Annihilating Your Population

[Cybersaber]

I would like to build a general consensus towards a rule that we never kill our own population. There are three circumstances under which this can occur. The first is when we take over an enemy planet and set the annihilate option to Yes. Until LB can fix the bug, this leads to a 0 pop Outpost than cannot be attacked and remains until it randomly dissappears. I think there is general consensus that exploiting this bug is not acceptable play. The second is when an opponent has clearly won a war against you and you decide to deny him the fruits of his victory by moving all of your population to your smallest planet, effectively killing it against the population limit. IMO, this is terrible sportsmanship. But it also has a long run effect that is highly destructive of the quality of games in our community. Consider this: if a player who launches the first successful attack in a 4 way is denied the population he would otherwise win, he is generally weakened by his actions. He will lose ships and transports and not tech as fast as the players who just kept the peace, and he will be more vulnerable to their attack after his campaign because he has nothing to compensate for these losses. This will encourage players not to attack first, which will make for long, boring games where everyone is hoping the other guy attacks first and becomes vulnerable. This just ruins the game. Since few players destroy their population upon losing, most of us seem to instinctively understand this. But those few are ruining it for the rest of us, hence my desire for a formal rule. Finally, we have the destruction of population because you built an Android when the planet was already at its maximum population limit. I have heard many players ask that this NOT be done, tho I don't personally understand the game logic for this. My proposal is that we have a rule that specifically bans the destruction of your own race's population, except by Android production, and that we also ban annihilation of enemy pop to zero (you can annihilate to population 1) until LB can fix the permanent OP bug. Comments?

[ALEX|D]

1) If LB couldn´t fix, that 0pop planet is invadeable, then the planet should be gone immediately after annihilate is still in progress and pop is on 1,999 (at he max). Or just it´s not allowed to annihilate to 0pop, just to 1pop is allowed.

2) Killing own pop, while getting invaded, shouldn´t be allowed by a rule. I think we could put this to a default-rule. Further we need to think about, whether its allowed to put all pop into transporters, so the invader doesnt get the pop, too. Pop is shiped then from "pontius to pilatus".

3) I think that a andro substitute a pop, while planet is full is wrong imho. It shouldn´t be possible to build this andro, in that case.

[siron]

3) I think that a andro substitute a pop, while planet is full is wrong imho. It shouldn´t be possible to build this andro, in that case.

Losing his pop means a demo lith will lose some RPs (and BC). (I rarely have droids with other races.) Dont think we need a rule here. It hurts already.

2) ... Further we need to think about, whether its allowed to put all pop into transporters, so the invader doesnt get the pop, too. Pop is shiped then from "pontius to pilatus".

I see nothing wrong in evacuating systems. And moving it to a temporarily full planet is absolutely ok when you did not have the intention to kill it. (Lack of freighters or a new colony in the next turns could force you to do so.)

Since few players destroy their population upon losing, most of us seem to instinctively understand this.

I attack often early on in a 4way and I was often a "victim" of this suicide strategy. (Not just a few players...) I get used to it...pretended a close war and blockaded all his planets when possible. I dont think that a rule would help here. At least, I see no plain rule which would not restrict the legitimate evacuation.

And I am bit surprised that Cybersaber addresses this point here. I had a chat about this suicide topic with RedDog last year. In his opinion suicide is absolutely ok and he mentioned that Cybersaber had the same opinion...(but he added that Cyber had some discussions with another veteran about this topic.)

[StepNRazor]

Yes I was surprised to see Cyber post this also, a file I gave LB to work on zero pop annihilate was a save that Cyber 0 pop annihilated one of my colonies. He wasn’t the only vet to do this, which prompted me to post some rules in my message of the day.
No 0 pop annihilate
No killing off pop
No defending with an empty ship
That what’s in my message of the day, and yes I had people not agree to play with such rules.

Hopefully LB can fix 0 pop bug and exploiting it won’t be an option.

Killing off your pop is weak and less than honorable. I think shipping pop to colonies that can handle the pop is ok. I think I see why Alex is opposed to it. If at war and an enemy ship is at your colony the turn your freighters with pop shows your pop is killed. So this is a potential problem, perhaps LB can come to our rescue again with either changing freighters with pop from being killed (letting the pop land) or giving the enemy ships the option of attacking freighters or letting them land the latter being the better option but not sure it is possible.

Overstuffing with droids seems like a bit of a bug to when colony sizes are greater than a terran for that size of colony. If you prefer a droid or a bio pop is your option but killing off bio pop units in order to over maximize colony size is exploiting a bug in thinking.