This is correct and you can see that from looking at the production speed from jobs vs the actual growth. However there is a technology with "increased pop assembly speed" that doesn't seem to be working, at least from my tests.
2.2 robots are nearly worthless (along with Machine Empires, Mechanist, and Synethic Ascension)
- Thread starter Amblingon
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So here's a file from a Mech/Tech game I started. I disabled all mines and all clerk jobs. When I re-enabled 6 miner jobs, the they were filled by robots, leaving 4 organics unemployed. I then reenabled clerk jobs, which the organics happily took, then reenabled the remaining miner jobs, which sat vacant even past a monthly tick, with the organics still sitting on their clerk jobs.
Newly grown organics will prefer mining jobs to filling new clerk jobs, but it pretty clearly is preferring to fill mining jobs with robos if robos are available. This means you can go back and enable/disable jobs again to force new organic miners into clerk slots, where they will stay until those clerk slots are disabled or specialist jobs become available.
As far as I know, the game does not ever swap pops from one same strata job to another (with the possible exception of soldiers), which actually is the problem here: if pops were re-evaluated whenever unemployment occurred, you could have robots automatically displace organic miners, instead of having to fiddle with disable/enable all the damn time.
Feel free to test for yourselves.
Edit: Linguistic clarity.
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thoughts for a way to fix the upkeep issue at least since a lot of people mentioned the lack of trade power. what if they added a per planet value similar to the trade routes BUT its linked directly between the worlds. called Adaptive optimization. essentially as the empire grows each planet has an optimization value that instead of being an extra job slot for something like clerks. each pop passively adds to the value. so as the planet grows it diminishes its own inefficiency. (im tlaking like at a third of the rate trade value grows) but its connected by colonized planets and not starbases
Got question about robot trait Luxurious - what this trait doing?? It's say "Pop assembly cost 20%" but build time don't change with this skill.
@Down
ohhh... ty.
@Down
ohhh... ty.
It's build cost, not time. It should be impacting the mineral input your assemblers are using.
i'm way behind on the conversation, but might as well ask, arn't robots supposed to be resource efficient in 2.2? requiring the same base resources to produce more higher tier resources? does the robot modifier do this effectively or are they still out competed?
I have to add that I tested playing with a certain build (rapid replicators+Rockbreakers. Mass Produced+Double jointed+Emotion Emulators.) it works quite well actually. Yes, the early game is a bit dangerous (selling minerals for energy was my life-support system) but I was able to stabilize myself and my economy. If you don't get Machin worlds early you will probably have your planets eventually overproducing, making new colonies for the new drones attractive. Machine worlds allow a lot of jobs and normally delay that a bit. It is important to get your colonies up to 10 op quickly due to it giving it 2 more possible replicators than just the one it has at the start. You will continuously struggle with power vs Advanced resources but if you set your economy up correctly you can balance it out (or flood the mineral market every now and then like I am doing). In the end game, I personally would use ringworlds for alloy/power/research and habitats for a mix of alloy and other advanced resources. Planets will mostly be used for minerals (or power if you really need it/have a good modifier) as machine worlds are insane.
It does. Very first game my primary species with Quarrelsome saw themselves getting kicked out of Unity-producing jobs by migrants that didn't have the trait, no imput on my end, leaving them unemployed (since they were all higher strata jobs).
I've since figured it out. It's due to enslaved pops. Enslaved organic pops have a higher priority for mining/farming jobs than robots. So even if you need clerks and your base species has thrifty, like mine does, and even though enslaved though pops CAN work those jobs, they'll still take the jobs from the robots no matter what and leave the toasters with nothing to do while your clerk jobs and the like are empty. That also makes your non-enslaved workers WAY more valuable, but unfortunately they quickly dwindle as soon as you build more promotion buildings.
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There are multiple issues as it stands now. Job specializing and worse return on investing for robomoding and gerenal micro-mangement.
When you start a gestalt machine empire you have some traits. Lets say 15% bonus to energy. You play a bit and unlock more trait points. You start produce new template that has 15% bonus to mineral. Your original population that has 15% energy bonus working mine jobs will stay on mining job. The main issue as far I can see is that you need 25% difference for a better synth to take over jobs that are already filled. So your 15% energy robots will "stay glued" to their miner jobs and you lose some income this way. You would have to manually intervene each time something like this happens. It would help to narrow the 25% difference automatic replacement threshold down to 15%.
Mechanicist robot actually start with zero traits. So you have to rush robomod research and unlock template then spend even more research to robomod your starting + built since then work robot force. Otherwise the problem will only compound if you don't unlock robomod quick enough. Then spend energy to move the right trait to where the jobs are because it is very likely that you have mix of mine/farm across your empire and you are stuck to robomod an entire planet toward one trait or another. So you will spend 100 energy each time you want to relocate robots, more likely 200 energy for pairs of robot if switching between mine/farmer after two robomoding, to a new location on top of time spend unlocking robomod and actively doing robomod. I actually did this in-game you are spending maybe 15 years (60 month for robomod unlocking, then two set of 60 month to robomod two different planets: one to miner and one to farmer) only then you can start to benefit from 15% to miner/farmer.
As it stands right now. You can't dissemble existing robot/synth population and have to pay upkeep for them if you happen to end up with X extra something robot/synth that you don't need or want. Worse yet as it stands auto-pick robot/synth template for production as far I can determine doesn't check which one you need more at that point. There is also a bug with it that it will still list template that you have since then no longer uses and deleted. As a whole I feel that gestalt machine and mechanist/robot/synth barely had any play test time which is unfortunately since it is my favorite gameplay style.
In some ways robot/synth are efficient because they have 100% compatible to all climate and other benefits unique to them. But right now the issue plaguing them are out-shadowing the potential benefit you could have gain.
Is it me or is anyone struggling to run a machine empire with the new update? The Bioreactors state you need 20 food to run but as a machine race they don't eat, does this not contradict the point of a machine empire to a degree?
I can understand generating food if you take over a system with organic pops but, surely a robot empire would have other means of generating sufficent energy without the need to convert food into energy alone as the other means of obtain energy is not enough to maintain an empire in the new update.
Is this correct or am i missing something?
I can understand generating food if you take over a system with organic pops but, surely a robot empire would have other means of generating sufficent energy without the need to convert food into energy alone as the other means of obtain energy is not enough to maintain an empire in the new update.
Is this correct or am i missing something?
Didn't a previous patch already remove machine worlds for driven assimilators? They are supposed to use Gaia worlds instead (which actually provided a bigger bonus anyway since it was in the second multiplication group than the first). And makes sense since it means they're actually using their cyborgs (which ended up better at everything than the machines, once you got a good mix).
I don't know how Gaia world bonus stacks up vs machine world bonus in 2.2, but I'm surprised if they undid the change and even let DA take the perk.
Also, the regular mods (for minerals and energy) were increased to 2 points, but got an extra 5%, so they match organic traits now. The 3 point +5% to everything mod is new (replaced the -10% energy upkeep which is now part of durable) and is better than the 3 point very strong trait (which only gives +5% to workers, while efficient processors is +5% to everything). Not saying the MEs are good, but the traits have been improved not worsened.
I don't understand your problem. That you think the fluff doesn't make sense or isn't to your taste? I don't see how that affects balance. Machines don't eat, so you can grow food to power the bioreactors, or not if you want. they're hardly the lynchpin to machine gameplay. I've been playing as a rogue servitor so I need to grow food anyway and I haven't been struggling (also not excelling, though this is mainly due to my spawn), but I can only imagine that I would have MORE options available to me if I didn't need to keep all these damn humans alive not less.
The people saying clerks are bad are both right and wrong. They aren't bad. They are a net gain in resources overall for your empire. However they are worse than anything else you can get early game. When you are getting to the point you need amenities you are far better off making entertainers early on. Those two pops will crush your amenities need for a long time. Whatever you get from trade value you'll be able to get more from fewer pops through dedicated jobs as well. This makes it easier to get the all important alloy foundries up and running.
I just found out that building a single robot also disables the "Stratified Society" mandate by the authoritarian faction, permanently reducing your base faction approval to 30 for all authoritarian pops. This is likely an oversight due to basic robots only having the "Servitude" living standard available. That is yet another reason never to build robots if you are authoritarian. I've submitted a bug report.
I enjoyed Driven Assimilators since Synthetic dawn, especially because you can grow and build pops simultaneously. I would also balance the traits of both to complement each other and place them on tiles where they got the best use of their bonuses. However, I can't get cyborgs with the "intelligent" trait to occupy the research facilities on planets that also have my early robots that have the power drill advantage (I also gave them the mass production bonus). The cyborgs also have the "ingenious" trait and I am able to ensure they get preference in power generation districts (good), but I wish I could have more control over the research districts.
I also liked playing authoritarian and slavers builds in previous versions. I hope that with machine empires, authoritarian, imperial, and other single mind or single ruler governments, that you get more direct control over whatever you want the pops to do (kind of the point of the government type right). If this creates balance issues then tweak the numbers or create short term penalties (e.g. temporary unhappiness), but PLEASE let me control the pops as I see fit. If the game made decisions on "auto" that I agreed with or that were best, then I wouldn't be asking for the ability to micro items (which is generally less desirable). Instead of avoiding micro, I'd rather get things the way I'd like them to be (in my make believe empire).
I've reverted my install back to 2.1. I've read through this thread, and found other unfortunate items with ME that would have impacted a play through if I continued.
I also liked playing authoritarian and slavers builds in previous versions. I hope that with machine empires, authoritarian, imperial, and other single mind or single ruler governments, that you get more direct control over whatever you want the pops to do (kind of the point of the government type right). If this creates balance issues then tweak the numbers or create short term penalties (e.g. temporary unhappiness), but PLEASE let me control the pops as I see fit. If the game made decisions on "auto" that I agreed with or that were best, then I wouldn't be asking for the ability to micro items (which is generally less desirable). Instead of avoiding micro, I'd rather get things the way I'd like them to be (in my make believe empire).
I've reverted my install back to 2.1. I've read through this thread, and found other unfortunate items with ME that would have impacted a play through if I continued.
Has anyone else in the late game the problem, that alloys are pretty hard to get? I feel like you can build insane amounts of alloy forges, but still dont get quite much out of it. Maybe it is just me.
My only issue with it, is that in the past you never needed to worry about growing food at all for a machine empire to generate energy you just constructed the power plants. Now you have this middle man to put it, which imo justr over complicates things.
yeah from my understanding at this point, the game calculated based on perks, not the % the perks give. so, i think a lot of the robot perks aren't sorting correctly. I keep having mining robots assigned to artisan jobs even though i have non miner robots on miner jobs, and this is after resorting my entire planet by canceling all jobs and reapplying them.
I only read about 5 pages of the comments, so this might have already been mentioned.
The +10% pop assembly speed from "Micro-Replicators" tech also does not apply.
Neither does "Self-Assembling Components".
The +10% pop assembly speed from "Micro-Replicators" tech also does not apply.
Neither does "Self-Assembling Components".
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