Decivilization

Decivilization is an act of destroying a market by completely collapsing the ruling polity, turning the planet uninhabited and giving it the 'Decvilized' market condition.

For a market to decivilize, it must be at 0 stability for at least part of a period lasting around 16 months, where:

• the first month (i.e. approximately 16 months ago) must have had a stability of zero at sampling time (samples are taken at a random interval of 20-40 days)
• the market must currently (at the time it's checked for decivilization) also have zero stability
• at least half the months in the sampling period must have had zero stability
• at least three months in a row (the 'streak') must have had zero stability

The chance of decivilization at the time of the deciv check (done every 5-15 days) starts at zero with a three-month streak, with every additional month adding 10 percentage points to the deciv roll.

Once a market is at risk of decivilization, the game will notify the player that a market is "deteriorating", and the market will be destroyed shortly after unless the player somehow intervenes.

Methods

The most obvious and fastest method to decivilize a market is a saturation Bombardment. On top of reducing stability by 10 – which in in itself can be enough to decivilize the market because it won't be able to recover – it reduces the colony size by 1, and outright destroys markets of size 4 and lower. And although the initial fuel cost does equal ground strength, saturation bombardment disrupts industries including military ones, meaning the fuel cost of the next bombardment becomes 100 fuel for a size 7 colony.

This does come at a price, as almost all factions regardless of your standing instantly turn hostile to you, no matter whose market you attacked, and you cannot avoid this penalty as turning off your transponder does nothing. Still, if you're confident in your ability to regain your standing or are going for a genocide and don't care, this is quicker and easier than other methods.

Now, the other methods are all pretty much a variation of the same thing: "keep stability at 0 for a year" but there's a bunch of different ways to achieve this. First we'll look at shortages.

The most significant shortage is of food as that gives a stability penalty equal to food units missing. A shortage of Luxury Goods and Domestic Goods also helps as meeting the demand for both grants a +1 stability bonus.

• The most obvious way to do this is piracy, as all trade fleets carry certain amount of units of commodities and destroying them will cause shortages.
• The second pretty clear way is raiding, as raiding with a significant enough force will create a shortage of a couple units.
• The third way though, is accessibility. Imports are restricted by accessibility, and if say a level 7 colony needs seven units of food, but it's accessibility is 60%, it will suffer a shortage of 1 unit, as the accessibility is too low. This can be seen very clearly with factions like pirates and the Luddic Path, who are hostile to everyone and suffer a big accessibility penalty because of this.
  • Disrupt the space port with a marine raid. While it won't cause the penalty of "no spaceport", it will remove the benefits of a spaceport functioning (50% for base Spaceport, 80% for Megaport) and for pirates, Pathers or if you're lucky another faction that plunged into a total war, that can be enough to reduce the accessibility to negatives, causing a shortage of everything the colony doesn't produce itself.
  • In case the colony itself produces commodities that stabilize it (most notable example being food) consider disrupting that as well. ** Disruption times can go over a year, so it is possible for some industries to be inoperational until the market is destroyed.
  • Note that colonies have an additional +5 capacity for in-faction imports (over the import capacity granted by their accessibility), so even a colony with a broken spaceport can often get food and other goods from outside its faction.

Another thing to do is to disable defense structures the Patrol HQ/Military Base, Ground Defenses/Heavy Batteries and the station, as they all provide a +1 or higher stability bonus.

Finally, we come to "recent unrest" penalties. When you conduct a marine raid, it lowers stability by up to 3 points (depending on raid strength), and a point is restored every 3 months. Simply raiding a planet 20 times with 1 marine unit stealing ore is a valid way to throw a size 7 planet into complete anarchy. The penalty stacks with itself and is uncapped so simply sit on top of a planet, conduct raids to steal ore with <1% projected caualties, and leave the system when the penalty reach -20, as it is impossible to recover from. While you are there, consider actually raiding the planet for profit: steal surplus goods, or even better blueprints while the defenses are non-existent.

After the planet decivilizes, it gains ruins corresponding to it's size which can be explored and tech mined as usual ruins

References

Only up to date for version 0.95.1a. It is likely still broadly correct but not verified for the most up to date data yet. Please double check the Version History.