Chain Gang Clarity

Hello all,

As a mainly Craver player, I've been making a lot of use out of the Chain Gang Program "improvement" to control who's population is growing within my star systems. It's very important for a Craver empire to use Chain Gang, but it's also at times frustrating and/or awkward to use because it is not very clear about how it is going to affect the system it is being used in. I'd like to suggest some improvements to make Chain Gang a little more intuitive to the player herein.

Current State

In the current game (0.3.7), Chain Gang works like this: 

1. You select Chain Gang Program from the build queue to convert a unit of population (or 300 Food) into 300 Manpower.
2. Chain Gang "selects" the unit of population for conversion by checking whichever pop type is currently growing in the system.
3. Chain Gang deducts 300 Food from the system its "built" in, (usually) resulting in the loss of 1 unit of that pop type the following turn.

The Problem(s)

The main problems with the current way Chain Gang works are as follows:

1. If you're using Chain Gang Program for the first time, you'll have no idea which unit of population is going to get used for the manpower conversion. The tooltip is of no help to you because it only tells you that it is going to take 1 Pop and turn it into 300 Manpower. It's only after you pass a turn and lose a unit of population that you'll start to clue into how Chain Gang is selecting pops for conversion.
2. Once your system hits the maximum number of pops it can hold, you'll no longer know which unit of pop Chain Gang is going to "eat" because you can't see which unit of pop is growing anymore. This makes queuing up Chain Gang somewhat less desirable in a maxed-out system, as you have no idea which pop type you're going to lose.
3. If you're looking to cut the population of a certain type consecutively with Chain Gang, you're gunna have a hard time. This is because the game cycles through which pop types will be growing in your systems (eg. Cravers and Haroshem on your system, 1st pop unit is Craver, 2nd is Haroshem, 3rd Craver, and so forth, generally speaking). Because Chain Gang makes its selection depending on system growth, you'd have to wait for every other unit of pop in order to "eat" the right pop. It only gets worse as you add more pop types to the system.
4. If you have more than 300 food production on your system, it becomes impossible to cull any unit of population on the system, effectively divorcing Chain Gang from its main effect (at least, in my opinion) -- Population control.

Suggested Changes

Problems 1 to 3 could be solved fairly simply in the following, I think: If there was a selection box of some sort (perhaps something like the mock-up I've done below) with the icon of the pop type beside the turn counter when putting Chain Gang Program into the build queue, the player would know which unit of pop is going to be consumed by it. In addition, the selection box could be clicked to select which unit of pop you want Chain Gang to consume via a wheel graphic (or something else easy to decipher -- I did what I could with Paint ) displaying all the pop types you have in the system.

Problem 4 is more of a mechanical one, but it's nonetheless fairly simple to solve (in theory) -- when Chain Gang completes, it subtracts 1 unit of the selected population from the system for the Manpower conversion, rather than consuming 300 Food from the growth of the system. This would separate Chain Gang from Food and allow it to continue to be useful for population control for the entirety of the game.