Industrial Waste and Max Population

[Zeraan]

I scoured the OSG and MoO Manual, but they do not give a formula on how much waste impacts the max population, nor how much it kills off population if there's too much.

Do any of you know the formula?

Also, the event "Industrial Accident", how does it work exactly? Does it just add a certain number of waste, or does it degrade the planet as well? How much waste is added? Is it proportional to the max population or production of the planet?

[Ianus]

Re: Industrial Accident
I've never paid attention to just how much waste is added by the event. It doesn't usually seem to take more than a turn to clean up the waste and get the second "damaged environment" announcement. Once the waste is cleaned up the planet becomes Radiated and the population maximum is reduced. I just had a game where the event hit my homeworld VERY early (it was still pop 100) and the planet ended up as a Radiated pop 50. I don't know how previous terraforming affects this reduction but I will pay attention in the future.
An interesting note: a planet that has become Radiated by the event can be Atmospheric Terraformed back to Minimal, but if the event hits a planet which has ALREADY been Atmospheric Terriformed you CANNOT use AT a second time on the same planet.

[RefSteel]

I scoured the OSG and MoO Manual, but they do not give a formula on how much waste impacts the max population, nor how much it kills off population if there's too much.

Do any of you know the formula?

Each unit of waste reduces (nominal) max pop by one.

The maximum amount of waste that can build up on a planet is equal to its base size minus 10. Thus, a size 100 homeworld can have up to 90 waste, and a base-size 20 planet, even if terraformed up to size 130, will never have more than 10 waste. Note that Atmospheric Terraforming and both Soil Enrichment techs increase the planet's base size however (unlike terraforming).

That's the easy part.

The way pop actually dies off is more complicated, and I don't actually understand it at all. (It almost never comes up because one almost never permits waste to accumulate). I think kyrub is the only one who might know (or be able to find) the exact formula. Some simple testing revealed that the formula is neither simple nor intuitive; it probably is related in some fashion to population growth, but not in an obvious way, and it appears to be rather buggy.

Also, the event "Industrial Accident", how does it work exactly? Does it just add a certain number of waste, or does it degrade the planet as well? How much waste is added? Is it proportional to the max population or production of the planet?

An Industrial Accident has the following effects:

- The planet's environment becomes Radiated (and thus Hostile).
- The planet's base size is changed to one half of the planet's max population (not counting waste) - including terraforming - and loses all terraforming, soil enrichment, atmo-terra, etc. Thus, a size-10 world terraformed up to size 50 (with IT+40) becomes a size 25 world ... and can now be terraformed up to size 65!
- The planet receives its maximum possible allotment of Waste (e.g. 40 for a planet that used to be size 100 and is therefore now size 50; 15 for the size-10 world terraformed to size 50 and accidented down to 25 as above.)

Note that population on a planet in excess of its current total size (base size + terraforming-completed-so-far) is lost immediately and completely during the interturn (unlike population merely in excess of the nominal planet size due to waste). This is processed before events however, so when the Radiated event hits, you have one turn to terraform the planet and/or transport its population away before anyone actually dies.

@Ianus: At least in the base game, it is certainly possible to use Atmospheric Terraforming for a second time on a planet that had been AT'ed prior to being hit with an accident. (I just did so in a test game in fact, by a lucky coincidence.) I'm not sure if kyrub's patch changes this (I hope not...) or if the Soil Enrichments function the way you described though.

[Zeraan]

-snip-

Thanks for your explanations! It really helps! Yeah, usually people don't pollute, but I want to handle it the same way if they do.

[Ianus]

Bah! I should know better than to make declarative statements in a community like this. I swear I remember games where I couldn't use AT twice on the same planet, but maybe I am thinking of back when I played on 1.2? Anyway I take back what I said. It's nice to know exactly why in the late game the Industrial Accident can actually end up improving the world.

[Zeraan]

I ran several experiments, and found something VERY interesting.

Meklars DO NOT pollute! If you set their eco all the way to left, then go to next turn, you'll see that they produced NO WASTE! Max population stays the same, there's no penalty! This is a bug indeed!

I then tested with Humans, and they DO produce waste. Here's the results:
100 Pop, 200 Factories - One turn produced 90 waste
92 Pop, 200 Factories - planets list show loss of 8 population. Lost 8 population
84 Pop, 200 Factories - planets list show loss of 8 population. Lost 8 population
77 Pop, 200 Factories - planets list show loss of 7 population. Lost 7 population
72 Pop, 200 Factories - planets list show loss of 5 population. Lost 5 population
67 Pop - Lost 5
63 Pop - Lost 4
59 Pop - Lost 4
56 Pop - Lost 3
52 Pop - Lost 4
50 Pop - Lost 2
48 Pop - Lost 2

and so forth

Apparently Planets List shows last turn's loss/gain of population.

It looks like the regular population growth formula is this:

population += (population * 0.05) * (1 - (population / maxPopulation))

But if I plug that in for first turn, it should have lost 45 population. But instead, it losts only 8. The population decline don't seem like a stiff penalty. You can waste for a turn or two to rush produce something, no biggie. If it actually loses 45 population on first turn, you'd seriously reconsider producing waste.

Rather, the formula if there's waste looks like this:

population -= (population / origMaxPopulation) * newMaxPopulation
100 / 100 * 10 = 10 first turn (off by 2)
92 / 100 * 10 = 9 second turn (off by 1)
84 / 100 * 10 = 8 third turn (off by 1)
77 / 100 * 10 = 7 fourth turn (off by 2)
72 / 100 * 10 = 7 fifth turn (off by 2)
67 / 100 * 10 = 6 sixth turn (off by 1)
etc...

I'll try and see if I can come up with the correct formula. But this is very interesting about Meklars not producing waste...

[RefSteel]

I ran several experiments, and found something VERY interesting.

Meklars DO NOT pollute! If you set their eco all the way to left, then go to next turn, you'll see that they produced NO WASTE! Max population stays the same, there's no penalty! This is a bug indeed!

Huh. I couldn't duplicate this bug (at least, not in the base game; I haven't tried with kyrub's patch).

[IMG]["mekwaste" image to be rehosted because photobucket is terrible][/IMG]

I'm not sure what could have caused the bug for you though....

I did notice another race behaving oddly though: The Sakkra appear to lose pop to pollution at twice the rate of other races. (e.g. 16 pop lost from a fuly-populated, fully-polluted base-size 100 world.) Cloning tech does not appear to duplicate this effect for other races.

[Zeraan]

Huh. I couldn't duplicate this bug (at least, not in the base game; I haven't tried with kyrub's patch).

I'm not sure what could have caused the bug for you though....

After re-testing, this is what I found: While the planet is not at max factories (less than 400 factories with RC2) for Meklars, they do pollute. But once they reach 400 factories and 100 population (not sure if population matters), they cease to pollute. I have the GOG.com's MoO 1 version. Can you tell me if base game has this bug as well? If so, then it's not kyrub's fault.

I did notice another race behaving oddly though: The Sakkra appear to lose pop to pollution at twice the rate of other races. (e.g. 16 pop lost from a fuly-populated, fully-polluted base-size 100 world.) Cloning tech does not appear to duplicate this effect for other races.

This is a good find! This means that the formula for population growth incorporates pollution, as evidenced by Sakkra. How do you explain double loss otherwise? They have double growth, and apparently double loss as well.

I'll examine population growth formula in OSG carefully, and see if I can glean any ideas from it on how it handles pollution penalty.

[Zeraan]

I think I'm getting close. I did a test run of human, and if they produce 20 waste in one turn, the population drops by only 1. So this led me to think, what if there's two passes in population growth?

First pass: deduct population loss from pollution
Second pass: add population as part of natural growth

I then came up with the following formula for population loss:
Pop = Pop - (Pop * ((Waste / MaxPop) * 0.1))

And the formula for population growth as per OSG, assuming a normal planet:
Pop = Pop + (Pop * ((1 - (Pop / MaxPop)) * 0.1)

I ran a simulation and this is what I got (Game's actual result on left, simulation on right). You can see that it's pretty close!

Code:

100               100
92                91.819
84                85.08296
77                78.24093
72                72.1672
67                67.77913
63                63.34966
59                59.77627
56                56.17638
52                53.45908
50                49.81282
48                47.97975

I think this may be as close as we can get without looking at the game's code. Or maybe this may inspire some ideas in some of you?

[RefSteel]

After re-testing, this is what I found: While the planet is not at max factories (less than 400 factories with RC2) for Meklars, they do pollute. But once they reach 400 factories and 100 population (not sure if population matters), they cease to pollute. I have the GOG.com's MoO 1 version. Can you tell me if base game has this bug as well? If so, then it's not kyrub's fault.

Okay, I've duplicated the bug now. Definitely not kyrub's fault; I've been testing it in the base game. But it's actually worse than it first appears: It's not limited to the Meklar, and it doesn't require maximum factories. It appears that, once the number of worked(?) factories on a planet passes a certain number (I'm having trouble pinning down the number; it may have some relation to the planet's base size - including e.g. Atmospheric Terraforming - but I'm not sure what relation if so...) the planet starts to automatically clean up a certain amount of waste (including waste already present on the planet) for free. If the number of worked factories on a planet is large enough, the planet's waste disappears completely and never reappears until the number drops. (Population does appear to matter under some circumstances, but it isn't consistent; there may be an effect related to terraforming levels, but that's pure speculation right now.)

I think I'm getting close. I did a test run of human, and if they produce 20 waste in one turn, the population drops by only 1. So this led me to think, what if there's two passes in population growth?

Nice! Your formulae seem to approximate actual population loss well for other planet sizes as well.