View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0015083The Last FederationSuggestionMay 13, 2014 2:18 pm
Reporterptarth Assigned ToChris_McElligottPark  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version1.016 (Finish Him!) 
Fixed in Version1.018 (Treasure Trove) 
Summary0015083: Children grow up too fast
DescriptionI was curious how long it takes a child to grow into an adult. I checked on 3 races the Andorians (they don't have children, but the mechanics were the same), the Peltians, and the Skylaxians.

How to measure children maturation rate.
Current Population: 47m
Birthrate: 2m to 3m
Deathrate: 1m to 1m
Children: 2m
Population in the next Month: 48m
Children in the next Month: 2m.

With 1m dying the next month projected population is 46m. The amount of children doesn't change. The difference between our projection and the actual outcome is 2m. That's the same as the number of total children last month. Therefore, it takes 1 month for them to mature.

The answer is 1 month. That's a bit too fast, isn't it? This is relevant to gameplay because it means that if something happens to the adult population, the Race can still bounce back in relatively little time. While reasonable for immediate balance purposes, it isn't very plausible.
TagsNo tags attached.
Internal WeightNew

Relationships

related to 0015084 closedChris_McElligottPark The time scale is off 

Activities

timfortress

May 9, 2014 12:47 pm

reporter   ~0037790

May be in TLF world, children will grow up in a month,its not the Earth growth rate definitely.

Drak

May 10, 2014 12:17 am

reporter   ~0037830

Last edited: May 10, 2014 12:22 am

First off, these are SOLAR days/months (which have heavens only knows what kind of relation to planetary times/earth years) and chart the stages/seasons of the sun, not of the planets. Considering that all the planets use the same calendar it clearly has no reference to local time, and even if it did, considering the Hydral were supreme rulers, the time segments are probably based on the Hydral homeworld's properties, which could have had any of a huge variety of lengths.

For reference, a Jupiter Year is 12 Earth Years, meaning we'd grow to adulthood in aproximately 2 years on Jupiter, and Neptune has a year that lasts 165 earth years, meaning you'd hit the equivalent of 14 in 1/12th of a neptune year, or about one month... ;)

GC13

May 10, 2014 12:36 am

reporter   ~0037831

Well, whatever the time scale is, with decent medical care an average biological race seems to survive for at least 1,000 months (i.e. a thousand times as long as they're children for), or fifty solar years. Really, a hundred solar years isn't that hard to get, either. And this is all deaths, not just natural ones.

ptarth

May 10, 2014 3:51 pm

reporter   ~0037844

I'm okay with nonstandard time units. However, the use of day suggests that people draw upon intuitive relationships (i.e., a day is 0000032:0000020-50 hours?). My guess is that the "solar day/month" was chosen as the smallest reasonable arbitrary time unit, and things were balanced around things happening in these units. However, when you consider the time scales relating to the actions that happen in them, it loses the intuitive link and gets weird.

Raid a convoy, 1 month.
Stop some pirates, 1 month.
Transfer a technology between races, 1 month.
Grow into an adult, 1 month.
Ship rebuilt after near total destruction, 6-12 months.
Build an outpost, 40-60 months.
Hire 1 guy to help you build an outpost, -1 to 3 months.
Hire 1 guy to help your research, -1 to 5 months.
Let a race research some tech with your help 15 months.
Hire 10 guys, and do the same, 5 months.

In the end, if we say that everythings is due to "space magic" (aka, The Hydrans did it), that's fine. We shouldn't, however, expect people to be completely satisfied with it.

ptarth

May 10, 2014 4:01 pm

reporter   ~0037845

More importantly, how did you calculate life span? I was able to figure out a method for that one.

My guess is that this is all an abstraction anyway. There are some % of population birth and death rates modified by various factors. And that "children" or "old people" aren't actually defined anywhere.

GC13

May 10, 2014 6:09 pm

reporter   ~0037846

I looked at the natural deaths on a planet versus the total population. Planets with negative Medical have a lot more deaths, but once the Medical is even a little bit positive you can easily have a planet with two billion people and just one million deaths every month.

ptarth

May 10, 2014 7:15 pm

reporter   ~0037850

But can't you also have a planet with 20 million population, positive medical, and 1 million deaths every month? In that case, wouldn't it be a life expectancy of 20 months?

GC13

May 10, 2014 7:20 pm

reporter   ~0037851

Due to the quirks of the way the game displays the information, you kind of have to look for a big planet to get a feel for the numbers.

Besides, looking at small planets also gives absurd birthrates too.

Drak

May 11, 2014 7:05 am

reporter   ~0037862

Last edited: May 11, 2014 7:17 am

I FULLY agree with the relative time issues. Especially in combat...

Fly from one end of the system to the other, and back again takes aprox 1 day. (I managed 44 one-way trips in a month)

Fly around in orbit a little bit, weeks or months... (Specifically, it seems there are about 40 combat turns per month - that's a kind of average, as the numbers vary a bit - probably due to rounding in the display, meaning 2 turns per day... Meaning I can fly from one end of the system to the other in the same time it takse me fly say, 10x the length of my own craft (at max speed power)... That would give my ship a scale of aprox 1 system diameter / 10, or 0.1 system diameters... Pretty sure that's larger than any planet...

I always balk at the time it takes to do a combat, it really shouldn't take any strategic time unless you get really long, and even then it should be days at most... But if you consider build speeds and the new siege lengths, I guess you still do combat alot faster than the NPCs do... Of course if everything was adjusted properly, it could work...

Actually, you know what I'd like to see probably best, would be for you to decide on a task each month (such as help with land area, improve relations, etc) and then that task just plodded on completely independant of you. Then as the simulation goes on, you can fly around, do attacks, hire goons, stop wars, or whatever other zero time activities (which I'd include combat in, no matter the turn count) while the chosen dispatch marched on, faithly assuming that you spent all your meaningful time working on that project and just took momentary breaks to handle battles and the like. Some kind of limit (like 1 battles per day max, so you had to pick your fights) would also be acceptable. Though that'd make the NPCs fight ALOT slower than you do, so...

Then again, that 277 turn Planetary defense mission I did that took almost 7 months, felt kinda epic, so I'm a bit torn... :)

ptarth

May 11, 2014 3:12 pm

reporter   ~0037865

Can we move the time discussion over to the linked time thread and keep this one about how hard it is to be a child and how short a Burlust childhood is?

I did some more children observation. This time on the Evucks. And I have no idea what is going on.
Medical 3.06 (Total Compatibility 0.10)
Month Population Civilian Soldier Child Birth Death
1 160 107 12 41 1-1 40-50
2 161 104 12 45 1-1 40-50
3 162 99 12 51 1-1 40-50
4 163 107 12 44 1-1 40-50
5 164 108 12 44 1-1 40-50
6 165 106 12 47 1-1 40-50
7 166 110 13 43 1-1 40-50
8 167 111 13 43 1-1 40-50
9 168 106 12 50 1-1 40-50
10 169 115 13 41 1-1 40-50
11 170 112 13 45 1-1 40-50
12 171 109 13 49 1-1 40-50
13 172 111 13 48 1-1 40=50
14 173 111 13 49
15 174 117 13 44
16 175 111 13 51
17 176 118 14 44
18 177 113 13 51
19 174 113 10 51
20 174 117 12 45

I stopped writing down birth rate and death rate because they never changed.
Birthrate was always 1m min and 1m max. Death rate was always 40m min and 50m max. Children populations increased by 7 million at times, and decreased by 7 million on occasion as well. That doesn't match up with the 1/1 birthrate at all. Total population did tend to increase by 1 million, but the ratio of children to civilians is odd. Additionally, the huge death rate relative to tiny birthrate should have wiped the planet clean very quickly.

On the plus side, the Evucks are a very young society, 1 out of every 3 is a child.

Drak

May 11, 2014 5:55 pm

reporter   ~0037869

Are you certain those are all Millions, and none are Billions? Because it'd make sense if the death rate were millions and the rest were billions (hence the general increase in pop by 1, as +1b -0.04b would make sense...

GC13

May 11, 2014 6:43 pm

reporter   ~0037871

Where have you seen a planet with a hundred billion people on it?

ptarth

May 11, 2014 6:50 pm

reporter   ~0037872

There might be some unit problems in the math going on behind the display, but I've reported it correctly. Screenshot attached.

ptarth

May 11, 2014 6:51 pm

reporter  

pop.jpg (379,170 bytes)

Chris_McElligottPark

May 13, 2014 2:18 pm

administrator   ~0038005

Thanks!

* Previously, children were born one month and then matured the next month. This was some old logic from November that we never got around to thinking about again, turns out. Now there is a 9-month cycle for children to mature, except for Thoraxians, which do it twice as fast. And of course the robotic races, which have no children, and are just manufactured as adults.
** This provides a much more realistic-feeling population, as well as making it so that there is more of a delay from a boom in the birth rate, which has positive balance implications.
** And as a side note, yes, a "solar month" is not equivalent to a month on earth, nor is a solar day equivalent to that sort of timescale here. The correlation between a solar year in this solar system and an earth year is never made particularly clear, but you can safely assume it's at least 15-20x longer than an earth year (as Drak pointed out, for example, a Jupiter year is 14 earth years, and a Neptune year is 165 earth years, etc). Given that these are normalized "solar years" for all of the planets in four zones of a solar system, picking something in the relatively quick-orbiting habitable zone would be arbitrary by solar standards.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
May 9, 2014 12:40 pm ptarth New Issue
May 9, 2014 12:47 pm timfortress Note Added: 0037790
May 9, 2014 12:51 pm timfortress Relationship added related to 0015084
May 10, 2014 12:17 am Drak Note Added: 0037830
May 10, 2014 12:22 am Drak Note Edited: 0037830
May 10, 2014 12:36 am GC13 Note Added: 0037831
May 10, 2014 3:51 pm ptarth Note Added: 0037844
May 10, 2014 4:01 pm ptarth Note Added: 0037845
May 10, 2014 6:09 pm GC13 Note Added: 0037846
May 10, 2014 7:15 pm ptarth Note Added: 0037850
May 10, 2014 7:20 pm GC13 Note Added: 0037851
May 11, 2014 7:05 am Drak Note Added: 0037862
May 11, 2014 7:06 am Drak Note Edited: 0037862
May 11, 2014 7:12 am Drak Note Edited: 0037862
May 11, 2014 7:15 am Drak Note Edited: 0037862
May 11, 2014 7:16 am Drak Note Edited: 0037862
May 11, 2014 7:17 am Drak Note Edited: 0037862
May 11, 2014 3:12 pm ptarth Note Added: 0037865
May 11, 2014 5:55 pm Drak Note Added: 0037869
May 11, 2014 6:43 pm GC13 Note Added: 0037871
May 11, 2014 6:50 pm ptarth Note Added: 0037872
May 11, 2014 6:51 pm ptarth File Added: pop.jpg
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Internal Weight => New
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0038005
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status new => resolved
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Fixed in Version => 1.018 (Treasure Trove)
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Resolution open => fixed
May 13, 2014 2:18 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => Chris_McElligottPark