This improvement has a certain flaw. While it is useful because it can turn Food into Production at an 1:1 ratio, it has the downside of completely killing growth in a system, since no more food is being produced. This means that if there is any kind of population drop or a desire for more colonists, the player has to dismantle the improvement. I think that being able to toggle this improvement on/off would be good, or having some kind of slider for specifying the degree of conversion. Alternatively, the improvement would not kick in until all planets in the system are filled to capacity with colonists, which would automate the process, which in turn would lighten the micro-management load.

I do not think this is desirable due to balancing. When you can freely allocate FIDS on which scale whatsoever, the necessity of specialization and custumization of planets will be pushed more to the background. You already have many, many tools to influence the structure and amount of FIDS. I use the Dust Virtualization to use full grown systems as a production base for ships, a certain reward for reaching full maturity i guess.

Cadoras wrote:
use the Dust Virtualization to use full grown systems

Um?

Stargem wrote:
if there is any kind of population drop

Also, if there are "many many tools to influence the structure and amount of FIDS" how does that help at all? A system which has no extra food (because of a very expensive structure) which needs population growth again (because of a game event that kills off population, say, a Rapt0r virus) cannot achieve population growth through any means, no matter how much you push your FIDS around: all of that food is STILL being converted into production. The only solution is to scrap the Dust Virtualization improvement and then rebuild it later, wasting a lot of resources.

Granted, but that is probably more a complaint against the nature of the game event instead against the improvement. If a negative game event forces you to temporarely dismantle an improvement and invest more resources, does that not mean the game event has a valid gameplay-purpose?

I think there should be a toggle on this as well. What if you comming into/out of a war?

sorry to revive an old thread but this still hasn't been fixed. the tech tooltip clearly states "surplus" ie the amount which is not needed for growth. Therefore it is a bug.

Surplus is what you see shown in the food box under the system name. It's surplus because it effectively subtracts population food consumption.

But yeah, it would be nice if the food was converted only when the system can't grow anymore.