Anyone here TRIED NOT to commit genocide?

Well its good that you have a conscience! And as for why its worth having, excuse me if I am stating the obvious but as for planet capture using large numbers of troops, it can be much more efficient to do that as you have all that population and infra ready to go. Also owning alien population with different atmosphere requirements can assist with colonising planets with max build capacity vastly increasing research and intel and resource production within your existing borders. Ditto ship capture of alien colonisers and their cargo especially when you can reverse engineer the ships at a shipyard and get new planet type colony tech to build into your own ships!

Capture is an economic goldmine.

I tried that.
I was attacked by the Eee consortium. They were losing a war so they pushed into my teritory. I Even sent them a treaty saying they could colonize in my territory! But then they attacked me and wiped out 2 defencless colony. I cant attack gas giants so I had to wipe them out. The somehow got a rock colony (I think they captured a Amon'krie colonyship) and I tried to use troops on that. But then the population had to be exterminated or the weapons platform would not die. So you can only not commit mass murder if your target is defencless.

Hivespace

My life for the hive!

Oh, we're talking about the game...

Well, I generally glass everything in sight, colonize at least one planet in the system, then move on to the next system. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary. >:)

When I play I pick my first victim as the race that breaths a different atmosphere than me and I capture the first planet and then glass the rest. I ship the new breathers into my space and use them.

SEV, more than a feeling.

The only thing in-game that I can think of that prevents attacking a planet is a "No Bombardment" treaty.

I prefer capturing over glassing.

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

I avoid glassing at all costs. It's more satisfying to take over intact colonies. It's not hard to mod the game to make people more durable. Kwok did it for Balance mod.

Taking over a colony is preferable but the investment in time and materials is a pain. I find it even more difficult in PBW.

If I start the conflict, I capture. If the enemy attacked me, I respond tit for tat. If they glass my colonies, I will glass theirs, but I never glass first. Doing so has helped me to become a more benevolent dictator.

I also try to limit my conflicts to securing one or two objectives, such as capturing an enemy colonizer, or taking a contested system. Rarely do I go on the expansionist war path until I literally have no more room to grow (which means all planet types and atmospheres are full). At which point my fleet is usually large enough to wipe out unprepared enemies very very quickly - even if it's via invasion and capture.

Space Empires Wiki

I make (and keep) friends and allies easily but if anyone attacks me they had best be prepared, at that moment, to take me out totally because I would be completely dedicated to their rapid destruction. I also think I'm a benevolent dictator (good with my friends, bad with my enemies).

I've been trying conquest and I must say it seems to work nicely.
But sometimes in a war there comes a time where you simple just have this urge to bathe yourself in the blood of your enemies. But then at least... i tried to not commit genocide

~Myrath

I recently tried to avoid genocide. Although I had trouble getting it to work I did manage to invade and occupy an enemy planet, gaining about 400 Million alien workers. Then my enemy set up a plague on his own people and killed 400 Million. Now there's genocide

When I played my first game I did have that I could not colonize other type of planets so I did capture those and also a few others. Until I decided to start a final war and started clearing out enemy star systems

I've been in a game with the same rules so I've been capturing what planets I could. Of course in this case my race are a bunch of pseudo-Arachnids that use captured population as livestock. Committing genocide would be a terrible waste of good food. It's probably best not to think what it's been like for the population of the human homeworld for the last 8 years [shudder]

I only capture good planets and even then only when I feel like it, when it is not too hard to capture.

For me when I have a war I end the war by destroying the empire that I am at war with.

I can be very slow to start a war, and I like to wait for others to start it for me, but when the war starts, I will only end it by taking out the other empire (I don't tust that empire any more after War starts).
I am also slow to tust a ally empire and I only let highly tusted allys to use planets in my space, and have my tech (My empire's tust is hard to get but when you have it you then have a ally you can tust with almost anything).

Nothing wrong with keeping a race around for food and fun.

Stars are like potato chips. You just can't blow up one

Mmmmm, stars.

I prefer capturing planets with population, ready space yards and other facilities.

Capturing is preferable but much more difficult and time intensive. It gives the opposition time to regroup and counterattack. I still like the Glass-Colonize blitz since it doesn't give time to regroup.

Oh, BTW: If there is anyone from my PBWs reading sign those treaties now.

I rarely commit genocide. As previous posters said, it's better to take the full infrastructure and population.

As for defenses on the surface, I never have a problem with those. I design a huge ship that is nothing but shields, armor, and shield regen devices. Rarely do I see a planet with enough firepower to do more than scratch the shields. The Tank flies close to the planet and sits there absorbing all the fire so the troop transport can drop it's payload.

Once on the surface, those pesky weapons platforms and defense troops are rarely any trouble except perhaps on planets with huge cargo capacities filled with defenses.

Any planet with a race that breathes an atmosphere I don't have yet will also have several freighters sitting ready to scoop up all the population for dissemination throughout my empire. Faster than bothering to research Utilization, building the Atmosphere conversion device, and then waiting for it to do the job...especially once I start building colony ships from those planets.

I'd like to mention that in my Arachnid game I have home hives with planetary shields (yes, plural) and, off the top of my head, 10 or more weapon platforms with direct energy weapons. On at least one occasion, and perhaps even two, my enemy has attacked my planet. It's very enjoyable seeing the enemy fleet obliterated one by one by a flicker of fire from the surface that doesn't care how many shields or armour a mere warship can fit. That and something like 150 fighters being systematically burned out of orbit. I know you said rarely, but I just wanted to mention that this is one of those situations where it does happen.

The planetary shields stack? I never thought to try that.

I try to capture as much as I can. Generally any planet that I can populate with a race that can live there un-domed, I'll try to take it intact.

My problem is getting the idiots to surrender after I've taken out 99% of their planets. Including home worlds. And every ship yard. And all their fleets. And fighters. Everything. And the buggers still refuse to surrender. It's really irritating if I'm trying to capture some technology from then that I haven't managed to filch in some other manner.

I wonder if there's some way to code it in that for each planet you capture rather than destroying outright, the chance of surrender goes up rather than down. If I prove to be a conscientious conqueror rather than a scorched earth destroyer, you'd think they'd be slightly more inclined to give up. But no, they'd rather have me attack and slaughter lots of civilians while I try to capture that last hold-out colony. Oh well.

There seems to be alot of problems with AI surrender.

Vince, you may be interested to know then that the shields seem to work a bit differently for planets. Normally if you aren't damaged you'll have maximum shields on your ship the next battle even if they were taken down a bit. In the cases i've mentioned my planets shields were reduced by 5000, before I burned the enemy ships from orbit. Same turn, but another battle, my maximum shields were still reduced by 5000. TO sort of balance planetary shields it looks like they keep damage for the whole turn. Of course that seems to allow you to send wave after wave for a turn to overpower the shields. Personally I'd mass everything in one attack to maximise the chance to overwhelm my enemy in one battle.

That is how all shields for ships and planets work.

Really? I would have thought I'd have noticed ships having weakened shields if they already fought, and took shield damage, during a turn.

The population Minister seems to spend most of his / her time slaughtering the native population, as I try to get some influx from other empires ASAP to max out planets.

Razing planets to the bedrock is a lot easier, as no troops to make, transport etc etc. The bare rock can be recolonised when I choose.

Maybe your ships had Shield regenerators?

Oops two posts..

Is the fact that shields work differently for planets a bug or an intended feature?

shields work the same for both planets, and ships

Thats what I thought.

speaking on the topic of genocide, did you know you can scrap captured population for organic materials?

Mmmmm... Aliens!

yes, but you only get 1K of organics per unit of population. Still, I've got an entire enemy homeworld being farmed. I suppose if I really need to I could scrap 2,500 units.

I more often scrap my own people to undome planets.

I guess its genocide only if you kill your own race and xenocide if it's another race.

Don't know why I didn't bring that up earlier. We've been talking about xenocide all along...

Actually I personally think of Xenocide as a specialized form of Genocide.

Genocide from another's point of view.

Generally this is what I do as well if there aren't a lot of non-breathers on the planet (of course, after you scrap them, they're still non-breathing, but in a different sense....

If it's later in the game, however, and the population of a planet has grown to a significant level, I generally try to ship them (literally) to other planets, rather than simply turn them into soylent green, or whatever the equivalent fast food item is.