Not a knock on the synthetic ability except it is more of a penalty, not a advantage. A good solution is give them a extra trait besides synthetic, and productive.
So the Thalan and the yor were in a similar boat, except they fixed it for the Thalan.
It does seemfairr adding a equivalent to power plants, and capitals, or just having power plants, but bringing back that galactic achievement they had in two.
Ok part of the problem is the matrix is confused it doesn't know if it is a farm, or a power plant. As a power plant it can only be built one per colony vs. a farm it loses hands down which can be built as long as there is room. You could build 28 farms on a planet if there is room. If you are the Yor, and colonise a class 25 planet; after, teriforming you could build one. In the population department it loses hands down. To add insult to injury, not talking about free production from farms in the form of people breeding as long as the planet is not capped out while you do whatever. Were synthetic that's all right except in the ability section where productive cancels out synthetic giving us only two abilities. What i'm talking about is adding buildings to increase population growth. Now yes the Yor could build factories. We know the Terrans can't build factories obviously ficisious. My point making buildings that can increase assemble speed kind of like the hospitals for organucs.
This causes the resuting early game to be at a disadvantage for the Yor. Organics getting free production from planets while the Yor is busy developing their planets. Losing the colony rush almost meaniing losing the game, but in the mod game after their colonies are pretty developed we have instantly fully populated Yor planets. Even in the late when organics fully developed planets are full with population. They begin converting factories into farms; because in the end production is more flexible than manufacturing. The Yor just can't do this because the matrix is to powerful to have more than one per planet; because it is a replacement for the power plant losing the late game.
In two this would not be a deal because of adjancencies. In three it is a big deal; because the closest thing we have to a power plant is the matrix; which, is a population food improvement, not a manufacturing improvement The adjancencies don't work for two reasons first factories, and research plants aren't farms causing for there to be no adjancency bonuses. Which means doesn't work as a power plant... The second do to the power of the matrix we can only build ione per planet.
What needs to be done is to have two improvements. One for increasing population,and one to replace the power plants. For these reasons combining the two doesn't work unless no one cares about adjancies or population.