Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into an abstraction?

[BlueTemplar]

Scrapping, retiring (and probably retrofitting) ships does not give back any money that was used to build their components. Also, if it did, and it was applied to the private sector, then the state is the one that should logically give that money back, shouldn't it?

I'm not aware of a way you can force the private sector to immediately retrofit its ships?

We seem to have a misunderstanding here : I first proposed to merge the state and private money to be merged OR to make the state own the mining stations (it would therefore burn money to build, retrofit, and maintain them, like it already does for ships). You instead seem to propose that when the private sector pays for ships or mining stations, it should burn that money too, instead of paying the government.

Private sector IS the population. Money is generated by population*development. That money is called GDP in the game. Then this money is split between the population and the government. When the money is destroyed (by the state building ships or maintenance) it does not go back to the private sector.

[Tcby]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

I'm not aware of a way you can force the private sector to immediately retrofit its ships?

Perhaps there is a typo somewhere here that completely changes your meaning. But assuming you actually meant to ask this: you can order private sector ships to retrofit in the exact same way that you do for their mining stations. Open up the page that shows all ships and bases, select the private ships you want, and order them to retrofit.

[&:]

[BlueTemplar]

Huh, that's weird... before this, this option was disabled for me... maybe because I forgot to make another non-obsolete design? Also, for the mining stations, you can also right-click on them and order them to retrofit, while you cannot do that with the private ships.

Also, the private ships seemed to be pretty quick at retrofitting by themselves after I made a new design and obsoleted the old one...

This is another issue then... I guess this mechanic of the private sector paying the state to build its ships needs to go away completely if this loophole is to be closed...

[Tcby]

Might I suggest that you make another thread to discuss this? I think it'd be best to let this thread gently drift back on topic.

[ldog]

ORIGINAL: Tcby

Might I suggest that you make another thread to discuss this? I think it'd be best to let this thread gently drift back on topic.

Yeah, for real.

So you might be onto something with keeping the growth rate up on max pop worlds. I haven't seen it on my homeworld, but I have seen the pop dip and then max every other cycle on another world. Possibly because the homeworlds happiness & development are a bit higher, possibly because the Securans on the non-homeworld have a higher growthrate still than the humans.

[Tormodino]

Does each population member create the same amount of tax, modified by bonuses, regardless of race?

If that is the case, and it does match with my experience in recent games where I have paid attention to growth and gdp, varying population growth, as well as limited tools to control immigrated and conquered races, will exacerbate any economic issue.
I am extremely in favour of having rapidly growing populations be a concern for slower growing races, but some more tools to offset this would be interesting. Abstractions are obviously required, but as time progresses in my games rapid breeders become disproportionally rich.

It seems that resource consumption is not a big enough factor in population wealth creation. There are no hard numbers from me here, but I can't see how all these billions of Gizureans living on 6 planets can possibly match a large trading empires gdp, but they do.
The private sector obviously adds a large chunk of change, but the amount of wealth directly created by populations is possibly a little too significant when you have resources being the de facto limitation to trade and production.

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar
Private sector IS the population. Money is generated by population*development. That money is called GDP in the game. Then this money is split between the population and the government. When the money is destroyed (by the state building ships or maintenance) it does not go back to the private sector.

I disagree. That sum represents money held by people able to spend not the average chum or minor business. You also destroy money whenever you crash research or order constructions or pay maintenance, it's not a closed economy.

Anyway I'm not sure discussing the finer points on our solutions for the issue is going to lead anywhere, I think all construction/refits should be a drain on resources and money with the state having only limited profit from it. If resources/cash is "lost" that doesn't matter as it's also arbitrarily created from planets.

The main point being that there shouldn't be any possibility for making huge profits from doing weird things, but as is that's something you can choose to do. To me consciously abusing a weak mechanic is no different from using the editor. Which is not necessarily bad if you need it but I don't see it as being part of the real gaming experience.

ORIGINAL: Tormodino

Does each population member create the same amount of tax, modified by bonuses, regardless of race?

If that is the case, and it does match with my experience in recent games where I have paid attention to growth and gdp, varying population growth, as well as limited tools to control immigrated and conquered races, will exacerbate any economic issue.
I am extremely in favour of having rapidly growing populations be a concern for slower growing races, but some more tools to offset this would be interesting. Abstractions are obviously required, but as time progresses in my games rapid breeders become disproportionally rich.

It seems that resource consumption is not a big enough factor in population wealth creation. There are no hard numbers from me here, but I can't see how all these billions of Gizureans living on 6 planets can possibly match a large trading empires gdp, but they do.
The private sector obviously adds a large chunk of change, but the amount of wealth directly created by populations is possibly a little too significant when you have resources being the de facto limitation to trade and production.

I think part of the problem is that lowly populated planets are not counted enough. The first few billions ought to be the most important as those are needed to fully utilize the planet, once you get past that extra population should still boosts the economy but it should be less and less (per person) the more there are.

[BlueTemplar]

RAAAH, browser crash ate my post! Here we go again, with less detail...

The citizens of your colonies act independently of your actions and form your Private economy. They actively seek to improve their colonies and increase their wealth.

Thus these citizens seek out business opportunities trading in-demand goods between your colonies and the colonies of other empires.

Hardy citizens will also form mining expeditions – extracting valuable resources all over the explored galaxy and returning them to your space ports for use.

Making lots of mining stations or having well-defended civilian ship designs is abusing a weak mechanic?

Population is the ultimate resource of this game : Money, research, construction speed.

Offsets for high growth rates : Max pop, high pop => reduced growth rate.

Trading less effective than high pop because ships cost 10 times the resources.

Max planet resource extraction is already at 600M population.

New mechanic for high pop planets being less effective => needs effort to be implemented, and risks of making "Infinite Planet Spawn" strategies too good compared to "Tall Empire" strategies. (Limitation usually achieved by happiness mechanic.)

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

Making lots of mining stations or having well-defended civilian ship designs is abusing a weak mechanic?

No... Ordering refits for the sole purpose of making money is...

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar
Population is the ultimate resource of this game : Money, research, construction speed.

Offsets for high growth rates : Max pop, high pop => reduced growth rate.

Trading less effective than high pop because ships cost 10 times the resources.

Max planet resource extraction is already at 600M population.

New mechanic for high pop planets being less effective => needs effort to be implemented, and risks of making "Infinite Planet Spawn" strategies too good compared to "Tall Empire" strategies. (Limitation usually achieved by happiness mechanic.)

Resource extraction is usually mostly unimportant for your economy, low pop planets would need a spectacular boost for "Tall Empire" strategy to become bad... Who says everything must be taken to extremes?

I could turn it around and say currently "Tall Empire" strategy is the only remotely viable strategy. Going somewhat in the other direction would improve diversity and add strategic choices.