Food and large planets

[vinco]

In my first game, I managed to get a hold of Gaia. However, since food production doesn't scale with population, the world seems significantly less useful than otherwise. It looks like I'll need to use 2-3 slots for farms to make the world self-sufficient, which just doesn't seem thematically appropriate, especially since the 32-pop planet only gets ~6 slots. This world should be a gem, and a powerhouse for my empire. Instead, it feels like a bit of a liability. Any chance that large worlds like this could get more food production or slots? FWIW, I'm the science bugs, and I've got the gaians on the world as well.

[sven]

In my first game, I managed to get a hold of Gaia. However, since food production doesn't scale with population, the world seems significantly less useful than otherwise. It looks like I'll need to use 2-3 slots for farms to make the world self-sufficient, which just doesn't seem thematically appropriate, especially since the 32-pop planet only gets ~6 slots. This world should be a gem, and a powerhouse for my empire. Instead, it feels like a bit of a liability. Any chance that large worlds like this could get more food production or slots? FWIW, I'm the science bugs, and I've got the gaians on the world as well.

The idea, at high level, is that if you have a planet that has a huge population, it's basically one giant city, and as such, probably needs to import large amounts of food. (A 30+ population Gaia is basically your empire's version of Trantor.)

Thematically, I think it would be appropriate if players had a way of designating Gaia as a "farm focused" world. That would require adding a way of turning off population growth, so you could keep Gaia's total population low, after building large amounts of farms. But without a "stop growing" option, Gaia functions best as a production or research hub -- in either case, it will be hugely valuable in terms of its economic output, but, will definitely require some number of "support" worlds dedicated to farming / mining in order to keep it up and running. You'll also need to build a fleet of transports, to haul all that food in from the surrounding planets. (Something that they'll start doing automatically, if you click the button that sends them to the "trade pool".)

Gaia's extraordinary in that it is actually possible for it to hit max population while also being self-sufficient -- that's part of the magic of it's ecology. But a more conventional "city planet" like Ashdar Prime will inevitably start to starve unless you're able to setup some supporting farm worlds for it.

[Arioch]

Food is still a new mechanic, so we're still working out the edge cases.

The problem here is that Gaia has double the population of a Garden but only one additional building slot. I don't think Gaia is by any means a liability; 30+ pop still makes for a very good production planet even if you have to build 3 farms (not to mention a good source of population for export to new colonies), but I do think there's an argument to be made that larger planets could have more slots.

[sven]

The problem here is that Gaia has double the population of a Garden but only one additional building slot. I don't think Gaia is by any means a liability; 30+ pop still makes for a very good production planet even if you have to build 3 farms (not to mention a good source of population for export to new colonies), but I do think there's an argument to be made that larger planets could have more slots.

Gaia's also a tricky case because the Gaiads are really intended to have a number of special interactions that make them actively opposed to intensive population growth or industrialization -- so, the planet won't really be "working as intended" until those features go in.

Right now, I'm pretty comfortable with the way Ashdar Prime is playing though -- it's a more standard example of a very high pop cap world, and one that's meant to have a more Trantor-ish feel. Ashdar Prime actually has relatively low productivity on any of it's farms, so unlike Gaia, it really requires that you setup some support worlds for it. But, given a few "feeder" worlds, it's an economic powerhouse -- just as it should be.

[vinco]

I can understand where you're going with Ashdar Prime. I guess I'm just running into my own desire to make all planets self-sufficient and blockade-proof at the expense of min-maxing. I'll try to rethink Gaia in the same terms.