Posted by: Alsadius
« on: June 30, 2024, 10:43:23 AM »
The general argument most people are making here is that colony ships are over-built and under-utilized, meaning that there's huge latent capacity which can get overwhelming for an empire. I see two potential parts to a solution here.
First and simplest, civilian companies should be paying maintenance costs out of their revenues, so they don't just pile up cash. You also want to split colony ships from cargo ships, so one can't cross-subsidize the other too badly. (Doesn't need to be fully split, but there should at least be some corps that do one or the other but not both.)
Second, and this will probably be harder to code/balance, I think you could use the excess capacity with people moving back and forth. Like, you don't expect every single person moving between A and B to be going in the same direction - there's not a plane route on the planet today that carries people in one direction but not the other. Tourism and bi-directional migration would give colony ships stuff to do other than just slamming people from sources into destinations en masse.
For an example of some mechanics I just threw together, maybe each planet has a colonization appeal score that'd be used to figure out where people move.
* +100 (base, as long as supported population >0)
* -1 for each percent of planetary population capacity used
* -3 for each percent of unrest
* -5 for each percent of the planet's population that's available workers (which would go negative if the planet has a shortage)
* -10 for each percent of the planet's population that exceeds infrastructure limits
* -10 for each point of colonization cost
* -10 for each other empire on the planet
* -20 for having any forced labour facilities
* +1 for each spaceport, slipway, naval HQ, and sector command
* +5 for each point of mineral accessibility
* +20 for having ancient constructs
Each five-day production tick, a percentage of the population wants to move away equal to 0.1% * (100-appeal)%, so a planet with 100+ appeal has no emigration pressure, while a planet with zero appeal could lose 0.1% * 73 ticks per year = 7.3% of its population, if sufficient transport exists to take them away.
For an example, my current Earth is at 8.12/12 billion (68%, for -68 appeal), 9.6% unemployment (for -48 appeal), no unrest, no CC, no other empires, no slavery, 3 spaceports+21 slipways+10 naval HQs (for +34 total appeal), 4.4 mineral accessibility (for +22 appeal), and no constructs. So the total appeal would be 100-68-48+34+22 = 40 net appeal. My Earth would get 0.1*(100-40)% = 0.06% per tick who want to move away (which is 4.87 million), so 0.06*73 = 4.38% per year (or 356 million) will decide they might like to move away. This number adds up over time, maybe with some decay to represent people in that pool dying or changing their minds.
When a civilian liner decides where to go, it picks from the potential destinations, and decides between them based on appeal - just a simple random selection, weighted by their appeal. Passengers also pay based on appeal. So if my only other habitable colonies are Mars (appeal 20) and Proxima Centauri 3 (appeal 60), a liner has an 60% chance of picking Proxima and a 20% chance of picking Mars, with the remaining 20% being a chance that people don't like the current options and stay put(i.e., the ship flies empty). The liner will also make 3x more if they go to Proxima, because people like it 3x better.
The important part of this is that the other planets are also below 100% appeal, and also have emigration demand building up. Mars wants to shed 7.3%*(100-20)% = 5.84% per year, and Proxima wants to shed 7.3%*(100-60)% = 3.92% per year. These numbers also pile up, and the colony ships will also be bringing some people back to Earth from there. Any planet below 0 appeal will never get anyone, and any planet over 100% appeal will never lose anyone, but the 0-100 range is pretty wide, and should include most of your colonies at any given time. (And if you don't like it, build your own colony ships and move people yourself, because those mechanics won't change.)
If this isn't enough, you could add tourism to the mix. But I can't see how to make that work especially well, and I don't think you need it.
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Design notes:
* A small colony can still have natural population growth exceed emigration pressure, unless the place is deeply negative on appeal.
* The "ships will fly empty if total appeal is too low" mechanic is to address the issue of there being no net movement early on in a game. In particular, if you only have two populated colonies, and both are producing a decent number of willing emigres, you can easily saturate a few colony ships and get zero net movement with the basic mechanics.
* There's a risk if the willing emigre population of a planet stacks up for too long and reaches 100% of planetary population, and then civilian capacity catches up and strips the place clean. I'd make that pool decay by something like like 5% of the total emigre pool per year, to represent people dying or changing their minds.
* The bit about pops paying more for more appealing destinations is intended to add a bit more to the economics of the game, and also to compensate for the longer trips that's likely to imply. Closer-in colonies will likely get filled up first, and filling up a colony will progressively lower its appeal, so the most appealing colonies will typically be newer ones that are further from your core.
* I'm not sure if the ships will return to Earth often enough to pick up a lot of net new emigres, using the mechanics above - shuttling back and forth between small colonies that all want people, and rarely actually adding new people to those worlds, would not be a good outcome for these mechanics. Perhaps if a ship can't get a full load, it will not actually make the trip it was considering - it'll instead go to a random planet that can fill it up(weighted by the size of the emigre pool on each planet, so it'll mostly go to your big core worlds).
* You might want to add some kind of "entertainment facility" whose primary purpose is to increase the appeal of a planet, possibly also reducing unrest. Playtest and see, I think.
Time for an upgrade next time the RV goes into drydock for overhauls? 
