Enough to bankrupt us all…
Take a look at WN-428a and WN-428b POPR: 70-100% happiness at all tiers, job openings all tiers, no ENG or SCI growth…
…The educational projects additionally increase the level-up percentages for each workforce tier …
https://handbook.apex.prosperousuniverse.com/tutorials/planetary-population/
Is it that simple, we’ve all been overlooking education for its additional tier-shift abilities?
…If a workforce tier grows, a percentage of the new workers will shift into the next tier. …
Ah, so to get 1 Engineer you still need 1000 unemployed PIO to increase to 2000… . I wonder then if you pump them: increase them one week to get higher tiers, then decrease them the next week while holding onto your higher tiers, this might manage lower tiers while increasing higher ones?
If the above is the case, WN-428b would be the perfect testbed for it: high happiness at all tiers, unfilled jobs at all but PIO, no Eng or SCI growth. If a lot was thrown into Education now there we could see what difference it makes to a relatively small population. Possibly an experiment worth investing in even if you’re not on that planet.
Taxes are criminally low. We need to be using this pause in costs to continue to raise funds. Neglecting anything beyond Pioneers is not a viable strategy long term for a CX planet.
You’re missing the point: no amount of spending will grow higher tiers as the PIOs will keep growing their unemployed and suck up all the investment. This is the problem with having higher tier happiness capped at lower tier: the lower tiers are always happier, and growing faster, from a larger base. Don’t believe me? POPR WN-428b : All tiers happy, most with open jobs, no higher tier growth. Either POPI needs a redesign and/or my observation above about education is what we’re all missing.
still feels foolish to let taxes bottom out when we could be maintaining a low tax rate and creating a reasonable buffer for any future changes
Bobemor - I want to agree with you.
The problem is that the upkeep for a large population is too high. The excess PIO and SET eat all the “happiness” that you generate. The Wellness center has existed for 2 weeks and is consuming 170K CIS of upkeep materials per week (btw - that is partial upkeep)…and it generated all of 2.4% Culture satisfaction.
Under the current scheme, higher tiers are simply not viable on an exchange planet. They are currently only viable on small planets. Which I don’t think is what the developers intended, but, it is what they built.
If you scroll up, you’ll see me railing against what Boucher is doing. The data has changed my mind. It is unfair of me to waste Katoa residents taxes on the current scheme. I expect Prdgi and Rubicate will eventually reach the same conclusion. It makes me sad, but that is what it is.
I hope the Devs fix the system. Specifically, I think they need to change the following aspects:
- Need satisfaction should not be capped by lower level needs. To McCowen’s point immediately above, we need to be able to have a higher tier happier than a lower tier to grow the higher tier without overpopulating the lower tier.
- The impact of different building levels should be exponential, not linear. A level 4 safety station needs to be 8x a level 1 safety station (or maybe even more than that), not 4x a level 1 safety station. This would give increasing returns to the big planets to allow them to achieve the cost efficiency that we both seem to think they deserve.
- The high impact buildings (e.g. Drone Station) needs to be reachable with lower tech. It is currently a circular exercise to reach it.
- Upkeep is simply too high. Too much DW per tier. Too much COF per tier. Too much KOM per tier. Simply too high.
- They need to find “normal” uses for the materials introduced for Populous. I’ll use SOI as my example. It is hard to build out a SOI industry when the only consumers for SOI are governments. But SOI could be used as part of Farm construction, or Farm recipes, or maybe “Super Farms” for use on a non-fertile planet. I’ve similarly suggested Solar Panels become part of Core Module construction for new bases. Make DEC and OLF additional luxury goods for population happinesss (maybe they can be pushed to 110% efficiency).
Once the goal is achievable, I’ll go back to playing the Populous game. But right now, paying the upkeep is wasting taxpayer funds.
PS…I appreciate your passion. And Yippy’s passion. And all the other folks who are active in this conversation.
@McCowen you’re misunderstanding the mechanic. WN-428a/b are failing to gain engineers because they have effectively zero technicians. The level-up mechanic is one tier to the next, immediately above it.
So, to grow engineers, you need your tech population to grow, and then a subset of that growth will convert to eng instead of being new techs. With full 100% fulfillment (but 0% edu), I’ve seen this work out to something like 1-3% of the lower tiers population being gained as level ups for the next tier.
If you don’t even have 100 techs, you will never grow engineers. Growing Pioneers does nothing directly for your engineer population at all, tho it will grow your settler population (which then can further grow your tech population, which will finally grow your engineers).
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@I_am_Tex Why set the building targets at zero? Unless you’re trying to save materials in the reserves?
On Boucher, I specifically didn’t do that in case the Tech employers on the planet wanted to try and handle things themselves. I did have the SST capped at 1, but I’m resetting to Max with the next POPR. The reserves are empty at this point, tho.
No one with higher tier workers contacted me indicating a desire to self fund.
And since my assessment is that any upkeep is basically wasted because we don’t have enough to fund the planet…leaving the buildings active would waste anything that someone donated. I’d rather hold any donations until we are ready to try full upkeep again.
I will probably use the excess taxes I collect to trickle stuff into the upkeep accounts so they are full when we turn them back on. Prior experience suggests that taxes at minimum will exceed COGC cost…although DW and RAT are really high right now, so maybe that won’t be true.
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Closing financials for October:
First taxes for November are now in:
As mentioned up above, all Populous upkeep is now turned off. Taxes for this week were mostly at the prior level, so big profit on taxes. I will use that money to pre-fund some Populous upkeep for when we turn buildings back on. But for now, need to figure out how taxes and upkeep will balance, so holding off on doing that immediately.
Population stats did pretty much did what I expected today. Unfortunately, no PIO died off, and I don’t expect them to. Which means we will stay in this state for a while. I feel really bad for the people using Techs and Engineers, but there is not any lever for me to pull right now.
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I noticed you finished the PAR? Was that something you had pre-arranged, and so had the mats regardless? Or do you have a new strat?
Pre-arranged. Just finally got the HABs delivered.
But we will need it when we restart upkeep, so glad to have it ready for future use.
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Today’s POPR shows that cutting POPI has for the first time reduced both PIOs and SETs: PIOs by 0.17% while 18 bases were added, SETs by 3.12%. This shows that, because LIFE SUPPORT is pegged at 100%, PIOs are really hard to get rid of short of us all demolishing our HB1s… At these rates, there will be about 150 TEC open jobs next week, SET will have 0% Unemployment in 3 months, and PIO will have 0% Unemployment in 4 years! Even with cutting POPI, Populous is still broken.
Quick weekly update…
Completed the Wildlife Park lvl 1 and Infirmary lvl 4 this week. We will need those when we start doing Populous upkeep again down the road, so glad to get them checked off.
Population Report today did about what I expected. Modest lost of PIO and SET, but not enough for it to really matter. Technicians are about to become a challenge for those who run them…my apologies, but as previously shown, I can tax you all to death to pay for Populous upkeep and still not make the Technicians happy. So we are stuck here until the developers do some tuning.
COGC upkeep has been paid. That is the only expense right now since all the Populous Infrastructure is turned off. That is less than what Taxes are generating with most fees set to minimum, so we are collecting a surplus right now. Will use that surplus to fill up the Populous Upkeep categories when we restart it.
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Today’s POPR is the first post Populous fix and shows promise. Remember the mechanics take account of the last 4 weeks so the effect of the last week is muted.
The drop in PIO has increased ten-fold, with the same need fulfillment and a 13% reduction in happiness due to the effects of the Populous fix. Now PIO unemployment should be 0 in 3 months instead of 4 years! Remember that happiness would actually be lower as it includes some of the previous 4 week’s inputs. There were 35 new bases this week. SETs saw a greater drop in happiness of 15% while only a 31% increase in population drop. I think this is because they were already well under 50% happiness while PIOs last week were only a little under 50%.
TEC and ENG happiness increased as they had open jobs (Somebody must have built more TEC production buildings). Both were still well under 50% happiness though, yet we saw a growth in ENG! A welcome bug or side effect of population shift? TEC still fell despite open jobs, so employment alone can’t make up for insufficient need fulfillment.
This now means the cap on higher-tier need fulfillment does not equate to a cap on higher tier growth like it used to. I would like to see what happens now with more weeks of post-fix numbers coming through, and with POPI turned back on and EDU need provided for!
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Alright…first a quick financial update, then some status talk, then some looking forward stuff:
Taxes in the last two weeks have been 278K and 260K. The majority of that comes from WAR rental - currently have 49 units rented out at 3K per week each. I don’t have access to any further detail on the revenue split, so I can’t differentiate between Production and LM revenues.
COGC is running right around 160K per 10 days, with some minor variation based on the price of the needed upkeep materials on the exchange.
As you know, the Devs made some POPI changes last week. They showed some promise in the first weekly report, but I do not think they were adequate to allow exchange planets to compete. They have talked about further changes that I think will be post Populous – specifically they are going to lower the upkeep (the suggested comment was making the current daily upkeep a once per 3 day upkeep). This again will help, but I still don’t think it will be adequate for the big planets.
The big news this week in this report is what I stated in planet chat a few days ago…I am not standing in the election that starts in about 4 hours, and as of late next Saturday (my time), Katoa will have a new governor.
Why? Biggest reason is 7 terms has been enough for me. Deeper than that, I have reached the point where the governing part was making this feel a little too much like work. And I have been insanely frustrated with Populous.
Part of why I wanted to govern Katoa when Populous was released was that I wanted to build a high tech workforce on Katoa. And I wanted to put my high tech buildings on Katoa to use that workforce. I expected Populous to make exchange planets the best place for high tech workforces, because they would have the most diverse range of supporting industries to support that workforce.
But the implementation of Populous has been the polar opposite. It has killed the exchange planets, and is forcing high tech workforces elsewhere. I gave the Devs some windows to tune and fix it, they have not done so, and now at this point, I will abandon hope for those changes and take my desire for a high tech workforce to the eastern Frontier. Oddly enough, following the exact footsteps that Esabab laid before me when he left the Katoa governorship.
I am still a Katoan first and foremost, and I will be there to support the next governor. The surplus tax revenues I have collected will be reinvested into the planet, probably by giving the new governor a jumpstart on upkeep materials. And I vow to help keep Katoa strong for as long as I am playing the game (or until a reset, because there may not be a Katoa post reset).
I thank all of you for the trust you have given me over the past seven terms. That is an amazing amount of trust.
I urge the candidates running to replace me to engage in serious policy discussions and share their ideas of how to build the planet going forward. I call on them to avoid cheap political games. And I hope that the voters look for and value deep ideas over cheap political games.
Together we can keep Katoa as the phenomenal Ammonia scented planet we know it is!!!
<Edit: Corrected formula error in financial summary>
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POPR Report:
We now have 2 weeks post-fix calculations so this should look a lot like future POPRs.
There were 24 new bases this week. Despite POPI not changing, the PIO happiness dropped from 34.9 to 27.4, resulting in a big increase in PIOs leaving. At the current rate unemployment will be solved in 7.5 weeks. Last week it looked like it’d take 12 weeks. Similarly SETs have seen their happiness plummet and reductions increase. SET unemployment looks like it’ll be resolved in 5-6 weeks.
Both TEC and ENG grew, despite having happinesses below 40% and no POPI. Since employment affect’s happiness then without Population shift these tiers should still be falling. This gives some hope that population shift could be significant. It will be a month before ENG jobs are filled, and 5 months before TEC jobs are filled.
With the Katoa elections underway this underlines the importance of a strategy for Katoa POPI. Continuing I_am_Tex’s zero-POPI PIO and SET cull should be continued, but with Ignition! due any day now there is more need to be growing higher tiers. When the new governor switches POPI back on may be their biggest decision. Too soon and POPI costs will drown them. Too late and other planets may have established themselves as high tier manufacturers. POPI still costs too much so, if Katoa is to thrive, high-tier manufacturers will need to start donating to construction and upkeep of their POPI buildings.
Alright folks, last post.
As you know, I have been governor for 7 terms now, and am stepping down as of the end of my current term, which is in about 6 hours.
It appears that PiBoy will be the next governor, barring a stunning last second change in the voting. He currently has over 75% of the votes cast, so I am pretty comfortable calling this one.
I have given PiBoy control of my Katoa Governance Inc governing corporation, so taxes will seamlessly begin flowing to him effective with tomorrow evening’s dividend payment.
The last thing for me to do was to use up the surplus I had accumulated over the last few weeks with the POPI turned off – I have done so by contributing to the upkeep reserves as you will see in the snapshot below. When (If) PiBoy decides to turn POPI back on, many (but not all) of the upkeep categories have multi-week prepaid reserves of upkeep materials.
This final snapshot goes from November 1st until today. (I didn’t bother doing a monthly close at end of November since I knew today would be my last day as governor)
Final comments:
- POPI is broken. Don’t blame PiBoy or any other governor for adverse Populous results until the Developers truly fix it. It currently only works on smaller planets.
- Unless there are serious changes to Populous, which the devs have hinted at, current taxes will not pay for Populous upkeep. They will have to be raised. By a lot. Don’t get mad at the governor when they do that, they are just implementing what the Developers are making them do.
- I still think Katoa is the best overall region in PrUn. The key is that it isn’t any of the individual planets, it is all the planets in the region working together that make it the best. So keep building up complementary industries on these planets to build an integrated ecosystem.
- Thanks for 7 terms of trust. That means a lot to me. I really appreciate it.
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