Syndicates

[Sammy]

So how exactly do Criminal Syndicate empires establish branch offices on your planets? Do you need open borders or can they do it with anyone?

[facciola007]

Unlike the mega corps, criminal syndicates click on the planet, goto corpate tab and install a branch office. This creates a casus belli that you can declare on them to close the office or just keep your crime level down and they will automatically be closed.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Criminal Syndicates do not require a commercial pact to found branch offices on your planets. Other types of megacorporations do require a commercial pact with you to do so. Border state does not factor into establishing branch offices for any type of megacorp.

The best protection against criminal syndicates is to have a very low crime rate. This won't prevent the office from opening, but it is likely to shut down soon after if you keep the crime rate at zero even after the criminal branch office opens.

Another good protection is to encourage other, non-criminal megacorps to establish offices on your planets by forming commercial pacts with them. Since only one corp can have an office on any one planet, a planet with another corp's office can't be the target of a branch office from a criminal megacorp.

If nothing else works you may be able to go to war with the criminal syndicate and eject their branch offices by force. I haven't tried that myself yet, so I don't know exactly how that works.

[Sabaithal]

To expand on tempest's explanation: The higher value your planets are (you can see it if you go to the corporate screen) the higher the chances that someone will want to establish a branch there. As already stated, crime syndicates don't need a commercial pact to do so.

Their branches aren't entirely harmful, but they do cause issues, mostly increasing crime rate by a surprisingly high amount on developed planets, even if you had none before.

A good way to counter them is to simply build some enforcer offices. In a pinch there is a planetary 'decision' that doubles the amount each enforcer contributes to lowering the crimerate. If the crime-rate is zero for long enough, there is a chance (I don't know how often it is rolled) that an event will trigger, shutting down the office and all connected facilities for it.

[Sammy]

Yeah I just set up a Hall of Judgement and did a anti-crime campaign and they disappeared pretty quick.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Originally posted by Sammy:

So how exactly do Criminal Syndicate empires establish branch offices on your planets? Do you need open borders or can they do it with anyone?

Basically, anyone, no agreement needed or anything.

Just can't do hiveminds

[Sammy]

And now all of a sudden my nation has "mob rule" debuff, I had 0% crime....