Do you know there is no population in UFP cause it doesn't exist, do you know that object can't fly faster then light, do you know there is no such place like Quonos, do you know that you actually doing nothing here except of counting and talking about frozen pizzas in space?

I guess that means you don't have an answer

No answer is needed, the system is fine as it is.

the answer is: Illusion, all this is nothing but illusion and that is part which you can't comprehend so all you talk is irrelevant cause it's illusion.

Even though it is a game and the UFP is imaginary we try to make game elements believable or at least something that makes sense. One thing that occurs to me is that in the old BOTF a system would eventually reach it's population maximum and then just stop. Clearly that's not a real scenario. An obvious drive for moving off planet (system) to another is overcrowding. Could there be extra colonists available as empire wide overflow? Perhaps a counter in the game somewhere. It would also be realistic that as a system reaches it's population maximum the rate slows (Practical - so as not to create panic levels of extra colonists in the counter) because of food and or water shortages, use of birth control measures etc. It could be another empire crisis. "Population maxed in the ____ system." You could start the game with a population maxed parent system and a certain number of colonists already available in the counter. CB

That all complicates the system, and the time spent programming it could be used in more critical areas. That's why I'm against any major programming change.

I only suggest this because Mike was proposing borrowing from future population growth (and that would require some programming) and I figure with this idea he wouldn't have to do that. To stick to the original BOTF he already has to program in a stop on population growth when a system reaches maximum. So he changes it to population slowing and puts the extra colonists into the counter. We don't have to do any more than that. We can imagine extra food and water shipped in from other underpopulated but productive systems. We can imagine really small housing units like the Japanese already use in their cities. Bashir

Which is what most other games do. With a very simple and well know algorithm.

Growth rate should increase. Take example from Earth. Out population growth rate is increasing and is much bigger than it was 100 years ago. But if it's such an simple and known algorithm, why don't you implement it yourself?

You might want to check the difference between growth rate and actual population. And read wikipedia for example.



Meaning, you don't know the algorithm?

Meaning that if you want it implemented, why don't you do it yourself.


This is an example of real life population growth rate

http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Populatio ... -rate.html

as you can see, it varies from year to year independent from the population.

Interesting, that (they implemented population control) the rate is decreasing just like we would have to as earth gets overpopulated. We're close already, and haven't gotten a man to Mars or even come close to researching Terraforming technology. CB

Yeah, not the best example... that was unfortunate.
Anyways, China is hardly a measure for the planet's average growth rate - because that's what we're talking about, growth rate of planets/systems. Earth's growth rate is decreasing - it's not just about births too.

As I understand it, our growth RATE is decreasing, but since there are so many people now, the number added every day is still huge. (Corrected) RATE is the number added per 100,000. However the existing population base is going on 7 billion... --- This calls for more Move over so I can turn around Bashir

I think we shouldn't have colony ships as separate ships. I think they should be a module for a transport ship. You build the transport ships, then can convert it to carry people. That way the ship doesn't cost population points. You can research other more efficient types of modules, outpost or colony II for example. However, I have never liked how colonization was handled in games, I think there should be a more random aspect to colonization. Like you find the planets, and mark whether you will allow them to be colonizable and your colonies themselves create and send colonists to the different planets. Would also be great to have a kind of migration effect in the game, where people can move to other colonies on their own. Scotty was going to retire when he hit that Dyson's Sphere after all. Of course, if you really wanted a particular spot before someone else took it you could build a ground outpost or something on it. But then people could migrate to it turning it into a colony over time. I'm thinking this could really create some interesting situations, especially if you made the colonies non aligned till they reached a certain size and allowed multiple races on a planet. Federation - Cardassian border anybody? This would probably be a bitch to code.. although MOO2 allowed different races on planets, so I dunno.