If production/research is tied to the populaiton it could be that 8bil on a class 10 gives 100% production capability. and mayby 16B would be needed for a class 20 to achieve 100% of the stated MP/RP/IP/Econ Increase/other bonus. It would still be abstracted but it would REALLY make 'winning' a planetary defense hurt.
If you were just leaving the minimum 8 bil from the initial colony on a Class 26 planet that you turn into a superfactory planet that pumps out dreadnaughts in 1 turn, imagine the impact that would have from a hard fought defense that only 600,000 survived. The damage and empty jobs would probably hamper production capabilities. But when it happened in GalCiv2, the turn after I just kept pumping out those dreadnaughts like nothing happened.
And though it was said in jest, it was actually reading on how industrialization has impacted the work week that made me origionally start thinking about how it would work in the future.
You want a machine doing all the work in the factory (and I whole heartedly agree). The next question though is what do you do with all of the people who used to do that job? The 80's power management approach was to cut all unneeded personnel, plus an extra 5-10% of the workforce and require the remaining people (preferably salaried) to work longer hours.
A different concept would be to just triple output to keep them all working normally.
If there is no market for triple the product a third option would be to cut the hours of all of the employees but still pay them the same, or to use the excess man hours in a new way.
A truly rich society is one that the people only work when they want to. Where is my 10 hour work week and $100K salary! Damn 1%ers...
all that being said, the factories still require intelligent people (in the case of the Yor inteeligent machines), so in order to produce anything you will need some level of people in volved. Maybe only 1 software guy and a maintaince team of 5 to run an entire automobile factory. I ask you then, what happens to the factory when you don't have those people?