Maxing out population on a planet (Full Version)

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RogerBacon -> Maxing out population on a planet (9/24/2020 12:32:06 AM)

I recently watched a playthough of Distant Worlds and the player was so happy when he maxed out his home planet's population, which he rushed to do. From a game perspective, it makes sense. More population equals more money and more research. In reality, it would be a disaster. Can you imagine any leader saying, "Let's rush to maximize the population that Earth can possibly support".

Other games, like the Civilization series, have major penalties for population growth. I think Distant Worlds should have some sort of penalty too. What does everyone think?



Retreat1970 -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (9/24/2020 1:44:47 AM)

Regardless, in this game pop=win.

Maybe a reduction in planet quality after 2/3 max pop to a 5% to 10% quality reduction?

Or more pop = removal of planet resources over time?

Maybe cost overruns starting at 50% pop so the bigger the pop the more bureaucracy and management costs to build?

Just thinking.

The homeworld centric view of the game leads to easy wins. Want to kill off a rival fast? Bust his homeworld. Ignore the rest. Game over.

In my games I play with house rules. If I didn't I might not play at all.



Siddham -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (9/24/2020 11:39:36 AM)

I agree. I think there should be a distinct line of research which controls population size; and anything above your current level would have penalties.
The line of research would represent relevant advances in economic & social policy and technology that enable a larger population without damaging the planet.
Or if not a distinct line of research some kind of integration of pop size to certain research lines.



Kingah -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (9/24/2020 2:43:28 PM)

Some kind of penalty should exist, even if it's just something like a linear growth of strategic and luxury resources required to sustain the population.



Always felt a food mechanic is lacking in DW though, which is closely tied to this. You can blockade a world of 15 billion people and nothing really changes. With food introduced it changes so many mechanics of the game.


Dream Idea pitch here, bare with me.

The food production of a planet dependent on type, quality, size and population. Continental, ocean and marsh planets obviously would produce more food than ice, volcanic and desert ones.

Depending on size and quality an output modifier is applied on the base food production of a planet. As the population of the planet increases, the needs might outgrow the production of food, and the empire need to find new worlds to colonize/conquer to secure the food supply.

Would give a reason to limit population growth on colonies etc.

As not to make this unbalanced on different starting planet types. Humans who start on a better world might require maybe 1 unit of food per 1 million people. Teekan's who are much smaller, require maybe only 0.5 units per 1 million people. I think I can make a case for most of the races on non-temperate worlds needing less food except for the Mortalen and Naxxilians.

If you don't have enough food for your colonies there would obviously be unrest and riots. As famine becomes an actual thing maybe it could be simulated by a plague that kills the pop until it's close enough to the food threshold required to sustain the population.

Food doesn't have to be an actual resource shipped around by transports. Could as well just be some hidden number on worlds controlling it's growth etc.

Sorry for the poorly formatted rant. A man can dream ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Retreat1970 -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (9/24/2020 9:58:42 PM)

Some sort of sustenance mechanic would be interesting. We already have a resource system in place.

Add a resource (or three, or ten :)). Planets behave normally unless they run out of said resource. Then pop dies slowly. Maybe to zero, maybe to half.

I'm positive that it's not coded anywhere, but Roger is around so...



RogerBacon -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (9/25/2020 1:21:54 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

Some sort of sustenance mechanic would be interesting. We already have a resource system in place.

Add a resource (or three, or ten :)). Planets behave normally unless they run out of said resource. Then pop dies slowly. Maybe to zero, maybe to half.

I'm positive that it's not coded anywhere, but Roger is around so...


Yeah. I always thought it was strange that there was no food in this game.



OnePercent -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (10/2/2020 2:26:56 AM)

I like the way swords of the stars handled it, planets had ecologically stable pop limit which was half of their actual max capacity, and if you decided to max out a planet it would start ruining the biosphere.

In Sots, the more planets you have reaching ecological equilibrium = more industrial capacity and thus = win.



Retreat1970 -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (10/2/2020 4:46:02 AM)

This line in the resource text...

ColonyGrowthResourceLevel: numeric value indicating level of resource required for growth at colonies, range from 0 (not required) to 1.0 (lots of this resource required)

Leads me to believe a resource could be created and needed in high demand (food), and assumingly would hamper population growth if depleted.

A quick way to do something with a food element maybe, but not exactly as requested.



BlindOne -> RE: Maxing out population on a planet (11/16/2020 7:45:21 PM)

Food 'sounds' like a good idea until you realize that by the time you can actually do space travel and have fusion reactors you may as well have food factories that produce food based on space and energy available rather than actual fertile agricultural land accessibility. Therefore the size of the planet would actually be the determining factor ... as it already is in-game. Perhaps a system like sots would indeed benefit the game where you could have colonies grow beyond their natural capacity at the cost of perhaps the quality and happiness.

I also think the game could benefit from a basic economic system that would promote actual trade between colonies. Right now all that is traded are raw resources when it would make more sense to have new colonies produce the majority of raw resources (as-is) but have the larger colonies provide luxury and industrial goods that the smaller colonies would appreciate and need to develop. This would create a basic two way exchange where a blockade could actually be useful.

To add to this simple system, have a 'developed' colony simply devour a % of its stockpiled resources every year and depending on how many resources it consumed and manufactured goods that it outputted, that is the actual GDP. This will softcap the stockpiling of resources on planets and be an easy way to actually calculate GDP. GDP would simply be the amount of resources devoured/produced in that year. Having lots of small colonies then which produce a tonne of raw resources that feed into the main homeworld becomes crucial to economic success but it also means that blockading the homeworld is devastating to the economy in the long run and blockading specific crucial resource colonies would be extremely detrimental to the manufacturing capacity of a homeworld resulting in actual painful economic blockades.



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