What if habitability mattered? Maybe a ceiling to pop resource production modifier and happiness equal to min(100, Hab.*2), so organics wouldn't benefit from planets below 50% habitability as much as they do now?
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It actually matters. Authoritarians and slavers have better time with it, but it still can hit you hard. It doesn't hit you so much in basic production as in CG use and building slots.
There's nothing arguable about it, farmers have a base production of 6 food compared to 4 energy from technicians. Even if you never bother with food processing plants, you're still up in efficiency.
Food is also the easiest resource to manage since you can adjust consumption with the nutrition policy and spend excess production on encouraging planetary growth.
Anyone have any experience with Grid Amalgamation? It looks like it doesn't even have the low housing requirements of livestock slavery.
Honestly, energy economy in machine empires needs a balance pass.
IMO, food and energy yields should be reversed when playing a machine empire, so tech-drones produce 6 energy and agri-drones produce 4 food. While I take the point that this might lead to too much efficiency, even boosting tech-drone yields to 5 would help.
IMO, food and energy yields should be reversed when playing a machine empire, so tech-drones produce 6 energy and agri-drones produce 4 food. While I take the point that this might lead to too much efficiency, even boosting tech-drone yields to 5 would help.
ME was OP in Dev Clash simply because Comrade Johan could get multiple Robot Assembling Plant on one planet at that time, which granted him faster development rate since its Pop rolled out much quicker than normal empire. Even so he did not build many military unit in early game.
When WIZ finally addressed the problem, he was already close to some late game tech, for example, the Pop assembling speed tech or climate restoration ( you need it for machine world)!
I've missed Machine Empires to have +20% stability and +15% housing usage. It essentially means that it takes longer to lose your fairly significant production bonus from stability before deviancy takes hold, and you can fit more machines onto each planet. It does seem to balance out pretty well.
Normal organics require amenities, free organics eat consumer goods, and slaves produce increased crime. The effects are hugely increased in bad habitability. The impact in resource consumption is hard to estimate, but it exists and thus, "arguable", since it depends on habitability for organics. Pretty sure that for 0% habitability machine bots are superior and I think on ~50% habitability they are even more or less.
i don't know if anyone else has noticed it but in my only game of playing robots this patch the ai decided it was better to build a conquered civs robots then my own super upgraded all points spent robots. Because yes i want robots that are complete garbage instead of working ones.
Especially garbage ones that you can't upgrade (or I didn't get the tech until 2330).
Not to mention exploits are encouraged [so they can be reported and fixed] and the red menace took advantage of every exploit available.
There is no reason to "want" 5/5/5. You specialize planets, so you'd maybe go 7/4/4 and have a housing district.
The effects are not that bad. For a normal empire type that colonizes an off-climate world (i.e. non-Tomb world) and which keeps non-Workers to a minimum it's roughly the equivalent of 1 energy credit extra in consumption per pop over ideal-climate world. Focusing on mineral production in particular on these worlds is still very profitable.
That's cool but we were specifically discussing energy vs food upkeep so I'm not sure why you're moving the goalposts.
More to the point, the fact that machine empires struggle to produce enough energy for pop upkeep and expansion combined with their poor growth rates is the main reason they suck so bad currently. Hives, on the other hands, are in a great spot, because they can use more easily produced food for upkeep and have the best growth rates in the game.
Well that one building slot still nets you an increase in efficiency plus additional jobs. And I'm not certain that this slot is of any particalur use. Due to high maintenace, my ME always has 3+ slots free, which can't be filled with anything productive since I lack the free pops for it. This really only changes midgame. At least the next patch adresses the +building speed techs, which should lower this problem somehow. But currently you will never beat an organic empire in pop growth, you simply lack the tools for this.
*rolling eyes* You are not expected too. It is net production (i.e. excess of resource output over maintenance) that matters.
You can't take one part of upkeep and ignore the other.
The point is, ME has so different economy than normal organics, that comparison by per-pop productivity is not possible. You need to compare an entire production chain. And, since ME have shorter production chain and less of types of upkeep and ignore habitability, things do not look so grim for them as some people are saying.
well, you don't exactly have a fairly large chunk of your society constantly working on pumping out robots like you do children.
You would think that shorter production chains are a benefit but they actually cause you to lose out on extra modifiers to production which have a multiplicative effect. While they are simpler they are also quite a bit less efficient as more modifiers come online and this unintuitive result is probably one cause of ME being poorly balanced at this point.
I think machine pops should have -50% housing requirements honestly. That or the drone storage buildings shoudl be buffed by a lot.
Also like everyone else I find them very very mediocre, no reason to play beyond RP at this point.
Also like everyone else I find them very very mediocre, no reason to play beyond RP at this point.
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In the 2.2.4 patch they actually made Rogue Servitors worse by making bio-pops angry if they don't have trophy jobs, so I don't think fixing Machine Empires is a huge priority for them right now.