Silly stubborn Hive Queen...

[steelwing]

How are the Hive Queen's moods determined?  I've got a Hive Queen that simply will not move out of a Warlike mood, and I'd kind of like to get her more inclined to play nice.  As near as I can tell, bribes only make her change moods randomly.

[x4000]

Giving her bribes does indeed just cause her mood to go through the partially-randomized mood swing logic, yes.  It doesn't put her automatically in a good mood.   However, the mood determinations are not just based on randomness.  There is what we call a "grab bag" of mood entries (think of it like a raffle with X number of tickets for each mood type), and how many raffle tickets each mood gets in the bag is determined by a number of factors.

Broadly speaking, here's how that works:

Warlike automatically gets 10 tickets.
-- It also gets 1 ticket for each 0.01 point of racial compatibility it has on its planet less than 1.  So 0.94 compat on its planet is 6 more tickets.
-- For all living races that it has a negative attitude towards, it gets 0.25 tickets for every point below 0 attitude.
-- For each hive queen that has been assassinated on that planet, plus one, times 2 overall, there are that many tickets subtracted (so 3 assassinations would be 8 tickets lost at that planet).

Neutral automatically gets 3 tickets.
-- For all living races that it has a positive attitude towards, it gets 0.4 tickets for every point above 0 attitude.

Cooperative automatically gets 1 ticket.
-- For all living races that it has a positive attitude towards, it gets 0.1 tickets for every point above 0 attitude.
-- It also loses 0.1 tickets for each 0.01 point of racial compatibility it has on its planet less than 1.  So 0.94 compat on its planet is 0.6 fewer tickets.
-- For each hive queen that has been assassinated on that planet, plus one, times 2 overall, there are that many tickets subtracted (so 3 assassinations would be 8 tickets lost at that planet).

Defensive automatically gets 1 ticket.
-- For each hive queen that has been assassinated on that planet, plus one, there are that many tickets added (so 3 assassinations would be 4 tickets added at that planet).
-- Additionally, looking at every planet owned by the race, if there are bad economic or environmental situations, then they also contribute tickets.  I didn't dig into the logic here.

Brooding automatically gets 10 tickets.
-- For all living races that it has a positive attitude towards, it loses 0.1 tickets for every point above 0 attitude.
-- For each hive queen that has been assassinated on that planet, plus one, there are that many tickets added (so 3 assassinations would be 4 tickets added at that planet).

Contemplative automatically gets 5 tickets.
-- For all living races that it has a negative attitude towards, it loses 0.1 tickets for every point below 0 attitude.


It then runs the raffle and sees what the result is.  If you keep popping up warlike, then that may just be the RNG hating you, or it is more likely that relations between the Thoraxians and the other races really stink.   Ironically, killing some hive queens a few times over on that planet will actually help make them less warlike over time (put them in their place!), though there are other negative ramifications from that in general of course.

[steelwing]

Ooooh, math!

Warlike automatically gets 10 tickets.
-- It also gets 1 ticket for each 0.1 point of racial compatibility it has on its planet less than 1.  So 0.94 compat on its planet is 6 more tickets.
-- For all living races that it has a negative attitude towards, it gets 0.25 tickets for every point below 0 attitude.
-- For each hive queen that has been assassinated on that planet, plus one, times 2 overall, there are that many tickets subtracted (so 3 assassinations would be 8 tickets lost at that planet).

You sure that isn't "every 0.01 points of compatibility"?   Because if it's really "every 0.1", then your example should be 0.4 compatibility = 6 tickets.

[x4000]

You sure that isn't "every 0.01 points of compatibility"?   Because if it's really "every 0.1", then your example should be 0.4 compatibility = 6 tickets.

My bad, thanks!  Yes, that is what it should have been.  It's expressed slightly differently in the game, so I had to mentally translate and was off by one place. 

[steelwing]

My bad, thanks!  Yes, that is what it should have been.  It's expressed slightly differently in the game, so I had to mentally translate and was off by one place. 

No problem.   Just making sure I understood the math right.

If you keep popping up warlike, then that may just be the RNG hating you, or it is more likely that relations between the Thoraxians and the other races really stink.   Ironically, killing some hive queens a few times over on that planet will actually help make them less warlike over time (put them in their place!), though there are other negative ramifications from that in general of course.

I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I don't know the exact attitude the Thoraxians have for each race, but it's not good.  They've declared war on almost everyone except the Boarines and Evucks.

[x4000]

Yeah, there's a chance you can make them feel not warlike just by rolling the RNG then, but they probably have an awfully large number of Warlike raffle tickets, heh.

[steelwing]

Yeah, there's a chance you can make them feel not warlike just by rolling the RNG then, but they probably have an awfully large number of Warlike raffle tickets, heh.

lol Gotcha.  Which means I'm gonna have to tank them so the races at war with them can defeat them.  With this kind of nastiness, the Thoraxians are already so pissed off at everyone that bringing them back around will take a few dozen forevers.

[x4000]

Most likely, yeah.  You could always assassinate queens periodically while you're trying to tank them, though.  Maybe you'll get lucky and one of the new queens will be in a better mood.  And in the meantime it does harm growth, etc.

[steelwing]

And after an assassination or two, some judicious tanking of economies, medical establishments, and environments, and a whole bunch of orbital bombing, I managed to take them out.  Had to do the same to the Burlusts, unfortunately, so I finished with only a 5-race Federation.  The Andors got wiped out early in the game.

[Mánagarmr]

I hate the Thoraxians. So much. Not only are they freaking impossible to make play nice with the rest, they're also awfully hard to wipe out

[steelwing]

Yeah, you have to either tank their RCIs really deep or be extensively superior to them technologically and/or numerically.

[Zebeast46]

I always wipe out the thoraxians first in my games, I lost to them once and have never forgiven them since then. But something that I found was strange was that the peltians were very good at wiping out everything I met, when I formed my federation I had the boarines the acidosis and the peltians, the peltians went on to take all the other planets while the acutians were wiped out by evucks and the boarines twiddled their thumbs. Chris, if you see this can you tell me how the Boarines regent changes mood because I want it to be warlike so I can get them to declare war on people.

[x4000]

Chris, if you see this can you tell me how the Boarines regent changes mood because I want it to be warlike so I can get them to declare war on people.

Sure.  Any time a new regent is installed, they automatically start out with the Defense priority.  It's their nature, and it gives them time to size up the situation (thematically speaking) before making choices.

Beyond that, their priority shifts every solar month based on the following factors (so it really doesn't flip-flop that often, as it's all based on stats that don't change that frequently):

if ( this.GetWellbeingMultiplier() < 0.5f )
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.Defense;
                    else if ( this.GetRCIImpact( RCIBarType.Medical, RCIImpact.ProvokesRegentPriority_Population ) != 0 )
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.Population;
                    else if ( this.GetTotalPopulation( true ) * 2 < this.GetEquilibriumPopulation() )
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.Population;
                    else if ( this.GetRCIImpact( RCIBarType.Economic, RCIImpact.ProvokesRegentPriority_Economy ) != 0 )
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.Economy;
                    else if ( this.GetRCIImpact( RCIBarType.PublicOrder, RCIImpact.ProvokesRegentPriority_Infighting ) != 0 )
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.Infighting;
                    else
                        this.BoarineRegent.BoarinePriority = BoarineRegentPriority.SolarUnity;

"this" refers to the planet in question.

[chemical_art]

I really need to get back into this game. Some day.

Anyway, from a tactical standpoint,  thoraxians are weakest if you can wipe out their space fleets which in turn isolate their ground troops. Pursue this very early on, and the other races will be given enough breathing room to grow numerically and technologically. Eventually someone will start bombardment and at least stall their growth. After even more time, someone will invade.

[Karrade]

I find it very helpful to have a couple of opponents in the game, so if you really don't like a race, don't wipe them out immediately, allow the others to vent their frustration on them, while you work on getting everything else set up.