an Alternate Model for Growth

[MercantileInterest]

In regards to its growth pattern, SMAC is CivII in space, which makes little sense. The newly arrived settlers on Planet are not subsistence farmers suffering from frequent famines, infant mortality and constant tribal infighting. The only significant constraint to rapid population growth would be people not wanting to have children, as in South Korea or Hong Kong. In the same line of thought, it makes little sense that factions cannot build factories for a hundred years.

I've on-and-off been creating a mod with rapid population growth and early industrialization but limited resources, particularly energy. Idea is to have fewer but bigger bases. Have employed the following:


1) Increased the cost of a colony module to 25. (Takes many resources to found a new base.)
2) Reduced the nutrient requirement for a citizen to 1.
3) 7 rows of minerals needed for base to grow instead of 10. (This seems to compress the SE benefits for growth.)
4) Increased cost and maintenance for most facilities. Can build factories in the early game but they'll draw so much energy you'll only want them in a few key cities.
5) Early lift on the nutrient cap.
6) Base size without hab complex increased to 10.
7) No specialists before size 11.
8~base squares grant no resources (still possible through high econ or recycling tanks)
Etc.

Yitzi patch allows an option for not letting crawlers operate beyond the bounds of their home base until a certain tech is discovered. Considering pushing back formers a little but making crawlers a default unit.

Let me know your thoughts on this design approach.

[bvanevery]

As long as you're contemplating realism, I'd get rid of Specialists completely.  They're moronic, tweaky, and dumb.  I never use them.  I can't imagine fiddling with them in 20..30 cities as being a good game design, and what all do they have to do with the future?

Are you sure the answer isn't to just call a "factory" something else?  "I should have factories immediately, on Turn 1!" might be all terribly logical from a hard science fiction standpoint.  But you're also saying, "I should have my minerals production jump to a much higher level immediately!"  Why is that?  What's good about it from a game mechanics standpoint?

Regardless of what you call these facilities, you have to deal with the basic question of how many minerals should increase in how many years.  And how much various units cost.

Food, again, just how fast is the human population supposed to expand?  Should it double every year?  Every 10 years?  When all those people translate into work and minerals, doesn't it make most of the early game pointless?