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Stellaris Dev Diary #142 - Sectors

Hello everyone!

Today we’re back with a dev diary and we want to take the opportunity to be more open with how we will attempt to tackle one of our more difficult systems – the sector system. The sector system was originally added to help players manage their planets, so that you would not need to micromanage everything once your empire gets large. We’ve often felt sectors are in a bit of an awkward place between different playstyles and what they actually should do for the player. Sectors have gone through a couple of different iterations, but never felt quite right.

I will start by outlining some of the goals with the (new) system and problems with the old one. This probably doesn’t include every concern for every player who ever used sectors, but it should cover some of the larger things. If you have something to add, we certainly want to hear about it!

The goal
  • Sectors should help to alleviate the player’s need to micromanage everything
  • Sectors should feel like a more unique part of the player’s empire
Problems
  • Sector geography can feel wrong
  • There are too many sectors in late-game
  • Wars and rebellions can mess up sectors
  • Player has to micro the sector economy
  • No manual control of sector area
  • Sectors don’t manage space stations
  • No “sector capitals”
I CANNOT PROMISE THAT ALL THESE CHANGES WILL HAPPEN, OR THAT THEY WILL APPEAR IN THE SAME UPDATE.

Sector types

The Core sector will be the sector that is formed around your homeworld and any system within range. A regular sector is formed around a Sector Capital, which you will be able to assign. It will also include all systems within range. Any system or planet not within a sector will be considered to belong to “Frontier Space”.

We are looking into also having different sector types, or sector policies, in which you could have different settings for sectors. Potentially, a sector could perhaps adjust its range in inverse relation to something else, like Administrative Capacity. Occupation Zones might also be a valid sector type, to make it easier to manage conquered territory.

Sector range simply means all systems within X jumps from the sector capital.

Sector budget
Players will have the ability to give resources to a shared sector pool, both as one-off grants and as monthly subsidies. This will convert minerals/energy into a sector budget, like it currently does. The new thing being automated monthly subsidies and a shared pool. It will still be possible to give a specific sector grants. Sectors will first attempt to use resources from its own pool, then from the shared pool.

Players will also be able to set planet automation to on/off. Planets in sectors will have automation turned On by default. This means you should be able to turn off automation for a specific planet in your sector, which you may sometimes want to do.

Sectors can have a sector focus, similar to how they do now in 2.2. The automatic control of planets should take sector focus and planet designation in consideration.

Sector geography
The current plan is to have systems be automatically added to a sector within range. If a system could belong to two different sectors, it should be possible to nudge them to decide which sector they belong to. This important for players being able to set a sector geography that looks good to them in their game.

Moving sector capital will also redraw the sector, and could potentially remove or add new systems to it. You cannot add systems to a sector if they are outside its range. Systems must also maintain cohesion to a sector, so it's not possible to cut off parts of a sector.

Planet designations
We really like the planet designations, i.e. “Mining World, Agri World, Forge World”, but we also want the player to have more control over them. We want to add the ability to manually set a planet designation, in addition to the automatic setting. If you designate a planet to be a Mining World, it should perhaps also be quicker to build mining districts there. It should generally feel cooler to colonize a world, and based on its features, immediately be able to decide it should be an Agri World – and designate it accordingly!

We also hope this will make it easier for the AI to specialize their planets a bit more in certain cases.

Governors
Although governors will remain mostly the same as to how they are now, we will try to remake the governor traits to be a bit more generic and applicable to a sector as a whole, as opposed to being so planet-specific with their bonuses.

Space stations
We have discussed adding an auto-build function for construction ships, similar to auto-explore, which should hopefully solve this problem better.

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I CANNOT PROMISE THAT ALL THESE CHANGES WILL HAPPEN, OR THAT THEY WILL APPEAR IN THE SAME UPDATE.

Our goal is to be able to able to get as much of this done by the next update as possible, but I cannot promise what will get in when. This sector rework is fairly ambitious, so it might be deployed in sections over a few updates. I very much like the design though, and I think it's a good foundation to build upon.

Since the launch of 2.2 we've been a little quiet, with a focus on extensive post-launch support. Going forward however, I'd like to increase our interactions with you, our community. While we want to have a more open communication, we want to avoid over promising or disappointing you if ideas change radically.

This is also a good chance for you affect this great game, so I hope an open discussion will lead to some constructive exchanges.
 
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I don't understand why sectors aren't simply generated as part of the map itself and remain as they are.
Being able to compartmentalize the map in that way would make sector borders into useful interim objectives for conquest, as well as good targets for early expansion.

Plus, it'd finally make that useless hyperspace building actually have a function--just apply it to the whole sector in which the starbase is constructed.
In fact, it'd open up all sorts of opportunities. Stored wealth in the sector stockpile being maintained after a total conquest of a sector, for example. Since the sector is static and is not destroyed as it changes hands, you could easily have any stored material goods be the reward for claiming total control of a specific region.
It would also help clean up and clarify the shape and reach of nebula systems, which are always kind of annoying as it is now. Which systems are within and without are difficult to know at a glance most of the time.

I can't help but feel like static sectors are both the easiest and best solution possible. It would be a huge help to the galactic geography/terrain aspect of the game, if nothing else.
 
In addition, I made a suggestion a while back to change cohesion, from being linked to open systems, to being linked by a colonies' distance from the capital. This could lead to an interesting dynamic with sectors. Basically, it's determined as the distance from the capital (Core, developed, rural, sparse). But if there were "sector capitals" they could have similar (but smaller) effects to help keep it up as well. The only way cohesion can be improved, is through technology (better thrusters, and FTL communication tech, which would be new), because the further away your colonies are, the weaker your grip on them is.
Since you have sector capitals, that would help lessen the effects as stated. But if those are too far away as well, they may want to split off (civil war), unless you have decent technology to stay unified. So if you go wide, you would need to be careful (And gateways would help), and if you want to be tall, you should be relatively unified.
It may also help overextending yourself in war, and you could see events where a planet rebels against something like a fanatical purifier because their hold is too weak. I would like to see that.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/an-alternative-to-current-cohesion.1153075/
 
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Looks great. Exactly what the game needs atm. Hopefully all of it gets added in future updates.
I would personally like to see a small overhaul or rework of planet invasion and ability to move fleets faster in your own space without having to build gateways everywhere.
 
Also, how would sectors affect your resource gathering? Will it all go directly to the resource on the top bar or will they go into sector pool?
 
I don't understand why sectors aren't simply generated as part of the map itself and remain as they are.
Being able to compartmentalize the map in that way would make sector borders into useful interim objectives for conquest, as well as good targets for early expansion.
Because that would be quite some work unless you are also satisfied with a system that creates really weird/crappy sectors.
 
Also, how would sectors affect your resource gathering? Will it all go directly to the resource on the top bar or will they go into sector pool?

Sectors would not have their own economy, so things would affect you directly. The budget would simply assign them resources to build with.

Any thoughts on CK2/Imperator style rebellions for sectors?
It would of course be cool, but I think we're a couple of steps away from that.
 
I don't understand why sectors aren't simply generated as part of the map itself and remain as they are.
Being able to compartmentalize the map in that way would make sector borders into useful interim objectives for conquest, as well as good targets for early expansion.
Reminds me of Total War too much: not exactly a fan of their province system, also I highly doubt that RNG will come up with something remotely sane when trying to generate those.
 
If were actually going to consider Garrison Fleets I hope it's implemented well. It could be interesting since lategame even Citadels usually are not much more than a speed bump for a large Battleship fleet. But it could also make offense too tough if the Garrison Fleets are allowed to be too large. I assume they would not cost upkeep but would only stay in their home sector under AI control mainly guarding their home station, and killing any pirates that spawn. It would also be neat in the sense I guess if Rebellion style events were implemented they might use Garrison Fleets against you.
 
It is an interesting thought, and something to look into. I'm not sure a "planet template" will be very easy to set up, though, considering how different planets can be. Maybe a small limit to how much a template can include, so it more easily can fit different planets?

This could also take the form of being able to give a planet a plan that guides the AI. Set it up so you can set a "planned building" on building slots that aren't open yet, and the sector AI will build that building as the building slots open up. Add in a target district count that the AI will build towards, and the player could take a minute or so to set up the building and district set up they want the planet to end at, and the AI can automate the implementation of it. That way I can know exactly what a planet will look like by the end, and not have to worry about the minutia of getting there. At least if I have the resources to absorb potential intermediate states, like a sudden drop in mineral output as a bunch of miners move up into specialist jobs.
 
I didn't like these changes. Sector range and manually selecting sector capital can create a lot of micromanagement for large empires, especially when wars change borders. We are already using sector range system in game and the results aren't good. Why sectors aren't determined by geography? In one of the previous dev diaries Wiz told that each star cluster would create a sector, why we're not using this system? You can do a lot with pre-determined sectors, for example you could make sectors rebel against your empire. Since 1.5 rebellions are a joke, even if a planet rebel against your empire they can easily be dealt with. I miss the old rebelling sectors.
Also, this sector resource pool is very confusing: Both minerals and energy go to the same pool. Does that mean sectors can use both of them as one? If I give my sectors energy, can it use as minerals? That doesn't make any sense.
 
Just to be clear, can we ignore sectors entirely, but still choose to tell the colony how we'd like it to specialize? I personally don't mind some micro, but after I've developed a colony to a point, it would be nice to set a specialty for the planet and forget about it.

Also, some kind of indicator in the Outliner that a planet has been assigned a specialty would be extremely helpful.
 
Do you feel like you need to be able to set the cap yourself, or would a default cap of 10k work?

I'd be happy with a constant cap of 10k. The only time I'd imagine needing a different stockpile size would be early game when I might want it lower due to smaller incomes, but at that stage of the game, the need for automation is much lower. By the time I start wishing for sector automation, I'm able to work with that size of stockpile just fine. Though to be fair, I don't actually use the automation at the moment, so my standards might be different than others.
 
I don't want to automate the process of building Outposts. I see expanding as being a player choice.

On the subject of automating construction, one of the minor pains in Stellaris (and one of the major ones in, say, GalCiv 2 or Sword of the Stars 2) is the starbase upgrade queue. While I am the sort of person who would micromanage my entire empire planets until it becomes stupendously unwieldy, I always find the starbase management kind of tedious. (Since frequently, there is very little change in set-up of what you want - of the three Stellaris is even the only one where there is some measure of doing it differently in some instances and not building the exact same station (at much greater length than Stellaris) x dozen times over the course of a game.)

It would be nice to be able to queue up the entire thing, rather than having to come back to it when you upgrade to a new level or a new module unlocks. Having the build queue respect what is under construction at a higher priority would help (e.g. being able to to an off-world trading company to the queue riht after a trading hub, rather than having to wait until the latter is completed) (I'm pretty sure this wasn't the case when I played just post-Megacorp's release.)

Failing that, a starbase design outliner would be nice; something you could set up like the fleet system in Hearts of Iron 4 (Man the Guns); basically a list of modules that tells the computer to add them to the build queue as soon as they are available to build (in regard to pre-requities, technology etc), which at least would mean you could minimise the amout of time having to come back to manage the build queue of something that is mostly going to have a fairly standard build over most of your empire. (Mostly, because you do sometimes want to do different things but I have found that generally, most of my internal starbases have the exact same module-set up.)

A good compromise might be being able to queue up, for example, six trading hubs and an off-world trading company when you first build the starbase, but the construction pauses on any locked module slots until you upgrade, at which it will build the modules it has room for now.
 
The goal
  • Sectors should help to alleviate the player’s need to micromanage everything
  • Sectors should feel like a more unique part of the player’s empire
I feel there is

- Sectors should give the player an impression of a growing (interstellar) empire, which becomes more difficult to govern over time

missing.

After some growth done, it should be an obvious decision to focus on a core area and give away responsibility for distant worlds.
 
Could sectors maybe have an effect on the types of pops that grow? I.E. a sector contains the homeworld of a species in your empire, so they are more likely to grow on that planet and other planets in the sector matching their Habitability type than applicable planets elsewhere in your empire? Or that immigrant pops might start out growing mostly in the sector where the first pops came to before they start spreading elsewhere?