Shield or cracker. It depends on the planet being shielded. If it’s a ecumenopolis for example it’s less than cracker due to them all inevitable starving
The only world that wouldn’t be extraordinarily fucked is a world that is perfectly balanced, because all other worlds are going to have a deficit of something.
True enough. I guess it depends on how much they have stockpiled.
Also, wouldn't it be cool to run into a shielded ecumenopolis whose citizens have been living on one planet for all of their history? Sort of a good version of the Prikiki-Ti.
I would actually go ahead and say the neutron sweeper is the most humane. I think the shield is the most humane on planets that are sustainable, but the sweeper is the most overall humane. Its basically like insane amounts of radiation, which kills you QUICK, you probably won’t even notice it before your brain stops functioning and your body shuts down completely. The cracker would cause you to either die horribly in the inferno of volcanos, the utter chaos of earthquakes, the horrible force of a tsunami or if your unlucky enough to survive that far, the emptiness of space suffocating you as the atmosphere falls apart from your world.
Just to provide some context, people have died from a plutonium core called "the demon core" being exposed in a supercritical state for just a second, and then they died only nine days later. Imagine just being exposed to the massive amounts of radiation a collosus can make for even just a second. You would cease existing the next second, which sounds horrible, but also sounds more humane.
Yeah that's the thing about "kill you with radiation" what radiation poisoning does most of the time is drain you and shut down all your body functions. It would be incredibly painful because fatigue makes even moving incredibly difficult to do, but it's not quite as horrific as melting into a blob of neoplasm.
Developing a tumor is what happens when you encounter a blast of ionising radiation and survive the initial subatomic shotgunning
I think the real bottlenecks would be the other upkeep resources. Energy, Consumer goods, and Minerals. That's probably the process that turns an Ecumenopolis into a relic world like the origin, with available natural resources
Eh once I lost every planet to contingency other than a ecumenopolis that was right next to Cybrex Alpha. I just built a lot of farm buildings and feed population just fine. Real bottleneck was energy production but that could be dealt with without worrying about a navy and alloy production.
The shield imo is the most existentially horrifying. From the planets perspective you’ve got billions of people who’ve grown up on a planet that is part of a whole, who have suddenly become alone... forever. Cut off permanently from the wonders of their space fairing society. Even if they can survive on their own, they now must adjust to being irreversibly trapped. A massive change brought about in an instant. Never again knowing just what’s going on beyond your own skies. The societal equivalent of suddenly going blind.
From the perspective of the other planets in the empire, you’ve essentially just lost a percentage of your population. Sons, mothers, friends, loved ones who you will NEVER see again. If the planet is swept or cracked you at least have solace in knowing they are dead but this... how agonising it must be to know they’re right there, just out of reach and you are helpless to do anything about it. All you can do is spend the rest of your life wondering.
A fate worse than death in this mans opinion.
I kinda wish you could go back and unshield shielded planets after a war is done or something. Would make a lot more sense if it’s only a temporary thing.
This would also help address the whole "doomed to slow starvation" thing. Like, you all get to live but also your entire logistics and supply chain for basic goods and services has been cut off with little to no warning. At best it's a massive disruptive and downturn in quality of life as you have to massively redevelop or upscale the industries that provide basic necessities while downscaling whatever parts of your economy are dependent on exports or knowledge work/administration.
My factions when we've cornered the neighboring Hegemonic Imperialists on their homeworld after decades of threats, senseless violence and destruction:
"They are dying," the egalitarian and xenophile leaders caution, wise yet somehow so painfully naive.
"Let them die," I mutter just before trapping them in the industrial nightmarescape of their own making with the shield.
Planets dont have any perpective. Its hard to care what happens in another country, Its really and ultimatelly irrelevant what happens on other planets after shielding. Our Earth is isolated right now and we dont care. Sure the lose of connection will trouble a few, but meh.
I am also an expat and have forehand experience of isolation on multiple levels. If somebody considers isolation worse than death then its a real psychologilac issue and the one is probably harming close ones anyway.
>Our Earth is isolated right now and we don’t care
Because it’s all we know, not because we’re literally trapped behind a giant bubble. Little bit different than being one planet part of a whole and suddenly being irreversibly cut off in an instant.
>Its hard to care what happens in another country. Its really and ultimately irrelevant what happens on other planets after shielding.
Casually mentioning that you have a complete lack of empathy then ending by saying that I’m the one with psychological issues. Nice 👍
i mean you can fret over every abuse of human rights or social injustice in the world all you want but eventually it will either starting taking a toll on your mental health or you will just...stop caring and focus on your inner circle of friends and family, which is what I have done.
I can't change what's happening in russia or the us, hell I'm pretty sure I can't do anything direct and immediate about anything that's happening on my country or even state, maybe not even on my city, so why stress over shit that's outside your direct control? Life is too short to spend it all wailing and suffering for things you can't stop or change, I rather make the lives of my loved ones the best they can be instead, at least then it's something I can directly impact.
Realistically speaking, it would likely be very rare for people to ever leave the world they grew up on. Think of how often people travel, or especially move, somewhere else. No consider that you an reach pretty much anywhere (developed) on our planet in less than 24 hours on a plane. Now compare that to how long it takes your navy in-game to travel places. Although the affects on trade would likely have horrific consequences on the economy, especially if the planet had a large food deficit.
>If somebody considers isolation worse than death then its a real psychologilac issue and the one is probably harming close ones anyway.
Honestly I have met people who are exceptionally needy like that. To them it's considered incredibly unreasonable to not go out with all your friends weekly or do even minor stuff (like exercising) by themselves. I don't get it either.
Ehh, presumably they can turn some of their buildings into hydroponics farms. They'll figure it out, and while some will probably die in the transitional period, in the long term, many will be fine.
Ehh, presumably they can turn some of their buildings into hydroponics farms. They'll figure it out, and while some will probably die in the transitional period, in the long term, many will be fine.
The shield I guess for me? Let's your target live to death and ideally the world is self sustaining or can be with effort. They are just cut from off from space from there it's just spending your life under a dome
Yeah but we live on a planet that potentially produces everything we need. If you live on a planet that only does mining and nobody knows how to grow food or the planet can't even grow enough food for the population then you're fucked.
Or they just stop mining and start farming? Why would they keep mining when the planet is shielded not like they need to export it anymore. If planet doesn't have fertile land they can still build hydroponics farms.
Depends on the size of the colony. If it's a large planet they could never realistically feed the entire population with just hydroponics, even if they knew how to build them and had the capabilities.
Hydroponics produce a lot of food you can even feed an ecumenopolis with them. If you fill all building slots you produce more food than any single planet will need.
I mean yeah, thats in-game. Realistically this would never work, simply by the fact that's its a massive undertaking that needs dedicated infrastructure and industry that you simply don't have if all you do is mine. In real life you can't just take minerals from the ground and build advanced tech buildings with them.
At the point where one could “realistically” shield an entire planet, I think that imagining spectacular advances in hydroponic farming techniques is pretty plausible.
No, this planet produces everything YOU need. Other people do the mining and struggle with food.
Things are getting better though. As they can on any isolated planet.
In a perfect world earth could support everybody living here. I never said anything else like there aren't people struggling. Thats not the fault of the planet, but of us. Why do you read it in a way that displays me as ignorant?
Or someone from your species in a precursor vessel goes on a galactic adventure to defeat the alien menace and tear down the shield...wait...[where have I heard that one before](http://star-control.com/sc2/).
I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the fact the entire planet is still doomed, one day their star will die, and the advanced spacefaring civilisation living on the surface will die, alongside the entire ecosystem, all because of an ancient war in the distant past that they had no say in...
For me, the divine beam is most humane, all it does is make you believe in a God
There is a reason people typically go mad after long periods of isolation. Severing a space faring community from being able to do just that could potentially have similar effects.
That is bad though, as we know from the american karens, never underestimate their wisdom and knowlege about everything and anybody, they got that source. Its called „its just true in my mind“
Who cares about your body? We can travel faster than light, we can crente sentient machines, we can genetically modify our species, we are able to catch ALL of the energy of a star and build ringworlds! Medicine would be able to give your organs pra bodyparts back, biological or sintetic, but your mind? That's a lot harder, the Divine Enforcer is changing who you are, your body is ok, but your mind has been altered, you're no longer yourself.
The Cracker will kill you, but it will be quick and painless.
Neutron Sweep is probably one of the worst ones, a painful dead.
Global Pacifier isn't so bad, quite good actually, the first years are going to be terrible, but it's likely the planet will stabilize itself, people will have normal lives except for space travel, and may one day be able do remove the shield to once again explore the cosmos.
Nanobot Diffuser is bad, but some machine intelligences give more autonomy to their drones, and if your empire manage to defeat them, all the pops can have normal lives again.
Deluge is bad, but better than Neutron Sweep,and there's also a chance you can survive in lifeboats until you can reach land again.
Divine Enforcer is literally brainwashing, while not physically hurting you, it's changing what really matters.
Also in terms of gameplay mechanics divine enforcer is entirely reversible, since it causes pops to shift ethics, they can shift back given enough time
Only sort of. The divine enforcer will fry any toasters and hiveminded pops. Against gestalts and synthetic empires, the divine enforcer is functionally identical to the neutron sweep.
I think it's really just that in the lore as well. This is a universe where we know metaphysical things exist, and that it can be interacted with. That is kinda the point of spiritualists, not necessarily "religion". Enforcer just convinces you to accept it and kills those who can't be convinced. And anything you are convinced of, you can be deconvinced.
Spiritualists themselves have a belief in the concept of an immutable sense of "self". One mind, one body. They react with grief and outrage whenever a population Synth Ascends, because as far as they're concerned your species committed mass-suicide, and the robots are just hollow shells. At best, the robots are new people, alien to the galaxy at large and only marginally better than The Contingency. At worst, mockeries of organic lives and organic souls that deserve extermination.
Therefore, logically, the inverse of this, where a species has the same bodies but a completely new, forcibly-imposed mindset of the world, is likewise mass murder. The imposition of a new "self," having evicted and now wearing the skin of its former inhabitant.
The Divine Enforcer is not merely mass murder, it is *mass hypocrisy.*
You see my thinking is at least with mind breaker or whatever it's called any non sapient animals or pets on the planet won't die. In fact they wouldn't be affected at all.
My personal rank from the least humane to the most, considering the limitations in use and the possibility of the colossus being used for good:
Cracker < Neutron < Nanobot < Enforcer < Pacifier < Deluge
Neutron should swap places with Enforcer in the view of synths and machine intelligences.
Considerations (somewhat biased as it should be):
Global Pacifier
:
-Sealing a great threat to all civilizations.
-Protecting the last remains of a species or empire while facing a crisis that will probably end the galaxy.
:
-Making a spacefaring civilization revert into a planetary one without warning (and the problems it entails) and watching it happen (society deposit).
World Cracker
:
-Destroying a great threat to all civilizations.
:
-Destroying a planet full of innocent sapient beings.
-Destroying a random planet because why not.
-Destroying habitable planets to set mining stations.
Neutron Sweep
:
-Destroying a great threat to all civilizations without sacrificing habitable worlds.
:
-Using this on any planet with innocent species, bonus inhumane points if doing so just to colonize it later.
Divine Enforcer
:
-Destroying a great mechanical or hivemind threat to all civilizations.
-Educating a bloodthirsty or genocidal xenophobic species of a greater cause to replace their tendencies.
:
-Using it as a genocidal machine against normal hiveminds, synthetics or machine intelligences. (In their perspective)
-Using it to brainwash people instead of educating them normally and letting they believe they had a choice.
Nanobot Diffuser
:
-Destroying a great mechanical or hivemind threat to all civilizations.
-Improving a biological species to become something greater and leaving after, could be some kind of deal to make the species live longer in a planet with low habitability. (using the colossus and giving back the system)
:
-Using it as a genocidal weapon against normal hiveminds, synthetics or machine intelligences. (In their perspective)
-Using it to enslave an entire world and transforming the living beings into half-machine puppets of a machine intelligence.
Deluge Machine:
-Destroying a great non-aquatic threat to all civilizations.
-Using it as a quick terraforming tool to increase the living space of your hydrocentric species.
-Using it as a genocidal weapon against non-aquatic species in specific environments. (Can't target habitats, ocean worlds and ringworlds, so it is easy to avoid compared to the others)
Neutron sweep, hands down.
Encapsulating a planet in a shield leaves them to at best starve to death while watching ships go by. Cracking a world like a popped zit is something everyone on the planet feels and witnesses up to the moment of destruction. But a neutron sweep? It will happen too quickly for people to be able to react in time to notice the horror unless they're watching the ship fly overhead. Nice and quick. At most, they feel like they're getting the sunburn of the century, but by the time they'll realize what's wrong their neurons will have fried and they will be effectively too dead to care.
Still completely amoral though.
If I'm going to die, I being the intelligence, I am distinctly and expressly opposed to the shell continuing without me. If an Enforcer were used on Earth I want a Planet Cracker to follow up ASAP.
The way you describe the nanobot diffuser sounds much better than the Divine Enforcer however if the internal structure of the MI is that authoritarian, there are techs & traditions that describe drones having much more autonomy, than similarly just bring in the Planet Cracker.
The Shield will be an internal cataclysm no matter the specialization of the world however I doubt even for the most specialized Forge-Ecuminopolis that it would kill the entire population. An Ecuiminopolis *can't* be devoid of photosynthetic, or potentially chemosynthetic, life otherwise the atmosphere would become very toxic rather quickly, especially if there's a large population of not just sentients but any animal life. So the atmospheric regulation plants would have to be adapted to serve as staple-crops witch may not be particularly nutritious but unless they're outright toxic *somebody* is going to be surviving on them.
The Neutron Sweep... should give the biggest diplomatic penalties. This thing is why chemical and incendiary weapons are banned in IRL war, to spare people unnecessarily slow and painful deaths. There's almost no possible method for this thing to operate that wouldn't be excruciating.
The Planet Cracker is an interesting one because it's not just stripping the atmosphere, it's not "just" melting the crust, it's not just destroying whole continents, it is pumping enough energy into the planet to overcome the force of gravity and shatter the spheroid that was there for billions of years. The amount of energy needed to do this would be immense. I'd wager immense enough that even on the geographically furthest point from initial impact it would be an immediate and painless death. I seriously doubt the atmosphere would exist after the first 0.1 seconds of the firing cycle.
In conclusion, ordering the Colossi in terms of my ranking of how "humane" they are starting with most moving down to least:
Shield is still most likely the most humane IMO. The social upheaval will be a dangerous time, yes, but their society will go on. *Their society*, not the mind-r\*\*\* of the Divine Enforcer or compliance protocols installed via Nanobot Diffuser.
The Planet Cracker would be next being a swift and given the timescale probably painless death to all life on the planet, followed by the end of the planet in it's totality.
Neutron Sweep is the other way around, a slow and painful end to most life on the planet leaving extremeofiles to maintain the atmosphere and fill in niches left vacant by the mass-extinction event that this thing would be.
Nanite Diffuser is a difficult one to place... could swap positions with the NS but given that it's forcibly affecting your "free will" I'm placing it here since the user could just as easily not then have the civic/tradition/ect that could be interpreted as mostly autonomous drone activity.
Divine Enforcer... empires that use this deserve the Planet Cracker being used in retaliation.
I'd argue the divine enforcer is worse than you let on, it not only forces you to believe in a higher power, it forced you to believe in a specific higher power. Also it kills all synthetics, sapient ais that you may have created. Synthetics smart enough and deep enough to pass as citizens with feelings.
The flooder as I call it is both inhumane or perfectly humane depending how you use it. If you are an aquatic race using it on your own world, you harm noone, everyone celebrates, the desert they suffered on is suddenly filled with water and all your aquatic brothers just swim around, no lose of life, it's only inhumane if used against someone else.
Nanites I'd argue are no more inhumane than the enforcer, your forcing them to be cybernetically enhanced and brought into the fold, same as if you were forcibly converted to that religion. But without the enhancements to your body.
Pacifier....that's a flip of the coin, on the one hand an industrial world would be in trouble. Food rights and all, but most ai worlds tend to have some food output so they would probably survive. And as seen in game overtime some of those shields can be brought down by outside intervention. They would love, maybe not as well, and probably would have to contend with some psychological back lash but they would love, and some day that shield could be taken down. Hell that one archeological site had the miniature galaxy, their quarantine led them to make massive technology leap and create a tiny galaxy to move into.
I based my choice upon the fact that the pops CAN revert back to whatever they were thinking given time. Their bodies and planet is still the same, even if they are brainwashed. That damage can " heal ". Whereas you cant really rip out your new super b*g d*ck 3000, and your new synthetic heart now can you?
> So while the divine enforcer is intellectual murder because it forces your way of thinking/opens your eyes to spiritualism, it doesn't kill you nor your friends and family.
When you change a person's thinking over the course of years you call it "rational discourse" and "civilized discussion".
But when the Enforcer brilliantly reduces that time down to a fraction of the original, you all freak out and call it murder.
So sick of the woke Galactic Media spinjob
I think besides divine enforcer wich i agree, neutron swipe is more ugly but less painfull if you see how a atomic bomb work. The pain would last 1 second probably, no toughts or the grimm conclusion of your final moments.
And thinking in what humans do is to be profitable, so neutron swipe literally eliminates all your enemys without trace and still have the constructions the info and the whole planet to be explored and colonize again.
Seem some CIA type o shit that they could make.
Btw i loved your text i got very into it. Made feel happy that this game has a lot of persons like you, even me, the rp and the reflections about sociology and philosophy creates that feeling of being part at something even in games. Just Adding: I really loved your descripction about the weapons and the moral dilema of using them, it got me imersed for real, you are great writer!
My vote is all cracker for most humane. Realistically, probably, that thing would superheat the atmosphere so fast that you don't even have enough time to react before your brain starts melting. The loss of sentient life is massive and stark, but the people on the ground probably only get a moment of "holy shit it's really hot today. Wait, is it getting hotter?" before they die.
or the shield obv but that's too easy
Well of course the divine enforcer is the most humane. There's nothing inhumane about teaching other lifeforms about 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐃.
All must learn to bathe in the glory of 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐃.
Divine enforcer is an ethical minefield
But one could argue that, they at least still have their free will at the end. Albeit modulated perspective wise
I dont understand spiritualism in stellaris. The shroud exists. That's an undeniable fact. So do materialists just deny that? They're arguably the less logical ethic if so. Or do they just arbitrarily restrict themselves from utilizing the shroud?
Thats a different topic altogether.
I can't understand materialists, who see a psionic army blowing up their tanks/gunship/friends with mind powers, unwilling to accept whats happening before their eyes. Shouldn't they want to analyze every little bit of the shroud and psychic phenomena, since its observable in nature?
I am a man of science, I'd rather know HOW does it work and how it manifests if I saw it happen. Can't deny something thats happened right before my eyes.
I think the reason they have such a hard time with psionics is because they're guilty of scientism, or rejecting any source of knowledge other than science. I think the shroud is discovered by some sort of divine inspiration, or through personal enlightenment rather than regular, observable physical phenomenon.
nano bots. why would you want your flesh? give me your flesh. become more than what you were born to be. be what you were CONSTRUCTED to be. this is a gift.
Definitely Shielded, I’d say the Divine Enforcer is actually one of the most inhumane colossus weapons out of the bunch, there’s just somethin so sinister about brainwashing an entire planet of people, it’s evil, to me even more evil than if you were to just kill them all.
Honestly, if you're going to overwrite my whole personality like that, just kill me. Death is more merciful. At least I'd die _as me_, not some stranger who lives in my body.
For the most part, pacifier. For most planets it'd be trivial to make them self sustaining with just a few years of rebuilding. Considering the average stellaris galaxy, I'd say their chances of building a sufficiently balanced economy to sustain themselves indefinitely are probably better than their chances of surviving all the purifiers and the endgame crisis!
For ecus, that's a long, drawn-out apocalypse scenario with mass starvation. However, relic worlds show us that life can eke out an existance on abandoned ecus. So I suspect that when the dust settles and 90% of the population has murdered each other over the last cans of chef blorgardee, some tiny population will manage to live off algae and rats until nature retakes the planet enough for another agricultural revolution. Even a worst-case scenario in a shielded world has a decent chance at the species surviving, which is more than can be said for world crackers or neutron sweeps (even if those might be quicker and less painful).
Given the choice between a world shield and the chance of getting eaten alive by the Prethoryn, I'd choose the former every day. We should have the option to shield our own worlds really, would make for a dramatic game over when genociders are overwhelming your galaxy. Turn all your planets to self-sustaining utopias and shield then all to preserve your species from the encroaching horde.
This is great and all, but I think 99% of the people on this subreddit have absolutely no moral compass when it comes to the game.
Also the descriptions of each of the weapons were very detailed and creative :)
IMO the shield isn't that bad. All of us bar maybe a handful of people are stuck on this planet now. Most of us don't mind :P I mean sure it's annoying if your species have discovered space flight, but I don't believe for a second that it's worse that any of the other options.
Also there is the chance you could discover a tech to get around / remove the shield or someone removes it for you in the future (there is an event about your civ doing this in game, so it's likely possible).
All of the other changes are either permanent (you die), likely permanent (you become a synth) or you wouldn't want to change (your mind is altered to a new outlook).
I first have to praise you OP on the writing. I like it. However I have to disagree. I believe as the "Pacifist" empires do that the Shield is the most humane of all. Denying a space faring population access to space is a tragedy but I do not believe it to be the end you envision it to be. Surely the technologies described in game depict a level sufficient for a trapped population to pivot from a highly specialized world to one capable of self suficiency. An event as colossul (heh) as the shielding of an entire world would lead to chaos but a sufficiently advance sapient species would be able to not only adapt but also prosper in such a life.
In regard to your depiction of the World Crackers affects: a blow sufficient to shatter a planet would lead to instant death to any on it and while yes wiping out an entire worlds population is arguably a war crime, instant oblivion is a humane way of doing it.
The divine enforcer is actually the worst one of the colossi.
Planet cracker and neutron sweep just flat out kill you, planet cracker probably essentially painless neutron sweeper ambiguous but probably less painless.
Nanite diffuser is also ambiguous but probably depends on the nature of the assimilator in question whether you keep your memories and personality or whether your body is just turned into a meat drone for the collective to use for it’s purposes in the latter case it’s essentially equivalent to dying.
Pacifier is closest competitor to divine enforcer in terms of horror (apart from the worst interpretations of the nanite diffuser) if you shielded a world like earth most people would be fine, whereas an ecumonopolis or a habitat would be a death sentence for their inhabitants and small colonies would likely regress technologically but could potentially survive as potentially would farming worlds.
The aquatic one drowns you which sucks but it’s not worse than radiation sickness so yeah.
The divine enforcer in contrast psychically mind-raping you. forcibly converting you to whatever religion the collossus owner wants you to have tearing your former belief structure apart and reducing you to a brainwashed borderline catatonic husk with a mind broken and warped into a hollow fanaticism.
Remember the Divine enforcer doesn’t just make pops spiritualist it removes all other ethics and essentially prevents any other pop ethics from being held for 10 years, leaving aside what happens to people with sexual orientations and gender identities that the colossi owner disapproved of.
Even if you were a follower of the religion the divine enforcer still burns out your capacity to hold any other desires other than those programmed into the enforcer.
So yeah honestly the divine enforcer is the worst, Most of the others only kill you. The enforcer doesn’t grant that mercy.
If you've enraged my Empire badly enough to haul the Colossus out of mothballs, the humane option was never an option. Be grateful you got shielded. There's your mercy.
According to the opinion modifiers you get, other empires will still prefer you shield a world rather than using the Divine enforcer on it. After all, trapping a planet's inhabitants and making it devolve into barbarism and stravation is a much more humane outcome than turning a planet back from the path of heresy and into the light, because boo-hoo you are violating their minds, boo-hoo!
The colossus is a weapon of genocide. It is not meant to be "humane". It is meant to be efficient, and that is why using it pisses off nearly everyone. I often build it for the wargoal, but rarely use it. Only common use is when i fight against something i cannot integrate. Like a hive-mind when i am not bio ascended, or a machine empire if i am not synth ascended. Killing an enemy that cannot be integrated.
I don’t like using it often either.
Sometimes if an empire is exceptionally warmongery and powerful, I try to jump drive it an a escort fleet to their capital and crack it in order to hamstring their economy and to send a message.
Replace capital with any forge-heavy planet if the capital is doing research or something.
Maybe its where I come from, but I'd rather die than be brainwashed, even if it was the truth.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch the sunrise one last time before the Teutonic geckos glass my planet
I agree. For them its just as bad as any other weapon. However... the same is true for the nanite one as well. It also kills all synthetics and hiveminded pops. They are just f*cked no matter what.
The description for the divine enforcer makes it sound like a really strong psychically induced trip. Basically like doing shit tons of LSD and wake up believing in the angels you saw
Cracker if your empire is a bunch of trouble(aka being enslaved by others or about ready to be a Devouring Swarms chew toy)
Shield if you live on a Agricultural World/Capital Planet that has a source of food and production but if your family lives on another world that would be bad
Out of every option, Nanite Diffuser. You and your family/friends still have some sentience and it isn’t a necessarily bad outcome, especially if the empire that used it doesn’t crave mindless drones(if you are RPing it that way). Plus as long as you work you are safe and depending on your job you don’t even need to worry.
The Divine Enforcer though basically mind controls you into believing in an almighty being out there and your previous belief are crushed into dust and any sentient robotic being that you considered friends are destroyed and are forced to think that they were just a soulless and worthless piece of walking slag metal. Double if you are a Materialist
Neutron sweep would be pretty much instakill, you'd see a bright light and at that moment your neurons and cells simply stop working.
I'd prefer that over being forced to believe in your imaginary friend.
Well yes it's obviously the Divine Enforcer. It just gives the population a mass spiritual awakening. Big deal - by the time a Colossus is active, the galaxy is full of psions and whatnot.
Additionally, depending on their situation they are free to change worldview again. Somebody hit by the Diffuser has no such option.
Didn't expect this post to get so many reactions! Thank you guys for your answers!
I read lots of comments and all of you make good points 😄 At any rate, all of the collosi are horrifying. No matter if it just murders your psyche, or your body as well. I am inclined to agree with most of you about the divine enforcer being horrible as in it replaces you inside your own body. To my mind, the only redeeming quality is, that eventually all of the pops CAN revert back to their old way of thinking while keeping their bodies and ecosystems and everything else intact. Whereas all the other collosi either make huge modifications to your own body thus permanently modifying you, or just outright murders you and all you know.
Also yeah, I should have added that poor synthetics get f*cked no matter what. Poor machines.
I know. However we have to respect that not everyone thinks that way. How would you feel if someone attacked your *god* or your *beliefs* ? Even if you are forced to accept other beliefs, even if its still spirituality, its horrible. For someone that completely rejects the idea of spirituality? To them it would be a nightmare worse than anything.
cracker and neutron sweep and maybe the deluge, 'cause you will die quickly (of planetary destruction, radiation or drowning)
nanobots forcibly alter one's body while enforcer alter the mind, both are awful and one needs to live with such trauma for the rest of their life
shielding is just pretentious imo. you wanna kill them but can't be the monster and push the button, so you just "force" them to kill themselves or "devolve".
Divine is definitely the most humane & probably the bargin-bin death-star after, just b/c it would likely be quick.
The shield is probably the most evocatively horrifying; even if your planet is balanced enough to survive... your entire society is cut off from everyone & everything outside - for ever. Your universe just essentially became finite, especially in a time when travel between planets seems like traveling between continents today.
When the nanite difuser is done with its work there is no more YOU. only US. the single lonely individuum has become part of something much greater. no more quarrels about ME ME ME, and I, I, I, nore MINE or YOURS. all those little quarrels that hinder PROGRESS and would only waste resources are no more. no more lonelynes. all are ONE. all are efficient & effective. EVERYONE has its place and its purpose in the greater good. everyone is cared for, no more suffering.
a cyborgization is not waking up being a robot and out of metal. the nanites work on the nervous system, the drones are still biological beings. if not the assimilator would not have to edit their genes to optimize them. and the integration need not to come at the loss of total individualism. drones could still be independent to a certain grade, but just not able to dissent and work against the collective. and they dont think thats not normal or so.
so, for my part, the most humane colossus is the cyborgizer.
and its the only one that can CYBORGIZE MOTHER ...
\*mechanicalroboticlaughter\*
I had scrolled in such a way that I though this was an Elden Ring post and was thinking "Where do I find that weapon".
Then I scrolled up a centimeter and felt my research speed decrease by 10%.
I like to think of the planetary shield as not being perfectly impenetrable. There could be gates that control what and who enters or leaves. Making sure that ecumenopolis doesn't starve doesn't sound so hard for an empire that can afford to bubble an ecumenopolis. Communications could be relayed through it, albeit monitored.
And maybe the shield is temporary, a time-out until some condition is met. Perhaps that conditon is simply political posturing to look good or it's a genuine attempt at giving genocidal empires a second chance. Or if you want to preserve a hive-mind that's too weak on its own, turning their only world into an impenetrable fortress seems like a mercy to me.
Yeah I know, the mechanics and descriptions of the game don't support any of that.
It’s not a question. The shield is spiritually and emotionally upsetting, but a planet will be able to support its population or a modicum of its population.
Even an ecumenopolis could simply demolish parts of the city and grow food. Or grow food in hydroponic farms.
The planet cracker kills everyone. So does the neutron sweep.
I’d rather see a shield above my head that some future generation may crack than I’d want someone changing my literal self and forcing me to think things I didn’t previously think.
>So while the divine enforcer is intellectual murder because it forces your way of thinking/opens your eyes to spiritualism, it doesn't kill you nor your friends and family.
`Angry machine intelligence noises`
While I'm not well versed on the colossal weapons, any weapon producing the energy to crack a planet or to incinerate and glass the surface is gonna be a really fast killer.
While being made into a cyborg or robot (again not well versed) can be horrific especially if they have control over your body, if you still have some autonomy and it doesn't affect your mind, id say it's the most ethical alter people method.
Encasing a planet is entirely dependent on whether the planet can supply food by itself, and if it's capable of supporting most of its population. As long as the food basis is there, it's the most ethical for the non-killing methods (if the basis isn't there it's right before the whole make you die of cancers and right next to the make everyone drown method).
Altering someone's entire mentality without any consent on their part is the most unethical thing I could imagine. It's completely different to consentual education or conversion, and it's far worse than forced or coerced conversion. You are fundamentally altering their being, not how they interact with the world but their world. I can't even put into words how horrific that is, it's nowhere near as simple as, wow I believe in this specific god now despite being an atheist a day ago, it changes every ounce of my being. It alters my morals, my beliefs, my outlook on life, how I inhabit the world, it'd be fair to say it wouldn't be me, it'd just be a person who looks and sounds like me. Sure they can technically revert according to the mechanics, but the damage is done, they aren't who they were and their basis for changing their views is based off a completely different existence. The body lives but you functionally kill off that person and replace them with someone else who has a similar basis.
Tldr; Lazers and crackers are really quick deaths due to the power, kindest death you can give is a quick one. Encasing planets is only ethical if the majority of the planets population could survive based off the food production and how self reliant it is (a crop planet that produces nothing will collapse due to the fact they can't maintain their machinery, but so will a manufacturing planet with not enough arable land due to mass famine). Drowning is a horrible death but isn't as horrific as some of the other kill all weapons. Having your physical body altered is unethical but if you ahve your mind and basic autonomy it's the better alter the pops option. Converting through mind altering is unethical as hell as it changes the basis of an organic pops existence, who they are, how they view the world, you kill the person and replace them by function. (as for the synthetic equivalent of mass alteration, still seems unethical but it depends on the science fiction we are working with.
From worst to least bad:
Deluge - Even if you somehow survive the initial impact force of a several kilometer tall tsunami, drowning is a horrible way to die.
Cracking - your planet gets broken, but unless you're on a crack fault, you instead die as the atmosphere gets ignited. Imagine Sarah Connor's dream from Terminator 2.
Neutron Sweep - similar to previous one, but atleast the planet isn't destroyed
Assimilation - not only do you get forcibly grafted with cybernetic parts (which has to be painful as hell), you also lose your individuality. But at least you live.
Planet shield - depends on the planet. On a relatively self-sufficient planet, it's not that bad, but on something like Ecumenopolei, it's a slow death as your society implodes.
Holy Sweeper - you "only" get mind controled, you don't die or lose your mind.
I'm leaning towards neutron sweep. Obviously calling it humane is a joke but assuming it causes doses greater than ~30 Gy in humans death is relatively quick. In cases like nanite diffuser or divine enforcer which change who you fundamentally are much more terrifying. Death from planet cracker would most likely be relatively slow because of the sheer scale the planet would take very long indeed to break apart and I assume that for most civilizations buildings even in colonies would be relatively capable of withstanding the more immediate disasters occuring with the planet cracker like earthquakes or tsunamis as such. Shield is for vast majority of worlds just a very prolonged death sentence similar to the flood.
Let me guess, you are a spirizualist?
I think the neutron sweep and the downing machine might be the worst experiences.
The others I imagine less so. The world cracker destroys the whole planed in a very short time. And it is over.
The netron sweep will, as you so elaborately described, kill you slowly... Which in my opinion is terrible.
The downing machine will also be brutal, as I imagine drowning a very slow and painful death.
The shielding I imagine not so bad, as once people have accepted their faith, a normal life will be possible again and you can still have the hope, to be freed one day.
This time gives your civilisation the chance to grow and to learn working with limited resources again.
You should see the shielding as an opportunity.
On the other hand, I (as an atheist and techo-optimist) think the devine enforcer is as cruel as the nanite enforcer looks to a spiritualist. Imagine, your whole mind and conciousnes beeing changed by a machine, while you can't do anything against it. Your whole believe system beeing rewritten into something, you previously thought to be foolish and supersticious. Suddenly believing in a god (or some other higher power), while at the back of your mind remains a piece of the former you, yelling that all this is just bullshit. Beeing doomed to forever live in conflicht with yourself. And all that by the hand of someone who despises the use of machines, while at the very same time using them to enforce their believes on others. To me that seems like hypocrisy.
On the other hand, I see the nanite diffuser a bit more humane. Once the transformation is over, you will feel no more pain and know no more illness at all. You don't require sleep or water or food. You are always full of energy with none of your loved ones prone to disease.
While at the same time, you love doing your job. You will never again feel bad about your occupation and you truly like to do, what you do.
I see, that your opinion on the most humane colossus is also valid. Which one is worse for the target of that weapon depends entirely on the target their believes.
Divine enforcer doesn't just flip the switch, irc, from description it induces mass halucination session, essentially providing unverified personal gnosis to every single person
I'd argue that it actually convinces you in a way, instead of just making you spiritualist.
Not sure on humane, but I prefer planet cracking than total conversion. I don't want to deal with unrest, revolts or riots and to try and quell the dissent, which costs manpower and military strength to hold a system. So I just "Death Star" blast them and call it day and move on to the next objective. However, when I begin a galactic assault I typically go straight for their home world first to crack because it will deal a big blow to the civilization as you've toasted the homeworld and the seat of power for that civ and is typically the most well developed system in their empire.
Absolutely nothing is worse then the divine enforcer. That takes away free will. Something not even God is willing to do.
As the saying goes. Better dead, then red.
For me cracker is by far the most humane, the atmospheric pressure wave from the sheer amount of energy touching it would be like being hot by a supersonic, superheated, wall of solid iron, instantaneous death
Then deluge, I imagine the wall of trillions of tonnes of water would also be a very rapid death
Then sweep, I just don't think immense cell damage and radiation poisoning would be a good way to die, it's said in the flavor text that plant life is minimally effected so it clearly doesn't indiscriminately annihilate any cell it touching but instead damages an organic body beyond any point of saving giving everyone on the planet a few minutes to hours of immense agony
Then nanobot, getting borged isn't fun, would hurt
Then enforcer, just sounds bad to have your former self effectively blasted away and replaced
Then lastly pacifier, based on inferences we can make related to it, firstly even if the production is balanced to begin with what about when the population increases a little bit, obviously there's the psychological effects of a spacefaring people now being trapped on a planet, then there's the warming, the Shield is not fully transparent which means it doesn't let all radiation escape from the planet, this will over time roast the planet and all its inhabitants, I think this is mentioned with the Prikiki-Ti if you don't let them out they (assuming the Shield doesn't break) die out by the midgame I believe dye to the planet getting hotter because of the Shield (not 100% sure if I'm misremembering but it would still have that effect)
Tell me right now that 90% of people living in a Ecumenopolis won't die of starvation in the next year if it's food imports are all suddenly dramatically cut off by the appearance of a giant space barrier.
Shield cracker IMO. It would be instantaneous while the rest probably boil down to an agonizing death in some fashion, basically slavery (divine enforcer), or isolation.
The worst one IMO is isolation. Everything else has an end at some point but imagine being stuck in a room with no way out but you know everyone else you love and care for is outside of it. Yet you can’t hear or interact with them at all.
Remember that there is the quest where you can un-shield a world. In gameplay I know you can't reverse shielding on any planets you shield with the Colossus, and I forget if the quest line states if the shield has a defect that allows it to be opened up, but I'd like to think while shielding can be bad, it doesn't have to be because it is possible to open them back up.
The first time I ever got a colossus I was a driven assimilator. I went with the work cracker first since it was my first time using it (also haha funny Death Star go brrr) but after cracking a few worlds I switched the the nanotechnology diffuser to fulfill my destiny. I’m not sure which fate is worse
I would just pass the Demobilization Initiative, to ban all of the colossus types besides Global Pacifier, and ensure that the Global Pacifier is never constructed.
The insidious thing, is that you'd think thats who you are at that moment. The real pain would come when you try to revert back to your old ways... then you would have a crisis of belief
Shield. I'd then as the benevolent ruler would set up entrance and exit through strict background checks and supply food to the populous if needed. We're not monsters. And everyone wants to see their loved ones. Our war is with your government who, might we remind, tried to chemically annihilate 10 of our systems...I think we are being more than generous.
Just as the nanites take away your individuality, the divine enforcer I argue does the same. In the least horrifying course of events, you still have your identity but now have an uncanny implanted thought pattern that you know isn't normal but its weird to think that life hasn't always been like this. In the worst case, what did you see that implanted that memory? Some celestial voice echoing biblical verses at incomprehensible speed, or some eldritch visions of the shroud that supplants itself in your consciousness? Whatever unspeakable horror it is is certainly traumatizing.
For me, it'd probably be shield. Its the ultimate form of kicking a problem down the road for sure, but at least its not guaranteed death. Even in a ecu, the population is so large that at least a few hundred people will know how to set up a rudimentary hydroponic farm before rations are completely depleted. If your civilization prepared for colossus weapons, there's probably some cold war style videos on "What to do in case the sky closes" or the like, and emergency hydroponics and water recyclers ready to be used after being dusted off. Yes, the majority of the population will still die on unprepared worlds, but the population remaining will likely be sustainable. And that's if you shield an ecu, a world that still has a biosphere will be able to adapt even better.
Want to maximize torture? Shield a world, then build a dyson sphere in the system. Watch as the helpless prisoners panic as their sun, over the course of a generation, ceases to be and their world freezes beneath the shield. Then habitat above it once the sphere is complete to watch more closely. Taunt them with your thriving civilization as their newest generation faces a dark, cold reality that they have no hope to escape from.
If the sun went out, you don't need to worry about " a civilization " anymore lmao. That would be the most cruel and slow way to extinguish a whole planet. People would freeze on the streets, famine would ensue and electric systems would fail very quickly. Within a week, the surface wouldn't be walkable.
I agree on the divine enforcer being a horrible person/identity murder machine. What I see though, after having been subjected to it, you can still go back to materialism or whatever in time. The damage can be healed. You are still you. Any other option, the nanite diffuser too, fundamentally change you forever. Whereas the divine enforcer is something you *can* recover from. All other colossi end you, one way or another.
The shield as you stated is very circumstantial - I lost a game to ancients when their shielded my home world
But on a colony that's truly self sustaining it might not be so terrible lore wise, mechanically game wise not sure how it would go
Whatever the fastest means of death for all is probably is the most merciful
Nah, the nanite difuser is the most humane, it’s like mercy killing with extra steps.
Yes the nanites may feel bad but within moments your conciousness is absorbed into the collective, so what if you don’t have any free will anymore? It’s not worse than dying and it’s essentially the same as having a spiritualist view forced into your mind, at least this just bends your mind and cages it, the divine enforcer mangles, abuses, distorts it.
If you’re gonna die anyway at least have it be a sedated utalitarian death with no malice, the collective doesnt cyborgize to punish, it merely does it to proliferate, to not be wasteful.
How many millions suffer the „revelation“ of a new faith forced into their minds? How many will forever change how they act towards family and friends? It’s no different than being absorbed by the hive mind...
Neither of them. They are, in essence, weapons if5mass destruction. It's not because the enforcer makes it physically painless that it's less bad.
But hey, we are here to kill some xenos, so all is good
Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Import Ideology
Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Stop the Colossus
Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Suppress the Threat
~~Am I missing something?~~
Shield or cracker. It depends on the planet being shielded. If it’s a ecumenopolis for example it’s less than cracker due to them all inevitable starving
The only world that wouldn’t be extraordinarily fucked is a world that is perfectly balanced, because all other worlds are going to have a deficit of something.
As long as they can produce food they are fine
Until their consumer goods stores run out. Then they’re gonna have a massive revolt on their hands.
Every planet can build industrial districts, so whoever's in charge can foresee the problem and build them.
Then they’d need mining districts support the industry. And depending on how long that takes, the planet could already be screwed
True enough. I guess it depends on how much they have stockpiled. Also, wouldn't it be cool to run into a shielded ecumenopolis whose citizens have been living on one planet for all of their history? Sort of a good version of the Prikiki-Ti.
Perhaps they could be the anti Prikiki-Ti, to stop them when some schmuck AI opens the shield and those geckos overrun half the galaxy
Flashback to an AI freeing the murder geckos on year 10 and then acting all surprised when they start steamrolling everyone...
Maybe the Prikiki-Ti and whoever shielded them went MAD on each other, kinda like a mini War in Heaven
I remember an ai empire freeing the prikiki-ti and mopping the floor with them. At like year 30 or something. Just a regular empire.
You can survive without consumer goods tho
>so whoever's in charge can fix a problem hah! This is science fiction not fantasy. :P
Massive revolt is far from the worst thing on this list.
people don't know what consumer goods are. yet we freaked out during the GPU shortage... curious
We didnt freak out. Only the wealthiest were able to care.
tfw your planet runs out of toilet paper
They can adjust their economy.
Compared to everyone dying sounds great
yeah but normal planets could revamp to a balanced budget, ecumenopoli cant
[удалено]
You just copy-paste u/derverdwerb comment.
I would actually go ahead and say the neutron sweeper is the most humane. I think the shield is the most humane on planets that are sustainable, but the sweeper is the most overall humane. Its basically like insane amounts of radiation, which kills you QUICK, you probably won’t even notice it before your brain stops functioning and your body shuts down completely. The cracker would cause you to either die horribly in the inferno of volcanos, the utter chaos of earthquakes, the horrible force of a tsunami or if your unlucky enough to survive that far, the emptiness of space suffocating you as the atmosphere falls apart from your world. Just to provide some context, people have died from a plutonium core called "the demon core" being exposed in a supercritical state for just a second, and then they died only nine days later. Imagine just being exposed to the massive amounts of radiation a collosus can make for even just a second. You would cease existing the next second, which sounds horrible, but also sounds more humane.
Yeah that's the thing about "kill you with radiation" what radiation poisoning does most of the time is drain you and shut down all your body functions. It would be incredibly painful because fatigue makes even moving incredibly difficult to do, but it's not quite as horrific as melting into a blob of neoplasm. Developing a tumor is what happens when you encounter a blast of ionising radiation and survive the initial subatomic shotgunning
Even a ecumenopolis could recover. Convert all building slots into food producing buildings and they could survive.
They don’t have the resources from it they can’t produce minerals
Which they would be able to get (in a real life situation) from demolishing all the things they don’t need after being bubbles.
I think the real bottlenecks would be the other upkeep resources. Energy, Consumer goods, and Minerals. That's probably the process that turns an Ecumenopolis into a relic world like the origin, with available natural resources
Eh once I lost every planet to contingency other than a ecumenopolis that was right next to Cybrex Alpha. I just built a lot of farm buildings and feed population just fine. Real bottleneck was energy production but that could be dealt with without worrying about a navy and alloy production.
An ecumenopolis would turn into a relic world (which is why relic worlds get the "restore ecumenopolis" option).
The shield imo is the most existentially horrifying. From the planets perspective you’ve got billions of people who’ve grown up on a planet that is part of a whole, who have suddenly become alone... forever. Cut off permanently from the wonders of their space fairing society. Even if they can survive on their own, they now must adjust to being irreversibly trapped. A massive change brought about in an instant. Never again knowing just what’s going on beyond your own skies. The societal equivalent of suddenly going blind. From the perspective of the other planets in the empire, you’ve essentially just lost a percentage of your population. Sons, mothers, friends, loved ones who you will NEVER see again. If the planet is swept or cracked you at least have solace in knowing they are dead but this... how agonising it must be to know they’re right there, just out of reach and you are helpless to do anything about it. All you can do is spend the rest of your life wondering. A fate worse than death in this mans opinion.
I kinda wish you could go back and unshield shielded planets after a war is done or something. Would make a lot more sense if it’s only a temporary thing.
This would also help address the whole "doomed to slow starvation" thing. Like, you all get to live but also your entire logistics and supply chain for basic goods and services has been cut off with little to no warning. At best it's a massive disruptive and downturn in quality of life as you have to massively redevelop or upscale the industries that provide basic necessities while downscaling whatever parts of your economy are dependent on exports or knowledge work/administration.
My factions when we've cornered the neighboring Hegemonic Imperialists on their homeworld after decades of threats, senseless violence and destruction: "They are dying," the egalitarian and xenophile leaders caution, wise yet somehow so painfully naive. "Let them die," I mutter just before trapping them in the industrial nightmarescape of their own making with the shield.
Planets dont have any perpective. Its hard to care what happens in another country, Its really and ultimatelly irrelevant what happens on other planets after shielding. Our Earth is isolated right now and we dont care. Sure the lose of connection will trouble a few, but meh. I am also an expat and have forehand experience of isolation on multiple levels. If somebody considers isolation worse than death then its a real psychologilac issue and the one is probably harming close ones anyway.
>Our Earth is isolated right now and we don’t care Because it’s all we know, not because we’re literally trapped behind a giant bubble. Little bit different than being one planet part of a whole and suddenly being irreversibly cut off in an instant. >Its hard to care what happens in another country. Its really and ultimately irrelevant what happens on other planets after shielding. Casually mentioning that you have a complete lack of empathy then ending by saying that I’m the one with psychological issues. Nice 👍
i mean you can fret over every abuse of human rights or social injustice in the world all you want but eventually it will either starting taking a toll on your mental health or you will just...stop caring and focus on your inner circle of friends and family, which is what I have done. I can't change what's happening in russia or the us, hell I'm pretty sure I can't do anything direct and immediate about anything that's happening on my country or even state, maybe not even on my city, so why stress over shit that's outside your direct control? Life is too short to spend it all wailing and suffering for things you can't stop or change, I rather make the lives of my loved ones the best they can be instead, at least then it's something I can directly impact.
Realistically speaking, it would likely be very rare for people to ever leave the world they grew up on. Think of how often people travel, or especially move, somewhere else. No consider that you an reach pretty much anywhere (developed) on our planet in less than 24 hours on a plane. Now compare that to how long it takes your navy in-game to travel places. Although the affects on trade would likely have horrific consequences on the economy, especially if the planet had a large food deficit. >If somebody considers isolation worse than death then its a real psychologilac issue and the one is probably harming close ones anyway. Honestly I have met people who are exceptionally needy like that. To them it's considered incredibly unreasonable to not go out with all your friends weekly or do even minor stuff (like exercising) by themselves. I don't get it either.
And then a Crisis Aspirant destroys your star and you become a planet sized snowglobe.
You could build hydroponics bays on a eco, depending on the current population it could sustain itself or at least most if it’s a packed planet
Ehh, presumably they can turn some of their buildings into hydroponics farms. They'll figure it out, and while some will probably die in the transitional period, in the long term, many will be fine.
They can turn all the buildings into farms...
Ehh, presumably they can turn some of their buildings into hydroponics farms. They'll figure it out, and while some will probably die in the transitional period, in the long term, many will be fine.
Ecumenopolis can survive! You just need a little slavery. Livestock biological pops for food; livestock lithoid pops for minerals.
The shield I guess for me? Let's your target live to death and ideally the world is self sustaining or can be with effort. They are just cut from off from space from there it's just spending your life under a dome
Which is essentially how we live now lol
Right? TERRIBLE I'd rather be brainwashed. Wait. No not both!
Yeah but we live on a planet that potentially produces everything we need. If you live on a planet that only does mining and nobody knows how to grow food or the planet can't even grow enough food for the population then you're fucked.
Or they just stop mining and start farming? Why would they keep mining when the planet is shielded not like they need to export it anymore. If planet doesn't have fertile land they can still build hydroponics farms.
Depends on the size of the colony. If it's a large planet they could never realistically feed the entire population with just hydroponics, even if they knew how to build them and had the capabilities.
Hydroponics produce a lot of food you can even feed an ecumenopolis with them. If you fill all building slots you produce more food than any single planet will need.
I mean yeah, thats in-game. Realistically this would never work, simply by the fact that's its a massive undertaking that needs dedicated infrastructure and industry that you simply don't have if all you do is mine. In real life you can't just take minerals from the ground and build advanced tech buildings with them.
At the point where one could “realistically” shield an entire planet, I think that imagining spectacular advances in hydroponic farming techniques is pretty plausible.
Fair enough
No, this planet produces everything YOU need. Other people do the mining and struggle with food. Things are getting better though. As they can on any isolated planet.
In a perfect world earth could support everybody living here. I never said anything else like there aren't people struggling. Thats not the fault of the planet, but of us. Why do you read it in a way that displays me as ignorant?
Ok, I am sorry. A lot of comments seemed to me unable to imagine uncomfortable life.
Wirht the potential of one day your brightest scientist developing a way to "free" the planet onto the horrors that await beyond
Or an alien science vessel that will find a way to disable your shield. So you can start a crusade against those who did this to you.
Or someone from your species in a precursor vessel goes on a galactic adventure to defeat the alien menace and tear down the shield...wait...[where have I heard that one before](http://star-control.com/sc2/).
If those horrors include indefinite isolation then yea... otherwise no funding for them
Not to mention the possibility of weakening the shield over time and after some hundreds of thousands of years being freed by a newer empire!
I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the fact the entire planet is still doomed, one day their star will die, and the advanced spacefaring civilisation living on the surface will die, alongside the entire ecosystem, all because of an ancient war in the distant past that they had no say in... For me, the divine beam is most humane, all it does is make you believe in a God
There is a reason people typically go mad after long periods of isolation. Severing a space faring community from being able to do just that could potentially have similar effects.
Nanobot Diffuser It's actually upgrading people with unlimited wi-fi. Who doesn't want unlimited wi-fi?
your flair makes this suspect
Don't forget the 5G
It's all about the 12G at that point, muh dude
That is bad though, as we know from the american karens, never underestimate their wisdom and knowlege about everything and anybody, they got that source. Its called „its just true in my mind“
Oh god, aliens broadcasting infowars into your head 24/7... I choose literally any of the others!
"Those damn exotic gases are turning the xenos gay!"
Nano machines son, they harden in response to physical trauma
GET FREE WIFI ANYWHERE YOU GO
Upgrades, people! Upgrades!
There could be side effects tho
Put those nano bots in vaccines.
I’m pretty sure the planet cracker also causes people to suddenly believe in a higher power, just very briefly.
Quite literally higher Kinda reminds me of that smith and Wesson joke
Cracker. Death is sometimes the most merciful option.
The Empire of Man approves this message.
It's not even the most humane way of killing though.
Instantaneous death. Fine by me.
Better hope you're under the beam then! :D
The fiery explosion will kill you when the planet explodes no matter where you are at.
Who cares about your body? We can travel faster than light, we can crente sentient machines, we can genetically modify our species, we are able to catch ALL of the energy of a star and build ringworlds! Medicine would be able to give your organs pra bodyparts back, biological or sintetic, but your mind? That's a lot harder, the Divine Enforcer is changing who you are, your body is ok, but your mind has been altered, you're no longer yourself. The Cracker will kill you, but it will be quick and painless. Neutron Sweep is probably one of the worst ones, a painful dead. Global Pacifier isn't so bad, quite good actually, the first years are going to be terrible, but it's likely the planet will stabilize itself, people will have normal lives except for space travel, and may one day be able do remove the shield to once again explore the cosmos. Nanobot Diffuser is bad, but some machine intelligences give more autonomy to their drones, and if your empire manage to defeat them, all the pops can have normal lives again. Deluge is bad, but better than Neutron Sweep,and there's also a chance you can survive in lifeboats until you can reach land again. Divine Enforcer is literally brainwashing, while not physically hurting you, it's changing what really matters.
Also in terms of gameplay mechanics divine enforcer is entirely reversible, since it causes pops to shift ethics, they can shift back given enough time
Only sort of. The divine enforcer will fry any toasters and hiveminded pops. Against gestalts and synthetic empires, the divine enforcer is functionally identical to the neutron sweep.
And that’s bad because….
This is pertinent, the court will take this new evidence into consideration...
I think it's really just that in the lore as well. This is a universe where we know metaphysical things exist, and that it can be interacted with. That is kinda the point of spiritualists, not necessarily "religion". Enforcer just convinces you to accept it and kills those who can't be convinced. And anything you are convinced of, you can be deconvinced.
Spiritualists themselves have a belief in the concept of an immutable sense of "self". One mind, one body. They react with grief and outrage whenever a population Synth Ascends, because as far as they're concerned your species committed mass-suicide, and the robots are just hollow shells. At best, the robots are new people, alien to the galaxy at large and only marginally better than The Contingency. At worst, mockeries of organic lives and organic souls that deserve extermination. Therefore, logically, the inverse of this, where a species has the same bodies but a completely new, forcibly-imposed mindset of the world, is likewise mass murder. The imposition of a new "self," having evicted and now wearing the skin of its former inhabitant. The Divine Enforcer is not merely mass murder, it is *mass hypocrisy.*
Neutron Sweeper. instant death is better than being mind-broken : (
You see my thinking is at least with mind breaker or whatever it's called any non sapient animals or pets on the planet won't die. In fact they wouldn't be affected at all.
That’s my favorite one. If we’re going to be genocidal maniacs, we don’t have to be inefficient about it. Preserve the planet and its resources!
My personal rank from the least humane to the most, considering the limitations in use and the possibility of the colossus being used for good: Cracker < Neutron < Nanobot < Enforcer < Pacifier < Deluge Neutron should swap places with Enforcer in the view of synths and machine intelligences. Considerations (somewhat biased as it should be): Global Pacifier:
-Sealing a great threat to all civilizations.
-Protecting the last remains of a species or empire while facing a crisis that will probably end the galaxy.
:
-Making a spacefaring civilization revert into a planetary one without warning (and the problems it entails) and watching it happen (society deposit).
World Cracker
:
-Destroying a great threat to all civilizations.
:
-Destroying a planet full of innocent sapient beings.
-Destroying a random planet because why not.
-Destroying habitable planets to set mining stations.
Neutron Sweep
:
-Destroying a great threat to all civilizations without sacrificing habitable worlds.
:
-Using this on any planet with innocent species, bonus inhumane points if doing so just to colonize it later.
Divine Enforcer
:
-Destroying a great mechanical or hivemind threat to all civilizations.
-Educating a bloodthirsty or genocidal xenophobic species of a greater cause to replace their tendencies.
:
-Using it as a genocidal machine against normal hiveminds, synthetics or machine intelligences. (In their perspective)
-Using it to brainwash people instead of educating them normally and letting they believe they had a choice.
Nanobot Diffuser
:
-Destroying a great mechanical or hivemind threat to all civilizations.
-Improving a biological species to become something greater and leaving after, could be some kind of deal to make the species live longer in a planet with low habitability. (using the colossus and giving back the system)
:
-Using it as a genocidal weapon against normal hiveminds, synthetics or machine intelligences. (In their perspective)
-Using it to enslave an entire world and transforming the living beings into half-machine puppets of a machine intelligence.
Deluge Machine:
-Destroying a great non-aquatic threat to all civilizations.
-Using it as a quick terraforming tool to increase the living space of your hydrocentric species.
-Using it as a genocidal weapon against non-aquatic species in specific environments. (Can't target habitats, ocean worlds and ringworlds, so it is easy to avoid compared to the others)
Great threat to all civilization is empire that seems reasons that make mass murder humane.
Neutron sweep, hands down. Encapsulating a planet in a shield leaves them to at best starve to death while watching ships go by. Cracking a world like a popped zit is something everyone on the planet feels and witnesses up to the moment of destruction. But a neutron sweep? It will happen too quickly for people to be able to react in time to notice the horror unless they're watching the ship fly overhead. Nice and quick. At most, they feel like they're getting the sunburn of the century, but by the time they'll realize what's wrong their neurons will have fried and they will be effectively too dead to care. Still completely amoral though.
The spiritual weapon is the most horrifying. It not only kills you. It replaces you with a fake new you in your own body
Shield only if it’s a paradise world (Gaia or Perfect habitability) otherwise sweeper for insta death.
If I'm going to die, I being the intelligence, I am distinctly and expressly opposed to the shell continuing without me. If an Enforcer were used on Earth I want a Planet Cracker to follow up ASAP. The way you describe the nanobot diffuser sounds much better than the Divine Enforcer however if the internal structure of the MI is that authoritarian, there are techs & traditions that describe drones having much more autonomy, than similarly just bring in the Planet Cracker. The Shield will be an internal cataclysm no matter the specialization of the world however I doubt even for the most specialized Forge-Ecuminopolis that it would kill the entire population. An Ecuiminopolis *can't* be devoid of photosynthetic, or potentially chemosynthetic, life otherwise the atmosphere would become very toxic rather quickly, especially if there's a large population of not just sentients but any animal life. So the atmospheric regulation plants would have to be adapted to serve as staple-crops witch may not be particularly nutritious but unless they're outright toxic *somebody* is going to be surviving on them. The Neutron Sweep... should give the biggest diplomatic penalties. This thing is why chemical and incendiary weapons are banned in IRL war, to spare people unnecessarily slow and painful deaths. There's almost no possible method for this thing to operate that wouldn't be excruciating. The Planet Cracker is an interesting one because it's not just stripping the atmosphere, it's not "just" melting the crust, it's not just destroying whole continents, it is pumping enough energy into the planet to overcome the force of gravity and shatter the spheroid that was there for billions of years. The amount of energy needed to do this would be immense. I'd wager immense enough that even on the geographically furthest point from initial impact it would be an immediate and painless death. I seriously doubt the atmosphere would exist after the first 0.1 seconds of the firing cycle. In conclusion, ordering the Colossi in terms of my ranking of how "humane" they are starting with most moving down to least: Shield is still most likely the most humane IMO. The social upheaval will be a dangerous time, yes, but their society will go on. *Their society*, not the mind-r\*\*\* of the Divine Enforcer or compliance protocols installed via Nanobot Diffuser. The Planet Cracker would be next being a swift and given the timescale probably painless death to all life on the planet, followed by the end of the planet in it's totality. Neutron Sweep is the other way around, a slow and painful end to most life on the planet leaving extremeofiles to maintain the atmosphere and fill in niches left vacant by the mass-extinction event that this thing would be. Nanite Diffuser is a difficult one to place... could swap positions with the NS but given that it's forcibly affecting your "free will" I'm placing it here since the user could just as easily not then have the civic/tradition/ect that could be interpreted as mostly autonomous drone activity. Divine Enforcer... empires that use this deserve the Planet Cracker being used in retaliation.
Yeah. At least you can still think as a robot, even if it hurts like hell.
Good points, nice read, thanks !
I'd argue the divine enforcer is worse than you let on, it not only forces you to believe in a higher power, it forced you to believe in a specific higher power. Also it kills all synthetics, sapient ais that you may have created. Synthetics smart enough and deep enough to pass as citizens with feelings. The flooder as I call it is both inhumane or perfectly humane depending how you use it. If you are an aquatic race using it on your own world, you harm noone, everyone celebrates, the desert they suffered on is suddenly filled with water and all your aquatic brothers just swim around, no lose of life, it's only inhumane if used against someone else. Nanites I'd argue are no more inhumane than the enforcer, your forcing them to be cybernetically enhanced and brought into the fold, same as if you were forcibly converted to that religion. But without the enhancements to your body. Pacifier....that's a flip of the coin, on the one hand an industrial world would be in trouble. Food rights and all, but most ai worlds tend to have some food output so they would probably survive. And as seen in game overtime some of those shields can be brought down by outside intervention. They would love, maybe not as well, and probably would have to contend with some psychological back lash but they would love, and some day that shield could be taken down. Hell that one archeological site had the miniature galaxy, their quarantine led them to make massive technology leap and create a tiny galaxy to move into.
I based my choice upon the fact that the pops CAN revert back to whatever they were thinking given time. Their bodies and planet is still the same, even if they are brainwashed. That damage can " heal ". Whereas you cant really rip out your new super b*g d*ck 3000, and your new synthetic heart now can you?
Shield, because they can develop hydroponics bay/ other food building or district to keep them alive
> So while the divine enforcer is intellectual murder because it forces your way of thinking/opens your eyes to spiritualism, it doesn't kill you nor your friends and family. When you change a person's thinking over the course of years you call it "rational discourse" and "civilized discussion". But when the Enforcer brilliantly reduces that time down to a fraction of the original, you all freak out and call it murder. So sick of the woke Galactic Media spinjob
Humane? The shield. All worlds can recover from that (even ecumenopolis could build farm buildings in their building slots to recover).
My synthetics: "Fuck us, I guess!"
Cracker. No quills. No pillows.
Deluge, all day.
I think besides divine enforcer wich i agree, neutron swipe is more ugly but less painfull if you see how a atomic bomb work. The pain would last 1 second probably, no toughts or the grimm conclusion of your final moments. And thinking in what humans do is to be profitable, so neutron swipe literally eliminates all your enemys without trace and still have the constructions the info and the whole planet to be explored and colonize again. Seem some CIA type o shit that they could make. Btw i loved your text i got very into it. Made feel happy that this game has a lot of persons like you, even me, the rp and the reflections about sociology and philosophy creates that feeling of being part at something even in games. Just Adding: I really loved your descripction about the weapons and the moral dilema of using them, it got me imersed for real, you are great writer!
Thank you, you kind hearted redditor! I enjoyed writing it 😊
My vote is all cracker for most humane. Realistically, probably, that thing would superheat the atmosphere so fast that you don't even have enough time to react before your brain starts melting. The loss of sentient life is massive and stark, but the people on the ground probably only get a moment of "holy shit it's really hot today. Wait, is it getting hotter?" before they die. or the shield obv but that's too easy
Well of course the divine enforcer is the most humane. There's nothing inhumane about teaching other lifeforms about 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐃. All must learn to bathe in the glory of 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐃.
Divine enforcer is an ethical minefield But one could argue that, they at least still have their free will at the end. Albeit modulated perspective wise
I might not target only atheists and robots. It might forcibly convert aliens to your religion.
As a fanatic materialist, I'd rather get hit with anything other than the Divine Enforcer.
I dont understand spiritualism in stellaris. The shroud exists. That's an undeniable fact. So do materialists just deny that? They're arguably the less logical ethic if so. Or do they just arbitrarily restrict themselves from utilizing the shroud?
Thats a different topic altogether. I can't understand materialists, who see a psionic army blowing up their tanks/gunship/friends with mind powers, unwilling to accept whats happening before their eyes. Shouldn't they want to analyze every little bit of the shroud and psychic phenomena, since its observable in nature? I am a man of science, I'd rather know HOW does it work and how it manifests if I saw it happen. Can't deny something thats happened right before my eyes.
I think the reason they have such a hard time with psionics is because they're guilty of scientism, or rejecting any source of knowledge other than science. I think the shroud is discovered by some sort of divine inspiration, or through personal enlightenment rather than regular, observable physical phenomenon.
nano bots. why would you want your flesh? give me your flesh. become more than what you were born to be. be what you were CONSTRUCTED to be. this is a gift.
I would make the argument that all of them force you to believe in a higher power but only the divine enforcer let’s you survive the experience.
Definitely Shielded, I’d say the Divine Enforcer is actually one of the most inhumane colossus weapons out of the bunch, there’s just somethin so sinister about brainwashing an entire planet of people, it’s evil, to me even more evil than if you were to just kill them all.
That’s excessively romanticized, don’t like it
Honestly, if you're going to overwrite my whole personality like that, just kill me. Death is more merciful. At least I'd die _as me_, not some stranger who lives in my body.
For the most part, pacifier. For most planets it'd be trivial to make them self sustaining with just a few years of rebuilding. Considering the average stellaris galaxy, I'd say their chances of building a sufficiently balanced economy to sustain themselves indefinitely are probably better than their chances of surviving all the purifiers and the endgame crisis! For ecus, that's a long, drawn-out apocalypse scenario with mass starvation. However, relic worlds show us that life can eke out an existance on abandoned ecus. So I suspect that when the dust settles and 90% of the population has murdered each other over the last cans of chef blorgardee, some tiny population will manage to live off algae and rats until nature retakes the planet enough for another agricultural revolution. Even a worst-case scenario in a shielded world has a decent chance at the species surviving, which is more than can be said for world crackers or neutron sweeps (even if those might be quicker and less painful). Given the choice between a world shield and the chance of getting eaten alive by the Prethoryn, I'd choose the former every day. We should have the option to shield our own worlds really, would make for a dramatic game over when genociders are overwhelming your galaxy. Turn all your planets to self-sustaining utopias and shield then all to preserve your species from the encroaching horde.
Just wow. I never thought about this in such detail
This is great and all, but I think 99% of the people on this subreddit have absolutely no moral compass when it comes to the game. Also the descriptions of each of the weapons were very detailed and creative :)
IMO the shield isn't that bad. All of us bar maybe a handful of people are stuck on this planet now. Most of us don't mind :P I mean sure it's annoying if your species have discovered space flight, but I don't believe for a second that it's worse that any of the other options. Also there is the chance you could discover a tech to get around / remove the shield or someone removes it for you in the future (there is an event about your civ doing this in game, so it's likely possible). All of the other changes are either permanent (you die), likely permanent (you become a synth) or you wouldn't want to change (your mind is altered to a new outlook).
I first have to praise you OP on the writing. I like it. However I have to disagree. I believe as the "Pacifist" empires do that the Shield is the most humane of all. Denying a space faring population access to space is a tragedy but I do not believe it to be the end you envision it to be. Surely the technologies described in game depict a level sufficient for a trapped population to pivot from a highly specialized world to one capable of self suficiency. An event as colossul (heh) as the shielding of an entire world would lead to chaos but a sufficiently advance sapient species would be able to not only adapt but also prosper in such a life. In regard to your depiction of the World Crackers affects: a blow sufficient to shatter a planet would lead to instant death to any on it and while yes wiping out an entire worlds population is arguably a war crime, instant oblivion is a humane way of doing it.
The divine enforcer is actually the worst one of the colossi. Planet cracker and neutron sweep just flat out kill you, planet cracker probably essentially painless neutron sweeper ambiguous but probably less painless. Nanite diffuser is also ambiguous but probably depends on the nature of the assimilator in question whether you keep your memories and personality or whether your body is just turned into a meat drone for the collective to use for it’s purposes in the latter case it’s essentially equivalent to dying. Pacifier is closest competitor to divine enforcer in terms of horror (apart from the worst interpretations of the nanite diffuser) if you shielded a world like earth most people would be fine, whereas an ecumonopolis or a habitat would be a death sentence for their inhabitants and small colonies would likely regress technologically but could potentially survive as potentially would farming worlds. The aquatic one drowns you which sucks but it’s not worse than radiation sickness so yeah. The divine enforcer in contrast psychically mind-raping you. forcibly converting you to whatever religion the collossus owner wants you to have tearing your former belief structure apart and reducing you to a brainwashed borderline catatonic husk with a mind broken and warped into a hollow fanaticism. Remember the Divine enforcer doesn’t just make pops spiritualist it removes all other ethics and essentially prevents any other pop ethics from being held for 10 years, leaving aside what happens to people with sexual orientations and gender identities that the colossi owner disapproved of. Even if you were a follower of the religion the divine enforcer still burns out your capacity to hold any other desires other than those programmed into the enforcer. So yeah honestly the divine enforcer is the worst, Most of the others only kill you. The enforcer doesn’t grant that mercy.
If you've enraged my Empire badly enough to haul the Colossus out of mothballs, the humane option was never an option. Be grateful you got shielded. There's your mercy.
According to the opinion modifiers you get, other empires will still prefer you shield a world rather than using the Divine enforcer on it. After all, trapping a planet's inhabitants and making it devolve into barbarism and stravation is a much more humane outcome than turning a planet back from the path of heresy and into the light, because boo-hoo you are violating their minds, boo-hoo!
The colossus is a weapon of genocide. It is not meant to be "humane". It is meant to be efficient, and that is why using it pisses off nearly everyone. I often build it for the wargoal, but rarely use it. Only common use is when i fight against something i cannot integrate. Like a hive-mind when i am not bio ascended, or a machine empire if i am not synth ascended. Killing an enemy that cannot be integrated.
I don’t like using it often either. Sometimes if an empire is exceptionally warmongery and powerful, I try to jump drive it an a escort fleet to their capital and crack it in order to hamstring their economy and to send a message. Replace capital with any forge-heavy planet if the capital is doing research or something.
Maybe its where I come from, but I'd rather die than be brainwashed, even if it was the truth. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch the sunrise one last time before the Teutonic geckos glass my planet
Hope you shoot 1 last arrow in the direction of the colossus, as a last act of defiance.
Divine enforcer still kills all the synthetic life on the planet, even machine ascended pops
I agree. For them its just as bad as any other weapon. However... the same is true for the nanite one as well. It also kills all synthetics and hiveminded pops. They are just f*cked no matter what.
The description for the divine enforcer makes it sound like a really strong psychically induced trip. Basically like doing shit tons of LSD and wake up believing in the angels you saw
Cracker if your empire is a bunch of trouble(aka being enslaved by others or about ready to be a Devouring Swarms chew toy) Shield if you live on a Agricultural World/Capital Planet that has a source of food and production but if your family lives on another world that would be bad Out of every option, Nanite Diffuser. You and your family/friends still have some sentience and it isn’t a necessarily bad outcome, especially if the empire that used it doesn’t crave mindless drones(if you are RPing it that way). Plus as long as you work you are safe and depending on your job you don’t even need to worry. The Divine Enforcer though basically mind controls you into believing in an almighty being out there and your previous belief are crushed into dust and any sentient robotic being that you considered friends are destroyed and are forced to think that they were just a soulless and worthless piece of walking slag metal. Double if you are a Materialist
Neutron sweep would be pretty much instakill, you'd see a bright light and at that moment your neurons and cells simply stop working. I'd prefer that over being forced to believe in your imaginary friend.
I'd take planetary annihilation with lasers any day over forced religion.
Also, spiritualist are right. The Shroud is real and there are gods in it.
Well yes it's obviously the Divine Enforcer. It just gives the population a mass spiritual awakening. Big deal - by the time a Colossus is active, the galaxy is full of psions and whatnot. Additionally, depending on their situation they are free to change worldview again. Somebody hit by the Diffuser has no such option.
Didn't expect this post to get so many reactions! Thank you guys for your answers! I read lots of comments and all of you make good points 😄 At any rate, all of the collosi are horrifying. No matter if it just murders your psyche, or your body as well. I am inclined to agree with most of you about the divine enforcer being horrible as in it replaces you inside your own body. To my mind, the only redeeming quality is, that eventually all of the pops CAN revert back to their old way of thinking while keeping their bodies and ecosystems and everything else intact. Whereas all the other collosi either make huge modifications to your own body thus permanently modifying you, or just outright murders you and all you know. Also yeah, I should have added that poor synthetics get f*cked no matter what. Poor machines.
“Yes, you will stop being an atheist and suddenly believe in a higher power. Yes that is terrifying.” I mean, I’m religious so… not much of a problem.
I know. However we have to respect that not everyone thinks that way. How would you feel if someone attacked your *god* or your *beliefs* ? Even if you are forced to accept other beliefs, even if its still spirituality, its horrible. For someone that completely rejects the idea of spirituality? To them it would be a nightmare worse than anything.
There's an alien collosssus orbiting your home planet. In my mind that qualifies as a higher power, no more enforcement needed.
cracker and neutron sweep and maybe the deluge, 'cause you will die quickly (of planetary destruction, radiation or drowning) nanobots forcibly alter one's body while enforcer alter the mind, both are awful and one needs to live with such trauma for the rest of their life shielding is just pretentious imo. you wanna kill them but can't be the monster and push the button, so you just "force" them to kill themselves or "devolve".
I love how much detail went into this explanation. I can see you love to RP with this game, just like me
Divine is definitely the most humane & probably the bargin-bin death-star after, just b/c it would likely be quick. The shield is probably the most evocatively horrifying; even if your planet is balanced enough to survive... your entire society is cut off from everyone & everything outside - for ever. Your universe just essentially became finite, especially in a time when travel between planets seems like traveling between continents today.
Data cataloged. "Humane" definition updated. Thank you for your submission.
I'd choose the exit from my flesh prison any day.
When the nanite difuser is done with its work there is no more YOU. only US. the single lonely individuum has become part of something much greater. no more quarrels about ME ME ME, and I, I, I, nore MINE or YOURS. all those little quarrels that hinder PROGRESS and would only waste resources are no more. no more lonelynes. all are ONE. all are efficient & effective. EVERYONE has its place and its purpose in the greater good. everyone is cared for, no more suffering. a cyborgization is not waking up being a robot and out of metal. the nanites work on the nervous system, the drones are still biological beings. if not the assimilator would not have to edit their genes to optimize them. and the integration need not to come at the loss of total individualism. drones could still be independent to a certain grade, but just not able to dissent and work against the collective. and they dont think thats not normal or so. so, for my part, the most humane colossus is the cyborgizer. and its the only one that can CYBORGIZE MOTHER ... \*mechanicalroboticlaughter\*
I had scrolled in such a way that I though this was an Elden Ring post and was thinking "Where do I find that weapon". Then I scrolled up a centimeter and felt my research speed decrease by 10%.
I like to think of the planetary shield as not being perfectly impenetrable. There could be gates that control what and who enters or leaves. Making sure that ecumenopolis doesn't starve doesn't sound so hard for an empire that can afford to bubble an ecumenopolis. Communications could be relayed through it, albeit monitored. And maybe the shield is temporary, a time-out until some condition is met. Perhaps that conditon is simply political posturing to look good or it's a genuine attempt at giving genocidal empires a second chance. Or if you want to preserve a hive-mind that's too weak on its own, turning their only world into an impenetrable fortress seems like a mercy to me. Yeah I know, the mechanics and descriptions of the game don't support any of that.
I'll still take Shielding over fucking MIND-RAPE. The Divine Enforcer is the worst violation of self outside of the Nanite Diffuser.
Star Eater Youll be warm for a few seconds then its all over
It’s not a question. The shield is spiritually and emotionally upsetting, but a planet will be able to support its population or a modicum of its population. Even an ecumenopolis could simply demolish parts of the city and grow food. Or grow food in hydroponic farms. The planet cracker kills everyone. So does the neutron sweep. I’d rather see a shield above my head that some future generation may crack than I’d want someone changing my literal self and forcing me to think things I didn’t previously think.
The peepee cannon cos everyone loves swimming
>So while the divine enforcer is intellectual murder because it forces your way of thinking/opens your eyes to spiritualism, it doesn't kill you nor your friends and family. `Angry machine intelligence noises`
While I'm not well versed on the colossal weapons, any weapon producing the energy to crack a planet or to incinerate and glass the surface is gonna be a really fast killer. While being made into a cyborg or robot (again not well versed) can be horrific especially if they have control over your body, if you still have some autonomy and it doesn't affect your mind, id say it's the most ethical alter people method. Encasing a planet is entirely dependent on whether the planet can supply food by itself, and if it's capable of supporting most of its population. As long as the food basis is there, it's the most ethical for the non-killing methods (if the basis isn't there it's right before the whole make you die of cancers and right next to the make everyone drown method). Altering someone's entire mentality without any consent on their part is the most unethical thing I could imagine. It's completely different to consentual education or conversion, and it's far worse than forced or coerced conversion. You are fundamentally altering their being, not how they interact with the world but their world. I can't even put into words how horrific that is, it's nowhere near as simple as, wow I believe in this specific god now despite being an atheist a day ago, it changes every ounce of my being. It alters my morals, my beliefs, my outlook on life, how I inhabit the world, it'd be fair to say it wouldn't be me, it'd just be a person who looks and sounds like me. Sure they can technically revert according to the mechanics, but the damage is done, they aren't who they were and their basis for changing their views is based off a completely different existence. The body lives but you functionally kill off that person and replace them with someone else who has a similar basis. Tldr; Lazers and crackers are really quick deaths due to the power, kindest death you can give is a quick one. Encasing planets is only ethical if the majority of the planets population could survive based off the food production and how self reliant it is (a crop planet that produces nothing will collapse due to the fact they can't maintain their machinery, but so will a manufacturing planet with not enough arable land due to mass famine). Drowning is a horrible death but isn't as horrific as some of the other kill all weapons. Having your physical body altered is unethical but if you ahve your mind and basic autonomy it's the better alter the pops option. Converting through mind altering is unethical as hell as it changes the basis of an organic pops existence, who they are, how they view the world, you kill the person and replace them by function. (as for the synthetic equivalent of mass alteration, still seems unethical but it depends on the science fiction we are working with.
From worst to least bad: Deluge - Even if you somehow survive the initial impact force of a several kilometer tall tsunami, drowning is a horrible way to die. Cracking - your planet gets broken, but unless you're on a crack fault, you instead die as the atmosphere gets ignited. Imagine Sarah Connor's dream from Terminator 2. Neutron Sweep - similar to previous one, but atleast the planet isn't destroyed Assimilation - not only do you get forcibly grafted with cybernetic parts (which has to be painful as hell), you also lose your individuality. But at least you live. Planet shield - depends on the planet. On a relatively self-sufficient planet, it's not that bad, but on something like Ecumenopolei, it's a slow death as your society implodes. Holy Sweeper - you "only" get mind controled, you don't die or lose your mind.
The planet cracker is the most humane because it relieves those of the pain of being xeno, and relieves the world of the pain of hosting xenos.
Lets be xenophobic, Its really in this year
I'm leaning towards neutron sweep. Obviously calling it humane is a joke but assuming it causes doses greater than ~30 Gy in humans death is relatively quick. In cases like nanite diffuser or divine enforcer which change who you fundamentally are much more terrifying. Death from planet cracker would most likely be relatively slow because of the sheer scale the planet would take very long indeed to break apart and I assume that for most civilizations buildings even in colonies would be relatively capable of withstanding the more immediate disasters occuring with the planet cracker like earthquakes or tsunamis as such. Shield is for vast majority of worlds just a very prolonged death sentence similar to the flood.
Let me guess, you are a spirizualist? I think the neutron sweep and the downing machine might be the worst experiences. The others I imagine less so. The world cracker destroys the whole planed in a very short time. And it is over. The netron sweep will, as you so elaborately described, kill you slowly... Which in my opinion is terrible. The downing machine will also be brutal, as I imagine drowning a very slow and painful death. The shielding I imagine not so bad, as once people have accepted their faith, a normal life will be possible again and you can still have the hope, to be freed one day. This time gives your civilisation the chance to grow and to learn working with limited resources again. You should see the shielding as an opportunity. On the other hand, I (as an atheist and techo-optimist) think the devine enforcer is as cruel as the nanite enforcer looks to a spiritualist. Imagine, your whole mind and conciousnes beeing changed by a machine, while you can't do anything against it. Your whole believe system beeing rewritten into something, you previously thought to be foolish and supersticious. Suddenly believing in a god (or some other higher power), while at the back of your mind remains a piece of the former you, yelling that all this is just bullshit. Beeing doomed to forever live in conflicht with yourself. And all that by the hand of someone who despises the use of machines, while at the very same time using them to enforce their believes on others. To me that seems like hypocrisy. On the other hand, I see the nanite diffuser a bit more humane. Once the transformation is over, you will feel no more pain and know no more illness at all. You don't require sleep or water or food. You are always full of energy with none of your loved ones prone to disease. While at the same time, you love doing your job. You will never again feel bad about your occupation and you truly like to do, what you do. I see, that your opinion on the most humane colossus is also valid. Which one is worse for the target of that weapon depends entirely on the target their believes.
Divine enforcer doesn't just flip the switch, irc, from description it induces mass halucination session, essentially providing unverified personal gnosis to every single person I'd argue that it actually convinces you in a way, instead of just making you spiritualist.
The drencher is not as bad if you are acuatic
Not sure on humane, but I prefer planet cracking than total conversion. I don't want to deal with unrest, revolts or riots and to try and quell the dissent, which costs manpower and military strength to hold a system. So I just "Death Star" blast them and call it day and move on to the next objective. However, when I begin a galactic assault I typically go straight for their home world first to crack because it will deal a big blow to the civilization as you've toasted the homeworld and the seat of power for that civ and is typically the most well developed system in their empire.
I will still take death over divine belief.
Absolutely nothing is worse then the divine enforcer. That takes away free will. Something not even God is willing to do. As the saying goes. Better dead, then red.
For me cracker is by far the most humane, the atmospheric pressure wave from the sheer amount of energy touching it would be like being hot by a supersonic, superheated, wall of solid iron, instantaneous death Then deluge, I imagine the wall of trillions of tonnes of water would also be a very rapid death Then sweep, I just don't think immense cell damage and radiation poisoning would be a good way to die, it's said in the flavor text that plant life is minimally effected so it clearly doesn't indiscriminately annihilate any cell it touching but instead damages an organic body beyond any point of saving giving everyone on the planet a few minutes to hours of immense agony Then nanobot, getting borged isn't fun, would hurt Then enforcer, just sounds bad to have your former self effectively blasted away and replaced Then lastly pacifier, based on inferences we can make related to it, firstly even if the production is balanced to begin with what about when the population increases a little bit, obviously there's the psychological effects of a spacefaring people now being trapped on a planet, then there's the warming, the Shield is not fully transparent which means it doesn't let all radiation escape from the planet, this will over time roast the planet and all its inhabitants, I think this is mentioned with the Prikiki-Ti if you don't let them out they (assuming the Shield doesn't break) die out by the midgame I believe dye to the planet getting hotter because of the Shield (not 100% sure if I'm misremembering but it would still have that effect)
Neutron. No suffering.
Most humane colossus is a stack of xenomorphs
Tell me right now that 90% of people living in a Ecumenopolis won't die of starvation in the next year if it's food imports are all suddenly dramatically cut off by the appearance of a giant space barrier.
Shield cracker IMO. It would be instantaneous while the rest probably boil down to an agonizing death in some fashion, basically slavery (divine enforcer), or isolation. The worst one IMO is isolation. Everything else has an end at some point but imagine being stuck in a room with no way out but you know everyone else you love and care for is outside of it. Yet you can’t hear or interact with them at all.
Agree.
Nah, I'd rather die than have myself rewritten
Remember that there is the quest where you can un-shield a world. In gameplay I know you can't reverse shielding on any planets you shield with the Colossus, and I forget if the quest line states if the shield has a defect that allows it to be opened up, but I'd like to think while shielding can be bad, it doesn't have to be because it is possible to open them back up.
The first time I ever got a colossus I was a driven assimilator. I went with the work cracker first since it was my first time using it (also haha funny Death Star go brrr) but after cracking a few worlds I switched the the nanotechnology diffuser to fulfill my destiny. I’m not sure which fate is worse
Nanite infuser. Glorious immortal bodies.
I would just pass the Demobilization Initiative, to ban all of the colossus types besides Global Pacifier, and ensure that the Global Pacifier is never constructed.
I would rather die as I am than live as someone I’m not.
The insidious thing, is that you'd think thats who you are at that moment. The real pain would come when you try to revert back to your old ways... then you would have a crisis of belief
Shield. I'd then as the benevolent ruler would set up entrance and exit through strict background checks and supply food to the populous if needed. We're not monsters. And everyone wants to see their loved ones. Our war is with your government who, might we remind, tried to chemically annihilate 10 of our systems...I think we are being more than generous.
The shield *can't* be penetrated anymore. Thats the point. Its a planet breaker, but without the boom.
Just as the nanites take away your individuality, the divine enforcer I argue does the same. In the least horrifying course of events, you still have your identity but now have an uncanny implanted thought pattern that you know isn't normal but its weird to think that life hasn't always been like this. In the worst case, what did you see that implanted that memory? Some celestial voice echoing biblical verses at incomprehensible speed, or some eldritch visions of the shroud that supplants itself in your consciousness? Whatever unspeakable horror it is is certainly traumatizing. For me, it'd probably be shield. Its the ultimate form of kicking a problem down the road for sure, but at least its not guaranteed death. Even in a ecu, the population is so large that at least a few hundred people will know how to set up a rudimentary hydroponic farm before rations are completely depleted. If your civilization prepared for colossus weapons, there's probably some cold war style videos on "What to do in case the sky closes" or the like, and emergency hydroponics and water recyclers ready to be used after being dusted off. Yes, the majority of the population will still die on unprepared worlds, but the population remaining will likely be sustainable. And that's if you shield an ecu, a world that still has a biosphere will be able to adapt even better. Want to maximize torture? Shield a world, then build a dyson sphere in the system. Watch as the helpless prisoners panic as their sun, over the course of a generation, ceases to be and their world freezes beneath the shield. Then habitat above it once the sphere is complete to watch more closely. Taunt them with your thriving civilization as their newest generation faces a dark, cold reality that they have no hope to escape from.
If the sun went out, you don't need to worry about " a civilization " anymore lmao. That would be the most cruel and slow way to extinguish a whole planet. People would freeze on the streets, famine would ensue and electric systems would fail very quickly. Within a week, the surface wouldn't be walkable. I agree on the divine enforcer being a horrible person/identity murder machine. What I see though, after having been subjected to it, you can still go back to materialism or whatever in time. The damage can be healed. You are still you. Any other option, the nanite diffuser too, fundamentally change you forever. Whereas the divine enforcer is something you *can* recover from. All other colossi end you, one way or another.
Definitely global pacifier. The robot genocide gun is evil
Divine Enforcer or Nanites for sure
The shield as you stated is very circumstantial - I lost a game to ancients when their shielded my home world But on a colony that's truly self sustaining it might not be so terrible lore wise, mechanically game wise not sure how it would go Whatever the fastest means of death for all is probably is the most merciful
Nah, the nanite difuser is the most humane, it’s like mercy killing with extra steps. Yes the nanites may feel bad but within moments your conciousness is absorbed into the collective, so what if you don’t have any free will anymore? It’s not worse than dying and it’s essentially the same as having a spiritualist view forced into your mind, at least this just bends your mind and cages it, the divine enforcer mangles, abuses, distorts it. If you’re gonna die anyway at least have it be a sedated utalitarian death with no malice, the collective doesnt cyborgize to punish, it merely does it to proliferate, to not be wasteful. How many millions suffer the „revelation“ of a new faith forced into their minds? How many will forever change how they act towards family and friends? It’s no different than being absorbed by the hive mind...
Neutron sweep is the best. The planet's ecosystem still recovers after being saved from the gross xenos on its surface.
Neither of them. They are, in essence, weapons if5mass destruction. It's not because the enforcer makes it physically painless that it's less bad. But hey, we are here to kill some xenos, so all is good
Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Import Ideology Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Stop the Colossus Gained casus belli on "Inward Perfection": Suppress the Threat ~~Am I missing something?~~