Census

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MarkG88
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Census

Post by MarkG88 »

Census and Census Capacity in VBAM has always been secondary to RAW and Productivity based on the nature of the economic system. That's fine overall, it works great, I like it and I'll always play it as is.

I can't help, however, but think that it's not realistic to prioritize colonization and so forth on RAW over Census Capacity so I've bounced ideas around in my head (and the occasional email to Jay) about utilizing Census for more than just "factory workers" and the recruiting limit for ground units. [See comment on SIZ under that topic for questions on census and ground units].

Ideas I've considered:

1. Census as an additional source of EP (aka tax revenue)-- so much EP per census point. Say 1/5 (with 1 EP per five points of "connected" census collected monthly or annually). By "connected" I mean there is an attached line of communication between systems and capital (think supply line rules etc).

2. Census as a source of additional research points. Again a ratio of so many people per additional point of research (this can be tweaked for monthly or annual bonuses to the research stuff based on how the new tech rules break down). And this can be bumped up a bracket (smaller deninamtor) by research institutes, a dedicated tech tree to R&D (high speed computers, etc).

3. Census as a limit to size of military (this gets fiddly fast, but rewards high populated empires vs. their smaller foes)........Stalin's "quantity has a quality of its own" comment is true to a certain extent if the tech levels are fairly even and in most VBAM games it will be or there's no challenge/fun to it. Webber is addressing this in his "Honorverse" series where the Haven Republic with the massive census advantage keeps bloodying itself vs. the smaller but higher tech (and until last few novels, better led) Star Kingdom (now Empire) of Manticore.

Census in this case will be used to limit the SIZ of ground units an empire can raise per year (since ground units will be more manpower intensive than space vessels unless droid/warbots are the primary "grunts"). And also, census will determine the total SIZ of an empire's space fleet. Keeping this as simple as possible is paramount, my initial, completely unplaytested thoughts are:

3a. Maximum Ground Units SIZ = 3 x empire's "connected" census (so quarterly builds for units perhaps?, again this is for empires with living soldiers, droids will be based on EP/productivity..........cyborgs will be modified by both, etc).

3b. Maximum space units SIZ = 12 x empire's "connected" census (I prefer 10 x myself and I really would like a 10 month game turn too. That's just to tidy up the math and account for the "hidden costs of war" such as holidays, local calamities, overtime, production bottlenecks, strikes, the various "frictions of war" that Clauswitz mentions etc that would eat up several days of the "work year" in any empire. So I just want to trim 2 months off the calendar.........but that is mostly because I'm also hankering for a "macro" VBAM set of rules where one turn = one year, and that is definitely fodder for a whole other topic so I'll quit while I'm mostly behind, instead of completely behind hehe.

-Mark
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Tyrel Lohr
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Mark, you have certainly put some thought into this!

Currently, the major change I think players will see in regards to Census in 2E is the divorcing of economic and production output. I may have mentioned this already, but the current 2E outline calls for economic output (the EP actually earned) to be equal to Census x RAW, while production output (the amount of EP that can be spent at a location on each turn) would be equal to Census x Productivity.

The change to economic output somewhat dovetails into your first point above, in that Census will be the aspect of a colony that generates revenue. The greater a colony's Census statistic, the more EP it will generate.

Colony infrastructure will undoubtedly see a makeover in 2E, and one of the aspect we have planned is for each colony to have the following possible infrastructure types: Census, Morale, Productivity, Agriculture, Tech, Intel and Supply. Specifics on the new infrastructure will be reserved for a later design journal, but the second item on your list fits into this change (to a degree). Instead of purchasing tech investment directly from the point pool, you will instead increase your colony's Tech statistic. The total Tech Capacity of all colonies in your empire is then the number of Tech Points you have to spend each turn on research projects.

Now, this Tech infrastructure will likely not be tied to Census in any meaningful way, as I think there is a desire to create the possibility of a player establishing small science outposts or military research facilities at locations that don't also serve as major population centers.

As for point three, I was thinking about this last night when I was trying to fall asleep, incidentally. While I think it has merit as an optional rule, I am not sure that the added administrative overhead is worth the effect. Maintenance Costs already act as a pretty good "cap" on military size, and this limitation will be reinforced in 2E where you have about five times the number of improvable colony statistics.

Working from your notes here, and incorporating new infrastructure types, I would be tempted to say a colony could supply a total SIZ of units equal to Census x Supply. This means Earth could maintain about 100 SIZ of units, while a small colony with just 3 Census & Supply could only maintain 9 SIZ of units. When the idea hit me last night, I would considering instead imposing a limit where an empire's total Supply would be how many task forces (or ground divisions) it could field. However, I dropped the idea pretty quick before (finally) falling asleep because I am not sure there is a way to make it work without feeling very artificial and adding more things to track. Better to regulate purchasing or construction limits, I would think, so you only have to deal with them at the point of purchase.

As a final note, going back to Census taxation, I think your internal trade revenue adequately represents this -- at least it does so well enough without trying to figure in tax rates and related Morale Checks (which would make a decent optional rule, but it would have to be optional).

-Tyrel
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Rainer
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Post by Rainer »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:Better to regulate purchasing or construction limits, I would think, so you only have to deal with them at the point of purchase.
True. There are also lots of background that have fleets stationed in the middle of nowhere for strategic reasons.

Tyrel Lohr wrote: As a final note, going back to Census taxation, I think your internal trade revenue adequately represents this -- at least it does so well enough without trying to figure in tax rates and related Morale Checks (which would make a decent optional rule, but it would have to be optional).
How about adding morale directly to the income calculation? If income = (economic output) * morale / census then keeping morale exactly 1 point above half census would not be as important and there would be more of a sliding scale. There also would be more of an incentive to increase morale.
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Rainer wrote:How about adding morale directly to the income calculation? If income = (economic output) * morale / census then keeping morale exactly 1 point above half census would not be as important and there would be more of a sliding scale. There also would be more of an incentive to increase morale.
I have tried this in a campaign before, and it did have a significant impact on how the game played because you always had to worry about Morale dipping lest you end up with income and food shortfalls. It made gameplay pretty maddening, to be honest, because a change in Morale destroyed your ability to plan or budget, and also required constant recalculation of commerce income.

That all being said, I think including this as an optional rule would be a good idea. It would allow a planet's outputs to fluctuate a bit from the baseline without resorting to the none/half/full breakpoint system. If Morale is allowed to exceed Census in 2E (have to test it), this would also allow very happy colonies to be extra industrious.

-Tyrel
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Post by Rainer »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:That all being said, I think including this as an optional rule would be a good idea. It would allow a planet's outputs to fluctuate a bit from the baseline without resorting to the none/half/full breakpoint system. If Morale is allowed to exceed Census in 2E (have to test it), this would also allow very happy colonies to be extra industrious.
I would not allow morale to exceed census. Especially on census 1/high RAW worlds this could lead to very big fluctuations.
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Adding numbers to Census

Post by Emiricol »

In the past it has been very difficult to correctly gauge population as a number, based on Census number, because it's not a linear progression. So, a planet moving 1 Census for a new colony could be a billion people or it could be a thousand, depending on the size of the source planet - but the transport costs and new Colony Census are the same either way.

From what I understand, 2E uses a population growth type calculation rather than random census growth roll.

So my question is whether 2E is going to resolve that little calculations weirdness, or make it easier to somehow homerule it in a way that makes it possible to put real numbers on Census? This is particularly important if one wants to write setting fic or maybe turn it into an RPG setting.

Thanks,

-Emiricol
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Tyrel Lohr
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

I should be able to create a chart that references Census values to approximate population totals and add it to the book. I have always pegged 1 Census to be about 10000 people or less, while 10 Census is about 4 billion people.

The disparity between population sizes is a strong argument in favor of not allowing Census to be moved from one location to another. Right now it is the only colony statistic that *can* be moved.

-Tyrel
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Post by Emiricol »

I know how I voted in the poll ;) Thanks for the replies.
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