PURGE and better control

Many people have this urge to purge xeno minorities, especially Cravers, from their system.

Whereas there are several ways to relieve your Major population of those xenos (like Chain Gang, faction specific population conversionsinfamous and horrendously tedious razing your own desolate system, endlessly having refugees in orbit...) it still is too slow, too little (choices for some factions) and most of all - too random - or lack of manual control.

Let me explain: you want to chain gang. Bam - you majors are dead. You want to eat some slaves(Cravers)  - bam, you've eaten riftborn or illo and not some pesky pilgrims. 

It would be GREATLY helpful if you could chose, who will be converted to manpower or food or anything and who will live another day.

SLAVERY and pillaging

But what if you have a whole lot of recently conquered let's say Sophons and you're Horatio. You've spliced some, it's late game - so you can converse them - but it willtake a great time and effort - and your planets are already full of Horatios. 

Why cannot you sell them? There could be a technology in the Trade quadrant - that would let you sell them on marketplace - after a technology (and optionally a system improvement) would be aquired.

In lore:

Some societes (sans most Pacifists) use slavery outright - Cravers being the most prominent, also Vodyani(that's basically the place where all your food goes - for feeding slaves/serfs).

Lumeris probably use some indentured servitude as a collateral, UE has gulags and Hissho well...an eternal deficit of sacrifices.  

Sophons, Vaulters and other goodie two-shoes are probably anti-live experimentation or thralldom in general

BUT 

you know, a bleeding-Heart Unfallen would BUY poor slaves and then FREE them on the spot. 

It could be like some factions would have that option, some would not, some might have it unlocked by law etc. Many possibilites. Meta thrives. 

Especially Lumeris would get a boost at economy through indentured serviture proviso contracts.

Selling excess pops for profit, trading them for useful traits, exchanging them, don't mind if i do!

Pillaging should then (as I initially assumed) also pillage people - how else can you farm people as Cravers or farm Vodyani and Riftborn as Horatio? 

I gather that its what happens when Vodyani or Cravers do behind the scenes (hunting grounds) - pillage ALL people and outrightly convert them to resources. 

Horatio is at disadvantage here, as while others can farm and take it all, he can only pillage(farm). 

There's also this case when you send your pops from A to B using spacebort. When B is full, they are stuck in a limbo. This situation can be resolved in 2 steps:

1.When sending from A to B show how many free places are available on the victory screen leaderboard.

2. Add a malus to happiness in B, as refugees are at your space door, with a small number next to your spaceport signifying how many Pops are waiting to get in. 

optionally

3. If B is full, after, lets say 5 turns, population goes to next free place and trickles down along the way eventually, as they are essentialy homeless refugees/migrant workers/gastarbaiters at this point. 

Population Control

With the exception of the stupid and game breaking trait the Vodyani pop have, I actually accept all pops. I normally play UE/Vaulter/Custom. 

I find that micro managing is essential to make best use of them, as the automated system management is totally rubbish at figuring out what works best. Obviously another AI issue that needs fixing. 

Populations sent via a spaceport to a full system no longer seem to get killed off. 

In my latest game I have 2 Vodyani that are quite happy in the logistic ship orbiting a full system. They have been there for over 20 turns and I certainly don't want them. Who wants a faction where just one population (-50% food on system trait! Totally game breaking. If a dev reads this - sort it out) will destroy your system through starvation? 

We have a game mechanic for boosting chosen factions populations, if you have the luxury required, rewarding you with extra bonuses that faction pop increase gives. Only it doesn't work very well. In my latest game I've boosted Z'Vali several times and have received +1 pop from at least 30 population increase, which I believe is a result from a calculation based on the overall population in my empire. If the boost actually worked so you could reach 50+ pop, then having those differing factions would be really useful (with micromanagement and spaceports of course).

Also getting some good minor factions can really make a difference in the early game, but in the mid-late game it gets really tough with the micromanagement and lack of credible population boost/purge mechanics as you end up with multiple minor factions from curiosity searching. Then you need to consider the pay-off for terraforming planets to temperate/fertile boosting happiness as well as increasing the population versus sterile/hot/cold as some factions work better on some planet types then others (which is also labourious to figure out). Getting lucky with a good minor faction in a game is so dependent on the system and galaxy generation, along with the major faction you play, (unless you're playing Vodyani or Cravers - one is crap the other is so OP it doesn't matter IMO) that having a purge mechanic must be good game design.

So on reflection I agree with HuskOfKnowledge's desire that we should be able to pick the faction to apply an action to, such as Chain Gang. 

However I don't think adding population sales in the market place (and would that also mean you can trade factions in the diplomacy screen?) will fix the faction population problems in the game. It would need added AI development (examle: Horatio AI buying for splicing rather than Strategic resources for better ships, thus ruining future strategy for expansion through war) and the AI is already weak. Plus you would have another layer of micromanagement in checking where the faction is in the empire's systems, are they useful somewhere else, should I hang on to them in case of Horatio, or Craver interest, etc.

It would be much better to have useful game mechanics for boosting or purging (with a time limited penalty?) faction populations, even then it would need AI development, but I believe it would be easier for the AI to figure out.

Aside from sending pops into space and having them remain there because the population is full up on the planet they arrive at, you can also accomplish getting rid of pops by sending them all to a crap system and then vacating it. 

That being said, I really like managing populations and the bonuses at 20 pop is usually worth keeping most factions around for. I'm not sure exactly why you would want to purge. It doesn't make much strategic sense when after getting that 20 pop bonus you just need one pop of that faction per system to get system wide benefits. 

Sedghammer wrote:

Aside from sending pops into space and having them remain there because the population is full up on the planet they arrive at, you can also accomplish getting rid of pops by sending them all to a crap system and then vacating it. 

That being said, I really like managing populations and the bonuses at 20 pop is usually worth keeping most factions around for. I'm not sure exactly why you would want to purge. It doesn't make much strategic sense when after getting that 20 pop bonus you just need one pop of that faction per system to get system wide benefits. 

Are u really sure this works like that? I mean - you get 20 Haroshems - get their bonus then after reducing their number to 1  - you still keep this bonus? This is bonkers and not intuitive and works totally different than eg sleeper tiers. Then why would I need say - 20 +influence guys if I have Saints and Sinners Law unclocked?
Many such cases when you don't want some race and you want to bred others.

What about immersion? Maybe someone wants to larp, and I know many do, eg.  Empire of Man ? It's not like UE intro isnt painting them as "eventual" purists. Horatio can live this dream already with their race-specific inbuilt tech and improvements. 

So you're saying I need to lose one system periodically to get rid of endless waves of Haroshems when I'm let's say a Riftborn? 

If Im not concerned with dust, influence or happyness but I want industry and science - those xenos are taking my valuable place. To get rid of them you need to have infrastructure on EVERY world that is inhabited by undesirables, high enough tech and resources(time included)to built starports and get nothing, other that odd chainbang, to kill them off.

One of you said something about "you know that this race will grow next so you can chaingang". Yes. But many a time my system got, possibly through my error, a race that is not desirable with consecutive "growth" being them insteam of the desirable one.

About buying: "buying" or attracting a new, specific race might be a boon comparable to attracting a good hero. Horatios would get "rare" or othewrwise  nonavailabe specimens and then . I don't get what is so wrong about this.

Hey,

First of all there is nice Populace Control mod made by sir Tygart. And for those who is eager to purge some Xenos there is also Wrath of the Righetous (Purification Actions) made by sir Kuma.

Last, but not least (especially if you despise mods as much as Xenos) what you can do is to research privateers and send unwanted pops to full system - upon arrival they will be orbiting the system what will allow you to kill them with your own privateers benefitting 300 dust per destroyed pop and no need to evacuate system from time to time.

Hope this helps.