how does faction suppression work?

[Emmecicubo]

A faction which really doesn't like my governing style (7% happiness) spawned.
I pressed the "suppress faction" button, decreasing by 20 their happiness and paying 1 influence per month.
After a couple of years (maybe more), nothing happened, but they increased their size by 1 (from 5 to 6).

So, what does the suppress faction actually do?
How do i get rid of that faction?

 

[Technotopia]

How about general measures like information quarantine?
Some traditions affect the ethics attraction, probably they spawned on distant worlds? Then reducing the distance factor through tradition may help you.

 

[name_here]

It gives them a -50% penalty to their attraction value, though some people are reporting that it doesn't actually apply for them. Essentially, if it works as designed, their projected size (pops randomly select ethos to flip to, so this won't line up with their actual size) is half what it would be if you weren't suppressing them. So they'd theoretically be size twelve now if you weren't suppressing them.

To get rid of them, find the ethos they're based on and mouse over its attraction value to find out where it comes from, then work to lower it while raising your attraction for ethos you like. However, this might be a doomed endeavour; actually zeroing out an attraction value once it's gotten started is near-impossible.

General rules: your governing ethos have a base attraction, which can be boosted by buildings, ruler traits, and policies. Also, once a faction is active it exerts its own attraction value. If you've got certain government types that can lower attraction for some ethos and raise it for others.

Xenophobes: attraction from enslaved alien pops and repugant aliens on the planet. Attraction from fighting aliens and from aliens committing atrocities against your species, reduced attraction from leadership of other species and free xenos.
Xenophiles: attraction from free alien pops and charismatic aliens on the planet. Attraction from allowing alien leaders and migration treaties. Reduced attraction from repugnent pops and atrocities against your species by other empires.
Militarist: attraction from being at war or losing wars and having hostile/rival neighbors for pops with full citizenship or who can provide military leadership. Attraction from all strong pops. Reduced attraction from lengthy peace
Pacifists: attraction from being at peace for long periods and no hostile/rival neighbors
Spiritualists: attraction if you have psionic research or ascension perks and for defensive pact/fed with spiritualist empires. Reduced by having or being robots and by AI rights.
Materialist: attraction from AI rights and having/being robots or cyborgs, and from research pacts with materialist empires. Reduced by psionic research and ascension perks.

 

[GC13]

It gives them a -50% penalty to their attraction value, though some people are reporting that it doesn't actually apply for them.

I'm not seeing ethics shifting happening at an appreciable rate. It's been decades and my pacifist percentage is still higher than its attraction was before I started suppressing it, and it's only gone down since then.

 

[Zavaleta]

I wish the faction attraction mechanic was more transparent. Without any tooltips, it is currently nearly impossible to assess if the system is WAD. It would be nice to have an idea as to why certain ethics and factions have the attraction value they do.

 

[Emmecicubo]

To get rid of them, find the ethos they're based on and mouse over its attraction value to find out where it comes from, then work to lower it while raising your attraction for ethos you like. However, this might be a doomed endeavour; actually zeroing out an attraction value once it's gotten started is near-impossible.

So that's the situation: I started as a fanatic spiritualist/autoritarian.
Now pacifists and xenophiles are taking over
I'm ok with pacifists, but those xenophiles are really a pain in the ass.
They are increasing because:
- active political faction
- diplomacy with xenos (i need that defensive pact)
- free xenos in the empire

Now, i can't enslave all the xenos because i'm not xenophobe, so i'm using the cast system.
The only solution i can see is to change the xeno leadership policy (which i can't find).
Do you have any other possible solutions?

Also, my main species is repugnant, maybe i can resettle a couple of them in a xeno planet to increase xenophobia

 

[Cagliostro]

Yeah, I have suppressed a faction (xenophobes) for decades and it has grown faster than my other factions. Either it's not working properly or the effect should be increased.

 

[Madgt123]

Purging usally offers a fast and cheap solution out of factions

 

[Dantilus]

I'm in the camp that's never noticed much difference either way when suppressing factions. I had an egalitarian faction that I suppressed for decades, always hovered between 12-15%. Stopped suppressing them when I needed the influence, still stayed within that range.

More interestingly in both cases the proportion of pops that were "predicted" to be in that faction was listed much lower, like 6-8%. Suppressing/not suppressing didn't seem to change this number much either.

 

[name_here]

So that's the situation: I started as a fanatic spiritualist/autoritarian.
Now pacifists and xenophiles are taking over
I'm ok with pacifists, but those xenophiles are really a pain in the ass.
They are increasing because:
- active political faction
- diplomacy with xenos (i need that defensive pact)
- free xenos in the empire

Now, i can't enslave all the xenos because i'm not xenophobe, so i'm using the cast system.
The only solution i can see is to change the xeno leadership policy (which i can't find).
Do you have any other possible solutions?

Also, my main species is repugnant, maybe i can resettle a couple of them in a xeno planet to increase xenophobia

Going by the wiki, the "free xenos" modifier applies on a planet-by-planet basis, with the overall value averaging attraction across planets. So if you have caste system, you can make sure all aliens on a given planet are assigned to food/minerals to locally reduce attraction. As for resettling your primary species, I would assume the attraction penalty would apply only to the other species, so that might not help much.

 

[RandomZach]

To get rid of them, find the ethos they're based on and mouse over its attraction value to find out where it comes from, then work to lower it while raising your attraction for ethos you like. However, this might be a doomed endeavour; actually zeroing out an attraction value once it's gotten started is near-impossible.

There are some events, notably horizon signal and old gods, that can change the ethics of your primary species. If you enslave (or purge) all your other species before doing this it's effectively a complete faction reset except for the ethos that your species is changed to (spiritualist for those two i mentioned).

 

[Dinkelman]

The governing ethics attraction system is broken atm, so you can't increase or decrease it no matter what.