Unfeasible to assimilate species with large numbers

[Felius]

So, the moment you pick a species for assimilation, for example, to give them the psionic trait, they all become unable to work. And even worse, they do count as unemployed for crime issues. While assimilating ony 7 to 12 pops per year, no matter if you have 7 pops or 240 pops of that species.

As such, trying to assimilate anyone that has a significant presence on your planets is going to cause major crime, to the point of being non-viable. Instead I feel that one of the following should be put in place:

• Pops should keep working while being assimilated
• Pops driven out of work for assimilation should not count as unemployed for crime purposes
• Only the specific pops being assimilated next "tick" should be driven out of work, the rest should remain working.

What do you think?

 

[Avil]

Basically, first option. They should not lose their job. That way they don't become unemployed and don't have to degrade to lower strata later.

 

[Volapyk]

Depends on which sort of assimilation it is, for psionics I could see them be able to work while it is ongoing, maybe give them a happiness penalty while it is happening instead. What I did in my last psionic playthrough was to assimilate them while there was few of them in my empire, and then using the species template to make the rest psionics, you can even genetically modify a single planets worth of pops then assimilate and then apply the template to the rest. This costs you social research but the pops will keep working