"Biological warfare" concept

I'm generally fond of anything that fleshes out the planetary invasion system and think this is on the right track, but the lethality seems far too high for a starsystem wide occurance - even in the late game it can take some time to ramp up colonies growth rates so that they fill out the system, so having so much of the population wiped out so quickly probably wouldn't be good for gameplay, and it opens the door to tactics like carpetting the enemy with bioweapon fleets to completely wipe out an entire empire in just a couple of turns. It seems almost like a straight upgrade over the Planet Cracker due to the sheer efficiency of clearing out whole starsystems.

I think it could work, but with a few tweaks to the lethality: perhaps half the mortality rate and double the progression timer, perhaps? Plagues are relatively slow affairs even in real life, as a virus needs its host to spread,and that means it has to either have a long incubation period where the individual is infected, but not showing any major symptoms, or a dangerous progression where it gets incremently dangerous over time but starts out as a relatively nonlethal thing. Think of the flu vs something more dangerous like ebola - the latter kills so fast and is so incapacitating that outbreaks burn themselves out, whilst the flu just simmers around forever because it has a high infectivity and low lethality. 

So, this is what I'd do: rather than instantly killing pops when the timer ticks down, they switch phases, going down this list.

Uninfected

Infected

Critical

Dead

In the first state, they're like normal. Infected pops are alive, but infected with the bioweapon and have decreased production states, representing those individuals who are ill but still able to work in some manner, so from a gameplay perspective they're still working the slot but at half effectiveness, whilst critical individuals are ones who have been hospitalized from the outbreak and are at serious risk of death, so they no longer provide any FIDS and will eventually die off if not treated. The way this system should work then in order to prevent rapid die off is to make the number of infected double every fixed number of turns that increase over time: one infected pop becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and so on. with increasing increments over time representing the government's response to the crisis, ie, eradication of disease carrying rodents, distribution of safe water supplies and sterile breathing masks, quarantine of infected districts, martial law, etc. 

The main defense would be through the construction of medical structures, whose purpose would be two fold: a small happiness/growth speed bonus and protection for pops against bioweapon attack. Think of the current defense structures, but supplemented by ones intended to deal with biological threats rather than traditional ones. A few examples:

Colonial Hospital

"Advances in preventative care, pharmacology and the science of biology have made it possible for modern physciaisn to be able to adapt treatment for exotic conditions found on the varying worlds of the empire."

+5% Population Growth Speed.

+5 Happiness.

+100 + Medical Reserve

Disease Control Center

"More than a simple hospital, the Disease Control Center is the heart of a complex network of clinics, research centers and datacenters all devoted to the task of defeating the ailments that plague the system's population, no matter how exotic."

+5% Population Growth Speed.

+300 + Medical Reserve

Atmospheric Filters

"A complex array of purifiers, condensors and evaporators similar to those found in large scale terraforming projects, these technological titans process the planet's atmosphere around major urban centers to produce clear blue skies devoid of pollution and air free of contaminants as small as Dust. The industrial applications are as vast as the health benefit."

+5% Industry

+5% Dust

+5% Population Growth Speed.

+600 + Medical Reserve

These are just random ideas that came to mind, so don't think of the numbers they have as final or anywhere near that, but the end goal is that the Medical Reserve in a system, represented by a small green cross like this + acts as the equivalent of manpower for biological threats; it serves to slow down both the spread of the disease, but also builds progress towards a cure turn by turn. So rather than spending science, the system fights it passively, representing the battle between health authorities present and the virus itself and how the system would be quarantined from the rest of the empire in order to risk the spread of disease. 

caekdaemon wrote:

I'm generally fond of anything that fleshes out the planetary invasion system and think this is on the right track, but the lethality seems far too high for a starsystem wide occurance - even in the late game it can take some time to ramp up colonies growth rates so that they fill out the system, so having so much of the population wiped out so quickly probably wouldn't be good for gameplay, and it opens the door to tactics like carpetting the enemy with bioweapon fleets to completely wipe out an entire empire in just a couple of turns. It seems almost like a straight upgrade over the Planet Cracker due to the sheer efficiency of clearing out whole starsystems.

     "Biological warfare" is not a very good name. This is the collective name of weapons of mass destruction that scientists create in the module "a laboratory of rapidly mutating artificial organisms." It can be nanorobots, unusual life forms, viruses, bacteria, anything that can be used against various representatives of the world of Endless. Therefore, different comparisons with real diseases are unacceptable.
      I knowingly wrote that this is the technology of the third tier and the fact that the fleet first had to make three turns in the position of the siege. By the time of the study of third-tier technologies, all have defensive fleets and scenarios with a rapid infection of all the enemy empire will not work. As I already wrote, the main task is to get the enemy to spend science points on saving their colonies.

       In this case, the application is not secretive, so on the planet immediately set the quarantine. Artificial organisms are created to work only under the conditions for which they are intended. 

       I presented a picture narrating about only one option of "biological warfare", soon I will give my thoughts on how other effects will work.

Greensmokie wrote:

     "Biological warfare" is not a very good name. This is the collective name of weapons of mass destruction that scientists create in the module "a laboratory of rapidly mutating artificial organisms." It can be nanorobots, unusual life forms, viruses, bacteria, anything that can be used against various representatives of the world of Endless. Therefore, different comparisons with real diseases are unacceptable.

Then why use biological warfare as a title for the idea and the concept and even for the symbol on the planet itself, when it doesn't actually represent what you're suggesting at all? It seems a strange choice, but in any case, the mention of real diseases in my post like the flu and ebola were an example of how the spread of a disease actually works, and something that would need to be emulated for this idea to either make sense from a gameplay perspective - ie, no sudden wipeout of massive swathes of the population that would look bizarre to most players -  and balanced for if the game is to remain fun. Having half your empire destroyed in a couple of turns is no fun at all, and it doesn't matter whether the term used is a bacteria, a virus or even microbots that produce laughing gas, the gameplay considerations remain the same. 

Greensmokie wrote:

   
      I knowingly wrote that this is the technology of the third tier and the fact that the fleet first had to make three turns in the position of the siege. By the time of the study of third-tier technologies, all have defensive fleets and scenarios with a rapid infection of all the enemy empire will not work. As I already wrote, the main task is to get the enemy to spend science points on saving their colonies.

But that doesn't actually solve the problem I'm referring to when it comes to siege carpetting. I've literally just done that to someone in multiplayer barely an hour before this post was made by using fleets with just seven command points to blockade each and every system, rendering it impossible for them to be able to fight back seriously. With this addition as you've proposed it and without a mitigating factor to slow the rate of infection, I could remove that entire player from the game in twelve turns. That's too fast, so fast that an outside player wouldn't be able to intervene before I erased his friend from the game and left a bunch of empty planets where he used to be.

And that was with tier two weaponry, if that. With a little bit of a rush towards the bioweapon tech, it would be trivially easy to completely destroy entire civilizations before we even get to the midgame, whilst at the same time rendering the process of sieging down a colony and then having a multiple turn invasion completely obsolete. It would be faster to just put a single bioweapon ship in every fleet - easy even with just seven command points - then carpet the enemy and irreparably cripple them for the rest of the game in four turns due to the loss of production and science for the time period it takes them to recover the lost pops or just wipe out his entire population in twelve turns, empire wide. No sieges. No ground battles. No waiting for ownership on worlds. No unhappiness. All the struggle of expansion gone in an instant.  

Having this tech at tier three only makes this problem worse - I can't even imagine it being anywhere near balanced in its present state without being tier four at least, with a hefty cost in resources in order to make every biowarfare ship a serious expense - which, I might say, makes the use of Quadrinix, a tier 5 resources, for a tier 3 module rather strange since it wouldn't be available to mid-late game other than from scanning curiosities, which would still be enough to produce the craft in large numbers - because this weapon as you've described it is outright better than the Planet Cracker. It wipes out everyone on the planet whilst leaving the planet itself ready for colonization, whereas the Planet Cracker removes it from the game forever and thus destroys valuable strategic/luxury resources, anomalies and the world itself, all of which could otherwise be taken by the conquering player. Why waste resources and time with constructing a large ship capable of carrying the cracker when you can use a cheaper medium ship available earlier in the game to achieve the same result, but without the waste? 

Hence why I believe it needs a defensive counterpart in order to stop it from completely replacing ground units, unit upgrades, planetary defense structures, hero upgrades, existing superweapons, hell, the entire planetary invasion system, which it would do in the way you've described it so far. It's a decent idea, believe me, as it could definitely give the player new tools in wartime, but it definitely needs a counterweight on the other side of the scales in order to maintain game balance and to prevent carpetting from becoming too powerful. 

caekdaemon wrote:

But that doesn't actually solve the problem I'm referring to when it comes to siege carpetting. I've literally just done that to someone in multiplayer barely an hour before this post was made by using fleets with just seven command points to blockade each and every system, rendering it impossible for them to be able to fight back seriously. With this addition as you've proposed it and without a mitigating factor to slow the rate of infection, I could remove that entire player from the game in twelve turns. That's too fast, so fast that an outside player wouldn't be able to intervene before I erased his friend from the game and left a bunch of empty planets where he used to be.

And that was with tier two weaponry, if that. With a little bit of a rush towards the bioweapon tech, it would be trivially easy to completely destroy entire civilizations before we even get to the midgame, whilst at the same time rendering the process of sieging down a colony and then having a multiple turn invasion completely obsolete. It would be faster to just put a single bioweapon ship in every fleet - easy even with just seven command points - then carpet the enemy and irreparably cripple them for the rest of the game in four turns due to the loss of production and science for the time period it takes them to recover the lost pops or just wipe out his entire population in twelve turns, empire wide. No sieges. No ground battles. No waiting for ownership on worlds. No unhappiness. All the struggle of expansion gone in an instant.  

Having this tech at tier three only makes this problem worse - I can't even imagine it being anywhere near balanced in its present state without being tier four at least, with a hefty cost in resources in order to make every biowarfare ship a serious expense - which, I might say, makes the use of Quadrinix, a tier 5 resources, for a tier 3 module rather strange since it wouldn't be available to mid-late game other than from scanning curiosities, which would still be enough to produce the craft in large numbers - because this weapon as you've described it is outright better than the Planet Cracker. It wipes out everyone on the planet whilst leaving the planet itself ready for colonization, whereas the Planet Cracker removes it from the game forever and thus destroys valuable strategic/luxury resources, anomalies and the world itself, all of which could otherwise be taken by the conquering player. Why waste resources and time with constructing a large ship capable of carrying the cracker when you can use a cheaper medium ship available earlier in the game to achieve the same result, but without the waste? 

Hence why I believe it needs a defensive counterpart in order to stop it from completely replacing ground units, unit upgrades, planetary defense structures, hero upgrades, existing superweapons, hell, the entire planetary invasion system, which it would do in the way you've described it so far. It's a decent idea, believe me, as it could definitely give the player new tools in wartime, but it definitely needs a counterweight on the other side of the scales in order to maintain game balance and to prevent carpetting from becoming too powerful. Just make your own idea. I do not play in multiplayer (because it's a waste of time) and I'm not a game developer. The number of turns and stuff presented in the picture is just a convention that shows how much influence on the gameplay I'd like to see. 

Just make your own idea. I do not play in multiplayer (because it's a waste of time) and I'm not a game developer. The number of turns and stuff presented in the picture is just a convention that shows how much influence on the gameplay I'd like to see. I'm not interested in continuing the discussion.