POWs

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I'm debating what to do about POWs.

Currently, you rescue life pods, get intel points and then have the survivors on the rescuing ship using up life support and often quickly running down the deployment clock. The solution is to offload them, and it can be the nearest rock if you don't mind the RP aspect. The last is therefore tedious micromanagement. So I am considering two broad options.

Option 1) You rescue the POWs, get the intel and they vanish - keeping the benefit and removing the tedium that doesn't require any major decisions.

Option 2) POWs become more important from a logistics and intel point of view. In this scenario, you have to build POW Camps, which double as interrogation facilities. There are no longer interrogation experts on every shuttle. The rescuing ship will transport the POWs, including captured officers, to one of the POW camps, or to a colony for subsequent transport (I'll need a transport POW order), where they will be questioned and intel gathered. A colony with one or more camps will have effectively unlimited capacity for prisoners, but a limited capacity to process those POWs for intel-gathering purposes. The prisoners effectively become a potential intel resource until processed. The game would start with the home world having a POW camp.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

[MinuteMan]

Option 2.

If this will also be the case for the AI.
Because then you get new choices.

You get the potential choice of trying to rescue your people or make them "unavailable" for the enemy.
If you can catch the ship that picked up the pods.

Would you be able to rescue them from enemies POW camps?

[Kaiser]

I strongly support the second option, I believe all these aspects related to diplomacy, Intel, treaties could be expanded and improved, so I definitely support the POW camps but I do not have at the moment any specific idea.
Maybe:
1) the possibility to return POW to the NPR in exchange of relation improving (do not know of it is feasible)
2) Intel gathering should be incremental, more POWs more chance to get new info (and also if there's a differentiation between simple crew and officials)
3) Chance the POW escape and steal a ship if in orbit?  It would be fun, of course the chance is minimal  and reduced depending other factors.

[alex_brunius]

I suggest keeping it as abstracted as possible, modelling PoWs in detail is the first step down a dark path leading away from the core design of the game IMO. There are alot of other aspects of intel gathering I would rather see improved instead.

But if you do choose to model interrogations, then wouldn't Naval HQs be a logical place for this? The game already have enough installations to keep track of as it is.

[Ghostly]

Option 2 sounds great! But if dedicated POW installations adding bloat is a concern, I'm sure they can be abstracted the same way crew is, with all 1m+ pop colonies being able to extract intel from them, or indeed have that functionality added to another installation. A few additional possibilities that come to mind are POWs adding to the Required Occupation Strength of their colony (with a higher Political Status Occupation Modifier than normal to represent their status as enemy combatants, and offset their small numbers) and an empire-wide setting governing interrogation harshness, with more cruel methods providing intel faster, but totalling less intel per prisoner.

In either case, unless Option 1 is chosen, an order to transfer survivors between fleets is sorely needed, as any ship that picks up too many survivors has to either return home or dump them on a random rock which is quite immersion-breaking when you have spare cryo berths in your other ships.

[Marski]

Option 2

[Pury]

I would suggest a 2 part solution. You get some "Shallow" level of intel from just capturing POW, for example location/existence/number of certain enemy units/colonies (Perhaps within the system?) something that might be extracted from regular Joe, as Officers and engineers interrogations might take more time to get anything usefull.

Then, if you transport them to a Planet with sufficient population (1-10m, enough to simulate needed capabilities of the colony to avoid creating another specified building) you can extract "Deep" level of intel. (Here we can expand on what we can extract from POW) Information about distant colonies, dockyards, state of the enemy empire etc.

In my opinion it is important to keep as close to abstract as possible in case of not-core mechanics.

[Xkill]

Option 2 sounds good, but the suggested change makes me believe that this would create unnecessary bloat with the addition of a new installation, specialized transportation and rate of interrogation. While deeper mechanics are good, this is a very niche case indeed, far removed from the core of Aurora.

As suggested before, abstracting the interrogation part to simply "large enough" colonies or existing Naval HQ installations is a simpler solution.

[Kaiser]

You guys are not really micromanagement oriented  It is Aurora, everything need to be micromanaged, c'mon!

[Pury]

You guys are not really micromanagement oriented  It is Aurora, everything need to be micromanaged, c'mon!

We have plenty of opportunities to micro, you got to give us this one

[Barkhorn]

Two POW related suggestions:

1. Could we have a way for ground forces to surrender?  Seems crazy I have to wipe out every last logi truck and conscript.  Ideally ground troop and naval POW's would give different intel; like a capture sailor wouldn't know anything about how their race's tanks work, and some captured rifleman won't have any idea how a spaceship works.  Also ideally there'd be some kind of system for judging reasonableness of surrender; it's pointless to surrender to the bugs from Starship Troopers, but surrendering to The Empire from Star Wars seems like it could be rational sometimes.

2. Allow POW's of the same species to escape the POW camp.  Aliens will stand out too much; no way for them to hide really, but a human POW escaping on a human world could blend in.

[Louella]

Option 2, with some modifications, I think.

You have prisoners, a ship can pick them up with a "Load POWs" order, selecting which ones as necessary. The ship can then go to a body, and "create prison colony", and a small colony of that species is created, with the POWs. This colony will have significant unrest, and require a garrison to maintain order - if you don't maintain order, they'll rebel and become a hostile world.
Prison colonies can build the forced labour camps and mines, and not much else.
Ships carrying the same species of POW can offload them onto the prison colony.
Some method to distinguish between newly arrived and previously questioned POWs.

Also need a method to repatriate prisoners and friendly survivors to worlds of their own species. I've attached a pic of the prisoners in my War of the Worlds game - only the Martians were actually hostiles, the others are survivors that I've picked up, but have no means to repatriate.
Since I occupied Mars, I should be able to repatriate the Martian prisoners there (and this should cause some unrest).


NPRs (including raiders) should also have prison colonies for any POWs that they capture. And the player should be able to raid NPR prisons and liberate the prisoners, including any commanders.

[Andrew]

I am firmly in favour of option 1 . This is far too much effort for a minor issue which rarely gives any useful information, with the added hassle I'll just stop rescuing enemy survivors

[Froggiest1982]

While option 2 sounds fascinating, it presents a "fake" logistical problem. Ultimately, we’re just picking up survivors, as we did before, and dropping them off at a colony.

As previously mentioned, unless the POW mechanics are completely overhauled to make them entities, I don’t see any advantage in not implementing option 1.

If POWs were to become entities, their status should be known—or potentially known—by the owner race, which would affect relationships over time. Both AI and players should have the opportunity to rescue the POWs, and there should be a low percentage chance of escape due to some form of unrest or damage.

Would I pursue that path? Probably not. There are many other areas of Aurora that could use some extra attention right now, and I think it would be better to address those first.

[Barkhorn]

I was just thinking, if we go with option 2, POW intel should "degrade" over time.  If you capture a sailor and can't get around to interrogating him; what good are his reports about fleet positions 6 months ago?