Voker57 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:28 am
If all populated planets are captured, outposts become free planets and ships disappear, to simplify defeat conditions and to avoid script bugs and the need for an AI.
The present scenario, where swaq deliberately evacuated tens of planets (all his planets) is not the same as "if all populated planets are captured".
He didn't concede for a reason, presumably to keep looking the game until all his outposts are taken. I don't like forcing the player to concede just because there is a bug in the outpost defense troops malus (i.e., that it is not triggered when there are no species in an empire).
The effect of your suggestion:
- Kick out from game a player if s/he does total scorched earth (i.e. killing off all populations and leaving only outposts with their military attachments).
- Turn all his outposts into empire-less outposts that are the easiest to conquer because they lose all defense troop techs.
- Keep the bug in issue #3059, so that outposts would still not get their troop malus.
The effect of fixing the bug in issue #3059:
- Do not kick out players that commit total scorched earth.
- Let the remaining (species-less) outposts retain their defense techs (and so do not make them so cheap to conquer).
The pros of your suggestion, implemented in
https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/3068, is that it deals with players that do not want to concede despite having lost.
The cons are that it does not let players in allied forces to do total scorched earth tactics to prevent enemies from getting stronger (instead they are forced to keep playing to delay enemies growth while they know they can just die slowly), and that it kicks out players that might not be annoying but just interested on the game development.
So I still prefer to fix the bug and not force player concession.
Anyways, the workaround PR, that would force the losing empire (if not willing to be kicked out) to keep at least one non-monster ship, does work as a workaround for the outpost troop malus bug.
But I'm against putting it into the MP server now if swaq doesn't want to concede, since he wasn't aware of it (or the bug) beforehand and he could have kept a scout in the corner of his space.