Population Growth

15% per year is a fantastic growth number per year, im using 3% rather than 15% as the base level, coupled with migration reduced to 1% per 6000, which makes imiogration and natural increse very much retarded, not to every ones likes, but does fit in my sense of reality as to probably pop increase natuarly style, and migration via commercial freighters outside the game, oh, and pop per tonnage for transport is 120, which means a lot of transports to get very few people transfered via freighters. On the + side, quadroupled the amount of damage to kill a pop point.

short version, low pop growth, v low migration, hard to get meaningful numbers via basic transports, but as i say not for evweryones taste.

conditions certainly effect pop birth rate, but i dont believe planet happiness does.

"Per Year" is misleading.

It should read "Per Turn".

That means it's 150% "Per Year" in the stock game.

Rabbits have NOTHING on these people...

Migration occures every turn as well.

In my mod, I turned down base reproduction to 2% every 10 turns (10 turns = 1 year).

After much testing, this seems a bit low for me (Homeworlds tend to have people leave far faster than they are born, which leads to population erosion).

Right now, I'm raising it slowly, and then going back and testing. Currently I'm at 2% every 5 turns (that's twice a year, so 4% per year). Its likely I'll have to gradually raise it further, but I find it easier to set things at a slow/low level first, and then gradually turn them up until you hit that "sweet spot" for design/balance.

BTW, in the settings.txt file is the entry which determins how often the game checks population growth. Migration is fixed at every turn and not adjustable.

Hmm, well I'll mess with it some more.

Aren't the Gestation Vats and Genetic Recoding Lab only for certain species? What are some facilities all species can build to increase population growth? And what should we research to get those facilities?

Gestation Vats : +0.5% (BM?) per lvl
- Genetic Recoding Lab : +0.5% (BM?) per lvl (also prevents plagues and boosts happiness by 1% (BM?) per lvl)

These come from the racial trait organic, and then you pick organic tech to obtain them, i dont know waht happens if you ntake a planet with them, dump the race into space and re populate with your people, but i suspect you get the bonus.

try also chaninging the number for imigration, as well as the % pop increase, im on 6000 which means more stay at home ( and so more increae and no erosion of the imigration producing base number)and less imigration and am not seeing the eroision your seeing, its a question of how many you want coming from the uber home world pop to fill up the colines, also i think 5% is the lowest point to have pop increase, to avoid having early game extremly pop rate increase from natural increase, at 2% i saw all the bad envoirnment colonies stuck at 1 m increase for scores of turns, which i kinda liked as all the imigration piled into the better worlds, but

Medical Treatment -> Medical Lab (level 1)

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

I think the BM growth rates are high in order to compensate for the AI exterminating unwanted populations as a mean of dome removal.

I don't mind too much, but transports sure can't keep up. I figure the AI needs all the help they can get, and I refuse to exterminate. That way the whole galaxy knows who the good guys are! And besides, I'm never in any real danger of losing.