GalCiv 2 & and some various (super) technologies

from Stardock Forums
I very much doubt any of this is possible in GalCiv right now (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), but it would be nice to see perhaps in GalCiv 2.

Population limits: Maybe it would be good to have the population limit tied to the PQ of the planet. I've got a Class 102 (using Kryo's terraforming enhancement, plus the Class 35 event) that has hit the 100 billion limit, the same as a puny Class 25 or so planet.

Some supertechnologies that could massively increase populations. I've built a ringworld (I think using Nand1's improvement pack), but it doesn't really do much. A ringworld would in theory increase the population that a planet could support by quite a lot. A Dyson sphere (something I'd love to see in a game somewhere) would be even more impressive, although given that it would be so big as to unbalance the game, I have no idea how you'd implement it. Maybe just a mini-Dyson sphere around red stars with lots of planets (for building materials) should be allowed.

Terraforming ships - it'd be great if you could terraform a planet without having to colonise it first. You'd probably want to do that first before you send millions of people to a cruddy world.

I'm not sure how planet defences (when there are no ships there) work at the moment, but it seems unrealistic that a planet can't defend itself without ships in orbit. You'd still have orbital and ground based defences like missile bases, energy weapons and whatnot that could shoot down transports or ships trying to attack you even if you don't have a fleet there. Maybe star systems could have their own defence rating and hit points based on the number of defensive installations you've built (which would be destroyed as the planet's HP was reduced)?

Just some random thoughts.
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Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
My thoughts on the PQ-based population limit are (PQ-5)^2*10*PQ (in Mils of course) This means PQ 5 and lower are completely uninhabitable, PQ 6 can hold 60 Mil, PQ 15 has a pop limit of 15,000 Mil. PQ 20, 45,000 Mil. PQ 25, 100,000 Mil (the current limit--I think PQ 25 sounds about right for that limit). PQ 50, 1,012,500 Mil. And your PQ 105? 10,500,000 Mil.

If that seems like too much, try (PQ-5)^2*5*PQ.

What do you think?
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I like it - it sounds like a good function to use. That would make the max population of a Class (Earth like) 16 planet about 19.3 billion, which seems reasonable, with advanced technology.

Certainly, technologies that would under normal circumstances, allow extremely high PQ planets, like a ringworld or Dyson sphere would be capable of supporting trillions (going by some rough figures, a Dyson sphere with a radius of 1 AU would have the surface area of about 210 million Earths (or a population of about 4 quintillion). I guess that would make it a PQ 7300 :)

The only thing I could see as a problem with that is that it could unbalance the game towards those who grab the PQ26 planets or get the PQ35 event, but that could easily be rectified by toning those events down a bit (say make it a PQ23 and PQ30 respectively?).

I can't help thinking about the Caves of Steel depicted in Isaac Asimov's books though. The population was certainly high but in GalCiv terms, as the PQ wasn't high, morale would have been low.

Maybe you could also have technologies that increase max population size beyond the PQ limit that would give corresponding morale penalties (evil tech?).