Stellaris Open Beta Population Scale Re-Rework suggestion

[prismaticmarcus]

This thread has derailed a bit. As we're talking about a beta, discussion of mods is entirely irrelevant and pointless. Anyone who discusses mods after this may be asking for an infraction.

 

[The Founder]

I wonder, would it be possible to instead of having the base pop ratio 100/old pop, make it be similar to billions? Increase the scale, so it's not half way. I want Earth with a few billions instead of 5k.

Maybe scale up from 100/1 old pop to 200k/1 old pop, that way Earth could have 10 billion hoomans in 2200(Some predictions estimate if to 10.4 irl). Would it be possible?

Just to highlight how badly this would work:
With a Mechanist start, I went from 4000 Humans in 2200 to 10907 Humans in 2276.
My population multiplied 2.5 times in just 76 years.

If those are actual 4 Biillion to 10.9 Billions, I doubt the numbers could work out.

 

[Archael90]

"play my way or don't play/you don't get an opinion".

Its more like "play as you want, but since You don't play vanilla, you cannot, and therefore should not, discuss about balance in vanilla"
But... Seems like not everyone is able to understand what they read.

But to the topic:
Like for me... 1 popp being 1 pop was okay, I can't find myself seeing thousands of them.

 

[fourteenfour]

Not all of us have nostalgia for the original Master of Orion.

well the problem here is those games did a lot of stuff better than Stellaris ever has so there is a reason to look at those games for inspiration to solve this game's problem.

my issue is, workforce is just the old system rebranded because someone at stellaris is too wedded to that jobs system they just won't let go.

 

[Calvax]

Just to highlight how badly this would work:
With a Mechanist start, I went from 4000 Humans in 2200 to 10907 Humans in 2276.
My population multiplied 2.5 times in just 76 years.

If those are actual 4 Biillion to 10.9 Billions, I doubt the numbers could work out.

IRL the population of earth in 1900 was 1.6 billion. In 1976 it was 4.1 billion. So the growth your seeing, if you want to read it as 1 pop is a million people, is plausible.

 

[Newbee53]

If anything, I would like for numbers to become lower. Higher numbers make for more "granularity", but they also pose some readability issues. I would seriously consider to turn 1 previous pop into 10, rather than 100 as it is now in the beta.

10s of pops instead of 100s of pops would still be causing issues in a couple of places. To have pop growth being similar to where it started you still need dead months with no growth. Which is weird and unintuitive for planetary scales. readability can be fixed with some tweaking to the UI, hopefully. Which is a major concern of the beta.

Personally, I think the biggest issue with the UI is the attempt to put all unemployment in its own category on the summery screen. Instead they should be pooled, with a tool tip if you really need to know. and the outliner needs to not show unemployment before it reaches at least a few hundred pops. that notice is seriously to common.

with those changes the number of pops can be more carefully displayed and readability shouldn't suffer, in my eyes anyway. The UI is kind of bad, but hopefully its not locked in yet.

 

[DarthWick]

So crazy how people are against granularity. Also I saw some missunderstanding in the comments, i suggested a base scale of 200k so a new colony would be 200k. (1 pop)

Also, to address the relativism between phenotypes, could either fix it by adding a phenotype modifier to adjust pop growth for arthropods/fungoids etc for example, and change job outputs per phenotype to reflect it very doable with the new sistem.

I am sure modders will be more creative towards this.

 

[Ryika]

Also, to address the relativism between phenotypes, could either fix it by adding a phenotype modifier to adjust pop growth for arthropods/fungoids etc for example, and change job outputs per phenotype to reflect it very doable with the new sistem.

Then you have numbers that don't mean anything anymore. 1 million pops of a "very large species" and 10 million pop of a "very small species" would perhaps produce the same amount of stuff, but just by looking at the number, you couldn't actually tell how much they're producing unless you know exactly what species you're dealing with.

Plus, it would canonize the "size" of each species or portrait, which would take away from people's ability to RP what they want their species to be.

I'm sure there are more elaborate workarounds that could somehow create a reasonable approximation of the system you're envisioning, but at the end of the day, there's just a lot of changes that would need to be done to even come close to a system that doesn't confront you with nonsensical numbers all the time, and for a very small reward. A reward that would probably get annoying quite quickly if you see these unnecessarily high numbers everywhere.

Keeping those numbers abstract is a much better approach in my opinion.

 

[DarthWick]

The new system seems to heavily incentivize generalist planets, which would perhaps give the option to make a ton of generalist planets with no trade instead of specializing, yet needing trade. Double the options. Huge improvement.

Except that you can't... actually quite make generalist planets, so instead it seems to me like a bit of a downgrade in design at the moment. Needs some adjustment.

In my testing, no. Specializing planets is still the way to go. Having a single trade planet is more than enough to cover any logistic deficits, and trade is generated anyway even if no trade buildings. At least in the current build.

 

[DarthWick]

Then you have numbers that don't mean anything anymore. 1 million pops of a "very large species" and 10 million pop of a "very small species" would perhaps produce the same amount of stuff, but just by looking at the number, you couldn't actually tell how much they're producing unless you know exactly what species you're dealing with.

Plus, it would canonize the "size" of each species or portrait, which would take away from people's ability to RP what they want their species to be.

I'm sure there are more elaborate workarounds that could somehow create a reasonable approximation of the system you're envisioning, but at the end of the day, there's just a lot of changes that would need to be done to even come close to a system that doesn't confront you with nonsensical numbers all the time, and for a very small reward. A reward that would probably get annoying quite quickly if you see these unnecessarily high numbers everywhere.

Keeping those numbers abstract is a much better approach in my opinion.

Good points, but if it would be set up as a trait you can add, aka small species, minuscule species, big species(very abstract naming here just for the sake of the example) that increase pop growth but reducing job eff, it could still be the same sandbox we love.

And I was thinking more along the way of 30 million small(fast growth, low eff) pops equalling 10 million with lower growth but normal eff.


A hive mind for example would have trillions of members vs a generic human with a few billions, but could overall be similar in output due to the size difference/reproduction rate.


I do actually expect for this to be the implementation of hive minds a bit. Lots of pops but, as before, the jobs would need more pops for a similar output. But this is a job implementatio. My idea is about species variety
Not suggesting to preset each regnum with fixed stata.


Mostly just throwing this idea out here for potential inspiration.

 

[The Founder]

Good points, but if it would be set up as a trait you can add, aka small species, minuscule species, big species(very abstract naming here just for the sake of the example) that increase pop growth but reducing job eff, it could still be the same sandbox we love.

Or we just keep counting pops and leave up details like that to your imagiantion?

As was said, way less work for the same effect.