Life is cheap!
 

We go around dumping billions of people into space without a second thought, all because life is cheap... too cheap. The problem is the massive repoduction of our planets. When nearly 2 billion people can be "born" on a huge/optimal/jubiliant planet in just over 1 month, what are a few hundred million here and there.

Reproduction rates need to be lowered considerably... or at least allow us(me) to do that in a mod.

What I suggest:

Allow reproduction rates to be measured in the tenths of percents (i.e., 0.5%, 1.3%, ect.). This also applies to buying reproduction trait, and to facility bonuses.

Allow us to determine how planet conditions and happiness affect reproduction (i.e., Jubiliant +.3%, Unpleasant conditions -.8%, ect.)

Track populations in thousands, not millions... it can be abbreviated to M or B once the pop. gets high enough.

And finally, allow us to determine how much colonists weigh (right now 100 weigh only 1 pound!)

Anyone else think people breed way too fast, and would like to see it reduced, thus giving much more value to population?

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Yeah, I usually end up building a "population base" on my homeworld. I fill every space possible with cargo holds and then I can transfer ~106 colonists per turn (for a 4000M homeworld) to the base and my homeworld will be maxed when the turn is run. Meanwhile a transport, or two, can pull people off the base and fill up all my colonies. I use the base because it has a lower maint cost than the transports.

When I find a breathable planet, I can usually fill it up very quickly without having to take any people from any of my colonies.

I usually take a 5-10% reproduction bonus, and the lowest growth rates I've gotten are in the range of 16-18% when people are angry. This seems way too high. Maybe you can get an extra advantage by taking a lowered reproduction rate to put the points on other stuff, but it probably would be better if the rates were lower.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Simply lowering the reproduction rates as it is won't work... because you can't modify the bounus due to happiness/planet conditions. Even if you drop starting reproduction to 1%, it can/will still hit about 20% on a jubiliant/optimal planet!

Re: Life is cheap!
 

In the beginning of SE IV quite a lot of people were complaining, that reproduction rate was too low!
I don't know how you calculated the 2 billion (= 2000millions) population increase in a month on a huge planet, but this is just not correct. The reproduction rate is per year and not per turn. If you loose a substancial part of your pouplation (eg. homeworld) it is almost impossible to catch up and in all my games I had almost no colonies with full population (I do ship hower always my polpulation from the older colonies to the new ones).
So in my opinion the reproduction rate is very well balanced.


[This message has been edited by Q (edited 16 April 2001).]

Re: Life is cheap!
 

I agree with Q. Reproduction is definitely per year and is pretty well play-balanced, in my opinion. If anything, it is too low and needs to be increased.

Given how easy it is to keep your population happy through the use of troops, I don't really understand why anyone would dump population into space.

Regarding the planet's conditions: If it is affecting my population's happiness or anything else in the game, I have never noticed it. I usually just ignore it.

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 16 April 2001).]

Re: Life is cheap!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like that idea. It gives you more incentive to expand.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Seems to me that would be an incentive to dump people into space.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

A few points here:

1) While maybe not completely realistic, I think the rates of growth allow for noticable expansion during the game while still requiring a player to defend his population base.

2) The amount of people that can be fit into cargo is a bit crazy though. When I can get the entire population of Texas into a single transport ship I think things are getting a bit kooky. I would like to be able to change the amount of people that can be placed on a ship.

3) On a similiar note, I think that colony ships are too easy to build early in the game. Maybe its just my old MOOII days, but starting another major colony should require a little more effort.

4) What would be really cool is if population increase was based on a Malthus curve. Basically it exponentially approached zero at either end of the extreme (no population or max). This makes sense because there is very low birth rates in either case. In the middle region, growth would be at a maximum. This would make population growth a function of current capacity and would require players to try and balance populations out so that they have more "elbow room." Planets that are around 50% full would have the highest growth. Of course the actual rate would be modified by the racial and planet modifiers. In the end though, the player who manages their colonization efforts will get the best growth which makes more sense.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Maybe you could gain production and lose happiness as your population got closer to max. This way you have something to lose/gain either way.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

I think the reproduction rate is fine the way it is, but a slight increase would be better. The thing we need for populations to not be so 'cheap' is to have greater consequences for icing a planet's population. If, for example, we had a Mars colony, and the Martian government decided to dump large ammounts of people into deep space, I'm sure the population of Earth, unless they really hated the Martians for some reason, would become very unhappy with the government of Mars.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by nerfman:
A few points here:

2) The amount of people that can be fit into cargo is a bit crazy though. When I can get the entire population of Texas into a single transport ship I think things are getting a bit kooky. I would like to be able to change the amount of people that can be placed on a ship.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

what, didnt you see the old star trek episode where they transformed the crew into small 3-inch styrofoam polyhedrials?

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Agreed, that colony ships should probably be more expensive -- it's a MAJOR endeavor to create a viable colony on another world, or should be. Combining that, with, say, Troop Tech level 1/ Troop Weapons 1 by default, and possibly making logistics more important by boosting weapon firing costs, might greatly increase the number of battles to capture rather than merely obliterate colonies.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Life is cheap!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by nerfman:
3) On a similiar note, I think that colony ships are too easy to build early in the game. Maybe its just my old MOOII days, but starting another major colony should require a little more effort.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can already do that by increasing resources necessary to build a colony component (in the components.txt file).

Trachmyr, there are values in the settings.txt file that allow you to change default reproduction rate. So, if you think that growth value is too high/low, you can fix it yourself.

Another good way to reduce the high reproduction rate is to increase the cost for reproduction characteristics (also in the settings.txt file). IMO that traits first 10 levels are TOO cheap - right now reproduction is the most cost-effective characteristics to increase. If you try to play the game using default 100% of reproduction, you will find game much more challenging (you will note the difference, trust me).

Re: Life is cheap!
 

I play the game with 100% default and I never have enough population to go around in my games and I mostly play organics with the bonus to growth from Vats and medical centers.
Also has anyone ever seen that population makes any difference to facilties?
In the settings it states that 50M to get a facility to work. I know that it effects the production due to pop.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

I must admit my error here... Indeed I was thinking that reproduction was per turn not per year... However, my feelings that reproduction was too high was based on the growth I viewed in my games, it was my calculations that was askewed. Still, growth is too high. If say gestation & recovery takes about 1 year; with about half of the population able to reproduce (i.e, men vs. women)... and only half of those at the correct maturity to reproduce (counting improved medicine) that comes to 25% per year. But that would only happen if everyone was trying to reproduce, if conditions were excellent and there was no death rate, and there was access to good health care.
If you were to figure that happiness influences desire to reproduce, it would go something like this:

Rioting = 5% of those who can (i.e., 5% of 25%=1.25%)
Angry = 10% (10% of 25% = 2.5%)
Unhappy = 20% (5%)
Indiffrent = 40% (10%)
Happy = 50% (12.5%)
Jubiliant = 60% (15%)

Now conditions come into play:
Deadly Growth x 0.2, -8% death rate
Harsh Growth x 0.4, -6% death rate
Unpleasant Growth x 0.6, -4% death rate
Mild Growth x 0.8, -2% death rate
Good Growth x 1, -2% death rate
Optimal Growth x 1.2. -2% death rate

Medical Labs (which should be available to all, not just organic) adds about 2% to growth rate before calculations for conditions AND cuts death rate in half.

The result, on a world with happy people, Good conditions and a medical lab... the reproduction rate would be 13.5% (the best growth would be 19.4% w/o racial modifiers)
--On a world with unhappy people, unpleasant conditions and no med facility, the repro. rate would be -1%, add a med lab and it becomes 2.2% (the worst would be -7.75%)

These numbers bring about more realistic growth, and provides a reason to look for planets with better conditions (or buy up enviromental resis. trait).

Like I mentioned, pop. should be tracked in the thousands... and 1K people should weigh 100KT (assuming KT stands for metric tons not a thousand tons... could you imagine a 50 million pound fighter!)

Well, sorry for the mistake (I'm sorry because the obvious miscalculation weakened by position)... but my original stance remains the same... although I think the culprit is the bonuses given to reproduction from happiness/conditions, not the base reproduction rate itself.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

To be honest, I think the population set up for the game works fine. I seldom if ever have enough population to go around. What I have learned to do after colonizing several planets is to build some transports and activate the Transport minister. The game then switches population between my planets optimizing each.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

I've got one planet that is at 33% per year. Using the "rule of 72" that means it's nearly doubling every 2 years. At a "meager" 24% (most of my planets are better than that) it will double every 3 years.

With 4000M population producing over 100 colonists per turn, you can easily fill up another breathable planet in only a year or two. For example, say your homeworld is large, and there's another large breathable in the same system. Once you colonize and have a transport, you can quickly split the population in half between the two and with the magic of compound interest end up with 8000M population by about turn 30 (year 3.0)

That seems a bit fast, especially considering I very rarely have any colonies that aren't maxed out on population within a few turns. If dropping the growth rate isn't a fix, then maybe making the colonists a heavier cargo item as was suggested would help.

I was wondering, too, does a racial reproduction bonus of 10% multiply your rate by 1.1 (10% becomes 11%), or does it add a flat 10% to the rate (10% becomes 20%)

Re: Life is cheap!
 

The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Just a little nitpick here http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

1 million colonists take up 5kT of space. Now, kT means kilo-Ton (I'm going to be using english system, since the nitpick is on "right now 100 (colonists) weigh only 1 pound!"). One ton is 2000 pounds. Thus, a kilo-Ton is 2000000 (2 million) pounds. Now five of those makes 10000000 (10 million) pounds. Thus, it's not 100 colonists weigh 1 pound, it's 1 colonist weighs 10 pounds.

I realize that this is still pretty tiny, my little dog weighs 15 pounds right now, even if she is spoiled and obese.

I just wanted to nitpick http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Oh, and before someone nitpicks me on this, I know I shouldn't have used the term "weigh". In space, they should weigh nothing because they are only in the presence of microgravity. I meant "mass" for everything, ok? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Life is cheap!
 

The calculation assumes you compact all those people into a nice square 5kT package for easy stowage, right Will http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Life is cheap!
 

Is there any way to change how much space population takes up? I thought there was, but I can't seem to find it in the settings.txt file. Does anyone know what the line of code is?

Re: Life is cheap!
 

nit-picking the nit-picker...

Okay say a KT is a Killoton (instead of a metric ton, which is what I think MM meant), that means a heavy fighter weighs 50 million pounds! an escort 300 million pounds! not to mention the 40 million pound tanks! ...and still colonist only weigh 10 pounds, looks like the future is populated by models that have taken the idea of SUV's way too far.

Re: Life is cheap!
 

"When I can get the entire population of Texas into a single transport ship..."

That's an understatement. You can fit 330 Million in a SMALL transport. The population of the entire USA is around 300 Million. Maybe that explains how a frigate can kill off an entire planet in a month, hehe.

I like how MOO2 did cloning facilities to raise the growth rate. Although cloning someone only ends up with another infant, which would hardly add to the growth or procutivity rates of a planet... Maybe a "maturation facility" would do the trick.

"what, didnt you see the old star trek episode where they transformed the crew into small 3-inch styrofoam polyhedrials?"

Heh heh, or the old Batman movie where the bad guy removed the water from the entire UN council and had them in a little crack vial?

Re: Life is cheap!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by serpwidgets:
Heh heh, or the old Batman movie where the bad guy removed the water from the entire UN council and had them in a little crack vial?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Hey, I saw that! That's probably the only classic Batman thing that I've ever watched.