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Stellaris Dev Diary #126 - Sectors and Factions in 2.2

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we're going to continue talking about the 2.2 'Le Guin' update, on the topic of Sectors and Factions. As said before, we're not yet ready to reveal anything about when Le Guin is coming out, only that it's a long time away and we have many more topics to cover before then. Also as said before, screenshots will contain placeholder art and interfaces and non-final numbers.

Sector Rework
Sectors have always been a bit of a controversial feature. Even if you disregard arguments about the general level of competence of the sector AI, the fact that sectors effectively force the player to cede control over all but a few of their planets has never gone down well with certain players. In truth, the decision to force players to give planets to sectors was very much a result of the old tile system - because of the sheer amount of micromanagement that was involved in managing a large number of planets, it was decided that automation was necessary, and also to make that automation mandatory (barring mods) to effectively force players to not make themselves miserable by micromanaging the tiles of a hundred different worlds. With the planetary rework in the Le Guin update, we no longer feel that this mandatory automation is needed any longer, and so we've decided to rework the sector system entirely.

Instead of being autonomous mini-economies, sectors are now administrative units in your empire, with their layout decided by galactic geography, with each sector corresponding to a cluster of stars in the galaxy. Sectors are automatically created when you colonize a planet in a previously uncolonized cluster, and your 'core sector' is simply the cluster in which your capital is located. All interfaces that are relevant to sectors and planets (such as the outliner) are now organized by collapsible sector entries, allowing for better overview and management of a large number of planets. As before, each sector can have a governor assigned to it, but sectors now automatically send all of their production to the empire stockpile instead of having their own fully realized economy. However, since we still want players to be able to offload some of the planetary management when controlling a large number of worlds, it is still possible to allocate resources to a Governor, who will use those resources to develop the planets under their control. This of course means that there is no longer any core sector limit, and anything that previously used to give a bonus to core sector planets has either been changed into a different bonus or removed altogether.

EDIT: Since there's a lot of questions about leader capacity, please read down a bit further in the thread where I address this issue. Thank you!

(Note: Image is highly WIP and has missing elements)
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Faction Happiness Rework
Factions are also changing in Le Guin, though not to nearly the same degree as sectors. Most of the core mechanics of factions will remain the same, but Faction Happiness is being changed into something we call Faction Approval, measuring how much a Faction approves of your empire's policies. Where previously Factions would only give influence when above a 60% happiness threshold, Factions now always give some influence, with the amount scaling linearly to their Approval, so a 10% Approval faction will give only 1/10th of the influence that a 100% Approval faction gives you (the amount they give also still scales to their share of power in your empire). Faction Approval is also no longer directly applied to Pop Happiness, but rather will affect the happiness of Pops belonging to that faction at different thresholds, with small boosts to happiness at higher levels of approval and increasingly severe penalties to happiness at low levels of approval (effectively swapping the influence threshold for various happiness thresholds).

This should mean that even small boosts to faction approval now directly translates into influence gain, and that factions almost always give *some* benefit, even if that benefit may be outweighed by the unhappiness and unrest they can cause. We're also hoping to have time to review the faction issues, tying them more directly to policies to make them easier to understand. For example, instead of demanding that all species have their rights manually set to Full Citizenship, the Xenophile faction might demand a certain empire-wide policy setting that forces the equal application of species rights across all species.
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That's all for today! Next week we're continuing to talk about the Le Guin update, on the topic of Trade Value and Trade Routes.
 
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Hopefully these changes will encourage more small scale conflicts, focused around contested sectors, since you don't have to pay additional governor upkeep for those planets. Reduced claim costs on contested sectors could also help support this. I too often find myself using vassalization or liberation clausus belli to avoid the influence costs of claims.
I can see why some would complain over not being able to make their own sectors, but I think that the system is a good baseline for future changes and makes it harder to exploit the system to optimize sector resources (especially with the changes to sector stockpiles).
I like the previously mentioned idea of being able to associate sectors together as one political entity, since it could allow for something akin to de jure drift from CK2, allowing the players some ability to shape the stellar landscape.
 
It's also possible that governors might get a small budget each month based on economic strength of sector even if you don't send them resources.
I’d like to se that. Maybe sectors could have about 5 or 10 percent of the empire capacity for minerals, energy, etc. Important to me is that if they do get a buffer that all resources that the sector can’t store get moved into empire storage. The old system doesn’t do that and we lose hundreds of resources each month to the void.
 
@Wiz
I rarely post (if ever), but I think it would give more choice to Stellaris players if we could keep the current mechanism of taxation from the Sector (i.e. 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%), with an additional option of 100% and removal of the 0% option, in addition to the "give resources" button.

I feel that this will allow more granularity in delegating automation to the Sectors, with 100% taxation representing maximum central control over the Sector, while still allowing the central government to give an infusion of resources to a new Sector, or for an urgent/high priority situation.

Just my two cents. :) Otherwise I am really liking the changes noted thus far.
 
That doesn't really make sense. Why would increasing the size of your empire require you to increase the size of an admiral's staff?
Fleet sizes increase, science is ever more complicated, sector population increases. You need more people to manage those things. I assume that even during peacetime, an admiral would have to keep most of their staff on hand (maybe crew quarters will also reduce admiral upkeep) and needs trained officers ready in case SOMEBODY decides to suddenly max out the size of the navy.
Additionally, as the empire gets larger and more powerful and prosperous, subjects, especially those leading the empire would expect a better quality of life and a bigger paycheck to accommodate for the increased responsibility.​
 
Rule of Acquisition 35: "Peace is good for business."

Rule of Acquisition 34: "War is good for business."

'Work in progress' is pretty self explanatory, if someone chooses to over-interpret that it's their own problem.

Goes without saying. But we shouldn't forget rule 62, the riskier the road the greater the profit.
 
Fleet sizes increase, science is ever more complicated, sector population increases. You need more people to manage those things. I assume that even during peacetime, an admiral would have to keep most of their staff on hand (maybe crew quarters will also reduce admiral upkeep) and needs trained officers ready in case SOMEBODY decides to suddenly max out the size of the navy.
Additionally, as the empire gets larger and more powerful and prosperous, subjects, especially those leading the empire would expect a better quality of life and a bigger paycheck to accommodate for the increased responsibility.​


It would make sense to give leaders higher wages based on the size of the job they're doing. However, increasing the size of your empire doesn't directly increase the size of your fleet or the complexity of scientific problems or the population of your planets, so why should it also increase the wages of your leaders?
 
Leader cap is gone, leaders cost maintenance instead, with costs scaling to empire size.

This is a good change but then it can become exploity by just hiring and firing untill you like have the one you are looking for.
 
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That doesn't really make sense. Why would increasing the size of your empire require you to increase the size of an admiral's staff?

The larger an empire is the more bloated it's bureaucracy will become... plain and simple. That includes all types of branches, even the military.
 
I like this a lot, but I would add one more thing: Tracking starbases in each sector and their upkeep and impact on the local economy would be handy as well.

May as well drop the suggestion while it is still WIP, looking good though!

Unfortunately I don't have access to the suggestion forum.

Feel free to do it in my place although.
 
@Wiz
Fantastic changes so far. Any idea how skillfully a governor will govern his sector if we give him resources as compared to the old sector AI? I love controlling my own planets up to about 20, then it starts getting tedious (for me). So I definitely want my sector governors to manage their sectors at some point and just want to know if they will do a better job in this new system. I am sure it is still being fleshed out and tested but do you have any sense of whether they will be better or more efficient or smart than the old system?

Also will there be something to do with Moff Tarkin's statement of "The regional governors now have direct control over their territories"?

Thanks! You guys are awesome!
 
I agree that Sectors needed a complete rework, but honestly this update feels more like they have been all but abandoned as a concept. The core limit as it works now is totally broken and limiting, but being able to define your own districts within your empire and being forced to strategically delegate operations rather than be able to easily micromanage everything was one of the biggest pillars upon which Stellaris stood. I'm worried that this update will completely remove an entire layer of strategy and make the game less unique. Hopefully more work is put into Sectors in the follow-up to Le Guin to restore some of that complexity.
 
I do have a question that hasn't been answered by @Wiz yet: What happens when multiple empires occupy the same sector? Does each star simply operate as an independent district or does it create a kind of neutral zone? The latter could be an interesting twist to diplomacy.
 
It would make sense to give leaders higher wages based on the size of the job they're doing. However, increasing the size of your empire doesn't directly increase the size of your fleet or the complexity of scientific problems or the population of your planets, so why should it also increase the wages of your leaders?
With the new empire size metric, population, naval capacity, and science cost are all affected by empire size. Population (and districts, both of which would require administration) do directly increase your empire size. Empire size increases naval cap, so admirals would need more logistic and support staff (even if you are not increasing fleet size yet). Finally, science costs increase over time and with empire size (hopefully along with your science production), so your heads of research would need more assistance to run larger and more complex experiments.
 
With the new empire size metric, population, naval capacity, and science cost are all affected by empire size. Population (and districts, both of which would require administration) do directly increase your empire size. Empire size increases naval cap, so admirals would need more logistic and support staff (even if you are not increasing fleet size yet). Finally, science costs increase over time and with empire size (hopefully along with your science production), so your heads of research would need more assistance to run larger and more complex experiments.

Naval capacity doesn't increase the size of the job your admiral is doing, though -- fleet capacity does. So, basing admiral pay off how many ships are in their fleet makes sense and would naturally scale up over time, but if you had twice as many fleets it wouldn't cost four times as much like it will if you scale it based on empire size/naval cap.

Governors are the same way -- you make an average of X energy per planet and have Y planets per sector and that doesn't scale with empire size, but the amount you need to pay your governor does? It's nonsense. You're already paying more by needing more governors for your extra sectors.

The only sort of leader it makes any sense for is scientists because the number of scientists you need doesn't scale up with the size of your empire like governors and admirals do.
 
I agree that Sectors needed a complete rework, but honestly this update feels more like they have been all but abandoned as a concept. The core limit as it works now is totally broken and limiting, but being able to define your own districts within your empire and being forced to strategically delegate operations rather than be able to easily micromanage everything was one of the biggest pillars upon which Stellaris stood. I'm worried that this update will completely remove an entire layer of strategy and make the game less unique. Hopefully more work is put into Sectors in the follow-up to Le Guin to restore some of that complexity.

I think you should view this as a core rework and foundation for a dedicated political and diplomacy update. I can, with rather high confidence, say that will be the next update after this one since that is what the game need the most after the POP and economy update.

They way I see it these changes are more or less the bare bones necessary to accompany the changes to the economy and new POP system. In all honesty there are only so many things they can change in any one single update. Adding a new and complex faction and sector mechanic and tie that with a new political internal system is way beyond this update... in my opinion.

Keeping factions and sectors as they was before probably was not feasible so it needed some basic change.
 
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I think you should view this as a core rework and foundation for a dedicated political and diplomacy update. I can with rather high confidence say that will be the next update after this one since that is what the game need the most after the POP and economy update.

They way I see it these changes are more or less the bare bones necessary to accompany the changes to the economy and new POP system. In all honesty there are only so many things they can change in any one single update. Adding a new and complex faction and sector mechanic and tie that with a new political internal system is way beyond this update... in my opinion.

Keeping factions and sectors as they was before probably was not feasible so it needed some basic change.
Agreed.
I hope the next update is a full rework of diplomacy that actually makes it pretty smart. That has been the most needed thing in the game for a long time in my opinion.
 
Is there any bonus or disadvantages to offering governors the resources to develop their sector? Offering limited self-governemnt which will improved happiness and productivity at the risk of promoting independence for example?

I like the sector system so I don't have to manage the planets in my empire mid to late game and can focus on building habitats, mega structures and forming alliances. Or conquering everyone.
 
The larger an empire is the more bloated it's bureaucracy will become... plain and simple. That includes all types of branches, even the military.
I don't mean to be rude, but you haven't really answered my question. Why does an empire claiming more territory increase the size of all its bureaucracies, even those that don't have anything to do with the new territory? Why would the governor of one sector get a raise when another sector increases in size? Why would an admiral hire more staff when the empire's population increases? I don't think these things make sense, and if they are incorporated into Stellaris I feel they'd negatively impact the game's verisimilitude.