As I’ve mentioned in the previously, we knowingly made the decision to reduce the overall number of pops in New Horizons – to slow down growth and to increase hard caps. This had the intended benefit of increasing performance, but also several other intended benefits, including reinforcing our theme and for the most part, our intended game play. Like I’ve said before, STNH is aimed toward slower pace game. Rapid, mindless expansion is as encouraged due to the slower pop growths (and the faster growth possible on truly well-developed planets with proper hospitals). Invasions and wars can be highly profitable if one captures a home planet… but those tend to be protected by stronger defenses and star bases than those found, comparably, in vanilla. The result is, or at least meant to be, a game play that is both slower, and more thoughtful.
That being said, slower pop growth does have some serious impact on early stage game play. While I had several plans to address it, time ran out before we release The Great Material Continuum (TGMC) patch. As we wrap up the post-patch polish and bug hunting phase, and as we solved most of our AI issues, it’s time to circle back and solve other underlying issues with our economy.
To understand the issue, we need to differentiate between ‘slow’ and ‘boring’. Fleet movement in STNH is – intentionally – slow, but even at the early game it’s not boring, since its offset by the huge wealth of choices you can have – where you want to explore and expand, and how you direct the resources of your budding empire.
This is true elsewhere in STNH. We have less ships and less fleets due to the costs of every single ship, but since there is so much more care and design going into every ship, and so many components you can choose to put into a ship, the end result, while slower, is not boring.
The solution to slower growth is to have interesting decisions to make. Sadly, however, there aren’t that many interesting decisions to make on the economic level in vanilla 2.2 – especially in the early game, and especially with the current planet system.
On new colonies, where players have little to do and choose from in vanilla, players now have to ‘suffer’ through this phase for much longer. On well-developed colonies, because you need new pops both for employment and to unlock new building slots, you are usually stuck into very specific and rigid paths. You know in advance what you have to do if you wish to be competitive, and all you do is sit and wait for the next building slot to be unlocked.
One of the very first lessons for every budding game design is defining what a game IS. The answer is is some variance of the same truth – a game is a series of interesting decisions. Slower pop growths, and having less pops, simply rob players from having interesting choices.
- It reduces how often they can make choices – slower pop growths means less pops, so less new choices.
- It reduces the range of their choice, since without a lot of pops, there are less buildings you can choose from or allow yourself to build.
- It reduces the impact of each choice, since without a lot of pops, buildings and techs, the actual output of every pop is minor compared to what it could be.
You might simply suggest we should increase pop growth – but due to the reasons why I described before, we won’t. There will be ongoing tweaking and I am intending to increase the efficacy of hospitals somewhat more in the future, but overall, growth speeds in STNH will remain slow.
Going forward, the goal is to change planet management in a way that gives players meaningful choices even during the early game – overcoming the issue of the slower pop growth.
Con permiso, Capitan. The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged. It’s now time to see if you can dance. – Q