Just asking, just so as I know, is a certain poster with a red logo and a name beginning with "D" the resident troll around here? ;)

No, im a formerly best MOO2 player overall (now retired), and developer of 1.50 patch, who coined it into existence in a way it is. Do you have some other questions by some chance?

Modesty not your forte eh?

Depends on definition there. Abundance of it has lead to underperformances by me sometimes, so technically speaking im tend to agree with you on it. I hope you're not planning to start a fan club of mine; really, you'll do more favour for me if you'll just learn the game better instead.

Patch version 1.50.19 has been released!

Changes are described in the CHANGELOG_150.TXT

Enjoy!

Is it possible to define a colony as research, agricultural or industrial, and to then define maximums for number of "persons" assigned to each corresponding occupation?

hey - that is not in cfg atm

the patch does have the following 3 params that you can consider using-

##
# If 1, first pop on a new colony always becomes a worker.
# If 0 (default, classic), it becomes a farmer on food worlds,
# unless your race is cybernetic or lithovore.
first_pop_to_production = 0;

##
# Value that the base food per farmer on a colony must exceed
# for a new population unit to be assigned to farming.
# Default is 0 (classic).
new_farmer_food_threshold = 0;

##
# If 1, a new population unit on a housing colony will not become a farmer.
# If 0 (default, classic), normal assignment conditions apply.
housing_creates_no_farmers = 0;

The third option sounds promising, is there any way it could be modified in two ways (which could stack)?

(option1) The game creates no new farmers at all

(option2) The game creates no new workers at all.

you already have option1 if you set value of new_farmer_food_threshold high enough.
option2 is not needed imo.

Why not {(option2) The game creates no new scientists at all.} at least?

It'd be nice to have all three switches to take care of all possibilities.

I spend so much time micro-ing in the late game because the computer insists on putting most new persons into ag (and whoever isn't put into ag is put into ind) when I want every single new person to be put into RESEARCH!!! It drives me nuts!

All 3 of them is reasonable indeed. All i meant is that in case of only 2 options, its look better to prevent them going scientists, as, in case player actually doesnt bother for precise manual adjust, at least workers will not lose their production; while its possible for scientists.

If you will prevent new farmers set by enabling their option, game should already assign a new grown colonists to a "most common job" for that colony (see UPD). If its not that you observe, then its buggy, actually (excepts some exceptions). Of course it may not work in a case of a not filled enough yet colony, but as your concern is about late game, it shouldnt be that problem.

UPD: My bad, should have checkd more thorough: actually game will not bluntly set a new colonist to a "most common job" that way, but will more probably assign it to there. The more skewed a ratio between non-farmer jobs (farming stuff is more complicated there) is on a colony, the more chance a new colonist will be set to a "most common job". Still its pretty much enough for a non-precise job autobalance already: set food threshold high enough to prevent a new farmers, set most existing colonists to a desired job; and a new colonists will likely spawn into it too. For a casual game (assuming a desire to not do micro) its seems ok as is id say.

The game seems to want to have farmers on every world (climate permitting). I'll have Electra (or whoever) with e.g. +60 to Farming so it just makes sense to have all agriculture happening in that system. And when my population is growing, in turns after I micro away all farmers outside of that system, the empire wide food-surplus will VERY QUICKLY shoot up, but then stabilise at a certain level...

You can set the minimum food output value per farmer to prevent new colonists to become undesirable farmers as an option present in recent test versions. That should pretty much do that you saying you want it to do. In case new colonists will not become a farmers for some reason, they will become workers or scientists with a chance based on their ratio to eachother.

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.