Excited for the Pops mod! I went ahead and posted some balance feedback so far in its own discussion thread to keep from flooding these comments. Hopefully it is useful!

Something I'm consider once I finish updating Expanded Pops is separating ranger jobs (from ranger buildings) from park rangers (from park zones), and having park rangers be a resort worker swap.

Thanks so much for your reply and the most recent update! I'll keep an eye out for any bugs or balance outliers.

More work still needs to be done, so let me know what you think.

I'm still working on Expanded Pops, but I managed to squeeze in a few changes:
Added urban park decision, gives + amenities, - waste, and - housing from city districts
Park zones now require the national park tradition (unless environmentalist)
Park zones give +75 ranges and +25 waste workers, various new bonuses (both by default and from Environmentalist traditions)
Park zones can now take unity buildings
Empires may start with a waste processing building, depending on civics and origins

Thank you for letting me know

BTW, the substainable farming and fishing zones currently don't work.

The reason is that the OR statement in the unlock itself ALSO needs to be nested in within an Owner = { } statement as apparently that is what actually allows the planet to check who owns the planet when checking if the zone can be built.Its a pretty easy fix of 6 lines to fix all three zones.

I have confirmed that this bug occurs with only this mod running and that nesting the zone's unlock OR statement inside of an Owner statement fixes the bug.

If there are no patch notes, it is always something miror like that.

No rebalance yet. Just updating to latest patch.

Hey there! Noticed an update. Is there any patch notes? Curious if this was the rebalance.

Glad to hear that balance is in the work. Love this mod since I first found it years ago. In 4.0 now every game becomes 'Rangers Dominate Bioscience and Win' .

I will be rebalancing a lot later. I will keep that in mind.

found it by accident. I personally don't like this change, because specialisation slots can be occupied by lot more and better specialisations. I guess a solution would be find mod gives extra row and for looks also extra building row then.

They are an urban zone, same as other district specializations, such as archives.
The zones are not currently locked by the tradition (although they will be later), the traditions just buff the zone.

So I used tradition and unlocked first urban park thing, they dont show up at deciscion, read here there at zone? what you mean with that? placed your mod at buttom to be sure loaded last dint help either, do have your other mods that are needed. any does your 3 mobs need special load order to?

it looks like I will need to do a balance patch once I have finished the comp patches.

Here is what I am currently considering:
- Waste Buildings are a planetary unique that gives jobs from city distrcts (and rural if Agrarian), maybe also waste reduction from civilians (especially at higher levels)
- Urban Park decision that gives + amenities and waste reduction, but - housing from city districts.
- Maybe a similar decision for rural districts
- Buff park zone but lock it behind environmentalist tradition (environmentalist civic also unlocks it)

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Would you be able to add compatibility for BPV - More building slots mod?

@Tovius, Coukd you add images of what we should see, and where

It works now. Thank you for your work!

Yeah, the park zones are appearing on my end.
I should also mention that the parks are not available if playing a wilderness empire.

If you have other mods that add zones, they may not be compatible.

It should appear in the urban zone. Ill double check later tonight

I have both universal modifier patch 4.0 and expanded mod base installed. I completed the environmentalism tradition and yet no matter how much I try the new zone do not appear on any type of world.

It is a zone now.
Make sure you have the required sub mod.

Hello, is it normal that you can no longer create parks / natural habitats?

I've updated the mod for 4.0. Let me know if you have any problems.

Remember to download the required sub mods, or half the mod won't work.

I am almost done, I just need to fix one final issue with Wilderness Biomass not producing any waste.

I am getting close to an update. I just need to create a few new zones and finish bug testing.
There won't be anything unique with the Wilderness origin for the comp patch, beyond the waste worker job swap. I will try to add more for it later.

I am currently looking for suggestions for names for wilderness versions of the waste buildings. For context, I have named the jobs detritisymbionts (decomposers that recycle nutrients)

Tovius - thank you for this wonderful mod. Your time is valuable, and I'm sure we all desire a quality mod - so please, do take your time!

I'm currently working on it now. I have to adjust a lot of things around to work with the new system, so it may take a bit.

Definitely miss having this, not demanding the update or anything lol just saying this mod has become thematically integral for my games

love the mod cant wait for update

Just wanted to say, love the mod and super appreciate it.

What about using habitability as a debuff from pollution? It has a lot of debuffs included (pop growth too) and instead of being flat modifier affecting everyone it will be much more dynamic (and will make much more sense), so some sort of space cockroaches with high habitability traits won't care about pollution while some other species can be quite vulnerable. Also habitability buffs will help to adapt to pollution. It will also make a mod more challenging a bit, since some people already pointed out here that pollution debuffs is quite negligible to be honest (can keep stability modifier tho, stability is too easy in vanilla anyway)

Also, I guess a pollution thresholds could've been based on the planed sizes if possible, it would make more sense if the big planets wouldn't be so easily polluted as a small one.

Waste is a resource that you can track on the planet screen. It should reduce by 100.
100 is only a moderate amount, though, so you might not see it reflected in the planet modifier. (The modifier also takes a month to update)

I cleared the "Great Pacific Basin" blocker with the 100 Pollution symbol next to so shouldn't it REDUCE me pollution by 100 once cleared cause i didn't see any reduction at all?

I have buffed the Environmentalist tradition slightly. In particular, the finisher now unlocks the ranger lodge building (or +10% habitability if Environmentalist)

Shouldn't this "on_action" entry have an "events" parameter assigned to it similar to other "on_actions" in the same file ?

on_colony_monthly_pulse = {
ecopops.4
}

A great mod with even more potential, adds a whole new element to the game. But i would combine it with extra building slots.

Wish there was a harder version of this mod. 30 Years with max pollution on capital and nothing has really happened. I choose to not clear depleted resources when i play lol to give that sense of actual change. Still very thankful you brought this mod back up to date.

For people looking for details about the mod, there you go: https://sp.zhabite.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1603330813/3774483849444315136/

Waste processors help you deal with, or improve the bonuses from, storms which deposit dust on your planets?

I feel like this mod should interact with the new Cosmic Storm DLC in some way, but I haven't delved into the new mechanics enough yet to know what to add. Any suggestions?

I guess they really wanted a planet dedicated to galactic garbage.

Guess it all comes to the dice rolls. Game AI can be so weird sometimes.

Funny, I've had people complaining about the exact opposite problem, but I can limit how many the ai builds.

Suggestion: Put a limit on the number of waste plants a planet can have. One game I saw the AI build just districts and waste plants on one planet.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Is the mod save compatible?