FreeOrion

In my current game of FreeOrion I found a planet of natives which do not need food. This seems to also give them the side effect of never growing in population and not being starved by blockades (the second effect seems reasonable). When I reseached Subterranean Construction the maximum population increased, but no growth occured.

It seems that population growth happens based on food consumption.
Maybe a better system would be to base growth (birth rate) on planet environment and base death rate on lack of food. I expect health has some effect too (My colonies on good planets have 30 health, outposts 20 health and the non food eating natives also have 20 health). Making health a bit more variable may be a good idea.

Bonuses and penalties of population

Currently Farming and Industry seem to based off population and Mining and Reseach not.

I think having more people is not as useful as having more land for farming - same with mining. These two should be based on planet size - not population size. (Low tech (3rd world) farming is labour intensive - current (1st world) farming is not.)
Reseach and Industry should be based on population. More people building or thinking is better than less. (Trade should also be good for Trade).

High population planets should be trade or industry hubs. Low population planets should be farming or mining places - since the land required for houses is instead used for farming or mining. Research could be population dependent or possibly location dependent - secret research outposts are quite cool.

The disadvantage of high population is the requirement for more food - this seems very reasonable. Outposts are currently really good since they allow increases in resource production without increasing population. An asteriod mine is much better than a planet mine since it doesn't consume food.

Troop meter should be based on population. Troop Pods should have 1 unit of troops - not 5. Surely the troop pod is the smallest collection of troops in the game. Planets should have more troops, so a fleet of troop ships (or a few large ships with many Troop Pods) should be required for invasions. As the game stands now invasions are really easy - I understand the combat system is not yet implemented, but still. Outposts should be really light on troop numbers - so troops as a fraction of population would be an easy way to do this. (Some thought should be put into allowing empty troop ships to be refilled or not - rather than destroying them during the invasion)

I like that outposts have 0.1 population. It is clear it is much less than a planet, but allows species bonus/penalties to affect the outpost.
Autolabs, Autofactories and Orbital Farming should be based on planet size, so that outposts are not so amazing. With Orbital Farming it is an advantage to have many low population colonies and outposts.

I suspect realism arguments can be made for population-dependent or -independent resource output of any type... Perhaps technology allows a few people to exploit a whole planet, or perhaps slave labour could be used for mining, industry or farming. Research being population dependent is a bit harder to explain for most species - it's more realistically a function of having suitable facilities or an interesting location, though some hive-mind type species might logically work better at research if there is higher population / more thinking nodes in the mind.

Likely, having content that works both ways for most resources would be good as they could have different effects on population / species thoughts about an empire, and would be associated with different strategies.

Having (very) high population be detrimental to some resource output is interesting; it would certainly motivate the desire to have a mix of high and low population worlds in an empire. A problem with this is how to keep population from growing on the worlds that are supposed to be low-population, though. Except by colonizing with il-suited species, there's presently no way to stop planet population from growing, particularly on farming worlds.

Troop meters and pods and such aren't balanced. The initial numbers were just set for testing purposes.

Which one? That was not intentional.

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"High pop" and "low pop" worlds could be determined by focus or Buildings
for example, various "max population" bonuses could only apply to world with a Particular Focus (ie Subterranean Construction... +3 max pop to Industry and Reseach focused worlds, +1 to Mining Output on Mining focused worlds)
OR
Megalopolis building... +100 max pop: Food Production=0 (requires 10 Food per turn.. to deal with the extra environmental costs)... You would be limited in how many of these buildings you could build, snce you need the food worlds to support it. (and Industry worlds need Minerals to be useful anyways)

The problem is that the game is not designed for control of individual planets, so choosing where to have high population may not be an option. Probably it is best that population just grows as it grows, like in real life - governments try to control these things but they tend to fail.

But, I do think that the focus should affect maximum population. Trade worlds should naturally grow, farming worlds should use all available space for farms and not be great places for teenagers and young people, who would naturally try to move away. Good recruiting places for the army ... (I am not suggesting migration of population units, just that population growth could be assumed to include migration)

Gaia worlds should have the 'right' amount of population not the most. Planets covered in cities should have the highest population. Maybe Imperial Palace should increase maximum population, since it makes sence that the capital will have lots of people living on it.

Maybe all buildings should increase max population, since these are the focal points of the Empire, where people would tend to concentrate. Planets without buildings are the backwaters, just there producing resources.


They are called Setinon, they are on an ocean world with very slow rotation. Their icon looked like a hairy bacterium.
20 of them are making 20 food - 10 for slow rotation +20 for self rotating crops + 2 for Orbital farms, for a total of 32.
Their food consumption is 0.
When I got Subspecialised Treatment their health went to 25 and they are now slowly growing in population.
Also their construction is just -20 due to very slow rotation. No +20 for their species.

I cannot attach the .sav file to this post.

That species does lack an effect to set its food consumption.
Zip it first.

Ok. Here it is. They are at Herschel.

I have also noticed that when I put the focus to Research, they still have +20 Farming from species, but they do loose the Self Rotating Crops bonus.

The game IS designed for control of Individual planets... through
1. Focus
and
2. Buildings built there



Well, I'd have Food+Mining Focus worlds be the most limited ones (ie very few boosts to max pop)... because they limit the pop.

I wouldn't necessarily have ALL buildings increase max pop (Secret/Dangerous research facitilties, etc.) AND I would tend to discourage any building increasing max pop on a Farming world (unless Farming Output was made independent of Population)... because That building is "self supporting".. you don't want a "self suporting" building it will get built everywhere hence the megalopolis... requires 10 food (in case of Lithovore races) AND sets food production to 0.

Fixed: revision 4353

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