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I was just looking through infocards for something else today, and noticed a few inconsistencies in planet infocards when it comes to population. I'll write them all out below to illustrate what I mean.
Bretonia:
Planet New London - 14.1 billion.
Planet Cambridge - 720 million.
Plane Leeds - 2.1 billion pre-war ("arguably the most heavily populated planet in the Sirius sector".) Wat.
Planet Sprague - 300,000.
Gallia
Planet Il-de-France - 16.3 billion.
Planet Lyons - 1.1 billion
Planet Amiens - 750 million.
Planet Le Mans - 420 million.
Planet Orleans - 5.7 million.
Planet Marne - 70 million ("densely populated industrial world that holds more than three quarters of all Gallic Border Worlds population".)
Planet Nevers - 450,000.
Kusari
Planet New Tokyo - 11 billion.
Planet Kyushu - 6.5 billion ("the most densely populated Kusari planet after New Tokyo")
Planet Honshu - 870 million.
Planet Juno - 30 million.
Planet Tomioka - 300,000
Planet Miyazaki - 20,000
Planet Kurile - 2,500
Liberty
Planet Manhattan - 18.1 billion ("the most densely populated planet in Sirius.")
Planet Denver - 3.1 billion ("the second most populated planet in Liberty after Manhattan").
Planet Los Angeles - 470 million.
Planet Houston - 450 million.
Planet Pittsburgh - 85 million.
Planet California Minor - 8 million.
Planet Atka - not yet settled.
Rheinland
Planet New Berlin - 6.3 billion ("one of the more populated planets in the Sirius sector")
Planet Stuttgart - 3.5 billion.
Planet Hamburg - 1.3 billion.
Planet Neuremberg - 320 million.
Planet Holstien - 60 million.
Leeds' infocard strikes me as erroneous, if only because it was described pre-war as one of the most heavily populated in Sirius. That to me would imply a population in the 17-18 billion range before the massed evacuation. However, war and occupation would have reduced the population massively anyway - evacuation and casualties. Honestly, it looks like all of the population infocards have at some point been revised, and Leeds' was overlooked.
Main refugee routes are Holestein, Pittsburgh, Neuremberg, Sprague, New London and Cambridge. You could add all of them except New London together and not even dent the tiny population Leeds' infocard currently gives it. So that leaves New London as the primary recipient, right? Well, that could make sense. Other House capitals range between 6 and 18 billion, so anything in that range is fair game.
That still means there's probably still a significant civilian population trapped on the surface though (I'd actually say that the 2.2 billion would be a more appropriate figure for a remaining collaborator population).
There's also the issue of New Berlin, which is potentially problematic. Its infocard makes a note of the fact that it's got one of the larger populations in Sirius, when it's the least populated of all House capitals, with even some non-capitals having larger populations than it. Not sure if the description is just being unhelpfully broad, or whether the population is accidentally low. I'm thinking it's more likely to be the former, given the unfavourable arctic living conditions.
On the whole, these figures seem pretty good. I'm not sure if anyone's ever bothered putting them in one place before. It reveals neat trends about each House as well.
Bretonia, overcrowded with extremely limited planets; Cambridge intentionally underpopulated for agricultural and ecological reasons. The situation on Leeds has forced more people onto NL, artificially inflating the population. If Leeds is corrected, probably the highest/second highest population House in Sirius.
Gallia, massively centralised with more people on New Paris than the rest of Gallia combined. Ties in well with their totilitarian government: people stay where they're put, and most are put where they're easiest to control.
Kusari,Lots of planets, but many are unsuitable for large populations for various reasons. Clear difference between low-tech Kyushu which requires lots of agricultural workers, and high tech Honshu which is mostly factory based (and also stealing huge numbers of people away from the GMG).
Liberty, with a sprawling population spread across many planets. This is due to their central position, favourable planets and lots and lots of migration from other Houses (esp. Rheinland and Bretonia) where living conditions are under threat / worse.
Rheinland, mostly low population due to largely unfavourable planets that impose population caps. All of their planets save Stuttgart either have climatic problems, natural hazards that limit colonisation or are currently underdeveloped.
Anyone else got any thoughts about the figures as they stand?
Never actually looked at those. Tbh, Gallia is supposed to be overpopulated, which is the reason for so many space colonies. I think the numbers are just off.
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(05-09-2015, 06:52 PM)Miaou Wrote: Never actually looked at those. Tbh, Gallia is supposed to be overpopulated, which is the reason for so many space colonies. I think the numbers are just off.
Interestingly, a number of Gallic planets make a note of the fact that they're intentionally left underpopulated. It's not just numbers, it's all of the lore fluff that's led to them, too.
Ile-de-France is horrifically overpopulated yes, but Lyon is basically a paradise garden world that has been left underdeveloped as a hunting preserve of all things.
506401 "Lyon is one of the most lucrative places for hunting in Gallia. Animals are abundant, not threatened by pollution or overpopulation [...] The population growth has been slowing down during the last 80 years due to somewhat high unemployment rates around the planet, and nowadays it is projected that the population will start declining in the next 10 or 20 years if the trend continues."
Orleans is also well below its potential population cap, being habitable for humans and capable of supporting large scale agriculture.
506202: "The planet is still largely rural, with a few mining colonies in operation by the Gallic Metal Service. The current population is estimated to be around 5.7 million people."
It'd honestly strike me that either, a) the people who wrote the overpopulation angle were dense as diamonds, or b) the overpopulation of Gallia's capital is self-imposed and done for good reason.
I remember that populations of planets were fixed in middle of .86, before we hadn't even one planet with 1 billion. Maybe some logic was missed in process of that fix.
Remember to take into account how many people were on the sleeper ships and how a population growth could actually happen over 800something years, before you start mashing in billions of people, please.
Look at our own population, which we have achieved over how many thousands of years.
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(05-09-2015, 07:55 PM)sindroms Wrote: Remember to take into account how many people were on the sleeper ships and how a population growth could actually happen over 800something years, before you start mashing in billions of people, please.
Look at our own population, which we have achieved over how many thousands of years.
Not a valid comparison. Did you know that the world's population was only around 2 billion in the 1930s? We've grown to around 7 billion since then. Thousands of years of pre-Industrial societies isn't the same as 800 years of hyper-advanced space age civilisation, with a colonial mentality that favours large families and fast breeding.
Sirius is the wild west of open land and opportunity, but with better than modern medicine to help it along. Earth's population growth is currently dropping off due to constraints on space and resources. For the Houses with multiple planets, this is far less of a population limiter.
What would be useful is taking 20th century exponential growth and applying it to the time frame the Houses have existed for and seeing what the total output is. This is complicated by the fact that we don't know what the starting number of settlers was, but I think it's safe to say hundreds of thousands at least in the sleeper ships.
1930s also had already existing cities and infrastructures with it, mind. We are talking about a sleeper ship plopping down on a planet and being unpacked into a city.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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(05-09-2015, 08:28 PM)sindroms Wrote: 1930s also had already existing cities and infrastructures with it, mind. We are talking about a sleeper ship plopping down on a planet and being unpacked into a city.
That's still an unfair comparison though, as the colonies would presumably have people who are well educated in various fields, as well as all the benefits of modern technology and research. It wouldn't be gradual development of a civilization, but more of a jump-start.
However, pretty much any discussion of scale in Freelancer or Discovery is inherently meaningless since most of it falls apart if you apply any sort of logic or theory to it. There's no shortage of things in the game that don't make a whole lot of sense. If you were to get into fixing it, you'd probably just make a new game.