POPI Proposition

[Madnewmy]

Currently, population is round robin around every player requesting a certain type. In theory, this leads to a “fair” distribution of worker, where everyone gets the same amount.

This leads to the current main problems that we have seen lately: Little to no reason to invest in POPI and population stealing.

In the current state of populous, most of the infrastructure is paid and fed by large/older player. Medium sized player have no incentive to supply the buildings, when waiting for a larger player to do it will always pay off. This is not really a big deal as we speak, but can be source of tension as it always seem to be the same group of 5-10 players paying.

The population stealing is a much bigger deal. We have seen, especially in the last week, many players having bases fully filled for months be drained. Combined with the extreme needs for techs and engineers with ignition makes this mechanic very annoying to deal with.

It was said by devs that having people “buying in” pop would be against what they wanted in the game. To be fair, this could be very destructive and easy to “lock out” people of their population. While I would love having a system where whoever paid or upkeeped the POPI get priority, I doubt this will happen. However, I think the “population stealing” part of populous could be easily reduced.

My proposition would be to only have X % of your population go back to the pool every week to be round robin. This might not be super intuitive so let’s put it in a situation:

Planet has 1500 ENG available (I will ignore planetary pool)

A employs 1000/1000
B employs 300/300
C comes in and wants to pull 1000

Old system :

A, B and C round robin to 300 (1500-900 = 600 ENG available)
A and C round robin the remaining 600 = 300 Each

A now employs 600/1000
B is still at 300/300
C is now at 600/1000

Proposed System (example at 33% goes back to pool) :

334 of A’s Eng go back to pool, 100 of B’s Eng go back to pool. Pool had 200 originally and is up to 634
A, B and C round robin 300 Eng’s (100 each), giving us 334 left
A and C round robin the 334 left giving them 167 each.

A would now employ 933/1000
B would still be at 300/300
C would employ 267/1000

Something similar would happen the next week

A send 311 to pool, B send 100 to pool, C send 89 to pool for 500 total
300 get on the first round, 200 on the second round.
A gets to 822/1000, B at 300/300 and C at 378/1000

Overall, goal is to promote newcomers to help building the infrastructure and growing the planet vs just skimping and stealing other people’s work. If they decide to not help, it would take multiple weeks for them to “steal” the pop, therefore giving time to the initial player to react vs just being stuck with ½ of the production overnight.

[Lockreed]

This is absolutely necessary

I do think its good that the system encourages the biggest (richest) players to chip in the most for the benefit of all - a bit of a catchup mechanic or progressive taxes if you will - but to have so much hard work and massive investment wiped out overnight is ridiculous

[Prdgi]

I really like this idea.

The numbers could use some tweaking, but it should be affected by the % of consumables you provide. Say 5% plus whatever % is missing from consumables usage.

Eg… If you provide only basic consumables you could have (.05 + (1.0 - .794)) = 25.6% leave to the pool

[Carepanda]

I’d prefer to see system where old population doesn’t shared between other bases, but only growth going to split between inhabitants. Leak of population required, but it can be dependent on activity rating, i.e. 0% for A and B, 10% for C, 25% for D-.

[molp]

Thanks for this great suggestion @Madnewmy!

As I stated in Discord yesterday the current workforce assignment is a simple round robin with the goal to distribute the WF evenly between all players. It obviously doesn’t account for WF stealing and other shortcomings.

I like your idea because it is independent of how much certain player contributes towards the POPI. I’d rather not take that into account because it would limit how the POPI upkeep will be paid for. If we leave that open we can have planets that are either supported fully by their governor, fully by the inhabitants or a mix.

I will present this idea to counterpoint once he is back from his vacation!

[Madnewmy]

@Lockreed

I do think its good that the system encourages the biggest (richest) players to chip in the most for the benefit of all - a bit of a catchup mechanic or progressive taxes if you will - but to have so much hard work and massive investment wiped out overnight is ridiculous

I think it would help a lot too. It’s easy to see it as the larger/richer player being A and C in the example and needing more pop, but it also encourages smaller player to contribute in order to grow their own pop faster

@Prdgi

The numbers could use some tweaking, but it should be affected by the % of consumables you provide. Say 5% plus whatever % is missing from consumables usage.

Yea the number could use tweaking forsure, 33% is just what I saw as something easy to present. The dev lower mentionned they don’t want a system that is directly related to the consus you put it tho (and it does make sense when thinking about governed planet)

@Carepanda

I’d prefer to see system where old population doesn’t shared between other bases, but only growth going to split between inhabitants. Leak of population required, but it can be dependent on activity rating, i.e. 0% for A and B, 10% for C, 25% for D-.

Yea AFK mechanics def need a look too… kofkof looking at you player pulling 1/3rd of the sci/eng of a player when E rating…

@molp

Thanks for this great suggestion @Madnewmy!

As I stated in Discord yesterday the current workforce assignment is a simple round robin with the goal to distribute the WF evenly between all players. It obviously doesn’t account for WF stealing and other shortcomings.

I like your idea because it is independent of how much certain player contributes towards the POPI. I’d rather not take that into account because it would limit how the POPI upkeep will be paid for. If we leave that open we can have planets that are either supported fully by their governor, fully by the inhabitants or a mix.

I will present this idea to counterpoint once he is back from his vacation!

Glad you guys are still looking at it I think populous has great potentiel, just feels a bit rough currently! Taking action into governing and taking care of a planet kept me interested int he game!

[Bobemor]

I like this idea as I think it provides a good middle point balance. I can see the game balance advantage for sharing, I can see the frustration/realism of not sharing population. This seems to preserve game balance but smooth out the edges enough that is both understandable and fair.

[Gladi099]

Someone providing all consumables on base (basic and luxuary) should be way more attractive to the workforce then the company only providing DW.

This could maybe also solve the inactive issue? Since those bases usually run out of consumables and would then get what ever is left over from the workforce.

[Madnewmy]

I am gonna piggy back on my own thread to add another point.

Currently, pop growth seems to be mostly done by open jobs. Keeping them on the planet is mostly done with the infra.

This should give a decent visualization of what I mean. We fed tons to the infra this week (talking around 600-700k probably) to make sure we could grow our tech at maximum speed. 30% more safety and 25% more health/comfort yet happiness barely changes, and we end up with less growth of tech. Hard to tell if the 20% extra culture or the 90 new open jobs on the engineers made the difference for the extra 2… However, this just feels like kind of a waste. Why are we even looking at building infra when we can spend the money on dummy bases just to grow pop?

I would strongly consider relooking at this numbers. No reason to spend on infrastructure that provides very little benefit at this point…

Edit:was told it was averaged over 4 weeks, guess ill try to keep it high for 4 weeks for the results

[Aldin]

This is still unfair and utter broken. @molp
Please read what Carepanda said : only Unemployed and growth should be redistributed. STOP redistributing people’s workforce because someone can pay 100 people to spam a planet with buildings.

Reason is simple : I grow population with my corp on a planet for months and then some group of players decide we’re having too much fun and spam open jobs to the point of your formulas creating utter disaster.
STOP reassigning already assigned workers. If you do this then it will force people to expand carefully and reasonably ( why would a player that struggled to grow population for months lose his workforce? )

A system that emphasize worker redistribution from unemployment and growth is actually a long term strategic system that would force players to plan ( supply popi, invest, open jobs and be patient etc ) rather than just building spam before next popr.

[Aldin]

And just so that I understand please : why is workforce redistribution from active players needed? What is the rationale behind this because I fail to understand it.
Thanks.

[Bobemor]

I think a short term solution is everyone especially big players contribute more to POPI. That would help short term

[Korant74]

Carepanda’s idea seems idea seems most reasonable. When I started in PrUn I did not know about this redistribution feature. I have no idea why redistribution of workers in active jobs would be forcibly removed when all their basic needs are fully met. I thought that as long as I provided all their basic consumption items in stock they would continue working.

It makes sense that workers without their basic needs met would have a chance of quitting their job to go elsewhere - perhaps after two weeks of unsatisfactory working conditions.

Do the workers not get redistributed if all basic and luxury goods are on-hand? If not, then that would be an essential quality of life improvement of high priority.

[Madnewmy]

You advertise for not stealing pop but than publicly say u will go steal pop? Captain selfish here

[Aldin]

You think what people say in a 6 active player planetary chat is “publicly”.
You think what people “say” makes them selfish? I thought it was all about how they ACT!

Think your bearings are off bud, as is your sense of justice. We figured that out when you failed to apologize after throwing unfounded accusations based on pure speculations and yet again instead of constructive talk you throw your judgement on how you “might” get inconvenienced from something I said, but at same time fail to mention I am the one inconvenienced and will likely lose 25% of eng/sci on my only eng/sci planet.
But please keep making such relevant unrelated remarks because you “might” get “inconvenienced” and I am the selfish one.
When you were in my situation you filled 10 chat long pages with vile insults and personal attacks.

Anything else you’d like to share from chats I did not consent to be made public or some other unrelated sources?

Here’s some of your public chats in Apoth local :

And your unfounded accusation proved wrong and you continued and continue with your vile propaganda and toxic behavior in chats against GDP/QWNE. If I had a report button I would report you for toxic behaviour.

[Madnewmy]

ah yes I too crop convos just to show the bad out of it

I dont see myself saying I want to go steal someone’s pop in any of these unlike you, after publicly saying you are against it! I could google it, but sounds like pretty much the definition of selfish. Or only agree if its your advantage.

Keep that image up boyo! I am sure everyone on the internet cares!

[Aldin]

I was trolling in planetary chat to provoke a reaction and prove you financed and encouraged thab to colonize and steal our scientists and engineers. I guess my trolling was passive in chat while yours was sabotage, especially when you came on FORUM with it to make it publicly

Selfish is when you DO things without consideration for others. Like :

• accusing people without proof and causing reputation and emotional damage.
• financing your friend to sabotage our hi-tech planet then linking my reaction on forum to discredit me.

I didn’t steal a single pop from you. Your friend did. I didn’t insult and violently attack you or your friends without proof, you did. You also attacked other GDP and QWNE members.

Ultimately I advocated against the mechanic of reassigning workers being unfair and broken and didn’t discuss the morality color of population stealing or those who do it or don’t.
The game is in test, it will reset soon and I eventually welcomed thab on our planet even if we lost ~18% efficiency for it.
You have 5-6 planets where you draw engineer/scientists while I have one and share them with your friend but you come and call me selfish at the mere thought that I would pull for a building on one of your planets?
You don’t need google to find what selfish means, you need a mirror.

Anyway, this topic is probably about POPI improvements and not about your personal vendettas. And for the record, I really never cared about your workers and never will, I don’t go that low.

[Prdgi]

@Madnewmy I understand that you are frustrated, however, you must refrain from personal attacks and toxic chat.

Its disappointing to see that you were witness to the hostility and toxicity around CUOP, were witness to @molp posting RE: toxicity around CUOP and still see fit to engage in ad-hominin attacks.

You are one of the most wealthy players in PrUn. New players look up to you, and you are setting a poor example.

Please reconsider the way in which you interact with other players.

[molp]

I think @Prdgi is absolutely right @Madnewmy: Please keep it civil!

[thabichi]

I want to clear up why and how I got to CR-409b so there is no misunderstanding.

I wasn’t funded or encouraged by Mad, or any other player. I make my own fabs on Hort C, and I make most inputs myself also (AL, TI, STL, NR, EPO, PG). I never hold more than 500k as I invest money as it comes in. In addition, I was awarded 1 mil form Catfiz which helped A LOT.
Why 409b? It’s close to Prom and Hort C, it has decent pop, and most importantly, it had Manuf COGC for my SPF (now changed to Electronics).
Why not the other options? Well, there are not many planets with the necessary population and honestly if I had to choose from whom I needed to steal, QWNE seemed the least worse option to me. Again, why?

1. Aldin already had +1 new Ship while mhk +2 new Ships.
2. My only Eng base got its pop divided to incoming QWNE member
3. Mad & CP have always been helpful to me.

Past all this, I agree that the current distribution of Population is broken, and for me as a mid-sized player, this shows that its horrible as well.