Can machine empires not construct a specific (sub)species template anymore?

[The Song]

Have I gone blind and unable to find the right buttons,
or is it no long possible to force my machine empire to specifically construct pops of a particular subspecies template (designed for being produced), and not the default species the produced pops then get converted into?

I've designed the two different templates but I'm not seeing a way in a planet's menus to force construction of the specific template over the other, which if iirc was something we used to do, and in population controls they're both templates of the founder species so I can't activate population controls.

We used to make empires that had luxurious & custom built traits, immediately make a 2nd template that had mass produced, set the second template subspecies to be converted into the main template (assimilation or subspecies conversion), then have our pop production specifically make the 2nd template, never the 1st.

 

[Red Death]

No, they can not. Yes, it is very annoying. No, we did not get explanation about why. Apparently in most cases assembly is supposedly just spread out over existing pop groups proportionally.

To be fair though, this:

We used to make empires that had luxurious & custom built traits, immediately make a 2nd template that had mass produced, set the second template subspecies to be converted into the main template (assimilation or subspecies conversion), then have our pop production specifically make the 2nd template, never the 1st.

Seems like kind of an exploit, does it not? You get all the benefits of mass-produced, without it costing you anything.

 

[HFY]

Seems like kind of an exploit, does it not? You get all the benefits of mass-produced, without it costing you anything.

It costs you pops for whatever amount of time they stay stuck in Assimilating.

Functionally it seemed comparable to the slow-build traits since Assimilation could add a year delay.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

It costs you pops for whatever amount of time they stay stuck in Assimilating.

Functionally it seemed comparable to the slow-build traits since Assimilation could add a year delay.

6 months, on average, since they assimilate on the first of the year but could be built any time during it.

It was really not close to building slower: -10% growth is very close to a 5 year delay for organics, but they have logistic growth.

For machines that have a flat number of Replicators or Roboticists and whose growth traits gave +15% (and a -20% upkeep reduction), it was a huge boost with basically no downside: a 6 month delay in using any given pop was less substantial than even the upkeep reduction you got while building it (at least 20 alloys, more like 30-50 for most of the game).

But it seems the devs decided "get the benefit of growth traits without paying for them" was not something they wanted to keep around.

 

[Psykhes]

6 months, on average, since they assimilate on the first of the year but could be built any time during it.

It was really not close to building slower: -10% growth is very close to a 5 year delay for organics, but they have logistic growth.

For machines that have a flat number of Replicators or Roboticists and whose growth traits gave +15% (and a -20% upkeep reduction), it was a huge boost with basically no downside: a 6 month delay in using any given pop was less substantial than even the upkeep reduction you got while building it (at least 20 alloys, more like 30-50 for most of the game).

I addition to this, you could also pick the negative assembly speed and upkeep traits for your "main" robots, which had then basically no downsides.
So you could double dip, get the positive ones for free, but also get the negative ones without experiencing their penalties.

 

[HFY]

I addition to this, you could also pick the negative assembly speed and upkeep traits for your "main" robots, which had then basically no downsides.
So you could double dip, get the positive ones for free, but also get the negative ones without experiencing their penalties.

Yeah to me this was the worst of it.

Since machines have an assembly Civic, it might be fine to just remove the +/- assembly traits entirely.

 

[GuardianGI]

Well it doesn't matter right now since job weights are broken. Just design a single most optimal species and forget about it. Atleast for now.

 

[RingworldUtopia]

yeah, honestly I never liked doing this exploit, and it started feeling mandatory especially when it became easy with automatic assimilation. this is the reason i'm ok with not being allowed to choose what pops to assemble, it's removed the temptation entirely so i can just focus on what my species SHOULD be in its FINAL form, rather than having to think of "what is the optimal meta template for pop assembly, and THEN what is the optimal meta FINAL template it should assimilate into". it feels bad to lose the ability to choose, but it also feels kind of freeing for this reason.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I am a little sad that cloning can no longer steal pops, though, through the same mechanic. That was always pretty funny, and it was nice to get easy access to e.g. psionic pops as a genetic ascension empire. But genetic is no longer in a position where it needs every advantage it can get to compete, so that's fine (and everyone would have been able to do that, anyway, with universal access to clone vats).

 

[HFY]

I am a little sad that cloning can no longer steal pops, though, through the same mechanic. That was always pretty funny, and it was nice to get easy access to e.g. psionic pops as a genetic ascension empire. But genetic is no longer in a position where it needs every advantage it can get to compete, so that's fine (and everyone would have been able to do that, anyway, with universal access to clone vats).

 

[RingworldUtopia]

View attachment 1326669

While looking for more humanoid looking synths (still can't find any that I like), I ran across a mod developer who disagreed

Steam Workshop::Blorg-Chan (Animated Portrait Replacement)

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