To be honest, I think the resettlement of slaves should also cost Influence. Slaves have owners and moving their property from one system to another should have a political cost. Even if you imagine that the slaves are all owned by the state, they would still be effectively the property of different Departments, Governors, or whatever.
Sure thing, as long as:
- Slaves get to be automatically resettled the way free pops are.
- The algorithm is changed so unemployed pops aren't being enslaved unless you use domestic servitude, which frankly nobody should be doing. Basing the algorithm on the worst slavery type, in the process outright screwing everyone else over seems questionable to begin with. But now slaves won't be resettled and some people want to add an influence cost to them being resettled to boot.
IMHO, logistic curve tackles with growth "vertically" on planet level, increased growth points tackles with growth "horizontally" on empire level. Both are necessary to tune the pace of growth and reduce the inflation in number of POPs into mid/late game.
Sure thing, as long as they adjust the requirement and production output/costs. If they don't we might look at some really messy hotfixes. Let's remain hopeful.
Will gestalts - machines & hives and megacorps get the same love as regular empires?
I doubt it. Machine Gestalts still lack leader traits, both Machine and Hiveminds are locked out from a lot of events, Ecumenopoli, etc.
For people worried about this having already stacked tons of +job production or -job upkeep, I don't think this is an issue. What this is effectively is a flat bonus to your amount of pops which don't gain any bonuses or malus. And considering that every job is a net increase of resources this is always worth it.
What I'm actually concerned about is the fact that +resources from jobs doesn't effect every resource: trade value and amenities ignore it for some reason. Admittedly it is a very minor worry, as both clerks and merchants have no upkeep, and entertainers using a few extra CG is easily offset by the bonus they give, but still.
The problem is that every additional bonus becomes "less" of a bonus. Because they all act additive rather than multiplicative. Now having all of these multiplicative would lead to an absurd inflation in terms of resource generation. But the reverse also holds true. Species traits become less relevant and impactful as you gain additional bonuses. To the point that the advertised "15%" in effect is oftentimes closer to 5% or below as it does not scale with other bonuses.
One solution might be to make species traits exclusively multiplicative with other bonuses. As they actually have a "cost" in terms of very limited trait points to keep them relevant and desirable.
As for the new technologies. The issue some people seem to have is that the increase is worth much less than the game makes it seem. While the increase to upkeep is fairly static. Let's take minerals as an example.
100% Base Mineral Production.
60% from the mining chain.
25% from the Mineral Purification hub.
This is a 185% increase compared to the base production. If we add another 30% from the final new tech. It ends up being only an overall 21,5% increase to productivity but a 30% increase to upkeep. Now the value might lie in this technology increasing specialist output/science output(?) but the more modifiers you have active the less beneficial it becomes at large.
Further, these technologies scale negatively with themselves in terms of efficiency. Each of them making the subsequent one slightly worse. And for base resources i.e minerals/energy they get worse with every repeatable. They might still be worth it for end product output ala Science, Alloys, etc. But they, funnily enough, increase inefficiency.