In response to all of the people who want to be able to do Industry-Dust/Science conversion at the start of the game, I've created an Idea:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/216-allow-industry-to-dust-science-conversion-from-start-of-game

I kept it very simple. Lo_fabre, I used your 10% conversion efficiency as the proposed baseline, and didn't expand into any of your ideas about manpower generation or such. If anybody wants me to link this thread to the Idea, I will do so.

It would be nice to do Industry-Dust/Science conversion before eras II or III. And I'd rather not bump up my militarist ideology more than necessary in the early game, or deal with the micro of constantly building and selling system improvements.

hopefully we soon get propaganda to "build" in systems to manage the political affinities so if you have nothing to build you can always try to convert your population to your point of view ^^

lo_fabre wrote:

Actually not sure why they put this conversion techs in Eras II and III, also not sure why they don't want us to have from start, but if Amplitude is going to maintain this idea, a solution to make everybody happy could be giving you a conversion for idle systems form start, that is very inefficient, and techs in following eras that make it more efficient.

Something like you start with ability to convert 5 or 10% industry into dust, and via unlocking techs you improve it to 25%, 50%, etc... and also get the ability to convert industry to science, and other interesting conversions: food --> manpower, industry --> influence, or whatever you imagine.

Something like that is exactly what I had in mind.

mixerria wrote:

If you think you have enough ships... You don't conquer quickly enough.

In any case, if you really don't need to enlarge your forces: build any system improvement you like and sell it the turn it's done for dust. That way you'll get a workaround industry-to-dust exchange.

What can i say, I'm a peaceful kind of guy. And maybe building tons of ship becomes a requirement and not an option in the higher than normal difficulty levels but if so it is still a hassle for those who play on normal.

Appreciate the workaround suggestion but it sounds a little too micro-intensive for my taste.

Caelie wrote:

MikeLemmer wrote:

I'm just about 60 turns through a random game (Tiny galaxy, multiple constellations, Lumeris faction, 1 AI opponent) in the latest update (the UE update) and I'm just not feeling it. The basic construction feels boring. Here's my initial thoughts on it:

1. It's too easy to build everything relevant to a system faster than you can research new buildings. I recently had to beeline to 3D Printing because I was running out of buildings to queue up (and didn't just want to have every system building ships).

I run into this problem in my games too, especially early game (before i unlock "infinite production to X conversions"). I have good production but have built everything useful that I have unlocked with tech. I don't need more ships. The remaining system improvements are useful but not worth the dust upkeep for the low benefit. And I don't want to just sit there wasting production either.

There are reasons why at a certain point I don't want to build anything. Usually I simply don't need more ships (largely because of the xp system i prefer to build fewer ships and upgrade them, making production less useful for ships for me) or I don't feel that the benefit from a system improvement is justified by the dust upkeep. Dust upkeep is often a problem for me early game but I have had this happen to me when I have had a large abundance of dust early too and it is just as annoying, with the difference that I build them anyway for a low benefit and then still run out of things to build fairly quickly.

To put the my issue succintly:  I simply run out of stuff I want to build and have to choose between building something I don't want (which will cost me) or wasting my production (feels bad).

To alleviate this specific early game issue, of not having anything sensible to spend my production on, my suggestions would be to make less effective "infinite production to X conversions" available from the start? Maybe 10% or 5% (5% is maybe pushing it a bit too low). From my point of view this would make me feel like I am at least getting some benefit out of my production while still wanting to unlock the more effective "infinite production to X conversions" asap (the more I use the less effective ones, the bigger the benefit from teching the new one is).

If you think you have enough ships... You don't conquer quickly enough.

In any case, if you really don't need to enlarge your forces: build any system improvement you like and sell it the turn it's done for dust. That way you'll get a workaround industry-to-dust exchange.

Caelie wrote: 

To alleviate this specific early game issue, of not having anything sensible to spend my production on, my suggestions would be to make less effective "infinite production to X conversions" available from the start? Maybe 10% or 5% (5% is maybe pushing it a bit too low). From my point of view this would make me feel like I am at least getting some benefit out of my production while still wanting to unlock the more effective "infinite production to X conversions" asap (the more I use the less effective ones, the bigger the benefit from teching the new one is).

Actually not sure why they put this conversion techs in Eras II and III, also not sure why they don't want us to have from start, but if Amplitude is going to maintain this idea, a solution to make everybody happy could be giving you a conversion for idle systems form start, that is very inefficient, and techs in following eras that make it more efficient.

Something like you start with ability to convert 5 or 10% industry into dust, and via unlocking techs you improve it to 25%, 50%, etc... and also get the ability to convert industry to science, and other interesting conversions: food --> manpower, industry --> influence, or whatever you imagine.

samsonazs wrote:

 

I agree that the siege / bombardment is nice without getting your troops on the planet and that should be possible.

What I would like to see here is maybe some defence improvements on the planet like rockets / lasers / something that could fight back. Of course the fleet can attack and destroy those improvements but that would mean that an evolved system cannot be sieged easily by an exploration ship.

Maybe the number of defence rockets / lasers / something would be based on number of colonized planets?
Right now I have a problem with planets being totally defenceless. 

Best option I would see is for planets to have fighters / bombers that could be lunched to fight sieging forces. 

Agree what you're saying about defending systems. If you have a read to this idea from @ValhallasAshes, there are lots of good points. I wrote there a post suggesting the use of manpower to defend systems, but better take a look at the whole idea, as my post has some flaws that ValhallasAshes pointed. Never made a different idea, because I felt it was close to the first he posted, that a new one.

 I see this working only if maximum manpower cap on a system will grow with population.

The numbers would have to be tweaked but I think that something like:

50 manpower / 1 population 

This would also have interesting consequences if you would need a certain number of manpower for producing ships.

If you run out of manpower you cannot build more ships until manpower is replenished in the system (could be supplied from another system).

A very interesting idea. I will make you have to think more of specialization, without modifying lots of things in the rest of the game, cause you'll need your big pop, big food, big industry system specialized in ship building, to supply the needed manpower. this probably will force you to move science, dust, influence to other systems, and make a good manpower transfer plan to your ship factory (transfer that can be blockaded). It also will encourage you to plan ahead the use of each system, depending planets it have, and the positioning of heroes (this way an overseer is a must in ship factory system, specially if comes from an industry faction).

+1 here.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

@samsonazs

I don't understand if you just want to change the size of the Empire manpower pool (with this sum rule), or if you want to remove the Empire acting like a pool to pick manpower generation from.

Because if you want to removes the pool, then there's no point in Empire manpower ?

The empire manpower pool would still be needed for improving infantry / tanks / planes and I would leave that to that limited number.

Manpower would be taken proportionally from each system if you "buy" an upgrade.

But that "empire manpower" would represent only currently available manpower in systems. It wouldn't be some manpower that is somewhere in the empire and not yet assigned to anything.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

@samsonazs democracy manpower could stay local and dictatorship manpower could stay global ?

That is not exactly the point.

The thing is the "empire manpower" in it's current implemention is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
You can have 10.000 empire manpower but that doesn't represent a single infantry/tank/plane until you build a ship or lose manpower on a planer and can replenish it.

That is why it would be better that "empire manpower" would be the sum of manpower from systems.

Also in this way if you build a ship on a planet you lose some of the manpower to send as crew on that ship.

I see this working only if maximum manpower cap on a system will grow with population.

The numbers would have to be tweaked but I think that something like:

50 manpower / 1 population 

This would also have interesting consequences if you would need a certain number of manpower for producing ships.

If you run out of manpower you cannot build more ships until manpower is replenished in the system (could be supplied from another system).

@samsonazs democracy manpower could stay local and dictatorship manpower could stay global ?

wilbefast wrote:

For sure you should be able to transfer between star systems and from start system to a fleet in orbit.
It should also work between fleets.

To clarify the question: how would you see this transfer actually being controlled in-game?

Let me put it this way:

1) Manpower generation would be system based so no instant transfer of manpower to ships or other planets as is the case now.

2) Manpower limit in system would be based on population in each system.

3) You don't have any "empire manpower" but instead you have the sum of all manpower in your systems (ships not included) and use that for upgrades.

4) As you plan to have invasion modules those are the same ones that should be used for transporting manpower. After all it doesn't matter if you are transporting troops to a friendly system or for an invasion. You are still transporting the same army. I would also consider implementing this to the population emigration mechanics but I don't know how will they look and if this has any sense.

This way you have systems generating manpower and sending soldiers to war in other systems.

One thing I would consider is to limit manpower to support ships (or have modules for it, needs to be balanced)

This way it makes sense and limits early era conquest which is space battles only and also would allign the invasion capability with the diplomacy era.

Right now each ship has manpower but can operate the same if it's manpower is at 0. Why does every ship need to have ground invasion forces?

From a gameplay point of view: again, we're against "hard blocking" interactions because we feel this is overly punitive. "Soft blocking" means that invading with a scout is impractical rather than impossible: things that are impractical or non-optimal can help encourage the local exploration of ways to improve mileage. A straight-out failure is less encouraging.

From a lore point of view I guess it's for the same reason naval vessel have armed soldiers on board: troops come in handy if you're boarded

Understood and that makes sense. Invading / blocking with an exploration ship while possible is almost impossible.

wilbefast wrote:
You mean the blockade/siege right? Admittedly this behaviour is easier to justify from a gameplay point of view than from the point of view of lore: it's similar to what was done in EL in that it gives the defender some time to bring reinforcements while creating an interesting conflict for the attacker. The attacker must choose between attacking early and facing stiffer resistance, or waiting for the resistance to enfeeble but, in so doing, give the defender time to arrive with reinforcements.

I understand that but would have it work differently.

You can blockage / siege a start system and cut it off from trade and so on.

This in no way reduces manpower on a planet.

You can then start "invasion" and the "preemptive bombing" reduces the planets manpower but also has a chance to kill population and destroy infrastructure.

You could have 3 options for that bombing and its strength would depend on the ships firepower:

1) precise bombing that has less firepower but concentrates on manpower

2) general strike that has normal firepower but has a chance to hit civilians and infrastructure

3) destruction - normal firepower spread across civilians and infrastructure (you just want to destroy them).

This way you still need a huge force or time to conquer a planet.

How does that sound?

The current ground battle plays are not final, we're still tweaking the damage to civilians and to infrastructure. Ultimately what you call "precise bombing" is what we call "siege", and I think it's a good thing that it is not necessary to actually invade before you start bombing military installations from space. If anything it would be more realistic to allow the preemptive destruction of infrastructure and civilians too, but this would be very frustrating for the defender and allow for some very cheesy strategies. 

I agree that the siege / bombardment is nice without getting your troops on the planet and that should be possible.

What I would like to see here is maybe some defence improvements on the planet like rockets / lasers / something that could fight back. Of course the fleet can attack and destroy those improvements but that would mean that an evolved system cannot be sieged easily by an exploration ship.

Maybe the number of defence rockets / lasers / something would be based on number of colonized planets?
Right now I have a problem with planets being totally defenceless. 

Best option I would see is for planets to have fighters / bombers that could be lunched to fight sieging forces.

wilbefast wrote:

Note that we plan on having specialised invasion modules so that players can spec out invasion ships which carrying larger quantities of manpower.

In the same way normal ships shouldn't have any manpower. As I wrote earlier they don't need it to operate in space but maybe we could have another limit that you need some manpower that is consumed to create a ship (as the ships crew). This way if you don't have a large military (manpower) in your empire you need time to create a big fleet (or need to buy privaters from the market).

The "gate ship construction with manpower" argument speaks to me, it's something I'll look into. To reiterate though: we don't want to completely block off interactions if we can avoid it, and our focus is on building a game system more than it is on building a simulation (as opposed to, say, Paradox). Realism is useful where it helps to convey the game rules, but we avoid making decision for the sake of realism.

One thing to consider here.
Should a ship without maximum manpower (not counting invasion modules) have reduced capabilities in battle?

I would suggest that up to 70% there are no drawback and only below that you get something.

With a mininum of 10% manpower needed for operation of the ship and even then the maximum minus shouldn't be huge but something like 30%.

About "got to build everything, that is auto-optimum", this is false in the short term and true in the long term.

One of the core problem is it's very difficult to know when this is false and when this is true : we don't really have the tools to planify devellopement unless we want to play Excell in space.
And if we had those, things like "would be refunded in turn X" indicators, I'm not really sure it would help :

a- lots of bonuses are like "+25% to something" or "Tier 2 planet: dust +50", so why bothering with +4 dust there / +1% industry there, aka penny saving ?

b- I don't reallly know what will happen at turn +5. Maybe there will be an event that gives me +100 something. Maybe I will loose the election removing my +25% something.

On the other hand, if they were things like stack penalties, then you should not build everything. Because it would be a loss of industry doing so.

On a parallel subject, I think some sort of tier 2 planet specialization would be beneficial for the lategame.

They could work like "bonus of tier 1 x 2, but nerf to this ressource system output". It would specialize systems in late game, so : creating great devellopement advantages but also creating strategic flaw ("what if they attack here").

Kind of "Mettre tout ses oeufs dans le même panier", as we say in french.

Frogsquadron wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

So the only thing you change is the order but in the end you want everything. 

Meedoc once mentioned that the choice would lie not in the selection of buildings to build, but in the order in which you choose to build them. This is basically the underlying philosophy behind the game's system development. Economic development will be improved to make it so that you don't run out of things to do that early (possibly by making Trade Companies more expensive to set up).

I understand the logic for making the choice in the selection of buildings but if we would have more of them then it would be a lot better. Currently there aren't that many choices to make.
Lets see how this plays out in later updates.
I know this is hard to balance as going for production increase first is almost always what people will start with to get other improvements and ships faster.

samsonazs wrote:

So the only thing you change is the order but in the end you want everything. 

Meedoc once mentioned that the choice would lie not in the selection of buildings to build, but in the order in which you choose to build them. This is basically the underlying philosophy behind the game's system development. Economic development will be improved to make it so that you don't run out of things to do that early (possibly by making Trade Companies more expensive to set up).

wilbefast wrote:

samsonazs wrote:
This is a wider issue as some building currently are not worth building on incorrect planets (but it is ok that it is like that) so your production queue gets even smaller.
For peace factions that is a problem as without era 2 tech you don't have much options you can do with extra production (exploration/colony ships).

But the worst thing is that for every star system you just go for building everything available. Maybe that is the plan but maybe it would be better to have more building that would be better suited for different planets. 

Some buildings are not worth building and yet you just build everything available? Your second paragraph seems to contradict your first, but probably I'm just misunderstanding your point - could you clarify?

By "everything" I mean that you always want to build most of the buildings on every start system.

You will build everything that increases production as that is essential and production can be converted into dust / science later on.

You will build everything that gives food as you need to grow and later on food production can be converted into production.

You will build everything that provides happiness to avoid rebellion and boost start system outputs.

So the only thing you change is the order but in the end you want everything.

The only things you might consider skipping are the defence and BigData shipyards improvements but in the end they are also good to have.

I don't have a clear solution to this yet but thinking about it. 

It is hard not to end up in a situation where you want to build everything on a planet system. But I would look for more unique building or ones that can be build only a few time.
Even the ones that are more effective when luxury / strategic resources are available (like Intensive Cultivation logistics or interplanetary transport network) are work building without those resources being available.

wilbefast wrote:

samsonazs wrote:
Manpower is not working well yet but I like the idea and it should work very well after working out the details.

Things bad:

- unable to transfer manpower between ships and star systems

What sort of interaction flow would you envisage for this transfer? Transfer to/from fleet constructible in the system? A transfer to/from system action in the fleet panel?

For sure you should be able to transfer between star systems and from start system to a fleet in orbit.
It should also work between fleets.

One thing I would consider is to limit manpower to support ships (or have modules for it, needs to be balanced)

This way it makes sense and limits early era conquest which is space battles only and also would allign the invasion capability with the diplomacy era.

Right now each ship has manpower but can operate the same if it's manpower is at 0. Why does every ship need to have ground invasion forces?

wilbefast wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

- start system occupation reducing manpower on planets (why? if planet is attacked then population and building should suffer also).

You mean the blockade/siege right? Admittedly this behaviour is easier to justify from a gameplay point of view than from the point of view of lore: it's similar to what was done in EL in that it gives the defender some time to bring reinforcements while creating an interesting conflict for the attacker. The attacker must choose between attacking early and facing stiffer resistance, or waiting for the resistance to enfeeble but, in so doing, give the defender time to arrive with reinforcements.

I understand that but would have it work differently.

You can blockage / siege a start system and cut it off from trade and so on.

This in no way reduces manpower on a planet.

You can then start "invasion" and the "preemptive bombing" reduces the planets manpower but also has a chance to kill population and destroy infrastructure.

You could have 3 options for that bombing and its strength would depend on the ships firepower:

1) precise bombing that has less firepower but concentrates on manpower

2) general strike that has normal firepower but has a chance to hit civilians and infrastructure

3) destruction - normal firepower spread across civilians and infrastructure (you just want to destroy them).

This way you still need a huge force or time to conquer a planet.

How does that sound?

wilbefast wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

Good things:

- ground invasions

Hurrah  

So what do you like about the ground invasions?

The rebellion option works very well (and I love how it's working to significantly boost defence) but should be adjusted by population size.

Not a fan of the rock / paper / scissors approach to infantry / tank / aircraft but I can understand the underlying aims for that.
What I don't understand is why infantry should be superior against aircraft than tanks?
It should all be based on equipment / trainig that you have.
Something to consider so that you could have each type be trained / equipped against a specific other type?
Have infantry with anti aircraft lunchers for fighting aircraft but then wouldn't be so effective agains other infantry. Something to consider.

But back to the good thinks the fact that you cannot take over a system quickly without overwhelming power or spening a few turns on it is good.

wilbefast wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

- the limitations on invasion forces (early limited access to manpower limits your conquer capabilities)

Note that we plan on having specialised invasion modules so that players can spec out invasion ships which carrying larger quantities of manpower.

In the same way normal ships shouldn't have any manpower. As I wrote earlier they don't need it to operate in space but maybe we could have another limit that you need some manpower that is consumed to create a ship (as the ships crew). This way if you don't have a large military (manpower) in your empire you need time to create a big fleet (or need to buy privaters from the market).

One of my longest posts.
Hope you find it usefull.

for manpower we need a better way to use it. 

Manpower is a empire based resource (so it's shared among all your systems) that comes to fill the reserves in every system and ship.

There is no option to stop filling manpower on certain systems or ships (for instance i build a defensive fleet, it will get filled with manpower even though i don't want it too, making it harder to build an invasion fleet after)

I think that if a ship is orbiting a system that you own, the invasion button should use the manpower of that ship to fill the reserves of the system first, then if they are full to fill the empire wide reserve, this way we could get 2 benefits :

1 : we could refill manpower in a besieged system fast when your reinforcements arrive

2 we can return unused manpower from some ships to be used in others.

for sieges i think that the orbital bombing option should be available while besieging (so we can bomb down pop and building) however a new orbital defense canon improvement should be able to do damage each turn to sieging fleets (that way you can't take a whole advanced system just by besieging it for 10 turns with a small corvette)

Bunker shouldn't just add to max manpower but also give you a threshold for minimum manpower after siege (i mean how can all your manpower get killed by the siege if you have bunkers and stuff, the manpower in the bunkers should be able to survive and if the attacking force is too small, defend your system)

samsonazs wrote:
This is a wider issue as some building currently are not worth building on incorrect planets (but it is ok that it is like that) so your production queue gets even smaller.
For peace factions that is a problem as without era 2 tech you don't have much options you can do with extra production (exploration/colony ships).

But the worst thing is that for every star system you just go for building everything available. Maybe that is the plan but maybe it would be better to have more building that would be better suited for different planets. 

Some buildings are not worth building and yet you just build everything available? Your second paragraph seems to contradict your first, but probably I'm just misunderstanding your point - could you clarify?

Manpower is not working well yet but I like the idea and it should work very well after working out the details.

Things bad:

- unable to transfer manpower between ships and star systems

What sort of interaction flow would you envisage for this transfer? Transfer to/from fleet constructible in the system? A transfer to/from system action in the fleet panel?

- unclear rules on how manpower is generated

- unable to adjust the speed of manpower generation (pacifists should have a lower one and militarists a higher one)

- manpower on systems should be based on populate (why a population 1 system has the same as population 20 system?)

These are we've been working on - expect big changes in the next update

- start system occupation reducing manpower on planets (why? if planet is attacked then population and building should suffer also).

You mean the blockade/siege right? Admittedly this behaviour is easier to justify from a gameplay point of view than from the point of view of lore: it's similar to what was done in EL in that it gives the defender some time to bring reinforcements while creating an interesting conflict for the attacker. The attacker must choose between attacking early and facing stiffer resistance, or waiting for the resistance to enfeeble but, in so doing, give the defender time to arrive with reinforcements.

Good things:

- ground invasions

Hurrah  

So what do you like about the ground invasions?

- the limitations on invasion forces (early limited access to manpower limits your conquer capabilities)

Note that we plan on having specialised invasion modules so that players can spec out invasion ships which carrying larger quantities of manpower.

wilbefast wrote:

It's too easy to build everything relevant to a system faster than you can research new buildings. I recently had to beeline to 3D Printing because I was running out of buildings to queue up (and didn't just want to have every system building ships).

Noted. The more militaristic factions tend to have more to build, we perhaps need to give the Lumeris some love.

This is a wider issue as some building currently are not worth building on incorrect planets (but it is ok that it is like that) so your production queue gets even smaller.
For peace factions that is a problem as without era 2 tech you don't have much options you can do with extra production (exploration/colony ships).

But the worst thing is that for every star system you just go for building everything available. Maybe that is the plan but maybe it would be better to have more building that would be better suited for different planets. 

I know there are plans to rework the planet system:
https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/2-rework-the-entire-planet-grid
So I will wait with suggestions for the next update.

wilbefast wrote:

It's too easy to grow populace. Food continues to be an utter non-issue for me. Frankly I'm trying to cut DOWN on my food resources, since my population's growing so fast it causes massive Unhappiness issues which I DO have trouble dealing with (even with the Lumeris' +20 Happiness bonus).

What are your thoughts on manpower? The plan moving forward is for excess food and population to be the primary source of this resource, though I suppose as a pacifist faction this is less of a priority. We also have plans to provide more control over population migration within your empire, so you'll be able to ship off population when necessary, either to the army or to other systems.

Manpower is not working well yet but I like the idea and it should work very well after working out the details.

Things bad:

- unable to transfer manpower between ships and star systems

- unclear rules on how manpower is generated

- unable to adjust the speed of manpower generation (pacifists should have a lower one and militarists a higher one)

- manpower on systems should be based on populate (why a population 1 system has the same as population 20 system?)

- start system occupation reducing manpower on planets (why? if planet is attacked then population and building should suffer also).

Good things:

- ground invasions

- the limitations on invasion forces (early limited access to manpower limits your conquer capabilities)

MikeLemmer wrote:

I'm just about 60 turns through a random game (Tiny galaxy, multiple constellations, Lumeris faction, 1 AI opponent) in the latest update (the UE update) and I'm just not feeling it. The basic construction feels boring. 

Hi Mike - I'm sure the others will want to pipe up too but I thought I'd go ahead and share my thoughts on your thoughts

It's too easy to build everything relevant to a system faster than you can research new buildings. I recently had to beeline to 3D Printing because I was running out of buildings to queue up (and didn't just want to have every system building ships).

Noted. The more militaristic factions tend to have more to build, we perhaps need to give the Lumeris some love.

It's hard to tell exactly how your decisions are influencing politics. I suppose it's because politics in this game feel unrealistic; there's no conflict with my populace about what I want vs what THEY want. If I build a ton of ships and attack enemies, it just gives my Military party more clout, instead of satisfying them while making the Pacifists angry enough to cause me trouble (or vote in Pacifists to curb my militancy). In other words, it feels too easy to get the populace to want what I want, rather than me having to consider what THEY want.

It's a delicate balance: as you need to be worrying about external threats we can't make the internal one take up too much of a cognitive load or you'll need to be a genius to get your head around it. That said populations will object to a senate that doesn't represent their ideologies and, in the future, the resulting approval penalties will risk causing a rebellion at system or even empire level. Stay tuned

It's too easy to grow populace. Food continues to be an utter non-issue for me. Frankly I'm trying to cut DOWN on my food resources, since my population's growing so fast it causes massive Unhappiness issues which I DO have trouble dealing with (even with the Lumeris' +20 Happiness bonus).

What are your thoughts on manpower? The plan moving forward is for excess food and population to be the primary source of this resource, though I suppose as a pacifist faction this is less of a priority. We also have plans to provide more control over population migration within your empire, so you'll be able to ship off population when necessary, either to the army or to other systems.