FreeOrion

Presently, if empire A is producing a building on a planet, and empire B captures that planet, the building stays on empire A's production queue, listed as being built at the planet. Empire A can't actually finish producing the building, as an empire must own the location at which it wants to produce something, and if that (or other) requirements aren't met, then enqueued production items can't receive any PP towards completion.

So, the question is: How to deal with enqueued production items located on planets that are captured by another empire? That is: ownership of the planet changes from one empire to another.

A similar question is what to do with enqueued production items on planets that starve or are otherwise lost to an empire, but without being transferred to another empire. That is: ownership of the planet changes from one empire to no empires.

One simple possibility is to destroy / remove all in-production items on any empire's queue whenever ownership of the production location is lost to that empire.

Another possibility is to transfer production items on captured planets from the production queue of the former owner to the queue of the new owner.

Another possibility is to leave items on captured planets on the production queue of the original owner.

Other possibilities:

- Some production items might be capturable, others might be destroyed whenever their build location changes ownership, others might stay in their original producer's queue.

- Having some items be capturable and others not would allow some distinctions to be made between "intangible" and "tangible" production items. eg. a large shipyard is hard to miss, so would be easily captured or destroyed, but a secret hidden spy centre or laboratory might not be noticed (whether finished and functional, or just partly completed), perhaps depending on tech levels or detection ability of the capturers or capturee empires. Other production items might have an "official" but insiginficant production location... I can't think of a good example, but something might be built around the whole empire, and only have a particular build location for bookkeeping purposes... perhaps this represents the location of the office where the project coordinator works, but the item itself isn't really located just on the one planet, so can't really be captured. This latter option might be applied for buildings that are marked "relocatable"... ie. those which the producer can move to a new production location (with or without penaltites, perhaps).

- Whether or not production items can be captured or retained after their location is lost might be a function of technology... ie. a tech might unlock the ability to capture production items, or to keep production items on planets an empire doesn't control.

-Distinctions might be made according to whether or how much PP has been put towards a production item. eg. half completed or more production items are treated differently from those less than half completed.

IMO we should probably pick one system and not try to mix things too much. eg. tech level determines whether things can be captured, or each production item is marked as capturable-on-location-capture, destroyed-on-location-capture, or retained-on-original-producer-queue; but not a complicated combination of these, in which a particular building (but not other buildings) might switch from capturable to destroyed on capture depending on tech levels.

Thoughts?

If a building is being built on a planet, and they catch it then they catch the building too. Unless the building is being built somewhere else, then moved to the planet, in this case they don't catch it.

utilae wrote:Unless the building is being built somewhere else, then moved to the planet, in this case they don't catch it.

How would whether a particular building is produced at its eventual location, or elsewhere, be determined or indicated? Tech levels? Property of building type? Something else?

How about giving the person who loses the planet the option to destroy the building if he wishes to do so. If he does not, the conquerer of the planet gets a dialog asking him if he wants to continue constructing the building (if he has the appropriate tech to do so).

Furthermore we could implement sort of an empirewide autodestroy policy for buildings. If a player doesn't want his shipyards to fall into enemy hands, he can specify them to be destroyed if the planet is captured.
If he does that, his troops will try to destroy the building.

Wheather they are successful or not could depend on a number of factors:
- Total number of troops on planet
- How fast the enemy manages to capture the planet
- Ships with anti-planet weapens in orbit around planet
- Number of buildings to be destroyed

This would add much more fun to space and ground combat. If the attacker wants a good chance to capture some buildings (and the associated techs) he will be forced to attack swiftly and efficiently, ie. he will have to take more risks and can't just sit back and hammer the defences with missiles.

Honestly I think it'd be kinda determined by how complete the building is. If it was barely started it'd kinda get lost in the shuffle, but something near completion should be capturable.

Kharagh wrote:...the conquerer of the planet gets a dialog asking him if he wants to continue constructing the building...

Such a dialog would be redundant, because if the conquerer didn't want to keep the under-construction item, s/he could just remove it from the production queue on the turn(s) after capturing it.

Also, in general, popup dialogs are bad UI design. People don't read them, they are often confusing even if read, and they generally interrupt / halt whatever else is going on and require user interaction before anything else can happen. For this situation, it's also not really clear when such a dialog would be shown, particularly given the separation between order giving and server turn processing periods of a turn.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Kharagh wrote:...the conquerer of the planet gets a dialog asking him if he wants to continue constructing the building...

Such a dialog would be redundant, because if the conquerer didn't want to keep the under-construction item, s/he could just remove it from the production queue on the turn(s) after capturing it.

Also, in general, popup dialogs are bad UI design. People don't read them, they are often confusing even if read, and they generally interrupt / halt whatever else is going on and require user interaction before anything else can happen. For this situation, it's also not really clear when such a dialog would be shown, particularly given the separation between order giving and server turn processing periods of a turn.

another thing is that such popups are often the ONLY source of the information. MoO2 is bad about this. If you forget about Galactic News reports you have no way of checking to see if there is one of those events active. (there are a few exception here)

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Kharagh wrote:...the conquerer of the planet gets a dialog asking him if he wants to continue constructing the building...

Such a dialog would be redundant, because if the conquerer didn't want to keep the under-construction item, s/he could just remove it from the production queue on the turn(s) after capturing it.

Also, in general, popup dialogs are bad UI design. People don't read them, they are often confusing even if read, and they generally interrupt / halt whatever else is going on and require user interaction before anything else can happen. For this situation, it's also not really clear when such a dialog would be shown, particularly given the separation between order giving and server turn processing periods of a turn.

Yep, of course you are right, however I hope you get the general idea

It should be as simple as this:

- If player chooses where to build building, and contruction starts, then
a) building can be captured if location of building captured
b) building can be destroyed if location of building captured

- If player chooses where building goes after it is built, ie when they build it no location is chosen then
a) building cannot be captured
b) building cannot be destroyed

Note: Building self destruction can occur when captured, if the player has such a tech or capability. It should be automatic, ie if building lost to enemy, then it might as well be destroyed.

Players choose where to build buildings when construction starts. So...

utilae wrote:a) building can be captured if location of building captured
b) building can be destroyed if location of building captured

[...]

Note: Building self destruction can occur when captured, if the player has such a tech or capability.

So is "tech or capability" the only factor then? Is capturability of buildings an empire-wide setting (not dependent on the type of building) ?

It should be automatic, ie if building lost to enemy, then it might as well be destroyed.

So to completely cripple an enemy and destroy all their buildings, you need only capture their planet for an instant (one turn) and have no need to have a defensible position on captured planets for any length of time?

The alternative would be to make buidlings persistant and difficult to destroy, so that pillaging a planet and then leaving it right away isn't good enough to really cripple someone... That is, you'd have to be able to take and hold a planet to prevent someone from just picking up where they left off after driving you out with a counterattack. This would be arguably more strategic, and promote builder strategies, rather than military only strategies.

Alternatively, the speed at which buildngs / planet infrastructure can be destroyed could be dependent on various factors... such as suggested above, or "bombing" tech level of pillager vs. construction tech of the building's creator...