Decisions: Industry or Trade world?

[Cumberlow]

I noticed these classifications on the colony screen along with some others like military world or just world. Is there any benefit to specialising planets for trade/science/industry? So far all the buildings seem beneficial so I build them all to max level on every planet and I'm still swimming in money. However, these classifications suggest specialisation is intended?

[jorgen_cab]

I think that if you colonize a Terran world it will certainly be beneficial to build everything. On other worlds with different production and maintenance penalties it will not always pay to build everything, or so I think.

One thing that I noticed are that population (in my opinion) increase all too fast on planets. You can easily get from 0 to 20 billion people on a huge Terran world in notime. This have been the major roller in income for me so I can afford to upgrade my planets.

I think this is all a balance thing and I hope that they include something to curb what seem to be an exponential growth in your economy as soon as you find a few good Terran worlds. At least population growth should be toned down to more realistic levels. The profit of new upgrades could perhaps take even more time to mature as well.

[Zaimat]

Definately we need to fine tune and balance some things and population growth factor is an important one because it does affect colonies drastically.

Population growth includes immigrants and not just growth from the local population. When a new colony is founded it can grow very fast if it has the right environment native to the race. So this makes terran planets grow very fast vs others for humans.

Population growth also goes through phases, initial growth can be much higher (doubling every turn and so on) and slows down as it gets higher and higher.

Specializing planets as noted by jorgen is very important on non-terran planets since they are not efficient for every type. Even on terran planets if you build all building types you are spreading out your workforce (population management) which is fine if that's what you intend. But if you want a research planet you should focus on research buildings so your workforce isn't split.

[Lithari]

Well, so far, I have learnt that, while the mineral quality and planet type helps, but its really the max population that defines what you build.

I mean, I found a system that has a huge planet with a desert climate and a Small Terran World, the desert world had a max population of 5bil, the terran world had 2bil or so, while both will be good, if it wasn't a terran world, the huge planet would be the better choice to build everything on, since the higher the population, the higher the income that colony will produce.

I am sure this will be changed prior to the game becoming a full product, but right now, its the size of the world that makes it worthwhile, assuming you have the tech to colonize it, that's how I see it.

[jorgen_cab]

One balance issue right now might be that population rises too fast. In my new game my population increased from 7 billion to 8 billion in one turn (year). This was on my home world with no other world to migrate from on turn one of the game. That must mean some serious cloning or perhaps forced child insemination...

[Lithari]

One balance issue right now might be that population rises too fast. In my new game my population increased from 7 billion to 8 billion in one turn (year). This was on my home world with no other world to migrate from on turn one of the game. That must mean some serious cloning or perhaps forced child insemination...

Well, its not so wrong, if my calculations are correct if you have 7,000,000,000 people on your homeworld, if only 875,000,000 of that total got pregnant...its quite possible that if they had just a single kid each, it would be way over an extra billion population.

The population growth isn't too fast, maybe have an option to invoke a 'no population growth' policy, I believe China has it, where you can only have 1 child or something like that, not sure if they have lifted it or not.

Anyway, the population growth is fine.

[crimsonsun]

its not so wrong, if my calculations are correct if you have 7,000,000,000 people on your homeworld, if only 875,000,000 of that total got pregnant...its quite possible that if they had just a single kid each, it would be way over an extra billion population.


Anyway, the population growth is fine.

Your maths completely fails to take into consideration the fact that births factor against Death....

[Precisionist]

One thing I'd like to see is some sort of stat to see the industry potential of a planet as well the potential for the other buildings. If I have a growing planet with 2b pop cap and no specials, how do I judge if it would be a better industrial or trade planet? Or is it pretty much even? Does planet type or resources play a role? Do certain planets produce more research than others?

Another thing is being able to judge the current industrial output on a planet. Food is obvious (needed/produced) and the same with trade, but industrial just shows what's being sold. I know I could compare from the ship queue, such as 1 planet will build a colonizer in 2 turns while the other 4, but that seems clunkier than just having a general "industrial output" stat. Maybe it's there and I'm just not seeing it?

[Zaimat]

Thanks for the feedback. The Industry building shows the Industry capacity which is the maximum production capacity per turn.

So if something takes 200 turns to build and your industry cap is 10, it will take you 20 turns to build it (unless you purchase extra production).

[jorgen_cab]

its not so wrong, if my calculations are correct if you have 7,000,000,000 people on your homeworld, if only 875,000,000 of that total got pregnant...its quite possible that if they had just a single kid each, it would be way over an extra billion population.


Anyway, the population growth is fine.

Your maths completely fails to take into consideration the fact that births factor against Death....

Yes, that was completely out of touch of reality...

The peak on Earth for population growth per year was slightly above 2%. This was in the sixties. It has now slowed down to about 1% and is actually declining further.

The 20th century has seen the highest ever growth in human population in history (despite two world wars), this is attributed to modern medicine and huge advantages in technology.

Many now believe that we will have declining population on earth in the near future unless we find some new energy sources that make it feasible to grow more food and recycle all the waste our consumption leave in their wake.

In any way I believe that having natural births at high percentages (around 5%) with very low populations is reasonable because supporting the growth is sustainable at small numbers. But being able to build enough infrastructure for hundreds of millions of people each year is problematic and too much migration should not be possible without social unrest and pollution increasing on planets. Just think of how much of the planets resources have to be diverted just to accommodate the new population, not to mention tension between cultural/religious groups.

I obviously don't want the game to model real life too much, but some consideration might be in order to get the numbers and effect of migration reflecting reality in some way.

[Gunther Haldan]

I liked the way Stars handled population growth. As your colony grew, the growth rate would increase until you reached about 1/2 your population limit, then your growth rate would slow as you approached that limit.