The Cravers/Gameplay

Militarist insectoid devourers of planets, the Cravers are a people bent on war, expansion, and consumption.

About
**Gameplay**
Traits
Ships
Strategy

**Note**: The "slaver driver" and "depletion" mechanics are both a bit unclear, so here's some detail on how they work:

## Depletion

Before a planet reaches the "Depleted" status, no matter how close to Depletion it is, Cravers on it will receive **a massive  bonus**.

* The bonus is an additional 150%  (x2.5 or +150%), not a multiplicative x1.5.
	+ If the population would normally produce 10 , it will actually produce 25 . The bonus will be listed as 15; 10 + 15 = 25.
	+ **The bonus applies to the sum-total value of all bonuses applied to that particular population unit.** So any strategic resources on a planet (which may give a raw per-pop / bonus), any buildings that increase / per pop, etc., are all accounted for in this bonus.
	+ Note: The Depletion bonus does not include the  resource. It's easy to miss the "I" at the end of the the "FIDS" acronym in the description.
* This bonus **only applies to Craver population units**.
	+ It does **not** apply to other pop units owned by a Craver player.
	+ If your primary faction is not Craver, it also only applies to Cravers on your planets.
* This bonus does not change as you approach zero. It stays at a constant value until the moment you reach the Depletion Point Cap on a planet, at which point it flips to a massive -50%  per  penalty, on that planet.
	+ Once a planet is fully Depleted, an individual population unit which would normally produce 10  instead produces 5.
	+ In the case of a Craver population, it would go from 25  to 5. The total difference is a drop of FIVE TIMES (250% to 50%).
	+ **This penalty *only* affects per  related Bonuses**.
		- For example, The  and  bonus from Drone Networks is unaffected.

* Each planet starts with a number of Depletion points based on the size of the planet, and the speed of the game (0.5x on fast, 1.5x on Slow and 2.0x on Endless)
	+ They are hidden by default and are only indirectly revealed by showing the number of turns remaining before the planet is Depleted. The internal count of "Depletion points" can only be inferred from this number of turns shown, and the fact that Cravers consume one Depletion point per turn, per pop.
	+ The maximum number of Depletion Points each planet size and on normal game speed goes as follows:
		- Huge: 200
		- Large: 180
		- Medium: 150
		- Small: 120
		- Tiny: 100

## Slavery

Slavery works the same way as Depletion with regards to which values are amplified (such as from buildings, strategic resources, and inherent pop bonuses).

Slavery is triggered by placing *at least one* Craver on a planet with non-Cravers. It does not stack; adding more than one Craver pop does not increase the bonus on the planet... it's just a fixed on/off toggle caused by having at least one present. When active, the Craver population triggering it will be subtly highlighted with a gold-tinged background, and the bonus applies to all non-Craver populations on that planet.

Since this has no permanent cost (unlike depletion, and **besides the fact that that one Craver will be applying its normal depletion mechanic to the planet**), you're heavily encouraged to micromanage which populations are resident on which planets so that you always have at least one Craver unit on each planet.

The only reason you would not want to do this is the rather large -10  per each enslaved pop.

Unlike Depletion, the Slavery mechanic is not intrinsic to the Craver population type. If you're a non-Craver faction and you conquer/acquire Craver population units, they will not apply anything related to the Slavery mechanic.

## Slavery + Depletion Overlap

The Slavery and Depletion mechanics mostly do not interact, because they're perfectly set up to only apply to opposite population types; only Craver pop units get the Depletion bonus, and only non-Craver pop units get the Slavery bonus. The one place where they interact is the Depletion Penalty (which applies to all pop units) and the Slavery bonus; once a planet is depleted, the Cravers can still 'slave drive' the non-Craver populations to produce extra resources. The implication of this is that, once depleted, Craver planets are better off having a minority of actual Cravers on them (outside of the  penalty, which can be worked around with laws).

## Invasion

Cravers replace the Raze action with Consume in Ground Invasion Outcomes.

* Consume: Like Raze except you gain  while you eat everyone. No  penalty.
	+ You gain the benefits of consuming a system proportional to the number of  and on the system.