Let us lower populations?

[Duroland]

But that's kind of part of the game, isn't it...? I mean, we get issues regarding our ever-increasing populations - would this then make those issues invalid?

My nation is at around 20 million and already gets issues about "overcrowding", so I'm afraid there's no relation between pop. size and issues.

I too am thinking that such enormous pop sizes sound quite ridiculous. Besides, the growth rate (millions each day) is ridiculous too.

Problem is, I have no clue nor suggestions. I understand that a lower growth rate would keep young nations to low pop levels for too long time.

[Reich1]

Why would any one like to lower populations any way? Everyone want huge population not low.

[Sionis Prioratus]

I like knowing how long nations have been around for, so I'd find this change rather irritating.

^ this.

[The Most Glorious Hack]

Meh. The Caloris Basin roleplays (er, roleplayed) as having a population of... 6, I believe. Not six million or billion, but six. For another nation of mine, I stripped off the modifier: 200 million became 200. It's easy enough to simply roleplay lower populations, I really don't see a need to add mechanics for changing game-side.

Besides, it's an interesting challenge to fit 15 billion people into Greenland.

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

I like knowing how long nations have been around for, so I'd find this change rather irritating.

If a nation ceases to exist for a while, then is restored, its population will be misleadingly low, however.

Personally, I don't see the importance of changing this. I barely even look at my nation page, so even though two point whatever billion -- don't remember the exact number -- far exceeds Vojvodina-Nihon's actual population (something on the order of 300,000 iirc, as used in various RPs), it doesn't bother me all that much. I just say "Vojvodina-Nihon's population is 300,000" and be done with it.

[Glen-Rhodes]

My biggest fear with this is that the number of people who say, "Cool! I always wanted to reduce my population" will be less than the number of people who say, "OMG WTF JUST HAPPENED I LOST HALF MY POPULATION YOU A-HOLES."

Which is a legitimate fear considering the outrage over the "Population bug fix" April Fool's Day prank.

No it's not, if the population is a setting that can be changed, which is what Bears really wants.

[Poree]

I was a little shocked at how unrealistic the population numbers were when I first got here. Then a friend reminded me the who point of the site was not to be realistic, but was a sarcastic/funny/exageration regarding politics and international isues. So now the odd populations do not bug me.

I do nto think we should change it.

Just my .02

[Fatatatutti]

*shrug* It's just a number. Sometimes we have 8 billion people so you'd better not mess with us and sometimes we have only 8 billion so we can't afford to lose any. It's all relative.

On the other hand, my people tend to be a bit child-like, so they probably don't know the difference between a million and a billion anyway.

[Sdaeriji]

My biggest fear with this is that the number of people who say, "Cool! I always wanted to reduce my population" will be less than the number of people who say, "OMG WTF JUST HAPPENED I LOST HALF MY POPULATION YOU A-HOLES."

Which is a legitimate fear considering the outrage over the "Population bug fix" April Fool's Day prank.

No it's not, if the population is a setting that can be changed, which is what Bears really wants.

If population became a customizable field, how would we determine an upper limit? What would keep people from editing their populations to, say, 600 sextillion or something assinine? Would the system keep track of where the population should be and any entries in excess of that value would be rejected? If so, how would a person know how high their population was allowed to be? Would the "true" population be displayed on the settings page next to the population field? How would the largest population nation ranking work? Would it be based on the inputted population or the "true" population?

I'm just doing some open-minded rambling. To me, the upper limit would be important. I think that, for as many good RPers who would lower their population for RP purposes, twice as many bad RPers would raise their populations to ridiculous levels to be RP dickheads.

[Bears Armed]

My biggest fear with this is that the number of people who say, "Cool! I always wanted to reduce my population" will be less than the number of people who say, "OMG WTF JUST HAPPENED I LOST HALF MY POPULATION YOU A-HOLES."

Which is a legitimate fear considering the outrage over the "Population bug fix" April Fool's Day prank.

No it's not, if the population is a setting that can be changed, which is what Bears really wants.

If population became a customizable field, how would we determine an upper limit? What would keep people from editing their populations to, say, 600 sextillion or something assinine? Would the system keep track of where the population should be and any entries in excess of that value would be rejected?

That is what I suggested in this thread's opening post...

If so, how would a person know how high their population was allowed to be? Would the "true" population be displayed on the settings page next to the population field?

I suppose so.

How would the largest population nation ranking work? Would it be based on the inputted population or the "true" population?

That's a good question: If it's truly meant to be "largest", rather than "oldest", then I personally would prefer it to use the player's inputted value... but I can see that other people might disagree, and also that that would probably involve more coding than just using the 'official' value.

[Sdaeriji]

If population became a customizable field, how would we determine an upper limit? What would keep people from editing their populations to, say, 600 sextillion or something assinine? Would the system keep track of where the population should be and any entries in excess of that value would be rejected?

That is what I suggested in this thread's opening post...

I know. I think what I'm getting at, in a roundabout sort of way, is that if there is an upper limit as calculated by the game, then the implication is that regardless of whatever population is input by the player, the game will always have an official or "real" population assigned for the nation. If that's the case, I would naturally assume that the game would utilize that population figure for any game features that are derived from population. After all, I wouldn't expect a nation to lose the ability to customize its title simply because the user manually edited the population down below 500 million. And if that's the case, and I feel it would have to be, then what's the harm in allowing nations to edit their populations higher? The true population data would still be housed in the XML feed, I assume, and could be referenced if the need arose.

[Lenyo]

Why would any one like to lower populations any way? Everyone want huge population not low.

Some people want reasonable population levels. I personally believe all NS population counts should be 10% of what they are now. Much more logical.

[Enn]

Gravedigging and spam? In Technical?

[Techno-Soviet]

Its been less than a month...how is this gravedigging?