Pacifism in the Era of Raiders

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

In the past, it was common for players to roleplay as a pacifist race which did not start building any military units until first contact, or sometimes until first hostile contact.

However, since the introduction of Raiders, I have not seen this kind of RP setting very much and it seems almost impossible to pull off as long as Raiders are turned on, since unlike most other threats in the game they can immediately appear in an undefended core system, including Sol itself, and take over once they find no opposition. Even Swarm, Invaders, or extremely hostile NPRs once encountered take some time to survey towards Sol before they can effect a game over, and for spoiler threats the distance at which a threat can materialize can be more or less controlled by the number of systems game rule (which isn't as effective for Raiders since they can spawn into any system immediately).

So, I am wondering if anyone has had success playing a pacifist setting with the Raiders active, or otherwise how people are working around this problem. I imagine the option of playing with a limited military is in play, but that's not what I'm interested in here. So far, the apparent solution seems to be turning Raiders on only once some other (hostile) alien presence is encountered and military buildup is underway, which is a bit gamey but I suppose works fine otherwise.

[Xkill]

I actually love playing like this. At first, only military I'll have are STO weapons. That is not "full pacifist", however.

I think it's a problem with the Raiders since they don't raid as much as they assault and then genocide if given the chance. My way of dealing with this is by establishing that Raiders need a significant level of interstellar activity to notice sapients in the Aurora dimension. Just survey ships is not enough. There needs to be colonies in other systems regularly receiving shipments of factories, goods and infrastructure.

As such, once I put down one or two out-system colonies, Raiders get activated for the player. I leave it on for NPRs though as they always have military. If Raiders manage to overrun planetary defences and glass a colony and hulk some freighters it's annoying, but not game ending. And if they attack the homeworld, the greater density of STO weapons kill them.

[gpt3]

I imagine the option of playing with a limited military is in play, but that's not what I'm interested in here.

These might not be what exactly you're looking for, but a few ideas:

• Paramilitary: Humanity has no external threats, but it still has internal threats such as separatist movements or organized crime or even just rogue asteroids. In order to deal with this issue, there is a token coast guard with minimal armament. No one is expecting to fight an organized force, so all equipment is tuned for low logistics costs and not combat prowess.
• Kzinti Lesson: Humanity has neither external nor internal threats, but it has many dual-use technologies that can be easily adapted into weapons. For example, the 120cm laser on your space station isn't for combat, it's for powering laser sails for pre-Transnewtonian civilian craft.
• Guardian angel: Use Spacemaster to temporarily create a super-powerful ship that annihilates every raider that shows up in a core system. Make sure to let the raiders clean up afterwards so that there is no evidence of what happened. From a roleplay perspective, you can say that all reports of raiders in core systems are (initially) just mass hysteria and that any reports of space combat and mysterious protectors are just wishful thinking.

[Froggiest1982]

In the past, it was common for players to roleplay as a pacifist race which did not start building any military units until first contact, or sometimes until first hostile contact.

However, since the introduction of Raiders, I have not seen this kind of RP setting very much and it seems almost impossible to pull off as long as Raiders are turned on, since unlike most other threats in the game they can immediately appear in an undefended core system, including Sol itself, and take over once they find no opposition. Even Swarm, Invaders, or extremely hostile NPRs once encountered take some time to survey towards Sol before they can effect a game over, and for spoiler threats the distance at which a threat can materialize can be more or less controlled by the number of systems game rule (which isn't as effective for Raiders since they can spawn into any system immediately).

So, I am wondering if anyone has had success playing a pacifist setting with the Raiders active, or otherwise how people are working around this problem. I imagine the option of playing with a limited military is in play, but that's not what I'm interested in here. So far, the apparent solution seems to be turning Raiders on only once some other (hostile) alien presence is encountered and military buildup is underway, which is a bit gamey but I suppose works fine otherwise.

Hi Nuclear,

With the "default" settings, the short answer is no. However, as you mentioned, adjusting the settings for when raiders and other threats can spawn does change things. If you set the number of systems between 30 and 50 for raiders to appear, and considering that Swarm (at least in my games) has a very low spawn rate, chances are you won't encounter raiders before encountering precursors or the swarm. A setting of 30 still gives a 60%/40% chance, while 50 guarantees 100% on real star starts. I'm not sure about non-real star settings, as I don't use them.

You could try running a few simulations on an empty database just for fun to find the most acceptable number in case 50 proves too large in scale. Please bear in mind that I don’t use any spoilers other than the ones already mentioned.

There's another trick you could use to keep the system numbers at a minimum: temporarily increase the chance for ruin generation. This would also favor the creation of precursors over NPRs. If you don’t want the precursors too close by, you can set the ruin generation to 40% or 50%, with the Raiders set to the "default" 10 or 15.

Personally, I usually set Raiders to at least 25, with 30 being my "norm." I find that a setting of 10 makes the game overly militarized. I don’t recall an instance where Raiders appeared before the Precursors or showed up in Sol right away. Even when that happens, I'm usually able to roll out my first strike group of fighters within a year of the unfortunate discovery, even with limited admin resources.

[Ghostly]

I did end up following this formula in my current playthrough, albeit unintentionally. Didn't build any military ships until the first hostile contact (survey ship getting blasted by Precursors in the 3rd system I discovered outside Sol) and didn't build any garrisons until one of my fledgling colonies got captured by Raiders shortly after passing the 10 system mark. Now every populated world gets a garrison with STO's, every major system gets a dedicated defense fleet, and I won't be expanding so carelessly next time.