Overpopulation?

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
EntropyAvatar
Space Kraken
Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:28 pm

Overpopulation?

#1 Post by EntropyAvatar »

So in previous MOOs (and in FO so far) planetary population swells, then growth slows and stops when the population cap is achieved. And everyone is happy.

BORING!

I say double the population caps but put in increasingly stiff morale penalties once population starts to exceed the midpoint. Living on a planet that is at the very limit of its carrying capacity should be a nasty, miserable experience. Overpopulation provides a strong pressure to expand, a reason for regular people to support war, and just improves the flavour of the game. "Understand that we mean you no harm, but our children are dying in their millions. We need green, open spaces....".

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

#2 Post by Krikkitone »

That only works if

1. There is a means of controlling growth rates
or
2. There is migration

Since the second has been definitely nixed and the 1st is not likely, then I'd disagree with any sort of a crowding penalty unless it was on an empire wide basis (ie your total population is ~70,89,90% of your total max population) and even then somewhat minor.

(Note: I would tend to agree with you my personal vision of MOO includes no planetary population caps at all only mineral/food caps. Which means you have to spend a few turns persuading people to grow when new area opens up, and a few turns putting on the brakes when population begins to exceed useful capacity... but that's not the way we're doing it.)

Blade Runner
Space Squid
Posts: 53
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 8:47 pm

#3 Post by Blade Runner »

I like this idea very much. I can imagine an another interesting solution too. The player can send the overpopulation to find unconquered planets. They can build there their own empire, which will be not part of the original one. Later the player can try to join back to his/her empire. Or attack them. :twisted:
-------------------------------------------
Te vagy a Blade Runner. :)

EntropyAvatar
Space Kraken
Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:28 pm

#4 Post by EntropyAvatar »

No migration? Argh. Yes, that would definitely put the brakes on overpopulation. Well, there could be ways of controlling population growth, or building more capacity onto a planet but that's much less interesting than finding new planets to offload excess population.

If migration is nixed, why are people still talking about how to calculate migration? I thought maybe the rule had been opened up again.

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

#5 Post by Krikkitone »

It's possible... I haven't seen anything, perhaps we should sacrifice a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri to the Powers That Be to ask that they might bless us with confirmation of the status of migration. Currently this should be it.

http://www.drektopia.com/popcaps.htm.

Although I Can think of one minor change to it, currently the few pop units that ARE migrating randomly select worlds, and have a chance of dying if they encounter a full world. I would simply have there be a list of available worlds (unfull same race same empire worlds) and then all the pop points are randomly assigned to planets on that list. Once that list is empty, (all planets are full) pop points have a chance of staying in the queue or moving to a 'galactic migration queue' where they randomly move to any available world (unfull world of their race from any empire or MAYBE an empty world of their EP.) If there are no available worlds from the 'Galactic migration queue' then the units have a chance of dying.

The second option would generate 'Splinter colonies' (of races not necessarily of the discoverer). They would need to be conquered rather than colonized. (their population would grow, but the buildings on the planet would be calculated based on their population after you took them over...as a relatively undeveloped world...although the development level/pop should start increasing once they filled the planet.)

Impaler
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1060
Joined: Sun Jun 29, 2003 12:40 am
Location: Tucson, Arizona USA

#6 Post by Impaler »

Perhaps if each unit of Un-occupied population capacity was converted to "happyness", as the planet fills up the happyness points dry up and the population becomes less happy as they are now on a crowded world.

The same thing could apply for Food or "infastructure" or anything else that is involved in population capacity.

If a planet is OVER populated (above its population limit) then not only will the population naturaly shink because of our population equations but for each point of over population present a point of "unhappyness" is generated, this would represent the very bad overcrowding when you exceed the population cap.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

EntropyAvatar
Space Kraken
Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:28 pm

#7 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Those could be good ways of modelling crowding, but as K1 said, it's not fun to penalize the player for something he cannot effect. If there's no migration, then modelling crowding or overpopulation will just mean that everyone ends up with a bunch of very unhappy worlds.

The solution: History begins with me. Any design decisions agreed upon before today are once more open for debate. I'll make sure that this time around everyone chooses correctly :)

Impaler
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1060
Joined: Sun Jun 29, 2003 12:40 am
Location: Tucson, Arizona USA

#8 Post by Impaler »

Alass they are rather strick on the nailing down of an issue once its gone through an officialy sanction descussion, debate, vote and final say from the project leaders. I too would wish some of the older desisions could be resisited but this is unlikely. Most likely we will finish the whole thing up too v 1.0 and then examine it in totality and make changes to core consepts then if at all.

Also I expect we would have many other ways of generating "happyness" points, as you loss happyness due to crowding you must suplant it with something else (butter principle here). SMAC works like this, you need to build Rec Commons and spend money on Psych. Think of it more like getting FREE happyness when a base is small.

Ultimatly I think their should be some way to tell your planet to stop breeding, some kind of one child policy or something, conversly their would be ways to pump it up if that was desirable.

Lastly high levels of unhappyness would decresse population growth regardless of present % full. In essence you need to provide more things to your population (butter) so that they will keep breeding.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

EntropyAvatar
Space Kraken
Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:28 pm

#9 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Impaler wrote:Lastly high levels of unhappyness would decresse population growth regardless of present % full. In essence you need to provide more things to your population (butter) so that they will keep breeding.
I dunno. Maybe populations breed more when there's less to do. Many of the people in the poorest conditions on Earth have the highest birth rates.

Impaler
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1060
Joined: Sun Jun 29, 2003 12:40 am
Location: Tucson, Arizona USA

#10 Post by Impaler »

You have a point their, its universaly true that among humans when living conditions are better (aka more Wester, more electricity, clean water, housing, access to liberal education and especialy Birth Control) the population growth rate declines because of a huge reduction in the Childred per woman. In many western European nations this has brought the CPW below 2.1 aka the replacemtn level which will result in population LOSS in these countries (admitedly they are rather densely populated though).

Studies of simpler mamals (like lab mice) have shown a rather interesting patterns that we might want to look at. I am not shure of the adsact details but their is a coralation between space/food/breeding/homicidal agression which keeps the population in balace. If we operate under an asumption that these rules also aply to every other sentient species in the universe then it shouldn't be to hard to figure out some nice formulas.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#11 Post by PowerCrazy »

Ok, but everyone must realize. We need to strike a balance. I don't want to have to deal with every aspect of every planet. Particularlly when i have 500+ planets. And i mean people deal with these things themselves, they don't need their emperor to tell them how many kids to have etc. It seems like an unecessary level of micro management that i could do without, and even with the empire level of population... SO? whoe cares if in my empire i have, 209080890707 people. That means i was able to expand more efficently than you were. Of course in our game he who expands the most should win, but not automatically. I just don't like being punished just because i am the best..... and i don't want to HAVE to micro the FUCK out of my colonies simply because i have more of them.
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

User avatar
skdiw
Creative Contributor
Posts: 643
Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2003 2:17 am

#12 Post by skdiw »

If FO only used the s-curve then we won't have this discussion. O well. Migration is avaliable except it is in some funky system (see game feature). What else is passed is planet cap, which if I understand correctly, it is the absolute cap, modable by player or techs. The best thing we can do, to same effect, is introduce an unrest factor or some variant of it like butter is best as a side but serve during desert principle when pop is half of cap. My perfered idea is to make food just as scarce and important as industry or mineral. Famine will always keep players in check so we won't have overpopulation problem and famine will help late-game food issues as outline in another thread.

The problem I have with overpopulation is micro, as with PC. 2 remedies I see: either we make sure that unrest only serve like butter as a side and doesn't add any problems so there is no reason to micro; or the second option is no controls allowed and players are forced to deal with it with macro means. I vote for the former if we decided to use "overpopulation" and no planetary HfoG.

Remeber to keep realism arguements to a minimum if any at all. I can think of tons of counter arguements.
:mrgreen:

Quintin
Krill Swarm
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2003 10:57 am
Location: Dallas, Texas, USA

#13 Post by Quintin »

I think population control could be an important strategic element of the game. Without pop, there can be no industry or research. Of course, micro-managing all you planets to make sure they all have enough room to grow (ala Moo2) can be a bit of a pain.

I understand FO isn't going to be doing freighters... and I understand migration is also nixed... are there presently any ideas on the table for making the most of the colonies you have? Or otherwise improving the growth rate and/or population caps for your existing colonies?

Maybe the empire could (as a general policy) subsidize relocations to newly terraformed colonies? Or maybe population shifts could be almost self-regulating? People move all the time... why wouldn't they move from the over-crowded mega-city/planey out to one of the more spacious, yet mature colonies? Of course, they wouldn't move out to thee spacious wasteland... they'd want a nice, blue sky and grassy plain. So perhaps newly terraformed planets get a population growth bonus for each maxed-out colony?

Or, for example, there's a small galaxy that has been almost entirely colonized. Is there the possibility of constructing artificial habitats? (a Dyson Sphere, or maybe just a Dyson Ring initially)

PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#14 Post by PowerCrazy »

YAY! Dyson Spheres..... Very cool. I'd be in favor of these. Unfortunetly there are some problems.

#1 the balance factor - A fully operational colonized Dyson Sphere would hold something like 10^20 people. Thats more people than 10000 planets (earth sized assuming it can hold 1 trillion).

#2 Colonizing a Dyson spehere would take 1000's if not 100's of 1000's of years. As such in our game without absurd game breaking techs it would be impossible to ever colonize on of these.

#3 Constructing a Dyson Sphere would essentially break the galactic model we have set up. As it would effectively remove a node from our galaxy. And with starlanes trying to connect everything....

#4 assulting a Dyson Sphere on the combat map. look down at the earth... It looks pretty flat to you. Now go about 1000miles straight up and you'll be able to see the curve of the earth and apreciate its full size. Now lets imagine that we have an earth orbit Dyson Sphere...at your vanatge point (1000 miles up) all you'd see would be a flat piece of metal extending almost infinetly in all directions. so how far would you need to go? 10000miles? nope. 100000? nope 200000? well you are about where the moon is and still its a flat piece all over. so lets just say 10 million miles away and maybe you'd be able to tell that it MIGHT start to curve just a little bit. This is what it would look like on the combat map. A huge flat piece of material. Yeah just TRY to conquer that....


Other than those problems, yeah i'm all for Dyson Spheres...
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

#15 Post by Krikkitone »

That's one of the reason's I wuld tend to be against population caps.

Because a Dyson Sphere is really nothing special, all it is is the maximum number of Solar powered Orbital habitats you can put around one star.


I DO have a proposal relating to that.

I'd allow colonization of Gas Giants, Asteroids, and Empty orbits in the following manner

They act just as if they were planets with the following characteristics
1. Unimprovable worst possible habitat
2. Lo G (the population is in Orbit)
3. Size and Mineral Richness that depends on which of the three (Empty orbit=Poor, Tiny Asteroid Belt=Very Rich, Small Gas Giant=Average, Large)
4. In combat they don't have 'planetary defense stations' only orbitals (spacestations, starfortresses)

The only 'Truly' special thing about them is that their EP could not be changed (we could add Deep Space Orbital as sort of the counter to Gaia, equally bad for everyone, and cannot be changed)

Post Reply