[geoschmo]

Yeah, 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.

Does the game let you set the population that high? Sphere worlds currently are 64,000 million. Is that as high as you can go or can it go higer?

Geoschmo

EDIT: This is kind of off topic for this thread, so I am going to start a new one to dicuss it.

[ July 10, 2002, 15:38: Message edited by: geoschmo ]