Fridge Logic: Colony Ships and Genocide

[Princess Stabbity]

It just randomly occured to me... Isn't a Colony Ship technically an embarked pop?

So... isn't it technically an atrocity comparable to purging a pop when someone makes it go boom in space?

 

[laptor]

Well, yes... is this important?

 

[Fourthspartan56]

Yes now that I think about it that would be an atrocity.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Well, yes... is this important?

Nn... it could be! I imagine the recipient of the gobooming should feel a bit upset over it, diplomatically speaking

 

[Sibericus]

Attacking civilian ships in general should give diplomacy penalties. Make it a player choice to attack civilian vehicles, so fleets don't automatically engage civies. The diplomatic penalty could also be affected by ethos. Pacifists would become more hostile over it, while militarists don't care as much.

 

[SolarGuy]

Actually just a bit of a pop. Not a full one. Still a quite large portion of one though, it just needs 12 months to get to a full pop (that's the 12 months for colony establishing).

But technically that's still an atrocity, like someone purged a few hundred thousands people.

 

[Slarkon]

i had reliable info that colony ship was smuggling weapons

 

[Kayden_II]

Actually, You build a Colony-Ship and You should lose a POP, but That's a Possibility to terminate POPs, so that the Devs have decided to make It the current Way.

 

[terrycloth]

There are no actual people on the colony ship, just frozen embryos.

Child labor laws in the future are *really* permissive.

 

[Talanic]

I suspect there's some form of interstellar legalese going on there. A colony ship is a tool with which you expand your sphere of influence. Any colonists on the ship are therefore understanding that they may be dispatched into space that may leave them in conflict with hostile aliens. As colony ships can be deployed aggressively to seize disputed territory (e.g. after an outpost has been razed), it is only logical for interstellar diplomacy to recognize the citizens on a colony ship as something more than citizens - if less than soldiers - for the purpose of determining their status in time of war.

 

[AndragonLea]

Maybe they should take a page from CIV and just have civilian shipping change flags when it is within the range of enough weaponry to kill it. A simple algorythm should be able to determine if the ship can emergency jump or will be shot to pieces before that and in such cases the civilian captains are trained to power down the drives and yield to superior force.

Takes care of the atrocity bit and gives people an incentive to not be careless with their civilian ships. It WOULD need some sort of exception to have them get destroyed by leviathans, though. Dunno about you guys, but I don't want the Ether Drake to start his own empire.

 

[Elfwind]

Have the ability to force colony ships away using military ships via "escorting them out of the system." This way we can have an outlet for diplomatic incidents.

 

[terrycloth]

Have the ability to force colony ships away using military ships via "escorting them out of the system." This way we can have an outlet for diplomatic incidents.

Maybe have them automatically e-warp if engaged, even if set aggressive.

 

[I am Sovereign]

I thought this thread could be about the fact that colony ships are in fact an embarked pop but doenst take away one from the planet it was build on.

Well turns out it isent.

To answer the OP yes it is. Maybe one day when we will get the galactic UN it could might be introduced a policy for all members which would forbid this as it would be a warcrime. Though this wouldnt be more then a gimmick.

 

[Jastebro]

It's ok. The colonists all sign a waiver accepting the risk of death when recruited for the ship.

 

[indika_tates]

In times of war the responsible of the safety of their own citizens is the nation itself. If someone sends a POP into enemy territory or neutral one where it can be intercepted the colony ship owner is to blame, not the attacker.

 

[Elfwind]

In times of war the responsible of the safety of their own citizens is the nation itself. If someone sends a POP into enemy territory or neutral one where it can be intercepted the colony ship owner is to blame, not the attacker.

True, to be fair the enemy has to assume something is up, like the colony ships has been rigged to explode or something.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

In times of war the responsible of the safety of their own citizens is the nation itself. If someone sends a POP into enemy territory or neutral one where it can be intercepted the colony ship owner is to blame, not the attacker.

The Geneva Conventions disagree with you. It's reasonable to assume that the "good guy" empires have similar standards in place.

A simple solution would be a Civilian Ship Policy where you can either indiscriminately destroy civilian ships or capture them. If the latter, you would be prompted with an event when your fleet engages one that would let you capture the ship or disassemble it for energy/minerals. In both situations, the event text mentions something about the occupants being imprisoned for the duration of the conflict or released to the enemy.

 

[safe-keeper]

Fridge logic indeed. Now that you say so, a diplomatic penalty for blowing up a colony ship actually makes a lot of sense .

 

[The Founder]

It just randomly occured to me... Isn't a Colony Ship technically an embarked pop?

So... isn't it technically an atrocity comparable to purging a pop when someone makes it go boom in space?

Colony Ships are not taking pops from planets, so you can not use them to Purge unwanted pops using them.

The initial pop of a colony is kind of appearing from "nowhere". Even with Cryogenics, keeping 500 million to 1 billion humans on a colonyship would be hard.
I asume the bulk of the initial pop is being ferried in via civilian transports (the same ones doing Migration and Resettlement work).

Heck, one of the original trailers has a human Colonyship being killed due to being asumed hostile. So nope, not anywhere near that kind of atrocity.
At tops it would be on the level of Terror Bombing for one pop.