Megacity planets

[Cornuthaum]

I just updated to the latest open beta after concluding my 103.b2 game and was wondering if Vic changed something about planet gen? I can't get more than 400-500 million people even on an ideal world with lots of rainfall and 1500 years of colonization to have pop growth in (seriously, there should be nearly double digit billions on this planet...)

[zgrssd]

He did cut down on the effect of rain:
-Fixed a minor glitch in the Colonization History. Low rain was causing excessively little natural Pop growth.*
The large reason for those billion people planets was the impact rain had. Those Megacity planets had not been intended.

[Cornuthaum]

that's a real bummer, then, and a huge turnoff :/


time to go campaigning in the suggestions forum to have my double digit billion planets back

[Pi2repsilon]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

He did cut down on the effect of rain:
-Fixed a minor glitch in the Colonization History. Low rain was causing excessively little natural Pop growth.*
The large reason for those billion people planets was the impact rain had. Those Megacity planets had not been intended.

I can't help but think of how the game's backstory is a poor fit for these pre-war low-population planets and that it would make more sense to just multiply pre-war population by a factor 10 or more for display during world generation without changing any game mechanics. (I.e. Generate worlds the way it is done now, but display pre-war numbers that aren't ridiculous.)

Because currently something has changed in the Galactic Republic future, such that (to take the best case) a Siwa class planet with a breathable earthlike atmosphere and farming and decent temperature and rainfall, that has been colonized and receiving the occasional immigrant for more than a thousand years at healthcare standards even better than those of today doesn't end up with billions of inhabitants in more than a thousand years of peace and expansion. But what can the change be? Even the small ones with a radius of a bit less than 4000km should easily be able to support that. Sure, they don't have the total surface area of Earth, but unlike Earth most of their surface area isn't water.

It certainly isn't because the future society during the Galactic Republic future has a low birthrate, since they are rapidly expanding and colonizing thousands of worlds.

One could then argue that with ever more worlds to colonize and emigrate to, worlds wouldn't reach high levels of population due to epic scale emigration every year, but that doesn't work either as the storyline has the Galactic Republic's outwards expansion slow down the last few hundred years due to fewer new planets being available as they are blocked by other powers.

With fewer new worlds to colonize, if the existing newest colonized worlds had low populations they'd be the obvious targets for immigration. From the untold thousands and thousands of worlds already colonized.

This slow development forms an amusing contrast with the early backstory of the timeline, where the frail early colonies in the solar system, with much lower tech and much worse planets, managed to somehow build up enough of a manpower and industrial base in a few hundred years that it took a 200 years war for Earth with its superior resources to beat them into submission. Rocks and moons colonized in the late Galactic Republic have nothing on the early Terran colonies.

[Vic]

I am going to return the chance to get these high populations... just give me a few days to do it in a purposeful way and not as a result of a glitch

[Vic]

Furthermore I strongly believe the majority of Planets in the fringes of the old Galactic Republic had relatively low populations. But indeed not all... there were some notable exceptions.

[Cornuthaum]

Thank you