Lithoids Catalytic Processing

[Farbros]

Hello everyone! I do know that normal biological empires would not really profit from Catalytic Processing civic, machine empires would be totally op with it, but what is about lithoids?
Theoretically it could be useful, because you could use agriculture districts, which in other case would not be used at all. But on the other hand most planets would be maxed on districts, if you build ±5 city districts (to open all buildings slots) with energy nexus or purification hubs and some alloy production districts for the rest. So what do you think about lithoids with Catalytic Processing civic? Is this any good, or it is really weak in cooperation to the other strong civics. Thank you!

 

[Quinzal]

In my eyes, it's not worth it for Lithoid. As a normal Lithoid, you're using minerals for both pop upkeep AND alloys, so you can freely double-down on producing them. Mining Subsidies, Mineral Purification Plants, as many robots with Power Drills as you can stand to build, etc.

With Catalytic Processing, though, you have to split up your production. While the 1:1.5 ratio of base resource production to alloy consumption remains the same, you're going to be responsible for producing minerals AND food, and by extension how efficiently you can produce these resources falls. Now instead of one planet focused entirely on mining and another on whatever you need, you have to have one planet focused on mining for your pops to eat, AND another focused on food to turn into alloys. That's wasted jobs, wasted efficiency.

With normal empires, this is fine. When you pick up Catalytic Processing as a non-lithoid, you're doing the opposite: trading the split production into one resource that can be produced more efficiently by itself (though, you still need some minerals for construction). With Lithoids though, you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Even if you intended to conquer lots of bio pops, that combo would genuinely be like giving away one of the biggest advantages of playing Lithoid.

So that particular species benefit would zero-out with the benefit of Catalytic.

Rather than being "neutral," though, it would be worse. Cuz it would mean that your species trait of Lithoid would now be kind of a net negative (slow growth). And even worse, it would eat up one of your prescious civic slots for no net gain.

I'd compare it to picking Tomb World origin and Fanatic Spiritualist. Or Wasteful and Environmentalist.

 

[Farbros]

Thank you for your responses, I got it, good to know.

 

[ZeeHero]

Biological empires absolutely profit from it. it is easier to produce 1000 food than 500 minerals 9 out of 10 times.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Thank you for your responses, I got it, good to know.

I think it might make for a really interesting logistical challenge though. It would certainly make your economy more complex, so while it would be a "bad" decision in terms of competitiveness, I'm imagining that it MIGHT be super fun. Or it could be just irritating. Only way to find out is to try it.

I always encourage people to try weird combos of stuff for the experiential element. Give it a go and tell us how it went (pretty please).

 

[DukeLeto42]

Personally, I think of Catalytic Processing as a tool to reduce specialization needs. As OnyxAbussos notes, the big Lithoid advantage is removing food from the equation, which in turn reduces the number of ways you need to specialize your worlds. Catalytic Processing does the reverse, making mineral production almost a non-issue for non-Lithoid empires.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Lithoids were already bad before 3.1 and now with merchant spam they are even worse.

+50 habitability is useless and -25 pop growth is really really bad.

on a 0 hab planet a non-lithoid gets -50 pop growth.
on a 50 hab planet a lithoid gets -50 pop growth.

Eating minerals is terrible since food is easy to get especially in the early game with hydro bays.

Catalytic Processing doesn't help them much.

And there best build using Calamitous Origin and private colony ships to colonize EVERYTHING can't even use Catalytic Processing.

 

[ZeeHero]

Best lithoid build is Terravores and its OP as F.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Best lithoid build is Terravores and its OP as F.

Any total war civic is overpowerded.

EDIT: Though catalytic processing + lithoids does play on another level you are right there.

 

[ZeeHero]

No, an overpowdered civic is Fanatic Pastry Chefs. the messy confection sugar is so annoying.

 

[Incompetent]

Hello everyone! I do know that normal biological empires would not really profit from Catalytic Processing civic, machine empires would be totally op with it, but what is about lithoids?
Theoretically it could be useful, because you could use agriculture districts, which in other case would not be used at all. But on the other hand most planets would be maxed on districts, if you build ±5 city districts (to open all buildings slots) with energy nexus or purification hubs and some alloy production districts for the rest. So what do you think about lithoids with Catalytic Processing civic? Is this any good, or it is really weak in cooperation to the other strong civics. Thank you!

Catalytic Processing is only good for machine empires in conjunction with the 0 food exploit.

As the other answers explain, specialization is generally the way to go in Stellaris. In 3.X, in most situations the rural district caps on planets are not a major bottleneck, because you don't have enough pops to fully exploit your natural resources anyway.

 

[majikero]

It's a net negative really. Very funny as a concept though.