Does the Synaptic Lathe still hold up?

[L-Histidine]

Pre-Phoenix, the Synaptic Lathe could maintain 40 pops without purging any, which let you use it as a deluxe Science Nexus without having to constantly hunt for new pops.

Following the release of 4.0... the Lathe was broken for much of that time, but now it (mostly) works in 4.0.17. This particular version also changed the Lathe to purge at any pop count.

Long story short, after burning maybe 15k or more pops in it, I was wondering if I'd have been better off using those pops to build a regular economy instead.
I don't have the inclination or all the numbers needed (missing purge rate in particular) to graph the relative effectiveness compared to a regular tech world, but I did do a quick snapshot comparison using my existing game.

Spoiler

Here is my empire panel with non-optimized ethics and civics, in 2378:

Here is a random tech world (pls don't judge I'm bad at the game) with 3.5k pops. It produces 978 total research along with 79 unity, 105 trade and a smattering of minerals, while consuming 118 energy, 4 food, 47 CGs, 4 alloys and a trickle of strategic resources I don't care about. Tech-World designation at Ascension Level 5 gives -51.25% researcher upkeep and +12.81% researcher output.

Here is a Lathe, also with 3.5k pops and ascension tier 5. It produces 1210 research, 79 trade, and 13 advanced logic for 558 energy, 20 food, 1 CG, 5 alloys, and a smaller trickle of strategics. The designation gives +38.43% resources from jobs and -12.81% job upkeep (and -12% purge speed).

That's... an edge (23.7% more research), but not a very impressive one given that the Lathe actively devours itself. Upkeep-wise I don't think 45 CGs are worth ~440 energy, either.

Let's scrape up a few more civilians and throw them in, even if this makes the whole thing even more unsustainable:

2382 research! That's actually a nice improvement... at least while it lasts, even with the ascension buffs (I accidentally broke the Synaptic Preserver while swapping districts) it was back to 3.5k pops in 12 months.
If we suppose the research output decays linearly over a year (an incorrect assumption that favors the Lathe), those extra ~1700 pops have bought us a one-off (2382-1210)/2 * 12 = 7032 research with their lives. That's... not even a T3 tech's base price.

Anyone still find the Lathe useful? Is it better to save it for late game when there's 'too many civilians sitting around' (and possibly being a net negative to research speed through their empire size contribution), or should I still try to use it for an early game boost at the cost of longer-term growth?

 

[Ishyro]

In my experience (emphasis on my), the lathe is a good quick and dirty way to get science, but in the long run you are always better off working these pops as researchers instead of sacrificing them.

But of course, getting good techs now is better than getting more techs in 50 years.

I haven't tried the lathe in 4.0, but I suspect it didn't change that much since the new researchers (especially physicists) are stronger than the old ones with all these buffing buildings.

 

[Revengeance_oov]

Part of your issue is that you only have 5235 Pops in the Lathe. That's the old equivalent of 52, which is...not many. The Lathe's per-pop output is quadratic with the number of Pops (assuming you're using the Resonator building) so you gotta get those numbers up!

 

[ahicaar]

The lathe has never been particularly efficient, if for no reason than you’re burning up the single most important resource in the game (pops.) it’s a tool for sprinting, not marathons.

 

[LavanGrimwulff]

Its not bad for genocidal since you can't really use alien pops anyways, other than that a tall build might be able to make good use of it once they run out of jobs, its effectively an infinite number of job openings.

Now if only they finish fixing its bugs, won't let me use more than 9k pops and I've got enough to bump it to 20k and keep it there for a bit.