Production and Population curves

[rgp151]

I'm sure others have done this, but I haven't seen it, so I just wanted to get a basic sense of the differences in the starting production of the races. 

For this I sent the colony ship to a planet in 3 turns, but sent no pop to it and just clicked through the turns allowing all pop to grow on the home world for the first 35 turns. When MAX factories was indicated I grew pop at the maximum possible level to still produce MAX factories, thus resulting in getting max pop and max factories at essentially the same turn. This is the fastest way to max production. This was not possible with some races, who naturally max pop before factories, such as Sakkra and Meklar. 

   

   

Again, this is just a basic experiment. Moving population around and diverting production to research changes many things.

This also doesn't account for waste. I didn't measure effective production along the way, which looking back I guess I should have, but I didn't think about it at the time.

At max production Humans have 151 RP, so 151 effective production. Sakkra have the same. Klackons have 205. Silicoids have 253. Meklars have 270.

So its interesting that while Meklars have 147 more gross production than Klackons at max factories, they only have 65 more net production. And of course only 17 more net production than Silicoids.

Of course this all at pop 100, no tech. Pollution reduction benefits the Meklars more than anyone else and increases their advantage.

[haphazard1]

Interesting comparisons. The effective (net of waste clean up) numbers would be interesting. The Silicoids do save a ton of BCs by not having to deal with waste, but their slow pop growth really hurts their development curve. Meklars have a higher total cap once they finish maxing out, but produce amazing amounts of waste and spend a huge amount on clean up.

Specific games will vary depending on planet sizd and quality, research spending, seed population, etc. But knowing the general trends is still very helpful.

[rgp151]

Yeah. IN this test the Silicoids max their pop around the same time as teh Klackons, a few turns later. But in reality I don't think that will usually be the case because sending pop to planets slows down the Sili growth more. But the import thing is that for both Sili and Klackons maxing production requires more micro-management of the population, to grow pop once you start hitting MAX factories. But there is no getting away from the Klackon supremacy, because they get higher production faster than anyone else, and can thus grab planets faster than anyone else.

[rgp151]

The other big advantage of the Klackons is that since their added production comes from population, that production doesn't generate waste, so the ratio of net production to gross production is highest for the Klackons, after the Silicoids of course. For all non-Klackon/Silicoid races prior to any techs, about 40% of production goes to cleanup. For Klackons, only 34% of production has to go to cleanup.

[MaxPower]

Interesting results.
 Just for comparison, I made an excel calculator for theoretical expected production results for 1 planet at maxed factories and population. For some unknown reasons (at least for me) your meklar net production is higher than expected. Maybe I am missing something in my calculator.