Conceding

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wobbly
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Conceding

#1 Post by wobbly »

This planet would be showing better defenses, shields and troops if he'd declared independence rather then conceding. Maybe those independence defenses, should be made automatic?
Endhu.png
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BlueAward
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Re: Conceding

#2 Post by BlueAward »

It's as if the planets and ships lost access to researched technologies but otherwise sorta kinda still stay with the fallen empire.

Like plasma ships, they don't seem to have plasma active anymore. Etc

Not clear to me but those planets also presumably still suffer negative influence penalty to stability

o01eg
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Re: Conceding

#3 Post by o01eg »

Concede was implemented long before Government feature. Now there is more sense to grant independence to all colonies. Not sure what to do with ships still.
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o01eg
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Re: Conceding

#4 Post by o01eg »

Maybe instead of calculate ship firepower directly from empire techs we could change ship attributes like it's done with fighters. This way ship will not only retain firepower after independence but also fix issue when empire should know other empires' techs to correctly show ship firepower.
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Oberlus
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Re: Conceding

#5 Post by Oberlus »

Also, since they count as not connected to empire capital (because of lost supply), they all get a big malus to stability, producing rebels that eat up defending troops, making planets from conceded empires easier to invade than natives early game.

BlueAward
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Re: Conceding

#6 Post by BlueAward »

Another thing to consider is dying out due to lack of growth techs. Are we talking about independence as in granting independence via building, which adds the shields, troops, techs etc? That would fix that, too

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Re: Conceding

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

not sure how conceding is implemented at the moment - is it like a totally passive empire? or is everything being unowned?
BlueAward wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 4:50 am Another thing to consider is dying out due to lack of growth techs. Are we talking about independence as in granting independence via building, which adds the shields, troops, techs etc? That would fix that, too
the independence building adds for specials critical values like population, defense, shields... with the last known target meter and an effect sets the target meter to that value. something similar could be done automatically for conceding

i think ships could stand still and have something similar.

in principle, temporary effects like stealth of ion storm those should not become part of the specials' value but should apply on top of it. this might be hard to code
Oberlus wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 2:35 pm Also, since they count as not connected to empire capital (because of lost supply), they all get a big malus to stability, producing rebels that eat up defending troops, making planets from conceded empires easier to invade than natives early game.
not sure. my first thought would be setting stability to a fixed value.
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wobbly
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Re: Conceding

#8 Post by wobbly »

Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 7:52 pm i think ships could stand still and have something similar.

in principle, temporary effects like stealth of ion storm those should not become part of the specials' value but should apply on top of it. this might be hard to code
Can ships have a part without a slot for it? A dummy part for the bonus?
Also just thinking about this, if you go right back to before weapon upgrades each mass driver tech was a separate part, so it is possible to replace a generalized laser with a specific tech laser on an unowned ship.

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Re: Conceding

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 7:29 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 7:52 pm i think ships could stand still and have something similar.

in principle, temporary effects like stealth of ion storm those should not become part of the specials' value but should apply on top of it. this might be hard to code
Can ships have a part without a slot for it? A dummy part for the bonus?
Also just thinking about this, if you go right back to before weapon upgrades each mass driver tech was a separate part, so it is possible to replace a generalized laser with a specific tech laser on an unowned ship.
Part without slot is trouble I think.

Having special weapon part is probably overkill and does not work well with targeting. Also there is no "change parts" functionality.

It's not hard to stop certain effects if a ship has a certain tag/special or it is possible to query if the owner still exists.
If the ships become unowned we need to record the tech bonus somewhere;probably in a special per ship per weapon type (e.g. MDs, Lasers, ...)
If we keep conceded empires we probably can simply apply the current effects
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Oberlus
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Re: Conceding

#10 Post by Oberlus »

Would it make sense (be doable by someone willing to) change the concede mechanic to, instead of removing the empire of the player that concedes (which causes the loss of techs and many other effects fail), make the empire "unwoned"? Create (backend change) a special type of empire that has no player but that is a regular empire in every other matter, or a special type of player to set as the owner of the empire.

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Re: Conceding

#11 Post by o01eg »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 3:12 pm Would it make sense (be doable by someone willing to) change the concede mechanic to, instead of removing the empire of the player that concedes (which causes the loss of techs and many other effects fail), make the empire "unwoned"? Create (backend change) a special type of empire that has no player but that is a regular empire in every other matter, or a special type of player to set as the owner of the empire.
It literally same as make that empire auto-turn.
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BlueAward
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Re: Conceding

#12 Post by BlueAward »

So what actually is the idea behind conceded empire? How much of a boon should it be to the neighbors who presumably contributed to the concession? To the victor come the spoils?

Currently the remnants are pretty irrelevant. So there seems to be push to make those more relevant. So at least they are passively defensive and require some resources to take over.

Tbh I did not know how conceding worked and I expected it is like a human player resigning and AI taking over. Why is it not the case? It would be another end of the spectrum and while presumably easier opponent than a real human it replaced, it would cease to give a bigger advantage like I had when I pressed Endhu and then could focus on wobbly. So is such scenario to be discouraged in future or remain a boon to a local victor?

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Oberlus
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Re: Conceding

#13 Post by Oberlus »

BlueAward wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:37 pm So what actually is the idea behind conceded empire? How much of a boon should it be to the neighbors who presumably contributed to the concession? To the victor come the spoils?
The first system (that I know of) was deleting all the assets (call it 1.0). That was quite frustrating for empires that were conquering, had invested a lot on warships, took loses, and then all populations on the verge to be invaded banishes; this gave advantage to empires focused on peaceful growth and took the fun out of the military part of expansion, so the "remove the empire but not the assets" (2.0) was introduced.
But then there were cases of players conceding when they were not losing (a quarrel with another player, impossibility to keep playing, rage quit for starting conditions, or whatever different than "I'm being invaded"), and system 2.0 made those planets/populations quite easy to invade, because the empire techs were removed so no planetary defense/troops, etc., thus giving great boosts to the neighboring empires despite them not having invested on attacking that empire or anything like that. Unfair for the other players. For those cases, with the aim to delay conquest and to require investment, those specials with pre-concede stats were added to planets (current system, call it 2.5). But ships need also some love, so that (e.g.) big stacks at the capital are not that easy to kill. And this is also a need for the case when the conceding empire was being conquered: it can be that the remaining defenses are tough enough to require extra investment (remaining stacks on colonized systems) but only if the ships retain their techs (weapon refinements and policies mostly).

BlueAward wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:37 pm I expected it is like a human player resigning and AI taking over. Why is it not the case?
I think there are two issues with that:
- In MP games with limited / non-free server resources, AI players take up lots of memory and extra CPU on the server.
- AI players don't know how to behave in an alliance. But that has a workaround: AI players, on overtaking control of an empire, leave all alliances and play solo.

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Re: Conceding

#14 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 5:09 pm
BlueAward wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:37 pm I expected it is like a human player resigning and AI taking over. Why is it not the case?
I think there are two issues with that:
- In MP games with limited / non-free server resources, AI players take up lots of memory and extra CPU on the server.
- AI players don't know how to behave in an alliance. But that has a workaround: AI players, on overtaking control of an empire, leave all alliances and play solo.
As a simple solution; we could just add some pseudo-AI (even without launching an extra process), which actually does nothing and keeps the empire like it is. Policies, tech etc. would still apply.
Researching a new tech can never lead to worse situation (else we need to change the tech), so keeping auto-research is also fine.

Main problem would be disconnection from capital. Simplest solution probably to script around that (make the disconnection less severe/add a plain stability bonus or similar). Switching the policies to decentralisation would probably work in some cases.
Anyway applying appropiate policies could be the last thing the player does before conceding.

I would not be worried about having pseudo-AI in my alliance, as long as I can revert to war state (in order to gobble up their planets). At the beginning of concede I would rather like (my conceding partner) to keep the supply network intact.
Not sure about fixed alliances though. A disgruntled player (or a bad move) could hurt ones own alliance by denying resources (or giving unwanted effects). But probably also ok, as that can be done even more effectively without conceding.

Changing policy after concede coooould be a thing if we find out in the wild that that is a real problem.
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wobbly
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Re: Conceding

#15 Post by wobbly »

You could add a policy for "fallen empire", name is arbitrary. Sets stability on all colonies to 1 and IP to 0. Keep old alliance state. For fixed alliance where you can't declare war this probably depends on how annexation mechanics are going to work.

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