kricktone wrote:Actually for the most macro solution
Movement of population is 100% automatic
Colony ships contain 0 pop
I'm starting to like this idea more.Geoff the Medio wrote:Having new colonies have effectively zero population is intersting. If colony ships have 0 population in them, then they can't be used to shuttle population around, which eliminates a potential motivation for micromanagement.
...
This would depend on us having a very functional migration system, though, and could be rather limiting of colonization to only be possible in areas where migration can occur. Presumably migration would be limited similarly to resource exchange (quite short range) or fleet supply (a bit longer, but still somewhat limiting). Near the start of the game, an empire's resource or fleet supply range might not be long enough to reach any colonizable planets...
It would be limiting to start a colony with more or less 0 population, and rely on migration for the growth... but i'm starting to think that it is limiting in a good way. It makes a lot of sense, and increases the significance of the "shape" of your empire. I've never liked the lack of importance that spatial relationship of colonies often has in 4x games. We've already done a number of things to remedy that (starlanes, and supply lines) but adding more spatial significance seems worthwhile.
I think we can stick with magically generate a tiny number of people for the new colony say .1 or .01-- enough that a colony that is beyond your supply lines will be able to grow... but just not nearly as fast as it would otherwise.
I'm not sure if the mechanics of how population automatically moves is on topic here. Ideally it would be generally predictable and intuitive. Kricktone's started a thread on it here.