For SE6? Population should be more important |
Population should be more of a planet's strategy than just a percentage bonus to production.
A certain amount of population should be needed just to run the basic colony. Say 5MM. Anything over that can build stuff.
Certain amounts of population should need to be "available" to build facilities. Of course, after building the facility, some population should be required to maintain and run the facility, reducing the "available" pool.
Shipyards should be labor intensive, as should Farms, Ports, Research, etc.
Like in SE3, if you work the populace too hard, you get unrest. This makes the Urban Pacification facilities valuable again. Taking rests by not building stuff, especially on EB, will make the populace happier. Cutting back on production output can do the same thing.
I'm not wanting to increase any micromanagement in the game. The game should be able to easily track this and show the available population so the empire leader can decide how he wants to use them.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
Every TBS is geared for combat in that way, though... That's the whole point. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate, right? Even the "peaceful" buildup crap they throw in games like Civ4 and GalCiv is just there to temporarily distract one from combat.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
Hmm.. I agree with Fyron. That would be one micromanagement layer too low for me.
I already spend a lot of time working on all my worlds. I wouldn't want to look at facility-staffing level.
What emperor concerns himself with how many workers there work in mine number 24 at world 150?
I think it's just fine like this. No need to go deeper.
~Myrath
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
I agree. Too much micromanagement and the game is no fun.
However, you could mod the game so that the planet MUST have 25% population to receive a 0% production bonus. If your population is below 25% you receive a negative production bonus (simulating lack of workers). If you tied the facility space used/facility space available into the population requirements, you could approximate what you want. More facilities need more workers.
You would limit the building of facilities to your population growth. That would make organic (with gestation vats more valuable) and medical tech more important (cost more)
The acquiring of other atmosphere breathers would be vastly more important.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
There are several mods out there that already do that.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
I don't remember which, but wasn't this done with one of the the previous incarnations of Space Empires? I remember you had to have a certain amount of people before the planet was capable of building ships. I think it was SE2 or SE3, I haven't played them for a while, but I remember that it made population transport more necessary.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
That was just a basic threshold, and was easily overcome with higher levels of colonization tech that seeded enough pop from the get-go (at least, in SE3). But even that is trivial in comparison to making each individual facility require X pop to operate.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
In SE2 you actually had to use a certain type of colonization module. The population would quit growing after a certain point if you didn't.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
Population doesn't matter if production tech uses robotics for production?
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
Right now pop does a nice job; increase production and optimise planet use (breathers). It already is a lot of micromanagement to take pop from one place to the other to un-dome planets if migration is just too slow.
But personally i think pop should be harder to keep happy and loyal to your cause.. but when they are its a good thing (bonuses). Right now its almost guaranteed that they are jubilant with 100% loyalty with varying levels of reproduction.
The main causes of unrest are ennemy intel(avoidable if cautious), events (little to no consequences), or "war treaty" that has been in place for a long time.. (easily cured with techs or some facilities), ennemy proximity to your planets (make fireworks out of them.. pretty lights make people happy).
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Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.
Re: For SE6? Population should be more important
There were actually plans to make X population required to run each facility in the beta, but it turned out to be nothing more than a micromanagement hassle and was removed. There is really no way this could be implemented without increasing micromanagement; you'd have to deal with moving a lot more pop around just to get a baseline of resource production going on each planet. As it is now, all you have to do with pop transports is "fill up here, dump off there." But with each planet requiring lots of pop just to run facilities, you'd have to worry about moving just the right amount to each planet first. And entrusting this sort of thing to an AI minister is never a solution...
Sadly, the feature was removed from the hard-code, rather than just set to 0 for the stock game...
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