Hello, the dev. I'm happy to find that the dev is willing to fix the pop problem sincerely.
I hope the planet S-curve growth can be retained because it is a reasonable and cool concept. But the empire pop penalty should be removed totally, since it cannot be explained reasonablly.
There is a breeder planets exploit issue about S-curve planet growth. I reflect on some of my plans to solving it, and now I get some detailed ideas that make a reasonable punishment on a breeder planets.
1. In the reality, happiness will affect people's fertility desire. With too much pressure, people will be not willing to marry and breed. In East Asian countries it has become a problem which result in the low fertility rate. So, introduing a happiness pop penalty on the planet scope is rational. (I do not like the ideas about empire scope plans that influence the pop growth, because in the game the pop growing unit is a planet, and different planets have very different ecology. Now the pop and job system is designed micro, so lump them together is not appropiate).
My design is very easy:
planet_pop_growth_rate = planet_S-curve_growth_rate * planet_average_pop_happiness
Different from the stability, the average pop happiness needn't to be related about political right weight. Just the average of every pop on the planet.
So, now happiness is a more important thing to be considered. Though slaves are always very productive, now they may slow down the pop growth, and a Thrall-World may make up it to some degree. Factions should be paid more attention to because they influence people's happiness a lot, while in the past players can just ignore the factions.
2. The critical problem about the breed planet is about resettlement. Because players can exploit the resettlement system to decide how many pops should be on a planet arbitrarily.
In fact, we can find distinct features of the planets which are chosen as breed planets by the players. I will describe it with a modding language to make it clear(But all the idertifiers are fabricated by me lol):
Code:
is_breeder_planet = {
AND = {
is_not_fully_developed = yes
has_modifier = planet_too_many_people_move_out
}
}
is_not_fully_developed = {
AND = {
NOT = {is_crowded = yes}
OR = {
has_jobs_turned_off = yes
has_empty_jobs = yes
districts_remained_unconstructed = yes
building_slot_unbuilt = yes
has_blocker_can_be_cleared = yes
AND = {
has_technology = tech_basic_science_lab_2
has_building = building_research_lab_1
}
AND = {
has_technology = tech_alloys_1
has_building = building_foundry_1
}
...... # has buildings can be upgraded
}
}
}
Well, if a planet is not fully developed, but but a lot of pop have moved out(every pop moved out triggers an event and level up a planet modifier, and when the planet modifier get to lv4, we believe there are too many pops move out from this planet), it means that the gonvernment does not constrct the planet for a long peroid and leave it undeveloped.
Of cource it is reasonable to trigger an event, which add a planet modifier to harshly decrease the pop happiness by 70% on the planet for 10 years because of people's disappointment about the lack of their colony construction. The theatres can only provide 20% happiness which are not enough to save the happiness on the breeder planet.
Combining the happiness punishment targeted on the breeder planet with the planet happiness pop growth penalty concept, now the "breeder planet" gets only 30% pop growth speed. And when the threatres lift the happiness up to 50%, then the "breeder planet" gets half pop growth speed, neutralizing the S-curve buff. It makes the breeder planet an unattractive choice to farm pops.
Fully developed planets or crowded planets will not trigger the punishment events. It requires the players to turn on the clerk jobs or the planet will be considered not fully developed.
This is my upgraded scheme to punish the breeder planet. Inroducing the planet happiness pop growth penalty makes the events more logical. And happiness itself makes more sense, and players need to attatch importance of it, which is good for gameplay.
EDIT:
I think more about the consequence that happiness pop growth penalty will bring. Are there any traits that influence happiness? Trait "Charismatic" can be a more pratical trait to increase happiness indirectly. It needs more test. It seems that it has the similar effct on pop growth compared with trait "Rapid Breeders", if so, "Charismatic" need to modify the trait point to -3.
Trait "Serviles" brings more happiness. Many players hate the species with serviles triat, and the origin "Syncretic Evolution" is not attractive at all before. So it does need to be modified.
"Psionic" bring more happiness. In 2.81 the ascension path "Transcendence" are defeated by the other two path because it has no pop growth advantage. The happiness may buff it a little.
"Loyalty Circuits" is a robot trait, while I design the happiness to influence the organic pop growth, it does not affect pop assembly. But since now the planet pop growth is easily decided by the average planet pop happiness, it may influence the total organic pop growth, which is not very logical.
So maybe the happiness pop growth can be optimized, now it is a bit roughly. There are two alternative schemes:
1.the specific species' pop growth on a planet is influenced by the specific species' happiness on the planet. Players can specify a high happiness species to continuously grow. To some degree it can be considered as exploit, but it can be tolarated.
2. Just distinguish the organic pop's happiness and robots' happiness. Pop growth is influenced by organic pop's average happiness. Players then pay less attention to robots' happiness than organisms' happiness. And that's why robots can have traits to influence their happiness directly.
For game balance, pop assembly should be restricted in other ways too. It is quite a headache because I cannot find some reasons to make the assembly slow down. So I can only give some ideas about organic pop growth.
.png){kind=avatar}
