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Manpower as a resource
Manpower should be the "fourth resource" in SE5.
There has been a lot of talk about adding "money" as yet another resource to SE5. I believe this is wrong for a lot of reasons, but I do feel that we should add another, different resource: manpower. Allow me to explain my ideas. Building ships, weapons platforms and so forth require not only stuff (minerals, radioactives, organics), and an industrial base (shipyards) but also you need to man them with trained personnel. The amount of trained personnel available for the military is often a limiting factor, especially in outlying areas or less populated planets. This is true in reality, and should be even more acute when dealing with far-flung interstellar empires. You shouldn't be able to build twenty battleships every three months on that distant planet with only 20 million people, even if you have the industry there to do it. The people just ain't there to man the ships. Furthermore, recruitment varies depending on popular mood (happiness), government type (more totalitarian govts can "press-gang" more personnel, but they will be less capable problaby), facilities (academies produce more trained personnel) and other stuff. I think that this could be implemented into SE5 simply as an additional resource that each planet produces, but which is not stored, and varies based on the above ideas. A wide variety of ideas come to mind about how this could make a nifty addition, with little added hassles. However, I beleive that we can go even one small step further and make it even neater in the following way. With this idea we could address the fact that manpower also varies by skill - the more you build, the more skilled manpower you use up, the less skilled are available. Eventually, in a nasty war situation you might be working with raw recruits who are very unskilled. Aaron has stated that SE5 will track supplies, ordnance, and experience level on a per ship basis in SE5. These affect how well a ship fights and its capabilities. BUT, how fully manned a ship is is another factor which greatly affects combat ability. Plus, each ship has to cycle through manpower on a regular basis. People get transferred, leave, die, etc...so you need to replace them. If we added a personnel skill rating to each ship in addition to ordnance, supply, and experience, then we could simulate the continuous drain of manpower on having a large fleet by making the manpower of the nation have to feed into the ships. If it can't then the skill level of the crew might drop due to being filled with the dregs of society, unskilled, etc...In other words, I'm talking about "manpower maintenance" in addition to other sorts of maintenance Aaron already has. The personnel skill level would add to ship combat Ratings and perhaps maintence rate as well. When you can't provide new personnel to your ships to account for attrition, then the ship personnel skill rating would go down (you're sending out green recruits to fill spaces that were held by veterans before). I come to this discussion because tracking US Navy readiness is what I do, and they basically track exactly these things on a per ship basis. Two hundred years of having a navy has taught the US that what is important for understanding ship readiness and capabilities is equipment, supplies, ordnance, training, and personnel. SE5 will apparently account for all but the latter. And I think implementing something like this in SE5 but would come with little additional burden to the player. Just add an extra column to the imperial budget menus, an extra resource icon to the planet windows, a "manpower" cost to ship components, etc... We would need to come up with "recruitment" and "attritition" rates for personnel, which would determine how many manpower points are recruited per million of population at any given planet, how rapidly crew skill degrades and needs to be replenished, and various schemes for facilities, racial traits, and government traits that modify both recruitment and attrition. Thanks for listening, Alarik Ps: If you wanted to run with this idea at the risk of making it complicated, perhaps we could even implement an "imperial policy"menu that would let us choose "draft" armies or "volounteer army" - the former would have a low level of inherent skill but yield a lot more personnel, the later would yield much fewer but more skilled personnel. PPs: credit where credit is due: this idea is influenced not only by my work, but also other PBeM games I have played, namely Lords of the Earth (www.throneworld.com) PPPS: cross-posted to the SE4 Yahoo forum for additional comments/critiques. |
Re: Manpower as a resource
I disagree.
I think better use of population modifiers is an easier and more effective (i.e. less micromanagement) way of doing the same thing. Stock SE:IV is not so great at this as you can have 100% production/build rate with just 1M people. If a planet has 100M people on it, then it's safe to assume that there will be plenty of skilled labour available. Make that level the base production/build rate, and then add new modifiers at whatever population amounts you desire, 10-20-30M etc, with a reduced rate. |
Re: Manpower as a resource
Have you tried SJ's Gritty Economics mod? It turns organics into labor "man-hours" and radioactives into power (or energy or something).
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I totally agree (with the original post). I find one of the biggest (problems / unrealisms / unbalances / whatever one may call it) with SEIV is the population issue. It's just irrelevant. The strength of an empire is in its people... which holds true in Civilization, Master of Orion, Stars!, real life, and so forth, where people do work. In SEIV, buildings do work, and people just make them a little more efficient.
In SEV, I'm looking forward to reductions in micromanagement, better graphics, better tactical battles, better AI, and hopefully increased realism like QNP. But beyond all those, I'm hoping population becomes not only relevant, but vital and realistic. Currently, the name "Space Empires" is misleading, as it is just a wargame... a real population that really did the work in the empire would make it a true empire-building game. This cannot be accomplished with the current "give buildings a bonus if there happen to be people on the planet" model, or even a highly graduated model based on that system. -Cherry |
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Re: Manpower as a resource
Good idea, but dont make it even harder for the underdog to get ahead.
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I think it could be done so that the opposite ocurred.
That is, I think such a concept might actually level the playing field in that we're talking about using population as a resource that gives skilled labour. Depending on how it was implemented, and given that the difference in population between a big empire and a small empire is generally much less than the difference in ship numbers or economy between the same two empires, it could help out the little guy. I look at it sort of like this. When one produces a starship one doesn't just need highly skilled and motivated crews, but the highly skilled labor to build and maintain them and the infrastructure to support them. In societies that we're talking about in SE4/5, where space exploration, exploitation, and colonization is a major part (if not *the* major) undertaking of their societies, you need a lot of people to make it work. I posit that the manpower requirements for the ships/weapons platforms/troops themselves, *as well as* the manpower requirements to build them, support them, and support the infrastructure that supports them are pretty significant. How many people in the US (or any other country today) are skilled enough to perform a complex and dangerous job in the military? Not too many, percentage-wise. Let's say a tenth of a percent. That means that in a mid-sized colony of 100M people you might expect 10,000 availalbe personnel for these things. Now, each turn is a month, and you not only have to build and support, but account for attrition for these ships/weapons/troops and it quickly seems to me that the manpower requirement is non-trivial. Plus, adding manpower would be FUN - becuase it allows various modifiers, racial traits, and facilities to have the effect you'd expect. Those Fanatical cultures to get the bonus that they really deserve - a bunch of fanatics, no limit to manpower for them. StarFleet Acaemy increases the base skills of manpower. Labor camps increase manpower, but decrease it's skill, etc...propoganda intel ops could decrease enemy recruitment, etc... the possibilities are pretty vast... And it really makes those happiness modifiers have the effect you expect - populations unhappy? Reduced manpower. And it adds an important and real life aspect the game - ship crews - which, trust me, are very important for the operation of a naval vessel. And it's realistic: if your empire starts suddenly pumping out gazillions of warships each turn, you would think that the quality of the crews would decrease. Likewise, if you're under siege and you start press-ganging everyone over the age of twelve, well, the effects could be felt. And given that it would be handled just like a "fourth resource" I don't see a lot of added micromanagement. Make it into an option at game start for that matter... Have I begun to beat the dead horse yet...? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Alarik Quote:
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Re: Manpower as a resource
But if you want to be realistic, it's going to take 180-200 turns for a population to produce enough personnel to produce enough of a crew to a "human" ship. That's 10 turns per year times 18-20 years for a human child to reach maturity. Other races may produce adult personnel sooner, depending on their physiology. I think this should be taken effect into gameplay, although I'm not sure how it could be done.
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I do agree with the first and second Posts, while this looks contraditory, let me sexplain myself:
I do agree that ship personel should be handled in the way that alarikf stated, as in every RL situation and in the majority of SF books that i read we see that a nation,empire, etc. that have a huge flet normally have more unskilled personal manning their ships against an empire with a smaller fleet (the population bases being equal), and, when you have a war, attrition loses forces you to employ more unskilled personel... In an additional note, you woould only lose personel quality by "attrition" if you actually lose ships, and in a very small rate in comparision of quality lost because of the size of the fleet, since wars and conflits tend to increase the skill leels of the personel involved (at leats of the ones that survive the battles). As about Cap Kwok said, facilities and planetary production should not be affected in the same way than ships, as the population numbers used in SE allow a lot of "grunt labor", and modern facilities productions in the tech level in wich the game start should not need to bia a personel to man (lots of automation)... It is important to note that in the to instances aove we are handling with 2 different types of skill: the first would be the skill to navigante, maintain and possibly (in the case of warships) to fight with a spaceship, and the second the skill of using an suposedly higly automatized facility to produce resources... In another note, if the manpower scheme sugested by alarikf is used for ships, we must create a way so the warships end using better skilled and bigger crews than support ships, since (at least i think so) any empire woul put his most skilled people in a battlecruiser instead of a simple pop transport... just my two cents... |
Re: Manpower as a resource
Did Aaron not say that the actual resources will be moddable with something like 5 different resource 'slots' availiable? This would mean that even if personel and/or manpower are not in SEV stock game, both of these options and many many more could easily be modded into it.
(starts drooling, thinking about the possiblities...) |
Re: Manpower as a resource
One way to not create more micromanagement would be to treat manpower in global scale, so planets with small and unhappy populations would produce only a very small quantity of ship crews, and big, happier populations would produce a lot of crews (with modifiers of facilities, if the planet is blockadedit will not produce crews, etc.), but the actual skill levels of the crews crewing the ships would be a simply comparasion of the number of ships in the fleet (with modifiers to attrition) with the global crew production of the empire...
So newbies to the game would not need to actually manage any new resource, since the "crew production" would not be actually "spent" but shared by all ships in a global scale (with some ships using more than others, since warships would need more crews)... As an example in how this would work in game terms, if you have 3 planets, one being you homeworld and the other 2 being a small undeveloped colonies, and you have 15 ships Letīs state that a ship need 1 "manpower point" to have a crew with 100% skill. The homeworld would produce 10 "manpower points" The colonies would produce each 1 "manpower points" We would have a totoal pool of 12 "manpower points" that need to be divided to 15 ships, resulting in 0.8 point per ship, that would result in a crew with 80% skill handling the ships... Of course we will need additional ways to represent the increased use of manpower by warships, and a crew skill would need to be capped at something like (like 150%), ships lost would decrease temporarily the global "manpower pool" and facilities could increase the "manpower points" productions of a planet or system, but the advantage of such system would be that you donīt increase micromanagement in any significat way, and adds a very fun factor to the game... |
Re: Manpower as a resource
Another thing that might affect ships is computers. The more that the tech is researched, the more things can be automated and there would be less need for a skilled crew. It might take a lot of game years to do the research and gain the technology. In the meantime, you would need such skilled staff. But eventually, you'll need less population to build and crew ships. Then you can use them to colonize more planets.
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I agree with you BUT: if you take a look at the Proportion Mod, I think you will agree with me that a lot of realisme can be found in that mod |
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The people on an overcrowded world could be stuggling to survive, and produce little in excess for the empire to use. A large population could be a large liability. The Chinese were defeated by the better equiped Mongols, the Persians were defeated by the better equiped Greeks, and the Aztecs were defeated by... ..etc. A smaller empire with resources, skill, and education can produce more with better quality. Maybe population bonuses should be a bell shaped curve? With a minimum for each facility. |
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Yeah, you're right, and yet I think we're talking about different things in part. I would say that the reasons the Chinese, Persians, Aztecs etc... were defeated was due in part to their inability to mobilize their massive populations in *conjunction* with their corrupted and non-competetive systems and, in some cases, really crappy technology (ok, actually I don't know much about the Persians, so I can't speak to them).
Now, we could simulate the above ideas about how much one could mobilize the populations by using the racial/government/special characteristics to modify manpower rates. So, the Chinese example would have the racial disadvantage of "inefficient government" which greatly reduces their mobilization. Or, depending on your view of history, the Chinese at that time were a seriously demoralized people, so that is where the happiness modifiers come into play: An empire that has been smacked around might be so demoralized that it is languishing - and this results in much lower manpower base to create troops from. NOW, I am NOT necsssarily saying that if a empire RUNS OUT of manpower that they can't build ships/wpns/troops. But if they do then they should have to deal with the fact that they are recruiting the dregs or unskilled for thier forces. That is where my proposal for the crew skill rating of ships/wpns/troops comes in: this is not experience, but baseline skill. The "standard" recruit should give a 0% bonus - just like in the standard game. If you run out of manpower, perhaps your crews should start at a lower level for newly built ships. Say at -1% to - 5%. If you have the racial ability "elite military ethic" or something like that, perhaps your crew baseline is +1% to +5T, rather that zero. And if you have a "volounteer" rather than "draft" force, you should start a bit higher too... Again, I come at this just from the perspective of gauging, measuring, buying, and analyzing US Navy readiness and what USN does is measure, among many things, the personnel, training, equipment status, ordnance, and supplies for each ship. Now, other navies may do something different or better, but that is just my perspective and I think it is pretty applicable to space empire vessels. Perhaps not to weapons platforms or troops, I can;t really speak to that as well... Ok, I'll stop babbling now. Hopefully. Alarik Quote:
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Re: Manpower as a resource
Take Europe as an example ( please http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif...
Great strides were made during the Renosance, which came after many died from the black death. |
Re: Manpower as a resource
Will SE5 have the ability to generate a resource based on population level, for example, a population of 100m people = 100 resource points (manpower, currency)?
If the game can generate a resource base on population level, the idea of having manpower as a resource type in SE5 is not a bad idea. But I would only go this far with it. The population would generate manpower points. The facilities would use a set amount of manpower points per turn. Academy facilities would uses manpower points but generate crew points. All vehicles would use a set amount of crew points per turn.[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img] |
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An overcrowded world could also be a very advanced developed society, which would mean a huge internal market, and huge profits from taxation. Examples: - The US today doesn't hold the leadership in production of most goods out there, but is the biggest market in the world, and everybody wants to sell in the US, while the the service sector become a huge source of tax income for the goverment. And who has the most resources to have the best army? - China. The commies in China have managed to pull of the biggest betterment of living standards in 10 years in history. In the near future (20, 30 years?), China will likely become the largest market in the world, and with it the status of superpower. And I don't wanna think how much money they will have for their military. So a heavily populated world can be an enourmous source of income. In the end, everybody is a consumer, and every consumer is a market. |
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