Anyone Mind Explaining New Pop Growth System

[RhysTheT00n]

I've recently moved over from console and naturally I have to relearn everything pretty much from scratch. Since 4.0 and the new Pop system has just been introduced I may actually not be on my own trying to figure out how stuff works now, but I'm trying to maximize my Pop Assembly as a Gestalt Machine empire and even with the Growth Ceiling Game Settings at their least impactful and activating Migration Controls, my Pop Assembly rapidly declines to 1-2 per month, even 0 sometimes. In the build Xbox is currently on, planets will always assemble machine pops at a constant rate unless you specifically tell a planet to cease assembly, but in the new system it seems to shift all over the place dependent on factors I haven't been able to understand yet

 

[Archael90]

I haven't got into this system yet. Played only wilderness origin, but I think I got the glimpse of it.
Pop growth depend on existing pops, the more they are, the faster they grow. If there is not enough pops, their growth is next to none, and such colony need immigration to start growing new pops.

 

[fourteenfour]

Over on reddit someone gave it a go,

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1kifurt/population_growth_in_40_how_it_works_and_how_it

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I don't know if the game is just horrifically bugged or something, but I was just looking at a magical +8 pop increase (when the planet's assembly rate is +4 per month, and the other freshly colonized planets shouldn't be emigrating even as a normal empire, let alone as a gestalt machine empire), but somehow only one job is being taken up, and jobs seem to be increasing on their own without me creating any. They're not becoming Maintenance drones and they're not emigrating to other planets, and nobody is IMMIGRATING to THIS planet, so what's happening to these pops?

 

[RhysTheT00n]

At the start of the game, everything proceeds normally and makes sense. Pops are assembled at a steady, constant rate and they immediately become Maintenance Drones instead of being idle and unemployed. When I create fresh jobs, they are filled up by the Maintenance Drones which means that Pop Groups slowly dwindles as they all become Complex Drones (or Menial if I want), but then I start colonizing planets, and everything starts going weird, even with migration controls enabled (and gestalt machine drones shouldn't even have migration full stop unless I manually resettle them, just like how it used to work)

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Ok, this new system makes no sense and I can only conclude I need to wait for a few patches or something, because I just colonized a new planet that has half again as many Replicators as my home planet, but literally has 1/40th of the pop assembly speed, and I watched the pops on both planets, there was absolutely 0 migration between the two. Also, the job efficiency system needs tooltips to tell me what's actually lowering it, because -10% job efficiency on a 100% habitable world with no resource deficits of any kind is just not helpful

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Can someone explain to me how 300 Replicators suffering from -25% Job Efficiency results in suffering -180 workforce?

 

[Taritu]

Migration is broken in the current build, I am given to understand. Hopefully it'll be fixed on Monday since it's, y'know, kind of important especially for non authoritarians.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Migration is broken in the current build, I am given to understand. Hopefully it'll be fixed on Monday since it's, y'know, kind of important especially for non authoritarians.

How broken? Do you happen to know exactly how it's going wrong? In my saves, pops are disappearing into the ether. Is that what's happening with everyone else?

 

[Taritu]

I don't know the details, I'm afraid, and different people are getting different results. The current build is really wonky, especially if you use any mods at all. It's also interacting weirdly with gestalts (machine and hive).

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I don't know the details, I'm afraid, and different people are getting different results. The current build is really wonky, especially if you use any mods at all. It's also interacting weirdly with gestalts (machine and hive).

Alright, well it's good to know it's not actually supposed to work this way, knowing it's bugged at all is at least enough for me to just give the game a week or two to "stew".

Still, you'd think something as obvious as the new pop system they've worked so hard on wouldn't be this broken straight away. It's not like a tooltip not showing correctly or something, it's THE big thing they've been working on

 

[ShaTiK]

Can't say for gestalts but regular for regular empires migration mostly works fine, the issue is limit. Base migration is only 10 per month and it is modified by few things like transit hub and something with hyper-relays (don't know for sure since I don't own that DLC). But overall 10 is way to slow and too little, it can't even account for decently quick natural growth per planet, much less movement of big chunks of population. At least that is what it looks like.

As for gestalts overall - well, since by all metrics the release version is mostly the same as last public beta (down to recurring bugs), I would say you are not yet supposed to play with advanced stuff, be it origins, civics or planets. Wait a bit for fixes to come. A couple of weeks. Maybe a month. Or two. Or half a year. I'm not being facetious - given how much was changed it isn't unreasonable to expect that much work to be done before all things are working the way they should.