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

[FleetingRain]

Population controls don't always work. You can't use them on aliens if Xenophile, and you can't use them if Egal.

Egalitarians can do it, I'm pretty sure (unless a save from 2.2.1 works differently in the beta). You're right about Xenophiles tho.

 

[hyno111]

I guess a "real pop growth" mod will be mandatory.

Realistic Demographics - proportional pop growth
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1592077532
Less Random Species Growth
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1589935363

Hope the dev change the weights and these mods does not became mandatory..

 

[vladimirovalenina]

The most obvious solution to balance it in a satisfying way would be to restore simultaneous growth, and provide a randomized temporary bonus to immigrant/refugee growth. That way you can get a rapid growth of alien pops but it won't happen every time and it won't stop other pops from growing. To balance mutiple pop species with single pop species, we'll want to provide bonuses to pops based on population size on a given planet, which will provide population growth to a single species planet that would be approximately the same (without bonuses) as a multiple species planet with the same population

 

[EvilTom]

The most obvious solution to balance it in a satisfying way would be to restore simultaneous growth, and provide a randomized temporary bonus to immigrant/refugee growth. That way you can get a rapid growth of alien pops but it won't happen every time and it won't stop other pops from growing. To balance mutiple pop species with single pop species, we'll want to provide bonuses to pops based on population size on a given planet, which will provide population growth to a single species planet that would be approximately the same (without bonuses) as a multiple species planet with the same population

I do like this, but I had a logical problem.

If you slow down growth on a 10 species planet, doesn't that mean you'll get no POPs appear for longer, but then you'll have several appear at once? This would lead to some weird issues. Would you prefer gluts of population increases over longer periods, or a steady growth? How would we get around that?

I think it's actually, at least logical, for multiple (non-interbreeding) species on a world to cause population growth to be increased. The only things will be competition for space, jobs, amenities, food etc which will encourage or discourage species to migrate or breed.
However... one way of actually countering this is to just have multiple species growing at the same time and scale UP population growth based on population. If each breeding pair always produces >2 children, then it's inevitable for the population to grow more and more as the population grows. There are other impacts, like ethics, morals, laws and policies, education, cost, equality, etc. Also over or covert population controls could be enforced.

Having accelerating population growth would cause issue with unemployment, resource consumption etc, but it will mean that being as population is the new meta, other issues would occur and probably mean snowballing happens more (I personally have little problem with snowballing, but I can understand it makes it less fun for a balanced game).

I want the challenge of overcrowding, joblessness and resource issues caused by robots and too many people. That is a real sci-fi trope and challenge of the future!

 

[Arutar]

Egalitarians can do it, I'm pretty sure (unless a save from 2.2.1 works differently in the beta). You're right about Xenophiles tho.

Yeah they "can do it", it just incurs a small 20% happiness penalty for the egalitarian faction.

I mean, who needs happiness or influence. It is a small price to pay to manually counter mind numbingly nonsensical (and easy to fix) game design planet by planet, right?

 

[Archael90]

I think that somewhere (policy, species rights) should be something that allow us to set approximate proportions of empire species, like you now - different main species, citizens, residents, and others, except fanatical xenophiles, of course.

 

[peenerz]

I agree. You’d expect a majority to outproduce a minority simply because there’s more people to reproduce with, not the other way around

 

[Seedy]

One of the annoying things is that they appear to already have [and have had] a habitability filter in place for migration treaties. If I have an alpine race, on alpine worlds, have a migration treaty with some desert races, I get zero pops from them over decades. The instant I get one as a refuge they grow everywhere. This has always been a problem, the migration treaty restricts folks by habitability, but once you have them, in the current or old systems, the pops move to anyplace without regard to habitability, and then get unhappy they moved to Antarctica and its not all bright sunny beaches.

 

[Cymsdale]

, and then get unhappy they moved to Antarctica and its not all bright sunny beaches.

Technically they don't get unhappy, they just start eating more donuts and buying more washing machines.

 

[EvilTom]

Now I know about those mods, I'll be using one of those. That'll be necessary until they sort it out.

 

[Shadowstrike]

I do like this, but I had a logical problem.

If you slow down growth on a 10 species planet, doesn't that mean you'll get no POPs appear for longer, but then you'll have several appear at once? This would lead to some weird issues. Would you prefer gluts of population increases over longer periods, or a steady growth?

Theres an easy answer to this. Every time the total "growing" pops add up to a full pop, create a pop from whichever species is furthest along to a full pop, and subtract 1 from the growth counter (which leaves it negative temporarily).

So if you have 0.6 growing humans and 0.3 growing blorgs (this is growth progress), and both grow by a rate of 0.1 each month, the next month, you would generate a human pop and get growth progress of -0.3 humans and 0.4 blorgs (instead of going to 0.7 humans and 0.4 blorgs).

 

[Avil]

Technically they don't get unhappy, they just start eating more donuts and buying more washing machines.

Well, to be fair there, more consumed good DOES mean better survivability in rough environment (consumables isn't only washing machines, but also more expensive and more suitable clothes, tools, machinery). Food is another thing, though, not sure why they would eat more. I guess, they binging on it to keep the good spirits at cold nights I kinda like that they don't lose mood from bad habitability, but pops still should prefer better suited climate and migrate on given opportunity.

Happiness shouldn't have a major impact on productivity anyway, happiness should provoke events, like strike actions, protestations, sabotages, but not really just reduce productivity to zero due to having a bad mood.

 

[anamiac]

I agree. You’d expect a majority to outproduce a minority simply because there’s more people to reproduce with, not the other way around

I would also expect that a planet with 300 pops would be able to produce offspring faster than a planet with 2, but what do I know?

 

[FleetingRain]

Yeah they "can do it", it just incurs a small 20% happiness penalty for the egalitarian faction.

I mean, who needs happiness or influence. It is a small price to pay to manually counter mind numbingly nonsensical (and easy to fix) game design planet by planet, right?

I never said I like the current system, I just pointed out a possibility OP didn't mention even if it has its own problems (such as not being obvious at first sight, it took me still last Saturday to discover it).

 

[Duuk]

I really think there are plenty of "possible" options. If they want to keep planet growth fixed at 1 pop per "time period" they can set it as

100% needed @ 3% per month

3.0 / number of pops = pop points per pop (PPP)
Each race gets PPP times number of pops on the planet times modifiers (rapid/slow breeder/etc)

When a race exceeds 100 it gets a pop. (and 100 is deducted from its total)

That way is simple enough. And it can have a simple enough mouseover for "pop growth" in the window.

Edit: Clarified the deduction.

 

[Avil]

I really think there are plenty of "possible" options. If they want to keep planet growth fixed at 1 pop per "time period" they can set it as

100% needed @ 3% per month

3.0 / number of pops = pop points per pop (PPP)
Each race gets PPP times number of pops on the planet times modifiers (rapid/slow breeder/etc)

When a race exceeds 100 it gets a pop.

That way is simple enough. And it can have a simple enough mouseover for "pop growth" in the window.

I like that idea. What kind of pop pops out determinated by a number of points accumulated, and this points get burned for this species that just got poped out. It means that sooner or later minority will get born, but majority gonna have an upper hand all the time (unless really strong generation of points comes from migrating pops).

 

[Andrzej I]

Currently, only one POP grows.

New system, EVERY pop grows. If the current (bad) weighting still leads 500k POP to grow more than others, others are still growing from higher numbers. Example: 500k Jovian pop will grow 10% a month, 2,5b humans growing 1% a month. Next month, Humans are 2,525b, Jovians are 550k. Yeah, Jovians theoretically could reach or surpass humanity... in how many centuries? Because humans are still growing too, and with their enormous starting numbers they are well ahead and even a minimum growth rate makes a BIG difference in numbers.

That would favor multi-ethnic empires far too strongly, allowing them to gain multiple pops only by virtue of having multiple species. How would xenophobic empires be balanced against that? I'm not opposed to the formula proposed, mind you, but I do think that it needs to be constrained to one pop per planet so as to retain balance with ethics.

 

[Shadowstrike]

As long as pop growth is based on existing population numbers, there isn't any advantage to multi species empires on growth alone (other than getting more immigrants)

I'd also like to point out that the current system has the odd effect of migration being a number that is not species specific. So if Humans are migrating from Earth, but Blorgs are growing on Mars, then effectively your human migrants are becoming Blorgs in transit.