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Stellaris Dev Diary #144 - Megastructures, Habitats and Minor Artifacts

Hello everyone!

First of all, I’d like to follow up on last week’s dev diary by sharing some more things we’re trying out with Megastructures (and habitats!).

After all of that, we also have something new to talk about!

Let’s start from the beginning – which of course leads us to the Mega-Engineering technology itself.

As always, numbers may not be final and temporary things may be sighted.

Mega-Engineering
Mega-Engineering is still a rare technology, but will now be more likely to appear as you build more Habitats and Citadels. This means it is way more likely to appear if you are performing actions in the game that would lead you towards the route of building larger and more powerful structures.

Master Builders
The Master Builders ascension perk no longer unlocks mega-engineering or adds size to habitats, but instead increases the number of megastructures you can simultaneously build by +1. What about increased habitat size you ask? Well, keep on reading!

upload_2019-4-18_11-41-43.png

Habitats & Voidborne
Habitats are no longer locked behind the Voidborne ascension perk but is rather a technology that branches off from the Star Fortress technology. Habitats now have a default of 80% habitability. We’re also experimenting with that some of the habitat’s districts will depend on which planet they are built over. In case you build one above a planet with mining deposits, this could happen:

upload_2019-4-18_12-11-1.png

upload_2019-4-18_11-42-33.png

Voidborne ascension perk now increases habitat size by +2 and increases Habitat habitability by 20%. This should mean it becomes more of a choice for specialization, rather than feeling it is a non-choice.

As a final note on habitats, it might be worthwhile to reiterate my thoughts that I eventually want to add different levels/sizes to habitats. It is however not something for the immediate future, but a little further down the road.

Ring Worlds
We didn’t quite like how Ring Worlds ended up feeling like a vast farm, so we’re making some changes. Instead of being a size 50 with regular districts, we’re changing it to a size 5 with a unique type of districts – segments. A Ring World, as you know, has 4 planets. Each planet can now build 5 segments, which are very powerful districts with many jobs and a lot of housing.

upload_2019-4-18_11-48-37.png

Minor Artifacts
upload_2019-4-18_11-46-59.png

Some of you might recognize the icon for what was supposed to become arcane technology, that partially got into 2.2. It was something that I was personally working on, but that didn’t work out as I had imagined it, and that I didn’t get enough time to finish with other things taking priority.

In the next upcoming DLC, you will be able to come across Minor Artifacts. “Minor Artifacts” is a broad term that includes any smaller and nameless artifact left behind by ancient civilizations. They are never gained passively every month, but will rather have to be found.

What are they used for, I imagine you asking? Well, the basic functionality is that they can be consumed in so-called artifact actions. There are a bunch of different actions that can be performed by consuming Minor Artifacts, with varying effects for each.

Some of these actions will be locked behind a technology, which some may also recognize.

upload_2019-4-18_11-45-27.png

Arcane Deciphering allows you to consume Minor Artifacts for a random technology-related bonus.

upload_2019-4-18_11-45-47.png

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That’s it for this week! Happy Easter everyone! Next week we’ll be back again :)

P.S. Attaching an Easter present

upload_2019-4-18_11-49-27.png upload_2019-4-18_11-49-45.png
 
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Here my thoughts, mmm. Sorry for slow reply.
Here's an idea:
  1. Habitat size:
    1. Habitats base technology gives you a very limited habitat, with 2-4 usable districts.
    2. Habitats also start with 4-6 "blockers" (each "covering" one district) that actually represent not-yet-built sections of the habitat.
    3. Initially, you have the tech to "clear" 1-2 "blockers" (representing expanding the habitats to size ~6), but not any of the others.
    4. Once you've colonized a habitat, you have a chance to draw the tech(s) that unlock "clearing" 1-2 of the remaining "blockers" (same way that techs to clear planetary blockers work today). Making it multiple different techs makes it take time to fully unlock habitat sizes.
    5. Normal research should be enough to "clear" all but two districts of the habitat; the final "blocker" or two can be a kind that you never naturally draw the tech to clear.
    6. Habitat "blockers" cost alloys to "clear"; the base price of the habitat should be reduced to compensate (that is, a now-smaller base habitat is cheaper than today, but growing it to full size costs at least as much as today just spread out over a longer time).
    7. Voidborne AP should reduce the cost and time of "clearing" Habitat "blockers" by ~50%, and unlock the tech to "clear" the last two districts.
  2. Habitat habitability:
    1. Habitats have ~50% base habitability (representing the difficulty of early efforts at hosting a large population in space).
    2. Habitat habitability is not impacted by normal habitability techs, but is impacted by species traits.
    3. There exist 2-4 techs, each of which increase habitat habitability by 5%-10% (the total final habitability from techs alone should be ~75%).
    4. Voidborne AP should increase habitat habitability by ~25% (in addition to the above effect), making habitats immediately nicely habitable to everybody even without full research.
  3. Optional additional changes for habitats:
    1. Let Expansion tradition finish give habitats the bonus district (with these changes it will be more viable to just mostly go for habitats / ringworlds; those empires should still be able to benefit from that tradition finisher).
    2. Let habitats have a "shipyard" building (max of 1) that gives soldier jobs (or something else with a similar impact on naval capacity) and also lets them build ships; an upgrade to this building could give more shipyard slots and also a bonus to new ship experience.
    3. Have a "Voidborne"-like background (non-swappable) civic where your population starts out in ~3 habitats, and with the tech to build more (but none of the techs to make them good), and unable to take the Voidborne AP but with its affects already applied, but with Habitat habitability that makes planets awful to live on (basically, Life-Seeded but for habitats).
    4. Some way to give habitats engines, allowing them to move around in space and (very slowly) flee hostile fleets (though they wouldn't be able to go into systems you don't control, or to move while under attack); part of the reason for this is to allow habitats to take advantage of different planets with the new "harvest the nearby spatial body" districts.
Many (maybe all?) of these changes could be made just using mods, without changes to the actual game code. They would represent the reasonable ability of all spacefaring races to eventually live in artificial worlds, while still allowing players a meaningful choice between ignoring habitats, using them sparingly, or going hard-core into them.

Habitat size: Well i thought it in the way you could spend alloys and time to upgrade it like a megastructre.. increaseing the size of the habitat from small --> medium --> large --> Huge. So it have the time and investment, a perk/trait maybe? you could increase the world size of the habitat and it could still benefit from type world it was put over. This does make me wonder if get special/rare districts if put it over a special/rare place? hmm.. this is what curious about.

The size of the habitat thought would have capped at 25 for huge as would be unfair to go over that. Large imagine would be 15 to 20 ish, medium 10 to 15 and then small size as normal. Expanding the station should cost a signicant investment that scales upwards.

The thought occurs, if was going spaceborne race for theme. I would'nt want to colonise a world, but certainly would love to build a ring world (Its like best thing for this empire type to want as its a huge station and artifical world), so it megastructres still stay a nice thing with this type.

Habitat habitability: Hmm, i remeber reading somewhere, they thinking of changing habitability and trying to get it more important. So notsure how this would work past current.

Optional changes for habitats: Well, it was going say voidbourne style start, the expansion tree would have to change to something different maybe? or least one or two of the options it gives as currently you dont get extra district from it and the perk "mastry of nature" would be useless to you as it doesnt effect habitat districts either.

The thought occurs if adding a station shipyard componant, add the ability to add defence stations like that starbase has to a habitat.. now that defense perk looks real tasty. >:3

Another perk idea/option could do is add ability for habitats to take one station componant per lvl or habitat. small --> 1, Medium --> 2, Large --> 3, Huge --> 4. (Like trade hub buiness, hyponic bay, etc..)

I want to expand on this idea a bit. The basic idea is to let players have something akin to a marauder empire, living in space habitats instead of on planets.

Background:
Something drastic happened to this species' homeworld's biosphere - or the whole planet - before they developed interstellar flight. Desperate to survive as a species, they built massive but primitive space habitats and packed as much of their population aboard as possible. Conditions were terrible and supplies were short, and for decades it looked like they might perish anyway, but eventually the population stabilized at a fraction of what it had been before the collapse. A century of selective breeding and primitive genetic engineering later, these people are now well-adapted to their void dwellings (and the dwelling to them), at the cost of having lost much of their ability to cope with planetary gravity and natural biospheres. Their population rebounding, the inhabitants of the <N> void dwellings have turned to other scientific pursuits, and have developed the first hyperdrives. A galaxy full of open space awaits...

Start Conditions:
  • Starts with <N> (probably 2-4) habitats in one system, each "built" to size ~5 (if enlarging habitats by building or "clearing blockers" is a thing) but possibly having some special blockers like "long-depressurized module" that block some districts without costing as much to clear as it would to build the habitat out to full size.
  • No habitable or inhabited planets, but one of the planets has the Terraforming Candidate modifier, representing either the original homeworld or a planet that could one day become habitable.
  • Starts with one habitat each around good sources of mining and generator districts, with enough of those districts to provide a starting income.
  • Starts with enough hydroponic farms to feed the population, and a small surplus.
  • Standard starting starbase, navy, civilian ships, leaders, and home star system size, etc.
Civic Properties:
  • Starts with the Habitats technology.
  • Starts with the technology for hydroponic farming.
  • Starts with Habitats preference: +<H>% (H ~=30) habitability on habitats, but all planets have base 0% habitability (like Life-Seeded).
  • Starts with the benefits of the Voidborne AP (however it ends up being implemented, it should be enough to give Habitats full habitability, possibly unless the species is non-adaptive) but cannot select this AP.
  • Starts with <N> habitats and the ability to build more, but no homeworld.
  • Incompatible with Agrarian Idyll, Life-Seeded, and Post-Apocalyptic (and with any other "background" civics that wouldn't make sense).
  • Cannot be added or removed after the start of the game.
Balance:
  • This empire has no lack of potential habitable space, but needs to spend massive amounts of alloys and influence to build it.
  • Early-game, saving up for even one more habitat will mean neglecting your navy and outposts for a long time; mid-late-game, you'll finally be able to comfortably settle all those planets you found.
  • You won't need to expand as much in order to find habitable space (promotes tall play), but your economy will probably be unusually dependent on mining stations and you will need more colonies (produces 2 sprawl each even before districts) than a normal empire (promotes wide play), so you can go either way.
Problems to address:
  • The existing building and district availability on habitats might make this idea inviable, in which case either they will need to be changed (which it looks like might already be happening, even beyond the "mine orbital body" districts?) or need to be special-cased for empires with this civic.
  • The existing (and silly) population growth mechanic would reward having multiple "colonies" like this from the start of the game; this could either be "naturally" balanced against in other ways (such as lack of housing), balanced by penalizing growth rate of empires with this civic, balanced by reducing growth rate on habitats in general, or balanced by making population growth sane and reasonable (i.e. based on population, so it doesn't matter whether an empire has 30 pops on one planet or spread across three habitats, in terms of total growth rate).
  • It's unclear what Habitat habitability would mean for ringworlds, ecumenopoli, and Gaia planets. I'm inclined to say the first is fully habitable (what is a ringworld but a habitat on a system-wide scale?), and both of the others are base of 50% habitability at best. The civic might also forbid building ecumenopoli, which would be a significant penalty unless ecumenopoli are nerfed hard or habitats are buffed hard enough (say, by giving them ecumenopolis-like districts) to make up for the lack.

Yes please, would like this. ^^

Edit: One problems have with habitats atm is housing, always go for that over over districts because negative effects from lack housing/jobs and because of the build slots in the habitats.
 
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Wow, great DD! Lots of things to unpack here! Let's see:

Mega-Engineering
Mega-Engineering is still a rare technology, but will now be more likely to appear as you build more Habitats and Citadels. This means it is way more likely to appear if you are performing actions in the game that would lead you towards the route of building larger and more powerful structures.

I like the whole "gameplay affecting your bonuses". More of that, please.

Master Builders
The Master Builders ascension perk no longer unlocks mega-engineering or adds size to habitats, but instead increases the number of megastructures you can simultaneously build by +1. What about increased habitat size you ask? Well, keep on reading!

At last, long last! I love how megastructures are a mid-game strategy now, if you invest on it. And the +1 building capacity will add to the feeling of being an actual master builder, indeed.

Habitats & Voidborne
Habitats are no longer locked behind the Voidborne ascension perk but is rather a technology that branches off from the Star Fortress technology. Habitats now have a default of 80% habitability. We’re also experimenting with that some of the habitat’s districts will depend on which planet they are built over. In case you build one above a planet with mining deposits, this could happen:

Voidborne ascension perk now increases habitat size by +2 and increases Habitat habitability by 20%. This should mean it becomes more of a choice for specialization, rather than feeling it is a non-choice.

As a final note on habitats, it might be worthwhile to reiterate my thoughts that I eventually want to add different levels/sizes to habitats. It is however not something for the immediate future, but a little further down the road.

Sorry to say this, but the new voidborne perk looks extremely underwhelming. Ascension perks should feel like pivotal moments that define your empire by giving you additional tools to play with and opening up new strategies. A measly habitability bonus that can be gained via techs and traditions have none of that. Unlocking new levels or unique districts / buildings for habitats, however, would make voidborne a far more interesting perk.

Ring Worlds
We didn’t quite like how Ring Worlds ended up feeling like a vast farm, so we’re making some changes. Instead of being a size 50 with regular districts, we’re changing it to a size 5 with a unique type of districts – segments. A Ring World, as you know, has 4 planets. Each planet can now build 5 segments, which are very powerful districts with many jobs and a lot of housing.

Love this to bits. Great decision, the more unique elements (districts, buildings, etc), the better. Really curious to see what bonuses and resources will segments bring. And as some people have already said, a bonus for agrarian segments owned by agrarian idyl empires might be in order, too.

Minor Artifacts
Some of you might recognize the icon for what was supposed to become arcane technology, that partially got into 2.2. It was something that I was personally working on, but that didn’t work out as I had imagined it, and that I didn’t get enough time to finish with other things taking priority.

In the next upcoming DLC, you will be able to come across Minor Artifacts. “Minor Artifacts” is a broad term that includes any smaller and nameless artifact left behind by ancient civilizations. They are never gained passively every month, but will rather have to be found.

What are they used for, I imagine you asking? Well, the basic functionality is that they can be consumed in so-called artifact actions. There are a bunch of different actions that can be performed by consuming Minor Artifacts, with varying effects for each.

Some of these actions will be locked behind a technology, which some may also recognize.

Arcane Deciphering allows you to consume Minor Artifacts for a random technology-related bonus.

Consider me VERY intrigued about this new mechanic. Can't wait for the information about this new brand resource. It seems that we will be getting an archeotech DLC.

Also, Minor Artifacts are a great chance to boost the much neglected Arcane Engineering. A say, +100% minor artifact bonus in addition to the impossibility of reverse engineering your tech would be a quite fitting boost for Arcane Engineering, flavour-wise.
 
I agree that all of changes that will be made according to this DD are good -those are really nice ideas that will help Stellaris to be better game.

Changes in habitats and the idea of different levels of habitats are my favourite. Maybe some of you heard about ideas spread by dr Issac Arthur on youtube? He is one of leading futurist and he always highlights that habitats will be fare more easy to build, maitain and costefficent than terraforming. I think that taking inspairing upon his point of view on future megastructures is correct way to develop interesting and propable setting for Stellaris.

I want also to thank for the idea of new districts on ringworlds. This will reduce unwanted and annoying micromanagement.

Ps.: About annoying micromanagement:
Could we get one button which will transfer all unemployed populations from planets without workplaces to planets with jobs to take?
Could we get one button which will transfer all homeless populations from overcrowded planets to worlds with free housing districts?

This is nonsense that in game we can build Dyson Sphere but we can't efficiently resettle our populations -at least as non egalitarian governments.
 
@grekulf would limiting the number of mining sections based on the deposit on the body the habitats is orbiting be a good idea? (could be especially interesting for orbitals with rares). Also, maybe have both a research type (for research deposits) and mining type (for other deposits)?
 
Will there be more reworked civics in the next patch? Some of them still need lots of changes, Philosopher King for example, there is almost no use to this civic because rarely a ruler lives / rules to the point where the extra 2 levels matter, same goes for all the +% army damage civics, they sound really cool (warbots for example) but their effect is extremely useless in most, if not all, cases.
I hope you will look into them as well!
 
Will there be more reworked civics in the next patch?
We don't know about 'next patch' but when they reworked Warrior Culture, they specifically stated they want to give other civics a facelift too.
 
We don't know about 'next patch' but when they reworked Warrior Culture, they specifically stated they want to give other civics a facelift too.
My bet is that the DLC/Story pack is Backgrounds, Civics, Ascencions, and a rework of the Precursors.

So I'm gonna go with Yes.
 
What are they used for, I imagine you asking? Well, the basic functionality is that they can be consumed in so-called artifact actions. There are a bunch of different actions that can be performed by consuming Minor Artifacts, with varying effects for each.

So we collect some stuff and convert it into a bonus, like "1000 engineering gained" or "10% boost to physics for 24 months".

This next update is shaping up to be quite the mixed bag of minor uninteresting things. I am so looking forward to the current dev team addressing important issues. ...
 
So we collect some stuff and convert it into a bonus, like "1000 engineering gained" or "10% boost to physics for 24 months".
Wow you mean the stuff described as a Minor Artifact isn't going to be the game-changing earth-shaking feature? When Distant Stars was coming out did you look at the sneak peeks and go "Really? All we're getting is a few new anomalies?"
I am so looking forward to the current dev team addressing important issues. ...
You mean like how they always are?
 
So we collect some stuff and convert it into a bonus, like "1000 engineering gained" or "10% boost to physics for 24 months".

This next update is shaping up to be quite the mixed bag of minor uninteresting things. I am so looking forward to the current dev team addressing important issues. ...

Devil's Advocate: Maybe this is the DEVs way of spending as much time as possible fixing everything else WHILE still keeping the money flowing in?? If that is the plan then I compliment them for it. If not then ... we'll see :)
 
10x district jobs & 1/10 district limit on Ringworld: That will reduce district construction build queue saturation (where you wait for 10 districts being built just so you can start moving pops over without things going into chaos), but not really reduce micromanaging (since you'll still want to block off certain jobs from being filled).

Loss of granularity will mean that Ringworlds will suffer from stability & crime issues, since you have to get used to over a dozen pops being unemployed, which might be enough to set us certain effects. Reminds me a bit of the trouble with Bio Reactors granularity in Rogue Servitors earlygame, where a second one usually takes too much food but you really want more than one.

Hope we also get another look at better job auto-assignment along with it, or its kinda pointless as you still be spending hundreds of clicks blocking/unblocking maintaince drone jobs.
 
Regarding Habitats and Voidborne, I think the new direction Habitats are taking looks really cool! However, Voidborne seems...a little dull? For me, part of the fantasy of the perk is to become something akin to Marauders or Enclaves, a civilization living in the void of space. Extra districts is a step there, but it doesn't feel like it's all the way done. What about adding housing to all habitat districts, a la Agrarian Idyll? I'd like something even more radical than that, to be honest.

One possible enhancement to Voidborne is suggested to me by the very name, which would be to add limited mobility to habitats. Once a civilization is fully comfortable living on artificial structures, there seems little point in permanently keeping those structures tied to immobile planets.

This would enable a play where (part of) your empire becomes somewhat mobile, and while I don't know if that's a good idea for gameplay, it seems an interesting one from the fantasy side.

Some possible aspects that could play into this:
- Reduced productivity while moving. Certainly all planet-related bonuses would be void while moving.
- What I would call a 'restlessness mechanic', increasing social unrest if a habitat stays at one place too long (10 years base value?). Voidborne people have a strong desire to explore.
- Something to limit a player from dumping 100 habitats into a single system. Perhaps crowding a system too much increases restlessness.
 
I like the way habitats are going, but if their districts are dependent on what they're built around, it would maybe be nice to see them as "expansions" of existing planets, rather than their own separate thing? This would also perhaps help with UI bloat.
 
One possible enhancement to Voidborne is suggested to me by the very name, which would be to add limited mobility to habitats. Once a civilization is fully comfortable living on artificial structures, there seems little point in permanently keeping those structures tied to immobile planets.

This would enable a play where (part of) your empire becomes somewhat mobile, and while I don't know if that's a good idea for gameplay, it seems an interesting one from the fantasy side.

Some possible aspects that could play into this:
- Reduced productivity while moving. Certainly all planet-related bonuses would be void while moving.
- What I would call a 'restlessness mechanic', increasing social unrest if a habitat stays at one place too long (10 years base value?). Voidborne people have a strong desire to explore.
- Something to limit a player from dumping 100 habitats into a single system. Perhaps crowding a system too much increases restlessness.
Moving planets arent possible AFAIK.
 
Devil's Advocate: Maybe this is the DEVs way of spending as much time as possible fixing everything else WHILE still keeping the money flowing in?
I don't know. I've said that in the past, but that doesn't really work for me anymore. Not after they promised "extensive post launch support" for Megacorp and then didn't release more patches than usual while leaving many fundamental issues unaddressed
 
The more I read this thread, the more I get convinced that the next update will be nothing more than a pack of bonuses and other stuff shuffled from there to there....

Wow you mean the stuff described as a Minor Artifact isn't going to be the game-changing earth-shaking feature? When Distant Stars was coming out did you look at the sneak peeks and go "Really? All we're getting is a few new anomalies?"

You mean like how they always are?

... specially since lots of forum members seem to be content with merely that - more, applauding these merely cosmetic small changes. 'Yes' to @Methone's question: distant stars would be a damn bore if it was limited to a few anomalies. It turns out eventually it came with little more than that, like L Gates, which still ain't that big a deal. Last time I checked, distant stars was rated 'neutral' by the Steam community reviews - a fitting judgment. Now Megacorp, there we had something to be excited about. But that's because from the early start, a roadmap of sorts was laid out, and every single dev diary was pure dynamite. (edit: most, not all). You could feel the dev team had a list of major aims. Here it's the opposite: three dev diaries already and all we see that there isn't much more than moving things around, like megastructures being taken from here and sent there. The next update is shaping up to be a disappointment like distant stars.

There was an initial roadmap mentioning some things (no promises though!), like espionage. Great. But will it be like the minor artifacts thing, which we can already see will be a boring 'chase the bonus'? Will you collect 'espionage artifacts', use them and get some random bonus? Stellaris is already burdened with too many boring things to do, if you already did them one or two times. The cybrex world, the habitable worlds survey, the space creatures ... what I want is something to keep me on my toes for a longer time. I would like to conquer the whole galaxy and still have the challenge of merely keeping my empire from falling apart. We need civil wars, we need sector independence desire, we need real diplomacy, we need internal politics (going much further than the current factions system).... EU:ROME already did that, what, 15 years ago?

Stellaris deserves better then, for instance, those ridiculous coins you buy to bet on a ridiculous enclave's slot machine. I forgave that dev diary during the development of Megacorp because it was a small tarnish in the middle o one of the most exciting development cycles i've seen so far. Maybe I am being too demanding to expect the next update to reach that level. Scrap that: I AM being too demanding, comparing to the enthusiasm seen above for so little.
 
I just want an overhaul for outdated civics or adding new ones for Hiveminds. They have been left with least amount of civics and least amount of playstyle diversity. When you see that someone who makes an "unofficial dlc" Hivemind mod get so much praise from the community it makes sense to give them more ways to play. Why are we still lacking a Hivemind fallen empire? What about adding other midgame threats like the Khan? They could be random aswell, maybe a sleeping devouring swarm that spawns from a secret laboratoy and starts to conquer the galaxy?