[Luiz Felipe]

Yeah i expect something more indepth for the planetary view and stats.

So far it looks really like Endless space (with more depth since there are tiles and pops, of course)


Something that has always bugged me is that I can't believe actually no game use science for this and we always get stuck in the classic paradigm of "arid planet", "barren planet" or "temperate planet" etc. which doesn't really mean anything, is unimaginative, and basically this is not how planets or space work.

Everyone that has been to school (i hope) knows about this :

Why not use actual planetary science to make a game set in space ? It doesn't have to be really complicated compositions but basic stuff everyone knows about like CO2, O2, etc. etc.

Yes!
I would love to see something like Mass Effect racial diversity:
- The Volus are ammonia based lifeform, and can only colonize planets with that composition;
- The Elcor are specialized to high gravity planets;
- Drell can only live in high temperature, low humidity places, otherwise they suffer with disease;
- Hanar are sea creatures, and so on.

Another example: The Uplift Trilogy shows two basic life types: oxygen breathers and hydrogen breathers.

 

[CptWilly]

Hey guys so far I feel in this new game PDS has taken some bold and intuitive moves with their development process including government types, species' ethos and most of technology. Now there proposal with POP's has definitely got some good things and not so great things about but overall I think it's a good addition. here's why now most of you guys because we are an educated bunch believe that this system just isn't realistic and even saw one guy go "If they are a space faring civilization food wouldn't be an issue for them." Now I'm sure you guys are familiar with the Warhammer 40k universe and this system makes sense to me because in the Imperium because they are hell bent on survival means they have created a system of having planets purely for reason like the aforementioned with disgust agri-worlds but they also include cool ones like Forge Worlds (Factories), Hive worlds (Large amount of POP's for recruiting armies) and even science planets even though they use these planets for only weapons testing science but you catch my drift and don't think all is bad in fact I am actually upbeat. NOW IMPORTANT FOR ALL PEOPLE many have complained about only having POP integers which fits the tile system but not reality. Now I have played distant worlds and am a massive fan of the galaxies population is so fluid in it's migration e.g If you tax to much and they are unhappy literally billions of people will leave your empire. Now in my current game I have played well beyond any point of playing just for fun of seeing the massive empires duke it out. NOW I MEAN MASSIVE my current empire consists of 290 BILLION PEOPLE while the two other empires who are my rivals are 260 BILLION and a whopping 360 Billion who is in the lead and i just love the fact that when the other empires catch up we could duking it out between each other with empires of A TRILLION PEOPLE. This is pretty much the core reason why people hate integer POP's you just lose that mind-boggling scale of running a massive empire. I HAVE A SOLUTION what you have is actually a regular number of people on the planet say in 2100 there are 10 million people on your newly colonised planet but by 2150 there are 50 million people (sorry the terrible maths here). Now this number is what effects the amount workers you get to work your planet so say 10 million means you get one worker and 50 million means you get 25 workers. WHAT I WOULD HATE TO SEE is you have the actual workers of or integer people have a stat based of them somewhere in demographics list this is absolutely terrible COUGH Civ5 COUGH.

So please support this post and I reckon we can change the Dev's minds about this after all they're still in alpha development. Also if anyone has any other ideas please post I would love to discuss with you. THE DARK WARMONGER OUT

tl;sra;du;drr (too long, still read anyway, didn't understand, didn't re-read).

That said, I think the main complaint about the whole "food drives population growth" conceit is not that space-faring civs would have outgrown such needs as a stable food supply, it's that the notion that populations increase as a result of abundant food supplies is unsupported by real-world observation. In fact, if you look a human societies today, the exact opposite is the case. In parts of the world afflicted by persistent food shortages, birth rates are high and (even in the face of high infant mortality and rampant malnutrition), population growth rate is fairly high. Hunger causes a great many other problems in these communities (poor health, short lifespan, low productivity), which could be modelled in a game system as severely reduced economic output, but is more or less nonsensical to model by simply shrinking the population size.

In fact, that's what makes real-life food shortage so tricky to solve. Once a community starts suffering the consequences of hunger, food production locally decreases as a result and populations continue to grow. If it were the opposite, we'd all just live in a state of perfect food equilibrium.

For what it's worth, the idea that food surplus leads to growth is equally flawed. Look at food-rich countries and you'll find some of the world's lowest birth-rates, in some cases below the rate required even to maintain zero organic population growth.

Of course, that's just us silly humans and aliens would likely reproduce differently (see Tribbles, reproductive process of), but I'm with those who are disappointed that population growth looks a lot further from the more realistic models Paradox has used in the past and closer to the Sid Meyer "full granaries=babies" nonsense.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

I think the main complaint about the whole "food drives population growth" conceit is not that space-faring civs would have outgrown such needs as a stable food supply, it's that the notion that populations increase as a result of abundant food supplies is unsupported by real-world observation. In fact, if you look a human societies today, the exact opposite is the case.

I think the model makes a lot of sense for Civ because it's modelling thousands of years of growth of mostly pre-industrial societies. In that sort of situation and over those time scales, a bonus food supply probably represents things like fewer people dying in the periodic famines. I agree that it doesn't feel like a good model for a space-faring species and a time scale of only a few hundred years. I'd prefer population growth rate to be mostly a characteristic of a species and society, and growth only stopping at some point *after* you reach the carrying capacity of the biome.

It's interesting that some of the very old games had aspects of their models that were more sophisticated that you'd think at first glance. Sometimes successor games that copy them lose that nuance. Like the food model in the original Civ is a great model for that game, but gets ported to a lot of places where it doesn't make as much sense. The original Master of Orion had an interesting economic and pollution model that was in a lot of ways more sophisticated and more scale-able than the Moo2 civ-clone model. For instance, you actually had the option in MoO of sacrificing your natural environment to get more immediate production. In MoO2, pollution is just an unavoidable tax on production.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

tl;sra;du;drr (too long, still read anyway, didn't understand, didn't re-read).

That said, I think the main complaint about the whole "food drives population growth" conceit is not that space-faring civs would have outgrown such needs as a stable food supply, it's that the notion that populations increase as a result of abundant food supplies is unsupported by real-world observation. In fact, if you look a human societies today, the exact opposite is the case. In parts of the world afflicted by persistent food shortages, birth rates are high and (even in the face of high infant mortality and rampant malnutrition), population growth rate is fairly high. Hunger causes a great many other problems in these communities (poor health, short lifespan, low productivity), which could be modelled in a game system as severely reduced economic output, but is more or less nonsensical to model by simply shrinking the population size.

In fact, that's what makes real-life food shortage so tricky to solve. Once a community starts suffering the consequences of hunger, food production locally decreases as a result and populations continue to grow. If it were the opposite, we'd all just live in a state of perfect food equilibrium.

For what it's worth, the idea that food surplus leads to growth is equally flawed. Look at food-rich countries and you'll find some of the world's lowest birth-rates, in some cases below the rate required even to maintain zero organic population growth.

Of course, that's just us silly humans and aliens would likely reproduce differently (see Tribbles, reproductive process of), but I'm with those who are disappointed that population growth looks a lot further from the more realistic models Paradox has used in the past and closer to the Sid Meyer "full granaries=babies" nonsense.

This...

and... the fact that any space faring race could easily produce whatever food they like as long as they have the energy, they don't need the fertile soil to do it. Neither will we here on Earth in the future either if we manage to find better energy sources.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think the model makes a lot of sense for Civ because it's modelling thousands of years of growth of mostly pre-industrial societies. In that sort of situation and over those time scales, a bonus food supply probably represents things like fewer people dying in the periodic famines. I agree that it doesn't feel like a good model for a space-faring species and a time scale of only a few hundred years. I'd prefer population growth rate to be mostly a characteristic of a species and society, and growth only stopping at some point *after* you reach the carrying capacity of the biome.

It's interesting that some of the very old games had aspects of their models that were more sophisticated that you'd think at first glance. Sometimes successor games that copy them lose that nuance. Like the food model in the original Civ is a great model for that game, but gets ported to a lot of places where it doesn't make as much sense. The original Master of Orion had an interesting economic and pollution model that was in a lot of ways more sophisticated and more scale-able than the Moo2 civ-clone model. For instance, you actually had the option in MoO of sacrificing your natural environment to get more immediate production. In MoO2, pollution is just an unavoidable tax on production.

It is not even a good representation in history. Population growth comes from something very different. The more people you have the more laborer you get and that means more farmers, hunters etc..

Human society did manage to provide an excess of both goods and food at about the start of the Civ series so food is not important for population growth at all. Sure it is needed to sustain a population and starvation, though real, have not been a great factor in the decrease in population other than in very local places.

In fact... both famine, sickness and war have many times resulted in a boom in population growth after a short drop. This is also supported by evolution theory.

Research have found that the higher the rate of children who reach adulthood the lower the population growth. This seem to be the overwhelmingly driving factor in low child birth societies. There are very low correlation between rich or poor, religious or secular for example.

I'm not even sure that humans would start to procreate more just because they would colonize other planets, this is more a sociology-psychological issue. As long as people a content with two children you will never get a bigger population. You would need to incentivize people but that might be hard. So other methods might be necessary.

Might not be fun in a game, but worth to consider anyway.

 

[DeveronMagi]

do we know yet how much of the planet stuff can be done by the AI and how much of it we have to do ourselves? i wouldnt mind that i have to build the buildings my self (just lik in EU4) but choosing which tiles are worked by what pop is something i wont mind let the AI handle, this will cut down on the apparent micromanagement of this solution. for the rest, this game looks so pretty

 

[Wenla]

My humble opinion is, that I can't have an opinion before I know more, so I just have to wait more details (POPs I mean).

And what becomes micromanagement, we are different kind of players, I really like micromanagement (yes, I know, I'm controlfreak). I know that it takes time, but that's what I have, and plenty of it.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general I don't mind micromanagement... the biggest problem is that the AI usually suck at it and just make the game that much easier for the player.

They could have a auto place feature for players that don't want to do it but the AI will rarely place stuff in the way a human would who is much better at future planning than the AI is.

 

[CptWilly]

I think the model makes a lot of sense for Civ because it's modelling thousands of years of growth of mostly pre-industrial societies. In that sort of situation and over those time scales, a bonus food supply probably represents things like fewer people dying in the periodic famines. I agree that it doesn't feel like a good model for a space-faring species and a time scale of only a few hundred years. I'd prefer population growth rate to be mostly a characteristic of a species and society, and growth only stopping at some point *after* you reach the carrying capacity of the biome.

It's interesting that some of the very old games had aspects of their models that were more sophisticated that you'd think at first glance. Sometimes successor games that copy them lose that nuance. Like the food model in the original Civ is a great model for that game, but gets ported to a lot of places where it doesn't make as much sense. The original Master of Orion had an interesting economic and pollution model that was in a lot of ways more sophisticated and more scale-able than the Moo2 civ-clone model. For instance, you actually had the option in MoO of sacrificing your natural environment to get more immediate production. In MoO2, pollution is just an unavoidable tax on production.

I agree with your point about time scale and thought about referencing it in my original post, but was already in big-block-o-text territory. If each tick were a decade, then food would just serve as an abstract for biome carrying capacity as you say, could be modified by tech, and would make some amount of sense. My previous post was definitely in reference to the purported time-scale of this game.

 

[Caesar01]

You have done excellent work! Keep it up! =)

 

[ponasozis]

Yes!
I would love to see something like Mass Effect racial diversity:
- The Volus are ammonia based lifeform, and can only colonize planets with that composition;
- The Elcor are specialized to high gravity planets;
- Drell can only live in high temperature, low humidity places, otherwise they suffer with disease;
- Hanar are sea creatures, and so on.

Another example: The Uplift Trilogy shows two basic life types: oxygen breathers and hydrogen breathers.

space empiers 5 did it
lets just say the result was not the most interesting

 

[King Ari]

A feature to have the AI select a tile for buildings/improvements based on the players preference is needed to reach a broader audience, imho. Just something to focus tiles that have the desired resources they want.

I personally wouldn't want that. I plan to micromanage everything little thing that I can. But I know that view is in the minority.

 

[TheAtreides84]

So far, fairly standard 4X resource management... no point in reinventing the wheel, I guess. Adiacency bonuses... never understood why they should be in a game: they are not realistic nor fun, boil down to very simple strategies and in most cases end up being just a minor annoyance.

 

[Martian Gamer]

CK2 leaves me with only a handful of holdings to manage myself, the rest is done by the AI. It's also pretty simple in its handling, doesn't happen that often since you need a lot of money, and isn't the focus of peacetime (that would be the family politics we know and love). This looks like it requires actual decisions every few turns for every single planet, and it looks like what every other 4X has. It's not interesting and I've already done it a thousand times.

First I think to manage an entire galactic empire would be super tedious. And PD has already talked about people like Governors that would manage daily local (on planet or in system) policy. Also I feel that the CK2 system of government would work well, I do think that the Federal System is a successor to the Feudal System. The player should just have to be manage imperial laws and the military, but that's my opinion.
Secondly this is not a turn based strategy game. It's a Grand Strategy game like other PD games.

 

[TheAtreides84]

tl;sra;du;drr (too long, still read anyway, didn't understand, didn't re-read).

That said, I think the main complaint about the whole "food drives population growth" conceit is not that space-faring civs would have outgrown such needs as a stable food supply, it's that the notion that populations increase as a result of abundant food supplies is unsupported by real-world observation. In fact, if you look a human societies today, the exact opposite is the case. In parts of the world afflicted by persistent food shortages, birth rates are high and (even in the face of high infant mortality and rampant malnutrition), population growth rate is fairly high. Hunger causes a great many other problems in these communities (poor health, short lifespan, low productivity), which could be modelled in a game system as severely reduced economic output, but is more or less nonsensical to model by simply shrinking the population size.

In fact, that's what makes real-life food shortage so tricky to solve. Once a community starts suffering the consequences of hunger, food production locally decreases as a result and populations continue to grow. If it were the opposite, we'd all just live in a state of perfect food equilibrium.

For what it's worth, the idea that food surplus leads to growth is equally flawed. Look at food-rich countries and you'll find some of the world's lowest birth-rates, in some cases below the rate required even to maintain zero organic population growth.

Of course, that's just us silly humans and aliens would likely reproduce differently (see Tribbles, reproductive process of), but I'm with those who are disappointed that population growth looks a lot further from the more realistic models Paradox has used in the past and closer to the Sid Meyer "full granaries=babies" nonsense.

I think it's just meant to reflect bronze-age growth made possible from agriculture and stockpiling of food. It doesn't make much sense for a space game and not even for a modern game, but the alternative is taking into account things like reduced fertility from education that may be even more unrealistic if applied to an alien race.

 

[Tim_Ward]

You know, I don't see a UI element for placing a pop on a tile - are we sure it has to be done manually?

 

[keytium]

You know, I don't see a UI element for placing a pop on a tile - are we sure it has to be done manually?

No we're not. I am really hoping that POPs will choose their own preferred tiles.

 

[Khanwulf]

Interesting DD. It looks like a mash-up of Civ and GalCiv. To be quite honest however I'm, not--just from this--very compelled by the planetary experience as presented, though there are some unique bits/takes as others have pointed out.

At this early stage perhaps the most effective feedback would be in the form of what I think would be effective and/or unique.

1. Lay out the planets horizontally, so we can see the topography and glory in our alien landscape. This is currently missing. Maybe provide a button-activated pullout view? Current display looks like a sanitary list.

2. Consider switching to hexagons. There are display, adjacency mechanics and ground-combat possibilities that are opened by this choice, and I think it would separate Stellaris from "Oh--looks like GalCiv." The ground combat potential alone ought to be worth consideration, as this is an area of major weakness in virtually every 4X game I know of; where you drop off your invasion and check back later to see if you've overwhelmed the defenders or not. Boring. I'm sure you'll get into all this in a later DD.

Questions:
A. Do resources deplete over time? Can new resources be found in already surveyed planets?

B. Are new discoveries possible on planets that have been surveyed and settled? For example, Omaggus III has tiles that are not settled yet and presumably not completely investigated in every way--any chance of new events from settling them or living on them? [I hope, yes.]

C. Are we able to rename planets and interstellar features (dust clouds for example).

D. Question marks are anomalies, I presume. Yes?

E. What drives the "territory extent" visible in yellow in the galaxy map pic? It extends more in one direction (up) than others and does not appear to be a simple sphere around settled worlds. Similarly, what is up with Roscan? --It seems to be generating resources but is not marked as a colonized world (by any space empire): are we looking at an orbital extraction in action? If so, why is it outside of territory?


Comment on Pops: I think the main difference in pops between a Civ game and Victoria 2 is that in Vicy you're creating jobs and the pops fit themselves to them. So the player/governor is nudging the environment and not dictating what people do so much. Civ takes an approach that the people are always at the mercy of dictatorial powers who tell them where to work and what to do. They have no agency, so to speak. So when a Paradoxian hears "Pops!" he'll think first of Vicky's pops and not the slaves of Civ games, however from what we see here the Pops are assigned workers and just react based on their characteristics.

So there is both a collision in modeling and expectations at work.

--Khanwulf

 

[Zoston]

I do realise that - I was answering to someone who claimed it was unrealistic to expect it due to the scale of the game and technical limitations. It's possible, but it's not what you folks want to do with the game. I'm sure you'll understand that some people who were excited that this could take heavy inspiration from Victoria 2 are disappointed. Here, let me get you a few quotes from the original announcement thread :

Since Stellaris will have POPs this means it will have a seriously complex and versatile population simulation, probably more complex and nuanced than any space game ever afaik.

Since you quoted me, I'll say I am not disappointed yet. We know way too little about POPs to make such conclusions. We do not know what kind of traits POPs can't or can't get. We do not know what 'Growth' means. There are clearly things missing from that screenshot as the dev diary says lack of food causes unhappiness, but there is no happiness indicator in that screenshot.

People jumping to conclusions need to check themselves. The information we have been getting is very piecemeal and not the complete picture, because the game is still in Alpha. We will be getting a POP diary eventually. If it then seems like POPs in Stellaris to not capture the beauty of Vicky POP's then it is time to be disappointed.

Also, I love the Vicky franchise, it is my favourite of all the paradox gsg's, but the economy in Vicky 2 is seriously unfixably broken, which is why I do not play that game any more. It has great ideas but as a proper simulation of 19th century society and industrialisation it is a failure. And it is a failure because they made the underlying simulation too complex to control, (and properly simulating the world economy is something not even economists with supercomputers are very good at, let along a game on normal PCs). So they absolutely should not make Vicky 2 in space, but take what is good about Vicky 2 while creating an economic system focussed more on simulating the results of modern economies and not the processes themselves.

 

[Wulfburk]

When you invade a planet does your armies go through each tile sieging and etc (at least through those tiles that have cities/military and etc facilities) like in CK2 where you go through all the baronies in a county when you are sieging it? That would be pretty cool in my opinion.