Colony vs Gene Clinic

[anamiac]

So, question. I've read the Reddit thread out there arguing that Gene Clinics are inefficient, because they tie up your pops and the 10% pop growth speed means it's going to be decades before you make enough pops to counteract the ones that you assigned to the medical profession. If you don't know where I'm coming from then you should go find the reddit thread and read it before we go further.

So, In my last game the unbidden were tearing up my empire and I started resettling pops from my planets before the unbidden could get to them. I discovered that if I resettled all the pops from a planet, the planet became uninhabited and re-colonizable.

So what if I did this deliberately? Colonize a planet, then remove the pops from it, then colonize it again. Assuming I have exploration, I get 2 population out of the deal.
Costs:
200 food
200 alloy
200 consumer
12 months to build the colony ship
maintenance of the colony ship as it flies to the colony location (unknown and variable amount of energy)
maintenance of the colony as it grows (there's a bunch of techs that help with this), which is about 30 months I think, so less than 300 energy.
200 energy to resettle my colonists home and

Compare that with what I need to get 2 pops from a Gene clinic:
300 minerals to build the clinic
12 months to build the clinic
2 energy + 2 consumer goods per month for the next ~50 years.
2 pops tied up for the next ~50 years.

The gene clinic costs ~1200 energy, ~1200 consumer goods, 300 minerals and takes two of your pops for 50 years to make 2 population. Repeatably colonizing and then abandoning a planet gets me the same amount of population significantly faster and cheaper without tying up my existing population.

So have I missed anything? Or is settling + abandoning a planet a faster and cheaper way of growing your population?

 

[Secret Master]

Alloys ain't free, ya know. That's a significant investment in the early game to do what you propose every year or so.

There is turn around time and shipyard use to consider. Tying down shipyards with a 1 year build time for colony ships constantly has got to play havoc with doing other things with that shipyard.

But I think I might try this out as Inward Perfection. Once you have X amount of alloy income, it might almost make sense.

 

[Peace Weaver]

200 alloys isn't that big of an investment for some pops that could potentially be working in a foundry.

 

[AlanC9]

It's a little hard to do a straight-up comparison between the methods when one is completely front-loaded and the other is not. Also, they're not exclusive, so how good GCs are doesn't have any real bearing on whether or not to use this new colony exploit.

Another cost of the colony method is tying up a colony for pop breeding. Although you can use a world with lousy habitability that you weren't going to colonize in the first place

 

[Lord Ruby]

The problem with abandoning and settling is that it prevents you from getting the pop growth from just having the colonized planet while it's being re-established. The abandoning method produces two pops in 30 months, which is 6.66 growth per month, if you prepare the colony ship before abandoning the colony.

If you can produce more than 6.66 growth per month per planet you're better off not abandoning. This shouldn't be that difficult between the natural 3, the 2 from a roboticist and a few positive modifiers.

 

[Defiler99]

Getting to 6.66 with the 50% new-colonization growth penalty would take some doing, though.

 

[anamiac]

That makes sense. So it's appealing if you're producing population slower than a certain rate. I dunno, maybe machine empires?

 

[Bankipriel]

I find Gene Clinics efficient because of the amenities they provide. With gene clinics, I am able to float my colonies around 0 amenities (+/- 5) until there are enough clerks to cover the planet's need. I never need to waste building slots or jobs on entertainers.

Also, your entire model of valuation is wrong, because increased pop growth means that every pop that arrives a little bit faster is producing their work product that much sooner. The additive benefit of this across dozens of worlds is significant. It's not about making the 2 pops back, it's about how much sooner every pop on that planet arrives.

Your plan to pull pops off of a single world from colonizing might be a useful cheese mechanic on one world, but it prevents that planet from being developed, which seems like a pretty serious drawback if done on more than one world.