Life is cheap!

[Trachmyr]

We go around dumping billions of people into space without a second thought, all because life is cheap... too cheap. The problem is the massive repoduction of our planets. When nearly 2 billion people can be "born" on a huge/optimal/jubiliant planet in just over 1 month, what are a few hundred million here and there.

Reproduction rates need to be lowered considerably... or at least allow us(me) to do that in a mod.

What I suggest:

Allow reproduction rates to be measured in the tenths of percents (i.e., 0.5%, 1.3%, ect.). This also applies to buying reproduction trait, and to facility bonuses.

Allow us to determine how planet conditions and happiness affect reproduction (i.e., Jubiliant +.3%, Unpleasant conditions -.8%, ect.)

Track populations in thousands, not millions... it can be abbreviated to M or B once the pop. gets high enough.

And finally, allow us to determine how much colonists weigh (right now 100 weigh only 1 pound!)

Anyone else think people breed way too fast, and would like to see it reduced, thus giving much more value to population?

[serpwidgets]

Yeah, I usually end up building a "population base" on my homeworld. I fill every space possible with cargo holds and then I can transfer ~106 colonists per turn (for a 4000M homeworld) to the base and my homeworld will be maxed when the turn is run. Meanwhile a transport, or two, can pull people off the base and fill up all my colonies. I use the base because it has a lower maint cost than the transports.

When I find a breathable planet, I can usually fill it up very quickly without having to take any people from any of my colonies.

I usually take a 5-10% reproduction bonus, and the lowest growth rates I've gotten are in the range of 16-18% when people are angry. This seems way too high. Maybe you can get an extra advantage by taking a lowered reproduction rate to put the points on other stuff, but it probably would be better if the rates were lower.

[Trachmyr]

Simply lowering the reproduction rates as it is won't work... because you can't modify the bounus due to happiness/planet conditions. Even if you drop starting reproduction to 1%, it can/will still hit about 20% on a jubiliant/optimal planet!

[Q]

In the beginning of SE IV quite a lot of people were complaining, that reproduction rate was too low!
I don't know how you calculated the 2 billion (= 2000millions) population increase in a month on a huge planet, but this is just not correct. The reproduction rate is per year and not per turn. If you loose a substancial part of your pouplation (eg. homeworld) it is almost impossible to catch up and in all my games I had almost no colonies with full population (I do ship hower always my polpulation from the older colonies to the new ones).
So in my opinion the reproduction rate is very well balanced.


[This message has been edited by Q (edited 16 April 2001).]

[raynor]

I agree with Q. Reproduction is definitely per year and is pretty well play-balanced, in my opinion. If anything, it is too low and needs to be increased.

Given how easy it is to keep your population happy through the use of troops, I don't really understand why anyone would dump population into space.

Regarding the planet's conditions: If it is affecting my population's happiness or anything else in the game, I have never noticed it. I usually just ignore it.

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 16 April 2001).]

[serpwidgets]

I've got one planet that is at 33% per year. Using the "rule of 72" that means it's nearly doubling every 2 years. At a "meager" 24% (most of my planets are better than that) it will double every 3 years.

With 4000M population producing over 100 colonists per turn, you can easily fill up another breathable planet in only a year or two. For example, say your homeworld is large, and there's another large breathable in the same system. Once you colonize and have a transport, you can quickly split the population in half between the two and with the magic of compound interest end up with 8000M population by about turn 30 (year 3.0)

That seems a bit fast, especially considering I very rarely have any colonies that aren't maxed out on population within a few turns. If dropping the growth rate isn't a fix, then maybe making the colonists a heavier cargo item as was suggested would help.

I was wondering, too, does a racial reproduction bonus of 10% multiply your rate by 1.1 (10% becomes 11%), or does it add a flat 10% to the rate (10% becomes 20%)