Factory workforce mechanics need changes/rework

[MKL81]

I know this subject was discussed already, but I cannot go past my frustration at times when dealing with how the population growth mechanics work, and how greatly it impacts the fun in the game. Let's take northern sectors that are owned by Split for example. Both ZYA and FRF owns 16 sectors/subsectors total. Do you know how many of them got any meaningful population to add bonus to workforce growth system? 1. One. O N E. When i.e. roleplaying as Split building even a bit bigger factories that would be home for 2-3 thousands of workers is an effort in futility. Maybe your children will be able to witness fully populated factory, because you, yourself will probably die of old age before that happens. That basically forces you to build in single sector only. Why? There are other sectors that, judging by the description, should be well populated like for example Wretched Skies V which, according to description "is home to a number of lesser Split families". Why almost nobody lives there to provide such bonuses?

Can we get changes like that in the next iteration of 7.0? I don't need new ship icons. I need changes like that to happen.

[GCU Grey Area]

Have not had any particular problem recruiting my workforce, even for very large stations. My HQ, for example, currently has a workforce of over 250k, recruited over the course of a game which has been running for around 26 in-game days.

The key thing with large stations is to build habitation first during an expansion phase (i.e. before production modules, storage, etc) & allow the station to recruit workers in excess of those currently needed. That way the station's recruiting the necessary workers while the modules they'll work in are being constructed. Also means the station remains at/near optimal productivity throughout, rather than efficiency suddenly dropping every time new production modules are completed.

[Falcrack]

If you have mixed workforce, each race will accumulate separately. So mixed habitation modules (Argon, Paranid, Teladi, Split, Terran, Boron) will result in much faster growth. That of course adds complexity to the food requirements though.

[MKL81]

Have not had any particular problem recruiting my workforce, even for very large stations. My HQ, for example, currently has a workforce of over 250k, recruited over the course of a game which has been running for around 26 in-game days.

"I never had issues during my 1000h playthrough, not sure what are you talking about". Vast majority of people never spent 10% of that time on a single game. I do not require god knows what kind of changes, changing few entries for the population database would not require much effort. Especially that it would make sense lore-wise. But maybe I'm not hardcore enough.

If you have mixed workforce, each race will accumulate separately. So mixed habitation modules (Argon, Paranid, Teladi, Split, Terran, Boron) will result in much faster growth. That of course adds complexity to the food requirements though.

I know that, but as you said, the added complexity makes it barely worth it to me.

[GCU Grey Area]

Vast majority of people never spent 10% of that time on a single game.

Suggested approach works regardless of game length.

In 10% of that time (i.e. about 2½ days) a station can recruit a workforce of around 25k. This should be sufficient for a station with around 100 production modules (given that my HQ currently has over 1k production modules & has been in a state of almost continuous construction since the start). By pre-emptively building habitation it's entirely possible to keep pace with the optimal number of workers required by a station.

This is based on just a single species of worker by the way (Borons in my current game). While Falcrack is entirely correct, the only reason I've ever felt the need to build more than one type of habitation is purely for role-playing purposes e.g. during one of my Split games my stations were always built on the basis of keeping Split habitation nice & safe right at the core of each station, with Argon slave quarters placed as ablative armour around the station's production modules.

[jlehtone]

I did peek my station, in Windfall. Population 0. "Base growth" seems to be 20. Is that per hour? If yes, then it could accumulte 480 per hour.
(Could and does, but since I give no food, they go away.) 10% of "1000 hours" is 100 hours, so that magical 2000 workers.


However, what does workforce have to do with fun?

[GCU Grey Area]

I did peek my station, in Windfall. Population 0. "Base growth" seems to be 20. Is that per hour? If yes, then it could accumulte 480 per hour.
(Could and does, but since I give no food, they go away.) 10% of "1000 hours" is 100 hours, so that magical 2000 workers.


However, what does workforce have to do with fun?

It's possible to have a far higher recruitment rate than +20, even in a sector with no bonus due to planetary population. A sufficiently large station can gain a 'large habitat' bonus of up to +1000% (i.e. +220 workers, rather than +20), though unfortunately I don't recall the precise threshold at which that bonus maxes out.

[Zloth2]

Try making a station out past Hewa's Twin. There's no water at all out there! Thankfully, having a population is completely optional.

It's probably a ways off for MKL81, but could you populate via purchase? Put an L maintenance or builder module on the station, fill a large freighter up with service crew at a faction station that matches your food, go to your station, and deposit them there? If I remember right, crew removed from a ship show up on the station.

[Koizuki]

In addition to pre-building out habitats, you can also build some welfare modules to help with the workforce accumulation in sectors with low or no natural bonus. Two of the three are pretty easy and simple to acquire right after you get the PHQ, and should give +70% bonus to workforce accumulation rate together.
Building extra habitat space also helps, as there is a "large habitat" type bonus that is applied if there's still a huge amount of space remaining.

I'm also not sure that the changes are precisely every hour, but I've not timed it properly myself. The only place it really matters is the Shipyard anyway, as they are continually drained for Service Crew when building new ships, but everywhere else you generally only have to fill up once and then it's fine unless you're unable to meet food/med requirements for a bit, in which case the decrease in workforce is pretty debilitating in terms of how fast you lose them until you can restore acceptable food/med deliveries. As long as that doesn't happen though, it should fill up in a pretty decent amount of time.

[jlehtone]

Assuming that one quits playthrough at 100 hours, how much of "large habitat, with welfare" does get built by then (and the production on top of it)?

Two separate stations accumulate faster than their habitats in one station (unless they are on different sides of that large habitat threshold). Those separate stations do build faster too.

[GCU Grey Area]

Assuming that one quits playthrough at 100 hours, how much of "large habitat, with welfare" does get built by then (and the production on top of it)?

Never played a game quite that short, that's barely getting started as far as I'm concerned. Shortest game so far for me was a ~5 day ToA game (abandoned due to imminent arrival of the Borons). Just checked my archived final save. Only built one station in that game, my HQ with 170 production modules. It's workforce of 45k was more than sufficient to benefit fully from large habitat bonus. HQ also had a single welfare module, although it's effect on workforce recruitment was so trivial (compared to large habitat) I didn't bother building the second.

[Imperial Good]

In practice it is not really an issue. Between bonuses from the dozens of large habitations, and the bonuses from the welfare modules, your large stations will usually end up mostly fully staffed by the time they are finished being built. There comes a point that the workforce starts to grow faster than the modules that need them can be built, at least for some production modules. Just need to make sure that you build the habitats along with the modules, and not all at the end.

[gbjbaanb]

TBH why is this a problem? Unmanned fabs produce product, and I think its probably easier to just build 2 fabs rather than 1 fab and a habitat.

The workforce system does need an overhaul but complaining you don't have enough workforce to min/max a station isn't it.

(I'd like to see fabs require workers, less than they have at the moment probably, and then the system you build in becoems more important. You'll have to build your specialised stations in heavily populated areas and ferry the goods in, like the real world does. I'd like to see workers need more than 2 types of "food" (as meds are built from the same base products, does nobody need "consumer goods" built out of refined metals and hydrocarbon plastics?!), I'd like to see more welfare modules like entertainment complexes and shopping districts that encourage tourism trade as well as workers, passenger transports and black market bars and clubs)

[Koizuki]

The main reason to ever add any workforce in the current iteration of the game is to increase production efficiency without increasing input requirements.

Building two unmanned fabs will outproduce a single manned fab (I don't think any of them gain a 100% bonus from workforce,) but it does come at the cost of needing twice as much input, whereas the manned one will require the same input as a single unmanned fab while producing more products out of it. The cost of these extra goods is usually more than the cost of just buying the food and meds from NPC's, in cases where you don't want to bother with the logistics yourself. The bonus output also results in being able to feed more intermediary fabs down the supply chain without needing to increase the original raw input as well, with this bonus getting more notable the more steps are in that production chain.

It's still entirely optional though, so it can more or less work either way; I do it simply because I like seeing people walking around my stations.