The last version was simplistic, and horribly flawed, but at least you knew what was going wrong.

"population pressure .. check"

Now its a double-tally system, wherein you then do the subtraction in your head, and find it doesn't make sense.

I stared at the readout for at least 20 minutes, trying to make heads or tails of it, before I finally figured out to overload on G&S, and carry on business as usual.

It doesn't effectively make any real change in my strategy, now I just need to build some approval nodes, instead of loading out on farms.

50% a good change, 50% muddying the waters.

Stardock, please remove the mud.

I believe in the latest video the devs said that the curve becomes nonlinear farther down the line. Not sure the exact formula though.

So I thought, as well (based on my homeworld Earth).  But at low pop, you can exceed G&S without penalty.

c.f. a colony with pop 5.4 and G&S 4.4 still has 100% Approval.

I feel the need to write another Journal ...

I haven't had much time to play so far and mostly have been trying out the Yor but so far I hate g&s for morale as implemented in beta 3.  Then again I hate managing morale as an entity unto itself.

I liked being able to adjust the economy to increase morale, in so far it makes sense to me.  I realize its a game and the devs don't have unlimited time to implement something complex but I would much prefer a system of morale based on societal and cultural factors like at war or not, availability of g&s based on industrialization, how well the empire's economy is going and local factors like the ideology decisions.  So for war like races bonus for being at war, penalty for non war like races, consumer goods would be equal to 10% of industrial capacity if that number is below your population there are shortages you get a penalty, techs that increase consumer goods add 5% to that and every 5% above gives a diminishing returns bonus to morale as well.  Economy could be as simple as in the black you get a bonus and a penalty for in the red, since economy is generally never an issue late game anything that give more bonuses to economy would also have to be subject to diminishing returns as well.  Influence could also give a bonus or penalty but I don't really have an idea for that.

The current scheme seems to be forcing the issue of smaller populations and I don't like that mechanic either, if I want to run high populations and have high morale I basically have to build farms and stadiums to the exclusion of all else.  

i was not a fan of the old system specifically approval being tied to planetary income
the only solution i could see to keep that system and make it make sense would be to tie approval to total income (as in what you make every turn)

the problem with that is if you werent paying attention you could fall into an unrecoverable death spiral.

my people arent happy so they're not working,

they're not working so im getting less money,

which drops my approval

which means they dont work as hard.......

Basing morale only on global economy is why morale shouldn't be tied to just the economy.  Its a good idea to have g&s or consumer goods or something like that as part of the equation but leaving it as a set value just encourages low populations especially if its local only.  

I think the best solution is that morale should not be mainly based on each planet individually or just one contributing factor.  

I feel like some are making the new system seem much more complicated than it is. The game clearly shows you what your goods and services are on each planet. It also shows your population. All you have to do in not let your population get too far above your goods and services. There really isn't any math involved. It is prefect one to one? no, but that's not a bad thing. As far as I know you will always have 100% approval as long as your G&S are higher than your population. Plus, because it isn't exactly 1 to 1, you get a buffer so you can have a slightly more population, which is great.

Would I like to know in a little more detail exactly how the population/G&S=approval formula works? Of course, but the current system is pretty straight forward and I think some people are blowing its complexity/obtuseness way out of proportion.

I see three options

a.) bring back the old way but without the wealthy population bonus, and remove alot of the morale bonuses from the tech tree.

b.) make it so 8 g&s and 10p=80% approval and not some other odd number. Also would be nice if that meant approval bonuses were 1% for every percent over 50%.

c.) I forgot what I was going to say...

DARCA

After I spent a few minutes trying to understand it, I decided I like the new system much better. If my approval goes below 100%, I need to add goods and services. Because the decline is gradual and linear-ish, I am not forced to make an immediate adjustment, I can stay relaxed and get to it when I get to it.  I suppose someone obsessed with optimization, er, I mean someone deeply engaged with the minutiae of the game might be annoyed by the need to pay attention to some arithmetic, and I am sympathetic to that perspective, but I am not OCD, er, I mean I do not seek pleasure from the knowledge I have utilized every possible crumb of advantage.  And I thoroughly enjoy the fact that the goods and services values don't match up perfectly with the population values.  I prefer fuzzy logic and quantum values to Aristotelian and Newtonian systems.

For Beta 3, as Aaron Rodgers might say, R-E-L-A-X, and see if you can enjoy the simplicity of:

G&S >= Population : Approval 100%

G&S < Population : Approval < 100%