Machine Empire Rebalance
NOTE: This is built for the 2.2.4 Live Branch, but should still work fine on older versions of 2.2. However, with the recent rebalance done officially, I will not be continuing this mod into 2.2.5 and beyond. It’s purpose has been met, official changes to Machine Empires are pretty close to the things I was doing, and added more as well.
So, with 2.2 Le Guin, came a ton of changes. And some even spoken of for Machine Empires in a dev diary. But nothing surfaced of them. Machine Empires are literally nothing more than a basic normal empire, with "immortal" leaders that can break down, energy upkeep instead of food for their pops, some removed events, and that is it.
Now, this is the Dev Diary entry that matters (Dev Diary 124):
Machine Empires share some similarities with Hive Minds, but rather than being focused on rapid growth, their primary focus is efficient use of resources. Like the Hive Minds, they have their own version of housing district, the Nexus District, and their resource extraction districts also provide three jobs where normal empires get two, but in addition to this they also have substantial bonuses to finished goods production, with jobs such as the Fabricator being a more efficient and productive variant of the regular alloy-producing Metallurgist.
Things Machine Empires do not have in the base game:
– Same Jobs per District as a Hive Empire, which is 3… which they do not have.
– Improved efficiency of finished goods production. They are identical to EVERY OTHER EMPIRE TYPE.
What does my little mod do? Fix exactly these two issues.
– All Generator, Mining, and Agricultural districts for Machine Empires now have 3 jobs per instead of 2.
– Habitat Generator Districts had NO Machine Empire entry! Only Normal/Hive Empire. This has been fixed. I know habitats kinda suck now, but, this was still an issue.
– The Machine Empire’s jobs for Alloys has been improved from 3 Alloys per 6 Minerals, to 4 Alloys per 6 Minerals.
– The Rogue Servitor’s jobs for making Consumer Goods has been improved from 6 Goods per 6 Minerals to 8 Goods per 6 Minerals.
– The Machine Empire’s jobs for Chemists (making Volatile Motes) went from 2 Motes per 10 Minerals, to 2.5 Motes per 10 Minerals. The same applies for the Translucer Job (Rare Crystals) and Gas Refiners (Exotic Gases).
– (New) The Machine Empire’s jobs for Coordiantors (the Unity job) went from 3 Society + 3 Unity, to 2 Engineering + 1 Society + 3 Unity. Machines are not as interested in genetics, crop growth, or social interactions, but the whole empire are just cogs in the great machine!
Two bugfixes are now also included!
– The Tier 3 Foundry building now properly has Fabricator jobs and not the Hive Empire’s Alloy Drone jobs that were mis-assigned to it.
– The Production Center building no longer incorrectly has normal empire Administrator jobs attached to it, but now properly has Coordiantor jobs (and by causal effect, this also fixes them for Hive Empires not getting their Synapse Drone jobs at them as well). – This is now fixed in the 2.2.4 Beta Branch. It is still in my mod for the stable 2.2.3 branch, but eventually won’t be a concern.
And that is it as far as the changes go. This makes Machine Empires stronger, on a per-planet basis, as they are more efficient with their materials, while not being able to as rapdily expand compared to say a Hive Empire. And it is only finished goods that use Minerals to make physical products. Nothing to boost Science, Unity, or anything else. I have considered than Machine Empires should get Engineering Science from their Coordinator Jobs… may test and see how that works out.
Mod conflits can occur with any mod that alters the following files as well:
– 02_rural_districts.txt
– 03_habitat_districts.txt
– 04_gestalt_jobs.txt
– 04_manufacturing_buildings.txt
– megacorp_l_english.yml
I hope this helps out any other Machine Empire players until Paradox can get around to addressing how they are being balanced (or for that matter, not…).
Update #1!!!
Three things changed/fixed here.
1: Corrected an issue with the Tier 3 Foundry upgrade actually having the Hive Empire Alloy Drone job assigned instead of the Machine Empire Fabricator job.
2: Made the change to the Coordinator job from 3 Society + 3 Unity, to now being 2 Engineering + 1 Society + 3 Unity. They are all cogs in the machine, and more than any other empire type, they NEED more Engineering Research.
3: Corrected an issue with the Production Center building having a normal empire Administrator job on it. It will now properly have a Coordinator job assigned (and this also fixes it for Hive Empires that were getting the same issue, it will now properly have a Synapse Drone job).
Update #2!!!
I went and did a thing! I have made a compatability patch for Glavius AI (by both popular request and personal want as well).
You can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1636564598
