Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Mechanics => Topic started by: Borealis4x on May 20, 2020, 03:12:37 PM
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Might sound like a silly question, but I don't know why I should bother developing colonies beyond just being mining outposts or listening stations.
As far as I can tell, the amount of installations you can build on your home planet are infinite, and its exceedingly more convenient to make sure all your minerals are funneled into one place. At most, you'd want a single colony per system to act as a depot for your mass drivers to shoot their minerals at so its more convenient for your convoys to pick them up and ship them back to your home planet.
I understand that their is an upper-limit of 12 billion population on ideal worlds, but that number is extremely high, and with the default start of 500 million unlikely to be reached by most players.
I wonder if there could be an overcrowding or environmental degradation mechanic that could encourage the player to spread out their population and industries. I'd certainly like playing with an Earth that has far too many people who are dragging down productivity due to a lack of jobs and dependence on welfare all while the environment is making it harder and harder to sustain such a population. Would really incentive the player to get their ass to Mars ASAP as an early-game goal.
PS: I know there is a setting that heats or freezes Earth over time, but that isn't what I mean. I want super-concentrated industries to have an adverse effect on habitability that can be offset by tech, terraforming, or moving industries off-world.
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Sure, you can cram as many installations as you want on a world, but who will man them? Population growth is logarithmic, it slows down as the population gets bigger. So to find enough workers for these factories, you need to spread them out.
Further, it's easier to afford to run those installations if you have a thriving civilian trade network you can tax.
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Population growth is faster at lower populations. So if you'd never get to 12 billion on the homeworld, you might still get to 12 billion in the empire if you spread out.
Civilian trade is a source of wealth, and you need colonies with sizable populations for it to happen.
While you can have space stations provide maintenance and shore leave capability, colonies may be more cost-effective. Also, AFAIK only colonies can produce maintenance supplies, so if you don't have colonies you'd have to haul them all from the homeworld.
Likewise production of fighters, missiles, and maybe even ships.
Mines are cheaper than automated mines, if you've got the workers to operate them.
Ground forces are more efficient in environments within your species tolerance, so a terraformed planet is a planet that's easier to defend against invasion.
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Even if the trade wasn't all that signifiant, and the population growth wasn't affected, there is still the fact that smaller pops usually have a better manufacturing population ratio, not having to commit as much people to service industries. usually, you can get a lot more done with a more spread out empire than with one big planet. also, from a logistical standpoint, it is muh faster to expand, and maintain a significant military presence protecting your resources if you spread out.
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I found this about pop growth on reddit :)
Ok, I have determined that population growth rate (in percent) is 20/(population in millions)1/3. Inverse cube root. Interesting. Steve likes his inverse cube roots it seems.
This means that the Total Growth goes as Population2/3, which means (fortunately) that there is no peak, and bigger is always better.
To maximize your total imperial population growth, you should have your population divided evenly among as many separate colonies as possible.
out of this subred: https://www. reddit. com/r/aurora/comments/41ihvr/what_colony_size_results_in_the_maximum_total/
So having more populations in fact makes sense :D
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Well if Earth gets attacked and destroyed and all your eggs were in that 1 basket, its game over for you.
I like to make 1 "main" colony per system and them make as many minor ones as I need for whatever purpose.
Honestly even if Luna has no minerals I consider it good to always colonize it just for the free pop-growth, money, and infrastructure you will get from it.
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Distance becomes a factor as you expand. As supply lines lengthen, the advantages of regional centres increases. Even if you aren't trying to support a fleet out 50 or 100 billion km from Sol, having to ship every ton of minerals back, and every mine and piece of infrastructure out, over that distance, requires a truly massive freight capacity.
I don't think its unrealistic that concentrating everything in Sol makes sense for the first century or two, given how many systems TN tech and jump points put within easy reach. But its a big galaxy, and now with C# the game won't become unplayable before we get to really get out there and colonise it.
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The main reason is probably the difference between having at most 2% growth and 10% (for small colonies).
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As other have said... higher population growth rates and more worker per population numbers is the main reason outside mining worlds.
You want as many places as possible to get as much new population as you can all over the place.
It also if fun to deal with many places anyway so why not?!?
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Also, C# has implemented population caps for worlds, so you can’t infinitely build and supply manpower on one world.
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I think this is the classic grow wide or grow tall. How many games havectried that and failed? In Aurora you can really do that and it says enough of how wonderful this game is.
It is perfectly viable to keep Sol as your fort or expand and control your possessions better.
I feel like there is no right or wrong here, it depends of what story you are trying to tell.
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If you have administrators with different high skills you can specialise colonies. One colony might have all your financial centres and a high wealth bonus administrator, another might have factories and an administrator with a high production skill. Same for ground forces construction, or shipbuilding, etc.
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I think this is the classic grow wide or grow tall. How many games havectried that and failed? In Aurora you can really do that and it says enough of how wonderful this game is.
It is perfectly viable to keep Sol as your fort or expand and control your possessions better.
I feel like there is no right or wrong here, it depends of what story you are trying to tell.
I agree... you definitely can make very good use of centralising population on a few worlds, especially when you can stack certain administrator bonuses for example. It will also help with logistic and general industrial distribution and management.
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Plenty of strategic reasons, and three economic reasons: population growth, civilian shipping income, and logistics.
Pop growth as capped at 10%, and declines rapidly as population rises. You maximize growth by spreading out your people.
You make a lot more money from civilian shipping when you have more colonies generating trade opportunities.
Logistics.
Earth is an enormous habitat, but it eventually runs out of minerals.
You can keep shipping minerals in to Earth for production, and shipping the products out to where they are needed.
But you have to build much, much less freight capacity in the long run if you move the production centers to where the minerals are.
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Also, roleplay.
Even if it was the best way to do it (and I am a sucker for theorycrafting) I would find it incredibly boring like this. I always looks for pristine Gaia worlds or somethng Earth like to easily terraform. Terraforming Mars is always a thing I do, because it is easily doable (now even more so than in VB).
I think most people would want to visit a different planet and mining colonies in surface habitats would quickly get boring. ;)
So I usually have one colony per system, if there is a good candidate and the system is worth it. Or more if the circumstances are advantageous. As many as seems practical and feasible.
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In VB6 aurora, I always colonized Luna and Mars, and one would get my best ship construction administrator, and the other would get my best ground force training speed administrator. When you are talking +50 or even +60 ship building, that is an enormous savings, especially as it applies to retooling and shipyard expansion as well.
Lower population worlds having a smaller service worker population. If you have a 25 million pop world, you can employ most of them in construction or research. If you have a billion pop world, 750 million are going to be in service jobs.
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In VB6 aurora, I always colonized Luna and Mars, and one would get my best ship construction administrator, and the other would get my best ground force training speed administrator. When you are talking +50 or even +60 ship building, that is an enormous savings, especially as it applies to retooling and shipyard expansion as well.
Lower population worlds having a smaller service worker population. If you have a 25 million pop world, you can employ most of them in construction or research. If you have a billion pop world, 750 million are going to be in service jobs.
Moving your shipyards to Luna in order to take advantage of the Ship Construction speed of an Admin is a clever idea. And its a cool role-play idea. I'll have to try that!
EDIT: Dammit, you can't move Shipyards! That's disappointing. Guess its time for some Space Magic...
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EDIT: Dammit, you can't move Shipyards! That's disappointing...
Yes, you can. You need a tug to tow them.
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EDIT: Dammit, you can't move Shipyards! That's disappointing...
Yes, you can. You need a tug to tow them.
o smeg, and my heavy tugs have just rolled off the assembly line.
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Its a shame you cant put Orbital Habitats in deep space. I've got two empty systems between Sol and a rich system I'm colonizing, and it'd be nice if I could create civilian markets in between them.
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Its a shame you cant put Orbital Habitats in deep space. I've got two empty systems between Sol and a rich system I'm colonizing, and it'd be nice if I could create civilian markets in between them.
Technically you can, it's just nobody wants to live there.
(And with the new system editing options in SpaceMaster, you can add a 50 meter rock to each system and a low-grav colony to trigger your orb-habs.)