• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to start talking about the Planetary Rework coming in the 2.2 'Le Guin' update - the complete redesign of the planetary management system and replacement of planetary tiles. This is going to be a really big topic, so we're spreading it out across four dev diaries, with today's dev diary being about Deposits, Buildings and Districts. Please bear in mind that everything shown is in an early stage of development, and there will be rough-looking interfaces, placeholder art, non final numbers and all those things that people assume are final and complain about anyway no matter how many of these disclaimers I write. :p

Planetary Rework
Before I start going into details on the actual rework, I just wanted to briefly talk about the reasons and goals that are behind this massive rework, and why we're removing tiles and building a new system instead of iterating on the existing systems. For me, getting away from the constraints of tiles has been my single most desired long-term goal for the game. It's not that I think the tile system is inherently a bad system - it works well to visualize your pops and buildings and for the early game it works well enough in giving the player some interesting economic management decisions. However, the tile system is also very constrictive, in a way I feel is detrimental to the very core concepts of Stellaris. The hard limitation of one pop and one building per tile, as well as the hard limitation of 25 tiles/pops/buildings to a planet, it severely limits the kind of societies and planets that we can present in the game.

Do we want to make city-planets, with enormous numbers of pops concentrated onto a single world? Not possible. Do we want to have a fully automated post-scarcity empire where robots do all the actual work? Can't be done without losing out on valuable building space. Sure, we could fundamentally alter the tile system in a such a way to allow these, by for example making it so each tile could support several sub-tiles with additional pops and buildings, but by doing this we will inevitably lose the easy visual presentation that makes the system attractive to begin with, and even then we would continue to be held back by the limit of one pop per building. In other words, we'd end up with something that superficially might resemble the old tile system but offers none of its main advantages and continues to be held back by most of its drawbacks.

When designing the new planetary management system we set out a number of design goals:
- The new system should be able to simulate a wide variety of different societies, to build on the roleplaying and diversity in play-throughs that is such a fundamental part of the Stellaris experience
- The new system needed to offer more interesting choices about how to develop your planets, while simultaneously reducing the amount of uninteresting micromanagement such as mass-upgrading buildings
- The new system should make your planets feel like places where Pops actually live their lives, as opposed to just being resource gathering hubs
- The new system had to be extremely moddable, to make it easier both for us and modders to create new types of empires and playstyles

We believe that this new system that we have created will not only vastly improve many of the features in the game that we couldn't get working properly with the tile system, but together with the resource rework discussed in the last dev diary will also make it possible for us to create truly weird and alien societies that play entirely differently from anything the game currently has to offer, or would ever have to offer if we had remained constrained by the tile system.

Deposits
Under the old tile system, deposits were simply clumps of resources placed on a tile, which would be gathered by a pop and determined what kind of buildings were most efficient to place there. Under the new system, deposits are more akin to planetary terrain and features. Every habitable planet will have a (semi-randomized) number of deposits, with larger planets usually having more deposits. Deposits represent areas on the planet that can be economically exploited, and most commonly increase the number of a particular District (more on this below) that can be build on the planet. For example, a Fertile Lands deposit represents various regions of fertile farmland, and increases the number of Agriculture Districts that can be built on the planet, and thus its potential Food output.
2018_08_16_0.png

(Note: All deposit pictures shown here are placeholders, there will be new art for them that isn't done yet)

Not all Deposits affect Districts however - some (such as Crystalline Caverns or Betharian Fields) are rare deposits that allow for the construction of special Buildings (more on this below) on the planet, while others yet may simply provide a passive benefit to the planet, such as a spectacularly beautiful wilderness area that increases happiness for Pops living on the planet. Deposits can have Deposit Blockers that work in a similar way to the Tile Blockers of old, cancelling out the benefits of the Deposit until the Blocker is removed through the expenditure of time and resources. A planet can have multiples of the same Deposit, and there is no hard limit to the number of Deposits that a planet can hold (though there is a cap to how many will be generated under normal circumstances). The types of Deposits that can show up on a planet is affected by the planet class, so where an Ocean World might get its Agriculture from Kelp Forests, an Arctic World would have Fungal Caverns instead.
2018_08_16_1.png

(Note: All deposit pictures shown here are placeholders, there will be new art for them that isn't done yet)

Districts
Districts are at at the core of how planets are developed in the Le Guin update. Districts represent large areas of development on the planet dedicated towards housing or resource gathering. For most empires, there are four basic types of Districts: City Districts, Mining Districts, Generator Districts and Agriculture Districts. There are exceptions to this (such as Hive Minds having Hive Districts) but more on this in a later DD. The total number of districts you can build on a planet is equal to its size, so a size 16 planet can support 16 districts in any combination of the types available to you. Additionally, the resource-producing districts (Mining, Generator and Agriculture) are further constrained by the Deposits on the planet, so a planet might only be able to support a maximum of 8 Mining Districts due to there simply not being any further opportunities for mining on the planet. City Districts are never limited by the deposits on the planet, so you can choose to forego a planet's natural resources and blanket it entirely in urban development if you so choose.

The effects of each District is as follows:
  • City District: Provides a large amount of Housing for Pops, Infrastructure for Buildings and Clerk Jobs that produce Trade Value and Luxury Goods
  • Mining District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Mining Jobs that produce Minerals
  • Agriculture District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Farming Jobs that produce Food
  • Generator District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Technician Jobs that produce Energy Credits
There will be more details on most of the concepts mentioned above coming in the other dev diaries. For now, suffice to say that the way you develop your planets with Districts will shape that planet's role in your empire - a heavily urbanized planet will be densely populated, supporting numerous Buildings and specialist Pop Jobs such as Researchers and providing Trade Value for your empire's trade routes (more on this in a future DD), but at the expense of not being able to produce much of the raw resources that are needed to fuel your empire's growth and manufacturing capacity.

A planet's Deposits and Planetary Modifiers may influence this decision - a large planet with High Quality Minerals and numerous Mining Deposits will certainly make for a lucrative mining world, but what if it also sits in a perfect spot to make a heavily urbanized trade hub? No longer are choices regarding planets simply limited to 'Where do I place the capital for the best adjacency bonuses?' and 'Should I follow the tile resource or not?' but will be fundamental choices that create diverse and distinct planets that each have their own role to fill in your empire.
2018_08_16_3.png


Buildings
In the Le Guin update, Buildings are specialized Facilities that provide a variety of Jobs and Resources that are not suitable to large-scale resource gathering. For example, instead of having your scientists working in a Physics Lab on a Physics Deposit (whatever that is supposed to be...) you now instead construct a Research Labs building (representing not a single laboratory but rather an allocation of resources towards the sciences across the planet) which provides a number of Pop Researcher Jobs that conduct research for your empire. Buildings are limited by the planet's Infrastructure, with one building 'slot' being unlocked for each 10 Infrastructure on the planet. Some Buildings are also limited in the number you can build on a planet, while others can be built in multiples (for example, a planet can only support a single Autotchton Monument, while you can have as many Alloy Foundries as the slots allow). Buildings can still be upgraded to more advanced versions, but generally there will be far fewer upgrades to do and those upgrades will often require an investment of rare and expensive resources, so it's more of an active choice than something you simply have to click your way through after unlocking a tech.
2018_08_16_5.png


Infrastructure comes primarily from constructing Districts, with City Districts giving much more Infrastructure than resource gathering districts do (6 as opposed to 2 in the current internal build, though non final numbers and all that). In addition to unlocking additional Building slots, a higher Infrastructure level also makes some Buildings more efficient, as the number of jobs they provide is fully or partially determined by the planet's Infrastructure level. For example, in the current internal build, Research Labs and Alloy Foundries both have the number of jobs they provide determined by the infrastructure level, meaning that concentrating your research and manufacturing to your heavily urbanized planets is generally more efficient than trying to turn your agri-worlds into science hubs. In addition to Buildings that provide resource-producing Jobs, there is also a wide variety of buildings that provide for the material and social needs of your Pops, such as Luxury Housing for your upper class Pops, Entertainment Buildings to make your populace happy and Law Enforcement to quell unrest and crime. Densely populated planets tend to require more such buildings, as the need for Housing and Amenities scales upwards with Pops and Infrastructure.
2018_08_16_6.png


Whew, that was a lot of words. Still, we're only just getting started on the Planetary Rework and next week we'll continue talking about it, on the topic of Stratas, Pop Jobs, Housing and Migration.
 
I sure hope not since that never made any sense.
Planet of hats should not be a goal to strive towards.

I don't think having a specialized economy for your planets really counts as a planet of the hats scenario.
 
I don't think having a specialized economy for your planets really counts as a planet of the hats scenario.
Intentionally neglecting possible industries makes no sense whatsoever and is very much a planet of hats scenario. It will also lead to very non unique planets where you essentially ignore all but one aspects of a planet instead if allowing each planet to be a unique mix according to its nature.
In that case, I think there is no real reason to build more districts. You'll go fish for deposits instead, even the ones for which you built 0 district.
I have no idea what you are talking about. How about you try the system before you try to pick it apart.
 
Wait, there's a beta somewhere? Sure I'll be interested. Is beta tester spot opened yet?
Not as far as I know. But that's essentially the point. It's in early development, no one has tried it yet so it's a bit early to try and call the new meta.
 
Intentionally neglecting possible industries makes no sense whatsoever and is very much a planet of hats scenario. It will also lead to very non unique planets where you essentially ignore all but one aspects of a planet instead if allowing each planet to be a unique mix according to its nature.

I'm fairly sure that's not what the term means. Planet of the hats tends to refer to culture, not economic specialisation. Besides; if every planet is more or less the same, woudn't that make them less unique? I can't really see how specialisation is meant to make planets feel less unique than having them all do basically everything to an average amount? Or is that not what you're saying?
 
What about special districts for different ethics (e.g. a temple district for spiritualists or a mass barracks for militarists), where these ethics focus on those areas so greatly as to be worth describing in terms of district size areas rather than just buildings? (Or potentially only for fanatics of those ethics). Like, most empires probably have some military infrastructure but fanatic militarists might have planet wide recruitment and training grounds, barracks and general fortress-planets?

Then maybe "wildlife" or "nature-preserve" districts might be a specific one of those for xenophile or pacifist or something (maybe environmentalist or something else?).

Hmm what happens if you switch ethos mid-game what happens to your barrack-ethos district if you drop militarist for say materialist?

What if I do gestalt conscience and have DE instead of regular hive mind what then? I suppose I still struggle to see how this would be implement in-game without become a mess.

Perhaps it would be better to do something like militarist get XX% bonus to fortress' innate ability. This way you get more benefit from those districts without being a mess.
 
This is sounding really good so far. More planet detail, meaningful choices, and development will help Stellaris feel more like a living breathing universe to me and hopefully many alien species will develop their planets differently to make it feel even more vibrant. I hope on heavily industrialized planets there will be pollution (if not kept in check) that can change how the planet looks because House Harkonnen needs to have a dark dreary landscape or the Baron will not be a happy boy. :D
Thank you for all your efforts, love the game!
 
Can I just say how much I appreciate that the dev team is willing to do complete overhauls of the game's core systems when they think it's needed to improve the game? A more cautious dev team wouldn't do this planet rework or changed FTL and Stellaris would be in a much worse place right now IMO.
 
Hmm what happens if you switch ethos mid-game what happens to your barrack-ethos district if you drop militarist for say materialist?

What if I do gestalt conscience and have DE instead of regular hive mind what then? I suppose I still struggle to see how this would be implement in-game without become a mess.

Perhaps it would be better to do something like militarist get XX% bonus to fortress' innate ability. This way you get more benefit from those districts without being a mess.

Even in the current version a lot of building types vanish if you conquer a planet(or even release a vassal)
The most buildings are deleted in the current version if planets change hands between organic empires and machines. Farms, unity buildings, administrativen buildings and things like paradises domes vanish as soon as you conquer an organic planet as a machine for example. The most "fun" thing is releasing a vassal as a Rogue Servitor. Instat starvation for the former bio-trophies because RS use a different kind of food building... From 100% happiness to 0% asap. Realistic I guess. ;)

It is a already a mess for the player if you mind micro. It is even worse for the AI as it often fails to rebuild such planets properly. Normal machine empires are the worst at it. Even if some useful buildings remain most will be occcupied by organic slaves which produce only energy.

Maybe these things will in fact improve and things will be replaced automatically.

I just hope that the new system will leave room for optimization of planetary output because that is one of the most entertaining things in the game to me.
The main thing that is rewarded by better snowballing if you do it right.
 
So how do machine empires work regarding food districts? Do they have to use city districts instead to fill the planet’s cap?
Well Rouge Servitors still need food.
From the looks of it resource district caps will be high enough to make that not much of an issue. If you want a resource planet there will probably be enough mineral and energy deposits to fill up most of the cap, and from what we have seen so far we can expect the total combined limit of food, mineral, and energy distrct limits to be greater then the total district cap.
 
I like this concept a lot better than the tile system. So, that's a good thing.

But why this ongoing obsession with the totally fallacious idea that interstellar trading as modern trading will be a thing?

Seriously guys, if you want to know what interstellar trade will really be in the future...read Saturn Run by John Sandford. And read it quick, because that would be a much better addition to the game than your current proposed trade models.

It's bad enough you ridiculously shoe-horned in "choke" points...in a 3-dimensional void, but seriously, do we HAVE to do this with "trade" too?