Complete overhaul is out:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2721977849

There's no non-overwrite way I can see to re-enable pop assembly, so I've taken a different route for ensuring plenty of options for having Pop gain or growth, while still keeping the thematic limitations in place (for the most part).

JESUS CHRIST, I try to update this mod, get incredibly frustrated, and give up to focus on other life things, and now, while fiddling around with making a personal alteration to another mod, I figure it out: it's the can_species_be_assembled gamerule, between 3.0 and 3.1 it was changed to make organic pop assembly criteria more strict.

Well, there's fuck-all I can do about that without going in the destructive overwrite direction which would break compatibility with overhauls HARD, or else giving out the ascension-exclusive Clone Vats technology like candy instead of providing a weaker, differently-flavored version. Fantastic.

So beware folks, this mod's core crutch for dealing with no pop growth got wrecked and there's no way to fix it that won't violate my design philosophy for this mod!

@greensniperhat What issues does that cause? Does it keep mechroid pops from having jobs or something?

heads up, 3.2 changes the job check system, so now you need a possible_precalc in your pop_jobs or else it will not work.

@Skill Less usually it doesn't, but I've had some odd issues with another mod (not mine) where Linux behaved differently due to it respecting the case of paths where Windows didn't.

"please share when you started noticing the problem, and the name of your operating system!"

the OS does not matter, really. ^^

@Pamparampampamparam Even in the new version of the mod I'm working on, I'm not sure if I can make this mod work with AI well enough to allow random empires to choose it: even assuming I can stop primitives from spawning, I'll still need to get the AI to prioritize robot assembly, migration treaties, and all other non-growth means of gaining pops, without overwriting vanilla files.

Hopefully someday Paradox will fix species spawning tags, and we'll be able to let empires be force-spawned without opening up the possibility of random spawns along with it.

@Pamparampampamparam that is a known issue that I was forced to opt into due to the greater issues brought on by allowing force-spawns; there is only a single toggle for whether species are allowed to generate, and that toggle governs both forced and random generations. And the random generations for this species are irrevocably (without overwriting vanilla files and ruining my attempt at maximum compatibility) bad: the AI will pick the portrait + trait without also taking into consideration the Necrophage requirement, creating bricked empires that can't grow pops.

Primitives will also choose the portrait sets, resulting in absurdities such as stone-age primitives sporting cybernetics. While I am sure some people would be OK with the Saturday-morning cartoon style absurdity, it's too big of a dealbreaker to allow along with the other issue.

They seem to not spawn in my galaxy and are replaced by a random Empire even when set to force-spawn.

@Grendain Yes, it is! Though I've been experiencing a bug that may only exist on my end, that is preventing my organic pop assembly building from working; I think it's a result of something changed in 3.1's engine, since I haven't altered the pop assembly building between updates. If you have an issue with Bio-Assembly Plants being incapable of building pops, please mention it. At worst, they will still be able to augment pop assembly speed given by Cloning Vats, if you take the Biological ascension path from the Utopia DLC.

Update for 3.1 ? is already updated ?

This should still be compatible with Lem, but take that with a grain of salt. I'll be looking over things this evening and doing an emergency patch if something is horribly broken.

Mechroids... I think there's a cream for that.

hmm, I'm still seeing mcr_bio_scavengers in my civic list even though it's not a txt file, probably gonna have to comment out the entire file.

Well, they did say they wanted to expand on Plantoid and Humanoid DLCs in one of their devnotes. This being Paradox, it wouldn't surprise me if they use the former option.

I'll be interested to see how the Lem update implements portrait-locked traits, as shown in [ forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-218-plantoids-gameplay.1484906/ ].

Either Paradox just defined an entirely new species archetype for Plantoids like they did with Lithoids, or else they've added a way to portrait-lock traits without relying on species archetype. If it's the latter, I'm excited: I'll get to add portrait-locked traits without needing an entirely new species archetype.

ow, my info might be outdated. Gotta find out if is_archetype also scans the parent archetypes or not...
Good luck, then!

@greensniperhat Just tested with and without comma, and with and without brackets. No luck. Thanks for the tip, though!

@greensniperhat if that works it'll be incredible. Ty for the heads up on this possibility, I'll give it a spin.

no, I meant not making new archetype, but having two archetypes in the species_class. Iirc it's archetype = BIOLOGICAL, NECROID

@greensniperhat that is correct, it is possible to create a new archetype that inherits the trait pools from multiple preexisting archetypes. However, to my understanding, checks for e.g. the BIOLOGICAL archetype *itself* will fail if performed against the new archetype that inherits BIOLOGICAL's trait pool. It is this compatibility issue that prevents me from creating a new archetype, as I'm worried about what a new archetype would do for compatibility with mods that frequently employ the "is_archetype" condition.

iirc you can have more than 1 archetypes per portrait category, I believe this will enable the species with the portrait to be able to pick traits from the archetypes it has.

Very kind of you to give news !

@Theobald (and anyone else interested): some minor life events got in the way of last weekend, so my weekday evenings have gone partially towards the updates I was hoping to release earlier. Hopefully everything will be done soon.

@Theobald I enabled random empire spawning in response to a previous issue with force-spawned empires, but I now realize I forgot to add namelists. Sorry! Hopefully a fix will be out within a few days, along with some other new content.

I consistently get Mechroid randoms with no names (just a blank line). Anyone else ? My fault ?

It works great now, thank you!

@Zamio turns out, disabling the species from random empire spawning also disables non-random forced spawning (???). I have removed the blocker on randomization, and will upload the change in a few minutes.

@Zamio I'll play around with it and get back to you.

Not sure if anyone is having this problem, but any mechroid empires I make to forced spawn never spawn. I tested with and without the mechroid perk/appearance and it only spawns without.

Might just download this for a Strogg role play. Too bad there is not any Strogg race portraits though.

ok thx for the reply

@ZombieKiller8989 I have not flagged leaders as immortal. While I considered doing so at first, given the large lifespan bonus already granted by the Necrophage trait, and the ample opportunities Stellaris provides to further extend leader lifespans, I thought that eventual senescence of the brain would be an acceptable in-game explanation for leaders dying without proper investment in life-extending technology. If you want to play Mechroids with longer lifespans, there are mods on the workshop that grant additional lifespan traits, but since I can't add traits to the Mechroid pool without adding them to all BIOLOGICAL pops' trait pools, I didn't want to dip my toes too far into overall Stellaris species balance.

I mean like with leaders, do they die over time?

@ZombieKiller8989 Negative population growth speed does not cause population growth decline, if that is your concern. It will simply disable the growth of new pops.

Does your starting species ever die out?

This is a brilliant mod that adds a lot of flavour and role play that I'll probably add for my next play through. I love it and adds so much to the necrophage origin

Although this does feel that you're making the strongest origin, even stronger.

To balance, adding a malice that all biological pops find this species terrifying, and utterly repugnant, reducing opinion and trade value could make it balanced, while maintaining realism.

I love the Brain in a Jar so much, thank you!

Strogg vibes

"By the time I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me."

Radical