If there is one skill that separates the men from the boys on Stellar Conflict, it is the ability to pop trick. When I first started playing SC, I found the FAQ on pop tricking to be woefully inadequate, and my game suffered from it. The following is a summary of what I have learned from my own experimentation, as well as what I learned at the knee of SC veterans BigB and DarkFalcon.

What is Pop Tricking?

The primary goal of pop tricking is to quickly get a 50+ population planet (hereafter referred to as a builder) quickly. Pop tricking can also help you build tech and boost econ. Seeing as how econ and tech are the two major variables in the game, being able to help in both areas, as well as gaining a builder or three can obviously be very beneficial.

How it Works

In SC, the way population growth is calculated is by multiplying the current population of each of your planets by your agriculture ratio. If you have a planet with 10 population, and your ag ratio is 1.2, the planet will begin the next turn with a population of 12 (10 * 1.2). When you pop trick, you lower the populations on all your planets to a point where your agriculture ratio gets very high. On the next turn, your planets' populations are multiplied by this very high ratio, giving you population where you did not have population before.

The Most Basic Example

Let's say you have two planets colonized. One is your home system, and the other is a planet with 10 agriculture. You decide that you want this planet to become a builder. You have no other planets, and no ships in play. Your total agriculture is 110, since you have 100 on your home system, and 10 on the second planet. If you lower the population on your home system and this planet to one, your agriculture ratio will be 50+ next turn. How do we know this? It's simple, we use the Patented BigB SC Agriculture Ratio Equation. The equation is this:

Ag Ratio = (Total Agriculture / (Total Population + 0.1))

All very simple, except for that little 0.1. "What's that for?", I remember asking. BigB sums it up like this... it's a fudge factor. SC does strange things sometimes, and by adding a little leeway to your calculation, you can be sure that you aren't going to be messed up by something random that SC does.

In this case, we can determine our agriculture ratio as follows:

Ag Ratio = (110 / 2.1)

110 divided by 2.1 is 52.38. Therefore, if we can lower our population on all planets to a total of 2, we will have an ag ratio of 52.38. Why do we want this? Because the turn after you begin your pop trick, all our planets will have their current population multiplied by the ag ratio. In this case, it would leave us with two planets with 52 population, both being builders.

How to Pop Trick

Okay, you like what you hear, but you don't know exactly how to go about it. Let's take the above two planets again. In order to pop trick, you would lower the population on both planets to one. You will not be able to support any ships (See Pop Tricking and Tech), so you will have to dismantle them all. You set the populations to one in the systems menu, and end turn.

The next turn, you will see that your total population on the two planets is two, one on each planet. Your agriculture ratio will be 52.38. Go back to the systems menu, and set the population on your homeworld back to 100, and the population on your other planet to either the maximum number of possible resources, or to 51, whichever is higher. Why 51 you ask? When you build a colony ship, the population of the planet where you build is reduced by one. You don't want your builder to drop under 50 population, because then you cannot build there anymore. On the third turn, you will have populations of 52 on your home planet, and 51 on the second planet. Build some ships now, you're probably gonna need them real soon.

Pop Tricking With Colony Ships

Now, you don't have to have a planet already colonized in order to pop trick. You can pop trick with a colony ship instead. The most important thing about this is to know how much population will be on the planet you are colonizing during the middle turn. This can be determined by knowing the BR of the colony ship. Colonized systems start with population equal to the BR of the colony ship squared. This means a BR2 colony adds 4 population, while a BR3 colony adds 9. This is very significant, because you will have to set the population on your homeworld and any other systems you have to a different setting. If we were trying to pop trick the same planets as in the above example with say... a BR2 colony, we would have to use different population settings. Instead of setting the home system to population 1, we would set it to population 4. That way the two planets have the same population. What would our ag ratio be? Well, let's use BigB's formula.

Ag Ratio = 110/8.1

Our ag ratio would be 13.58. Is this going to be enough? Well, since the ag ratio is multiplied by the planet's current population, the post-trick population would be 13.58 * 4 or 54.32. So we would get a builder this way too. You do the same with BR3 colony ships, except you set the population of your home system to 9, to match the projected population of the new system.

Pop Tricking With More Than Two Planets Now, our above example is very nice, but it's not really a very good pop trick is it? All we really got out of it was one builder. We can do a lot more. Let's say we are thinking of pop tricking with two planets. One is a 50-agriculture planet behind your home system, and the other is a 10 agriculture planet out in front. You can trick both these planets, and make all three of your systems into builders. How? It's just as easy as tricking two planets. Let's use BigBs equation again. Your total agriculture is 160. You are going to lower the population on all three planets to one, so your population will be three. Therefore ag ratio will be 160/3.1, or 51.61. After pop tricking, all three planets will have a population of 51. You do the same for any number of planets. A good rule of thumb is that the first planet you want to get is covered by your home system. Any additional planets cost another 50 agriculture per planet. Use the ag ratio to be sure, but this is a quick way to find out if you can trick.

Pop Tricking and Tech

I hope you are following so far. We're gonna back up a little bit now and explain why you have to dismantle your ships in order to pop trick. Your tech gain is determined by the following formula:

(Percentage of unused fuel + Percentage of unused min)/2 * Scenario tech level

Lets say you are using half of your minerals and fuel, and you are in a 2.00 tech scenario. You are using 50% of fuel and minerals, so fuel+min/2 is equal to 0.500. Multiply this by the tech level, and you get a 1.00 tech gain. The problem with this is that if you use MORE than your maximum amount of fuel and minerals, you will lose tech. If you have only 2 population (and therefore only 2 min and fuel), and you are trying to support 2 BR1 attack ships, you are going to be short 14 minerals, and 30 fuel. When you compare these numbers to the small amount of fuel and minerals you are producing (two each), you get a huge tech loss of about nine points. This is because the tech loss is calculated in relation to your current min/feul. If you only have 2 min and fuel, a 30 points shortfall is very significant. This is why you dismantle the ships. However, this leads us into our next section....

Pop Tricking With Ships In Play

Okay, we're getting pretty advanced here. You see, if you are pop tricking with a higher pop setting, like say 9 population per planet, you might be ale to support a few ships. Take a look at the SC build chart at:

http://www.televar.com/~acamp/SC.build.chart.html

You can see how much it costs to upkeep each of the ships, and you can figure out if you can support a few "floaters" while you pop trick. The most common use of this is to leave a science ship around to explore your opponent's backfield. Since a BR1 science ship costs 6min and 12fuel to maintain, you can support it if you have 12 population during the middle turn of a pop trick. It's not that hard to do this, you only need 3 planets with at least 4 population. An important note: ships that will be used up before the start of the middle turn do not use resources. This means you can colonize, terraform, or even use an engineer during the turn you start your pop trick. As long as these ships are used up when you start your second turn of the trick, you will not get dinged when your population drops

Pop Tricking With Mixed Population Settings

Up to now, we've been using the same population setting on all the planets we are pop tricking with. You don't have to, and a lot of the time you can get a lot more out of your pop trick. The most common use of this is the 2-1 pop trick.

The 2-1 pop trick is done when you are pop tricking with your homeworld and another planet which has more than 50 agriculture. Let's say for example that you are trying to trick a 60ag planet. When you calculate your ag ratio using population settings of one, you get an ag ratio of 76.19. This is a nice pop trick, because instead of a 50 population homeworld, you are going to have 76, giving you more resources to work with. However... we can do a lot better. Try the same calculation with a pop setting of three. 160/3.1= 51.61. This means that if you set your home planet to two instead of one, and the second planet to one, you will still end up with an ag ratio over 50. You will end up with your homeworld at full population, plus a 50+ population builder. You can do this with any number of planets, just like in a normal pop trick. You just have to have 50 more agriculture for each extra planet. Don't try this unless you are sure you can pull it off. You are better off with a 76 population homeworld and a 50 population builder than if you screw it up and end up without getting builders. Another mixed-population trick involves planets where you do not have enough resources to make all the planets into builders. Let's say you have a 50ag planet, your home system, and three 25ag planets. Your total agriculture is 225. Lets try BigB's ratio and make them all into builders.

Ag Ratio = 225/5.1

Whoops. only 44.12. This is not good. If you tried to pop trick all those planets into builders you would end up with five 44-population planets. This is very bad. Can you still pop trick? The answer is yes. Lets say you only need 3 of the planets to become builders. One planet is on the front line, another is your home system, and another is a back planet you want to become a builder to help you colonize. Set the three planets you want to become builders to population two. Set the other two planets to one. Run the facts through BigB's formula and let's see what we get.

Ag Ratio = 225/8.1

27.78. This is enough to get you builders at the three planets you set to two population. You end up with three builders, and two planets at 27 population. Important Note: whenever you change pop settings, make sure the planet you are setting actually HAS the population you are setting it to. This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised. If you set a planet to 2 population, but it only has one to start with, it's going to pop trick as if you set it to one. However, if you calculate the population gain that the planet is going to gain from your normal ag ratio you might be able to get away with it. For example. If you have a planet with one population, and you need it to have 2 population for your pop trick, you can set it to two if your ag ratio is sufficient to bring it up to two at the beginning of your middle turn. SC rounds all population additions up, so if you have anything over 1.001 ag ratio to start with, your planets will grow at a rate of at least one per planet.

Slow Tricking

There are many names for this style of pop trick, but they all do the same thing. Slow tricking (also known as safe-tricking) is done by setting the population of your home planet to 50, raising your ag ratio slightly. Since you have at least 50 population (and 50 minerals and fuel), you probably won't have to dismantle any ships There is no real formula for this pop trick, it takes a lot of experience. Most players lower their homeworld population to 50, and leave all the other planets at the same population setting. This often gives you an ag ratio of over 2.0. You need the planets you want to slow trick to be relatively higher population to start with. Population 10-20 planets work well. If you have a 20 population front planet you need to make into a builder, you can lower your HW pop to 50. Run your total pop through BigB's formula and make sure you can get an ag ratio of just over 2.0. The following turn, set your HW population back to 100. The front planet should double in population, to about 40. Your HW will be back to 100, and all your other planets will have grown as well. Make sure your ag ratio stays high enough after the first gain to boost the planet up to 50 the turn after. If manage to get your builder to 40 population the first turn, you are going to need a 1.25 ag ratio

to finish the trick. A word of caution. Unlike other pop tricks that help you gain tech, this pop trick actually hurts your tech level. You probably won't lose tech, but since you are losing 50 fuel and min off your homeworld, your used fuel and min percentages are going to be higher, resulting in less tech development.

Written by Peter Grauer. Submitted Aug. 21, 1998