On Inflated Populations

[Naggeroth]

Several RPer's and I have recently been having an argument with TFU over what counts as an acceptable inflation of the NS population for fluff reasons. There were several suggestion's thrown around and then suddenly TFU throws out one whopper of a number.

18,950,100,223,751,000 Sapient People.

Now there has been some fairly major argument over this since that number is exceedingly high. Like "Holy Shit I can't see anything up here" high. However I decided that since me and a few people on MSN are not the authority of acceptable behaviour on NS, I figured I'd ask around and see what other people believe are acceptable levels to inflate one's population for a nation which will be in 'general play(IE: not ascended beings who have all sorts of rules for interacting with lesser beings, but a nation which pretty much is part of the general political scene.).'

What say you ESUS?

[Chronosia]

I say, my population is as it is and that's all that it is!

[Sskiss]

Like Chronosia, I use my population as it is. Anything over that is godmod unless everyone within the NS FT community agrees with it. I once proposed an one order of magnitude increase in population for NS FT nations, but even here, I knew that everyone had to agree on it for it to pass.

[Telros]

I agreed with it for the limited idea of having it for "fluff" or story purposes, but keep your NS population for military and stuff. But now, I see no point. Just keep your pop since there are enough problems with them and I see it as just adding something else to remember and do.

[The Fedral Union]

Look, I think its fine if I do this, I am not using inflation to win, to give me any advantage to do any thing of the sort and I still use NS page numbers for my military , but come on give me a brake, I want to rp my nation a certain way, I want to rp it as big, with a-lot of tech but that doesn't mean I will crush you, for fucks sake why cant numbers just not be mentioned and if we ever fight we assume our populations are sort of the same to balance things out if you do not agree. but in reality I'm not using this to win I want to do something with it, you keep saying oh your tech is wanky or stupid , or to much. I know you are trying to help but who thinks a ring world is stupid if someone wants to rp that way huh? What is wrong with you know allowing free form to be FREE FORM. I have been trying as much as I can to give my nation a certain image, a ring world and population like this helps, and frankly there are other post scarcity nations around, you keep going on and on about how you would have to ignore me and shit if I am post scarcity, guess what I'm post scarcity . To hell with winning NS to hell with specs I'm here to write and have fun end of story to hell with any one who wants to try to make my inflation or the way I use my tech as a way to win against any one, ITS NOT NOR WILL IT EVER BE, I refuse to go back in to my cesspool days, I wont be delgated to n00b any more, I will never again be that old TFU.

[Solar Communes]

I capped my population which should be at about 1 billion now, and for worse, humans are still a minority but fortunately they are growing as [spoiler]disguised ethnic cleansing like what the Australians did with Aboriginals[/spoiler] liberal policies on interracial relationships between humans and elves ensure the ubermensch genome shall prevail against the unterelfen genetic code in the future generations to come.

[Neo-Mekanta]

I mostly take a "NS Population = Nation's Population" approach to FT. The thing is, though, that Mekantans are, and always will be, Mekantans.

My nation has a population of about 12 billion Mekantans. My nation also encompasses many fully populated star systems, rendering the actual sapient population well above twelve billion. But that is not my population, I do not claim that as my population. I simply have that many people because of the Mekantan diet. Those extra people aren't people, they're cattle. But numbers matter, and I RP the Hegemony as if that number is 100% accurate. (Also, that the cattle aren't very happy about being cattle, making it a disadvantage.)

The thing about throwing around a number like nineteen quadrillion is that you can't separate that number from the power of your nation. The industrial base that kind of population would give you aside (since there are more than enough post-scarcity nations present here), you'd basically have infinite capacity to replenish your forces after a catastrophic loss. "Oh, carrier down, all hands lost? It's cool, dawg, we gots 196 trillion more, we good."

I'm not saying you committed a grievous sin and must be executed, Rob, but "no advantage" is pushing it.

[Derscon]

Personally, I treat any inflation like I would treat a large fleet or a large amount of drones.

To a point, hyperinflated populations are fine if RP'd correctly, as in manufacturing, you just have a lot of organics rather than a lot of drones.

However, these laborers are likely to be of poor quality, much like, say, ships.

Also, as we all know true post-scarcity is logically impossible, with umpteen quadrillion people, there will be resource strain. Period. TFU is not going to be a host to luxury goods, nor will it have a particularly high standard of living, meaning people are going to be generally discontent with life.

But Mekanta is right. To have that many people and claim no advantage is silly. You're gonna have to take some losses, post-scarcity or not.

[The Fedral Union]

*sigh* I am post scarcity and that many people could be supported on it, hell its NS... people play as they want. Post scarcity in my nation is due to energy to matter fabrication, dimensional and atomic cloning mumbojumbo. To be fair I just want an environment nothing more.

[Derscon]

*sigh* I am post scarcity and that many people could be supported on it, hell its NS... people play as they want. Post scarcity in my nation is due to energy to matter fabrication, dimensional and atomic cloning mumbojumbo. To be fair I just want an environment nothing more.

Sure, lots of ways to produce goods and what-not. My point is nothing is 100% post-scarcity, even though your society is as close as mortal imperfect beings can get, so may as well be called post-scarcity.

I get that it's an environment, but you have to make your trade-offs unless you have other motives. I RP as a god-like but non-interventionist society because I don't like war RPs and don't really want to invest that much time in NS. If you keep high involvement, but create a post-scarcity economy with basically unlimited manpower, you have to take losses somewhere else.