What I had in mind was (using the Ultra pop numbers) this. If an OP is 1-20 PTU and a Colony is 21-60 PTU, I'm thinking that in this model, you'd have to emplace at least 15 PTU to achieve Outpost status, or at least income producing Outpost status. As for Colony, you;d then have to increase to about 45-50 PTU's to become an income producing Colony.
If that’s the way you’d prefer to do it, then I’m happy with it.
I just thought it easier to have
all outposts producing no income (with the reasoning that they are only just self-sufficient, and producing no surpluses for export) – as it is easier to write a simple rule then one with “ifs” in it.
Honestly, though this isn't doing much for me. Once again, it comes down to the annoyance of tracking all those pesky PTU's. Having to know how many PTU's all your outposts and colonies and settlements have, so that you can know how many more you need to get produce income at that level or to jump to the next level. It's just too micro for my taste.
re: “too micro” – and yet you are happy to track and send orders to every IFN FT…..
I’m the opposite – I find that an spreadsheet works well for populations and so makes it
very easy, but tracking all those pesky FT’s to be a chore.
I think that the problem here is that I'm an old school pure ISF guy who grew up enjoying a simpler strategic game of Starfire and I'm dealing with 3e fans who often grew up playing the SM#2 modified version of ISF. And I just don't find that micro level of granularity in the economics and colonization appealing or interesting. It doesn't bother me to have to scrounge together the FT's and money to do colonization, rather than sending off the colonists in dribs and drabs. Regardless, don't think that I'm nuking this line of thought. I'm just venting my general distaste for this general level of economic granularity that I'm generally not fond of in SM#2 (and Ultra, etc.)
I think that the first serious slowdown occurs between Small to Medium. Below that, pop growth is probably fairly quick, though I'd think that it's more likely that players won't want to wait for OP's to grow into Colonies, or Colonies into Settlements. As I think I said before, I think that they'll absolutely take habitable pops all the way up to Settlement without a second thought. Perhaps even Small, though that may be less of a guarantee.
O.K. Here’s what I’ve calculated for the various population growth rules (Note: that for all of the calculations, I started with an Outpost of only 2 PU):
Standard ISFOutpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 60 turns
Settlement -> Small in 120 turns
Small -> Medium in 180 turns
Medium -> Large in 360 turns
Large -> Very Large in 660 turns
Total Time = 1440 turnsSM#2Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 30 turns
Small -> Medium in 20 turns
Medium -> Large in 30 turns
Large -> Very Large in 30 turns
Total Time = 200 turnsUsing PTU (as suggested by Crucis on 2nd October) – with 25% growth rate for medium+ populations (i.e. as per SM#2)
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 50 turns
Small -> Medium in 70 turns
Medium -> Large in 100 turns
Large -> Very Large in 110 turns
Total Time = 420 turnsI’m very happy with the idea suggested by Crucis to do population growth in PTU, as that drops the growth rate considerably (tripling the time it takes to go from Small onwards, and doubling the overall time it takes to go from a small outpost to a Very Large Population).
Even if the population is “pushed” to Small (i.e. 151 PU) to help growth along, changing from PU (where it took 80 turns to go to Very Large) to PTU (where it now takes 280 turns) has a
dramatic effect.
In retrospect, I think that it is a brilliant idea.
And BTW, if by "secondary colonization sites" you mean secondary colonization source populations (i.e. other than the homeworld), I'm not all that sympathetic to the idea of having to keep growth high enough to produce these secondary source pops just so that there are colonization pop sources ever 4 StMP. I can understand why non-habitable colonization may be too expensive beyond that 4 StMP threshold, but habitable colonization should be worthy of doing considerably far beyond that.
The problem is, that once you breach the 8 StMP limit, the ROI starts to favour IU over colonisation.
Using the
best case (benign planets), and taking into consideration that PU grows (while IU doesn’t) – once you reach 12 StMP, it isn’t worth colonising Poor/Very Poor planets (with Very Poor becoming a bad investment at 8 StMP).
Using Harsh planets, only the richest are the best at 12 StMP, through to it not being worth your while to colonise Very Poor planets at 4 StMP. Hostile is slightly worse then Harsh.
So if you eliminate the ability of colonies to support colonisation (through reduced population growth), then it isn’t economically feasible to place colonies more then 3 months travel from your homeworld – resulting in very small empires, and the use of genocide as a
defensive weapon (i.e. if yousend in raids to kill off all of the enemies populations within 4 StMP of the border, then their ability to secure the border area becomes very difficult).
There is "some" pop growth. I just don't think that most players are going to play campaigns that are long enough to see a Small grow into a Medium AND then see that Medium reach Large status. You have to remember that pop growth is the root cause of the economic explosiveness problems. I don't think that having a bunch of Mediums and Smalls is too big of a problem. It's when you start seeing Large's and VLg's show up that things really get out of control.
I agree – which is why I’m pointing out that if you go to PTU growth, that addresses the problems of too many Large/Very Large populations (and so income).
Having said that though, I
do see a need to have “normal” population growth to allow planets to gow to Medium size – to allow them to be used as sources of colonists.
I want to do away with the both the flat hard set numbers for both TL Research and tech system Development and replace them with a fees that are based on a percentage of your empire's income. Obviously, the base percentage for TL Research would be much higher than for tech item Development. And this doesn't take into any sort of acceleration like Crash, Perceived Threat, Assisted, and so forth. But it will all be based on percentages of income so that the smallest empires can afford to do research, and the largest ones will be paying more. But frankly, I'm thinking that the percentage will be the same, regardless of TL.
O.K.
I'm also thinking that there will be a couple of categories, Critical Projects and Hazardous Projects, which will increase cost, time, and risk of the projects. Critical projects are meant to be the "game changing" tech systems, like fighters, cap missiles, anti-matter warheads, etc. Hazardous projects are those that are particularly dangerous, like anti-matter, X-ray Laser detonation chambers, laser buoys, etc. As you can see, anti-matter warheads are both critical and hazardous projects.
Ahh – make sense.