I think it's sensible that a surrendering civilization wouldn't want their enemies access to a pristine Class 17 planet. They're not surrendering because they want their enemies to prosper, after all. It's not without historical context - that The Defeated Party killed themselves rather than surrender (Jonestown, etc).

But in game-world and so it's a bit more fun: Other than a toggle switch, which of couse thrills the "Give Us More Options" crowd, how about, on surrendering, every planet that has been Level 0'd by the surrending Civilization has on it a special Chimeric Biomass that frees up half the tiles the Class 0 planet had before being destroyed and a Kiln of Worlds so that the new colonizing civilization can improve the Class planet if they so desire? I say half because if you agree with me (er, anyone? Hello!??....) that a surrendering civilization would see every planet have a Scorched Earth Party and be rendered useless, it makes sense that no amount of work would ever make that planet the Level it was prior to it's Scorched Earth Party.

Quick thought... I remember a small risk like game... where territories (planets) when surrendered, only about 50% went to you, and there was a high chance that many territories became independent or joined nearby other factions.

A somewhat random result of a surrender on a per-planet basis, might be a lot of fun. Proximity/Influence should of course matter. So a empire surrendering to you that is very far away, may only give you 20% of their planets... another 20% might suicide, and finally the remaining 60% goes to the Altarians who were always keen on those worlds anyways.

I haven't made it to this yet, but you seem to be continuing to confuse Ascension Gates and Ascension Crystals.  An Ascension Gate is built on land and is used for a Research Victory.  There is no way one can be studied by a starbase module.  Ascension Crystals are in space and must be researched by starbases with the appropriate modules to get enough Aura points to ascend and get an Ascension Victory.

I've played several games starting with the first 3.81 opt-in and continuing to the 3.9 release.  The AI turn times seem to be quicker early in the game and are definitely a lot smoother.  By smoother, I mean the game doesn't have the situations where 4 or 5 races will finish in a fraction of a second, then one race will take 3 or 4 seconds, then several more will be fast, then another will take 2 or 3 seconds, then the rest of the AI will finish.  All of them seem to take the same 1 or 2 fractions of a second until the turn is finished very quickly.  I haven't played a full game because of all the updates, but I noticed that I was getting a lot more turns played than I expected for the amount of time I played.  I also was playing longer at a time because the AI turns were finishing so quickly that I felt I had to do "just one more turn."  This may become a problem, but it's one I'll be glad to have.

This works except for one irritating problem.  All the planets that are turned into dead worlds retain their icon showing the race that used to own them.  The icon stays until the game is saved and reloaded.  This is what happened when the Mu'Kay surrendered to the Tywom.

The problem with this is that when my influence expands the visibility does not.  It takes a ship moving into the area to make the visibility update.  The ship doesn't have to actually move into the area that isn't showing visibility, it just needs to get close enough to make the game update.  Despite the lack of visibility, if a foreign ship enters my influence, I can see it even if the visibility isn't correct.  It's just the visibility appearance that's the problem, not the ability to see foreign ships.  It may be necessary to play on a larger galaxy to see the problem.  I have videos showing this, but they aren't where I can provide a link at this time.

This didn't work right in one game I played with one of the opt-ins.  There was a planet ready for colonizing in my influence at the end of my Turn 99.  An AI settled it before the start of my Turn 100.  During Turn 100 my influence was 22.6 times their influence.  Before the start of my Turn 101 the planet flipped to me.  I have plenty of screenshots showing this.  Unfortunately, I don't have a save.  I haven't had situation like this again, so I don't know if it still exists.

I found a new problem in the opt-ins that I think still exists.  AI ships are ignoring solid objects in the galaxy.  I saw an AI ship attack the ships stationed at an enemy planet by moving through a dead world to get there.  I then saw other cases where a ship stopped on a solid object.  One was a colony ship stopped on top of a planet it was probably trying to colonize.

Another colony ship was probably trying to colonize the same planet but couldn’t because the other ship was in the way, so it was stopped on a star.

I also found a freighter stopped on top of an Ascension Crystal.

Despite all these little problems, I enjoying this update.  The improvement in turn time is a very welcome improvement.  I'm worried I'll be spending more time on the game than I usually do.  I'm making all the reports that I do because I want the game to be even better than it is.

Which leads me to the next part.  The AI can be really dumb at times.  While playing the first opt-in I saw AI ships doing some strange things.  The AI was unable to do anything useful with its ships as it seemed to be caught in a loop.  Because I had a good view of what the AI was doing, I got some saves while this was happening and probably before it started.  I need to verify some things, then I'll make a separate post in the Support section with links to the saves.  The strange things are not the same as in this post, but I did see that happening in several of the games I played, including the 3.9 release.  If these two problems can be fixed, I think the AI will be a lot more dangerous.

Quoting Ynglaur,

reply 50

Well that sucks.  If I disable surrendering will they fight to the bitter end?  I hope this doesn't change behavior in my current saved game .

@Stardock - Please make surrender behavior a toggle in game settings.

Yes, 

Comparing a galactic  civilization with billions and billions of people to Jonestown doesn't work that well.  Even at Jonestown there was evidence that people resisted and that the majority were probably tricked into drinking the poison koolaid.  There was a sizeable group that escaped.  I think one would have a hard time convincing people to commit mass suicide on a planetary scale let alone a galactic one.  Of course, the government could just use weapons of mass destruction against it's own populace, but does that sound like something that most governments would choose?  I don't think so.    The government of Poland didn't order all of its civilians shot, its infrastructure leveled, and the land sowed with salt when it was invaded by Nazi Germany, nor did any other country do so.  Even that nutjob Hitler, who apparently entertained ideas like that, was thwarted by the fact that German civilians and the military basically didn't go along with it and that country was already largely leveled by the war at that point. 

But we're dealing with alien civilizations here./  Perhaps the Drengin government would order such a thing.  But I doubt the Altarians would or the Terrans or the Drath etc.  But if they did, why would they spare the homeworld?  That makes no sense.  If one is going to buy into the idea that this would happen, everything should be destroyed-especially the home world where the government's power is presumably the strongest.

Regardless though, the real argument against this isn't that it isn't realistic./  It's that it's a clumsy way of addressing a problem that doesn't really exist and that makes the game worse for it.  If micromanagement of newly surrendered planets is such a problem for a player he or she can just destroy the new colonies on the governor screen.  Presto.  The "problem" is solved without taking away other player's choices and one doesn't have to make any changes whatsoever to the game.  This was a solution in search of a problem.

Regarding the self-destruction of planets in a surrender scenario... it does make some sense in some cases. For example, the Drengin are comically evil, and are rules by an authoritarian regime. The will of the people to "live" is hardly what matters... and only the supreme leader's opinion about self-destruction does. So I could certainly see such a government planting anti-matter explosives in their colonies (during their downtime as a hobby perhaps) and then deciding to use them in a total-loss scenario.

Artificial intelligence races might (if sufficiently spiteful and not as logical perhaps) also be inclined... and hive minds of any sort could also consider the option.

Still... the odds that this much effort would be put into this is unlikely, and then the odds of it working perfectly are unlikely. 

I think it is important though not to have surrenders be "you get everything" for you or the allies because it creates a steam roll effect. Equally... the self destruction isn't really that much fun. I think the randomizer is a good solution.

For the "random" result proposal... here is some more specifics on how it could work.

• Each planet has a base chance of 40% surrender to conquering player, 40% chance to become independent (and would likely be absorbed in the near future by any given player), and a 20% chance of "suicide". I'll shorthand this ratio as "40Sr/40In/20Sd
• If conqueror has same ideology ratio becomes 50Sr/40In/10Sd
• If planet is within Zone of Control of conquering player there is no change to this.
• If planet is within Zone of Control of another player the ratio receives a -10Sr and +10In.
• If planet is within Zone of Control of another player, and that player is the same ideology or in an alliance to surrendering player, the ratio receives a further -10Sr, +10In.

If I did this right, then say we have five planets. Two are in the conquering player's zone of control, one is outside all zone of control, and two more are within an allies zone of control. All player's share the same ideology.

Planets 1 and 2, would 50Sr/40In/10Sd

Planet 3 would 50Sr/40In/10Sd

Planets 4 and 5 would 30Sr/60In/10Sd

(Roughly the conqueror has good odds of taking 2.5 of 5 planets, and the rest most likely do not suicide)

IF the conqueror was a different ideology:

Planets 1 and 2, would 40Sr/40In/20Sd

Planet 3 would 40Sr/40In/20Sd

Planets 4 and 5 would 20Sr/60In/20Sd

(Roughly the conqueror has is likely only going to take 1.5 of 5 planets, one likely suicides and the rest go independent)

Presumably all ships either turn pirate or go to the nearest ally or suicide.

Someone more clever/good with maths should take this from me and run with it.

I have a save that shows the colony ship on the planet along with another colony ship on a star.  You can get it here.  There is a Read Me that should explain everything.

I think the scorched earth idea is not a good one. To badly amend some famous words...

The Empire has fallen: "we will fight them in the asteroids; we will fight them on the moons; we will fight them in the colonies. We will never surrender.

I can see a small percentage of colonies committing suicide, but others will choose to not surrender and fight on. A small cluster of them could group together and sue for peace -- as a puppet, perhaps. Still others would turn to neighboring allies, or neutrals at least, and ask them for help. But complete planet burns? I don't think so. A true "death before dishonor" race, maybe, but I think they would fight to the bitter end and not surrender anyway.

Additionally the complete coverage of all controlled space is as bad. To be fair, my first reaction was "Great, I don't need all those sensor stations and ships anymore." Shortly after that I realized the strategic and tactical possibilities this removed from the game -- both defensive and offensive. I would rather spend the extra effort or have different options such as patrol set ups with response options.

Fixing the chaos of captured planets and covering my space with sensor assets is not a micro issue for me. It was called game play back when I started playing 4X games.

I started playing this in early release and watched it come close to its own "scorched earth" end. Since then it has developed into a robust 4X allowing for a wide range of game play options and styles. In my view these two changes in particular seem to work against that end. Most of the rest on the list seem pretty good (even if the Villains DLC made me think "GalCiv Toon Edition").  

Edit:

Someone suggested having the ships on Sentry only wake up when an enemy ship is in sight, not the neutrals or friendlies -- good idea, that.

I agree with all of this.  I'd love to see a response from Stardock to what is clearly a consensus on this thread that these changes are not desirable.

Regarding the sensor changes, it would be more tolerable if this was some sort of advanced technology towards the end of the tree or perhaps even something only accessed through some ability trait.   Or perhaps a special improvement.  Hyperion Sensor network or something like that.  Maybe something accessed through the ideology tree even.  But I think I still like the previous way better than even those alternatives.

Experienced a few crashes running the old saved game.

Had all the Mowling worlds become dead planets when they surrendered and gave them to another civ.

Anyways, expect a few bugs when a version changes in the middle of a game .

They are unhidden now.

I will add my voice to the anti-scorched earth chorus.

Thanks!