Manpower as a resource

[Makinus]

One way to not create more micromanagement would be to treat manpower in global scale, so planets with small and unhappy populations would produce only a very small quantity of ship crews, and big, happier populations would produce a lot of crews (with modifiers of facilities, if the planet is blockadedit will not produce crews, etc.), but the actual skill levels of the crews crewing the ships would be a simply comparasion of the number of ships in the fleet (with modifiers to attrition) with the global crew production of the empire...

So newbies to the game would not need to actually manage any new resource, since the "crew production" would not be actually "spent" but shared by all ships in a global scale (with some ships using more than others, since warships would need more crews)...

As an example in how this would work in game terms, if you have 3 planets, one being you homeworld and the other 2 being a small undeveloped colonies, and you have 15 ships

Let´s state that a ship need 1 "manpower point" to have a crew with 100% skill.

The homeworld would produce 10 "manpower points"
The colonies would produce each 1 "manpower points"
We would have a totoal pool of 12 "manpower points" that need to be divided to 15 ships, resulting in 0.8 point per ship, that would result in a crew with 80% skill handling the ships...

Of course we will need additional ways to represent the increased use of manpower by warships, and a crew skill would need to be capped at something like (like 150%), ships lost would decrease temporarily the global "manpower pool" and facilities could increase the "manpower points" productions of a planet or system, but the advantage of such system would be that you don´t increase micromanagement in any significat way, and adds a very fun factor to the game...

[gregebowman]

Another thing that might affect ships is computers. The more that the tech is researched, the more things can be automated and there would be less need for a skilled crew. It might take a lot of game years to do the research and gain the technology. In the meantime, you would need such skilled staff. But eventually, you'll need less population to build and crew ships. Then you can use them to colonize more planets.

[Intimidator]

Saber Cherry said:
I totally agree (with the original post). I find one of the biggest (problems / unrealisms / unbalances / whatever one may call it) with SEIV is the population issue. It's just irrelevant. The strength of an empire is in its people... which holds true in Civilization, Master of Orion, Stars!, real life, and so forth, where people do work. In SEIV, buildings do work, and people just make them a little more efficient.

In SEV, I'm looking forward to reductions in micromanagement, better graphics, better tactical battles, better AI, and hopefully increased realism like QNP. But beyond all those, I'm hoping population becomes not only relevant, but vital and realistic. Currently, the name "Space Empires" is misleading, as it is just a wargame... a real population that really did the work in the empire would make it a true empire-building game.

This cannot be accomplished with the current "give buildings a bonus if there happen to be people on the planet" model, or even a highly graduated model based on that system.

-Cherry

I agree with you BUT: if you take a look at the Proportion Mod, I think you will agree with me that a lot of realisme can be found in that mod

[Ed Kolis]

bearclaw said:
Did Aaron not say that the actual resources will be moddable with something like 5 different resource 'slots' availiable? This would mean that even if personel and/or manpower are not in SEV stock game, both of these options and many many more could easily be modded into it.

(starts drooling, thinking about the possiblities...)

Really? I recall the sample data files he showed us had just the standard 3 resources as costs for a component... of course that might change... and of course with Labels.txt you can rename anything in the game so if you want to call your resources "material", "labor", and "energy", or "ironium", "boranium", and "germanium", or even "time", "talent", and "treasure" (for a church ministry mod? ) or "health", "mana", and "chi" (if you come up with the crazy idea of turning SE5 into a fantasy RPG )... ok, I'll stop rambling on about all the wondrous possibilities

[Wardad]

Saber Cherry said:
I totally agree (with the original post). I find one of the biggest (problems / unrealisms / unbalances / whatever one may call it) with SEIV is the population issue. It's just irrelevant. The strength of an empire is in its people...
-Cherry

Not entirely...
The people on an overcrowded world could be stuggling to survive, and produce little in excess for the empire to use.
A large population could be a large liability.
The Chinese were defeated by the better equiped Mongols, the Persians were defeated by the better equiped Greeks, and the Aztecs were defeated by... ..etc.
A smaller empire with resources, skill, and education can produce more with better quality.
Maybe population bonuses should be a bell shaped curve? With a minimum for each facility.

[Fyron]

Wardad said:
Maybe population bonuses should be a bell shaped curve? With a minimum for each facility.

P&N PBW Version does that. Resource production starts low, rises quickly to a max bonus at 620 million or so, and steadily drops off to 100% later on. Construction bonuses increase more slowly, but always increase.

[AMF]

Yeah, you're right, and yet I think we're talking about different things in part. I would say that the reasons the Chinese, Persians, Aztecs etc... were defeated was due in part to their inability to mobilize their massive populations in *conjunction* with their corrupted and non-competetive systems and, in some cases, really crappy technology (ok, actually I don't know much about the Persians, so I can't speak to them).

Now, we could simulate the above ideas about how much one could mobilize the populations by using the racial/government/special characteristics to modify manpower rates. So, the Chinese example would have the racial disadvantage of "inefficient government" which greatly reduces their mobilization. Or, depending on your view of history, the Chinese at that time were a seriously demoralized people, so that is where the happiness modifiers come into play: An empire that has been smacked around might be so demoralized that it is languishing - and this results in much lower manpower base to create troops from.

NOW, I am NOT necsssarily saying that if a empire RUNS OUT of manpower that they can't build ships/wpns/troops. But if they do then they should have to deal with the fact that they are recruiting the dregs or unskilled for thier forces. That is where my proposal for the crew skill rating of ships/wpns/troops comes in: this is not experience, but baseline skill. The "standard" recruit should give a 0% bonus - just like in the standard game. If you run out of manpower, perhaps your crews should start at a lower level for newly built ships. Say at -1% to - 5%. If you have the racial ability "elite military ethic" or something like that, perhaps your crew baseline is +1% to +5T, rather that zero. And if you have a "volounteer" rather than "draft" force, you should start a bit higher too...

Again, I come at this just from the perspective of gauging, measuring, buying, and analyzing US Navy readiness and what USN does is measure, among many things, the personnel, training, equipment status, ordnance, and supplies for each ship. Now, other navies may do something different or better, but that is just my perspective and I think it is pretty applicable to space empire vessels. Perhaps not to weapons platforms or troops, I can;t really speak to that as well...

Ok, I'll stop babbling now. Hopefully.

Alarik

Wardad said:

Not entirely...
The people on an overcrowded world could be stuggling to survive, and produce little in excess for the empire to use.
A large population could be a large liability.
The Chinese were defeated by the better equiped Mongols, the Persians were defeated by the better equiped Greeks, and the Aztecs were defeated by... ..etc.
A smaller empire with resources, skill, and education can produce more with better quality.
Maybe population bonuses should be a bell shaped curve? With a minimum for each facility.

[Wardad]

Take Europe as an example ( please ...

Great strides were made during the Renosance, which came after many died from the black death.

[TNZ]

Will SE5 have the ability to generate a resource based on population level, for example, a population of 100m people = 100 resource points (manpower, currency)?

If the game can generate a resource base on population level, the idea of having manpower as a resource type in SE5 is not a bad idea. But I would only go this far with it. The population would generate manpower points. The facilities would use a set amount of manpower points per turn. Academy facilities would uses manpower points but generate crew points. All vehicles would use a set amount of crew points per turn.[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img]

[Yef]

Wardad said:

The people on an overcrowded world could be stuggling to survive, and produce little in excess for the empire to use.
A large population could be a large liability.

The key word here is "could".
An overcrowded world could also be a very advanced developed society, which would mean a huge internal market, and huge profits from taxation.

Examples:
- The US today doesn't hold the leadership in production of most goods out there, but is the biggest market in the world, and everybody wants to sell in the US, while the the service sector become a huge source of tax income for the goverment. And who has the most resources to have the best army?

- China. The commies in China have managed to pull of the biggest betterment of living standards in 10 years in history.
In the near future (20, 30 years?), China will likely become the largest market in the world, and with it the status of superpower.
And I don't wanna think how much money they will have for their military.

So a heavily populated world can be an enourmous source of income. In the end, everybody is a consumer, and every consumer is a market.