Population in SEIV
 

This isn't a new discussion. My suggestion might not even be a new suggestion. I am sure someone suggested it somewhere. I don't recall seeing anyone use it in a mod, but I could be wrong about that even.

There is a lot of funkiness with SEIV and population. It may not be very realistic, but on balance it's a very playable system. And that is the important thing anyway, more so than realism.

I mean if we think about how planetary colonization might really occur, it's more likely the initial colony would have thousands, not millions of colonists. Then once the colony was established maybe millions of people would move there over the months and years to follow. But that takes a hefty amount of micro managment to move those people around, especially in a more "realistic" system with regards to hom many people could fit on a ship. Unless you have some automatic system.

Maybe popultion transfer could be handled in the background, where you don't have to build the ships and physically move the people. You would send a colony ship that would start it off, then have a "population transfer window" where you set the population goals for each planet. These would be met gradually over time and would deplete the populated worlds automatically, offset by reproduction.

Of course in an emergency, or when dealing with other empires you could still load them in a cargo ship and ship them off like so much cattle too.

Also, why can't you have a domed colony exsist side by side with races that breathe that atmosphere? That would require some changes, but it would be neat.

But like I said, the current system may not be realistic, but it is very playable.

Maybe we could approximate some of this ourselves in a mod. Proportions tries, but even with it you are carting around a miilion people in a relativly small ship.

We'd have to change the scale in our minds. Anywhere you see 1M of population, read that as 1 thousand. Then greatly increase the population levels allowed on a planet. Instead of a medium planet holding 2,000M, make it hold 6,000,000M. If 1M is 1,000 people then 6,000,000M would be 6 billon people. Then a colony component would hold 4 thousand, a much more resaonable number.

I did some quick tests and the game will allow a number as high as 99,999,999 for the population number on a planet. Since the game views this in units of millions of people, this would be 100 trillion people. My thought is if you change the scale in your mind this becomes 100 billion people.

You could change all the pop limits in the planet sizes text file. then when you see a colony ship that can hold 4 million people you read it as a colony ship carrying 4 thousand people.

A densely packed population transport carrying 300 million people, the population of the USA, becomes a more plausible transport carrying 300 thousand people. Still a lot, but merely the size of a small city.

Some other things would have to be changed. You'd have to increase the population check, as proportions does. You'd have to decrease the militia per population, or at least make them much weaker comparitvly. Maybe make plantery damage less. This owuld make planets much tougher, which is good, but might make them too tough if you dont make some other changes.

Ideas?

Geoschmo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Yes, this is another AI feature that could be added in SE V. If population had 'attitudes' toward things like habitability of planets, danger level of living in a particular system (planet/stellar events, tension/war with other empires, presence of space monsters? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ), and economic conditions, then you could have 'automatic' migration of the sort that MOO 3 is promising.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Right, those would require some hard code changes. What do you think abou tht esecond half of my post about changing the scale of population in SEIV. That could be done in a mod without any code changes. I may be missing some points though that could make it totally unworkable.

Geoschmo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

I would love it if population were handled almost exclusivly by competant AI. If I had my way, population movement should not be abstracted, rather keep the current system of transports in place, but have them on full AI control. Players would have an incentive to produce enough transports to meet movement demands, and a failure to have enough transports would adversely affect the economy.

Players would then have to worry about protecting these AI controlled transports against other empires raiders and dare I say, pirates and space monsters.

It would a lot to the game to have more to do than blindly expand.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

In Roman numerals, 'M' is 1000.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Hmm... this is going into Fyron's Quadrant Mod v2.00. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cool! So we call it the Roman Mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Of course once you hit 1000M it switches to 1B. B wouldn't by chance be the Roman numeral for Million would it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Geo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Geoschmo, I just tried this and got a RCE when hitting "End Turn". I started a game with a medium homeworld and I took Advanced Storage Techniques. Here is the entry for the medium planet (with other changes to it):

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh yeah, I made these changes to Settings.txt too:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

[ July 10, 2002, 20:03: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Ok, so seriously I am looking for problems with this idea. The first thing that comes to mind is if you multiply the polpulation by 1000, you've just made planets 1000 times harder to destroy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif I am all for making planets tougher, but I haven't heard anyone suggesting they need to be 1000 times tougher. TO counter this some you can reduce the damage to kill one pop in the settings.txt file. It's at 10 by default. So you reduce this to 1 and it's only 100 times harder than it is now to destroy a colony. Is this too tough? We can increase the power of planetary weapons to help with this, but will it be enough? And if it is does it take Weapon platforms completely out of the equation. There are some details to work out in this before anyone tries implementing this change.

Next would be reproduction. If we change the scale of the population numbers, but not counter that somehow with the reproduciton then people skip right over rabbits and start breeding like bacteria. That's no good. We can change the reproduction check frequency. Not sure how high you can make it. I'll have to test that some. Is taht all you would need to do to correct this? Maybe I am missing something else important. along these lines.

Geoschmo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Alas, I am hitting the same wall. It appears maybe this will not work after all. I had not tried hitting end turn before when I determined the game would allow an 8 digit number for the population.

Geoschmo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Increase the structure of weapon platforms to compensate, and then increasing the dmg of planetary weapons isn't a problem.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, changing the scale would help in some ways. You'd better remember to fix the population bonuses or every colony will be at max production in a hurry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But having a ship only able to move a few thousand colonist would be nice, and population growth would be much more realistic. This would slow the game even more, of course. But apparently many people like the way Proportions works and it slows the game, too.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, making planets harder to destroy is not a bad thing. We had a whole thread about how ridiculously easy it is, remember? But do change the number of militia per point of population! Or planets will not only be indestrucible but unconquerable. If we changed militia by a factor of 1000 just like population we'd then have a very real incentive to invade rather than slag planets. The difficulty of just killing everyone on a planet would be very high.

As far as reproduction, we can reduce it somewhat, yes, but if you scale it back to make large planets seem 'realistic' you'll make new colonies unable to grow. Dropping the default reproduction rate to 5 percent would be good. I wish we could limit the bonuses from happiness but only production is modifiable.

[ July 11, 2002, 00:41: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Population in SEIV
 

"Reproduction Check Frequency := 100"

OK, someone explain this line to me. I'm reading it as the planets are checked and the pop multiplied by the reproduction number every X turns.

That would make this kind of silly, considering you'd only get new population once every decade. Wouldn't decreasing the reproduction a lot be a better solution?

Phoenix-D

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, yeah kind of it would. But the problem is the base reproduction rate is only 10 percent as it is. If you reduce it any lower than 5 and every planet with less than plesant conditions will have zero reproduction. Not only every ten years, never.

I wish that this was doable. The more I think about this the more I like it. But I can't seem to get past the RCE's. I guess we could still change the scale, but less than 1000. Maybe 100. But it will be harder to equate in your head. I didn't want to have to do a bunch of calculations. Ah well.

Geo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

CLONES

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Damage resistance: I think 100x the current levels is completely reasonable.

Reproduction: Changing the number of pop units this way is actually going to reduce the repro rate rather than increase it, because reproduction rate is linear except for the rounding error (minimum +1 per check). However, as I pointed out in Proportions, the default set's base repro rates are about 10x faster than actual human industrialized reproduction rates. That's why I set the repro check frequency to 10 (once every 10 turns) in Proportions.

Range check error: Tell MM and send a saved game, and he might fix it.

Overall, this is a nice idea, though I don't think it's a lot different from what I am doing in Proportions - it just has higher-grain less abstract numbers for population. I don't think of population units as necessarily representing one million civilians in Proportions. To me they mainly represent a level of effective workforce, including their equipment and survival necessities. The fact that they double in one year definitely does not represent in my mind that they reproduced and raised and educated childen at that rate. I think of it more abstractly, and I assume that there must be numerous small civilian craft that transport civilians and goods around (for example, this is the only way blockades make any sense). The natural population increase may take this into account.

In fact, I recently had a slight misgiving about how literal my treatment of population in Proportions is, compared to the following interpretation:

Another way to think of population is as if they are 1000 people each, but without increasing their numbers. In this interpretation, what they represent are 1000 highly-trained, educated, appropriate-age, healthy, colonization-equipped personnel who are under the emperor's control. Civillians who are not highly-trained, have health or age problems, or who for social reasons are not ready to serve as colonists, are not represented by populaion units (maybe by facilities, or by nothing). That is, they only represent the people who matter for the purposes they are used in the game.

Anyway, there are a various interesting ways to interpret and represent population. I'm pretty happy with the way Proportions works, but I'd be curious to see an attempt like Geo suggests here, too.

PvK

Re: Population in SEIV
 

I don't.

I am ever caught up in Starfire via Shiva Option. But they were able to take out worlds above max pop levels wiht a few hudnred fighters loaded with FRAMs. Antimatter does a number. What are CSMs made of?

Re: Population in SEIV
 

CSMs are nukes.

Skuly has a point; some of the weapons in SE4 would do serious damage to a planet, perhaps to the point of rendering it unlivable even if you *didn't* kill everyone off.

Phoenix-D

Re: Population in SEIV
 

GEOSCHMO:Also, why can't you have a domed colony exsist side by side with races that breathe that atmosphere? That would require some changes, but it would be neat.

I have that situation in a game against the AI, although it was quite by accident. My race breaths oxygen and I captured a methane breathers planet. Planet next to it was methane, and I remembered from reading this forum how you could use Transports to expand domed planets. I accidentally loaded a transport up that had 1 oxy breather and the rest methane, and accidentally dumped them (what I get for getting in a hurry) on the methane planet I captured.
I've been off-loading like crazy from that planet, trying to get that 1 oxy breather the heck out of there, but the transports just keep picking up the methane breathers.
I'm close to emptying the planet now, and figure I'm going to wind up with that 1 flippin' oxygen breather left.
Your comment just stuck out because I wish I didn't have this situation!

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Star Jack, don't use the load population command. Instead, park the transport over the planet and use the transfer window (hotkey T) to pick up the oxy breather.

Rollo

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Rollo, Thank You! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, we've been requesting bombardment to do some damage to the planet itself for a long time. At the very least it ought to reduce conditions. But that would make the 'Radiation Bomb' less useful as a specialty weapon, so MM is not likely to do it.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">CSM's are supposed to be nukes but their damage and ammo levels don't really reflect that.

Also, consider the opposite end of the scale - depleted uranium cannon. Good luck killing anyone with a depleted uranium cannon from outside the atmosphere of a planet. Even inside the atmosphere, good luck hitting targets, and even if you hit with every shot, you'll never have enough ammo on a space ship to kill even one million people with them.

PvK

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nope. M = 1000 is the largest "digit" the Romans used. For inconveniently large numbers, they drew a line over the number to indicate "1000 times". So
_
M = 1,000,000

Re: Population in SEIV
 

"Good luck killing anyone with a depleted uranium cannon from outside the atmosphere of a planet."

Depends on how fast said cannon shot is moving. a hunk of whatever moving at .9C is going to do a lot of damage.. The DUC is probably pretty slow though.

Phoenix-D

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Ya I hardly think every empire would start with a relativistic cannon by default. Also, if you have a shell travelling at .9C, would it help if it were uranium? Maybe it would trigger a fission reaction on impact...

In any case, my point is that anti-ship weapons would not I think generally be effective as tools of genocide from space. It doesn't really fit my imagination to have single shots eliminating millions of civillians at once, the way they currently do.

If the ship weapons are supposed to be as strong or stronger than thermonuclear bombs, then how does any ship ever survive even a single hit?

I can appreciate that some sci-fi weapons could do massive damage to planetary populations, but I don't think all of them would, and many I don't think would be capable of causing casualties in the millions at all, though the same weapons might still be quite good at neutralizing weapons platforms...

PvK

Re: Population in SEIV
 

"If the ship weapons are supposed to be as strong or stronger than thermonuclear bombs, then how does any ship ever survive even a single hit?"

Really really strong armor? Remember that these ships can do other weird things as well- like fly through the same sector as the center of a black hole and come out unscathed (as long as they don't stop)

Phoenix-D

Re: Population in SEIV
 

No... moving across a black hole obviously does not represent surviving the event horizon - it just means flying dangerously near, without entering. It's an abstract representation of 3D space, momentum, etc.

PvK

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Which is why I said same sector and not *through* it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Heh... actually, in space where there isn't as much material to transmit a shockwave it's not that inconceivable to survive a nuclear weapon as long as it's not a 'direct' hit -- detonation in actual contact with the ship.

And remember, scale is everything. What's the size of the warhead? Isn't it easier to load lots of small warheads (a few hundred kilotons?) on smaller missiles than to put the very biggest bomb you can make (50 megatons? 100 megatons?) on larger missiles? It's the usual trade-off: Smaller warheads are much more survivable individually but easier to get a hit with because you can launch more. Larger warheads might wipe out the target completely but with fewer of them available they can be more easily countered various measures.

There was a project in the late 1950s to build a space ship powered by nuclear bombs. Yes, bombs would be dropped out the back and a 'pusher plate' on the underside of the craft with enormous shock absorbers would take the bLast. It was called the Orion Project. Do a Google search for it and you'll find plenty of resources. It's had some recent attemtion due to the son of Freeman Dyson (who was a major contributor) writing a book about it.

[ July 13, 2002, 23:18: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Population in SEIV
 

I guess my point is that the game values do not reflect the real-universe differences between weapons, and clearly we all have very different imaginations of what the same things represent.

However, I would say that if one considers that components like Bridge and Life Support can absorb 10 damage points each, that 60 points for a thermonuclear warhead hit seems at least "a bit" light (some would say incredibly so), since a typical smallest unarmored exploration ship can absorb typically 210 damage points.

As for passing through the black hole, again, it seems clear that the only way to enter the destructive zone of one in SE4 is to END the turn within the pull radius of the center, in which case the object takes damage. Moving through the same location on the 2D map and then moving to a safe distance is obviously (to me, anyway) not representing a move into the destructive area. To me, it seems like actually not a bad abstract representation, as long as one doesn't insist on interpreting it too literally and two-dimensionally.

PvK

Re: Population in SEIV
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mass to transmit the shockwave is pure gravy. Most of the energy put out by an atomic device isn't directly kinetic in nature anyway ... radiant energy of various types. Also remember, the mass of the bomb itself will impact your craft at very high speeds. A near-miss in space will still push you around (hence hte Orion you mention below http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ). Potentially quite violently ...

Lackof proximity mainly produces a more-diffuse / less-intense dose of the radiant energies of the bLast. Otherwise, touching or 100m or 1km or whatever away, a bLast is a bLast.

Some randomness in damage would be VERY nice especially here, to reflect proximity of detonation; it's not like you can "shaped charge" effect a nuclear bLast, after all ...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">With a lithium-hydride packed Hydrogen Bomb (of sufficient mass and size), the limit is much closer to a gigaton than a mere 100 megaton bLast. IIRC, the USA and/or USSR have test-detonated Hydrogen Bombs of up to 300 or 400 megatons ... as non-recently as 30 years ago, at the height of the cold war.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah yes, the Orion ... one of my Favorites. The novel Footfall includes the actual (in the story ofc) construction, launch, and use of such a craft. Unfortunately, I'm suffering brainlock on the writer's name ATM ...

When piloting an Orion-drive space-craft launching from a planetary surface, just remember: if the first bomb is a dud, that's not a problem. If the SECOND bomb is a dud ... you have a definite problem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Mainly owing to the fact that the first one throws you a mile or so up, and if the second fails ... you fall. Heh.

Re: Population in SEIV
 

When you are talking about hardened miltary targets, mass is essential for doing damage on anything but a direct hit. In an atmosphere the intense radiation heats up the stuff around it and causes the explosion. Thus the damage. Outside a certain radius even a nuclear warhead isn't going to do much damage in space. This would depend on the heat resistance of the skin of your ship, of course.

The Orion project actually included the 'propellant' -- stuff for the nuclear explosion to heat up -- with the bomb. It wasn't just a bald nuke dropped out of the craft. You can see the details as I said, by going to a search engine. So, it was not relying on just the energy.

I would really like to know where you get the information about any nuclear tests larger than 50 megatons. According to every official 'Nuclear Arms Testing' site I've ever visited the largest test ever was a Soviet nuke of 50 Mgtn which it was believed could be souped up to 100. Where on earth could anyone have tested anything larger?

Edit: The 'Tsar Bomb' was the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed or detonated. While only tested at 50 Megatons, it was intended to be a 100 megaton device. It was 'useless militarily' and was created purely for political purposes.

NB: Sakharov was the designer! (1961)

http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew...ovwarhead.html

[ July 14, 2002, 03:40: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Population in SEIV
 

just out of curiosity why would something of 100 megatons be useless militarily? too big to fly in?

Re: Population in SEIV
 

Well, that was their choice of words on the site that I found. I guess no nuclear bomb is truly 'useless' but it's sure possible for it to be 'out of spec' or even 'counter-productive'. Think about the whole context of warfare. This must be a very expensive bomb to build, with refined uranium being a very scarce and precious resource, and also very difficult to deliver without killing the pilot. Even assuming it could be delivered with an ICBM of some sort, saving the 'pilot' question, it's so huge that it would wipe out far more than the target. At the least this is a waste of your precious resource, refined uranium. And unless you really are a lunatic and seeking to cause as much destruction as possible, it doesn't do any good to take out hundreds of square miles of countryside along with the military base that you were aiming at. What it does do is make you look bad to kill the vast number of civilians that would be killed along with the military personel. So from a 'pragmatic' perspective of waging war 'intelligently' I guess it is essentially useless. Weird as it sounds to talk of pragmatic and intelligent use of nuclear weapons... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Population in SEIV
 

RE: Military utility of big nukes,

As the accuracy of delivery systems increased, the yield of individual warheads was decreased and MIRV'ing came into being. Put a bunch of "smaller" warheads on a single delivery platform, so you can hit and destroy more targets effectively. Cheaper to deliver (vice one uber-massive warhead) and gives you greater reduncy to counter the Soviet ABM systems that were in place during the cold war.

The primary killer for "modern" nuclear devices is the overpressure and then bLast - radiation has always been an un-intended and unwelcome side effect - except for the "neutron bomb" devices.