I never have enough Non-Specialists

[Doctor Wu]

The buildings they work in stop functioning, I keep bringing them in and in 30-40 sols, they're all seniors and I'm screwed.

Is there a tutorial you might recommend?

[kory]

You can put specialists in regular buildings, there isnt any penalty.

[Doctor Wu]

Then I run out of them. lol

[NotThatHarkness]

At a certain point in every game I have the opposite problem. Plenty of non-specialists and universities can't train them fast enough to fill specialist positions. Which leads me to ask, what is the birth rate in your colony? Is comfort high enough on average for colonists to reproduce? Do you have a medical building in each dome with residences to lower the comfort threshold for births? Do you have many schools, are they packed with kids?

The applicant pool will get you started. But in the mid-term you'll need to rely on your Martianborn population to replace aging colonists. If your birth rate can't sustain your colony, perhaps you expanded too fast. The size of the applicant pool varies with sponsor, but regardless it won't be enough to sustain a reasonably sized colony long or even mid term. This is something I struggle with. I generally forbid births until I feel I've got advanced resource production or rare metal mining implemented to support a bunch of schools and universities. So I try to keep from expanding too much so I don't exhaust the applicant pool and end up with a low working population. When to switch gears and start building child domes and university domes is something I generally get wrong-ish most of the time.

Next game, consider using the More Colonists game rule. That gives you an applicant pool of 500, which should help if you run into this problem again. The Forever Young breakthrough tech will allow seniors to work and have children. You can use survivingmaps.com to find maps with that breakthrough or use mods to get it on any map. That will mitigate the issue, but not solve it.

[Doctor Wu]

I agree about not depending on the Applicant Pool for long. But my birth rate, in the starter dome will never be high enough to keep M.U. going. For me, Engineers and Medics are a huge short-fall mid-game. And of course NSpecs.

[Doctor Wu]

I find the game pretty scientifically faithful to what I've gleaned from Science Documentaries, Robert Zubrin, NASA etc. But one thing that is WAY off base is that 2/3 of the Applicants in the pool wound't get within 10 miles of a NASA Astronaut Training Facility. LOL

[some moron]

you gotta breed your own human-units

[Doctor Wu]

Oh. Such as the Clones? That's the Breakthrough tech? They age and die quick. So once they come out of the "cloning Vat" can you pick their job?

[Doctor Wu]

Oh. Clones? Isn't that the Breakthrough Tech?

[Sticky Wicket]

Trying to get the balance right with this is very difficult. I have never managed to so far to get it right. The problem seems to be about successfully pre-empting the sudden waves of colonists turning senior leaving massive gaps in the workforce. The way I deal with it: at any one time I have a group of unemployed in all areas of work ready there to replace losses.

~~

With regard to the applicant pool, yeah it feels totally unreal, like scraping the barrel of the gene pool. Like where did they find these people?

[some moron]

No sorry, I just mean you gotta breed Martians
have a clinic in each dome and soon you will have too many

[Toxo]

Setting up your dome properly usually results in population spikes.
Keep comfort in mind, and provide at least one activity of each type. (Luxury / shopping / gaming etc). Avoid comfort buildings that burn resources in the beginning, but don't fear to use them once you can afford it, since they are very space efficient.
Make sure to have free nursery space, esle new kids won't get born. Also as much school slots as you have children, and equally as much university space, once you have access to them. Colonists will usually train for those jobs that are currently held by a non specialist and require a specialist to function, so a colony sorts itself out over time.
Also, some breakthroughs are stupidly OP. The AI controlled fusion reactors will allow you to never worry about power generation again, and AI extractors solve all your resource problems. Since they don't require workers anymore, you get away with fever specialists, and it helps your dome comfort, since you can use resource burning buildings earlier. Just make sure to enable 24h shifts on them, else the building will shut down periodically, even if you have AI extractors.

[some moron]

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Trying to get the balance right with this is very difficult. I have never managed to so far to get it right. The problem seems to be about successfully pre-empting the sudden waves of colonists turning senior leaving massive gaps in the workforce. The way I deal with it: at any one time I have a group of unemployed in all areas of work ready there to replace losses.

I find my pace goes like this:
early game I want a minimum of people because i can't afford all the life support so I'm very picky about whom I accept
then when I get small factories up, I need as many as I can get so I accept many more, and many more flaws and I can deal now with flaws and insanity and suidice
until now I have had propagation turned off
around 100 imported, I build nursery dome and turn on progation
next 20 sols I am growing my own and importing many
another ten sols and i stop importing
another five sols and I turn off reproduction in most domes, maybe leave two on to keep a trickle being created

I'm trying to say yes there is a time in the middle where I can't import enough and can't yet produce them, but that quickly turns into producing too many. You have to get the techs to improve comfort, and cliinic in every dome. about 75% of the way through the game you should be producing more humans than you need.

[NotThatHarkness]

Originally posted by Tremere:

Make sure to have free nursery space, esle new kids won't get born.

The birth rate has nothing to do with free nursery spots. There may be a mod that regulates birthrate in that way, but that's not a game mechanic I've ever seen in my games.

I think the next patch(?) introduces something like this, but tied to school slots IIRC.

[Doctor Wu]

That's way more NSpecs than I can bring in initially. Again. More unattended NS buildings and a SOL is a day or a year? These guys age VERY fast.

[some moron]

It's all the radiation and recycled food
sometimes there's a problem where it doesn't go properly through all the recycling process