May 2025 POPI Updates
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
The May 2025 balance patch includes a variety of changes to population upkeep and population infrastructure. If you’re a governor, these changess may affect how you run your planet. Archiel’s Governor Helper has been updated with most of these changes already. If you’re working off a copy of the sheet, you’ll need a fresh copy.
Key Changes
The increased tick length, from 3d to 5d and from 10d to 15d, represent an overall increase in the amount of upkeep you get for each material provided. Also for Pioneers and Settlers, the consumption of advanced needs has been reduced. This means planets with mixed populations (which typically might look like 100,000 Pioneers and 5k scientists), won’t suffer as badly from the overwhelming count of pioneers consuming expensive education and culture. These changes are already modeled in the new Governor Helper. Additionally, the base education rates and building education rates have been improved. Some additional research is going into these changes, since the numbers in the blog post don’t exactly match how we calculate them in the tool. Once we’ve worked out the details and verified the numbers in-game, we will update the sheet again.
Upkeep Materials
Additionally, various upkeep items have been changed. OFF in the SST got a bit worse, which brings it nicely in line with the other SST options.
Some minor improvemnts were made to the RAD in the Security Drone Post, and the PK and BND inside the Hospital, but with the minimum consumption of 1 material per upkeep cycle, it’s hard to get those buildings to be viable.
For safety, the SST remains king. With SUN at $439/u, it edges out DW and OFF at $100/u.
I think this is great gameplay because it trades the efficiency of SUN for the versatility and availability of DW and OFF. This gives governors a meaningful and interesting tradeoff.
Unfortunately, the Security Drone Posts fares poorly. In order for the newly buffed RAD to be competitive with SUN, it would need to price each RAD at $2822/u, which seems unattainable.
For Health, Infirmary buildings were previously undisputed, but the recent improvements to BND and PK make Hospitals approach viability. Very large planets that have maxed out their INFs may need more health than can be provided by a single upkeep items. TUB in an INF is usually the second choice, but it’s possible we might see some use of hospital upkeep items now, which is exciting.
The EMC begins to look plausible, since it provides an equal amount of safety as well- so when you consider the double efficacy it’s providing health+safety at $1.25/need.
Comfort has traditionally been challenging- usually governors level up the PAR and provide DW, since other upkeep items can be hard to source in large quantities. It’s consumed by many tiers, and lower tiers use it faster than they use culture or education. It also can cap your education, which commonly happens since education is easy to fill.
The wellness center got buffed, as well as the 4D Arcade. With today’s prices we see a genuine mix of viable buildings to fill comfort. DW and PFE in a PAR will probably remain the best choice for many. I’m hopeful that the market grows for HOG, since 4DAs are a large building and provide 1.6x the comfort per material filled. EDC is easy to make and the price will continue to fall for EDC, making it attractive and available.
With a close race between comfort buildings, construction cost may begin to play a role in your choice here.
Art Galleries were traditionally the main source of culture, but improvements to the VR Theater have mixed things up here.
Personally I’m a big fan of the Art Cafes, even though their construction cost is high, and their overall satisfaction produced is low. They weren’t improved in this patch, but DW in an ACA remains strong.
A note for MHP here- MHP is used in many places, but the viability varies drastically. It’s most effective in the ART. DEC is in a similar situation- don’t ship a bunch of DEC to your planet and drop it in the wrong POPI building!
Education is usually easy to fill, and the patch has made the University even better. HD remains very strong, but every other UNI input got improved in order to bring them closer in balance. IDC is a personal favorite because of the ease of production and falling price.
Since active education buildings provide an important static bonus to your education rate, they tend to be overbuilt for that reason, so it’s easy to max your your required education. And you have a lot of good options.
