Stellaris Dev Diary #122 - Planetary Rework (part 2 of 4)

[RoverStorm]

Few questions, @Wiz

1. Suppose my primary pop has no bonuses to food but takes farming jobs. Then we get a different species that is great at farming, but they are weak (-5% minerals) and the only jobs open are mining. Will the pops swap jobs so the good farmers are farming and my primary pops are mining, or will the new pops just take the mining jobs and neither will swap because they already both have jobs?

2. If we have agrarian Idyll, and farms give both food and unity, will it prioritize a pop that has more food output or more unity output?

3. A pop being demoted from nobility to farmer is obviously going to be very upset, but what about the reverse? I doubt a farmer has the skill and education to instantly become an effective administrator, so while they'll be very happy about the promotion will there be a decent production penalty for newly promoted pops?

Good luck on your programming!

 

[timtheboost]

I would guess the reason is that if you do that either it is a killer performance wise, or it leads to a lot of slow pop growths happening at the same time in cosmopolitan empires. To illustrate what I mean, say you are playing as a xenophobe empire, you have only one species. You now have 1 growing at say 20 'growth points' a year. If it took about 100 'growth points' then you would get another pop in 5 years. but for the next one you would now be able to use that one pop to help grow the next, so say for argument sake you now have 25 growth points, its now 4 years till the next pop. now you have 3 more years till the next pop give or take. It takes you 9 years to grow 2 pops, and in 20 years you will have about 5. Now suppose you are a xenophile empire. You also have 20 growth points a year, but have to divide it in 2 for you two species in this hypothetical scenario. so you get 2 new pops in 10 years, already lagging behind. I could continue but I believe you get the idea. The problem only gets worse the more species you have. This off course destroys balance because now you as a xenophile empire are always going to be a little bit behind,being more behind the more pops you have. Although there probably are ways for you to match this with modifiers those would just as easily become exploitable.

I understand that argument completely. Here I have a solution for you: what if the new pop is generated as the first "new" human is generatet, with an efficiency according to his growth status. This would eradicate not only the problem you mentioned, but also the illogicality that the new born/immigrated citizens are doing nothing until there are enough to construct a new pop.

 

[Nussor]

@Wiz
Will Roboproduction have an on/off switch?

 

[Medicine Man]

Will a species' homeworld have any special attraction for them? It would make sense to me that the cradle would hold a special place for species, especially ones that don't lean towards xenophilia.

Especially if the homeworld isn't the capital

I really like this idea. It would be nice if there were some way to attract surviving refugees of a species to their homeworld if you recapture it after they've been purged by a third party.

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

Yah, I am excited about the redesign overall. The single pop growth could potentially be alright... But the weighting as currently described sounds terrible.

I mean, the description may be incomplete, but weighting towards equalizing representation makes no sense to me from either a gameplay or verisimilitude viewpoint. The only place where it makes sense (again, by either criteria) is migration of a species to a planet with low representation that has plentiful jobs for it.

 

[Shogeton]

I think the 'one population growing' is an elegant way of simulating a lot of demographic stuff happening without cluttering the game up with a ton of charts. Of course, if species A B and C are all on the planet and A is the next one up, that doesn't mean that B and C have all decided to stop growing. It just means that the next species to have an amount of population large enough to count as a unit of 'pop' is species A. Which would mean, if I understand correctly, that Slow Breeder wouldn't 'slow down' the pop growth at all. They just would be reduced in frequently that they show up. (and vice versa)

The only thing I'm still trying to wrap my head around is the 'if there's less of a species, they'll show up more often'. I mean, it seems to be mostly to avoid a vicious cycle. After all, if we do the intuitive thing and say 'if there are more of species A than Species B, Species A will spawn more' that is likely to result in Species B being spawned less and less, and makes truly 'cosmopolitan' planets difficult, because any small plurality will snowball. But as Wiz said, RP is an important part of it, and it feels a bit immersion breaking that as soon as one pop of a species appears on a planet, they will start rapidly rushing to be there in equal number to the other species. Because as Wiz explained it, it seems to be one of the heavier weighted things, with an 8-1 ratio on a plennt pretty much guaranteeing that the species that is on 1 is gonna be the one to breed faster, and is likely to completely prevent any pops from the majority species to show up for a while.

We'll see how it turns out, I'll be eagerly playing anyway.

 

[Riftwalker]

so, best i can figure for small races to grow faster than larger ones, is possibly ability to not compete over the same resources or terrain, even a little, allowing the races to wiggle into cracks that other races couldn't fit into. but this only makes sense on a world approaching overcrowding or higher.

 

[verybad]

Just thinking, an empire that is "tall" may be forced by it's overcrowded planets to go to war due to instability from unemployment. War is necessary not just to grow, but to keep your government functional.

This also leads to militaristic governments possibly gaining bonuses to soldier growth on overemployed planets, and overpopulation being useful despite it's negatives. Deliciously deep in it's functionality. War becomes much more useful than just increasing the size of your borders. Perhaps soldier pops might be attracted to planets need enemy planets while higher class pops might try to migrate away.

Also, there could there be space pops with jobs (e.g. on trading fleets that are attracted to planets/systems with positive economic growth) Travel on space fleets would provide even more growth on said systems, but also increase space crime pop growth (pirates), so you might need to provide a police fleet to protect those merchant fleets on shipping lines).


This could be SOOOOooooooo good.

 

[CyberSpyder]

it feels a bit immersion breaking that as soon as one pop of a species appears on a planet, they will start rapidly rushing to be there in equal number to the other species.

It doesn't even have to appear on the planet. Remember this part of the DD?

A Planet will only have a single growing Species at any given time, but is not limited to the Species alreadyliving on the planet - any Species with theoretical access to the planet through migration will be able to start growing on a planet, and when choosing a Species to grow, planets will generally prioritize Species that are under-represented on the planet

If one pop of a species appears anywhere in your empire (and has free movement), they'll start rushing to be on every planet habitable to them in equal numbers with the species already there.

 

[Calvax]

thats human like behaviour enforced on every alien race in your game. i find that kinda dissapointing.
what if there are alien races with a different mind set, where pops are not like "what!? no, i wont do that low tier job lul. give me candy pls."
with the current system this is not possible i guess?

I’d be surprised if we didn’t get species traits and civics related to this.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Hmm... still nothing addresses inevitable overpopulation of the galaxy. Will species, at least, start to decline due to food shortage? (not to mention that planetary bombardment should, logically, stop any empire food from getting to the planet)

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

Hmm... still nothing addresses inevitable overpopulation of the galaxy. Will species, at least, start to decline due to food shortage? (not to mention that planetary bombardment should, logically, stop any empire food from getting to the planet)

I think population is controlled by the supply of housing and the supply of housing is controlled by the supply of districts, of which every planet has a finite number.

 

[Ingros]

Will it be possible to sign one-direction migration treaty... or even better.. allow immigration/emmigration to/from other empires based on species and open borders
E.g. more options in migration control menu

 

[Orphalesion]

So I probably missed something in all those pages but....

...will this new Migration mechanic also take habitability into account? Or will species deliberately migrate to planets where the environment makes them miserable just so that every species is represented?

Aside from that I quite like the idea, it's also such a bother to have a multi-species empire and then your older coreworlds you created before encoutnering/incorporating other species will still be mono-species...

 

[George The Eco]

I understand that argument completely. Here I have a solution for you: what if the new pop is generated as the first "new" human is generatet, with an efficiency according to his growth status. This would eradicate not only the problem you mentioned, but also the illogicality that the new born/immigrated citizens are doing nothing until there are enough to construct a new pop.

I see what you mean and while it probably would solve the problem it would also probably be really really bad for performance,because each day these new pops have to be reevaluated to see how much growth they add. Whilst probably not a problem on smaller maps it could really lead to horrific slowdowns later down the line.

 

[George The Eco]

The logical solution is to ditch the one pop at a time rule for everyone. If every single pop generates another pop of the same kind as itself, whenever the space exists to expand we have no problem at all. We just reduce the speed of pop growth overall to be more realistic (that is slower) and everyone wins.

Except the devs are in effect doubling down on the 1 pop at a time growth rule.

Here's the thing though why would you have 10 different pops of the species growing at the same time? why not just combine them, after all for all effects and purposes they are the same and could be clumped together. It'll just annoy a large percentage of the player base. In addition slower pop growth is just going to slow down the game in addition to the slowdown from ftl.

Also its not necessarily realistic that pop growth would at all be slow in a space faring civ, with virtually unlimited resources its in fact quite likely that you are going to have massive pop growth. I'm not saying that it will happen, just that its far from impossible that populations will explode within relatively short times

 

[Serenity84]

@Wiz
Will Roboproduction have an on/off switch?

It's a building. Buildings can be turned on and off

 

[kabill]

I think the 'one population growing' is an elegant way of simulating a lot of demographic stuff happening without cluttering the game up with a ton of charts. Of course, if species A B and C are all on the planet and A is the next one up, that doesn't mean that B and C have all decided to stop growing. It just means that the next species to have an amount of population large enough to count as a unit of 'pop' is species A. Which would mean, if I understand correctly, that Slow Breeder wouldn't 'slow down' the pop growth at all. They just would be reduced in frequently that they show up. (and vice versa)

It does look like having one pop growing at once produces the same outcome as splitting growth points between multiple species all growing at the same time (weighting for less populous species notwithstanding; see below). An example...

Assume we have two species. One is rapid-breeding (+100% growth speed) and one is slow-breeding (-50% growth speed). Say a planet generates 20 growth points per year, which is split proportionately between all growing species on a planet, and a new pop is grown every 100 growth points. Assuming both species start at equal numbers, that means that in 100 years:

- The fast species grows 20 pops (20 growth / 2 = 10 growth per year; 10 growth per year * 2 = 20 actual growth per year; 20 * 100 years = 2000 growth points; 2000 / 100 = 20 pops grown)
- The slow species grows 5 pops (20 growth / 2 = 10 growth per year; 10 growth * 0.5 = 5 actual growth per year; 5 * 100 years = 500 growth points; 500 / 100 = 5 pops grown)

Now the same system but with only one pop growing at a time. The pop chosen is random, with weight modified by the species growth speed modifier. So the fast species is twice as likely to be picked as normal, and the slow species half as likely. That means that the fast species has an 80% chance of being selected and the slow species a 20% chance. On average, starting with the same number of each species, therefore 4 fast species pops will grow for every 1 slow species, or for every 20 fast pops born, 5 slow pops will be born. That's the same ratio as with the growth-split system above over 100 year period. Now let's see how long it takes for those pops to grow:

- It takes the fast species 50 years to grow 20 pops (growth speed = 20 * 2 = 40; 100 / 40 = 1 pop per 2.5 years; 20 * 2.5 = 50 years)
- it takes the slow species also 50 years to grow 5 pops (growth speed = 20 * 0.5 = 10; 100 / 10 = 1 pop per 10 years; 5 * 10 = 50 years)

That's a total of 100 years, exactly the same as the growth-split system. In other words, over the same time period with the same growth rates, the one-pop-at-a-time system produces the same outcome as splitting growth between multiple pops, but with the advantage of growing whole pops in one go (so having lots of species on the same planet doesn't result in longer times to get whole pops). Point being, growing one pop at a time is fine.

The only thing I'm still trying to wrap my head around is the 'if there's less of a species, they'll show up more often'. I mean, it seems to be mostly to avoid a vicious cycle. After all, if we do the intuitive thing and say 'if there are more of species A than Species B, Species A will spawn more' that is likely to result in Species B being spawned less and less, and makes truly 'cosmopolitan' planets difficult, because any small plurality will snowball. But as Wiz said, RP is an important part of it, and it feels a bit immersion breaking that as soon as one pop of a species appears on a planet, they will start rapidly rushing to be there in equal number to the other species. Because as Wiz explained it, it seems to be one of the heavier weighted things, with an 8-1 ratio on a plennt pretty much guaranteeing that the species that is on 1 is gonna be the one to breed faster, and is likely to completely prevent any pops from the majority species to show up for a while.

So it's actually this that is the problem, because it doesn't make any sense and causes problems like those outlined here. I can see the logic of weighting less numerous species when factoring in migration, but then you're actually weighting migration rather than species number per se.

I wonder whether part of the problem is the rolling together of natural population growth and migration into the same thing. I.e. a planet cannot grow pops from natural growth and migration separately - either there is a immigrating species (which overrides any natural growth on the planet), or there is natural growth (with no immigration at all, unless they happen to be the same species). I am inclined to think that separating these out might work better, i.e. you have natural pop growth (along the lines outlined above) and then migration as a separate growth/decline system. That could take up the same UI space (the "decline" UI slot is replaced with a "migration" slot, which might be immigration or emigration depending on the context), and since most decline is likely to be from migration anyway, I don't see it causing any significant problems compared with the extant suggestion.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

Here's the thing though why would you have 10 different pops of the species growing at the same time? why not just combine them, after all for all effects and purposes they are the same and could be clumped together. It'll just annoy a large percentage of the player base. In addition slower pop growth is just going to slow down the game in addition to the slowdown from ftl.

Also its not necessarily realistic that pop growth would at all be slow in a space faring civ, with virtually unlimited resources its in fact quite likely that you are going to have massive pop growth. I'm not saying that it will happen, just that its far from impossible that populations will explode within relatively short times

The game is supposed to be played over a period of centuries, 'slowing down the game' is sometimes what we need. Population growth is presently far too fast to be in any way realistic, it should take a few decades to increase your population and I happily mod the game so the population growth rate is far slower, to no ill effects at all. Population growth needs be brought into line with the pace of the game in general, it is presently too fast but it makes sense to tie it into technology.

Clumping them together slows down population growth and essentially represents the way that populations of at least most creatures within a given environment behave. As the total population goes up, the rate of population growth goes down as fewer babies are born per adult, this counteracts the fact there are more adults meaning a greater potential to reproduce so we end up with a linear population growth 1+2+3+4 rather than 1-2-4-8-16-32-64. That means Malthus is wrong and we don't all end up starving to death, which is why all creatures have evolved to work that way.

However this principle is based upon population density, not the total number of the creatures in existence. If we are dealing with the expansion of the population into empty space, rather than the increase of the population within a given already inhabited place, then it is likely that the exponential growth should apply instead. It is very silly to impose a linear increase in this situation, so that every pop has to wait patiently for the last pop to be born, even if the linear increase is very fast.

The answer is to have pops operate like bacteria engaging is cellular division, until the number of housing slots are fill and deal with immigration SEPARATELY on a 1-in, 1-out basis. We encourage things to become more cosmopolitan not by artificial population boosts, but by diversifying the terrain of the planets to make housing slots that are uninhabitable to the main species but might be inhabitable to other species of a different terrain preference.

 

[The Founder]

1. Suppose my primary pop has no bonuses to food but takes farming jobs. Then we get a different species that is great at farming, but they are weak (-5% minerals) and the only jobs open are mining. Will the pops swap jobs so the good farmers are farming and my primary pops are mining, or will the new pops just take the mining jobs and neither will swap because they already both have jobs?

Yes, explicitly:

Pops that are more suitable for a Job than the current Pop holding the Job may take it from it them, so constructing a bunch of Robot Pops with mining equipment will likely see your organic Miners losing their jobs in short order

2. If we have agrarian Idyll, and farms give both food and unity, will it prioritize a pop that has more food output or more unity output?

Agrarian Idyll can work very differnetly. If they wanted to keep the whole "Farms produce minerals/unity" thing, they could just add extra Mining/Unity jobs to the Farming Districts. That would make it a non-question: Miners work mining Jobs, Farmers work Farming Jobs, Unity people work Untiy jobs.

With the new Economic System, there is now a ton of new Ways to implement old Civics.
Same way Aristrocratic Elite changed with Introduction of variable Leader Level Caps.
Same way it will change again with introduction of jobs.

3. A pop being demoted from nobility to farmer is obviously going to be very upset, but what about the reverse? I doubt a farmer has the skill and education to instantly become an effective administrator, so while they'll be very happy about the promotion will there be a decent production penalty for newly promoted pops?

While it would be realistic, it does not sound like a Fun mechanic. There is enough abstraction to basically ignore that for gameplay purposes.