@Diamondkai09 You should not have 5k pops. This mod is for pre-4.0 versions.

so am i supposed to get at least 500 pops per month on a planet with 5k pops?

@failproof I have not tried it recently, but there is no reason it should not.

Hello, would this work on the current version?

I think a great balance for mechanical empires would be to simply allow them to build multiple robot factories. It never made sense for them to be limited to one only. Just make them expensive. Maybe limit them to one per colony capital building level. Or limit them to one per X population on the planet in a way that roughly matches your new organic pop curve.

Right now synthetic empires have the same very silly problem organic empires did. Its extremely powerful to go as wide as possible, habitat spam, anything just to get more population growth since its fixed per-colony.

Thanks, I tried to make it clear! I haven't seen other mods touching the same modifiers, but they are likely not balanced for it. Then again, neither is the base game! The AI also struggles sometimes because of existing problems this mod highlights.

Cool mod, haven't tried it yet so can't complement to much! What I did want to complement is this fantastically clear description - reads like a product pitch document I'd be delighted to receive (and is better than many I do receive) so thanks! Looking forward to trying it out. Any idea how this might conflict with other mods (aside from those that obviously tinker with pop growth)?

Basically not at all, that would need a completely separate implementation that I did not get into.

Does this work with synths to any degree, or not at all due to assembly plants?

@atreidesson You are quite correct on that. It does depend on what setting you use for the groeth penalty.

But if you remove the growth penalty, then of course it's exponential. You don't have it removed on the picture though.

It's actually not exponential but rather linar with that. Because when a pop birthes, it changes the next growing pop's cost by +0.25. Whoch it produces in 1.25 months. So naturally a big population will grow every 1.25 months, changed by modifiers of course, having 0.25N pop cost and 0.2N production for N pops.

Oh, I have not updated the listed version, but it seems to work fine.

Does it still work for 3.10?

The main problem I have encountered is that the AI does not build new jobs until they get unemployed pops, which means the auto-resettlement of unemployed pops does not work.

Now that is already bad and sub-optimal in the vanilla game, but it is worse with this mod, definitely.

I saw a couple planets that had more than 50 unemployed pops on full planets and planets that had quite a few buildings but no pops in the same empire. The AI doesnt move them manually and just piles pops up on big planets after like 2300, while planets that are in development during the mid-late game dont get any further assistance in pop growth apart from immigration, which isnt too helpful. The AI probably sees its planets on an individual scale instead of an empire scale, which would be necessary in order to fix this.

@Fulcrum52 That is a possibility I will look into. It is a bit difficult to do without further unbalancing, I might have to reduce pop assembly per roboticist.

@Krone Thanks for trying it out! What kind of problems did you see the AI run in to? From what I saw myself, they were still powerful enough to crush the crises on their own. Sometimes the AI seems to refuse to build when they should, but they did the same without the mod.

I absolutely love the idea of this mod and tried it in my last run. It is a great change for your own empire but the AI doesnt know how to manage their planets. I felt like the game was much easier since the AI just failed at building good empires. I will return for sure as soon as the AI can manage this mod. Great work!

Could you also unshackle pop assembly buildings from colony amount by making Robot Assembly buildings give 1 roboticist job every 15 pops on planet, since 15 pops = baseline 3.0 vanilla Stellaris growth. Clone vats buildings could give 4.5 growth every 15 pop but it's food maintenance cost also increases by 100% for evey 15 pops.

there's already a mod that adds build speed per pos

That's actually not a bad idea to help construction keep up with pop growth, I will look into it.

Nice. Gonna try a overtuned Pop growth and -% pop housing one planet build with this.

Also can you make pops give a slight building construction speed bonus, say 1% per pop?

They still have some worth for that, but much less than before.

what about robot assembly? Most empires can still assemble robots on one-pop colonies, that seems to make those tiny worlds still worth taking

I so far as the mod is balanced, it is balanced for the otherwise vanilla game. The core idea of the mod is that it does not matter if 40 pops are spread over 2 colonies or 20, they give the same amount of growth.

However, I could lower the cap to an amount that does not affect the vanilla game but will prevent the excesses in other mods (I have not played those myself I think). Right now the cap is at 10.000...

I still feel there should be a hard cap somewhere, just for things like Birch World, Frameworld (Frameworld isn't robot-only anymore), Shield World, Coming Out of Your Shell, etc.

I hope so! Not much experience with mods yet.

Let's hope this doesn't mess with my other mods when I try it.