Life is cheap!

[Puke]

quote:

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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.

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

[Taqwus]

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.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Daynarr]

quote:

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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.

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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).

[Aussie Gamer]

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.

[Trachmyr]

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.

[Atrocities]

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.

[serpwidgets]

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%)

[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.

[Will]

Just a little nitpick here

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

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?

[Marty Ward]

The calculation assumes you compact all those people into a nice square 5kT package for easy stowage, right Will