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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.
 
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...

Good point.
 
Will these changes mean we'll start seeing more meaningful revolts and internal rebellions? Would be great to have more opportunities to engage in proxy wars, or witness/fight major ideological civil wars.
 
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?

Something like the CK2 rebel system would be good yeah.

Faction is created around some ideas or goal (break up, change ethos, change government type etc.), pops around the empire join the faction. if the faction's total political power is equal or superior to the leading faction political power, then an event happens leading to either a coup (embrace the new faction) or civil war (keep the current faction). Systems joining the civil wars can be determined by the political power split on each planet.

To have truly dramatic civil wars rather than "oh no i have to send troops to this planet again"
 
Last time I checked, intergrating a subject can cause the species to get the recently conquered rebuff, and sometimes those planets may become unrestful suddenly especially if they are integrated and made into slaves.
Now that there is a bigger impact from such sudden changes, I see the land appropriation comment about newly conquered but will there be any changes to integrating subjects? Maybe cause culture shock events for those who have opposing ethics making it more important choosing who you intergrate. Or maybe the other end of the scale, could some pops ethics change as part of being intergrated?
 
@Wiz
If I may suggest something, could crime in spiritualist empires at least partially involve heretic cults?
 
All of these changes look really good, I'm looking forward to 2.2 so much.

One thing though, I know it's placeholder art and I'm not criticising you, but I really think it would be a good idea to make sure the symbol for "Crime" doesn't look like a stylised black person when the update rolls out.
 
It's mainly because population numbers can vary a whole lot more than Infrastructure, and if amenities just go on population it'd overlap almost entirely with Housing. I'm considering also having population use a small amount of amenities each, but that depends on how well that would work in testing.
But how it will work with no-happiness pops then? Will planet full of droids and single organic pop require a lot of amenities just to keep one single organic pop happy?
 
I knocked up a diagram to understand dependencies between the new parameters:

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Nice one. Yet, you've missed crime directly triggering Unrest events.

Also, as we know infrastructure decreases amenities but increases production which makes me wonder what happens if we just totally neglect all this graph and focus on Infrastructure -> Production. Needs some testing to understand if the system is balanced.
 
Will we see special FE/anomaly/Ascension tech for stability, amenities and happiness generation? Or some new buildings that can only be gained by certain events? You know, things that distinguish normal empires from hyper-advanced ones?
 
I posted in one of the community posts but want to ask @Wiz directly if this has been thought of.
With the new immigration mechanics, could there be a new agreement for authotarian, despoilers/raiding and maybe xenophobic empires for slave trade agreements allowing slave pops from other empires you have the agreement with to grow on your planets (maybe add a energy bonus to each empire if it balances to represent buying and selling of said slaves).
 
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).

Does it means new updates will open up a chance for us to privateer in space?
Besides, will enforcers produce any resources as planetary fortress in current version?
Anyway, what I want to say to 2.2 is... SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!
 
Wow, this is a much more in-depth rework than I previously thought. Some musings regarding this system:


- Crime generating "criminal" jobs and space mafias / pirate empires being a thing sounds utterly awesome!

- Happiness becoming a more difficult investment is great. I love how now you've gotta put a lot more work if you want to have a happy society, rather than being the default state of your empire

- Happiness will affect stability and stability will in turn affect resource output means that in the end, yes, happiness keeps affecting total output, which I believe is a missed opportunity for introducing more granularity (think stability affecting certain resources while happiness / unhappiness affecting the output of different resources)

- Amenities being tied to infrastructure rather than population sounds rather counter-intuitive, and I fail to see what is its purpouse, other than contributing to happiness which in turn will contribute to stability (which is, in the end, the most relevant factor in a planet). Seems like the type of mechanic that you gotta see it working in order to understand it

- I am quite intrigued about the fact that the relationship between happiness and stability will depend on how much political weight the strata has. Will different political systems have different weights for each strata? So the happiness of the masses do matters in democracies, but is completely irrelevant on slave-based dictatorships?
 
Hey Wiz, if you're still here could you explain how the new slaver guilds work? Does it enslave 40% of each species or just your main one? How does it decide which pop is enslaved, at birth? How do you set the rights and slavery types for these slaves, do they show up in the species list as a sub species or something?
I'm guessing this is still non-finalised so you're probably unable to give clear answers though.
 
If i understood correctly these amenities are like the service stuff. Like restaurants, and hairdressers. In reality a rich person can, and probably will use more of these, than a poor one. So why not make it connected to population multiplied by their strata value? A rich administrator would need more, than a mining worker, and a chattel slave even less.
that make sense
but then it will be the same with housing too
 
But how it will work with no-happiness pops then? Will planet full of droids and single organic pop require a lot of amenities just to keep one single organic pop happy?

If you are talking about per pop effect on amenities then obviously non-sentient pops won't consume them.

If you are talking about a scenario where there is only one pop but lots of infrastructure affecting amenities, that's seems fine. Being happy is harder with all this industrial pollution.