FreeOrion

han_krum wrote: 1) small colonies take a while to take off;
2) it takes a long time to fully max-off older colonies afetr they reach abou 2/3.

I tend to like this pattern as well. And I'd have no problem with limiting player control over migration to minimize micromanagement advantages.. That it takes a long times for new worlds to compete with your home planet and your initial core worlds creates a good game dynamic, IMHO.

Exactly. Linear growth would be too boring, too predictable... And worlds SHOULD take a while to get developed, but not too long. The civ style growth wouldn't work for us, but the same idea is what i'm looking for. have a tangible advantage to a bigger colony in both growth rate, production cabability, and overall empire contribution. This is important from a strictly gameplay perspective.... As well as a precedent has been set for us to follow. THe only problem is exploiting the hell out of it. But since we aren't having a discrete population unit, we shouldn't have to worry too much. Just don't allow moving colonists.

PC some of your arguments are really void. Exponential growth is every bit as predictable as linear growth. Everything that has a formula to it is predictable. If you want unpredictable growth we'll have to use a random system.

About the discreet population unit. I'm not sure we don't have it. Our econ system produces 3 of every resource per population unit (for a balanced planet, values vary for classified planets). That sort of implies that we do have a population unit.

Right now it seems to boil down to this choice: linear growth system + allow moving of colonists or your formula + no moving of colonists. Personally, I know which one I'd favor here.

NF, are you sure you don't want the effects of a MoO2 style growth system present? They are nice gameplay. You want to throw it out, I don't think it would be better without it.

There's a third option as well nightfish...

Exponential growth + hideously expensive/uncontrolled moving of colonists.

I think that exponential growth is a better system, for pretty much the same reasons Oceanmachine and others have put forth. As to moving colonists, I like the idea, and I think it worked well in MOO1. I never do it much in MOO2, which is probably why I grow so slowly

Perhaps there should be an associated cost, say xxx money per turn per unit being moved, so that it's not something you'd want to do too often.

jbarcz1 wrote:There's a third option as well nightfish...

Exponential growth + hideously expensive/uncontrolled moving of colonists

Yes, that's probably true, the question is whether anybody will bother to move colonists at all if we have a very expensive system. I'm not sure exponential growth is "worth" denying players who really love transporting colonists around their joy.

A system like civ's, where the larger your pop the slower your growth, naturally makes it less desirable to migrate colonists, as they'll grow quicker on young colonies, or just as fast as others.

han_krum wrote:NF, are you sure you don't want the effects of a MoO2 style growth system present? They are nice gameplay. You want to throw it out, I don't think it would be better without it.

I agree with u han krum. Human controlled transporting colonists is a very nice system. It was workin nice in Moo2. I hope it will work somehow in FO.

Nightfish wrote: Yes, that's probably true, the question is whether anybody will bother to move colonists at all if we have a very expensive system. I'm not sure exponential growth is "worth" denying players who really love transporting colonists around their joy.

Wow ! Do I see some litght in the tunnel ? I like your doubts NF. Think about it more !

I would just like to throw some support at exponential growth. Its worked in the past and dose not require us to add new factors such as food. Because the growth will be automated it saves the player a lot of time that would end up being used to squeeze out small advantages under other systems. A system that can be manipulated for small advantages ends up being unfun because the player becomes addicted to the "trick" (for example the hurry production of SMAC, the game always overestimates the minerals needed so changing the sugjested number yeilds a tiny savings but is very tedious). Another thing to note, the slow growth at near max population means that a maxed colony will have to dip down in population inorder to provide the needed migrants for a new base. In a linear system though the maxed planet dose not have to give up as much of its advantage.

Also I consider the consept of Bio as an answer to the basic problem here, the ability to "cram" a new colony up too its maximum pop cap imediatly after discovery. With slow Biosphere expantion this is no longer possible (puting in more people then Bio can support will make the growth negative). Now we dont need to worry about migration because their will be very few places to migrate too.

Plasma Dragon wrote:

han_krum wrote:NF, are you sure you don't want the effects of a MoO2 style growth system present? They are nice gameplay. You want to throw it out, I don't think it would be better without it.

I agree with u han krum. Human controlled transporting colonists is a very nice system. It was workin nice in Moo2. I hope it will work somehow in FO.

PD, infact I was talking about the growth system, not the colonist movement system. Sorry to dissapoint you, but you got me wrong. I any case, I think we should avoid the mistake of MoO2 in the way a player would have to move colonists around every turn to keep an optimal growth rate, [rant] while still preserving the gameplay advantages of the growth system.

The way I see it, there are two ways in which we can improve the colonist movement system, if we have one, in the contex of an eventual MoO2 style growth. One is to have a simple macro tool that automatically moves them to achive a player-set population density or quantity, with a possibility to give priority in moving from/to given planets. The other is to make colonist movement expensive. Both are fine with me. [/rant]

Another radical idea. NO COLONISTS MOVEMENT. We could have growth based on almost ANYTHING as long as it is uniform for all players, differring only by race stats. And it would be a balanced system. Unfortunetly a popgrowth system as arbitrary as the last 4 digits of precision of the server computer clock might be a real turn-off for most players

PC you start sounding like a die hard MoO2 fan. Not so much by what you say, but by how you say it...

Perhaps colonist moving is something that should be race specicifc, some races cant be moved other then a colony ship, some move automaticaly, some at high cost. It could be a race pick called "Migratory"

han_krum wrote:One is to have a simple macro tool that automatically moves them to achive a player-set population density or quantity, with a possibility to give priority in moving from/to given planets. The other is to make colonist movement expensive. Both are fine with me. [/rant]

As mentioned by PC, another option is no colonist movement at all.

A fourth option (my preference) is a simple migration system of migratory paths. Set pretty much the same as one sets routes for newly built ships (every ship built get sent to this system) - simply say "Migrate from this planet to that planet", and leave it to it. I imagine being able to turn on a "Migration overlay" which shows lines for all the migratory paths, so you can see the connections you have set up. I do not want my colonists migrating automatically. I would rather no colonist movements than that, my preference.

I agree with Tyreth on that. Colonists moving around on their own whim are no fun.