FreeOrion

R5014.
"completed (i think) transition to 100 point population. Additional many population and production tool-tips and 'pedia entries should be clearer and correct."

Population, should now work right, except that it is pretty much the same for lithic, robotic, and organic species, even though conceptually the xeno/bio techs should not work on robots.

Theoretically an average species on a huge planet with all relevant techs and buildings (and a blue sun for phototrophic), and all growth resources supplied should be able to reach, but not exceed pop 80. A species with "good population", under the same conditions should reach 100.

Now: please test.

The production values aren't all yet calibrated, so don't worry about that much yet.

Population entries now go like this, which is IMHO clearer, and doesn't introduce "planets size level" as something the player needs to know:

• "Increases max Population according to planet size-- Tiny: 3, Small: 6, Medium: 9, Large: 12, Huge: 15."

eleazar wrote:"Increases max Population according to planet size-- Tiny: 3, Small: 6, Medium: 9, Large: 12, Huge: 15."

It's a bit ambiguous as to whether that refers to the increase, or the new amount after the increase.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

eleazar wrote:"Increases max Population according to planet size-- Tiny: 3, Small: 6, Medium: 9, Large: 12, Huge: 15."

It's a bit ambiguous as to whether that refers to the increase, or the new amount after the increase.

You think this is clearer?
"Increases max Population according to planet size-- Tiny: +3, Small: +6, Medium: +9, Large: +12, Huge: +15."

eleazar wrote:You think this is clearer?

Yes. Throwing a "by" in there, in place of the "--" perhaps, might also help.

eleazar wrote:OK, moving back to a 100 pt population scale...

Here's what i'm thinking. Instead of having rules about when a pop bonus can work or not depending on tech and quality, you just stack them all together. Bad environments have a negative population malus to overcome, but it doesn't matter what bonus you use-- as long as it is big enough you can live there. (There may be some exceptions).

I just want to say that I like this change a lot.

I've been pushing these numbers around to try to get research and production to naturally max out at 100. I don't really like any of the options i've come up with..

Currently planets have a max population of 100. Species when focused on production (i.e. industry/research/ later influence...) have a base production rate of 0.2. That means without any bonus/malus a 100 pop planet produces 20 per turn. A species with a "Great" production bonus is supposed to produce 0.4 per pop, on the 100 planet that's 40.

That leaves 60 Buildings, specials and techs (hereafter abbreviated 'b/s/t') to add to the meter. In the past i thought that would be fine, but trying to make the numbers work seems to force me into one or more directions i don't want to go.

There are currently 13 b/s/t that boost research. To make the math simpler let's theoretically get rid of one and make it 12. That means on average each can raise the meter by 5 to end up at 100. That doesn't sound too bad.

However, if it is a population based bonus you would get 0.05 per citizen. And assuming some bonuses are bigger/smaller than others, we'll sometimes get annoyingly tiny numbers like 0.02. The extra decimal place makes it look a lot worse to me. I think there's a reality about numbers where people's eyes glaze over more easily as you increase the length of the number. This effect happens much more quickly with additional zeros after the decimal place.


The options i've thought of but don't like:

• Raise the max graph meters significantly above 100 and/or get rid of the graph part of the meter like most other 4X games.
• Radically prune the number of b/s/t that effect each resource
• Return max population significantly below 100

As you might have expected i'm strongly in favor of going back to a base production of 1 per Population. With boni ranging from 0.25 to 1 per Population the max can be tweaked to be 500 or 1000.

So this is my prefered option:

eleazar wrote: [*]Raise the max graph meters significantly above 100 and/or get rid of the graph part of the meter like most other 4X games.

If you look just at the typical population trend, going from ~16 to ~80 on the homeplanet, then you've gone to fivefold base productivity/research just from that population increase. Even if starting industry was only at 10, that would mean that the sum total of all tech increases could only be to double productivity per unit population and still keep the final numbers capped at 100. That would be quite underwhelming, and the first few (lots!) of those would seem practically worthless -- it would totally devalue research and shift the empire focus entirely to physical expansion.

I think it would be natural and reasonable for the tech increases to scale up productivity in a very similar degree to how much they allowed scaling up population. Suppose it was the same, scaling up to a max of fivefold base productivity, then total end production of a typical homeworld planet would be ~25 times the base production on it. Even if we start with current starting numbers of ~20 with industry focus, that would get us up to ~500 per homeworld at the endgame. Caps for species with applicable bonii might be up to 625 or a bit more, but ok. Considering that starting production is enough to make a starting medium grade warship in ~2-3 turns, I think we actually wind up in a fairly similar position at endgame; and the higher powered ships would appear to take even longer to build. So that doesn't seem unreasonably high at all. We wouldn't necessarily have to have the same end-target for research, but even if it was half of that, given that it (currently) starts out at a bit less than half of starting industry potential for typical races, there's plenty of room for research tech to give a somewhat greater boost to research productivity, which seems fine to me.

While I was writing this, Sloth sneaked his post in! Similar view on suitable endpoints, even if the paths may differ. But he makes me look long winded!

eleazar wrote:Raise the max graph meters significantly above 100 and/or get rid of the graph part of the meter like most other 4X games.

This.

Another option is to make not all production output increases proportional to population. Larger population can have benefits besides boosting production, and if large populations are making production too large, then this would help.

There were previously some infrastructure-dependent bonuses, but apparently those were objectionable.

Fixed-amount bonuses could be used, with suitable conditions for when they can be applied (to avoid all newly founded colonies getting bonuses immediately, unless that's appropriate).

Or, there could be caps on how much of a bonus something can give, with the amount below the cap proportional to population.

That said, having resource output meters work on a 0-1000 scale seems reasonable as well.

Geoff the Medio wrote:That said, having resource output meters work on a 0-1000 scale seems reasonable as well.

For ease of testing and for making meter bars for things like Supply useful, would it be possible to make the scale range of a meter bar scriptable?

EDIT:

For reference i'd be interested in hearing what the maximum production numbers people are getting in real situations toward endgame.

eleazar wrote:For reference i'd be interested in hearing what the maximum production numbers people are getting in real situations toward endgame.

In my last test game (rev 5670), starting with the human race, around turn 150 (mid game) my homeworld's industry meter was at 109. Pop wasn't completely maxed out at that point (only 1 of the three growth specials for organic races discovered), and IIRC I had only very few of the production boosting techs still missing (e.g. no hyperspatial dam). So the final max would be even higher. A race with great industry would've been even higher still. Maybe 130?

eleazar wrote:...would it be possible to make the scale range of a meter bar scriptable?

I'm not sure where / how to set such a value... It would probably be easier to have hard-coded scales per-meter, or even have in-game option widgets.

Geoff the Medio wrote:That said, having resource output meters work on a 0-1000 scale seems reasonable as well.

IIRC, one of the objections to this option was that resource output in the early game would barely show up on the meter.

Bigjoe5 wrote:

Geoff the Medio wrote:That said, having resource output meters work on a 0-1000 scale seems reasonable as well.

IIRC, one of the objections to this option was that resource output in the early game would barely show up on the meter.

I think that's why the suggestion above coupled it with dropping the graph/bar part of the meters and just leaving it numbers.