Wilderness populations? Bug or feature?

[lance.heyen]

I made the mistake of trying out the new Wilderness origin for my first playthrough since the update not realising just how many changes to the game they had made with the 4.0 update. Does anyone know what the go is with pops and the wilderness origin?

My beginning planet currently has a pop of 57.
The second planet I colonised has a pop of 1...
And the third planet I colonised has a pop of.... 113.

It originally looked like my first planet had normal pop growth (was slowly growing like normal) but every colonised planet went up to the max pop for the planet as soon as it was colonised? But when I reloaded my save all of a sudden planet 2 was back down to 1.

No mods, no cheats, no wars to bring in extra pop. I may have to scrap this game entirely and go back to a more normal origin until I get a handle on the new mechanics.

[Orangenextrakt]

You do not have 'pops'.
The biomass turns into a pop when a job is open.
Since they have a +1000 bonus to workforce, most jobs are filled with a single 'pop'.
You also use this biomass when you construct buildings.
I think you can figure out the rest from there.

[lance.heyen]

Originally posted by Orangenextrakt:

You do not have 'pops'.
The biomass turns into a pop when a job is open.
Since they have a +1000 bonus to workforce, most jobs are filled with a single 'pop'.
You also use this biomass when you construct buildings.
I think you can figure out the rest from there.

Yeah, definitely sounds like I avoid this origin for a while XD

[Azirel]

The main issue is that when you have MORE than 1000 jobs of a single type, it breaks.
Let's say you have 1200 job slots for miners. Guess how much "biomass" (or "biomass-pops") will be used? If you guessed 2, you're wrong, it will use some random amount between 5 and 200.

Someone have even already created a bug for it.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-phoenix-v4-0-3-3b8a-wilderness-job-bug-using-too-many-pops-and-pops-refusing-to-fill-jobs.1741753/

[Azirel]

Reproducible in 4.0.4 currently, at least from my old save created during the 4.0.1 times

[identity]

Originally posted by Azirel:

Reproducible in 4.0.4 currently, at least from my old save created during the 4.0.1 times

Interesting. I didn't get far enough to notice this, though. My problem is that biomass is an arbitrary bottleneck that replaces all other resources. It also seems to be that you get more biomass depending on how many pops you have, and you're just constantly spending it the moment you can build something you need. Seems counterintuitive, unless that's part of the bug.

[mr steal ur spell]

Originally posted by identity:

Originally posted by Azirel:

Reproducible in 4.0.4 currently, at least from my old save created during the 4.0.1 times

Interesting. I didn't get far enough to notice this, though. My problem is that biomass is an arbitrary bottleneck that replaces all other resources. It also seems to be that you get more biomass depending on how many pops you have, and you're just constantly spending it the moment you can build something you need. Seems counterintuitive, unless that's part of the bug.

In terms of the fantasy being explored, it makes sense. The player isn't controlling one intelligence or government, it's all sorts of different organisms working together for mutual benefit. That's what the biomass number is supposed to represent. It makes sense to compare it to the nanites ascension for machines which increasingly turns everything into nanites and regularly gives you ships and more nanite deposits based on that.

The problem is that there's no clarity regarding how much biomass you need to keep things running smoothly (especially early on) whereas the nanite ascension happens when you are at least mid game and sorted out your borders and production. When you are switching to nanite ships, you don't have weird income swings like you do with wilderness and that's what always throws people off.

Edit: I forgot to say that while nanite rewards super wide play, wilderness has a sprawl penalty that crushes you if you expand with too many districts.

[Azirel]

Looks like my issue will be fixed in 4.0.5
In a pretty stupid way (increase the Wilderness workforce bonus to 99999), but should work as a stopgap