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.