Capturing planets, a question of practicality.

[tbontob]

Originally posted by couslee:
Another simple strategy you can apply to help conquered planets not start out rioting, is get the planets first. If you capture a planet that is angry or rioting, there is a reason for that. you inherit the mood of the people. for example
you enter a system, and mop up all the enemy ships, then move on to planet capture. The population has suffered a lot of anger increases because of enemy ships in sector, battles lost, ships lost, ect.. If you take the planets first, then mop up the enemy ships, you get two benefits. One, being they have not had all the battles lost anger increases, AND they get the anger decreases by your battle victories in that same sector. take the planets first, it makes a huge difference in alien happiness levels. And don't forget to leave enough troops behind to offset the "20". If you capture a planet and the first build order on emergency build is 6 troops. leave four of your invaders behind to act as police. I rarely have have to build UPCs doing this. So get the high pop ones first, then the smaller pop planets, then the Ai ships. Use intel to enemy ship supply drain and engine damage to stop them from attacking you while you grab the planets. then go mop-up the derelicts.

Try it, you will be glad you did.

Sounds like good advice. Making the planets angry means we will have to deal with the effects of an angry planet.

Much better, as you suggest, to conduct ourselves so as to avoid making the planets angry and if done right, our actions will contribute to their happiness.

[Slick]

Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor.

One other thing I do is put 5% into happiness when setting up a race. Not sure how effective it is, but I also had one of my first games go rioting all over the place and I didn't know what to do. Been adding 5% ever since and that's pretty cheap. Initially you just want to prevent planets from rioting, but if you develop a system that gets your own planets to jubiliant and keeps your planets with alien population from rioting (or also gets them to jubiliant), you will see tremendous benefits to production and construction rates. The percentages can be seen in settings.txt.

Another thing is that when you ferry population around in transports to the right-breathing planets, the population in the transport has a happiness level. I am not sure if it stays locked in from the point they are loaded into the transport or if they can change happiness when on the transport. I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this?

Slick.

[Phoenix-D]

"Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor."

Two different things. One controls the happyness of the population, the other the opinion the AI has toward other players.

Phoenix-D

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Slick:
[QB] I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this? [QB]

This does work. If you remove the population from the planet completely, by abandoning the planet (but don't scrap the facilities), and then load them back on (you don't have to wait a turn) it resets the planets happiness. Just remember that there has to be a point where the planet is left with a population of zero.

This is usually a pain for high pop worlds though and so is easier to just drop some troops and wait. However, this is a must use tactic if you are playing with an emotionless race.

Whenever an emotionless race conquers a world it freezes the happiness at its current state permanently. I've wanted that bug fixed for a while now but it can be worked around (though it does put a crimp in the playstyle of races like the Borg).

[ February 09, 2003, 20:24: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

[Grandpa Kim]

I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.

[couslee]

maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent. Things that constantly effect the mood of the planet are building facilities, winning battles, or losing them. new treaties, ect... I have read nothing that the setting have a null effect at indifferent. The race =-20 is not combined with the alien race =20 to counter each other. either one or the other applies, not both. I have not fully investigated all the settings to find out what would make it balance at ANY given level. I tend to just put troops on every planet, and my current game is artisian. my planets stay at jubilant, even if i am getting my arse handed to me by an enemy.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.

Yes, I think that is a "gotcha" too. However if you put a Med Lab and a UPC, you get the highest bonus of each! (And the warning that you already have a system-wide facility that does the same thing, which isn't quite true based on the percentages.) Some mods increase Med Lab 2 & 3 to 2% & 2% respectively to address this.

Slick.