PSA: The overpopulation issue is your fault

[Jeffry]

Throw in "Child permits" for some growth, but not the tribble-atoinswe have now.

Ha, good idea. But now I feel that should be the default setting, because the breeding rate as of now is completely ridiculous and doesn't have a parallel in either the developed world on Earth right now, as @draqsko points out, or in any plausible starting colony scenario in the future.

 

[Gundies]

As part of the Paradox line-up we all know that the game will most likely improve greatly over the coming patches and dlc as most games they have a hand on do.

Whether you like it or not, at this time comfort is earthsick/renegade and babymaking on. It has no effect on your productivity and there is no gameplay reason to make everyone comfortable unless you want lots of children. You can play the game as it is knowing and using that knowledge and have colonies that work better for you, or you can fight it and hate it and eventually give up until the patch hits.

Personal feelings on the matter aside the biggest issue with adding in some edicts or contraceptives or something is that they will need to completely rethink comfort as it will be rendered a pretty much a meaningless stat. It would basically be just a placebo to make the player happy when it's high. Perhaps in this scenario they could change it so it does start to effect productivity.

 

[draqsko]

As part of the Paradox line-up we all know that the game will most likely improve greatly over the coming patches and dlc as most games they have a hand on do.

Whether you like it or not, at this time comfort is earthsick/renegade and babymaking on. It has no effect on your productivity and there is no gameplay reason to make everyone comfortable unless you want lots of children. You can play the game as it is knowing and using that knowledge and have colonies that work better for you, or you can fight it and hate it and eventually give up until the patch hits.

Personal feelings on the matter aside the biggest issue with adding in some edicts or contraceptives or something is that they will need to completely rethink comfort as it will be rendered a pretty much a meaningless stat. It would basically be just a placebo to make the player happy when it's high. Perhaps in this scenario they could change it so it does start to effect productivity.

That's why I mentioned real world population dynamics and economic prosperity, comfort can be modified to control population growth just like it is now except they need to reverse it and make it more like how real world populations reproduce. Low comfort level = people breeding like flies and to combat that a player needs to maintain a higher comfort level. Now player wants will correspond with game mechanics, a high comfort level is a good thing because it will prevent your colony's population from spiraling out of control. Or if you want to be a cold heartless dictator, you can neglect comfort and have lots of human material with which to construct your empire. Either way the system will be one the player can intuitively understand because it is one that we live with every day.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Ha, good idea. But now I feel that should be the default setting, because the breeding rate as of now is completely ridiculous and doesn't have a parallel in either the developed world on Earth right now, as @draqsko points out, or in any plausible starting colony scenario in the future.

Honestly if it was me, I'd have Birth permits on the slightly unpopular end, but allow you to be more selectave about who breeds and so what traits are passed on, which in turn would have impacts (for example allowing the Sexy Perk to be favored might make the edict more popular as they seek mates and to give it something to do now we've accepted more isnt always better) at the same rate of growth but less morale damaging would be a lottery, or trade the controll of traits for a productivity boost by giving permits to the hardest workers. Then you'd have increasingly draconian levels of eugenic meddling, potentially taking your colony to full handmaids tale type stuff if you have the stomach for that. Very tight controlls to such purposes would undoubably reduce birth rates in turn, making things that boost it usefull again.

And thats just one aspect we should have been able to play with, this is 5 mins of thought at 3am. Then theres rations (Variety, degree of preperation, quantity) living standards, amenity access... theres so much that they could and really should be doing with the human side of the equation because right now your colonists feel like the worst and least intresting part of the game. A badly implamented nesesty. We have humans druging in mines and in factories, while robots get to explore, discover anomolies, and be the ones to break new ground on mars. It seems totally backwards to me.