hey i only now saw your post. Sorry for not answering sooner, steam never gave me a hint it was here and now that 2.1 is out I actually looked at the mod again. I hope you can forgive me letting you wait so long. I did not ment to ignore you.

you should see a Jaspers eventually. as Generals and as Populations.
I took Rubies since in a Ruby battalion there is a ruby leader, right? I had Amethysts and Jaspers as Generals once now it is Jasper and Topaz and Rubies. Amethysts are to goofy as generals and overall, Quartz gems are only from earth and there shouldn't be any in the homeworld roster if i was perfectly straight with the lore. I maybe i'll change it with the patching i am doing for 2.1, but I like Rubies as Generals.

Sadly i was not able to reskin the robots for the Gems, YET. I was trying to make the Gems themself Robots with happieness, so basicly Synthetics but I ran in to issues and i can't figure out how to solve them :(

if you have any other usggestion i am willing to listen ;) I promised myself to do some work on it with the new update and now that it is out i gotta do something. i will look into the synthetic and the Pearl robo thing. I like the idea of holo pearls as robots.

Alright, I get where you're going with the leader stuff. I would argue that at least some quartzes probably were made places other than earth, it seems unlikely you wouldn't already have troops of that level by now. Leaders seem fine as is.

I imagine doing synth-like pops isn't gonna work without synthetic dawn, otherwise folks could just mod them in and get around needing the DLC. Honestly I don't mind not being able to manufacture gem pops that much, not to mention that to create gems I'm looking for fertile worlds for "kindergartens" i.e. hydroponics bays instead of mineral deposits. But yeah, doing holo-pearls as the lvl 1 robot and then standard pearls as the drone would be the way I would do it, seeing the evolution. Of course my Pearl Solidarity™ side is giving me dirty looks but I'd really like that feel. It'd be a big help for my unrest and I can lie to the other civs that they're not real gems so they'll back up a bit on the slavery issue.

I also imagine it might amuse you to know I've actually written two short fics based on the game play I've had so far in this mod. Very much enjoy, it's what got me to play.

well with the revelation in the most recent episodes i dont think Pearl can be made to be workers tbh. We only know of 3 Pearls. all of them are the most loyal and personal servants of the 3 known diamonds. should i add our Pearl in her Homeworld Fashion to the pearl's pictures in the mod?

Well, to be fair I was modding my bots already to be less laborers and more... I don't remember what traits I was using instead, and I don't have access to my save to look. I think it was more along the lines of research assistant since clerical duties do seem to be within their perview. (Courtroom recorders, screening YD's calls etc)
But I'd say it would make sense to add the new Pearl image, sure. And we do know that they can belong to other gems. No one thought twice when they saw Sapphire with "her" Pearl, Peridot was amused at the idea of getting to flaunt her own around as if it would be unlikely but not impossible, and even Eyeball had visions of grandure (which was really creepy ngl) with the idea she too could rate her own Pearl. There are "hundreds" of them, so they must belong to more than the diamonds.

And, as a side note we actually know of 4, if you recall Rhodonite being a Morganite's Pearl and Ruby in star-crossed love.

yes true, i forgot that detail. my bad. Well i am gonna Add PD Era Pearl to the pictures and than i will look into the holopearl image as robots.

All good. Sounds cool and I look forward to seeing it get updated. I'll have to get another game started so I'll be able to see them.

well, when i update the mod it should be save game compatible. I have build it in a way that should cause no issue since i am only replacing thing in it not adding or removing things. unless you mean because of the 2.1 release. than i think you need a new game.

I lost access to my save because of comp issues and I didn't have it cloud save. So yeah, I gotta get back up and running again.

done, i added Robots, Androids and Synth. to get you holopearls you have to research Synth. i hope that is an ok thing.

Well to be fair I don't have synth dawn but noted, I'll keep that in mind.

yeah, it is sadly a synthetic dawn feature. I am looking if I can make some edit to the non DLC thing but I have only little hope for it. unless i replace the standart picture for every race

I updated the mod big time. now Gems are Robots and have to be build but still use happiness

Sweet.

After several hours of play I'm back with a few notes.

The biggest one I noticed might be that food somewhat surprisingly lost most of its importance. I was riding the max cap without any issues at all and very little to do with it, conversely I was feeling pretty regularly strapped for minerals, more than usual.(Maybe the increase on the consumer goods cost?) I admittedly only have three planets right now, one of which I didn't care much about but it'd be pretty hard to burn through 5k food even then before it'd get built back up. Not honestly sure the suggestion I'd make there, but it had me looking for a button to try and trade food away just to have something to do with it. I guess I was just used to the idea of trying to build up the surplus to hang onto that I was automatically building that up more than I needed. A bit weird you can't trade food, I wonder why they didn't add that in.

The building pops itself was good, I didn't mind that at all. Had a different feel to it I appreciated. I was able to have the number of pops I needed without having them popping up all over the place and having to find work for them.

One thing that's a peeve but might be hard to fix is having the standard lifespans on leaders just feels weird. Part of that is probably my having... "adjusted" some of the traits with a mod on my previous attempt to play, to way up the leader lifespans, but it does still feel strange with the civ flavor. I liked having the familiar faces. A mechanics vs lore thing, those are always a tough one to balance I know. I imagine that's probably you designing this with the vanilla restrictions in mind.

I also noticed there's still the blank pop bug, although it's less than it was. I only saw it once. That and two other tertiary bugs. The adjective form of Gems is written as "gem", while the vanilla races are capitalized, which makes it look out of place when you see "gem-Human War of Annexation" or what have you. The other is the stock name for armies has "Homeworld" misspelled.

All in all my current run is interesting, although bogged down in a attrition war stalemate.

(Disclaimer: I'm also still pretty new to this game so comments made here may be influenced by my not having strategies worked out.)

thanks for the great feedback. i will adjust the adjective thing, and propably make ruler immortal. the invisible pops i cannot explain and i am not sure how to fix the food thing. i will thin about it.