Workaround for broken Founder Species (long post is long)

[RabbaDooDabba]

Hey there fellow Forumites,

I have noticed multiple threads and bug-reports reporting different Bugs like broken oligarchic elections, non-functioning RGB vials, Supremacists upset about species-purity although there are no (apparent) sub-species.

All those are caused by broken Founder Species identity…

A short Disclaimer first: I have no essential knowledge about coding or scripting but I like to waste hours upon hours in sandbox-galaxies, exploring gamemechanics and such. Therefore, every deduction and conclusion is drawn by sheer observation and rudimentary understanding how a system operates and handles data.

Also, english is not my native tounge. While I am rather confident in my english skillz™ I am still prone to some mistakes and hicc-ups, I also find it mentally exhausting, so please bear with me.
Alrighty then…

Part 1: Mind your own Matter

This is the Demographics tab at the "start" of the game, we have 25 pops, all on our capital planet. Everything is nice and dandy.


No sub-species yet, just the original template.


Some time passes, we gather unitiy, unlock a few ascention perks and, in the end, decide to go psionic. So we choose Mind over Matter.


Sweet, our species is Latent Psionic now. (sorry for the weirdly cropped pictures, I was just going through the motions after some time but all essential information should be visible.)


Although, the game begs to differ. We are actually a sub-species of our original species (which I will refer to as Progenitor Species to differentiate from Founder Species)
So, the game is looking for the template but cannot find any pops having this template, that is why there are 0 pops on 1 planet. Sounds logical to me.


So we want to present the game some pops with that template.
And we want to create a new template first. We really, really want to….


Just change the name a bit...


… and hit create to… yeah.


Right, now apply the Progenitor Species template (which is the Founder Species at the moment).


There you go, Founder Species reinstated… and an ascention perk wasted as this species is not latent psionic anymore.


And this is why we created that second latent psionic template. If you would not have done that you could not psionically transcend by picking Transcendence as there would be no way to regain Latent Psionic.
Now, for consistency's sake, we hit modify on that template,...


…change the Name back to its original...


...and apply this template to our populations.


And there you go, Factions are satisfied again, elections work like they used to and the mental crisis is averted.

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

Part 2: Enigmatic Emergency

Alroight chaps, we are in a later stage of the game. We unlocked every gene-mod Point we could get and by adding the RGB vial even managed to go into negative trait Points, even Fallen empire Pops say "damn" to this sight.


Everything is as it is supposed to be but... we could use yet another trait…


Ah... the Enigmatic Cache offerd to uplift us. Thank you very much, Balkor.


Now we are truly whole.


Except… -.-
Fine!... You payed Attention during part 1 so no problem, right ?


Well, Stellaris throws you a nasty curve ball. Because of negative trait points you cannot create new templates.


But I am a step ahead. Before initiating the enigmatic ascention, I created a vassal.
Simply reintegrate that vassal after ascention. (Migrated pops with the Founder Species template work as well, but who would let their pops migrate to different empires *nervous laughter*)


And here you can see that the game is just looking for matching templates and not "Pops that were of the former Founder Species".
Also of note here is that Progenitor Species and Founder Species are different this time. So applying the Progeniter Species template would have done nothing... even if they are "the originial".


Just apply the uplifted template to the remaining Founder Species templates...


… and Bob's your uncle.



Fun Fact: Ships (not admirals) in battle gather experience to rise through ranks.
While waiting for projects to finish, I cleared the galaxy with a single, invincible titan…
however, the gathering of ship experience appears to be "1 per survived day in combat" interessting.​

 

[faljen_isus]

i somehow trust that this will be helpful in all future iterations of stellaris

 

[Astax]

Your species does not appear to be as good as it could be! Back to the drawing board with you!

 

[The Kombinator]

i somehow trust that this will be helpful in all future iterations of stellaris

I trust, that it won't. Because to be honest. This is more like a bug, and it actually matters, if you are xenophobe. What OP just posted is a solution to these bugs.

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

This is just supposed to be a helpful guide I can point to in future threads about this bug.
As far as I know, only "Mind over Matter" and "Enigmatic Ascention" cause this bug

It would be nice if someone could clarify if the "Brain Symbionts" event is exempt from this bug, I have not tested it yet.

I trust, that it won't. Because to be honest. This is more like a bug, and it actually matters, if you are xenophobe. What OP just posted is a solution to these bugs.

I hope it won't. I would rather have this bug fixed than to awkwardly gene-mod back and forth :/
I already made a bug report and apart from this guide, I do not know what else I can do to draw attention to it.... Without being an absolute nuisance, that is.

 

[Snoipah]

I just wasted a bunch of research time because I gene modded my species, then got the latent perk, and then I gene modded back to the pre-gene modded species, which wasn't the founding species anymore.

Make sure you gene mode back to what the species was exactly before the latent psionic perk otherwise, yeah, wasted 40 months.

 

[Butlerian]

This is great, thanks @RabbaDooDabba

I trust, that it won't. Because to be honest. This is more like a bug, and it actually matters, if you are xenophobe. What OP just posted is a solution to these bugs.

I don't understand why "I think this solution is useful" and "I think this problem is a bug" are mutually exclusive.

I think that it won't be useful in future because pops are getting re-done in Le Guin, but that's a totally separate issue.

 

[tobias.mb]

Mind your own Matter

For Psi ascension it should be noted though, that "transcendence" (the 2nd perk) fixes the issue as well. The psionic version is correctly set as main species, even if the version they uplifted from wasn't the main species. So if you go that route, there is no real need to fix the issue after the 1st perk.
You could also simply save up a free perk slot until you have 2 free ones and you can pick "mind over matter" and "transcendence" at the same time.

Edit: Also if you want to retain some unmodified pops, you can build a colony ship before the project finishes. Then you only need to use it after finishing the project, and you have some original pops again on the new colony.