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Population Growth on Planets
http://www.classictw.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=33939		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  lmstr [ Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Population Growth on Planets
Anyone have a clear understanding of how growth works on planets -- specifically the math behind it.

Also I presume each planet has a different growth variable, I'd love to know what that is for the default planets....like what planet is the best for population growth...and how bad Volcanic is...considering you need a huge pop on board to make a dent into 1 mil ore. Is Oceanic bad to use as a colonist battery considering it can carry so much.
Author:  Cruncher [ Mon Apr 15, 2013 7:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
It all depends upon the settings the sysop has chosen.

You may want to download your own copy of TWGS and play around with the settings yourself.

If it's a stock game, Oceans really do produce a lot of colos, as well as Earth types.

I've found that the growth/death cycle in TWGS is much, much kinder than it was in the old HVS MBBS version I first played.

That being said, colonist still do grow on Volcanics. 50k is the max optinal colo level for stock Volcanics.

As always, you must balance your turns with your needs.
Author:  lmstr [ Fri Apr 19, 2013 1:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Somewhere I read that the more you interact with a planet... ie...land, take off, display stats ect the more chance for colonist death. Is that still the case? Should I not use a planet with a ton of colonists for a Mega Rob / D/RTR Dumping?....
Author:  Cruncher [ Fri Apr 19, 2013 8:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
lmstr wrote:
Somewhere I read that the more you interact with a planet... ie...land, take off, display stats ect the more chance for colonist death. Is that still the case? Should I not use a planet with a ton of colonists for a Mega Rob / D/RTR Dumping?....


I would have sworn that statement to be true when we played the old HVS MBBS game, but TWGS I rarely if ever see any colo death cycles. I think their must be Viagra in their water these days. Hehe...

For dumping, you just need the planet with the highest equipment capacity.
Author:  Mongoose [ Fri Apr 19, 2013 11:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
There are two different settings for colonist growth and death on gold planets. One time I asked JP exactly what they do, and he cryptically replied that the knowledge is out there but he won't discuss it. There isn't much left that isn't publicly known about this game, so if you wanted to make a name for yourself, you could run some experiments...
Author:  Grey Gamer [ Thu May 09, 2013 3:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Mongoose wrote:
There are two different settings for colonist growth and death on gold planets. One time I asked JP exactly what they do, and he cryptically replied that the knowledge is out there but he won't discuss it. There isn't much left that isn't publicly known about this game, so if you wanted to make a name for yourself, you could run some experiments...


"the knowledge is out there." I wonder where in the world it would be.

I remember having planets and not being able to land on them because my colonists were so excited to see me that they had heart attacks and died... or maybe I landed on them, but I will use planets as big ships nowadays, travel from sector to sector, take off and land countless times.

In previous games, once I had enough SBB ports, I created SSS ones, and would go back and forth. If your port max is 65,530, you buy down halfway, and have 250 holds, it would take 262 turns for one port, so I might have landed a few thousand times a day, with only a small population growth.

The problem that I used to have and I have not gotten there yet in my current game, was too many colonists. My planetary trader script used to keep each group at 99% of maximum [efficient] production and would move any excess to Fuel Ore and I periodically went through and moved them to another planet.

For some reason, that part of my script stopped working. It is weird how my scripts work perfectly and then start having problems, but that is off-topic.

I would also be curious to know the different rates, but besides needing to keep production balanced, it is minor to me.
Author:  Grey Gamer [ Tue May 21, 2013 1:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Mongoose wrote:
There are two different settings for colonist growth and death on gold planets. One time I asked JP exactly what they do, and he cryptically replied that the knowledge is out there but he won't discuss it. There isn't much left that isn't publicly known about this game, so if you wanted to make a name for yourself, you could run some experiments...


As I mentioned in my overly-long response, I remember colonists dying when I landed on the planet. My latest server keeps going down, so I installed my own to work on scripts, and I created a planet of each class in TEdit, with 3,000 groups of colonists on each planet for fuel ore. I made an ugly little script that landed on each one thousand times and saved the number of groups of colonists in fuel ore to a different file. Then I did search-and-replace to change spaces into tabs and copied it into Excel. According to my calculations, landing on a planet kills exactly 0.0% of colonists each time.

One thousand landings on each planet and I still had 3,000 groups of colonists on each.

Mongoose, I do see that you specified "gold" planets. Should I try again?

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Colonists-corrected.xls [34 KiB]
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0colonists.ts [97 Bytes]
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Author:  Mongoose [ Wed May 22, 2013 11:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
I'm not even sure when colonist growth/death occurs anymore. Maybe when you get your hourly turns, or maybe at extern. *shrug*
Author:  Oso [ Wed May 22, 2013 11:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
It happens more frequently than every hour.
I'm pretty sure it happens in realtime or close to it.
Author:  Grey Gamer [ Wed May 22, 2013 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
From http://www.electricscotland.com/games/twadvice.txt:

Quote:
Mountainous Type [...] This is the best type of planet to start with in the MBBS Version of Tradewars. But, in the DOS version only, landing frequently on this planet type causes colonists to die, and landings must be kept to an absolute minimum. In the MBBS Version this is not a problem, and makes a perfect home planet.


Quote:
Volcanic Type [...] It does have 1 serious drawback, its colonists tend to die each time one lands on the planet,
and also when one does a Corporate Planet Scan (command T L). Keep landing down to an absolute bare minimum, AND put 25% of the colonists on equipment production (where they do nearly nothing), and the other 75% on fuel ore. This reduces colonist deaths very nicely. Maximum efficiency is with 50,000 colonists on fuel ore, but don't forget an extra 12,500 colonists on equipment. And don't be tempted to pick-up the bit of equipment they produce, as this will kill more colonists! They are extremely slow to upgrade, but worth it.


I was not able to find other references. What changes were made from DOS to TWGS?
Author:  Cruncher [ Wed May 22, 2013 1:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Grey Gamer wrote:
From http://www.electricscotland.com/games/twadvice.txt:

Quote:
Mountainous Type [...] This is the best type of planet to start with in the MBBS Version of Tradewars. But, in the DOS version only, landing frequently on this planet type causes colonists to die, and landings must be kept to an absolute minimum. In the MBBS Version this is not a problem, and makes a perfect home planet.


Quote:
Volcanic Type [...] It does have 1 serious drawback, its colonists tend to die each time one lands on the planet,
and also when one does a Corporate Planet Scan (command T L). Keep landing down to an absolute bare minimum, AND put 25% of the colonists on equipment production (where they do nearly nothing), and the other 75% on fuel ore. This reduces colonist deaths very nicely. Maximum efficiency is with 50,000 colonists on fuel ore, but don't forget an extra 12,500 colonists on equipment. And don't be tempted to pick-up the bit of equipment they produce, as this will kill more colonists! They are extremely slow to upgrade, but worth it.


I was not able to find other references. What changes were made from DOS to TWGS?


I have the original DOS game, but only used it to practice on my own machine different invasion techniques.

I kept detailed records of death/growth cycles on the HVS MBBS version and found that death/growth was tied to fig/shield price cycles. Not so now.

Today TWGS death/growth cycles are tied to ship hold prices, and I've not paid close attention. I forgot who, but someone created a spreadsheet that calculated that, but that may be off now that the "year" in the game has been set to our future in v2.

As far as I know, landing on the planets causing increased death rates was/is an urban myth. Your own testing proved it.

You may however might try creating a stock planet and a gold planet based on the stock, then edit the gold planet to have a more hazardous factor and place the same number of colos on each and track the death/growth cycles. Just to speed things along, you can age the game, record results and age it again.
Author:  Grey Gamer [ Wed May 22, 2013 3:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Cruncher wrote:
I have the original DOS game, but only used it to practice on my own machine different invasion techniques.

I kept detailed records of death/growth cycles on the HVS MBBS version and found that death/growth was tied to fig/shield price cycles. Not so now.

Today TWGS death/growth cycles are tied to ship hold prices, and I've not paid close attention. I forgot who, but someone created a spreadsheet that calculated that, but that may be off now that the "year" in the game has been set to our future in v2.

As far as I know, landing on the planets causing increased death rates was/is an urban myth. Your own testing proved it.

You may however might try creating a stock planet and a gold planet based on the stock, then edit the gold planet to have a more hazardous factor and place the same number of colos on each and track the death/growth cycles. Just to speed things along, you can age the game, record results and age it again.


Age the game by changing the date? Modifying "Age of Game in days" of course, does nothing.

The difference between Hazard Level and Habitatibility Rating is the former is defined as "This setting determines how extreme the losses will be due to natural disaster" and the latter specifies "how frequently losses will occur".

(M) Earth 1 100
(K) Desert 2 98
(O) Oceanic 2 98
(L) Mountain 3 98
(C) Glacial 5 92
(H) Volcanic 7 90
(U) Vaporous\Gas 8 88

I have gone onto TEdit a few times to reset the colonists to 3,000. In the twenty-six hours and thirty-nine minutes since I ran my script, my planets have changed to the following values:

Class Name Current Percent change %/24 hours
(M) Earth 3014 0.4666667 0.420263%
(K) Desert 3015 0.5 0.450281%
(O) Oceanic 3018 0.6 0.540338%
(L) Mountain 3015 0.5 0.450281%
(C) Glacial 3016 0.5333333 0.480300%
(H) Volcanic 3015 0.5 0.450281%
(U) Vaporous\Gas 3000 0 0.000000%

At some point I will determine the best that I can whether the gold variables are classic constants

So, does it sound like Habitatibility Rating is the chance to not have a natural disaster in a given period of time and Hazard Level is how disastrous it will be?

What if I check the population every thirty seconds while running this batch file:
Code:
TIME 12:00A
CHOICE /C N /D N /T:30 >nul
TIME 12:10A
CHOICE /C N /D N /T:30 >nul


and so forth. I would rather write something that would figure out all of the times, but I could write a script to create the batch file.
Author:  Cruncher [ Wed May 22, 2013 4:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Grey Gamer wrote:
So, does it sound like Habitatibility Rating is the chance to not have a natural disaster in a given period of time and Hazard Level is how disastrous it will be?


To be perfectly honest, I rarely notice death cycles. More often than not I have to move excess colos to new planets.

IF we had the dramatic growth/death cycles that we used to have in HVS MBBS, then I would invest more time into examining the best method to weather the death cycles.

I think we've finally put an end to the myth that frequent landing on a planet kills colos. Thanks for investigating that one.
Author:  Helix [ Wed May 22, 2013 4:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Cruncher wrote:
Grey Gamer wrote:
So, does it sound like Habitatibility Rating is the chance to not have a natural disaster in a given period of time and Hazard Level is how disastrous it will be?


To be perfectly honest, I rarely notice death cycles. More often than not I have to move excess colos to new planets.

IF we had the dramatic growth/death cycles that we used to have in HVS MBBS, then I would invest more time into examining the best method to weather the death cycles.

I think we've finally put an end to the myth that frequent landing on a planet kills colos. Thanks for investigating that one.

Have someone bang a Subzero and graph the growth and loss for the Striking Distance and the White Dwarf. Use a script to log it to a file over 24 hours. Those are 2 planets that will give you information in plenty.

Attachment:
Striker.png
Striker.png [ 13.51 KiB | Viewed 19550 times ]


Attachment:
white dwarf.png
white dwarf.png [ 13.47 KiB | Viewed 19550 times ]


You could even download a v2 server for free and load up the subzero edit and track the colo population changes for all the planets.
Author:  Grey Gamer [ Wed May 22, 2013 8:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Population Growth on Planets
Wow, I had not even realized there was that menu. That complicates things.

Changing those options automatically changes all of the other settings, including the maximum amount of each product that can be stored, including the Habitatibility Rating and the Hazard Level, although all of them, including the Habitatibility Rating and the Hazard Level, can be set wherever you want.

Geological Activity
Dead 0 100
Dormant 0 100
Normal 1 100
Active 5 93
Violent 16 27

Temperature
Searing 4 67
Hot 2 100
Cold 4 95
Frigid 11 47

Hydrosphere
None 2 41
Arid 1 90
Normal 1 100
Saturated 2 100
Submerged 5 52

Topography
Flat 0 100
Uniform 1 100
Normal 1 100
Rough 2 99
Precipitous 6 48

Atmophere
None 8 44
Thin 3 90
Normal 1 100
Thick 8 91
Dense 26 46

Gravity
Negligible 1 89
Low 1 90
Normal 1 100
Heavy 1 90
Crushing 4 44

Weather
Stagnant 0 100
Calm 1 100
Turbulent 2 80
Normal 1 100
Chaotic 3 38

A violent, frigid, submerged, and precipitous planet with dense atmosphere, crushing gravity, and chaotic weather would be 255/19, but you can change the settings to 255/0.

I installed TWGS on my computer and could "bang a Subzero," or just put in my own settings. I think that the most informative would be 1/0 (small disasters constantly occuring) and 255/10 (cataclysmic disasters regularly occuring), although it would be easy to make several planets with a variety of settings.

Striking distance would be 3/90 and White Star would be 1/89. Glacial and Volcanic are probably worse. Do you regularly lose colonists on those?

I can test them as well.

I found out as much as Cruncher wanted to know before this post. Putting in extreme conditions would help me figure out lesser conditions faster, but are there any edits where colonists consistently die on planets that are still desirable?
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