Nerve stapled prevents Necrophage Elevation

[St4rHope]

Hello, today i've played some Necrophage and noticed that a pop with the nerve stapled trait cant be a necrophyte (the job needed to be come a necrophage pop).

Is this a intended mechanic?

 

[Archon87]

The necrophyte job is a specialist job, and thus cannot be worked by nerve-stapled pops (or proles). Slaves are exempt from the restriction against specialist jobs in this one case, but no one else is. Seems to be working as intended, though I would argue that this is an edge case that an exception should be made for.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

IIRC, the necrophyte job is supposed to represent voluntary "ascension".
It is a choice that pops make of their own free will.
A nerve stapled pop lacks free will, as per the description of the trait:

Unessential neural pathways relating to self-preservation and free-will are severed, creating a docile and obedient client species.

Though it can be noted that, according to the wiki, the necrophyte job has these modifiers:

• x1.5 Charismatic trait
• x0.75 Nerve Stapled trait
• x0.75 Docile Livestock trait
• x0.75 Enslaved
• x0.5 Repugnant trait

The NS and DL modifiers are pointless, as those traits prevent the (specialist) job from being taken in the first place.
These modifiers can only add pointless CPU calculations, I guess.
(It seems like the necrophyte job may have been originally designed as a worker-level job, whose modifiers were not updated following a design change.)

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

This is why I suggested to make Necrophyte a worker job for Hivemind Necrophage. Its a simple change and would allow you to have Nerve Stapled Necrophytes. This would remove the stability penalty from Livestock slaves and give you a powerspike for your Biological Ascension. Since Hiveminds lack Psionic Ascension they should atleast be able to get more out of their biological Ascension than other empires. Sadly, thats not the case and non-Gestalt empires can make much better biological pops via things such as Xeno-Compatibility or events which guarantee free traits.