Steve was starting Aurora the base mailing list were diehard Starfire 3rdR players for the most part.  One of the things that had always been considered an imbalance was planetary conquest.  It was way to easy and profitable.  Don't get me wrong, most of us used variations on GFFP to further our Imperial expansion goals, it was still considered gaming the system.  The agreed upon goal for Aurora was that orbital bombardment for the purpose of genocide should have major negative benefits to future use. 

Out of those discussions it was determined that planetary invasion by ground troops was the preferred method of planetary conquest.  It helped that this was Steves' preferred method as well.  The result is that you can "bomb" a population into submission and have a planet your people don't want to live on, or invade and garrisson and have a useful planet and an increase (eventually) in imperial population for workforce and tax base.

Thanks Charlie - this is what I was sort of remembering in my last post.  My "smacks of GFFP" comment was trying to say that using your ground troops to wipe them out after you've already conquered them might push things back into the "way too easy" category, even though you're using ground troops.  It should be hard to wipe out a planetary population - especially if it's a planetary population of cockroaches :-)

John