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Stellaris Dev Diary #124 - Planetary Rework (part 4 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 the last one, in which we'll be talking about how some special empires and planets such as Hive Minds, Machine Empires and Habitats will work under the new planetary rework system.

Gestalt Consciousnesses
One of the aims of the Planetary Rework was that we wanted to be able to present the different kinds of societies in Stellaris as actually being different on the planet. Under the old system, the planet of a Gestalt Consciousness feels very much like the planet of any other empire, save for a few minor differences such as the fact that the pops don't have happiness. Under Le Guin, this will change considerably, with Hive Minds and Machine Empires getting their own districts, buildings, strata, jobs and planetary mechanics. Hive Minds and Machine Empires share some mechanical differences with normal empires - they do not produce Trade Value and have no internal trade routes (more on this in a later DD), their pops lack Happiness, and instead of Crime they have Deviancy, representing Drones that malfunction or go rogue in some manner. Instead of the normal Strata, pops are generally divided into Simple Drones and Complex Drones, with the previous producing amenities and raw resources and the latter producing research, unity and finished goods. Amenities for Gestalts represents the necessary maintenance capacity required for planet to be functional, and impacts Stability directly instead of affecting Pop Happiness. Stability is still a factor for Gestalts, representing how smoothly the planet is functioning as a part of the collective. A low-stability Gestalt planet will not experience revolts if there are only drones present on it, but it will be impaired in other ways, such as resource production penalties. Gestalts also not produce or require luxury goods, with the sole exception of Rogue Servitors that need it for their bio-trophies.
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Hive Minds
In Le Guin, the planets of Hive Minds are focused around rapid growth. Instead of City districts, Hive Minds have Hive districts that provide a very large amount of housing, and each of their raw resource districts provides three jobs where a normal empire only gets two. Hive Minds use the normal biological Pop Growth mechanic, and can also make use of migration mechanics internally - drones will emigrate from overcrowded worlds and immigrate to worlds with free housing. Hive Minds also have a special building, the Spawning Pool, that provides Spawning Drone jobs which use a large amount of food to increase the rate of pop growth on the planet. Furthermore, Hive Minds have their own set of capital buildings that lack the 'colony shelter' level - a newly colonized Hive Mind planet has a fully functional capital present from day one. All of these mechanics make Hive Minds ideal for a 'wide' playstyle, expanding rapidly and claiming huge swathes of space for the Hive.
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Machine Empires
Machine Empires share some similarities with Hive Minds, but rather than being focused on rapid growth, their primary focus is efficient use of resources. Like the Hive Minds, they have their own version of housing district, the Nexus District, and their resource extraction districts also provide three jobs where normal empires get two, but in addition to this they also have substantial bonuses to finished goods production, with jobs such as the Fabricator being a more efficient and productive variant of the regular alloy-producing Metallurgist. However, this comes at the expense of being unable to naturally produce new pops, having to rely on costly Replicator jobs to construct new drones. Machine Empires are ideal for an empire that wants to be self-sustaining, and truly shine when they have access to numerous kinds of natural resources.
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Habitats
Finally, another mechanic from a previous expansion that is changing considerably in Le Guin is Habitats. Habitats are still acquired and constructed in the same way as before, but rather than being size 12 planets with a handful of unique buildings, Habitats are now a mere size 6 (8 with Master Builders), but have their own entirely unique set of Districts. Rather than building City, Mining, Farming or Generator districts, Habitats have the following districts available:
  • Habitation District: Provides housing
  • Research District: Provides researcher jobs
  • Trade District: Provides trade value jobs (Non-Gestalt only)
  • Leisure District: Provides unity and amenities jobs (Non-Gestalt only)
  • Reactor District: Provides energy-producing jobs (Gestalt only)

No matter the type, each District built on a Habitat provides a fixed amount of infrastructure (currently 5, or 1 building per 2 districts). Habitats can support most regular planetary buildings, and so can be further specialized towards for example trade, goods production or research, but lack virtually all ability to produce raw resources. Since research and unity penalties scale towards an empire's number of districts rather than planets in the Le Guin update, they are also highly efficient for tall empires, as Habitat districts provide a larger amount of housing, infrastructure and jobs compared to regular planet districts.

(NOTE: This interface is extremely WIP, the finished version will have non-placeholder art and better district number display, among other things)
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That's all for today! Next week we're finally moving on to the rest of the Le Guin update, starting with the Galactic Market. We may be done talking about the planetary rework (for now), but there's much more to the update we've yet to even begin showing you!
 
For immersion 1 huge coherent ring is so much better than 4 standard size planets. I hope you find a way to donit that way.

I respectfully disagree regarding immersion with 1 huge coherent ring rather than 4 standard-size planets. For me at least, the 4 divisions of the Ringworld not only made it feel "real" in terms of regional variations within the massive ringworld, just seeing four different sections to colonize was a constant, immersive reminder to me that the Ringworld was bigger than any individual planet could be expected to be.
 
I had been playing this game for a while but eventaully stopped being bored due to the fact each kind of aliens, no matter how strange and different they may appear, felt mechanically the same. There was no difference between Humans, machines or hive-mind insects. What I see now is a promise that this game is going to be what I had expected from the beginning. Space will be strange and full of secrets.
 
Space habitats have a higher "bar of entry" than planetary habitation, but once you can do it they're immensely more practical than building on a planet.

Do you have like... any idea how dirt-cheap making a bunch of cylinder habitats is once you have the infrastructure to build them at all?

Stellaris is space opera in nature, so we actually see more limitations on colonization and orbital construction than are realistic.

It would be like an endless pipe extruder nowadays. One time construction costs and after that just energy and mineral costs. Every 2 weeks a guy has to check that it still looks OK.
 
Not in the sense of getting it as a resource on the habitat itself, but they'll probably automatically 'mine' the planet like a mining/research station would.

This is actually pretty cool if I understand it correctly- you could essentially at a later point replace some of your mining and research stations with a Habitat while also not losing out on the research around said planet.

Will there be special flavor for habitats orbiting certain planets?
 
All events have been adjusted to the new system in various ways. It would take several dev diaries to go over how they all work now, so that's something you'll have to discover when playing. :)

Will some of them be getting more art to help make them stand out even more? I say this as someone used to some events so much that I don't even read them as soon as I recognize the choices.
 
Only for the ones being kept as livestock, processed, or in the process of being assimilated. Rogue Servitors are the only exception to this, as before.

Couldn't there be an option for hive minds to keep some in very limited preserves to gain a sociology bonus of some kind? As a random idea that popped into my head.
 
*sigh* It's so nice to come back here after spending the last week or so in the EU4 section. Like laying in a warm bath listening to whale songs after a long arduous day at work.

Specific comment but I really like the new(?) image for Habitats. It does a great job of conveying an artificially created mini-world in outer space. A pat on the back for the artist.
 
U always give us what we want. U the best. Before seemed habitats were useless. But now they will be great. Gj guys. Cant wait about ring worlds. U guys rly are the best.
 
Just thinking of how a habitat could be made into a mobile habitat (different amounts and types of districts based on the ship size) then moved above new planets which are raised by the Hunger...

The planets are burned, their ecology taken for the Hunger. We must feed, me grow and we expand or we die, because the old systems are burned to nearly nothing. We see the others live in relative peace with their systems, and we almost understand, but we never can, never do, instead we take so that we may flourish. They can not understand us, they can not understand the hunger.

i.e. A hive that not only eats others not only because they taste good (feeds the hive better than regular , but because their planets are burned out over time and the Hive literally will starve to death if their not expanding all or most of the time. Lives most of the time on ships that don't provide much food but are good for tech, energy, and production, needs to expand to get resources and food because the planets that it does land on (whether warfare or colonization) give lots of early resources but are anti-terraformed their mines are burned out.
 
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Just thinking of how a habitat could be made into a mobile habitat (different amounts and types of districts based on the ship size) then moved above new planets which are raised by the Hunger...

The planets are burned, their ecology taken for the Hunger. We must feed, me grow and we expand or we die, because the old systems are burned to nearly nothing. We see the others live in relative peace with their systems, and we almost understand, but we never can, never do, instead we take so that we may flourish. They can not understand us, they can not understand the hunger.

i.e. A hive that not only eats others not only because they taste good (feeds the hive better than regular , but because their planets are burned out over time and the Hive literally will starve to death if their not expanding all or most of the time. Lives most of the time on ships that don't provide much food but are good for tech, energy, and production, needs to expand to get resources and food because the planets that it does land on (whether warfare or colonization) give lots of early resources but are anti-terraformed their mines are burned out.


Sounds like the Cravers from the Endless Space games which would add a very interesting playstyle though. Given a Stellaris twist I think it would be a very good addition to the game. Or normal species and even other Hive Minds it will bring out the fear of losing even a single planet since before too long the planet will become a barren wasteland.
 
sounds really nice, a bit like the Vasari in sins of a solar empire, the whole zivilisation lives on giant ships and starbases and they just taking worlds to mine them down to the core for resources... really an interesting option that could be added as a civic for gestalt- and materialistic+xenophobe-empires
 
sounds really nice, a bit like the Vasari in sins of a solar empire, the whole zivilisation lives on giant ships and starbases and they just taking worlds to mine them down to the core for resources... really an interesting option that could be added as a civic for gestalt- and materialistic+xenophobe-empires
I thought they just flee a horror that destroyed their worlds.
Also gameplay suggests they inhibit the worlds like the other races in SOASER.
 
I thought they just flee a horror that destroyed their worlds.
Also gameplay suggests they inhibit the worlds like the other races in SOASER.
true, they flee a not further descripted enemy, thats why they live mostly on their ships and leeving the planets empty of any resource....
i wouldn't wonder if they will make another "sins of..." that discribes this enemy more and continues the "storry" but thats another thing xD
but that gameplay of the vasari would be interesting in stellaris^^
 
As to the rest of this, I recognize I speak from a gulf of inexperience here but I'll lay out why so: I found my attempts to play most machine empires to be very abortive, with the entire galaxy turning against me after one conquest (which I found the -30 relations malus really exacerbated, with more empires deciding to actively antagonize me instead of like, break agreements at most). I scratched my head over this, but apparently it was at least at one time the case (I haven't played really since these dev diaries began, as I'm more hype for the changes than for the current state of the game) that by default hives/gestalts went with the most atrocious possible policy toward new species by default, and the descriptions of how they worked implied it was the only state it could possibly be. In short, I thought that purging pops was the only permitted action for gestalts, when displacement is actually an option. Suffice to say, has there been or will be there be some changes to address that misconception?

I found that kind of play very exhausting, with a war setting me back ten hours of wasted effort when I wasn't able to accurately predict opinion maluses and in turn was unprepared for the fight I had essentially picked with half the galaxy.


Right at the first moment when gestalt contiousness were added, I remember Inexperience too costed me dearly, the natural penalty for being a big one mind hive is not that bad others would antagonise me instantly yet they kept their distance and dislikemd me from afar. Of course, there was one empire that not-by-coincidenceb decided to grow my direction and really hated me.. add border friction and that soon escalated to war.. I won, they were ugly yet delicious and at the time that was the only option, few big planets latter and the pennalty-per-devoured-pop or "genocide" was the max -1k everywhere, so much so that even one protectorade I helped like crazy still hated my guts something fierce..

Seeking an alternative since on that one my only help from oblivion was a friend ( "co-op" game), latter one we started a new game, plus I had mine on single.. and displacement was there (to the woe of every egalitarian empire) and means no penalty at all from war.. Both gestalt options have a starting minus, yet that is easy to work around via traits, perks and diplomacy (and some rare events).. to me, you need only play around with some species and play more with hives/robots. They are fun, and by the sound of it, will be even more fun with Le Guin..


I myself enjoy playing as hives.. just wish it had more options (like robots) - maybe an assimilator hive (or parasyte hive) adding any large sentient to the link without the need of both ascention perks.. if only much slower...
 
Pretty cool stuff, I'm actually tempted to try playing Hive Mind/Machine Empire now.

Just a question though, concerning Gestalt stability: wouldn't it have been more interesting to go for a less "black/white" system ? One where, say, high stability would mean higher resource production, but research malus, while low stability would increase research speed but with the risk of the colony splintering from the main Hive Mind and "rebelling" in their own way. Might probably be too complicated, especially when it comes to the AI properly managing it, but I wonder if that kind of idea has been considered.

No, there are more than one type of hive mind

For them to add that feature it would turn all hive minds into a borg type

If an entire colony rebelled for most hive minds the entier colony would die

For some it would be impossible
 
I think habitats should still produce minerals. the best way to conquer the galaxy is by claiming vast regions of territory than spamming habitats

Unless hive minds are gonna get a resource mining mega structure you're effectively neutering them late game.

And the fact they can make energy is worthless because you can just make a Dyson sphere

Besides that the Latoid Conciseness approves of the god's plans


I recommend a building for mining the planet below. (Unless there is a colony below) I understand you're trying to balance it but, you just made how my hive mind works worthless