Migration should be reverted to pre-2.2-like mechanics and purges should give pops a half life.

[Ariphaos]

I think more than a few of us have been in the scenario where one pop suddenly becomes dozens through a combination of the current magic migration system and the extreme weight currently given to underrepresented pops.

Migration no longer preserves pops, pops diffuse into and materialize from nothingness via migration. Sedentary pops magically diffuse faster, nomadic pops materialize more pops from nothing.

I feel they should go back to the 2.1 system, though a world should only accept one migrant at a time.

Purges should have a flat percentage chance to kill a given pop each month. We've seen the exploits - stuffing thousands of pops onto a single world for effectively infinite resources that will last centuries because it takes two months for each pop to die in sequence.

On the converse is the cozy crisis we have now. It takes decades to truly lose a planet. It ought to be much faster.

Castration should be a population growth policy. Either giving the pops a small chance per month, or a death timer, possibly modified by its lifespan. The latter is probably a pathway to bugs, though it could instead be implemented as a 'do-not-cull-before' toggle.

Displacement should be a migration policy. Can't migrate to the empire's worlds (if migration treaties are available), but can migrate out either to refugee-accepting empires or to those with open treaties. Could be exempt from the 'one pop leaves at a time' limit.

This would allow us to still try to get rid of the above as sold slaves, as well. Right now you have to put them on the market before you set them as undesirable.

Starvation should trigger these percentage-chance-to-die purge mechanics. If a planet can't feed itself, it starts losing biopops at a rate based on how underfed it is, lowest strata first.

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Having a set chance per month to die allows us to calculate how valuable a pop is.

If we can have some confidence in the value extracted from a single pop via purging, some pretty awesome mods become possible. Devouring swarms that no longer get trait points or other genemod abilities through tech, for example.

 

[Little Green Mensch]

Either they should revert to the old, discrete migration system, or pop growth (including migration bonuses to pop growth) should be more heavily weighted by habitability (especially) and available jobs compared to the traits of the species being selected for growth. The current weighting toward "under-represented" pops is insane, and dramatically increases pop maintenance costs for non-purging empires, because it pushes every planet towards equal representation regardless of habitability.

 

[Ariphaos]

You can play with the habitability and other pop weight mechanics in the defines to your heart's content. The result is still a bit awkward - it could use some primary species weighting for xenophobes and a 'last grown' penalty, which can't be done in the defines at the moment.

The big breaker however is how migration works. You either turn it off for everyone else or end up with a mess that is simultaneously unrealistic, messy, and stressful.

 

[Urza1234]

Either they should revert to the old, discrete migration system, or pop growth (including migration bonuses to pop growth) should be more heavily weighted by habitability (especially) and available jobs compared to the traits of the species being selected for growth. The current weighting toward "under-represented" pops is insane, and dramatically increases pop maintenance costs for non-purging empires, because it pushes every planet towards equal representation regardless of habitability.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629545379

So. I've been working for the last couple weeks on a rework of the population system. Its wayyyyy more conservative than what the OP is suggesting. I try to mainly make mods that are close to the developer vision of the game.


It does do what you want however Mensch. I've 96% removed the pop weighting towards equality*, and I've written a script that gives pops more or less growth prioritization based on the application of their traits**. If you have a species with Industrious for example, that species will grow more on planets where it is working mining jobs, scaling based on the number of pops that fit ideal conditions up to 21***.

It also applies pop weighting based heavily on habitability. This includes migration rules.

It also loosens up job assignment, so that those industrious pops will actually reliably end up as miners.****

All these changes also all apply to the AI, which improves their economies, so they're harder to fight. Its also compatible with Glavius.


*(I had to keep 4% to avoid some accidental genocide scenarios)
**(with similar mechanics for economy traits like communal, and for negative traits)
***(I stopped there for the sake of my sanity)
****(This wont be quite as anal as some players, job weights seem to have additional arcane and mystic rules that I'm not sure we have access to, but its way way better)


I've just this morning decided that its ready for other people to playtest it. Please let me know if you have any questions or find any problems. I just uploaded my release, and set it to visible, so hopefully steam will actually push my final version.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

+1 for OP. Current system is unintuitive and fundamentally borked. If I could make three changes, this is what I'd do:

1. Separate migration from pop growth/decline. Planets produce emigration based on emigration push and other worlds' immigration pull. When a planet's emigration counter ticks to 100, a weighted roll determines which pop emigrates, and a second weighted roll (that can take into account things like habitability preferences) determines where it ends up.

2. Separate purge from pop decline. Purge becomes a monthly percentage chance (based on purge type) for purged pops to be removed.

3. No pop decline mechanic except emigration (as above), purges and events. Lack of jobs, amenities and housing on a planet should instead negatively impact pop growth, so that normal pop growth just stops when conditions get too averse.

 

[fodazd]

I agree with this. The old migration system was better and more intuitive, and resettling all your undesirables to a single planet to make them last longer sounds like an exploit that should be fixed.

 

[Ariphaos]

3. No pop decline mechanic except emigration (as above), purges and events. When modifiers to growth reach -100%, normal pop growth just stops. That's it.

I think there is a place for the pop decline system. It would not be as obtuse (at least to us as modders) if migration was removed from the current growth/decline system as most people seem to agree on.

 

[permeakra]

Gating migration, i.e. having a cap on the speed of migration actually makes sense, since it is gated by planetary transportation and relocation paperwork. So, while preserving pops during migration is something they should reintroduce, complete return to the older system should not happen. We should not have 12 pops suddenly pop up on a planet with 2 pops population.

Of course, I find the current approach to handling growth/decline quite ridiculous. But pre-2.2 wasn't good either.

3. No pop decline mechanic except emigration (as above), purges and events. When modifiers to growth reach -100%, normal pop growth just stops. That's it.

I quite disagree
- We actually have decline of "pops" IRL via insufficient breeding.
- With absense of population limit on planets we need another limitation mechanism that would work in isolated empire.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Strongly disagree. I like the current system in theory, I just think it needs some tweaking.

About the biggest change I'd suggest outside of weighting changes is allowing multiple POPs to grow at once on a planet simultaneously (like how starbases with multiple shipyards can build multiple ships at once).

 

[Urza1234]

Strongly disagree. I like the current system in theory, I just think it needs some tweaking.

About the biggest change I'd suggest outside of weighting changes is allowing multiple POPs to grow at once on a planet simultaneously (like how starbases with multiple shipyards can build multiple ships at once).

That could be really interesting as like a limited tech, or a tradition.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Strongly agree, pops should be conserved

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

I think there is a place for the pop decline system. It would not be as obtuse (at least to us as modders) if migration was removed from the current growth/decline system as most people seem to agree on.

What do you think should be the purpose of the pop decline mechanic? I'm genuinely curious.

(My own view is, as stated above, that migration and purge should be handled separately, invasions and bombardments are already handled by a separate mechanic, and other sources of pop loss should be handled via event.)

- We actually have decline of "pops" IRL via insufficient breeding.

We actually don't. On the level of abstraction Stellaris uses for pops, Earth contains a growing number of human pops, and it's not relevant that certain areas (Japan) is experiencing decline or that some cultures are disappearing due to assimilation.

- With absense of population limit on planets we need another limitation mechanism that would work in isolated empire.

The is internal migration, or if you disable that, you can let planets grow until negative modifiers to growth stops it from growing further. I think that's definitely preferable to the current 'growth-then-decline' mechanic.

 

[Urza1234]

The is internal migration, or if you disable that, you can let planets grow until negative modifiers to growth stops it from growing further. I think that's definitely preferable to the current 'growth-then-decline' mechanic.

What do you mean by that? What negative modifiers to pop growth?

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

What do you mean by that? What negative modifiers to pop growth?

Currently a planet will stop growth and start declining pops if a combination of unemployment and lack of housing/amenities. I don't know the exact details because the decline system is stupidly opaque, but it's not hard to envision a system where you simply penalize growth based on overcrowding, unemployment and lack of amenities so it reaches an equilibrium point where growth just stops instead of the current nonsensical one-two of growth and decline.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Currently a planet will stop growth and start declining pops if a combination of unemployment and lack of housing/amenities. I don't know the exact details because the decline system is stupidly opaque, but it's not hard to envision a system where you simply penalize growth based on overcrowding, unemployment and lack of amenities so it reaches an equilibrium point where growth just stops instead of the current nonsensical one-two of growth and decline.

Population decline is fantastic, IMO. It lets an empire experience meaningful demographic shifts (in theory, at least- like I said, the weightings need tweaking).

 

[Urza1234]

Currently a planet will stop growth and start declining pops if a combination of unemployment and lack of housing/amenities. I don't know the exact details because the decline system is stupidly opaque, but it's not hard to envision a system where you simply penalize growth based on overcrowding, unemployment and lack of amenities so it reaches an equilibrium point where growth just stops instead of the current nonsensical one-two of growth and decline.

Ok, It wasnt clear to me that you were suggesting a new mechanic. I've been through those files a dozen times and there were no growth modifiers I knew of that did what you were describing.

So, the way that it works is that when your unhoused pops reach 1.5 you stop growing, as a hard rule. When your unhoused pops reach 2 you start declining.

Decline doesnt actually have any interaction with unemployment or amenities afaik. You can easily test this by fully populating an ecumenopolis, then forcing all your pops to be unemployed. Even with more than 200+ unemployment, as long as you have free housing your pops will still not decline.

Population decline is fantastic, IMO. It lets an empire experience meaningful demographic shifts (in theory, at least- like I said, the weightings need tweaking).

Exactly as Black Umbrellas says, the pop-decline system allows a fully grown planet to shift its demographics over time, which is great if your growth weighting setup makes any sense at all. I actually try to take full advantage of this in my mod. Ideally if you have a diverse pool of species the mod eventually shifts the demographics of each planet to fit the available jobs.

Simply halting growth would make planets stagnate. Brahma and Shiva, you need both.

 

[Ariphaos]

What do you think should be the purpose of the pop decline mechanic? I'm genuinely curious.

(My own view is, as stated above, that migration and purge should be handled separately, invasions and bombardments are already handled by a separate mechanic, and other sources of pop loss should be handled via event.)

My proposal also has migrations and purges being handled by separate mechanics.

The reason I feel pop decline is useful is as @BlackUmbrellas stated - it allows for demographics to shift over time at least in theory. Non-atomic jobs could remove some of the pain of this, and some adjustments to how housing works could make pop management overall less obnoxious.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

But demographics can still shift over time even without the decline mechanic, as long as you have pre-2.2 migration mechanics. One species emigrates, a pop of a different species arrives, maybe a third species grows. This is far preferable to decline, because it doesn't inexplicably cause entire species to waste away in order to make room for their underrepresented comrades.

Of course if you're running an empire that doesn't allow migration for whatever reason, then yes I envision your developed planets will lock in place. Incidentally that's what a lot of players have asked for, because they like 'finishing' planets so they don't have to come back to them for further micromanagement.

Ok, It wasnt clear to me that you were suggesting a new mechanic. I've been through those files a dozen times and there were no growth modifiers I knew of that did what you were describing.

You're right, I wasn't clear about that part. I've edited my first post in the thread to clarify.