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I haven't found a way to eliminate pop booming from the game, but I have come up with ideas to reduce it.
The first idea I tried was simply to reduce the Growth bonus for Democracy to +1. This means that factions need all 4 of democracy/faction growth bonus, planned, creche, and golden age for bases to boom.
I eventually gave up on this because I needed to give alternate bonuses to Democracy, and I wasn't happy with any of the ones I thought of.
My second idea was to increase the base number of columns in the "nutrient tank" needed for population to grow ("nutrient cost modifier") to 12, hoping that that would increase the Growth SE for a faction to pop boom to 8. Unfortunately, it didn't.
My third idea was to give the "No Future Society" SE choice a -1 growth modifier, and to reduce the nutrient cost modifier to 9. This is normally invisible to the player (their base Growth factor becomes -1, but because of the reduced modifier the rows of the nutrient tank are still 10 cells across), but it again requires the player to run both planned and golden age in order to pop boom (at least until a future society choice is discovered).
My most recent idea is to reduce the growth modifier of each of the political SE choices by 1: Frontier, Police State, and Fundy all get -1 Growth modifiers, and Democracy's Growth bonus is reduced to +1. Again, I reduced the nutrient cost modifier to 9.
The last two methods have the advantage of being completely neutral to normal-game SE choices. While ideally I'd like to be able to remove booming from some mods entirely, the way these mods require bases to achieve Golden Ages while the faction runs Planned has a nice strategy effect. The "bureaucracy drones" which result from having lots of bases make it very difficult to achieve Golden Ages. and so players have a choice between many bases that can't pop boom or a few bases that can. (Normally I find building lots of bases to be a much more powerful strategy than building only a few.)
I also reduce the growth penalty for Green to -1, because if I left it at -2 then any Political choice except Democracy would reduce the faction to zero population growth.
If one removes crawlers and hydroponics sats from the game as well, one can bring Hab Domes wayyyy down on the tech tree (e.g. Planetary Economics) without hurting game balance, which leaves players with some interesting choices about the number of bases they'll found that you don't see in the standard game.
The first idea I tried was simply to reduce the Growth bonus for Democracy to +1. This means that factions need all 4 of democracy/faction growth bonus, planned, creche, and golden age for bases to boom.
I eventually gave up on this because I needed to give alternate bonuses to Democracy, and I wasn't happy with any of the ones I thought of.
My second idea was to increase the base number of columns in the "nutrient tank" needed for population to grow ("nutrient cost modifier") to 12, hoping that that would increase the Growth SE for a faction to pop boom to 8. Unfortunately, it didn't.
My third idea was to give the "No Future Society" SE choice a -1 growth modifier, and to reduce the nutrient cost modifier to 9. This is normally invisible to the player (their base Growth factor becomes -1, but because of the reduced modifier the rows of the nutrient tank are still 10 cells across), but it again requires the player to run both planned and golden age in order to pop boom (at least until a future society choice is discovered).
My most recent idea is to reduce the growth modifier of each of the political SE choices by 1: Frontier, Police State, and Fundy all get -1 Growth modifiers, and Democracy's Growth bonus is reduced to +1. Again, I reduced the nutrient cost modifier to 9.
The last two methods have the advantage of being completely neutral to normal-game SE choices. While ideally I'd like to be able to remove booming from some mods entirely, the way these mods require bases to achieve Golden Ages while the faction runs Planned has a nice strategy effect. The "bureaucracy drones" which result from having lots of bases make it very difficult to achieve Golden Ages. and so players have a choice between many bases that can't pop boom or a few bases that can. (Normally I find building lots of bases to be a much more powerful strategy than building only a few.)
I also reduce the growth penalty for Green to -1, because if I left it at -2 then any Political choice except Democracy would reduce the faction to zero population growth.
If one removes crawlers and hydroponics sats from the game as well, one can bring Hab Domes wayyyy down on the tech tree (e.g. Planetary Economics) without hurting game balance, which leaves players with some interesting choices about the number of bases they'll found that you don't see in the standard game.
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