last i remember there was a shipside synth slot if no one rolled survivor synth + a general synth slot . i play up to the end of middle pop but i don’t really see synths as much as i used to, what happened? if i ever see a synth it’s one of the synthvivor mains (malcolm), i miss the synths 
i remember there being so many synths, and now there are none
Check player reports and you will know why
Mix of the above and shipside synth, as mentioned, only existing if there’s no survivor synth. That means there’s a high tendency for any synths to be groundside, so that factors in. Really don’t get the point of having a shipside synth role when it’s only purpose is if there’s multiple synth players and they manage some mutual agreement for none of them to go survivor synth but that’s a seperate tangent.
I’ve basically only seen Malcolm and Gunther (was it Gunter?) in the past dozen or so rounds I’ve played that have actually had synths.
Some people lost their WL
Some got banned
Some people quit in solidarity with the council being replaced at the start of this year.
Some people got bored with the game.
Then the whole DDOS thing happened and that did effect new blood coming into the eco-system. I do hope after I leave in the nearish future I can check back in a year or so and see a vibrant community. Multiple things happened at once eventually it’ll rebalance itself again.
Playing synthetic is sometimes very bothersome in my opinion. Upvoting what was said earlier, I’m seeing more and more situations when people crash out on synths.
Might be at this point they’ll have as much reports as pred players get nowadays.
Recently I’ve seen Dixon and Malcolm as survivor synthetics, and Dean, Jeanne, and I (Lopez) as marine synthetics. From what I understood, some people stopped playing synthetic after a council purge, others after whitelist items were removed and more restrictions were placed to take the whitelist in a different direction, but that happened before I got the whitelist so I can’t tell you much.
Karen will return when she is needed most.