Solar System Census

A note from the Starmaker: When you create a new habitable planet, the population number is generated according to the planet size. For example, if you make Earth habitable it'll display population of around 6 billion people.

I'm finding that one out.

I'm a new comer and the last thing I want to be is one of those annoying fly by forum party poopers. The game is wonderful, addictive, engrossing, fascinating, edifying.

But I have to say, it is a tad bit disappointing that so much rigor and effort and precision was put into designing hard science fiction space craft and apparently not even 1% as much rigor, effort or precision was put into conceiving of hard science fiction space ecologies. All the propulsion, weapons, powerplants, sensors, etc. are completely viable in terms of present day technology. But I'm not sure if 150,000,000 humans living on Luna (or even more living on Mars) is even remotely viable in terms of present day technology. Despite quite a bit of interest in the topic, no one has yet to produce a working arcology on even a scale of a handful of people, and even in the lowest risk contexts such as rural Arizona. Much less Antarctica or 100 meters under the ocean surface or in orbit!

Perhaps most of the obstacles to arcologies are fiscal and motivational, not technological; I can tentatively accept that as an initial stance. But in terms of long-term sustainable ecosystems that can self-sustain indefinitely without additional external inputs after the initial setup and infusion of materials, I'd say we might not know about that for a very long time. With those points in mind, it might have been a bit less speculative if all of these population values were an order of magnitude or so lower . . . Heck even 1.5 million Lunar dwellers seems plenty (especially if it is the second largest celestial community in the system) for game mechanics purposes.

And what I'm saying is: in the absence of explanations for how 150 million people are living (apparently quite copacetic-like) on an object like Luna, my eye-squint guesstimate is: all of these figures are grossly inflated and out of whack with the games obvious intent to be as hard of science fiction as possible. Moderating the relative population numbers based on the objects' properties is great, but on what basis are we even able to assert that any of those numbers should be > zero? We do not even have a single person living in space at this time, and we do not have any proof that we have the technology to do it. Until we have a farm up there that supplies itself with its own nutrients and seed (and has managed to run without external inputs for a decade or so), it is not even possible to assess the question, and thus proposing even a single permanent human resident on the Moon is inherently speculative from a strictly scientific standpoint. Everything people need to survive while spending time in space is brought from Earth and the conservative stance is: that is how it will always be. I personally don't think that, but I also don't think that it will be as apparently easy as the game portrays for a planet of apes that is coming apart at the seams and undergoing environmental Armageddon to toss several hundred million people up there and initiate a phase of human evolution which leads some centuries later to ~1.5 billion humans living off Earth.

Yes, we have sent a few people into space and some for long periods (437 days spent on Mir is the longest single trip). People can survive in space. But this is not the same thing as populations of people (even if that population is only 1) LIVING in space permanently. If memory serves, the absolute longest total lifetime duration that any space traveler spent in space is less than 1000 days, and that was spread over a dozen or more journeys over decades of employment as a cosmonaut.

There isn't even any plan by any competent entity to embark on the necessary infrastructure and resource buildup to pursue the very initial stages of an actual space colony, much less a self-sustaining space colony. Given those cold hard facts, any fiction which portrays populations of humans living off of Earth is speculative. But portraying a billion humans living off of Earth is arguably far more speculative than portraying a couple hundred thousand. Even more so when the game seems to suggest that life is pretty decent, fertility is apparently normal, and lifespans are also normal; all pretty hard to accept in the absence of an elaboration of HOW their technology is keeping them healthy, happy, horny and sane.

Engineers like to imagine that humans are inconsequential I guess, but the fact is, without the squishy sensitive apes all that fancy hardware and chemistry are perfectly irrelevant, and the majority of costs for manned space flight are the manned part. This is why robots make much better space travelers than humans at this point.

It doesn't take away from the game; it merely calls for an expansion or sequel in which these topics are given the same degree of rigor as the spacecraft engineering.

An overhaul that hashed out the "human, population, ecological, logistical and economic" side of the COADE Universe would be a HOOT to contribute to! Did they make enough to keep going? The SteamSpy numbers didn't look so great, though without a publisher to carve out their egregious cut for doing Muck All I suppose a few tens of thousands of bucks over a couple year span is a nice revenue stream, even a living wage depending on your situation.

Very sad because there is an incredible work of art and science in the heart of this.

Your addition is really hard to follow, do you think you could list the names of each object next to their population? Or group them into categories (Earth system, Mars system, Belt, Jupiter system etc etc)?