I'd argue Mechanist is in a halfway point between uncommitted and committed. It doesn't have a mechanic that will drastically force you to play your empire differently than normal. To use the three examples above. Necrophage encourages you to to get lots of fodder pops on worlds that produce rare resources like energy, minerals and food, while having your necrophage pops on worlds that heavily produce specialized goods. It also forces you to make sure you aren't necrophaging too many pops if you go heavily into diplomacy and might even encourage you to avoid necrophaging certain species because their is a malus for each pop you turn and I do believe it gets doubled when it's the founding species of someone you want to be on good terms with. Void dweller actually encourages you to spend less time on claiming systems and committing to unneeded wars, since the alloys and influence are better spent on habitats and you can kneecap yourself by claiming too many systems early on or going to war too soon. Clone army is interesting because you do have to play to stay ahead of massive pop growth and then depending on what you do, you might be dependent on getting another species that has full citizenship rights, just not allowed to be military leaders.
Mechanist doesn't force you into a style of play that is going to be noticeable different from how other empires play, but it does force you to commit to building robots. Note this doesn't mean you're forced to go synth ascension.
I'd argue that the devs should lean into giving Mechanists better robot and synth pops than normal and megacorp empires that didn't start with the origin. Not sure how much leeway there is to play with to ensure that they don't over take actual machine empires, but an extra trait point, trait slot or even unique trait might be the way to go with them. That could be a a the start bonus and small enough that they aren't OP. Like I said, I'd like to see less origins that aren't meant to be challenging fall into D tier and that have a somewhat unique feel to them. As in if I pull up a random empire in the midgame years, don't look at their origin or homeworld, I can get a feel for what there origin was still.
Mechanist doesn't force you into a style of play that is going to be noticeable different from how other empires play, but it does force you to commit to building robots. Note this doesn't mean you're forced to go synth ascension.
I'd argue that the devs should lean into giving Mechanists better robot and synth pops than normal and megacorp empires that didn't start with the origin. Not sure how much leeway there is to play with to ensure that they don't over take actual machine empires, but an extra trait point, trait slot or even unique trait might be the way to go with them. That could be a a the start bonus and small enough that they aren't OP. Like I said, I'd like to see less origins that aren't meant to be challenging fall into D tier and that have a somewhat unique feel to them. As in if I pull up a random empire in the midgame years, don't look at their origin or homeworld, I can get a feel for what there origin was still.
