Colonists and Hierarchy of Needs

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The Ascent Magna Carta has been signed. No longer are colonists slaves or mindless servants. They now have "rights" and motivation, or the lack thereof. They are no longer mindless drones, but have the beginnings of personality and now have the ability to expect some things. So this is how this all works ...

The concept of Hierarchy of Needs (HoN) is that once basic levels of need are satisfied, or mostly satisfied, a person can and will move to the next area of need to become satisfied. The lower on the scale, the less happy, thus less motivated a person is to strive for the loftier things in life. As each area of need is satisfied, a person becomes happier, thus their morale goes up. Improved morale means improved production.

Waervyn's Hierarchy of Needs Video


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Contents

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs (HoN) is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization" and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.


Each level on the HoN scale identifies the need and the mechanics related to Ascent:TSG:

Physiological Needs:

Air, water, and food are metabolic requirements for survival in all animals, including humans. Clothing and shelter provide necessary protection from the elements.

Buildings for first level: Residential tower/module, Food in warehouse (all 4 food types needed for 100% Food Security).

Safety (Security) Needs:

Personal security, financial security, health and well-being, safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts

Buildings for second level: Hospital (1 for every 50,000 colonists), Basic Medical Supplies (stored in warehouses. Consumed like food).

Love/Belonging Needs:

Friendship, intimacy, family

Buildings for third level: Entertainment Complex (1 per 50,000 seems to work well. More for faster socialization. Less for slower)

Esteem & Self Actualization Needs:

For game purposes, these two have been combined at present. They are very close and are sometimes blended by some who view the scale in 4 levels.

"'What a man can be, he must be.' This quotation forms the basis of the perceived need for self-actualization. This level of need refers to what a person's full potential is and the realization of that potential. Maslow describes this level as the desire to accomplish everything that one can, to become the most that one can be."

Higher (Tertiary) education is considered a large part of this. Only about 20% if the colonists will seek tertiary education.

Buildings for 4th/5th level: University (Educates 1 person per day. 1 University every 5-10 offices. Can have too many and not work well), Mine Office(MO) Building , Farm Office(FO) Building.

Tracking HoN

HoN can be monitored when you hover your mouse over the Entertainment Center:

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The Food and Housing Security are the Physiological Needs.

The Employment and Healthcare Security are the Safety/Security Needs.

The Social Integration are the Love/Belonging Needs.

The Ambitious colonists are the ones satisfied in the Esteem & Self Actualization Needs.


Morale is an overall colony wide reflection of the "mood" of the colonists. The more Needs that are satisfied, the happier the colonists, and the higher their morale. Morale can be monitored by Trending, which can increase or decrease depending on the colony-wide attitude of the colonists. At present, the highest morale is 76% until more structures are added to the game.

With improved morale comes improved productivity. A player does not need to address the higher levels of HoN and can construct more mines/farms to compensate lower production levels. Yet, by not providing the physiological or security needs (level 2) will bring production to almost a complete halt. Not feeding your colonists will cause riots and completely stop production (level 1). In the long-term, developing a HoN strategy for your colony is recommended since your farm and mine production will increase from 75% base to up to a 120% increase.

Tertiary/Self Actualization Needs

Tertiary can be challenging since combinations of actions are required to maintain a balanced colony.

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Approximately 20% of your total population will ambitiously seek tertiary (higher) education. The image below shows a colony of 118,051 population (hover over a residential tower. "#### of" shows your colony population):

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You will need such trained people to fill your Farm Offices (FO) or Mine Offices (MO).

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The base efficiency with no offices is 75%. You will need 1 FO/MO and 1 for each 10 farms/mines on your colony. Once you build offices, you will need to tertiary (University-trained) colonists. Each University trains 8 colonist every 24 hours.

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Example

For a 20,000 population colony think about this. 4,000 colonists will want to be trained.

One colonist every 3 hours means 8 per day per colony. To train enough in one week you would need 190 Universities. Adding 72 Universities will grow your colony by 21,600 colonists required to staff the Universities and each of them will need to be trained. So your colony has to grown by more than 100% just to train the colonists needed to get your efficiencies up in a week. Of course, it will take you longer to train those who will train because you just added 21,600 who need to be trained.

Whenever you drop multiple new mines/farms, you will bring in new colonists. It will need more FO/MO to make them efficient. You will need more trained. Dropping in more Universities will mean you need even more. So finding a stable number of Unis is good. Adding a FO or MO will require 300 more colonists and 300 more wanting tertiary education.


You can have so many FO or MO that they are using up all your tertiary trained colonists and you do not have enough to staff the rest of the offices. This means having too many creates a situation that you can not get your efficiencies up because you can not train more once that 20% ambitious is filled.


This is why an interface for us to see the number of mines/farms, the number of FO/MO and a few other details is really needed. It is almost impossible on larger colonies to count. So educated guessing is the best we can do.


Tsenna has created a really nice building counter so you can track your ratio much easier. It is free and available to all.

Go to colony.ascentextras.com to use it.


Waervyn's Colonization Yield Calculation Video

Starting Suggestions

New Colonies

10-20 Universities should get you going. It will take some time to get those trained. Be careful that you do not overbuild and can not house your Universities thus they can not effectively train. 1 per every 5-10 offices is a educated guess.

If you use the zigzag method of layout, you can have about 50 mines/farms per dome. So you need 3 FO or MO per dome of that type. Again, do not overbuild because it will require more trained then you may have colonists for. 1 to 12 ratio of offices to mines/farms seems to get you close to 120% efficiency.

Established Colonies

Half to one dome of Universities will do well. It will keep your colonists trained and you should see your FO/MO staffing filling up over time. It will take time to train the trainers if you dump a bunch all at once. Patience is needed.

One thing I did was add domes and slowly removed some of my Uni to fill the jobs needed. This allowed me to shift after I got most of my colonists trained. I actually removed too many and had to add some back and felt the circle of needing more to be trained so they could train and struggled to get my efficiencies back in line.

1 to 8 offices to farms/mines is effective.

Massive Colonies

Having a good balance of FO/MO per farm/mine is critical. Having two domes of Universities will speed things up as you construct your offices. It could take months to turn a massive colony into a capable HoN-compliant colony. If you incorporate the HoN needs as you go, given time, it will balance out and your production will soar.

Having a 1 to 5 or 6 farm/mine to office ratio will be needed to get to 120% efficiency.

Miscellaneous

If your ambitious colonists are at 100% and you still need to train people for your FO/MO, you have too many of them or Unis.

A neat trick - do not tear down right away. Power off some universities. See how it changes the numbers. When you turn the power off, people leave that building and will go to work in the buildings powered up. I do this when I have farms and mines in a colony. I power down the FO until I get my MO staffed. Then I power the FO back on. It allows me to direct the colonists.

If you do not have enough jobs after powering off some buildings, add hospitals for the unemployed (negative number of jobs needed) to create easy job demand. You can power hospitals on and off to move colonists around as needed also.

Government Settings Colony/OSB

You will need to food cost, shelter cost and healthcare cost that each colonist has to pay. You also have to set minimum wage, tertiary wage (Uni trained), and unemployment benefits for each colonist.

You will also have to choose what you want banned from your colony. It is good to ban Neurostimulators if you want to quickly improve your morale. Leaving neurostimulators unbanned will require your colony to take a while (up to 2 weeks) for morale to stabilize if they are not banned. To ban multiple items list them with a comma separator.

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Summary

All will need to be patient as you work through the first negotiations with the colonists. It bodes well that civilization is returning and quality of life is improving enough that colonists now have some rights and voice into their employer's empires. Looking back in history, the more people's voices were heard, the better things got. The more freedoms directly correlate to the new technologies and better quality of life for everyone. The hope is that we all are not just about making more credits, but bringing quality life back to the stars. Something better than what was, or we will see the same collapse. We need each other and the colonists to finally make our way back to Earth! So help us bring joy and happiness to the smallest among us. If their rights are protected and addressed, ours are sure to be also.

Words from the Ancient Wisdom tell us, Treat others the way you want to be treated. "Treat your colonist well and you will be treated well by them. Just because our neural pathways are suited for space flight, doesn't mean we are better, just different. Let us be the light of hope and freedom as we work our way back to an Earth that may be in extreme darkness."

Jam said he was coming back to do more. He will. Until then, I am happy to help anyone figure all this out as we go. If you are having trouble, post a thread or catch me in game. We will work it out. I think it is well worth the effort. Some have decided to just build more mines instead of deal with any of this. That is okay for the short term, but when colonists awake, you may have trouble finding enough to come to a colony they are treated as slaves. Having this sorted and in place will make that transition a no-brainer.

~ RAM


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