Make troop/colony ships consume local troops/population

[labgnome]

Well it won't be KISS to beginners to understand taking one unit of troop will cost them more than one for species that have good defensive troops but not good offensive ones...

Personally I don't see that. I don't think that troops values will need to cost different amounts. Unless I'm mistaken, I think that species with higher defensive troop values than offensive troop values would just have left-over troops after completing a troop ship.

[Oberlus]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

So 1 troop could cost F/OffensiveTroopTrait/TroopPartTech population, where F is some conversion factor adjustable at game start, default to maybe 0.15 (or 0.3). E.g., bad attack troops (50% -> 0.5) with the advanced troop tech (2.0) would consume 0.15 pop per troop.

Troop trait - Troop tech - Pop cost per troop
Bad - Standard - 0.3
Avg - Standard - 0.15
Good - Standard - 0.1
Great - Standard - 0.075
Ultimate - Standard - 0.05
Bad - Advanced - 0.15
Avg - Advanced - 0.075
Good - Advanced - 0.05
Great - Advanced - 0.0375
Ultimate - Advanced - 0.025

[labgnome]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

Do you think that defensive troops should also consume population?

[Ophiuchus]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

I think that would need pooling of population growth in the empire or lead into micromanaging troop production.

[Oberlus]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

I think that would need pooling of population growth in the empire or lead into micromanaging troop production.

Yes, that's the base of the idea. For offensive troops consuming either defensive troops or population.

[Ophiuchus]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

I think that would need pooling of population growth in the empire or lead into micromanaging troop production.

Yes, that's the base of the idea. For offensive troops consuming either defensive troops or population.

Yes. I think that pooling of population growth is nearly unscriptable. What I mean you need a way/formula where to take that troops/population from. Growth of population and troops is also quite different.
It would be great if we had a solution for this, because i think it makes a some new sets of solutions possible.

One would probably first want to take the growth over the maximum (as exists for troop growth). Then maybe use the growth everywhere (or growth from planets which already reached maximum growth effectiveness).
Then you start lowering current values, you would maybe not want to take it lower than the maximum growth effectiveness (i think that is at 50% max pop), and you would not want to take it lower than certain thresholds necessary for effects (currently only population 3, but for making tall work we were talking about high-population gated effects).
When taking troops you would probably want to take only from planets which are not in danger of being attacked.

Of course this taking does not have to be as efficient as a manual taking would be as long as we do not allow manual interference. It should have uniform effects and not have really bad side effects.

If i got you right the base idea is that colonising is more like shifting population from one planet to another, preventing that 1 extra population you get "for free" (later 3 extra pops)?

[Krikkitone]

The simplest way to take population/troops is just proportionally.

eg...colony ship needs 3 population, the supply group has 25 population of that species. Each world loses 3/25 (12%) of its population.

It’s not “optimized for best empire function” but that can just be how it works making it less micro managy.

(the only problem would be trying to take more than a supply group has...just say you can’t build a colony/troop if you don’t have at least 2x the required amount.

[Oberlus]

The simplest way to take population/troops is just proportionally.

eg...colony ship needs 3 population, the supply group has 25 population of that species. Each world loses 3/25 (12%) of its population.

It’s not “optimized for best empire function” but that can just be how it works making it less micro managy.

(the only problem would be trying to take more than a supply group has...just say you can’t build a colony/troop if you don’t have at least 2x the required amount.

I like this one.

If not optimized, must be close to it.
Example with those numbers:
Colony A 16 pop, loses 1.92.
Colony B 6 pop, loses 0,72.
Colony C 3 pop, loses 0.36.

Probably smaller colonies require more time to recover, but that also makes them give less pop on following colony ships.

[LienRag]

We could grab offensive troops directly from population, and leave defensive troops alone, to avoid issue pointed out by Lienrag.

That would be very different...

Population is the core resource of the game, and growth painfully slowly.

Not saying that it's necessarily a bad idea, but that would change the game dynamics a lot, especially at start.

Right now conquering a planet is getting free population, and that's the biggest advantage over colonizing. That would not be the case anymore - good or bad for game balance and strategic interest, I have no idea, but certainly a big change.

[LienRag]

(the only problem would be trying to take more than a supply group has...just say you can’t build a colony/troop if you don’t have at least 2x the required amount.

Would there be a warning for that ?
As a beginner I had some trouble with the much simpler aspect "planet must have at least two troops to build a troop ship"...
When explained it was obvious, but understanding that was the cause why I couldn't find a troop drop on the list of that planet certainly wasn't.