Just a warning, this is mostly just rants with some suggestions afterwords. tldr suggestions at the bottom.
I recently finished my first game in Le Guin, and the new pop mechanics are... different. They wanted to make a more indepth economy, and they succeeded in that. Except micromanagement is still incredibly tedious. In fact, I'm willing to say that the new mechanics are even more micro intensive than the old ones. Not only do you have to keep an eye on the housing to pop ratio, but also especially the pop to jobs ratio, which forces you to do some basic math on every planet as you have to find the perfect buildings to build to provide the perfect amount of jobs, but if you build any buildings your workers will leave their old jobs to become specialists. Which is fine, except if you don't have a large income to begin with, as building buildings can temporarily crash your economy, forcing you to micro jobs, which is incredibly tedious. Also, if you plan to have more jobs than pops, all pops will try to take a specialist job first, which leaves you with unworked resource districts, which if you need filled you would have to micro some more. The housing isn't too tedious. Though I always end up with slight overcrowding, and it's almost odd how all of my planets end up with the overcrowding icon in the outliner. Maybe pops should be reluctant to leave their current job if doing so would put you in the negatives. And pops should have a growth malus as they reach the housing limit, perhaps stopping them entirely from growing beyond it(unless you help them too), and maybe make pops start to decline as soon as you've gone over the housing limit(unless you forced them to grow). That should severely reduce the amount of microing needed to stabilize world populations, and so that if you forget a world for a little bit, it won't suddenly decay into a massive crime and drug fueled
homeless orgie popping out more kids to make drugs. As it currently is, though, I don't think I can put up with the amount of microing to colonize even a single segment of a ringworld.
Speaking of megastructures, the habitats were nerfed far too hard in my opinion. Habitats are my favorite megastructure, and I loved the thought that most of my species lived in them. However buildings and resource districts are king now, and habitats have the worst of the lot. Habitat districts are absolute garbage! The leisure district is marginally better than a standard holo district, but far worse than any of it's upgrades, the same goes for for the science district. They are made even worse by the fact that they provide NO housing and that you cannot build research labs or theatres on habitats. Meaning that you LOSE access to two building slots if you build them. Why not just get rid of all but the housing district and let habitats build research labs, holo theatres, and commercial zones, with their respective upgrades. And why not bring back the asteroid mining bay as a building which could provide two mining jobs. Look, I know the devs have said that they wanted habitats to be more like space forge worlds, but could you please just let me specialize the habitats the way I want to?
Going back to ringworlds, I just don't know what to say about them, except ,perhaps, that they are mostly irrelevant. They are absolutely gigantic worlds that provide absolutely no minerals whatsoever. Meaning that if you want them to do more than make literal bread(as energy districts are mostly obsolete with a dyson sphere) then you would have to support their massive planets with valuable minerals from your other worlds, which usually is in short supply already. Machine and hive mind empires have access to nearly limitless minerals with their respective planets, why not make ringworlds have infinite mining districts so that regular empires can have access to nearly limitless minerals, which will also make ringworlds self-sufficient. You can also lower ringworlds back to a size twenty five, and just give them more efficient districts, like how habitats have a plus ten housing district. That would ensure less microing would need to be done to fully develop such worlds, and that developing one wouldn't blow you far past your admin cap.
Another ascension perk I picked was the gaia worlds one. Gaia worlds mostly seem to be a waste of a perk, as terraforming to a gaia world actually DECREASES the planetary features on a world. Meaning that my second most developed world, which produced a good chunk of my resources lost ALMOST EVERYTHING when I turned it into a "perfect" world. I was left with TWO districts in each resource, with only ONE planetary feature per resource. While I'm certain that this is a bug, why not make gaia worlds do the opposite, and give more planetary features.
Finally, I went down the synthetic ascension path, which felt almost tacked onto the game now. I only gained a single special building, which turns food into energy, which seems pretty useless. Why not give them access to machine worlds, or some knockoff cyber worlds, which could lower robot housing and consumer goods cost(as they can just live in "cyberspace").
tldr: 1: Pops shouldn't leave their current jobs if doing so would put you into the negatives.
2: Pop growth should be almost hard capped at the housing limit, and decline past it.
3: Habitats should only have housing districts, but gain access to proper research labs, and other buildings.
4: Ringworlds should be a size 25 with more efficient districts and mining districts.
5: Gaia worlds should add planetary features.
6: Ascension paths should be given more love, perhaps with more unique buildings and worlds.
I recently finished my first game in Le Guin, and the new pop mechanics are... different. They wanted to make a more indepth economy, and they succeeded in that. Except micromanagement is still incredibly tedious. In fact, I'm willing to say that the new mechanics are even more micro intensive than the old ones. Not only do you have to keep an eye on the housing to pop ratio, but also especially the pop to jobs ratio, which forces you to do some basic math on every planet as you have to find the perfect buildings to build to provide the perfect amount of jobs, but if you build any buildings your workers will leave their old jobs to become specialists. Which is fine, except if you don't have a large income to begin with, as building buildings can temporarily crash your economy, forcing you to micro jobs, which is incredibly tedious. Also, if you plan to have more jobs than pops, all pops will try to take a specialist job first, which leaves you with unworked resource districts, which if you need filled you would have to micro some more. The housing isn't too tedious. Though I always end up with slight overcrowding, and it's almost odd how all of my planets end up with the overcrowding icon in the outliner. Maybe pops should be reluctant to leave their current job if doing so would put you in the negatives. And pops should have a growth malus as they reach the housing limit, perhaps stopping them entirely from growing beyond it(unless you help them too), and maybe make pops start to decline as soon as you've gone over the housing limit(unless you forced them to grow). That should severely reduce the amount of microing needed to stabilize world populations, and so that if you forget a world for a little bit, it won't suddenly decay into a massive crime and drug fueled
homeless orgie popping out more kids to make drugs. As it currently is, though, I don't think I can put up with the amount of microing to colonize even a single segment of a ringworld.
Speaking of megastructures, the habitats were nerfed far too hard in my opinion. Habitats are my favorite megastructure, and I loved the thought that most of my species lived in them. However buildings and resource districts are king now, and habitats have the worst of the lot. Habitat districts are absolute garbage! The leisure district is marginally better than a standard holo district, but far worse than any of it's upgrades, the same goes for for the science district. They are made even worse by the fact that they provide NO housing and that you cannot build research labs or theatres on habitats. Meaning that you LOSE access to two building slots if you build them. Why not just get rid of all but the housing district and let habitats build research labs, holo theatres, and commercial zones, with their respective upgrades. And why not bring back the asteroid mining bay as a building which could provide two mining jobs. Look, I know the devs have said that they wanted habitats to be more like space forge worlds, but could you please just let me specialize the habitats the way I want to?
Going back to ringworlds, I just don't know what to say about them, except ,perhaps, that they are mostly irrelevant. They are absolutely gigantic worlds that provide absolutely no minerals whatsoever. Meaning that if you want them to do more than make literal bread(as energy districts are mostly obsolete with a dyson sphere) then you would have to support their massive planets with valuable minerals from your other worlds, which usually is in short supply already. Machine and hive mind empires have access to nearly limitless minerals with their respective planets, why not make ringworlds have infinite mining districts so that regular empires can have access to nearly limitless minerals, which will also make ringworlds self-sufficient. You can also lower ringworlds back to a size twenty five, and just give them more efficient districts, like how habitats have a plus ten housing district. That would ensure less microing would need to be done to fully develop such worlds, and that developing one wouldn't blow you far past your admin cap.
Another ascension perk I picked was the gaia worlds one. Gaia worlds mostly seem to be a waste of a perk, as terraforming to a gaia world actually DECREASES the planetary features on a world. Meaning that my second most developed world, which produced a good chunk of my resources lost ALMOST EVERYTHING when I turned it into a "perfect" world. I was left with TWO districts in each resource, with only ONE planetary feature per resource. While I'm certain that this is a bug, why not make gaia worlds do the opposite, and give more planetary features.
Finally, I went down the synthetic ascension path, which felt almost tacked onto the game now. I only gained a single special building, which turns food into energy, which seems pretty useless. Why not give them access to machine worlds, or some knockoff cyber worlds, which could lower robot housing and consumer goods cost(as they can just live in "cyberspace").
tldr: 1: Pops shouldn't leave their current jobs if doing so would put you into the negatives.
2: Pop growth should be almost hard capped at the housing limit, and decline past it.
3: Habitats should only have housing districts, but gain access to proper research labs, and other buildings.
4: Ringworlds should be a size 25 with more efficient districts and mining districts.
5: Gaia worlds should add planetary features.
6: Ascension paths should be given more love, perhaps with more unique buildings and worlds.
So, to clarify, If I have 30 pops and 30 jobs and I build a Research Lab I will then have 30 pops and 32 jobs - will 2 of the already employed Pops move to fill the new Research Lab positions? If so, would these just be ambitious grunts from Districts or could specialists move as well if the new specialist position was deemed more relevant?
