We can't pick our robots to build. Is that not bad?

[Red Earth]

I haven't seen it mentioned so I'm wondering if I don't understand something or I'm not playing the same as others.

I would typically design a robot with recycled and mass produced traits and build those for a while (cuz pops is pops), then later apply a template with traits specific to a planet's needs, usually with luxurious/custom-made traits since they're irrelevant traits after the pops are already built. So I have a New Robot template and several Refit templates.

However, now I can't pick what robot gets built, and the game chooses not to build the New Robot template in favor or the Refit template. I don't know how it decides what to build now but so far I haven't liked it.

Not choosing pop assembly also weakens the vat-grown trait. It costs two points so it's supposed to be good, but with the cloning bonus spread across all species, it can be boosting and insignificant fraction of cloning based growth when they can't grow without it at all.

Well I don't actually want to micromanage what pops grow where and would prefer the game make reasonable choices for me, I don't think it's making reasonable choices now so I kind of have to be able to do it manually.

 

[WJJellO]

Regarding vat-grown: The new DLC adds a cloning tradition that drastically increases bonus pop growth (from cloning) and also reduces the cost of vat-grown to 0. It can very easily achieve more growth from cloning than a non-cloning-tradition empire would get from cloning and growth combined. This appears to be the main use case for the trait now.

I agree that pop assembly is generally in a bizarre spot now where it basically functions as "flat growth" with little control over what pops are growing when multiple are possible.

 

[Red Death]

Yeah, we probably need the option back to select species for assembly, with it defaulting to the current "assemble everything" function when you do not select anything. But now that organic and mechanical assembly happen in parallel, we actually need two selections.

 

[Eddi]

We have all this new space in the management tab, where you could put options to... manage... pop growth?

 

[balmung60]

Yeah, it's kind of the point of pop assembly that there is some control over which pops are being built, and not having that just seems like missing said point

 

[Revengeance_oov]

Just give a checkbox next to each species for allowing/prohibiting growth on the planet. Easy peasy.