How do ME empires choose which pop to assemble next?

[Mantonio]

My starting robots are science-oriented, and once I researched robomodding, I quickly made some mining-oriented and energy-oriented templates to use as well

However, only the original ones are ever built. I have jobs open where the other templates would be more beneficial, and none of them grow faster than any other, but they just go for the standard template, every time

What gives? Do I have to micromanage and manually set it to only build specialised pops each time?

 

[Danny Pockets]

For regular species, if you click on the little box where the next pop is growing, you can select which species you want to grow exclusively, but you suffer a -20% growth buff. I haven't checked to see if this is possible for robots but try clicking on the box and see if you get the option.

But also I don't think the kind of robot customization that was typical in pre-2.2 is not how you should think about it anymore.

I am currently on my first ME play through (never played ME pre-2.2), my point being that I've come to ME without any prior prejudices.

I think robomodding used to be used to min-max your economy because you could have mining-bots on mineral tiles, electro-bots on energy tiles etc... You had control to make those choices.

You no longer have that control, so there's no point trying to tailor your robots like that anymore (that approach only made sense with the tile system where you had control). The closest you're gong to get is creating a template in the species section, then applying that to a specific planet en masse. So if you have a specific food planet it might be worth giving those robots a farming buff, for example.

But I feel like the main point of robo modding is to remove the negative traits from your bots, thats basically how I've used it so far. I like to really stack on as many traits as I can, so I started with three negative traits which are all gone now. That's a pretty awesome buff.

 

[RageOfAnubis]

I think they intend for ME's to use machine worlds and highly specialise each one. You would then be able to, for example, set a mining world to only produce mining specialised pops (or robo mod the pops on that planet after filling all the mining drone jobs with standard drones produced on other planets).

 

[Dalwin]

For regular species, if you click on the little box where the next pop is growing, you can select which species you want to grow exclusively, but you suffer a -20% growth buff. I haven't checked to see if this is possible for robots but try clicking on the box and see if you get the option.

But also I don't think the kind of robot customization that was typical in pre-2.2 is not how you should think about it anymore.

I am currently on my first ME play through (never played ME pre-2.2), my point being that I've come to ME without any prior prejudices.

I think robomodding used to be used to min-max your economy because you could have mining-bots on mineral tiles, electro-bots on energy tiles etc... You had control to make those choices.

You no longer have that control, so there's no point trying to tailor your robots like that anymore (that approach only made sense with the tile system where you had control). The closest you're gong to get is creating a template in the species section, then applying that to a specific planet en masse. So if you have a specific food planet it might be worth giving those robots a farming buff, for example.

But I feel like the main point of robo modding is to remove the negative traits from your bots, thats basically how I've used it so far. I like to really stack on as many traits as I can, so I started with three negative traits which are all gone now. That's a pretty awesome buff.

Actually you can control which jobs are held by which model (or species for biological), but it is awkward. I saw a dev describing this method in another thread. On the bright side this means they are aware of the issue so improvement should eventually appear.

Here is the method described:

Basically a pop will seek the job at which it is most efficient, but it has to be better than the current job holder by a significant margin to displace him. To reshuffle them all supposedly to the best fit you go into a given tier such as workers. Set the priority of all jobs to zero which temporarily fires them all. Then set it all back to max and they are supposed to go to the best spots. You would then have to do the same for specialists.

Obviously that is more hassle than it is worth.

 

[Danny Pockets]

Actually you can control which jobs are held by which model (or species for biological), but it is awkward. I saw a dev describing this method in another thread. On the bright side this means they are aware of the issue so improvement should eventually appear.

Here is the method described:

Basically a pop will seek the job at which it is most efficient, but it has to be better than the current job holder by a significant margin to displace him. To reshuffle them all supposedly to the best fit you go into a given tier such as workers. Set the priority of all jobs to zero which temporarily fires them all. Then set it all back to max and they are supposed to go to the best spots. You would then have to do the same for specialists.

Obviously that is more hassle than it is worth.

Ah well that's nice to know!

Yeah, I generally have the impression that the priority system is probably a temporary stop-gap until they settle on something more intuitive and with better accuracy/control. It feels pretty half-baked at the moment.