Pop/Species Growth Ratio Formula - It needs adjusting, badly.

[Hexagoros]

Right now, in the presence of even a single free 'xeno' species, I feel as though the original majority/home species simply stops reproducing, or has their reproduction much too heavily reduced. Then, if the Xeno species starts spreading to other planets, this causes a cascading effect of the 'home' species simply withering away until 'parity' has been the two achieved.

This is both 'unrealistic' and very frustrating.

Basically, forces you to choose beween 3 rather poor options
1) Heavy handed population control policies
2) Playing Xenophobe
3) Watching your Home species become immediately displaced because you 'dared' to allow a minority pop to exist within your borders.

Either weight a majority species to have some sort of favoritism in pop growth (to represent the larger growth inherent in a larger base value), or simply add a random element, but this 'weighted for parity' is just infuriating.

 

[I genocide for fun]

Yes. The whole system needs fixing.
Its quite ridiculous that the tomb world species are the most populous species in pretty much every empire within a few decades. They migrate everywhere and before you know it the only species growing on your planets are the junk rats or some nuclear war survivors and no one else.

 

[Derp]

i kinda like having my empire be 50% psychic rad rats

 

[Hexagoros]

Yes. The whole system needs fixing.
Its quite ridiculous that the tomb world species are the most pupolous species in pretty much every empire within a few decades. They migrate everywhere and before you know it the only species growing on your planets are the junk rats or some nuclear war survivors and no one else.

What's even worse, is that the AI is not even aware that it's founder species is basically being overridden into oblivion, and so you end up with AI factions that have barely any representation of their original founding species.

 

[Zentay]

At least there's a good reason to play a xenophobe now.

 

[Arutar]

What's even worse, is that the AI is not even aware that it's founder species is basically being overridden into oblivion, and so you end up with AI factions that have barely any representation of their original founding species.

Yes. Apart from all the actual numerical disadvantages you get as a player because of the messed up growth system, it is utterly immersion breaking.

Many A.I. Empires (which are not purifiers, gestalt or the like) end up with an ridcoulus population spilt and loose much of their unique flavor because of that.

At least there's a good reason to play a xenophobe now.

True. I usually play the "good guys" (some version egalitarian, xenophil ,peaceful, etc.) most of the time, but I sure won't be doing that under the current system.

 

[Kent_Lang]

To solve that parity issue is easy to fix as it's a single variable in the defines file, and I've been working on a system that's supposed to allow every pop on a planet to contribute to pop growth but the modding tools don't allow for it. It's actually quite frustrating. For a company that claims to support modding, the lack of documentation and tools to mod the game doesn't allow us to really change the game very much.

 

[Incompetent]

I don't think the founding species should be favoured as a matter of course, but population growth really ought to follow some basic demographic principles.

Which species of pop grows next should be picked in the first instance according to the ratio of pops currently on the planet, with some adjustments for immigration and pop growth speed modifiers. So if the planet's population is 90% hamster, then other factors being equal, 9 times out of 10 the next pop should also be a hamster. Immigration can alter the ratio of course, but there has to be a reason for pops to migrate, and even when they do migrate, pops should prefer to migrate within their own empire, going to a foreign empire as a last resort. Species rights should also play a role in whether species migrate between empires (so you have 'soft' tools to encourage/discourage migrants of a given species), but I don't know how complicated that would be to implement.

I don't know exactly how it works now, but I get the impression that currently, all species on a planet have the same chance to reproduce, and the immigration pool is drawn equally from everywhere in the galaxy that could possibly provide immigrants.

 

[Drachenfels]

This discussion is funny. When population change was reaveled and it said there will be only one pop growing at the time. I was pretty sure it's going to be recipe for catastrophe. Why somone would hardcode such assumption? Why not have all species growing separately (and migrtion separated from that?) Was it because ux? What we have now is mess that is going to be discussed, tweaked and work on till Kingdom come. But why? We are never going to know.

 

[Kent_Lang]

This discussion is funny. When population change was reaveled and it said there will be only one pop growing at the time. I was pretty sure it's going to be recipe for catastrophe. Why somone would hardcode such assumption? Why not have all species growing separately (and migrtion separated from that?) Was it because ux? What we have now is mess that is going to be discussed, tweaked and work on till Kingdom come. But why? We are never going to know.

I think it's good to have all the growth of your pops factor into one single pop and it suits the way planets were reworked. What I tried was to add a percentage to the growing pop from all pops of the same species. I only succeeded by half because the pop growth must be applied planet wide and this means that it affects all species growing, which would be unbalanced and not what I wanted to do. There's as far as I know no modifier that affects only the pop that's currently growing atm. It's a shame too because you could mod pop growth a resource to so that it could be influenced by events for example such as migration waves adding x value to growth instead of just modifying growth speed. Haven't looked into migration too much either but I assume that it's similarly hard coded.

 

[AlanC9]

Which species of pop grows next should be picked in the first instance according to the ratio of pops currently on the planet, with some adjustments for immigration and pop growth speed modifiers. So if the planet's population is 90% hamster, then other factors being equal, 9 times out of 10 the next pop should also be a hamster.

Wouldn't that likely increase the proportion of hamsters?

 

[Incompetent]

Wouldn't that likely increase the proportion of hamsters?

Yes, but one time out of ten the next pop is a non-hamster, which hugely increases the proportion of non-hamsters. Overall the proportions would be stable over time.

 

[Arutar]

This discussion is funny. When population change was reaveled and it said there will be only one pop growing at the time. I was pretty sure it's going to be recipe for catastrophe. Why somone would hardcode such assumption? Why not have all species growing separately (and migrtion separated from that?) Was it because ux? What we have now is mess that is going to be discussed, tweaked and work on till Kingdom come. But why? We are never going to know.

To be fair,while the dev diary said that the system favored minority pops, it was hard to anticipate that it would be implemented in such a blunt and nonsensical manner.

I don't know exactly how it works now, but I get the impression that currently, all species on a planet have the same chance to reproduce, and the immigration pool is drawn equally from everywhere in the galaxy that could possibly provide immigrants.

If only. According to my observations it is way worse than that.

Growth simply seems to aim for an more or less equal species split in te empire, almost reagardless of any other factors. Case in point even if you get a new pop which is unique in the entire universe (like the pop you can get from the subterranean refugee event), it will now exclusively grow on all planets in your entire empire until it has achieved parity.

When I got the event, I had 3 planets, 81 of my founder species and 1 one the subterranean species.

About 20 years later I had 3 planets, 81 of my founder species and 37 of the subterranean species.

Seems legit.

 

[SpectralShade]

Yes, but one time out of ten the next pop is a non-hamster, which hugely increases the proportion of non-hamsters. Overall the proportions would be stable over time.

that's asuming that the hamsters keep shipping away the extra hamster they produce.

If they don't, then it will follow the path of:
9/10 :> new hamster => 10/11 :> new hamster => 11/12 new hamster

and so on and so on, reducing the chance for the non-hamster with every hamster produced.

A single pop increase inspite of several different species is never going to work proper.

 

[Riftwalker]

Right now, in the presence of even a single free 'xeno' species, I feel as though the original majority/home species simply stops reproducing, or has their reproduction much too heavily reduced. Then, if the Xeno species starts spreading to other planets, this causes a cascading effect of the 'home' species simply withering away until 'parity' has been the two achieved.

This is both 'unrealistic' and very frustrating.

Basically, forces you to choose beween 3 rather poor options
1) Heavy handed population control policies
2) Playing Xenophobe
3) Watching your Home species become immediately displaced because you 'dared' to allow a minority pop to exist within your borders.

Either weight a majority species to have some sort of favoritism in pop growth (to represent the larger growth inherent in a larger base value), or simply add a random element, but this 'weighted for parity' is just infuriating.

i mean, if you care about your main species above other species, doesn't that mean you SHOULD play xenophobe?
*this is a joke

 

[Incompetent]

that's asuming that the hamsters keep shipping away the extra hamster they produce.

If they don't, then it will follow the path of:
9/10 :> new hamster => 10/11 :> new hamster => 11/12 new hamster

and so on and so on, reducing the chance for the non-hamster with every hamster produced.

A single pop increase inspite of several different species is never going to work proper.

Same goes the other way: if you happen to get a non-hamster, then the chance of another non-hamster next time is greatly increased. A minority that gets lucky could grow quite big.

If you don't like the high variance that comes with picking independently at random each time, you could instead have a d'Hondt-style proportional system. But still, I think the model has to spit out new pops in proportion to the existing population somehow. If you don't have something like this, then founder populations cease to matter.

 

[Riftwalker]

Species rights should also play a role in whether species migrate between empires (so you have 'soft' tools to encourage/discourage migrants of a given species), but I don't know how complicated that would be to implement.

this is already the case FYI, if you put residency, those pops will be much less likely to migrate to your empire, and i believe they won't even turn up in your core sector(if you have the correct policy).

as for the rest, I can see plenty of reasons for people to migrate outside their empire. If the empires have a migration treaty, then of course it's probably fairly easy, beyond that many pops might want to move for political reasons.

but really, at least the way i've been playing the last few games, accepting new pop types isn't that big of a deal. though, i will agree, nuke world pops can be an issue, but I mean, so were the Krogan in Mass Effect. if you want to limit the buggers, you gotta really try. but otherwise, my main species always has stayed on top of pop numbers up into 2400. and this is playing fanatic xenophiles that have cross breeding.

 

[Riftwalker]

Same goes the other way: if you happen to get a non-hamster, then the chance of another non-hamster next time is greatly increased. A minority that gets lucky could grow quite big.

If you don't like the high variance that comes with picking independently at random each time, you could instead have a d'Hondt-style proportional system. But still, I think the model has to spit out new pops in proportion to the existing population somehow. If you don't have something like this, then founder populations cease to matter.

honestly, I think your ethic should have a passive effect on it.

f phobes - non-citizen species always decline first, favors citizenship species growth and then follows straight proportions(worlds won't mix species very well, even amongst citizen species)
phobes - same as above, but declines are random(so each race has an equal chance to be picked)
neutral - follow straight proportions, but highly expressed species decline first.
philes - more likely to grow unexpressed species, highly expressed decline first
f philes - more likely to grow off planet species and unexpressed species, a species will never decline if not highly expressed(unless evenly expressed)

 

[Arutar]

though, i will agree, nuke world pops can be an issue, but I mean, so were the Krogan in Mass Effect.

But that is precisely part of the problem: The Krogan in Mass Effect were so abundant because they had a ridicoulous high birthrate.

Under the current system, even one single pop of slow breeders will take over half you your empire, since instead of having growth determined by sensible factors (brithrate, habitability, Rights, etc.) we get this nonsensical mandate of species parity , which is essentially enforced by mandatory population controls for the majority species until parity has been reached.

 

[Kinkness]

But that is precisely part of the problem: The Krogan in Mass Effect were so abundant because they had a ridicoulous high birthrate.

Under the current system, even one single pop of slow breeders will take over half you your empire, since instead of having growth determined by sensible factors (brithrate, habitability, Rights, etc.) we get this nonsensical mandate of species parity , which is essentially enforced by mandatory population controls for the majority species until parity has been reached.

And that is my biggest problem... You have no population controls, infact, its outlawed, yet... your main species all 100 billion of them just stop reproducing, or at least, are 100% perfectly controlled as if they are under a chinese reproduction law, and population control mandate... It makes no sense at all...