I've been playing a Medium-Size Few Constellation game with a Craver faction sharing my constellation. While they're a decent distance from my homeworld, I found a Huge Atoll world with both strategic resources, a luxury resource, and a beneficial anomaly right on their doorstop. Naturally, I couldn't let such a prize be taken by them, so I established an outpost there early on.

The screwiness started when I chose the Finding Frontiers action on the outpost; I leeched 50% of the food from the Cravers' homeworld and built my outpost in 3 turns, and the initial population was Lumerist to boot. I found it strange I was getting food from a race bent on consuming everything, but alright...

My 2nd population on the planet was a Craver. I was notified the planet would be depleted in 100 turns. Annoying, but manageable; the game would be over by then, after all. I wondered what could compel the Cravers to settle in my empire, especially when they're listed as XENOPHOBIC in the politics screen. I was also wondering how I could stop them from settling in my empire.

Then the Cravers declared war and not only captured my Huge Atoll, but colonized the two systems between it and my homeworld. I built up my fleets and not only recaptured my Huge Atoll, but also one of the new Craver colonies. Unfortunately, both planets now had Cravers for half of their population. The Depletion countdown was down to 30-40 turns. Without any apparent means of getting rid of the Cravers, I resigned myself to expecting my giant world to be turned into a husk and hoping some event would come up to stop them from completely depleting it.

Well, an event has come up, but it's... not what I expected. I now have a quest (Bug Fixing) to grow 2 more Cravers on their former colony in 10 turns. There's only one population slot left open on the planet. I facepalmed and awaited the inevitable quest failure.

The whole thing has been strange, irritating, and absurd.

My thoughts on the whole thing:

• Why am I able to leech food off a neighboring Empire I'm in a Cold War with? Especially when it's the Cravers? Do I just attach a giant steak on my broadcast ship and lure them towards it?
• It's strange you can get new colonists from an Empire you're in a Cold War with. It's even stranger (and unwanted) you can get colonists from the Cravers. What if you only got colonists from Empires you were at Peace/Allied with? If that is a good excuse to set Empire Diplomacy at an Era 1 tech, all the better.
• Non-Craver empires need a way to manage/restrain/eliminate the Craver populations. I've got 2 colonies that'll become worthless in a few dozen turns because I can't stop them from devouring everything. God help me if any of them started migrating to my other colonies.
• There needs to be a check on the Bug Fixing quest to make sure it's actually solving. Being asked to grow 2 new pops on a planet that only has 1 slot open is a joke.
• There should also be a check so the Bug Fixing quest doesn't activate for non-Craver empires.

And here's my savefile with the two Craver colonies (and the impossible Bug Fixing quest): Impossible Quest.zip

MikeLemmer wrote:

Why am I able to leech food off a neighboring Empire I'm in a Cold War with? Especially when it's the Cravers? Do I just attach a giant steak on my broadcast ship and lure them towards it?

I'm sure working for the cravers is better then fighting em, right?

"Oh my gracious lord! I have fixed the leaky pipes on the tractor oh so gracious one... so possibly we can skip the need food raid perhaps? Also I did the numbers on your accounts as it looks like we own the bankers.... NOTHING HA HA. The economy is fixed oh so powerful one, all debts forgiven! So how about a feast while you snort some of this here dust? No need for anger here m'lord. You don't need to use those new orbital bombardment cannons that lovely sophon left lying about ha ha..."

I also had the same thing. Luckily I was able to colonize more planets in the system, so I was able to move around the Cravers to only have one at each planet. When I got a planet that was already depleted I moved all my Cravers on that system to there. If it was not clear you can drag and drop population inside a system.

I also had that quest to get two more Cravers in 10 turns. I don't think it's possible to do. When I got that quest I had enough free space, but it was like I get a new Sophon colonist in 6 turn. I hope we will get more control over the population of our planets or move population between systems. So these kinds of quests will be possible in the future.

I think the easiest fix for this, if doable, is that if a planet isn't in the craver faction, it will not deplete, but you don't get all the craver bonuses, and then maybe make it an option if you want.

It's a little werid otherwise because basically you can steal the craver special affinity by just getting some craver pop, breeding it, and then spreading across the galaxy in the same way they would.

Further it doesn't really make lore sense that your empire would be fine that your initial colonists are now being slowly eaten by the cravers as they voraciously consume the planet.

Well the cravers drain the planet of it's renewable deposits, more then actually eating it all.

What would be cool is some kind of advanced xenology tech that lets your empire deal with the ravenous hunger of the cravers in a sustainable way, letting them be apart of your empire. Could be anything from a muzzle to simply making their pops drain a little extra food each turn as a result.

That or we need to deal with each planets queen and tell her to slow down on the egg laying or whatever.

Igncom1 wrote:

Well the cravers drain the planet of it's renewable deposits, more then actually eating it all.

What would be cool is some kind of advanced xenology tech that lets your empire deal with the ravenous hunger of the cravers in a sustainable way, letting them be apart of your empire. Could be anything from a muzzle to simply making their pops drain a little extra food each turn as a result.

That or we need to deal with each planets queen and tell her to slow down on the egg laying or whatever.

It doesn't work that way. They were specifically engineered to be an all consuming pest. They can't stop it even if they wanted to.

It's like asking a human not to breathe. 

I wish we could select what kind of population we want when we build a colony ship or passenger transport ship so i can ferry them into out of nowhere and let it sit there for the entire game.

Some people are asking to reintroduce the ability to raze planets.

Why not create a tech or law that allows you to kill all people from other factions in a system?

Now there's a religious law that allows only to grow pop from your faction.

It does definitely seem like the sort of thing that certain governments just flat out wouldn't tolerate.