[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

quote:

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If 'labor' were a non-portal resource then you'd be forced to locate your major shipyards at large population centers. Hey, presto, more realism

P&N does this, and I'm sure proportions has something to that effect as well.

In the latest P&Ns (2.5 PBW), spaceyard rate is set to 10% for 1M people, and goes up 1% for every 25M people after that.
Effectively, Homeworlds start with about 175% of normal build rate, but colonies of 100M are stuck with 14%, and struggle to build even the cheapest facilities, normally taking 6 months to a year each.
At the other end of the scale, Sphereworlds get about 25x more build rate than normal
Besides the fact that it would take forever to build the spaceyard on a colony, you'd get little return on your investment.

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That's not quite what I meant but it's true that population production bonuses come close to this effect. But what I intnded was that even orbital space yards should be dependent on population.

Basically, population would 'produce' a resource called 'labor' and it would then be used to: 1) operate facilities, 2) build stuff. Each facility could then have a 'labor input' requirement to be operated. And spaceyard bases built around planets with high population would be vastly more productive. Oh, and robotoid factories would then boost your 'labor' production per population point, not your production directly.

After the balancing effects of making population more valuable, and making facilities usage more realistic, the main advantage of this system would be similar to the 'maintenance modifier' that was discussed in another thread. You could make something very expensive in 'labor' but not other resources so it was difficult to build but not expensive to maintain.

[ July 03, 2002, 16:13: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]