The pop growth curve is extremely scuffed on Habitats. For any colony that has a base housing of less than 35, the pop growth per month value graph on a pop to housing graph is not a smooth function. Right after half capacity the pop growth crashes. If you build 4 productivity districts on a size 4, the base housing is 17 and at 9 pops you’re suddenly looking at 1.2 pop growth instead of 3.
This encourages people to take advantage of this base growth below half capacity and spam small habitats. Moreover, pop assembly buildings are not restricted by capital building or habitat size, allowing synth and machine empires to print ridiculous amount of pops from a size 4 habitat.
A habitat costs 150 influence but that’s really just on par with taking 2 to 2.5 systems while the pops pumped out by habitat is providing more benefit on the long run. As we all know, pop is what wins the game.
The design of the curve focused too much on single planet growth and ignored the empire pop growth as a whole. As a result, empires without investment in habitats are exploiting this very mechanism of pop growth to fuel ring worlds and ecumenoplis or whatever gestalt equivalent.
I think it is appropriate to remove the base 3.0 growth below half carrying capacity to smooth out the curve and prevent mini breeding habitat spam. This will also increase the value of resettlement related bonuses for a new colony to get a kickstart on pop growth. Later in the game a player would be allowed to ignore this thanks to auto resettlement already in place to fill the new colonies faster. If need to, I think the colony designation should be available until 10 pops so they can take advantage of the resettlement target bonus.
On top of that, pop assembly buildings should require Voideborne ascension perk and should only allow to be built on upgraded habitats, the same as advanced housing building. Housing buildings greatly increases carrying capacity of habitats for pop growth, I don’t see why assembly buildings should not have the same restrictions. This can prevent micro habitat pop assembly spam unless an empire is willing to spend an ascension perk on it and all the extra effort into upgrading a habitat.
Last but not least, to avoid Void Dweller being nerfed into oblivion by this change, all the starting habitats should already be upgraded for the carrying capacity. It makes little sense that they only managed to upgrade the capital habitat but not the other two.
This encourages people to take advantage of this base growth below half capacity and spam small habitats. Moreover, pop assembly buildings are not restricted by capital building or habitat size, allowing synth and machine empires to print ridiculous amount of pops from a size 4 habitat.
A habitat costs 150 influence but that’s really just on par with taking 2 to 2.5 systems while the pops pumped out by habitat is providing more benefit on the long run. As we all know, pop is what wins the game.
The design of the curve focused too much on single planet growth and ignored the empire pop growth as a whole. As a result, empires without investment in habitats are exploiting this very mechanism of pop growth to fuel ring worlds and ecumenoplis or whatever gestalt equivalent.
I think it is appropriate to remove the base 3.0 growth below half carrying capacity to smooth out the curve and prevent mini breeding habitat spam. This will also increase the value of resettlement related bonuses for a new colony to get a kickstart on pop growth. Later in the game a player would be allowed to ignore this thanks to auto resettlement already in place to fill the new colonies faster. If need to, I think the colony designation should be available until 10 pops so they can take advantage of the resettlement target bonus.
On top of that, pop assembly buildings should require Voideborne ascension perk and should only allow to be built on upgraded habitats, the same as advanced housing building. Housing buildings greatly increases carrying capacity of habitats for pop growth, I don’t see why assembly buildings should not have the same restrictions. This can prevent micro habitat pop assembly spam unless an empire is willing to spend an ascension perk on it and all the extra effort into upgrading a habitat.
Last but not least, to avoid Void Dweller being nerfed into oblivion by this change, all the starting habitats should already be upgraded for the carrying capacity. It makes little sense that they only managed to upgrade the capital habitat but not the other two.
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