Great stuff!

@Neru yes, but despite seeing both versions each empire can actually only build one. if I wanted to make the alternate version invisible in the tech tree I would have to make a separate version of that tech for riftborn only.

One immediate issue I found is that the early empire tech Planetary Landscaping gives you two variants of Intensive Cultivation, the regular one and one labeled as (Riftborn), at the same time. I was playing Unfallen and using Excellent Space 2.

Thanks for the replies. Sounds great and I'll try it out. Having incentives for both playstyles is good to have

@Neru I haven't gotten to playtest a lot so I don't know how the AI handles the changes. however since riftborn start with access to both t1 strategics they should be fine. The idea of making them reliant on foreign pops came from their questline which basically gives you the choice of being friendly with- and accepting of biological life or going terminator mode. The problem though was that in vanilla there really is no incentive to actively use foreign pops. With these changes the incentives are: filling your systems faster, better happiness on non-sterile planets, the ability to use the food resource and gaining some passive manpower from that.

You'll still be able to produce manpower faster by - well - producing it directly, but the conversion of production to manpower is less efficient than food to manpower. However if you happen to spawn with lots of strategic resources and/or fully sterile systems nearby you might just decide to produce all your manpower and go full machine mode.

The question of how biological manpower can be converted into artificial one is a good one, but you got the same problem in vanilla right? I doubt riftborn military ships are compatible with biological life yet you can still use manpower earned from growth/minor civs or via diplomacy to fill their fleets all the same. In the end it is a matter of mechanics serving gameplay over immersion as you said ^^

Also, does the AI know how to handle this change or does it just get stuck at zero manpower and strategics forever?

Interesting concept and making Biophobic affect only the Riftborn makes sense, but making the Riftborn more reliant on foreign pops seems to go against their dislike of natural life. How exactly does this mod make them less clunky to play? How is manpower provided by foreign pops "converted" into more Riftborn shells? I suppose some level of abstraction is fine if it serves better gameplay to some extent.

Thanks to you :)

Glad you got it working!