Some more biology research

[crys]

i dont know if it was said before,

but i would like something like advanced foods, which reduce the pop needed in agriculture.  (basic food, enhanced food/farming, advanced food - or something more creative like self regenerating fertilizers.
maybe stronger at more hostile planets(growing food at alien planets should be less difficult, because you can take different seeds - manipulate them easily)


if we would move from biology science to planatary science:
pollution reduction -> less workers for manufacturing sector
or if you like it more bio-factories

some tech that could help with the lots of pop in service industries too.


maybe something to increase population growth
as tech or building

someone said population growth is fast in this game, but at 6b pop, it takes something like 13 years to 7b - which we made on earth in about 12-13 years too.
with the option to colonize other planets, why should the world been compellt to slow our population growth?

[UnLimiTeD]

Because new born children aren't instantly workers, but Aurora doesn't simulate that.
Furthermore, we can see pretty clearly that birth rate drops dramatically with rising wealth and education, and the high tech society depicted in Aurora should thusly have a lower population growth.
Also, Aurora doesn't picture the environmental damage, logistical problems, social unrest and civil wars that inevitably come with strong population growth;
Thus we only get the good side of the coin.

[crys]

hmm i thought in the usa there are usualy 2 or more children in a family, think the same for japan and maybe even more in singapore?
just because in europe we have a falling growth rate, its not every where like that.

about the social unrest and civil wars - i think the world would quickly unite, if we find alien life out there - as an enemy.(humans are warmongers - its what we know best)
it looks a lot like an united earth in auroa anyways, so i would assume religion(one of the main causes of war) lost a lot of the conflict potential, because of the lacking number of nations which could go to war with each other.


i dont see much logistical problems with advanced space flight, if you can build thouse huge/quick space ships.

enviromental damage is a point, most of us propably care not enough about it - if it will cause huge problems is another question, but lets assume it will.

earth grew 3b ppl in the last 39 years 4->7b who knows where it is going.

about the children - you can assume that health issues are going down alot - and ppl will be more healthy, work longer, and get older.

but who knows, maybe population growth goes down alot in future, or we are still growing in numbers like the last 40 years

[sloanjh]

I've always assumed infrastructure just referred to the infrastructure required to keep you alive on a barren planet, things like bio-domes, air conditioning etc. Rather than what we think of as infrastructure as in road and rail etc.

That's correct.  Once the planet becomes habitable, the infrastructure cost becomes zero and any infrastructure in place just sits there doing nothing (kind of like medieval city walls in European cities ).

John

[sloanjh]

Should a colony cost zero world really require no "infrastructure?"  I think it should be capable of generating infrastructure faster than population growth, unlike a >0 colony cost world, but if you plopped half a million people on an infrastructureless planet, they'd probably die horribly for numerous reasons.  Should an infrastructureless planet be able to house 10 billion people?  i doubt that too.

I actually made this argument very early on.  Steve didn't buy it

John

[jseah]

hmm i thought in the usa there are usualy 2 or more children in a family, think the same for japan and maybe even more in singapor?
just because in europe we have a falling growth rate, its not every where like that.

Actually, this is wrong.  Singapore has *the* worst greying population in the whole world.  I come from there... >.>

*checks* Yep, we rank at the bottom of the CIA world factbook.  0.78 children per woman. 
Japan is at 1.38, which isn't much better (at #202 out of 222). 

IIRC, the only advanced economy that has replacement birth rates is the USA, at 2.06, (actually a quick glance at the CIA factbook tells me France is around there too) and mostly because they have lots of immigrants that generally have higher birth rates for one generation. 

[crys]

got me there, i only checked the population growth numbers.

the number of children i got more from things i heared or assumed =(
bit confusing to hear about dense population with few children(how got it dense without alot of children?)
all immigration? hmm

guess i should get my facts in order to make an argument

[UnLimiTeD]

Happens.
Today, rich industrial and post-industrial states mainly keep up their population by immigration; and I can support the numbers above, even though official government statistics for signapore show 1.2 birthrate in 2011.
Still pitiful.
USA is a special case because of just the thing you said won't matter much in the future: Religion.
It's the only large economy that still contains a statistically relevant amount of people churning out children; whether that's for the better I leave to you.
With a more well rounded social policy, unrests might be limited in the less economically endowed regions, and birthrate might be increased again to self-sustenance, but much higher? not really.
If a world with 5 billions or more has a consistent living standard that on average reaches at least the 80s in central Europe or North America, population will be relatively stagnant even with efforts being undertaken to increase fertility rates.
Short of Religion, political indoctrination or any other given ethos ingrained to the populace, it'll require a significant financial effort.

This gives meaning to politics, however.
A Theocracy could start with less research labs and have have slight disadvantages on other areas, but a higher pop growth in turn.
At least leave it to the SM, that'll allow for nice RP.

[crys]

maybe it would make sence to connect the growth rate with the employment situation.
so when you are lacking ppl for work - youre growth rate is increasing because of the abundance of open jobs.
but in the same way decreasing growth when there are no open jobs.


on the other hand i have lacking population on new planets, where i put all my mines from the home world - but thouse are usualy small and grow fast.(much faster then earth today 5x-9x) - there im allways a bit sad to see 75% of the ppl working in the service industries, and just 12-25% in manufacturing with millions of open jobs in the mines.

if it would be easy we wouldnt speak about it =)

[UnLimiTeD]

Because people today work in service industries. No one actually wants to work in mines; That age is past us.
New planets with a small population size, in small communities, have that "frontier"-atmosphere, that agreeable does indeed foster growth.
Maybe people have nothing to do in the evening. 

[ollobrains]

might make sense that birth rates drop on large planets with full employment and high wealth factors.  Within full environmental conditions ( spacial area of planet could scale this up or down based on earth ie larger planets more space to spread out settle etc) high growth colony worlds could see some population moves back to bigger planets based on comparitive wealth and biological factors

[Redshirt]

Anyone thought about genetically tailored virus warheads once you autopsy an alien race? Of course, there's good RP arguments both for and against it, but leaving the option in...

How about radical biological changes, like converting oxygen breathers to methane breathers? Or engineering to be able to withstand radiation or toxic gasses?

[crys]

i havent attacked population is this game yet, so i dont know how strong thouse radiation warheads are.

i think the problem here is, that thouse attacks would be too strong, that they are game breaking.
propably the same with terraforming enemy worlds.

maybe it would be better, to be less realistic here, then to implement attacks which would eradicate planets with "little" effort

about youre biological changes.
you can already create new races with bio-science, and transform youre ppl into another race.(using titan at full)
changing oxygen breathing to something else - which is not supplaying oxygen should be impossible.
the difference is just to huge

[Redshirt]

Radical biological changes would, of course, be far up the tech chain.

Biological weapons would differ from radiation warheads in that they would leave the existing structures intact, as well as not irradiate the planet (which is a problem afterwards.) I'd personally rather welcome the new species into my empire, but to each their own.

[ShadowLop]

Radical biological changes would, of course, be far up the tech chain.

Biological weapons would differ from radiation warheads in that they would leave the existing structures intact, as well as not irradiate the planet (which is a problem afterwards. ) I'd personally rather welcome the new species into my empire, but to each their own.

If bioweapons are implemented, they should have a chance of making the world inhospitable entirely, especially one created as a rush job or with relatively low-tech processes.  A virus engineered to attack species A but not B could potentially mutate to attack both species, meaning your own bioweapon would potentially make the worlds inhospitable to both them and you, as well as potentially destroying the ecosystem.

Even if the virus is safe to your own people, would YOU live and work in cities or buildings that were recently doused in experimental bioweapons without protective infrastructure in place?

A potentially viable alternative would be chemical weapons, which would basically inject various chemicals into the atmosphere, which would need to be extracted out by terraforming equipment.  This would mean that a species under bombardment could potenially fight back by running a mass of terraformers to extract the chemicals (hopefully) faster than the missiles can dump it in.

Quite frankly, there should be no way to conquer a planet without SOME negative effect, whether requiring time and resources to negate your bombing, or damage to either infrastructure or ecology.