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Stellaris Dev Diary #123 - Planetary Rework (part 3 of 4)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we're going to continue on the topic that we started on in Dev Diary #121: The Planetary Rework coming in the 2.2 'Le Guin' update. As this is a massive topic that affects many areas of the game, we've split it into four parts. Today's part is going to be talking about Happiness, Stability and Crime.

Planet Stability
In the Le Guin update, Planetary Stability is the most important factor for determining the productivity and prosperity of your planets. Planetary Stability represents the overall political stability on a planet, and is influenced by a large number of factors such as Pop Happiness, Housing, Amenities, Crime and so on. Planetary Stability ranges from 0 to 100% and has a base level of 50%. A Planet that has at least 50% stability will gain bonuses to resource production and immigration pull, while a planet that drops below 50% stability will experience penalties to resource production and increased emigration push. Below 40% stability, unrest events such as hunger strikes, terrorist bombings and so on may start to occur, which can further lower stability down below the threshold for an armed revolt to start. We're still looking into which parts of the previous Unrest events we want to keep, replace, or convert to the new Crime system, so the exact way in which unrest events and armed revolts will work is not fully decided at this point, and we'll likely cover it more in detail in a future dev diary.
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Pop Happiness and Approval Rating
Pop Happiness is a major factor in determining planet stability. Each Planet that contains at least one Pop with free will has a Pop Approval Rating value that is the average happiness of the Pops, modified by their Political Power. Each Pop has a Political Power value that depends on their stratum and living conditions - for example, a Ruler Pop living in a Stratified Economy will have an immense degree of Political Power, and their happiness may be more important than that of even a dozen Worker Pops. However, even Pops with no political power at all can still drag down your Approval Rating, so a planet with a vast mass of angry slaves will need some Rulers to keep them in line. On the individual Pop level, Happiness no longer affects productivity, so to ensure your planets are productive you now only need make sure your Stability level is high, and whether you achieve that stability with a happy populace or ruling with an iron fist is up to your ethics, policies and general playstyle preferences. Individual Pop Happiness is not entirely without effect though, as the happiness of a Pop determines how likely it is to adopt your governing ethics, and also affects how much Crime it generates (see below for further details).
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Amenities
As part of trying to consolidate systems relating to happiness we've added a new value called Planet Amenities. Amenities represents infrastructure, facilities and jobs dedicated to fulfilling the day-to-day needs of the population. In order to not suffer penalties, a planet needs at least as many Amenities as it has Infrastructure, and any Amenities above or below that number cause increased/decreased Pop Happiness, respectively. Capital Buildings and many Ruler jobs produce a base amount of Amenities and may be sufficient for a sparsely populated mining world, but urbanized planets will likely need to dedicate part of their infrastructure to Amenities-producing jobs such as Entertainers to keep the population happy. Many of the things that used to directly increase Happiness in the old Tile system (such as Domestic Servants or certain special buildings) now produce Amenities instead, and direct Happiness-buffing modifiers have been made rare, so keeping your entire population perfectly happy is now something that requires dedication and resources, rather than just a matter of throwing down a couple of buildings and calling it a day.
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Crime
Something else that we wanted to achieve with the new system was to create the potential for social and political unrest without necessarily having it take the form of a direct penalty or revolt, especially on heavily populated worlds. Crime is a value generated by all virtually all Pops with free will, and can vary between 0 and 100% on a planet. Happy Pops produce less crime, while unhappy Pops produce more crime, but only Pops at a perfect 100% happiness produce no crime at all. Crime has no actual direct penalty, but instead may result in events such as smuggler rings or organized crime taking root on the planet. These events and conditions are generally detrimental, but may also open up certain benficial opportunities and decisions that would not be available on a planet with perfect law and order. Nonetheless, a very high level of Crime is generally something to be avoided, as crime can lower stability and also result in Pops leaving their ordinary jobs and moving into special Crime jobs that appear on the planet and which take resources away from your empire rather than producing them. To combat Crime, you can build buildings such as Precinct Districts that create crime-suppressing Enforcer jobs. In general, empires that rely on repression and inequality to keep their Pops in line will need to employ more Enforcers, but there will also be other ways to manage Crime, possibly including ways to integrate the criminal enterprises as a fixture in your society (the exact details on this is still very much something that's a work in progress).
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That's all for today! Next week we'll continue with the final part of the Planetary Rework dev diaries, on the topic of Machine Empires, Hive Minds, Habitats and other mechanics that are changing alongside the Planetary Rework.
 
Will it be possible to make illegal migration?
For example crime pops will sell another pop as slave to another empire.
Or your pop became refuge and fleet to another country without permission (which country may not like it).

Don't even mention this. I once wrote a whole event chain based on this, and got threat to be banned for involving politics. It was a very detailed one though with many choices some of them locked behind certain ethos. For example only authoritarians, and xenophobe has the ability to purge them. But integration was a possibility at great cost too.
 
You said on twitter that Xenophile is the most picked ethos. How much of that is because it is the most powerful one? And these changes seem to buff it even more.

Well currently it is sure not the most powerful one. In pure MP it's pretty much worthless, and for AI game it's worthless for warmongers. I would certanily love to see being buffed to have some practical use beyond that slight opinion improvement.
 
Curious to see how faction happiness will play within the new system. Will this still have an effect on max pop happiness or will factions be covered in a later dev diary?
 
Sounds great! I always found it odd that martial law decreased unrest. In the new system it will increase stability which just affects unrest and crime but still may affect pop happiness negatively. Yay.
 
As others mentioned. Gestallt has been not mentioned yet. Since they got mindless drones it would be reasonable to have absolute stability, and 0 crime. However their connection the whole could be worrying, or something to combat.
 
Have you considered these things:
Opressive armies?
Military Police?
UN like peacekeepers from the confederation?
Threatening fleet above the planet?
Allowing orbital bombardment of your own planets in case of high unrest or crime.
Brutal edicts, like mass deportation or imprisonment?


Recruitable criminal armies, penal battalions?
Agents that plant unrest and raise crime rates on enemy planets? Infiltrating pops that can be raised or at least cause unrest in case their current empire is at war with their original one?
Homecalling edict like Volksdeutche before WW2?
Population cost of armies?
 
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Will there be penalties to stability or otherwise a detrimental effect of having a multiethnic planet like a small multiplier to the effects of negative stability as when things go bad racial tensions flame up?

Because currently there is no downside to having a multiracial empire as you get access to a wider range of traits with the pops automatically taking the jobs they are best for and opens up more colonialization options as you have a wider range of preffered climates.

It would be a shame if one playstyle would be the unquestionable best with all advantages and no downsides.

You said on twitter that Xenophile is the most picked ethos. How much of that is because it is the most powerful one? And these changes seem to buff it even more.

I think it is already a bit of a thing with the possibility of migrating pops bringing unwanted ethics with them and the boost to ethics attraction that certain agreements bring with them. (migration treaties with xenophiles, egalitarians or spiritualists already increase the attractions of their respective ethos), being able to negate this with a high governing ethics attraction costs stuff like civic slots or influence if you have certain governing ethics and from a roleplaying point of view this could be seen as a society being good at integrating migrants into their culture in case of a high governing ethics attraction.
 
This looks very interesting, I can't wait to play it! I have a question though, will planetary separatist be the only type of rebels? Do you have any plans to add rebelling factions or anything similar?

God I've been praying for some civil war mechanic for so long and this uodate would be perfect for it! Let my bug people have their own Horus Heresy god damn it!
 
possibly including ways to integrate the criminal enterprises as a fixture in your society (the exact details on this is still very much something that's a work in progress).
Mafia Society? Awesome!
 
Have you considered these things:
Opressive armies?
Military Police?
UN like peacekeepers from the confederation?
Threatening fleet above the planet?

Recruitable criminal armies, penal battalions?
Agents that plant unrest and raise crime rates on enemy planets? Infiltrating pops that can be raised or at least cause unrest in case their current empire is at war with their original one?
Homecalling edict like Volksdeutche before WW2?
Population cost of armies?

Espionage still won't become a thing. So no infiltration into other empires yet. Devs. said that the system gona be heavily moddable so even if these job aren't exist first they could be modded later.
 
Hi Wiz,

Sorry for derailing the discussion towards the previous dev diary, but I'm very concerned about the new pop growth system letting only one species grow at a time, especially combined with preferrence for "underrepresented" species for growth. And it gets even worse if different species have different growth speed. I can't figure out how this new system would handle situations like these:

Example 1:

Imagine a planet populated by rapid breeding species Rabbits - if would fill up quite fast, wouldn't it? Now, if we add just a single pop of slow breeding Snails, this new species would be "underrepresented" and thus picked for growth much more often than Rabbits until they somewhat equalize. As a result, Rabbits will effectively stop growing for long period of time. It's as if a few Snails move in and Rabbits are like "Hey folks, there are 10 billions of us on this planet and just a few hundred of Snails, so let's stop making children until those shelled chaps catch up." It's not even semi-plausible, no matter how you bend your headcanon.

Example 2:

We have 2 planets A and B. Planet A is populated by many Snails, it's overcrowded, and many Snails are unemployed. Therefore it has significant Migration Push and Snails pops are declining via emigration. On Planet B live many Snails and a few Humans, but there is a lot of spare room here. Thus, Planet B has some Migration Pull and immigrants from Planet A increase growth speed of the pops... who turn out to be Humans because they are "underrepresented" species here. And thus we have an absurd situation when migration of Snails form Planet A to Planet B increase Human pops.

Example 3:

If you specialize (sub)species per strata, on your mining worlds you have only a few Master Race pops to do Ruler and Specialist jobs on the planet and many more Proles to do menial labour. As time passes, you build more mining districts to open Mining jobs and a add some housing for the new workers... but instead there grows a bunch of "underrepresented" Master pops who now have to bust there humps in the mines or loiter around with no other job to do.
Of course, if it was the other way round, and more populous species grew faster, you could find yourself in a situation when you add a city district and add some specialist openings, but Proles fill up the housing faster and try to snatch those jobs because their sheer population gives them faster growth. But at least it's plausible and quite logical - 10 billion workers will have way more children than 10 million white collars. And you if you want to turn the tide you at least can figure a logical course of action (e.g. make a Masters-only planet with lots of housing and growth bonuses where they would grow faster and then resettle to target worlds as soon as housing is available).


Even if multispecies growth gets complicated, in 2.1 pop growth being split between three or four pops of different (sub)species doesn't look like a big problem - why should it be in 2.2? If it's UI representation that you worry about, someone suggested a neat idea in the previous DD thread: calculate different species pops growth separately, but "growing" icon will show portrait and tooltip for the species whose pop will complete growing next. When you click on that portrait a new window would open showing all growing pops, their growth progress and modifiers. I could draw a mock up for this window but I guess you get the idea.
I have similar reservations. If this will be annoying in practice or not mostly depends upon how the mentioned "force species x to grow" option will work. If you can on each planet decide what species will grow with out any limitations by ethics or other downsides then it will be fine. Even better would be if you could lock that choice, so this planet will only ever grow the chosen species (as long as it is growing). even better yet would be a growth queue where you can dedice the order in which any available species will grow, e.g.: Species x, species c, species y, species z, species x ...
 
Since any single planet revolting is unlikely to cause a large enough empire to break a sweat, are there any plans for dissatisfied planets to form some kind of a rebel league and only rebel together once the league is strong enough?
 
Hi Wiz,

Sorry for derailing the discussion towards the previous dev diary, but I'm very concerned about the new pop growth system letting only one species grow at a time, especially combined with preferrence for "underrepresented" species for growth. And it gets even worse if different species have different growth speed. I can't figure out how this new system would handle situations like these:

Example 1:

Imagine a planet populated by rapid breeding species Rabbits - if would fill up quite fast, wouldn't it? Now, if we add just a single pop of slow breeding Snails, this new species would be "underrepresented" and thus picked for growth much more often than Rabbits until they somewhat equalize. As a result, Rabbits will effectively stop growing for long period of time. It's as if a few Snails move in and Rabbits are like "Hey folks, there are 10 billions of us on this planet and just a few hundred of Snails, so let's stop making children until those shelled chaps catch up." It's not even semi-plausible, no matter how you bend your headcanon.

Example 2:

We have 2 planets A and B. Planet A is populated by many Snails, it's overcrowded, and many Snails are unemployed. Therefore it has significant Migration Push and Snails pops are declining via emigration. On Planet B live many Snails and a few Humans, but there is a lot of spare room here. Thus, Planet B has some Migration Pull and immigrants from Planet A increase growth speed of the pops... who turn out to be Humans because they are "underrepresented" species here. And thus we have an absurd situation when migration of Snails form Planet A to Planet B increase Human pops.

Example 3:

If you specialize (sub)species per strata, on your mining worlds you have only a few Master Race pops to do Ruler and Specialist jobs on the planet and many more Proles to do menial labour. As time passes, you build more mining districts to open Mining jobs and a add some housing for the new workers... but instead there grows a bunch of "underrepresented" Master pops who now have to bust there humps in the mines or loiter around with no other job to do.
Of course, if it was the other way round, and more populous species grew faster, you could find yourself in a situation when you add a city district and add some specialist openings, but Proles fill up the housing faster and try to snatch those jobs because their sheer population gives them faster growth. But at least it's plausible and quite logical - 10 billion workers will have way more children than 10 million white collars. And you if you want to turn the tide you at least can figure a logical course of action (e.g. make a Masters-only planet with lots of housing and growth bonuses where they would grow faster and then resettle to target worlds as soon as housing is available).


Even if multispecies growth gets complicated, in 2.1 pop growth being split between three or four pops of different (sub)species doesn't look like a big problem - why should it be in 2.2? If it's UI representation that you worry about, someone suggested a neat idea in the previous DD thread: calculate different species pops growth separately, but "growing" icon will show portrait and tooltip for the species whose pop will complete growing next. When you click on that portrait a new window would open showing all growing pops, their growth progress and modifiers. I could draw a mock up for this window but I guess you get the idea.

Perhaps the rapid breeder and slow breeder traits have an effect added that makes them a larger slice of the population, like rapid breeders being chosen to grow more often and slow breeders being chosen to grow less often.
 
Let's face it. Some of them were kind of a paid police. They actually protected your stuff, if you paid up. They could be integrated into the local police force with some tricks, or the IRS.

Although the protection you paid for was usually you being protected from the people you pay not to smash your kneecaps and possesions.
 
Since any single planet revolting is unlikely to cause a large enough empire to break a sweat, are there any plans for dissatisfied planets to form some kind of a rebel league and only rebel together once the league is strong enough?
There are different ways to make this happen. It could be that any planet that rebels reduces stability on all other planets for some time. So there could be a chain reaction of further worlds rebelling and seceeding if your stabiltiy is too low on too many worlds at the same time. Of course there should be some mechanics that allow rebellious world to join a rebel empire that formed previously.
 
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Although the protection you paid for was usually you being protected from the people you pay not to smash your kneecaps and possesions.
it is bad business if the competing police force smashes a clients kneecaps. So protection is actually worth something... Mind you it is sort of like an insurance company burning down uninsured houses...