Life is cheap!

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by nerfman:
3) On a similiar note, I think that colony ships are too easy to build early in the game. Maybe its just my old MOOII days, but starting another major colony should require a little more effort.

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You can already do that by increasing resources necessary to build a colony component (in the components.txt file).

Trachmyr, there are values in the settings.txt file that allow you to change default reproduction rate. So, if you think that growth value is too high/low, you can fix it yourself.

Another good way to reduce the high reproduction rate is to increase the cost for reproduction characteristics (also in the settings.txt file). IMO that traits first 10 levels are TOO cheap - right now reproduction is the most cost-effective characteristics to increase. If you try to play the game using default 100% of reproduction, you will find game much more challenging (you will note the difference, trust me).

[Aussie Gamer]

I play the game with 100% default and I never have enough population to go around in my games and I mostly play organics with the bonus to growth from Vats and medical centers.
Also has anyone ever seen that population makes any difference to facilties?
In the settings it states that 50M to get a facility to work. I know that it effects the production due to pop.

[Trachmyr]

I must admit my error here... Indeed I was thinking that reproduction was per turn not per year... However, my feelings that reproduction was too high was based on the growth I viewed in my games, it was my calculations that was askewed. Still, growth is too high. If say gestation & recovery takes about 1 year; with about half of the population able to reproduce (i.e, men vs. women)... and only half of those at the correct maturity to reproduce (counting improved medicine) that comes to 25% per year. But that would only happen if everyone was trying to reproduce, if conditions were excellent and there was no death rate, and there was access to good health care.
If you were to figure that happiness influences desire to reproduce, it would go something like this:

Rioting = 5% of those who can (i.e., 5% of 25%=1.25%)
Angry = 10% (10% of 25% = 2.5%)
Unhappy = 20% (5%)
Indiffrent = 40% (10%)
Happy = 50% (12.5%)
Jubiliant = 60% (15%)

Now conditions come into play:
Deadly Growth x 0.2, -8% death rate
Harsh Growth x 0.4, -6% death rate
Unpleasant Growth x 0.6, -4% death rate
Mild Growth x 0.8, -2% death rate
Good Growth x 1, -2% death rate
Optimal Growth x 1.2. -2% death rate

Medical Labs (which should be available to all, not just organic) adds about 2% to growth rate before calculations for conditions AND cuts death rate in half.

The result, on a world with happy people, Good conditions and a medical lab... the reproduction rate would be 13.5% (the best growth would be 19.4% w/o racial modifiers)
--On a world with unhappy people, unpleasant conditions and no med facility, the repro. rate would be -1%, add a med lab and it becomes 2.2% (the worst would be -7.75%)

These numbers bring about more realistic growth, and provides a reason to look for planets with better conditions (or buy up enviromental resis. trait).

Like I mentioned, pop. should be tracked in the thousands... and 1K people should weigh 100KT (assuming KT stands for metric tons not a thousand tons... could you imagine a 50 million pound fighter!)

Well, sorry for the mistake (I'm sorry because the obvious miscalculation weakened by position)... but my original stance remains the same... although I think the culprit is the bonuses given to reproduction from happiness/conditions, not the base reproduction rate itself.

[Atrocities]

To be honest, I think the population set up for the game works fine. I seldom if ever have enough population to go around. What I have learned to do after colonizing several planets is to build some transports and activate the Transport minister. The game then switches population between my planets optimizing each.

[Will]

Just a little nitpick here

1 million colonists take up 5kT of space. Now, kT means kilo-Ton (I'm going to be using english system, since the nitpick is on "right now 100 (colonists) weigh only 1 pound!"). One ton is 2000 pounds. Thus, a kilo-Ton is 2000000 (2 million) pounds. Now five of those makes 10000000 (10 million) pounds. Thus, it's not 100 colonists weigh 1 pound, it's 1 colonist weighs 10 pounds.

I realize that this is still pretty tiny, my little dog weighs 15 pounds right now, even if she is spoiled and obese.

I just wanted to nitpick

Oh, and before someone nitpicks me on this, I know I shouldn't have used the term "weigh". In space, they should weigh nothing because they are only in the presence of microgravity. I meant "mass" for everything, ok?

[Marty Ward]

The calculation assumes you compact all those people into a nice square 5kT package for easy stowage, right Will

[Noble713]

Is there any way to change how much space population takes up? I thought there was, but I can't seem to find it in the settings.txt file. Does anyone know what the line of code is?