Worker Penalty?

[Kakihara]

hey folks,
just wanted to ask a quick question, since it seems to be covered nowhere on the web: what exactly DOES worker penalty do?
I mean, obviously it should decrease your production or something like that, but I'm not sure if it does.
anyone got a confirmed info about this?

oh btw: first post here. great forum, gotta love it

[rewster1]

Are you talking about when you colonize a planet and it shows you "Worker Penalty: 25%" or "50%"?
It actually applies to workers, farmers, and scientists, and tax income, and it pretty much does what you'd expect, except that it rounds to the nearest whole number.
This penalty is due to the gravity on the planet being different from your race's Home World.
It combines (added together, not multiplied) with other modifiers that are percentage-based, such as government and morale.

This combined percentage penalty is applied AFTER all other bonuses such as a +1 racial pick or automated factories, though it doesn't apply to output from buildings.

So, if you are feudal and normal gravity, and are settling a high gravity planet, don't bother researching because your scientists there will produce a grand total of 0 output due to -50% gravity penalty and -50% feudal penalty.

Which can suck when there is a HG artifacts planet near you...

[Kakihara]

hm... but I actually tried it with workers (production), and there wasn't any penalty on a 50% worker penalty planet. with scientists on the other hand, I found the RP to be halved.
so are you sure it affects industry, too?

[rewster1]

I'm fairly certain it does apply to workers. Were you by chance using a Unification government?

[Kakihara]

yes, I'm Unification

[rewster1]

In that case, Unification +50 production and an HG planet -50 production cancels out, so you get "regular" production. Your food probably looks the same. Check at a different planet that is normal gravity, and unification should give you more than "regular" food and production.