Rogue Servitors giganerfed into unplayable levels? Or a bug?

[RingworldUtopia]

It's the year 2300. With the same number of colonies as now, I would usually be at hundreds of unity per month before the update. With the new pop system, I am at literally 24 unity per month.

I'm not sure what the problem is here, whether it's that my biotrophy pop growth is very low (1 per month), or that my unity production is very low, or maybe there's some new unity costs I am not aware of that are eating into that production.

But other than my unity problems, I just noticed something that has not yet really become an issue but will become an issue once I have my science ringworld: my 990 biotrophies on one of my colonies, only grants a 1% buff to my complex drones. I thought the pop conversion was 1 of the old pops=100 of the new pops. Using that math, rounding up as the game has, my near 1000 biotrophies should be granting 10% buff, not 1%. If this is intended, it's a giganerf to biotrophies who I'm not even sure I'll be able to stack like I used to anyways because of the limited building slots now.

Has anyone else played rogue servitor since the update? If so, did you notice these issues? Were you able to make rogue servitors work somehow, what did you do differently to make them work?

Is this a bug, or an intended nerf?

Edit: I finally collected enough unity to add my 3rd civic, so I chose Maintenance Protocols and instantly jumped from 24 unity per month to over 350 unity per month. Maintenance protocols is usually a supplement to my biotrophy unity output, but it is now my main source of unity lol, this makes no sense. But at least I found a workaround for now. The maintenance drones taking care of my biotrophies are the ones giving me unity, instead of the biotrophies, haha.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

my 990 biotrophies on one of my colonies, only grants a 1% buff to my complex drones.

Tooltip problem. Check the output of your complex drones, and there'll be a "9% from pop jobs" line or similar.

Anyway, have you noticed that unity district specialisations are still available and give coordinator jobs rather than bio-trophy jobs? Archives are pretty much always better than a research specialisation anyway because archives give 100 jobs and research only gives 90. You should be no worse off for unity than any machine empire.

 

[Twogs]

I think the biggest issue the Bio-Trophies have is the new pop grow system
You start with only 500 which makes their grow very slow. On top of that is the 50% grow malus of Maschine Intelligence.

 

[jedavis]

Anyway, have you noticed that unity district specialisations are still available and give coordinator jobs rather than bio-trophy jobs?

Bit of a bummer for that to become Servitors' main unity source, but good to know I guess.

Sounds like trophies were an unfortunate casualty of the removal of the base pop growth floor.

 

[Twogs]

Bit of a bummer for that to become Servitors' main unity source, but good to know I guess.

Sounds like trophies were an unfortunate casualty of the removal of the base pop growth floor

Yeah I tried to alleviate the 50% malus with budding, but that doesn't help against this issue either

 

[RingworldUtopia]

yes i'm going from 0 to 1 to 2 and back to 0 growth on biotrophies. 2 took lots of investment and lasted a month at most lol.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

I think the biggest issue the Bio-Trophies have is the new pop grow system
You start with only 500 which makes their grow very slow. On top of that is the 50% grow malus of Maschine Intelligence.

I'm currently looking at a couple of changes for Rogue Servitors

• Remove the -50% growth penalty from Machine Intelligences, it's not needed anymore.
• Have Rogue Servitors start with 2,000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500 (replacing the pops that would normally be Maintenance Drones for other Machine Intelligences).
• Giving them access to a dedicated district specialisation to house Bio-Trophies.
• I'm also investigating giving them access to a version of the Auto-Curating Vault to provide bonuses to Bio-Trophies.

 

[RingworldUtopia]

I'm currently looking at a couple of changes for Rogue Servitors

• Remove the -50% growth penalty from Machine Intelligences, it's not needed anymore.
• Have Rogue Servitors start with 2,000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500 (replacing the pops that would normally be Maintenance Drones for other Machine Intelligences).
• Giving them access to a dedicated district specialisation to house Bio-Trophies.
• I'm also investigating giving them access to a version of the Auto-Curating Vault to provide bonuses to Bio-Trophies.

View attachment 1300128

yes amazing, i was looking for a sanctuary specialization and settled on archive when i couldn't find it. all of these changes look great.

edit: also that 2000 would be especially amazing because i'm literally at 1000 on my homeworld and no other colony has broken 1000, by 2300. i want more squishies!

 

[HP Delron]

One of their bigger problems at the moment is that conquered species will never convert into bio-trophies. They remain as Workers/Specialists and just hanging around not doing anything, not even counting as unemployed or demoting to citizens. They stay in the weird non-trophy, non-working state indefinitely.

This means independent of the quality of returns or other factors on trophies, you just can't get more beyond the natural growth from your starting population.

Presumably this is a bug and I've seen it reported in the bug forum a couple times. I'm assuming it'll get swept up in one of the fix waves sooner or later.

 

[Thiend]

I'm currently looking at a couple of changes for Rogue Servitors

• Remove the -50% growth penalty from Machine Intelligences, it's not needed anymore.
• Have Rogue Servitors start with 2,000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500 (replacing the pops that would normally be Maintenance Drones for other Machine Intelligences).
• Giving them access to a dedicated district specialisation to house Bio-Trophies.
• I'm also investigating giving them access to a version of the Auto-Curating Vault to provide bonuses to Bio-Trophies.

View attachment 1300128

I'd like to suggest replacing wholesale the Biotrophy job with making them a secondary "good unemployed" group alongside Maintenance Drones.

Make Rogue Servitors get both Maintenance Drones and Biotrophies as their unemployed classes, depending on whether they're machines or not, and keep Biotrophies unable to hold any actual jobs. That just seems like it makes more sense with the way the whole system is set up, rather than a district specialization that will inevitably either be wasting Biotrophy jobs or wasting whatever you intend to build alongside them.

This is broadly a problem with district specializations and is why I've suggested giving them two distinct city districts with two specializations each adding jobs separately and with building effects fully separated, but in this specific case I think it would be even easier to just NOT make Biotrophies be a job you need to build at all.

 

[PhillipLynx]

I'd like to suggest replacing wholesale the Biotrophy job with making them a secondary "good unemployed" group alongside Maintenance Drones.

This is really interesting to me. For Knights they made the basic civilian job into squires so we know something like this is possible.
My only complaint is you don't get the neat visual of actually building organic sanctuaries. Somehow they're living in the same space as your robots. Also it'll probably open up some weirdness where you can give them the shelled trait and put all your bio-trophies on one world.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

One of their bigger problems at the moment is that conquered species will never convert into bio-trophies. They remain as Workers/Specialists and just hanging around not doing anything, not even counting as unemployed or demoting to citizens. They stay in the weird non-trophy, non-working state indefinitely.

This means independent of the quality of returns or other factors on trophies, you just can't get more beyond the natural growth from your starting population.

Presumably this is a bug and I've seen it reported in the bug forum a couple times. I'm assuming it'll get swept up in one of the fix waves sooner or later.

I've been investigating this for a fair bit of this afternoon and think I have a solution.

 

[Red Death]

• Remove the -50% growth penalty from Machine Intelligences, it's not needed anymore.

I like it, but keep in mind this also buffs Driven Assimilators! (Not sure if you intended that or not).

• Have Rogue Servitors start with 2,000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500 (replacing the pops that would normally be Maintenance Drones for other Machine Intelligences).

If you're going to do this, please look into also adjusting the starting pop balance for Necrophage empires. Almost all their pop-growth is going to happen from the pre-patents, but since those are a minority of your starting pops, it's slow and rough.

 

[Twogs]

I'm currently looking at a couple of changes for Rogue Servitors

• Remove the -50% growth penalty from Machine Intelligences, it's not needed anymore.
• Have Rogue Servitors start with 2,000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500 (replacing the pops that would normally be Maintenance Drones for other Machine Intelligences).
• Giving them access to a dedicated district specialisation to house Bio-Trophies.
• I'm also investigating giving them access to a version of the Auto-Curating Vault to provide bonuses to Bio-Trophies.

View attachment 1300128

That sounds pretty amazing

Too sad I just started a new game and decided to not go with Rogue Servtor ^^

 

[HFY]

If you're going to do this, please look into also adjusting the starting pop balance for Necrophage empires. Almost all their pop-growth is going to happen from the pre-patents, but since those are a minority of your starting pops, it's slow and rough.

True but you get bonus pops from your guaranteed habitables.

Dunno how it balances out but you're not doing as badly as someone with few pops and empty starter colonies.

 

[jedavis]

Do servitors get access to clone vats now?

(If no, should they?)

 

[Thiend]

This is really interesting to me. For Knights they made the basic civilian job into squires so we know something like this is possible.
My only complaint is you don't get the neat visual of actually building organic sanctuaries. Somehow they're living in the same space as your robots. Also it'll probably open up some weirdness where you can give them the shelled trait and put all your bio-trophies on one world.

This is solvable by keeping the building as a planet-unique enhancer for Biotrophies. That would also preserve the upgrades.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

This is really interesting to me. For Knights they made the basic civilian job into squires so we know something like this is possible.

Technically, they didn't. Squires are a Worker tier, never-unemployed job, like Livestock, Servants, or Toilers (assuming those are still around).

My only complaint is you don't get the neat visual of actually building organic sanctuaries. Somehow they're living in the same space as your robots. Also it'll probably open up some weirdness where you can give them the shelled trait and put all your bio-trophies on one world.

Make organics take a job that makes them miserable by default, but building the sanctuary jobs-swaps them over.

So you need to build a sanctuary if you want happy biotrophies.

It doesn't prevent you from stacking a million biotrophies on one world, but it does solve not needing a building at all.

 

[RingworldUtopia]

for my current playthrough, since people have pointed out biotrophy popgrowth is very low in this patch, i will de-ironman my save and console command some popgrowth traits on them to see if that helps. but i'm really looking forward to the changes being worked on

 

[jedavis]

My only complaint is you don't get the neat visual of actually building organic sanctuaries. Somehow they're living in the same space as your robots.

I'm thinking of that Futurama episode where Fry gets sent to the robot asylum.