Population Extension

Considering the amount of options to tweak the arcology's society I've always found it jarring how granular the population description is; slaves vs. citizens. I'd like to add some layers to that and allow more control over what the population looks like and have some consequences to such choices as well.

Citizens have now been broken up in lower, middle, upper and top class. The first 3 classes plus slaves create opportunities for each other; encouraging one of them will ripple through to the others. the top class only cares about how high the domestic product is, which depends on a the combined value of everyone living inside the arcology.

Slaves and the lower class compete for work. Because slaves are really cheap labor, though less efficient, they take priority. All jobs left over are available to the lower class. Note that also player owned MENIAL slaves do these jobs. The lower class will fall into slavery depending on the level of 'welfare' (mostly policy related) even during good times (and the player can snag them as usual), but when there are no jobs those without jobs will attempt to leave and many of those trying to get out will be enslaved instead (some going to the player). The amount of work available depends on a fixed amount plus the jobs higher classes need done and the prosperity value of the arcology. Additionally menial slaves will now die. Not a huge amount, unless your arcology is particularly cruel. This effects arcology wide slaves as well as player owned menials (fuckdolls and bioreactors not yet included).

The higher classes have more straight forward interactions; they do not get enslaved or depend on prosperity directly. Enslavement is confined to the lowest class because it stands to reason a higher class citizen is higher class (partly) because they are not fatally indebted. If they were, they'd be considered lower class. No need for further complication this way. There might be class mobility within the arcology; when there are enough high class opportunities fresh citizens could move in or middle class citizens move up. But it doesn't really matter who fills those spots as far as we are concerned.

Phase 1 of this extension is finished, the basic population interaction is in place. This seemed like the time to gather some feedback, before developing things further.

Phase 2 would be FS interactions.

Phase 3 would be policy interactions (potentially new policies and/or changes to existing ones)

After that we'll see what still needs work. Reworking rents, interactions with sector upgrades/specializations, compatibility with other areas of the game, etc.

What if instead of calling them the "top class" they are the elites related to whatever results in eugenics programs? They sit at a fixed 12 or 20 or so, until they try to overthrow the PC out of dissatisfaction and are reduced to zero when you beat them.

I wouldn't do that. That's a whole system unique to eugenics that should stay there.

The 'elite' might be 'top class' but the other way around does not need to hold. I'm not super familiar with that story line, but I was thinking developing that FS would have a positive effect on the amount of 'top class' citizens you'll attract, but not directly do anything with the story line.

Perhaps the other way around there'll be some interaction; if the 'elites' get killed I could have that reflected in the number of 'top class' citizens, but they'd get replaced over time by new blood through the system I propose. New 'top classers' of course, not 'elites'.

I am still looking for a better name for them, though, in game they're referred to as 'millionaires' for the moment.

Honestly, I'm thinking it would be best just to stick to basic slave, menial and citizen tracking and not anything more complex.

But you agree that the way the population develops currently could use an update, yes?

I don't particularly want to make things any more complex than they need to be, but conceptually having these layers and a framework to balance them out is easier than trying to get a single 'citizen' number to line up with expectations.

Now I understand that this economy/arcology stuff is not the meat of the game and putting too much effort into what is arguably 'side stuff' has less of a return in game play gains than expanding on the slave management. I expect you to slow me down when I risk making this other part of the game take too much player effort or become a real distraction because you can't play the slave training game if you mess up the economy things I'm tinkering with. But, in other ways it is an important part of the game; if we wanted to purely train slaves we could have a game that did away with the arcology concept. Society and our citizens are a part of the experience, so I want it to be better and more immersive.

If you can see the makeup of your arcology is a boatload of slaves with a great big deal of one-percenters at the top you get a better sense of the elite oligarchic society you've crafted, and likewise the kind of Eden you've made when there's a free and blooming lower and middle class instead of those slaves (but still a reasonable amount of course) and top class citizens. I want to get away from the extremes the ratio of slaves/citizens move towards at the moment and go towards something that can be managed (better) and gives the player some more feedback on the kind of society they're running. And sure, if I can balance it reasonably, good citizen management should be rewarded by higher rent income.

For me this is enough reason to implement it like this. I could consider cutting the top class and tweaking the upper class to compensate, but considering how needy the top class is they're a very useful tool to make extreme arcologies be appropriately extreme in their citizenry. A more wishy-washy upper class would make that less satisfying, I think.

Also I was thinking about why those immaculate and perfectly trained slaves set to whoring always get plowed by a billion plebs. That's just not right. If she were serving in the club I'd expect a line to go all the way around the block for her, but when she's a whore she should be fucked by distinguished citizens for a lot of money, so her skills and training can really shine through. I suppose I don't need to know exactly how many top class citizens there are to know what kind of customer base this exceptional slave can expect to work with, but if I did that'd make it easier to improve another part of the game. In general I'd like to take a look at the demand for slave goods and services eventually. At that time it'd be really useful if I had a solid idea of who's looking to buy, you know?

Problem with that thought. There is nothing to determine visitors to the arcology, but there are a lot by the looks of things.

That's true, I've ignored them. I don't think they're currently defined in any way, or are they? The game just says they exist, right?

Tourists or people coming to do business are unlikely to be of the lowest class and the amount coming through probably depends on slightly different factors than those that determine whether or not they want to live there. Prosperity, upgrades to the transport hub, a fully upgraded FS (driving tourism), local economy?

Instead of defining them as their own thing we can add some amount of middle (3/4) and upper class (1/4) citizens that grow when you upgrade those parts of the arcology. That's the kind of people we expect visitors to be, right? That'd give those classes a bit more complexity which they don't have now (not that they needed it), because visitors, if they keep coming and going consistently, are citizens for all practical applications.

But if we decide they're just a slightly different flavor of middle or upper class citizens we could decide to not bother with adding the tourist factor and leave it as is. I'm fine with either, though I guess adding something would be more correct.

added 21 commits

• 21419e38...07d1181a - 20 commits from branch pregmodfan:pregmod-master
• 8be5d471 - Merge branch 'pregmod-master' into Population

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• 387c0774 - Visitors added

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I added a way to determine the number of visitors. The main reasons to come to the arcology are prosperity and FS development, those are aided by the transporthub upgrades (if enabled) and the state of the local economy (bad economy, less visitors).

The way I'm calculating FS progress is not exactly pretty, but I have little other choice than to make this check for each FS, no?

<<if $arcologies[0].FSHedonisticDecadence != "unset">>
	<<set _FSScore += $arcologies[0].FSHedonisticDecadence>>
<</if>>

And as far as I can tell there is no limit on how high an FS development can go. Which seems odd, but I'll clamp _FSScore to make sure it does not get out of control. At least prosperity can't go nuts.

There'd be a bit more to it as well. Early game would probably see a large flow of visitors up until either crime/prosperity ends up too bad and chases everyone off or the weather becomes lethal. Which is another thing to keep in mind. The weather will have a major impact on tourism unless you have some means to shuttle them in and out safely.

Outside of that, you're on the right track for it.

Oh, and location. Middle of the ocean will probably see less visitors than in the middle of a city, no?

Dang, I should consider crime and location, that's true.

I'm not sure the visitor numbers should start particularly high; is the arcology really that attractive when its prosperity is low and has no defining FS features yet? In that sense I expect it to start out reasonably low, and slowly start to climb up, eventually peak to then get turned around by an economy that is starting to get really bad. Assuming people have the wisdom to make use of the excellent scaling economic difficulty, of course!

Weather would be really tricky, especially since I don't want to have to deal with a visitor count that changes a lot. But if we're realistic, bad weather would stop all inflow/outflow of people, not just visitors (unless the appropriate infrastructure is built). I'd be willing to freeze the entire system in case of terrible weather, that should be doable. Not sure if that's something that really matters when we're talking big picture, but it's a neat detail for sure. Of course, if no one can come in or leave, well then the visitors from the previous week are still around, aren't they? So weather does not need to be a direct variable to determine the number of visitors, luckily.

Though, wouldn't there be far more things that would get shut down by bad weather, then? Like getting slaves from outside the arcology (your neighbors, slaveschools without a local branch, no prestigious slave auction, put a maximum on the amount of menials available)? Like everyone else the merchandise brought from last week would still be stuck inside the arcology during bad weather, but if all the merchandise was sold to people last week they'd be out of stock and you can't buy anything, right? And in that case your corporation probably also has a bad week. Is that something we want? It'd make weather far more relevant for a change, but where it restricts player choice it could lead to frustration.

Something to think about.

Depends, they either start with an established FS or it is a rather new arcology and would still be in that period of interest more than likely.

I was thinking that too. Something like upgrading your trading capabilities to be weather resistant.

Right, starting with an established FS would immediately make it more attractive. That would already work just fine as is. And we could give a fresh arcology a honeymoon boost or something, but I'm a little concerned about starting off with a boost that will eventually drop off, as it would risk creating a bit of a negative spiral for the arcology. The bigger the drop, the worse it would be, of course. But I'm willing to add, say, 200 visitors extra at week 1 and have it get reduced by 10 every week for the next 20 weeks. At least to give it a try.

Would there be anything against assimilating the secExp transport hub (without the security bit) into the base game? Since I'm not sure making a competing upgrade makes a lot of sense, but perhaps there's another upgrade to fill the gap that doesn't feel too similar.

Unknown. Heavy thought needs to be put into that. Leaning towards maybe.

Yeah, that's fine. It won't be too punishing (probably) to have the stuff I want to do in this merge get frozen during bad weather, but if more and more things get a weather check there needs to be a vanilla counter, obviously.

Another alternative method instead of <<if $arcologies[0].FSHedonisticDecadence != "unset">> <<set _FSScore += $arcologies[0].FSHedonisticDecadence>> <</if>> You could just add your value to _broadProgress inside FS Developments.

I'll have to look into that, then. Thank you @Blank

I've decided how to go about transportation and the like. If secEx is on, we'll just use the transport hub. If it is off, I recommend creating a simple upgrade line for manageArcology so play off of.

added 41 commits

• 387c0774...a180b593 - 38 commits from branch pregmodfan:pregmod-master
• d01fa266 - Tweaks
• f9b7e182 - Merge branch 'pregmod-master' into Population
• cce01a9d - Visitor and minor tweaks

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