Life is cheap!

[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.

[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

[Noble713]

Is there any way to change how much space population takes up? I thought there was, but I can't seem to find it in the settings.txt file. Does anyone know what the line of code is?

[Trachmyr]

nit-picking the nit-picker...

Okay say a KT is a Killoton (instead of a metric ton, which is what I think MM meant), that means a heavy fighter weighs 50 million pounds! an escort 300 million pounds! not to mention the 40 million pound tanks! ...and still colonist only weigh 10 pounds, looks like the future is populated by models that have taken the idea of SUV's way too far.

[serpwidgets]

"When I can get the entire population of Texas into a single transport ship..."

That's an understatement. You can fit 330 Million in a SMALL transport. The population of the entire USA is around 300 Million. Maybe that explains how a frigate can kill off an entire planet in a month, hehe.

I like how MOO2 did cloning facilities to raise the growth rate. Although cloning someone only ends up with another infant, which would hardly add to the growth or procutivity rates of a planet... Maybe a "maturation facility" would do the trick.

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

Heh heh, or the old Batman movie where the bad guy removed the water from the entire UN council and had them in a little crack vial?