You're probably right. This likely was the easiest and laziest solution possible. Just slap a single equation down and call it a day. Stellaris is FIXED everyone! Rejoice!
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The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0
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Even a "nerf" to the actual system by reducing the penalty would not solve the problem, it just pushes it back a few decades. Growth scales up very fast in the midgame. With 0.5 you reach the drought at the early 2300s maybe, with the reduced amount it will start in 2350s with the same settings. The result is the same, and you already feel the slowdown in the decades before. Its is always there...
The only solution is a look to the planetary level, actually using the carrying capacity as it supposed to be. Slow self growing colonies, pushed by imigration from populated worlds, the bigger the empire is, the faster a single new colony can grow. When a planet reaches its own capacity, growth slows down, emigration starts if possible. In an ideal scenario this limit is reached when you run out of housing and jobs... a natural stop when a planet is "done".
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Then they can call it a day and deal with the angry mob. I already skipped this zombie DLC last time. I was tired to see the game going mostly to add many super weapons. istead of interesting domestic mechanics. I made the mistake then to buy the new DLC and the one i skipped together. And now i can not play the game. I will not repeat this again.
I dont mind to spend money for not much work. Bring a other DLC with some new orgings (its realy only about to add some new traits and a new picture). But better not to fix laggs than to fix them in such way. Laggs were a problem but it was not impossible to play.
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Well, it is not what they did and I don't believe they will touch the POP growth balance regarding late game performance in any way soon again, so we have to work with what we got and propose some tweaks to the system in place.
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It seems to me that robots are quite useless with 3.0/3.1 I'm 150 years in the game and built the fantastic amount of 24...wtf (and each for the cheap price of 150 alloys)
I mean I get the idea behind the changed pop growth and it's logical that pops reduce their reproduction if the planet fills up. But changing the speed of building stuff doesn't really fit into this (imho). At least the multipliers for bio pops should somehow apply to robots as well (increase speed as long as there's a lot of space)
It's like reducing the mining output when the storages fill up despite having 100% demand for resources
Oh and most of the game it only played with 1 segment, the other are only colonized recently.
I mean I get the idea behind the changed pop growth and it's logical that pops reduce their reproduction if the planet fills up. But changing the speed of building stuff doesn't really fit into this (imho). At least the multipliers for bio pops should somehow apply to robots as well (increase speed as long as there's a lot of space)
It's like reducing the mining output when the storages fill up despite having 100% demand for resources
Oh and most of the game it only played with 1 segment, the other are only colonized recently.
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No linear value will work. The potential space of the game settings is too large and if the goal is to control end-game speed, you need a very strong modifier at the empire level. Dropping it to 0.2 from 0.5 will at 1,000 pop, triple the growth cost as opposed to 6x. A 50% improvement. Players will get a little further along, but unless they are playing small lightly habitable galaxies, they will still find a wall.
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I know. I mentioned 3-4 times already in different threads, linear formula won't work. You need some mechanics that represent how overcrowded your Empire is based and dependent on various parameters that makes sense and change POP growth formula based on it. It may\should be even a complete different formula for different Empires. But looks like it's just too much for PDX, maximum quota for new mechanics per DLC achieved, you can one use single formula.
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Just spitballing here, let me know if any of my numbers are off or could be improved:
Currently, pop growth is 100+(EmpirePop/2)
Which, for an empire with 1000 pops would be 600 (100+(1000/2))
And at 500 pops would be 350 (100+(500/2))
May I suggest adjusting the formula to include a modifier which is the number of Colonies is multiplied by the Average Planet Capacity to provide something akin to an EmpirePopCap. The EmpirePopCap would then be multiplied by the current Empire Pop to give uh... X?
Using the example above the empire would have 10 Colonies with an average Planet Capacity of 100, which provides a total EmpirePopCap of 1000
100+((EmpirePop/2)*(EmpirePop/EmpirePopCap))
Which would result in a 500 pop Empire having a Growth Rate of 225 (Instead of 350), and a 1000 Pop Empire being at 600 same as the current system.
This would allow pop growth to be somewhat connected to the total carrying capacity of your entire empire (and galaxy size) instead of being independent of it. There would be a benefit to adding ringworlds or continuing to colonize later on. I haven't fully thought out the different ways to game this system, like habitat spam however, or how it would integrate with Greater Than Ourselves and the new migration mechanic changes. Growth would still be tempered as planets filled up, and individual planets would still have the base growth reduction. But adding new worlds wouldn't be such a drag.
You could add another modifier at the game start too, to speed up or slow it down even further, which would look like this:
100+((EmpirePop/2)*((EmpirePop/EmpirePopCap)*Modifier)))
Which could be as low as 0.1 for extreme growth, or higher to slow things down. At 500 pops and a 0.1 modifier the growth rate would be at 112.5 so there wouldn't be any slowing down.
I'm not a modder or programmer, I'm just procrastinating at work.
Planet capacity is fuzzy to me, it isn't just housing but some other factors as well. From a current game I've seen it as low as 20 on a habitat to 353 on a fully developed ringworld segment.
Currently, pop growth is 100+(EmpirePop/2)
Which, for an empire with 1000 pops would be 600 (100+(1000/2))
And at 500 pops would be 350 (100+(500/2))
May I suggest adjusting the formula to include a modifier which is the number of Colonies is multiplied by the Average Planet Capacity to provide something akin to an EmpirePopCap. The EmpirePopCap would then be multiplied by the current Empire Pop to give uh... X?
Using the example above the empire would have 10 Colonies with an average Planet Capacity of 100, which provides a total EmpirePopCap of 1000
100+((EmpirePop/2)*(EmpirePop/EmpirePopCap))
Which would result in a 500 pop Empire having a Growth Rate of 225 (Instead of 350), and a 1000 Pop Empire being at 600 same as the current system.
This would allow pop growth to be somewhat connected to the total carrying capacity of your entire empire (and galaxy size) instead of being independent of it. There would be a benefit to adding ringworlds or continuing to colonize later on. I haven't fully thought out the different ways to game this system, like habitat spam however, or how it would integrate with Greater Than Ourselves and the new migration mechanic changes. Growth would still be tempered as planets filled up, and individual planets would still have the base growth reduction. But adding new worlds wouldn't be such a drag.
You could add another modifier at the game start too, to speed up or slow it down even further, which would look like this:
100+((EmpirePop/2)*((EmpirePop/EmpirePopCap)*Modifier)))
Which could be as low as 0.1 for extreme growth, or higher to slow things down. At 500 pops and a 0.1 modifier the growth rate would be at 112.5 so there wouldn't be any slowing down.
I'm not a modder or programmer, I'm just procrastinating at work.
Planet capacity is fuzzy to me, it isn't just housing but some other factors as well. From a current game I've seen it as low as 20 on a habitat to 353 on a fully developed ringworld segment.
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It's quadratic so high pop counts will quickly exceed the linear slope in the original. It may be better at low pop counts, but the wall will get higher more quickly at some point.
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Some interesting oddities with POP growth... if you build robots on a planet they help your organic people to grow faster until you reach the cap. Organic POP is just the amount of POP on the world... so you can have 20 robots and 5 organic POP and still enjoy a full bonus to organic POP growth.
This probably should be changed.... it just seem a bit odd. Organic POP constructed probably are fine if they help breed more POP.
This probably should be changed.... it just seem a bit odd. Organic POP constructed probably are fine if they help breed more POP.
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its look like now entire game is for grind pops an its stupid like we know from earth
people are just getting born THAT SHOULD BE LATS TING TO CARE ABOUT HOW TO GROW POPULATION
people are just getting born THAT SHOULD BE LATS TING TO CARE ABOUT HOW TO GROW POPULATION
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I'm no expert, but to my knowledge, that kind of problem means looking too much at the specific numbers as being a problem instead of what's actually good gameplay, and thus time is wasted tweaking those numbers instead of taking a step back and going "What would a cool space empire realistically do?"
From that perspective, the whole "Number of pops too high! Performance needs it lower, do something!" issue melts away into "Wait a minute, why are we as the great Conquerers of Space constantly creating space housing for people over planets with no resources just so we have more people breeding? And why is maintaining all that not hurting our economy? Shouldn't we be making a damn Ringworld instead?", and then it becomes pretty obvious that the real problem is that there's a particular form of empire expansion (habitat spam) both players and AIs do to ridiculous levels that is simply degenerate.
The number of pops does need to be lowered, yes, but anything that lowers it should be looked at as bad if it hurts how cool the space empire seems, so it has to be something "on theme", like maybe your bureaucrats just can't keep up and there's rampant space piracy hurting you from overpopulation.
I really think habitats need to cost an actually important alloy upkeep so that it's mathematically infeasible to continue building them long-term. They should be strategic toys that are well worth it to put on important deposits, not every empire's main form of living space after 2350.
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I think this tile-based bandaged, infected, re-bandaged, re-infected wound of a system needs to go. Our problem was micro and performance issues killing end-game. Now you can get optimal growth by... micro(building more housing, to keep the growth bonus on the S curve optimal), and while lag is considerably lower (I'm actually able to run 30 AIs on 5800x, although in SP I have no DLC, maybe it has an effect on speed), it is at the cost of end-game being practically dead, once again, as after you reach the "soft" pop cap, further development needs even more micro, or just sitting there doing nothing, effectively killing your game.
The fact that pop number>all else is still a thing is actually really insane. Just look at how in our world there are countries with low population yet way higher economic output than some with much higher population(Australia vs Brazil comes to mind), even though I hate making comparisons to countries vs stellar empires, as we currently do not have a hive mind country on our humble Earth, it really tells you how screwed up this pop above all else approach is.
Development and actual interaction with your population is just not a factor in Stellaris. You build a building or district and everyone is suddenly educated, capable of instantly producing everything at maximum efficiency, and all you are waiting for is new people to be born(and occasionally for resources). It would be great if the pop system could be abstracted, and made a bit more like Cities Skylines and Vic 2(where education and supply and demand are a thing), as this game is the perfect opportunity for something like that. I don't think its a shame to re-use good things from your other teams (unlike the ridiculously boring EU3-EU4 siege mechanic that has been re-re-used for 2 DLCs now...).
The fact that pop number>all else is still a thing is actually really insane. Just look at how in our world there are countries with low population yet way higher economic output than some with much higher population(Australia vs Brazil comes to mind), even though I hate making comparisons to countries vs stellar empires, as we currently do not have a hive mind country on our humble Earth, it really tells you how screwed up this pop above all else approach is.
Development and actual interaction with your population is just not a factor in Stellaris. You build a building or district and everyone is suddenly educated, capable of instantly producing everything at maximum efficiency, and all you are waiting for is new people to be born(and occasionally for resources). It would be great if the pop system could be abstracted, and made a bit more like Cities Skylines and Vic 2(where education and supply and demand are a thing), as this game is the perfect opportunity for something like that. I don't think its a shame to re-use good things from your other teams (unlike the ridiculously boring EU3-EU4 siege mechanic that has been re-re-used for 2 DLCs now...).
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Yes the majority of the economic system is poorly designed in general and doesn't work very well for a game of this scale (or with automation and AI being as poor as it is at least). Actually changing that would be a daunting overhaul of the entire game, however, and it's much easier to slap a lazy equation to bottleneck the whole system and then call it a day.
I wish that was just my own sarcastic thought, but that's what they actually did. It's cringe-worthy. I don't understand what they were thinking and how they didn't realize how unpopular it would be.
I wish that was just my own sarcastic thought, but that's what they actually did. It's cringe-worthy. I don't understand what they were thinking and how they didn't realize how unpopular it would be.
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Thing is, all the feedback I've seen for the dev diaries were overwhelmingly positive, so it makes sense as to why they would call it a day with just some quick fixes. It is not like the changes are coming out of nowhere, the dev diaries document everything, sometimes even a bit too much.
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This is a fundamental problem with them amalgamating so much into one big release. There was supposed to be a 2.9 patch that was just the pop changes, but then everything got bundled with spying (to sell the DLC as usual) and so the initial backlash against the bad ideas in the pop stuff got overwhelmed.
I literally made an account just to tell them that transit hubs were a completely wrong solution to the pop migration problem from basic game design principles (starbases are limited and are only justified in cost being on chokepoints and maybe where you collect lots of trade value, not over lots of planets, and it makes no sense to hugely favor multi-planet systems). Thankfully, they relented a little and made them not necessary for the auto migration.
The per-pop empire penalty for creating new pops was something I noticed briefly mentioned in an early dev diary about the population changes, and I was not a fan of it at the time, but that was months ago, and nobody was expecting it to be this harsh.
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Reading the dev diaries and their ponderings and planning is very different than seeing the results and understanding the implications. I read that dev diary months ago and I've been talking to anyone who would listen about how awesome it was going to be to have reduced populations.
Never in a million years did I make the connection that their proposed system would literally curve you down to essentially zero growth and require you to do all sorts of stupid things to cheese for additional growth.
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You can only see the real effect of changes after trying it yourself. It's not something you can comprehend just reading about it, since theory differs from practice. Game design should be based around what feels good in the player's hands, and not what sounds the best when written in a forum post. This is why playtesting is so important, and appears to be neglected in the development process (I noticed severe problems with the new pop system after a few hours of playing it, and couldn't believe the devs didn't see them).
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