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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As much as i agree it would be better solution, i actually think it's a solution that require more work, while current one is the simplest - just introduce one universal formula and you're good to go. Because, it's true - cutting everything x2 is easy, but you'll spend another year tuning all jobs\professions\districts\civics to get some even basic balance. While with current formula they can reduce penalty from 0.5 to 0.2 and call it a day. This is probably why it was chosen.
As much as i agree it would be better solution, i actually think it's a solution that require more work, while current one is the simplest - just introduce one universal formula and you're good to go. Because, it's true - cutting everything x2 is easy, but you'll spend another year tuning all jobs\professions\districts\civics to get some even basic balance. While with current formula they can reduce penalty from 0.5 to 0.2 and call it a day. This is probably why it was chosen.
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.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".
As much as i agree it would be better solution, i actually think it's a solution that require more work, while current one is the simplest - just introduce one universal formula and you're good to go. Because, it's true - cutting everything x2 is easy, but you'll spend another year tuning all jobs\professions\districts\civics to get some even basic balance. While with current formula they can reduce penalty from 0.5 to 0.2 and call it a day. This is probably why it was chosen.
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.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 5x. Less than 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.
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.
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?"Haha of course I can respond, the response is "I don't know", my personal feeling on the matter is that there's only so many times we can overhaul systems before maybe we should ask some questions about why we keep feeling the need to do that.
Who in the world wants to play to year 2600 anyways?
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.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.
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.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.
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.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.
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).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.