indicate2d Population Level Glitch

[Torvald]

Dear Game Moderator,

I just received my turn 2 info for indicate2d, and I think something has gone screwy with the population level factor for neutral worlds.

Here's what happened. On turn one, I moved to the two worlds adjacent to my homeworld.

On turn two, I captured one of those worlds, but the population was already maxed out at the population limit of 114. That is a bit odd, but could potentially happen.

However, I was unable to capture the second world, because it had a population of zero, with no population limit listed (meaning no population was allowed).

I've never encountered this situation before in Starweb or RSW, so would appreciate you checking this out.

Thanks.

[drwr]

There is considerable variation in the population and population limit on the neutral worlds in RSW. Furthermore, because of the random galaxy weights, some games may tend to produce lots of worlds with low population or low limit, and other games may tend to produce many worlds with high population or high limit. (It's also possible to have a game with high limit and low population, or low limit and high population.)

It is rare to come across a world with zero population. It is even rarer to come across a world with a zero population limit. But you just happened to get lucky on this very rare find.

On reflection, though, I think your instinct is right: for game-related reasons, although it might be arbitrarily low, the population limit of a neutral world should probably never be zero from turn 1.

Therefore, I've just tweaked the global game parameters just a bit, in order to prevent more 0-limit worlds in the future, and I've adjusted the population limit of the world in question so that it is still low, but not quite zero.

The actual population of this world is still 0, though, and that falls within the normal game parameters. If you want to capture the world, you will have to migrate some population onto it.

David

[Torvald]

Thanks for the quick response.

Yes, what you've proposed sounds like a fair and reasonable resolution to the world that ended up with zero population plus a zero pop limit.

Thanks again.