Are Surrendered Troops Killed?

[lloydster4]

When troops surrender, are they executed or reintroduced into the planetary population in some way?

Considering the scarcity of life, it seems like a waste to kill them. Ideas:

-Slavery
-Ransom
-Hire as colonists/workers
-Join freefolk

Also would be nice to get scrap value for captured equipment. Maybe 25-50%?

[GodwinW]

Agreed for the surrendering pop.

As for capture stuff: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4829998

[Leslac]

Yeah I wondered about this too. I'm pretty sure they just "disappear", I've never seen any rise in city population at least, but haven't looked at free folk population.

I guess you could either make them just free folk or introduce a new category (that wouldn't demand too much of the game code as is I hope) - "POW's" that you have to feed (or not depending on your autocrat/democrat scale) and can create events, rebel, get used as forced labour (raising unrest), returned to enemy as part of a peace event/deal or slowly be indoctrinated into your general population. Brainwashing tech etc.

Then there's covert stuff like using them to create rebel units in the enemy zone (very expensive), or for that matter using covert actions to get your own pow's in enemy zones to do something probably doomed to fail. Also extra spies etc.

[Lovenought]

I worry that this could be a bit exploitable if it also applies to minors/free folk. On some worlds you can get 60,000+ Free Folk Marauders in a big zone, which you can easily crush one at a time with a single brigade, suffering few losses and forcing each unit to surrender by encircling them.

[lloydster4]

ORIGINAL: Lovenought
I worry that this could be a bit exploitable if it also applies to minors/free folk. On some worlds you can get 60,000+ Free Folk Marauders in a big zone, which you can easily crush one at a time with a single brigade, suffering few losses and forcing each unit to surrender by encircling them.

I'm skeptical of this claim. A subunit is 100 infantry, so that's 600 sub-units in a single zone.

In any case, there would need to be scaled penalties or costs that would make absorbing such a large population undesirable. Unrest, money, pop happiness, production penalties, something like that.

[Lovenought]

ORIGINAL: lloydster4

ORIGINAL: Lovenought
I worry that this could be a bit exploitable if it also applies to minors/free folk. On some worlds you can get 60,000+ Free Folk Marauders in a big zone, which you can easily crush one at a time with a single brigade, suffering few losses and forcing each unit to surrender by encircling them.

I'm skeptical of this claim. A subunit is 100 infantry, so that's 600 sub-units in a single zone.

In any case, there would need to be scaled penalties or costs that would make absorbing such a large population undesirable. Unrest, money, pop happiness, production penalties, something like that.

Oh right, blep, my mistake. I was remembering 38 stacks I saw and my brain automatically translated it into thousands. Blame the unusually small scale of the game