Okay, so I have an awesome/insane/"what even" idea for planets and populations, and I really need to get this off my chest and out of my brain before I explode.
WARNING: LONG
I hope I have enough room.....
To summarize, my idea and aim is to revamp how growing POPs are treated, as well as to change how planets develop over the course of the game.
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POPs first because they're shorter: So I always imagined a POP as representing 1 Billion people, and I imagine most do the same, or something similar. It kinda annoyed me how a growing POP was basically xx% of 1 Billion people who didn't do anything. SO, I suggest allowing the POP to work the percentage of yield of the tile equal to their formation %, so if a Tile has 4 minerals, and a POP at 50%, it yields 2 minerals. I feel this would make expansion more interesting and accelerate the early game.
Also, how each growing POP would have an ethos? Allow multiple POPs to grow at the same time with different ethos, and divide the growth rate among st them acording to the existing ethos population. So if you have a world that's 1/2 materialist, 1/4 militant, and 1/4 authoritarian, each gets that fraction of the growth rate.
This would make an interesting dynamic of more populous ethos growing faster than less populous ones, and gives player more.....interesting...options in controlling their ethics.
Next, PLANETS, the big one.
First, structure, Planets as being 5x5 squares is......frankly, kinda boring. And like a dozen other games I can think of off the top of my head. What would be unique would be to stretch the map so it would cover a more "planet surface" kinda feel, at the time i was thinking an elongated hexagon like an Eckert II projection (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckert_II_projection). To compensate, the tiles themselves would have to change shape to hexagons themselves, which would work with a base of 5 hexagons, which only ups the (max) planet size from 25 to 29.
second, I think making planet layout match the skins would be FAR more immersive and unique to each play-through. But to avoid the same copy-paste skin and layout you could divide them into compatible segments so the edge pieces are all similar or the same. So you make 20 unique layouts for the lower left map piece, and the same for each other piece, and tie them to a corresponding skin, and you have the computer generate each planet picking one from each segment category. If you only have 20 for each, you have 20^4 unique possibilities, or 160,000 unique skins and layout. Which sounds like plenty. Even just making them could be made easier by just mirroring one piece on different axes.
Third, planetary modification. Is your terrestrial species sick of those pesky oceans? Looking to grow your economic base but those ecosystems in the way? Now you can change that! Hopefully with minimal ecosystem collapse.
Funny pitches aside, what this part handles is literally just modifying your whole planet for purposes other than terraforming. Remember those layouts I mentioned? Well they weren't JUST for the land, they were for the Oceans as well. Leveled, you can drain each level of the ocean by using a (would-be new) building, a hydro-pump that can store and filter the water for your population. Homeworlds would have 3 or 4 levels to represent the tectonic activity (Marianas trench for example), and you need a new hydro-pump on the new coast for each level drained, and you have to keep the old one to hold the water. In the event of an orbital bombardment, and a pump being destroyed, it would flood the lowest level not flooded, and would either displace (to another tile on the planet) or kill all the POPs affected, but would NOT destroy the structures (so you don't have a chain reaction of instant global flooding).
This effectively allows you to grow your usable surface from a moderate area to the max (29 in the modified map) through use of advanced technology, resources, and a little patience (oceans are big).
Lastly, planetary development. Basically, Coruscant. No seriously.
Like, not JUST a city world, but one you build over however many years (For Coruscant, 20,000 years). Basically around the same tech area you gain access to that hydro-pump from earlier, you also gain access to planetary superstructures, That allow you to build in place of (or for balance upgraded from) high-tier mining networks, power plants, and labs. What these structure REALLY do is allow another level of your rising super-cities, without suppressing what was there. It enables an up/down to one side of the planet UI and you can build something else on TOP of that superstructure. This effectively allows you to increase the size of the planet indefinitely, but at increasing costs per level you build (like cost times the level your building on). The superstructure was expensive and took a while, so do you raise the rest of the planet first or forge ahead to ever increasing costs? It would be a decision between cost and prestige. The superstructure tech would unlock techs that would be compatible with only superstructures below them, and would focus on migration attraction or population growth.
I like this idea because some worlds (cough cough Homeworlds) get lost in your sea of colonies, and wanted to maybe give these unique worlds a chance to shine.
Yeesh, that was longer than I expected. Whoops? lol