The problem with the pops mechanics

[CantGetNoSleep]

Right as I start a game, I often find myself thinking: why even bother with a main species? I realistically have two options in this game:
1) Be xenophobic, and hate everyone and embrace slavery, or
2) Don't even bother designing your main species

Why? Well, if you're xenophiles, or egalitarian, or neither but want migration treaties, or perhaps even just allow refugees in, then:
3) as soon as you allow anyone else in, your main species stops growing. Full stop.

It seems the game is hell bent on achieving "parity" between the species. Worse still, the absolutely useless pops who have some sort of adaptability will displace your entire people. Wanted to tech rush? Nah. All your new pops are adaptable serviles. Wanted to do unity? Nah, your new pops are adaptable serviles. Wanted to focus on food and agrarian ideal? Nah, all your new pops are now adaptable serviles. Shall I go on? It doesn't matter that there's only 1 pop in the entire empire. From here on, every single planet, in every single sector, will breed useless species.

I mean, why bother with a main species at all? Just ignore everything and go synth or biologic or xenophobe. As those are your only options.

Please fix this. Growth should be based on existing pop numbers unless you as the player decide to do something pretty freaky.

 

[HFY]

Yeah the growth selection algorithm is stupid.

If you're neither Egal nor Phile then you can use species rights to prohibit growth as the default, and only "white-list" the species you like. You have to re-touch any new templates to let them grow, but it's usually tolerable for 2-5 total species, since you can re-touch the rights in the same list as you create the new templates.

Also, this is why deliberately creating a trash main species can be awesome -- e.g. an Invasive Species plantoid with 4 negative traits and nothing else for +20% habitability and +20% growth rate -- then go Synth and assimilate everything into your actually-desirable new Synth template. Or do a trash Invasive Species then Bio Ascension yourself into something non-invasive with Budding to take advantage of your huge bloomed population.


I'm playing an Auth + Mat Cyborg game right now, with 4 species allowed to grow. I have Refugees Welcome because I love getting a few examples of new species, but they can't expand at the expense of my founders, so they just don't grow at all.

 

[Thecarlocarlone]

I believe the problem lies with the species rights menu. Which is also where you do species modifications.
I mean, a xenphile empire would go so well with genetical modding, yet genetical ascension is only viable if you have a mono species empire.

The problem could be fixed by giving us more control over species rights, but at the same time, even the amount of control we have now requires way too much micro. So you are right: I either slap a "full citizenship" to all or a "purge" to all and call it a day. Then, if I did full citizensip I do synths ascension and psionic ascension only. Genetic and Cybernetic require way too much micro if you have more than 3 species.

 

[nweismuller]

This problem is something that really interferes with my enjoyment. Running my standard egalitarian trade league, I have no desire to set up reproductive or migratory controls, but letting anybody else into my territory means that suddenly my own people are prevented from reproducing, which fails the plausibility test for what I expect from actual reproductive freedom. For Zarqlan's sake, could the devs please just fix the growth selection algorithm already? I'd play Stellaris again a lot more if they fixed this one thing; it is literally the biggest thing reducing my desire to play.

 

[Anaximatter]

I think it's the single pop slot for growing that's the root cause of all these problems, but I doubt that's going to be altered at this point in the development of the game.

 

[HFY]

I think it's the single pop slot for growing that's the root cause of all these problems, but I doubt that's going to be altered at this point in the development of the game.

From a UI perspective, it should be possible to move the growth bars into the species list -- the growth boxes are right next to that list, so removing the boxes and adding bars to the list should be possible.

The list might want to group templates of a single species into a single growth bar for that species, but that's a small change.

Assembly and Decline would need to be put somewhere else.

 

[Anaximatter]

From a UI perspective, it should be possible to move the growth bars into the species list -- the growth boxes are right next to that list, so removing the boxes and adding bars to the list should be possible.

The list might want to group templates of a single species into a single growth bar for that species, but that's a small change.

Assembly and Decline would need to be put somewhere else.

Would get a bit messy with the various different growth rates across different planets, unless you are proposing just rescaling pop growth based on total #*species modifiers

 

[HFY]

Would get a bit messy with the various different growth rates across different planets, unless you are proposing just rescaling pop growth based on total #*species modifiers

Yeah part of the per-species growth rate change would be removing the base 3 growth entirely, and only using current population to grow new pops.

New colonies would grow very slowly without spillover from a more-developed world -- your first big decision would be to build up your more-productive homeworld, or invest in future growth by sending new homeworld pops off to the colonies (by unemployed auto-migration or just manually resettling Clerks).

Breeder colonies would need a sizable population base to grow new pops at a decent rate, and at that point they should function as normal colonies in addition to pushing out extra pops for new colonies. The degenerate cases like 1-pop Habitats being useful for pops should be reduced.

 

[Anaximatter]

Yeah part of the per-species growth rate change would be removing the base 3 growth entirely, and only using current population to grow new pops.

New colonies would grow very slowly without spillover from a more-developed world -- your first big decision would be to build up your more-productive homeworld, or invest in future growth by sending new homeworld pops off to the colonies (by unemployed auto-migration or just manually resettling Clerks).

Breeder colonies would need a sizable population base to grow new pops at a decent rate, and at that point they should function as normal colonies in addition to pushing out extra pops for new colonies. The degenerate cases like 1-pop Habitats being useful for pops should be reduced.

100%, this is also the fix for "tall vs wide" balancing, so then the real issue would become building slots vs sprawl

 

[HFY]

100%, this is also the fix for "tall vs wide" balancing, so then the real issue would become building slots vs sprawl

Yeah, competitive "wide" would usually imply some conquest, but that's awesome because conquest is fun.

If you can't conquer anyone -- you're isolated or whatever -- then you can go wide by reducing population in your capital, which means taking a big risk in terms of reduced productivity now in trade for greatly increased productivity later (when your many colonies grow sufficiently).

 

[Anaximatter]

Without significant new mechanics you aren't going to make not conquering equal to conquering, the tall option would be unchanged: nihilistic acquisition

 

[HFY]

Without significant new mechanics you aren't going to make not conquering equal to conquering, the tall option would be unchanged: nihilistic acquisition

Yeah, the key thing is the timing IMHO.

"Tall" play might grow its guaranteed habitables into full productive & specialized colonies and then use Cruisers to vassalize a neighbor or two.

"Wide" conquest play might not touch the guaranteed habitables because you need that 60 corvette fleet ASAP, so you just stay in your capital until you can take someone else's capital (and their first two colonies). Finally a use for Life-Seeded, heh.

"Wide" bloom play would be risky -- you'd be investing in a lot of colonies that won't pay off for a long time -- but if you're in a situation where you can take that risk, then it's a mid-game explosion as you will eventually have more stable, happy colonies than anyone else.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Without significant new mechanics you aren't going to make not conquering equal to conquering, the tall option would be unchanged: nihilistic acquisition

There are already significant mechanics which favor tall, it's just that they're not enough to counterbalance the innate advantage of "more pops and more planets = more alloys".

But removing the logistic growth minimum would be a move strictly in favor of "tall": it closes the gap between an empire that's just the central core of ~10 worlds and an empire that has 15 such worlds and 100 breeder worlds keeping them stocked with pops.

With the minimum at 3.0, the tall empire gets 45 growth, and the wide empire gets 367. Without the minimum, it's 45 vs. ~105 (assuming you still get the ~0.375 per pop that the current logistic growth formula gives, and the breeder worlds have 1 pop each).

Clearly they're not on equal footing (nor should they be: being big should be let you do big things), but I'll take 45 vs. 105 every day if the alternative is 45 vs 360.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Even if the way this works isn't actually changed in the base game, it would be nice if the weights/rules the game uses to select the next species to grow were put somewhere in script where they could be easily modded. Or maybe we could get an effect that lets you set the growing species via event, which would let you write your own algorithm to choose what should grow next after one pop finishes.

 

[Eelectrica]

Yes, I'd be happy if my species was given priority on habitable worlds. Maybe a 75% chance of the empire species being the one the grows or something.

 

[Anaximatter]

There are already significant mechanics which favor tall, it's just that they're not enough to counterbalance the innate advantage of "more pops and more planets = more alloys".

But removing the logistic growth minimum would be a move strictly in favor of "tall": it closes the gap between an empire that's just the central core of ~10 worlds and an empire that has 15 such worlds and 100 breeder worlds keeping them stocked with pops.

With the minimum at 3.0, the tall empire gets 45 growth, and the wide empire gets 367. Without the minimum, it's 45 vs. ~105 (assuming you still get the ~0.375 per pop that the current logistic growth formula gives, and the breeder worlds have 1 pop each).

Clearly they're not on equal footing (nor should they be: being big should be let you do big things), but I'll take 45 vs. 105 every day if the alternative is 45 vs 360.

To bring it in further you could require a pop from the capital planet to build a colony ship. Then the only advantage in pops for wide would be in +pops on colonisation, from tradion and precursor

 

[Ikael]

Without significant new mechanics you aren't going to make not conquering equal to conquering, the tall option would be unchanged: nihilistic acquisition

Agree 100%

The logistic growth mechanic, planets having virtually infinite pop capacity, and colony ships not requiring pops to be built absolutely destroy any chances of Tall being competitive. I would also like to add that the invasion shock penalties and the costs relating to conquests and pop assimilation are comically light.

However, there are many things that can be done without needing to "reinvent the wheel" that would mitigate the problem, just as Abdulijubjub pointed out.

There would be no harm in trying to do both things at once, tho.

 

[WalimWTo]

I have no desire to set up reproductive or migratory controls, but letting anybody else into my territory means that suddenly my own people are prevented from reproducing, which fails the plausibility test for what I expect from actual reproductive freedom.

Well I find it quite a realistic outcome. (I cannot post an explantion, because "The current situation in Europe has no relevance for a SciFi game set in the far future.")
I agree that it leads to problem mentioned in first post and isn't fun mechanics, but it's realistic. And definetly fun is more important then realistic in SciFi game.

I would also like to add that the invasion shock penalties and the costs relating to conquests and pop assimilation are comically light.

Agree. And i think famed "internal politics" and overhauling pop ethics into cultures, could bring solution to boths problems.

 

[Eladrin]

One of the things on my "experiment with this" list is simultaneous per-species empire-wide pop growth. Not exactly sure how some things will interact with it, but there are some aspects of the current pop growth system I'm not happy with.

 

[HFY]

One of the things on my "experiment with this" list is simultaneous per-species empire-wide pop growth. Not exactly sure how some things will interact with it, but there are some aspects of the current pop growth system I'm not happy with.

Could you talk a bit more about your intent with that change?

I can imagine some obvious problems, but they might not be relevant depending on the details.