That may be integrated in the genetic ascension update but I would love way to increase pop metabolism aka extra points for extra food cost (like the cyborgs have with energy).
Let's be real, the way you can use food are very limited :
-Pops. but it's a constant increase (and it tends to shrink as you gain options to reduce pop upkeep)
-Nutritional plenitude. feels like a no brainer edict as growth is king. same problem as pops as it's just a percent increase.
-Clone vats. Nothing to say, clone vats are a great use of food.
-Bio ships. I find those laking compared to real ships but I guess it is a real use. I imagine that real bio-ships teased by the devs will be a better use of food but we don't have them yet.
-Catalytic civic and bio reactor. These feel like bandaids. The ressourse is mostly useless so you can transform it into other ressourses that arn't. Not very satisfying.
-Others. Things like the prethoryn relic, the damn the consequence edict. Yeah those exist but are niche and far from garanteed options.
Because of that, I feel that we could keep the idea that food is for pops but give option to pay more food/pop for other benefits
Metabolism could be done in multiple ways but the easiest one would be to allow to make a specie with more points than you are allowed. An other could be to add negative traits that increase pop food upkeep. A third way would be to add extra traits like the cybernetic ones that are discounted at the cost of food upkeep.
This would give options to make food production more useful in general. Agrarian Idyll type civs would be able to sink those huge amounts of food into something that is unique to them.
Could even be fun to have the option to create high metabolism species at empire creation. This would change the balance of ressourse production, forcing you to invest massively into farms which may slow the early game to profit from your super pops in the mid game even before genemodding when basic ressourse production stabilizes.
A genetically ascended empire with high metabolism pops + clone vats would have a big number of highly efficient pops balanced by their equally high food upkeep.
Let's be real, the way you can use food are very limited :
-Pops. but it's a constant increase (and it tends to shrink as you gain options to reduce pop upkeep)
-Nutritional plenitude. feels like a no brainer edict as growth is king. same problem as pops as it's just a percent increase.
-Clone vats. Nothing to say, clone vats are a great use of food.
-Bio ships. I find those laking compared to real ships but I guess it is a real use. I imagine that real bio-ships teased by the devs will be a better use of food but we don't have them yet.
-Catalytic civic and bio reactor. These feel like bandaids. The ressourse is mostly useless so you can transform it into other ressourses that arn't. Not very satisfying.
-Others. Things like the prethoryn relic, the damn the consequence edict. Yeah those exist but are niche and far from garanteed options.
Because of that, I feel that we could keep the idea that food is for pops but give option to pay more food/pop for other benefits
Metabolism could be done in multiple ways but the easiest one would be to allow to make a specie with more points than you are allowed. An other could be to add negative traits that increase pop food upkeep. A third way would be to add extra traits like the cybernetic ones that are discounted at the cost of food upkeep.
This would give options to make food production more useful in general. Agrarian Idyll type civs would be able to sink those huge amounts of food into something that is unique to them.
Could even be fun to have the option to create high metabolism species at empire creation. This would change the balance of ressourse production, forcing you to invest massively into farms which may slow the early game to profit from your super pops in the mid game even before genemodding when basic ressourse production stabilizes.
A genetically ascended empire with high metabolism pops + clone vats would have a big number of highly efficient pops balanced by their equally high food upkeep.
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