Surrendering Pawns, AI Capturing and Negotiations (LONG READ)

[NickB0]

These are just some ideas I think would make good additions to the game, and this post will go into depth on how these mechanics will work. This is a long read so I just want to clear something up.  When I use the word colony or colonists, I'm referring to the player's pawns. All other ai groups are referred to as factions/raiders.


==============================SURRENDERING PAWNS=============================


In combat, individual pawns will now have the option to surrender as an alternative to fleeing or dying. This is only regarding human combat i.e. pawns will obviously never try to surrender to animals or mechinoids.

Colonists can only surrender manually by the player, and all other pawns decide on their own.

When a pawn surrenders, it will drop its weapon and lay on the ground. It is now in surrender mode and will be unable to move (the pawn can use the same variable for being incapacitated).

The pawn will then await its capture.

If it is raiders making the capture, they will carry the pawn to a safer temporary location, and later carry them off map when they retreat. (They will do the same for incapacitated colonists/raiders as well)
If the player is capturing, they can just carry them off to prison or behind the front lines bound.

Ai Surrendering

There are five variables that affect a raiders decision to surrender.

1 - Mood and wounds.
   
A pawn with low moral and/or wounds will surrender more easily.

2 - Personality.

Pawns with cowardly traits will be more likely to surrender while braver ones will hardly ever.

3 - Positioning and Numbers

The more enemies targeting a pawn, the more likely it will surrender. Pawns that are not under fire won't ever.
Pawns will NEVER surrender if they close to allies e.g. a single pawn will not surrender next to five friends still fighting, instead it might choose to flee. So a pawn must be distanced from its group before it decides to surrender. With alpha 11, the new tactical ai that avoids kill boxes and makes new entries by sappers, pawns should be more spread out from one another.

However it may be possible for a small group of 2-3 pawns to surrender if isolated from the main party AND they are heavily outnumbered AND every one of them wants to surrender (this might not even be worth the time and effort programing)

Pawns will also surrender instead of flee, if fleeing would be too dangerous e.g. if they are missing a foot, or have to run towards the enemy to escape.

4 - Faction
   
Surrendering decisions for a pawn may differ faction to faction. For example some tribal factions may have honor and almost never flee or surrender (similar to how hard they are to recruit), while an outlander town won't be as disciplined.

5 - Colony Reputation

This is the colonies history of dealing with prisoners. If in the past, your colony didn't take care of its prisoners, (selling them, harvesting there organs, killing them ect) then pawns will be less likely to surrender depending on the extent of your cruelty. Releasing prisoners can offset this.

(Maybe factions will track this independently from one another and only account for cruelty and care of its own pawns? So cruelty to one faction will not affect the decision to surrender of another?)

[Bonus] - Raid leader's choice (If raid leaders ever become a thing)

The raid leader would be a high-priority target that spawns with every raid. If taken out, it would cause the raiders to lose moral and become disorganized (would be a valuable prisoner as well).

If attackers have lost most of its party and the fight isn't going their way, the raid leader may order his remaining pawns to flee or surrender.

Large scale surrendering will be uncommon to balance the fact that the player should be winning most fights and this might be too easy.

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It may seem like with all these variables, pawns will be surrendering as soon as they get a scratch. But remember, this is supposed to be uncommon. The majority of pawns would get killed or incapacitated before they would want to surrender. With all those variables calculated under the worst conditions, a pawn might have a 20% chance of surrendering. On top of that, grouped up pawns for the most part, are not affected (raiders usually stick together) so maybe 5% of a losing party will end up surrendering.

In a situation when a pawn is in surrender mode and is not soon captured, a friendly unit can approach it so it can re-arm and resume fighting. Or without being rescued, they might attempt to flee if the enemies are very distanced, with or without their weapon.

(There should be two types of fleeing. Cowardly fleeing where they attempt to leave the map, and strategic fleeing where they fall back and regroup with the main party.)


Colonist Surrender

If a colonist is in a bad situation that it can't escape, the player can surrender it manually instead of having it likely die. Like the ai, colonist can NOT surrender when close to allies, but they can do group surrenders if they have to.

Note - After a player surrenders a pawn (puts it in surrender mode), I'm not  sure if they should be allowed to un-surrender it to flee or fight again instead of getting captured (basically feigning surrender). I figure the enemy ai will be too easily exploited by this so once you surrender a colonist, it will be permanently in surrender mode until it is captured, rescued or the fight stops. Or perhaps there can be some sort of cool down period?

I was also thinking of having colonist surrender automatically like the ai does, but this would just frustrate the player more than make things interesting e.g. maybe the player was about to pull a colonist back to regroup or heal, then out of nowhere it just surrenders, and it might still die due to injuries.
       

When a colonist is in surrender mode, the enemy party can do one of three things. This applies to incapacitated colonist as well.

- Ignore them

Depending on the situation, they may simply ignore them and divert their attention towards fighting.

- Bind them and carry to a safer location to later capture

They will get carried to a safer spot on the field. When the raiders have given up, ("The raiders have decided to capture who they can and flee") they will be carried off the map as prisoners.

- Execute them on the spot

Executions would have been decided based on factional traits and hatred towards the colony. I've thought about it and decided against it because the game is going to be hard enough now that incapacitated colonist can be captured in mid battle. Maybe this would be more appropriate with gigantic colonies, but this would break the balance of average ones. It might become almost impossible to gain more population than you lose due to executions.
 

===================DESIGNATED SAFE ZONES AND FIELD MEDICS===================

Safe Zones

This is the area the raiders assign in the beginning of a raid to carry surrendered/incapacitated pawns to. The area would be somewhere behind the raiders front lines, not too close but safe, and in the same direction as the retreat path (possibly construct sandbags?).

When the raiders leave they will prioritize carrying away all surrendered/incapacitated pawns in the safe zone instead of on the field.

Field Medics

One or more of these pawns will spawn with most raids. They would stay in the designated safe zone to heal captured pawns and allies brought to them (maybe even treat un-incapacitated raiders with major wounds?). If there are too many patients, the medics will only treat major wounds to try and save everyone.

They will not engage in combat directly and will carry away wounded/prisoners when the raid party retreats. (Orbital drop raiders won't have these because they won't have safe zones)

Choosing valid targets to carry to safe zone

The tricky part here is how to balance the ai's decision to capture/rescue pawns or ignore them on the battlefield. The ai would have to factor its parties distance from the target, versus the targets distance from the enemy to calculate if it's safe to carry the target back.

Also since the raiders will be clearing many of the incapacitated off the field, the player will be getting fewer (or way less) prisoners (plus getting their colonist captured). The colonies growth could drastically decrease because with fewer prisoners means less recruiting, so this system will need a ton of testing and tweaks to get everything balanced.


==========================NEGOTIATING WITH RAIDERS============================


Demands

Depending on the type of raid, the colony may have the option to settle the matter peacefully instead of violently. Certain raid events will allow you to negotiate while the raiders are preparing (like the event already in the game where they spawn and wait a while).

So the faction will demand the release of (if any) its prisoners and a combination of other prisoners, gear, food, medicine, prosthetics, material and silver. The faction can be reasonable with its demand (still a considerable lose for you) or completely greedy.

A reasonable demand will be an amount proportional to the colonies wealth. For example, once the raiders drop and are preparing, they may demand their factions prisoners released, 5 guns, 3 stacks of food (as much as 3 people can carry), 2 stacks of metal, 2 stacks of silver and 1 (non-colonist) prisoner. (Some items can be compensated for something else only if they are not available).

If the faction is extremely greedy in their demands they can ask for as much as they can carry away. So if a group of 25 raiders make this demand, they will take 25 stacks of supplies (unspecified/they will take the best).This is supposed to be unreasonable and you would only accept this offer if your colony stands no fighting chance.

After the raiders are done preparing, an interface will appear with the option to deny or accept their demand. If you accept, the raiders will become non hostile and enter your base to carry the demanded goods off the map and leave.
If the demanded supplies are not available, the raiders will deconstruct your structures for material. They will ignore stacks of worthless gear like crappy clothes and broken guns. If the supplies is hidden in inaccessible rooms, the raiders will just knock the walls down (Possibly have them kidnap a colonist too?).

If you deny the demand, the usual raid will commence.

Giving in to demands mid combat

Possibly have the option to surrender in mid-fight and give in to their demands? This could give the colony mercy if they have too many casualties to continue fighting. However, I can see this being exploited at the start of a raid, by having fortified turrets and colonist kill a handful of raiders, then immediately surrender before the raiders do any harm.

So maybe only have the raiders accept the colonies defeat when they know the colony has taken heavy losses. The demand terms will be MUCH harsher. This option is only for raiders who had demands in the first place, so if they never made a demand at the start, the option to sue for peace won't be available.

Tribute

This is a new event where an enemy faction demands tribute in exchange for peace. If accepted, once a month the faction will demand a different specified amount of supplies (perhaps prisoners too) that they would pick up the next day with a party of soldiers.

As long as tribute is taken, the faction will remain non-hostile and will never raid the colony. The deal can later be cancelled if the player denies or attacks the pawns taking the payment. The faction would soon follow up with a raid and the colony will never get this event from them again.

Prisoner Exchanges

A few days after a raid, the colony and the raiders can exchange the prisoners they both captured. This would work by having the player contact the faction by comms console and a trade interface will appear. From here you can see the prisoners (that align to the faction) of the colony and the colonist captured by the faction.

The trading will be an even exchange of pawns (the rate might need balancing) and possibly trading prisoners for supplies or supplies for prisoners (at even worse rates than trade ships). However, a faction will never accept supplies if the colony won't trade back its prisoners.

To simplify things, everything will be transferred using trade beacons. Be warned, factions will not hold onto your colonist forever.


=============================RAID CHANGES===================================


With these changes added, here is a general outline of what different raid events can appear.

Regular Raid

without demand:
Preparation Delay - Sometimes
End Goal - Destroy Colony

with demand:
Preparation Delay - Always (this is the period to accept or deny demand)
End Goal - Extract supplies (If there is no longer resistance)

Regular raids use designated safe zones and medics.

Siege Assault

Without demand:
Preparation Delay - Construction
End Goal - Destroy Colony

With demand*:
Preparation Delay - Construction
End Goal - Bombard Colony then extract supplies

*Raiders will dismantle their mortars and carry away the metal and shells if the colony accepts demand.

Siege assaults use designated safe zones and medics (somewhere around the mortar area).

Orbital Drop

Without demand:
Preparation Delay - None
End Goal - Destroy Colony

With demand:
Preparation Delay - Always (will not spawn until time is up)
End Goal - Extract supplies

Orbital drops do not use designated safe zones and medics.




=================================CONCLUSION=================================


These new features will be difficult and time consuming to implement (especially the ai aspect!) with huge balancing issues as well, but I believe they would be very fitting for Rimworld (I'm sure some of them were already planned for development anyway)

These changes will add a little more depth to combat and overall it will give the players interesting choices between risk and sacrifice when dealing with raiders, and different situations for improved story telling.

Rimworld is one of the best games I have ever played, so if I had any coding or programing experience I would try modding this myself. I know Tynan takes suggestions and feedback from the community, so maybe this can help him or other modders with ideas.

[Frankenbeasley]

It's a very nice concept and well explained.

I suppose, if you had the pawn's faction as a sort of hidden trait, whereby it automatically adjusts their likelihood to surrender, then you could basically use the same mechanic as is in use for mental breaks (maybe also subverting the spacial environment factor so that instead of measuring the walkable spaces around the pawn, it count's the enemy/friendlies).

It could also mean that any prisoners you recruit would retain the faction's trait effect as a background buff/debuff for their mental state. You could either do it as a randomised factor on generation of the map, or as a more basic standard based on techno-cultural 'distance' from the colonists (i.e. tribal societies are far more separated from space-borne colonists than are pirates, and so have a harder time adjusting).

I definitely think you should be able to demand ransoms from other factions for prisoner returns. Selling to slavers should hit faction reputation, ransoming the captives back should provide no negative or positive effect, and releasing them with no demands should provide a boost to relations (maybe with a bonus if you have undertaken medical intervention to save the prisoner's life).

Definitely a +1 from me.

[NickB0]

It's a very nice concept and well explained.

I suppose, if you had the pawn's faction as a sort of hidden trait, whereby it automatically adjusts their likelihood to surrender, then you could basically use the same mechanic as is in use for mental breaks

That's what exactly it. You worded it better than me.

It could also mean that any prisoners you recruit would retain the faction's trait effect as a background buff/debuff for their mental state. You could either do it as a randomised factor on generation of the map, or as a more basic standard based on techno-cultural 'distance' from the colonists (i.e. tribal societies are far more separated from space-borne colonists than are pirates, and so have a harder time adjusting).

This is a great idea. Factions should definitely have an effect on certain mood modifiers and behavior (it was their past after all). I also think recruiting needs an overhaul/more depth.

I definitely think you should be able to demand ransoms from other factions for prisoner returns. Selling to slavers should hit faction reputation, ransoming the captives back should provide no negative or positive effect, and releasing them with no demands should provide a boost to relations (maybe with a bonus if you have undertaken medical intervention to save the prisoner's life).

Again you explained it better I had actually planned on writing about in-combat ransoming (more like a hostage situation).  An interface would appear mid battle with the raiders demanding the colony to surrender the battle or they would kill incapacitated/surrendered colonists on the spot. This was before I thought executions was a bad idea. Its an interesting idea, but way too punishing for the player.