Controlling biotrophies growth as rogue servitors

[Prpht]

I have a problem with preventing the biotrophies total overgrown of my machine empire. Ended being afraid of having even 1 BT pops on any colonies, as they tend to grow really fast compared to machine assembly. And do not need any jobs for it. Currently pushing every assembly job possible with every available bonus to keep them in check (and aggressively colonize planets just for safekeeping them). This creates fun gamplay, but with really stressing time pressure ("ouch, I need another BT world, and another agri-world to feed them and another goods manufactory world to make them happy" "ouch, they grew again, guess its another 3 worlds then /cries for the lost alloy and cool colony spot/..."). Is it intended?

Also, new patchnotes say:

Added a new decision to stop or continue Robot, Droid, and Synthetic Pop assembly, and made this work independently of organic population controls

but the only decision I see stops the whole growth (both organic and machine assembly). Am I missing something?

 

[Wolfgang I]

If you starve them they grow slower. It is only - 25% to happiness but will reduce pop growth by 75%. If you add strict rationing you can reduce pop growth by another 10%.
Slow breeders helps too.
If you stack all 3 you get - 95% pop growth in exchange for - 35% happiness.
It is the most efficent way to play them now I think.

 

[Nimic]

I have a problem with preventing the biotrophies total overgrown of my machine empire. Ended being afraid of having even 1 BT pops on any colonies, as they tend to grow really fast compared to machine assembly. And do not need any jobs for it. Currently pushing every assembly job possible with every available bonus to keep them in check (and aggressively colonize planets just for safekeeping them). This creates fun gamplay, but with really stressing time pressure ("ouch, I need another BT world, and another agri-world to feed them and another goods manufactory world to make them happy" "ouch, they grew again, guess its another 3 worlds then /cries for the lost alloy and cool colony spot/..."). Is it intended?

Also, new patchnotes say:

but the only decision I see stops the whole growth (both organic and machine assembly). Am I missing something?

There are two different decisions. One is for machines, and I really assumed the other one was just for bios.

 

[Prpht]

I created a new 2.2.4 game to test it. Only one decision, stops both growths (see the screenshot). Or I am missing something?

 

[Nimic]

I created a new 2.2.4 game to test it. Only one decision, stops both growths (see the screenshot). Or I am missing something?

Huh, that's weird. There are two decisions for empires that have gone Synthetic. They have their own problems (not being able to assemble said synthetic species, for example), but they're there. I have no idea why there wouldn't be separate ones for Machine empires. Must be a mistake.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

For biotrophies, if you don't want *any* to grow, you can just set their species rights to disable population growth.

You only need to use the planetary decision if you want to grow biotrophies on some worlds, but not others.