This has been a recurring topic for a while with me- Food has capped usefulness for its primary mechanic, population growth, because growth caps at 300 on Normal speed, and you can't get more than one pop per turn. (the capped growth rate is why shipping people away doesn't actually prevent the excess Food being wasted, just the pop cap being wasted) And as a result, it's usefulness deteriorates pretty rapidly in the span of time between hitting that threshold and gaining Food-Industry conversion. As a result, it often doesn't feel rewarding to seek it out unless you're specifically building for... Industry, a different FIDSI. Hissho Observances and the now better highlighted Population Destruction mechanic are now much clearer examples of where this can cause problems, as sacrificing a unit of population isn't a cost at all when it can be replaced instantaneously, allowing Diligence Ritual to stack as high as its cooldown will allow with no real cost in lost Population.

The fix though is very simple, and something I'll be making a mod for ASAP. Two simple steps.

1- Increase Population Growth cost for each Pop on System, like Riftborn

2- Add a cost to launch a Pop from a Spaceport equal to the Growth Cost that would be cancelled out by sending them

If the devs were interested in making sure Riftborn have to actually deal with their increasing costs instead of just shuffling about without caring about the costs, then there could be an Industry cost instead for shipping Riftborn specifically.

Because non-Riftborn grow passively instead of actively, a higher cost increase would likely be necessary for balance, probably around 100 Food, though even 75 would improve things. The important thing is that shipping a unit of population costs the exact same amount, so each unit shipped out is neither a net loss nor net gain, percentage bonus shenanigans aside.

In addition, this will improve Ecologist Population management gameplay immensely. It's a bit of a problem that trying to increase Food actually makes it more and more difficult and obnoxious to manage population, and as a result Food is Ecologist but actually makes Ecologist gameplay more difficult because the time allowed to organize populations keeps getting shorter. With the needed Food to keep pace constantly increasing bit by bit, Food is always a good idea, and much less likely to inadvertently sabotage management.

twimpix wrote:

Wholeheartedly agreed with point 1. I'm not a pro who's able to elaborate on the topic like the OP but I can sense too that there's just something not right with the food/growth mechanic. I'd like to give this a spin if it came to the G2G balance mod.

Point 2, I'm not sure about but we'll never know if we don't try.

The second mechanic is a necessity so people don't just sidestep the first mechanic. That happens with Riftborn right now- people just ignore the increasing costs by shipping away the Riftborn, thus causing the cost to go down again on that system. By making it cost you Food/Industry to ship people around that's no longer a problem so long as it's equal to or greater than the amount the player would otherwise be reducing the cost.

So if sending someone away reduces the cost of the next pop by say 75 Food, but it cost you 75 Food to launch them from the spaceport, you didn't really gain anything. It's still fine for getting pops where they need to go but it's not going to help speed up growth any.