Alki and you are on the same page with everything Mzyxptlk?
OK I've thought about the 150 cap, and abolishing it, and the pros outweigh the cons. My greater than normal activity somewhat biases my opinion though, and for the whole of PA a cap at 150 is probably a little better. Having thought about population caps, the verdict is still out.
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Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk
I propose removing the sector ceilings in population. This will give players more strategic freedom in deciding what kind of planet they want to have. Valuewhore? 100% mining! Researching scans or close to your HCT limit? 100% research. Scanner or distwhore? 100% construction! Incomings and a large stockpile? 100% production! Getting cov opped? 100% security!
In my opinion, this reinforces one of Planetarion's strongest points, when compared to similar games (pia, spm, etc): the fact that there are several ways to do well. By making these choices more fundamental, people will choose a path and stick with it; by making them more extreme, you encourage people to stick by those paths, and allow them to diverge more.
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But really how many unique styles are there in PA nowadays? In the examples you gave, really all of them apply best to the traditional value based planet except the construction example, which specifically mentioned 'scanner or distwhore'. The few styles that exist would certainly diverge more (a plus in my eyes, though I'd rather different types of military/traditional planets diverge more rather than the gap between scanners, dist whores, value whores, etc grow wider), but in the current setup I think it's unbalanced to which styles benefit most. Having said that, a bonus side effect would be new styles would likely appear, and though likely less powerful than existing strategies, would definitely make the game more interesting and fun (the most important thing). I'm not entirely convinced this is the best thing for PA, but it couldn't hurt to try it for a round and see.
And what about the FC/SC/RL effective % caps? 250 finance centers with 100% mining population, wowzers! I cba to think if that would be cost effective though; I think only construction based styles would go much over 150.