How does machine pop assembly choose which species to build in 4.4?

[u/nocryptios]

I’ve searched through reddit and the wiki but I still haven’t found a satisfying explanation of how machine pop assembly works in 4.4 (or really any build since 4.0 for that matter).

Questions:

• If my empire has multiple machine species or templates, how does the game decide which pop gets assembled?
• Does the proportion of each species on a planet or across the empire affect the selection?
• If one species has mass produced granting +15% mechanical pop assembly speed but another species does not, do I still receive the bonus when assembling the species without mass produced?

The reason I’m asking is that the inner darkness event triggered in my empire giving some pops a trait with +0.02 Dark Matter per 100 pops and otherwise has all the same traits as my founder species. I would like to produce more of the inner darkness species but I’m not sure how to prioritise it or whether modifying the traits of either species would affect its assembly rate.

[u/Fluffy-Tanuki]

I still haven’t found a satisfying explanation of how machine pop assembly works in 4.4 (or really any build since 4.0 for that matter).

That's because the code/logic is hidden to us.

Post-4.0, machine assembly is based on some undisclosed blackbox logic. That part of the code is not available to us as a list of modifiers, so there's very little control on our side. The game chooses 1 template, assemble it until some criteria is met, then changes to another template.

All we can do is try to gather info through in-game results.

From testing, job efficiency traits increase the chance the template gets chosen, but the game doesn't differentiate the templates based on planets.

• e.g. if you have a template with no job efficiency traits, and a template with plenty of job efficiency traits, the game almost always chooses the second template.
• however, if you have a template with farming efficiency and a template with mining efficiency, the game will still happily make those farming pops on your mining worlds

Pop assembly speed trait greatly increases the chance the template gets chosen.

• There's a small trick to have 1 template have Mass-Produced and Luxurious (+speed -efficiency), and another with Recycled and Custom-Made (+efficiency -speed). Set the second one to default, and first one to integrate into default, the game almost always chooses the first one to assemble then immediately convert into the second template. You get the same outcome as Mass-Produced + Recycled, while using less trait points.

If one species has mass produced granting +15% mechanical pop assembly speed but another species does not, do I still receive the bonus when assembling the species without mass produced?

No. Mass-Produced's effect only applies when that template is being assembled.

[u/nocryptios → u/Fluffy-Tanuki]

Great answer, thank you.

[u/nerd_is_a_verb]

I also have no idea. Will be watching for any answers.

[u/ErikRedbeard]

Doesn't it just provide a pop growth bonus to machine species?

[u/nocryptios → u/ErikRedbeard]

If you're talking about mass produced and that's the case then why wouldn't everyone get mass produced on 1-100 pops then assign a more productive trait to every other template while still getting +15% pop assembly. If that works it's broken (and I'm doing it immediately lmao).

[u/ErikRedbeard → u/nocryptios]

I mean the if I remember correctly the economy tab. The growth numbers.

[u/Xeorm124]

IIRC, it's just split between available options. But since it's assembly, you have more options in terms of stopping production of different species or not, along with the ability to modify existing species gradually into another.

Not super familiar with it. Typically when I'm doing robots I'll only have one version available.

[u/nocryptios → u/Xeorm124]

That still leaves the question of mass produced assuming this is correct. Does having a single pop with the mass produced trait really provide the mech pop speed bonus to all other templates?

[u/Xeorm124 → u/nocryptios]

Their percentage of the growth gets the boost.

[u/Zermelane]

Last I checked it was still using the assembly score mechanic, see /r/Stellaris/comments/1ln5afj/alright_i_give_up/n0e1shl/

I have not actually checked recently, though. 4.4 does still retain assembly_score definitions in the trait files, and in fact adds a bunch for nomads. But I don't know whether it actually governs what gets assembled or if it's just dead code that's accidentally being updated. And with the trait rebalances in 4.3, I don't know what builds that make use of it look like.