Determined exterminator ultra slow pop assembly.

[Cubit32]

The first 4 pops needed to get the space to build robot assembly plants take about 30 years to assemble before they can get reasonable growth going. And even at that point Hives and organics are able to grow at a rate of at least 1.5 and the hive seems to be able to grow at a base rate of 3 starting from pop 1. But machines have to assemble at first at a base rate of 1. Importing pops helps but that is very expensive and kinda just shifts the problem. Are determined exterminator machines just supposed to be really bad at assembling pops? Pops are the most important resource in the game and DEMs don't have effective means to get them. With hives I can get 1 pop per planet per 1.5 years. With DEMs it takes 6 years a pop AT LEAST for the first 3-4 additional pops and another 3y/pop for the next 5.
I'm already using the assembly civic and trait.

 

[Jiav]

thats the new robot growth for you

only way to jumpstart your colony is by transfering 4 pops onto it

 

[WhiteKyubey]

The first 4 pops needed to get the space to build robot assembly plants take about 30 years to assemble before they can get reasonable growth going. And even at that point Hives and organics are able to grow at a rate of at least 1.5 and the hive seems to be able to grow at a base rate of 3 starting from pop 1. But machines have to assemble at first at a base rate of 1. Importing pops helps but that is very expensive and kinda just shifts the problem. Are determined exterminator machines just supposed to be really bad at assembling pops? Pops are the most important resource in the game and DEMs don't have effective means to get them. With hives I can get 1 pop per planet per 1.5 years. With DEMs it takes 6 years a pop AT LEAST for the first 3-4 additional pops and another 3y/pop for the next 5.
I'm already using the assembly civic and trait.

It's not just DE problem, but all ME but assimilators. Just resettle 8-9 pops on each new planet or it will take forever. And ofc both trait and civic for robot building speed is a must.
I guess it should be their price of 100% habitability everywhere, but it's too high in my opinion.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

When playing robots I always resettle a dozen pops to the new colony to kick-start it.

 

[Bki]

When playing robots I always resettle a dozen pops to the new colony to kick-start it.

Yes, of course. But there are still many many issues with that. First you need to pay energy to re-settle when the start as a ME is energy starved. Then while you will have a few pops producing extra amenities, most of the pops displaced were doing productive jobs (and if there weren't, you were wasting energy by paying for pops not doing productive jobs before) and it will take many years before their job on the colony give you as much as what they were doing before.

And more importantly, you can do that for the first colony rather easily, and maybe you can scrape enough for the second one, but if you want to keep a decent rate of expansion, you won't have anything you can spare for the next ones. Not without slowing down your expansion. And you will have those new pops you grow in between have to gather the raw materials needed to pay for the colonies rather than getting you ahead of the curve in alloy production and/or research. (But you still need to do it, because if you aren't playing to the strength of ME to colonise everything in your space and compensate the meh natural pop growth by just having more planets, why are you even playing as a ME).

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Yes, of course. But there are still many many issues with that. First you need to pay energy to re-settle when the start as a ME is energy starved. Then while you will have a few pops producing extra amenities, most of the pops displaced were doing productive jobs (and if there weren't, you were wasting energy by paying for pops not doing productive jobs before) and it will take many years before their job on the colony give you as much as what they were doing before.

And more importantly, you can do that for the first colony rather easily, and maybe you can scrape enough for the second one, but if you want to keep a decent rate of expansion, you won't have anything you can spare for the next ones. Not without slowing down your expansion. And you will have those new pops you grow in between have to gather the raw materials needed to pay for the colonies rather than getting you ahead of the curve in alloy production and/or research. (But you still need to do it, because if you aren't playing to the strength of ME to colonise everything in your space and compensate the meh natural pop growth by just having more planets, why are you even playing as a ME).

Right, I think it completely the other way. I'll grow my first colonies just as anyone without resettling, since I don't have neither the pops or energy to do this effectively. Besides, first 25 nothing is happening anyway, and so you can focus on claiming space. You can also just drop a colony on every planet you find and leave it grow - it's not like you lose anything by doing it slowly.
However, in the midgame when the last bits of space are claimed and you have solid enough energy income I'll usually start my second colonization wave in more distant worlds I've claimed but not colonized. At that point you have both energy and pops to resettle. Basic workers are usually always fine to move, since you can just build identical district to the colony, so nothing is really lost. If you eventually build habitats/ringworld, you can easily kickstart them by resettling dozen workers there.

 

[Bki]

Right, I think it completely the other way. I'll grow my first colonies just as anyone without resettling, since I don't have neither the pops or energy to do this effectively. Besides, first 25 nothing is happening anyway, and so you can focus on claiming space. You can also just drop a colony on every planet you find and leave it grow - it's not like you lose anything by doing it slowly.

The issue is that even with expansion and all pop growth you can get, pop growth is horribly slow until you can get the second pop growth job. And you still have to pay the upkeep and pop-building cost for the horribly long time until you can grow a few more pops. If you resettle 3 pops to get to five you can get the pop growth going at an acceptable level and get the other pops working on resources so that the colony pay for itself. Not doing so you will just lose money and minerals for years.

And if you're playing in a relatively crowded galaxy, you really don't want to be weak with a struggling economy in the first years, as the AI magically get fleets around 2-3k and if they happen to be xenophobes or spiritualist they won't hesitate that much to attack you if you're weak.