Max Population on Planets or how i learned to stop worrying and never terraform

[Darknote (OP)]

Hello,

I've searched on the forum but results came up empty regarding how big the population on a planet(Capital/Terraformed) can get(I recall seeing once that it will never stop growing but cannot find that thread on reddit anymore).

Anyway, I have some questions regarding colonies.
•Do planets have a cap on how big a population can get before they stop growing? I do not want to get to have 2 Trillion souls on a world as that seems a bit too much.

•If for example I set a planet to have 50Mil.  Pop.  limit with infrastructure on worlds not yet terraformed(Thus the 50 Mil.  won't grow due to infrastructure limits) does the infrastructure keep coming in from commercial ships? 'Cause it seemed so from my game.  Is there a way to stop this?

•Can I setup a PDC with a very large PDV so that the pop will never ever complain? Or is it better to have a very large station with military weapons in the system close to the colonies(I decided to play a new game without overhauls since I reaaaally like forward bases with hangars and ports and such cause it's cool that's why).  This is also tied to the first question, as I really do not enjoy have Trillions upon Trillions of people that just need more and more defenses.  There should be a limit on this no? Otherwise it just gets insane.

Thank you for reading and I hope someone can answer these questions.

Cheers!
Dark

[Titanian]

Currently there is no population limit, but there probably will be in the next version.  But population growth slows down the more people live there.

You can't stop the civilian companies from bringing more infrastructure if they can access the system.

Yes, PDCs provide PPV.

[Darknote (OP)]

And which option should I choose? Have a big PDC or a big Ship/Station in orbit to provide PPV to all colonies in a system?

Thanks for answering!

[ORCACommander]

token PDC can certianyl be a thing but they are best made small and cheap and shipped out as needed because if you are to make a big one it might as well be a real one.

population in VB aurora has no growth limit.  Infrastructure when it gets insufficient will cause unrest.  infra will be produced locally and if any of your planets have it as an export it will be brought in by civillian ships

[83athom]

•Do planets have a cap on how big a population can get before they stop growing? I do not want to get to have 2 Trillion souls on a world as that seems a bit too much.

No caps, but growth slows so much you will never get to 2 trillion without SMing in population.

•If for example I set a planet to have 50Mil.  Pop.  limit with infrastructure on worlds not yet terraformed(Thus the 50 Mil.  won't grow due to infrastructure limits) does the infrastructure keep coming in from commercial ships? 'Cause it seemed so from my game.  Is there a way to stop this?

No. Also seting a specific limit with infrastructure dosn't work as A) The colony builds it own very slowly without using material, B) there isn't a good reason to keep a population from growing, and C) it doesn't stop people from growing, they just start dying en-mass without enough infrastructure.

•Can I setup a PDC with a very large PDV so that the pop will never ever complain? Or is it better to have a very large station with military weapons in the system close to the colonies(I decided to play a new game without overhauls since I reaaaally like forward bases with hangars and ports and such cause it's cool that's why).  This is also tied to the first question, as I really do not enjoy have Trillions upon Trillions of people that just need more and more defenses.  There should be a limit on this no? Otherwise it just gets insane.

Larger populations and more important planets it is better to build one large station. For multiple smaller colonies its better to build small outposts. Also, I simply don't see a rational or logical reason for there to be a cap on PPV requirements. A larger population feels like a larger target, and therefore want/need more protection. If you really wanted to skimp on PPV, you can always train large amounts of cheap ground units to act as "police" forces.

[MarcAFK]

Population over 2 trillion causes an overflow bug, but growth stops after 200 billion anyway, even though the planet will still show a positive growth percentage.

[Darknote (OP)]

Thank you all for the help! Much appreciated

[bitbucket]

In terms of the absolute number of warm bodies, population growth actually speeds up as the total population grows, despite the percentage rate falling, and after the percentage rate bottoms out at 1%, a population's absolute growth rate starts increasing even faster as it grows ever larger. 10% of one million comes out to a lot less than 1% of a billion.

Most colonies are going to grow at a geometric rate whether you like it or not. Only on low gravity worlds are you able to impose any sort of hard cap, as you can't move underground infrastructure.

[83athom]

In terms of the absolute number of warm bodies, population growth actually speeds up as the total population grows, despite the percentage rate falling, and after the percentage rate bottoms out at 1%, a population's absolute growth rate starts increasing even faster as it grows ever larger. 10% of one million comes out to a lot less than 1% of a billion.

However, the time it takes to get from 1 billion to 2 billion is much smaller than it is to get from 2 billion to 4 billion (doubling your population). By the same merit, it will take a multitude longer to go from 250 billion to 500 billion than it is to go from 500 billion to 1 trillion. What I was saying as even though you get more people per yer for a larger population, it gets to a point to where you statistically no longer "grow" as a population. While the raw numbers seem astronomical, the rate of growth barely inches.

Oh, and population rates don't "bottom out". I've seen 0.5% growth and less on truly massive populations. Steve stated before there is no under limit on growth rates, and can technically get to 0.001% growth rates on a large enough body (if there doesn't get to be overflow errors).

[MarcAFK]

I've tested it, growth completely stops at around 200 billion, even though the listed percentage is still well over 1%. Overflows happen at a trillion.

[bitbucket]

Earth in my campaign.

9 billion and still growing at a 1% base rate every year, plus governor bonuses. A 1% fixed growth rate results in about a 70 year redoubling time regardless of size.

My total population in 2082 is 11.3 billion baseline humans plus 600 million gene-modded sub-races, from a 2025 start with 5 billion (I took a standard conventional start and multiplied everything 10×).

Perhaps at much higher populations it'll slow further, but I imagine most campaigns will never see that happen.

[MarcAFK]

By the time you hit 50 billion growth is below .5% it drops to .25% by 500 billion, and is still .2% at 900 billion.
It'll probably take 1000 years of gametime to get near the overflow.

[83athom]

Perhaps at much higher populations it'll slow further, but I imagine most campaigns will never see that happen.

There are people still playing with v6.x and v5.x because of long lasting role-playing games, and they play them regularly. Usually those sorts of games are in centuries after start date (with culling of civilian ships and nprs to make the game last). They reach those ludicrously high populations.