Census
Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:33 pm
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
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