Inside Scoop page 2

ON PLANETARY POPULATION MIGRATION: AN ANALYSIS OF SYSTEM-WIDE WORKTHINGS

by Smitty

I upgraded the airports on Numazu, assuming that I'd be moving workthings from the hugely growing population on Numazu to other planets to complement their workforces. What I discovered is that moving workthings is vastly more complicated than my first assumption. This is because workthings moved is calculated against the BASE population - so my dreams of leaving Numazu at 1000 workthings and moving off all the extras were quickly dashed!

In order to get a real idea of the effects you will cause on your planets, it is important to do a quick mathematical analysis of what will happen when populations migrate. Bear with me through the math and you'll have an extremely accurate view of what moving one worker or a thousand will do.

First, the variable definitions:

Pb is the unaltered base population of the home planet you're moving workthings off of (normally 1000)
Ex is the total increase in population all builds add to the population (5 antigrav and 10 airports would be 15%)
Ex is called the "build multiplier" in this document
Plost is the total number of workthings lost because they were not in the base population when the build multiplier was used to calculate actual population
Pt is the number of workthings transferred of the planet

At each reset, your planet's population can easily be calculated by multiplying base population times efficiency modifier.

Pb * Ex = total population on the planet.

Using this basic value, you can get the number of workthings "lost" due to lowering the base population.

(Pb * Ex) - ((Pb - Pt) * Ex) = Plost

If you take Pt and multiply by the build modifier (En) of the NEW planet the workthings are on you get the number of workthings gained by adding to the base population of the new planet. It is important to remember this gain, because your "losses" will seem especially high if this value is not counted.

Pt * En = Pgained

Now, if you are transferring from a highly promoted planet to a lower level planet, your build multiplier will most likely be lower on the workthings' new planet. This means you have gained Pgained workthings total, and lost Plost workthings total due to the bigger base population on the new planet being multiplied by a LOWER efficiency multiplier.

In this case Pgained - Plost will be negative. This is a bad situation, because it means that if you had simply left your workthings alone, you would have more workthings OVERALL in the system(1).

We can see by this simple analysis that moving workthings is actually counterintuitive. If you want to increase the total number of workthings you have in the ENTIRE SYSTEM, you must move workthings from less improved planets to more improved planets.

So now we know that you can increase the total number of workthings in your SYSTEM by moving workthings from less developed planets to more developed planets. However, this will stack lots of workthings on your well developed planet(s) and leave your lower level planets hungry for workthings. So what are the implications of this?

First, we all know that for every 100 workers above the base population of 1000 there is a 1 point increase in the consumption of consumer commodities(2). Second, every 100 workers below the base population is a 1 point decrease in the consumption of consumer commods.

What does this mean to you? In short, you can drastically alter your planet's roll by shifting workers (at least, for the consumer commods)! Want to add production points to the consumer group? Move the planet's population out. Taking the population from 1000 workers to 500 will provide a 5 point boost to production of consumer commods, due to lowering of demand. Of course, these consumers have to go somewhere - so the new planet they land on will have an increase in demand for consumer commods. If the efficiency multiplier is higher than their home planet, you won't just get an increase for the workthings you move- because they will be subject to the increased multiplier. In effect, you are actually moving more workthings than you thought!

In closing: what does this mean for you?
1. Moving workers has multi-faceted implications for both the home and destination planet of the new workers.
2. It is possible to have a drastic impact on a planet's roll via workthing migration
3. It is possible to both decrease and increase the overall number of workthings in a system via migration.

Whether migrating workthings is good for your system is a topic of discussion for another time!

Smitty, Pacifica System Magnate

(1) assuming that was your goal - initially it was mine. Then things changed!
(2) these commods are: cereals, fruits, games, meats, nanfab, pharms, proteins, sensamps, sims, textiles.

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