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Stellaris Dev Diary #147 - An update on Sectors & Designations

Hello everyone!

First of all I want us to celebrate that today is the 3-year anniversary of Stellaris. Stellaris is such a great game that has changed a lot since its release. Since 1.0 we’ve added Civics, Traditions, Ascension Perks, Fallen Empires, Hive Minds, Machine Empires, planet killers, starbases and much much more.

When we started developing Stellaris, I don’t think we could ever foresee what Stellaris would become this many years later. It’s really become its own thing and it’s really fun to see how many new players – many of who may never have played any of our other games, or any other strategy game for that matter – have found their way to Stellaris. Stellaris is such a great game for telling your own stories and in general just enjoying the awesomeness of space.

A big thanks to our awesome community for making this game even better!

Alright, let’s move on to talking about sectors & designations. This will be a followup to Dev Diary #142 and I will try to outline what we’ve done so far.

Designations
Previously planets would automatically assume a role depending on what was built on it. It’s now possible to set this manually, if you wish to. Having played with this myself, I must say it feels pretty great to be able to make that choice directly yourself.

upload_2019-5-9_14-2-20.png

Automation
A new neat feature is that it’s now possible to decide which planets, regardless if they are in a sector or not, should be automated. Automated planets will build things according to a certain build order, which is set up per designation. For example:
  • Build all district types of its designation
  • Build the buildings following the build order of its designation
  • Remove Blockers
  • Repair Buildings
  • Upgrade all buildings
This will happen every time it has less than 3 open job slots.

If crime is high this will trigger a crisis that will build a Precinct House, ignoring the normal build order.

If a building in the build order can not be build, e.g. because you lack the technology, it will be skipped.

Automation will try to use its own Sector Stockpile if possible, otherwise it will use the Shared Stockpile. You can read more about the sector stockpiles further down in the dev diary.

upload_2019-5-9_14-5-17.png

Because we deemed the risk to be too high right now, AI empires will not manually set designations or use the build orders. Our goal is for that to be improved in later updates, however, and when it’s had more time in the cooker we will be deploying those changes.

Sectors
In the new system, sectors will be created by making a planet a Sector Capital. This will immediately form the sector and include all systems within 4 jumps of the Sector Capital. We originally had thought to make the range 6 jumps, but we feel like 4 jumps feels better.

upload_2019-5-9_14-3-17.png

It becomes very easy to create a new sector. Simply click the flag on the galaxy to open the planet view.

upload_2019-5-9_14-3-49.png

In the planet view we have a create sector button. Once clicked, it will immediately create the sector.

upload_2019-5-9_14-4-15.png

Boom! Sector created. It’s just as easy to delete the sector as it is to create a new one. The sector capital is also visible on the map with its own icon.
​
Sectors now also have a Shared Stockpile, in addition to their Local Stockpiles. It is possible to set monthly subsidies for your Shared Stockpile. This should make it a lot easier to manage larger empires.

upload_2019-5-9_14-4-51.png


What remains to do
We didn’t want to try to do too many things at once, so we will be going with the safer option of deploying these changes in increments. These changes will not be coming in the upcoming update, but rather in the future.

Left to do:
  • Have AI empires set manual designations
  • Have AI empires use build orders for designations
  • Allow players to have control over the build orders for the different designations
  • Add nudging of systems between sectors
  • Allow you to create new sectors from within a sector
  • Display non-sector systems as a “Frontier Space” sector
  • Rework Governor traits to be more widely applicable
  • Look into automation for construction ships
When we’ve looked into more of these things we may want to start exploring ideas like adding more mechanics to “Frontier Space” or if we can tie faction to sectors somehow. Those are only some thoughts we’ve had though, and it's too early to say if that will come to fruition or not.

---

That is all we had to share for this week’s dev diary. I’m really looking forward to next week’s dev diary, when I’ll be sharing something awesome.

Thanks again to all of our community, and let’s look forward to the next 3 years!
 
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Sounds great & looking forward to the new expansion.

On that note, please don’t commit to a date other than ‘when it’s ready’!

I’d rather have a working system a few months late than an expansion with rushed out features that don’t work properly.
 
This is a step forward but I assume the stated build priority must be a bit of a simplification from what it is in game, because as it is written here you wouldn't build any buildings until every district for that designation is filled.

For example, on a mining world, whenever it goes to build something, it will build a mining district unless those are maxed out and wouldn't get to the "build a building" line. Assuming that housing districts are also part of a mining designation, you'd have to build all of those before it got to buildings too.

It also seems like it won't repair a building unless the planet is filled with districts and buildings. I'd probably just put repairs at the highest priority. After all, there is a reason why the destroyed building was built in the first place instead of whatever building is next in the queue.

I'm also curious whether the presets include things like replicators, psi-corps, noble housing, and other planet unique buildings that aren't directly associated with a kind of production.

For me, unless the presets are actually a bit more clever than presented here, I don't think I can use them until we get the ability to modify the build orders.
 
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On one hand, it feels like we're going back to the pre-2.2 system of letting the player decide where sectors go, which is good.
On the other, it feels like we're addressing the problem with player-made sectors being sprawling and massive, which is better.
I'm looking forward to seeing what this will do about AI's resource allocation, since not understanding moderation seems to be what's causing the AI stagnate.
 
grekulf said:
This will happen every time it has less than 3 open job slots.
Click to expand...

If the player closes off (de-prioritizes?) some jobs, will the AI recognize them as unavailable? Currently the planet UI still counts them as open jobs.

Also, will the player be able to step in and manually override one or two buildings here and there, or is the automation an all-or-nothing deal (like the how fleet designer works now)?
 
I don’t see anything here that won’t improve the game for me. I’m particularly happy with the automated build. I’m glad to go back to a planet and replace buildings I don’t want that the computer built if I get to do it less than the current setup.


Methone said:
Set a planet to a Generator World. Build a speed-boosted Generator District. Swap it over to a Minign World, then build a speed-boosted Mining District, etc.
Click to expand...

I don’t see any reason to prevent someone from doing this if they want to micro that much. I don’t think it’s actually going to let someone get more out of a planet than they otherwise would though. The planet designation shown also boost the income of that job, so by switching between each build you’re loosing a boost to income on jobs you have to get a different type of job faster. The only time build speed is particularly helpful is when you start a planet and move a bunch of pops onto it to jumpstart its development. Otherwise your build speed will already outpace your pop growth. And even then you could just build plenty of one type of district instead of jumping around and get both benefit.
 
grekulf said:
This will happen every time it has less than 3 open job slots.
Click to expand...

Please add a feature (like a little checkmark next to the build queue) that will also turn this on for non-automated planets.

That is, I would like to able to queue up a bunch of districts and buildings, but have the next construction only begin when there are less than 3 open job slots on the planet, otherwise construction is paused.

This (in addition to what you've already detailed) would basically solve the problem of planet micromanagement forever, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The ability to set planet designation and automate on that basis is a great addition though! It really solves lot of problems by itself, I don't mean to criticize. I just think it can be improved even further.
 
Really lovely changes.

On the visual design of the sector 'aura', can that be tightened up to use the same curvature as the aura of your occupied space, just a little smaller? Sector auras have always bugged me with their jagged, un-smoothed edges, whereas it feels like they should be a smooth subset of your occupied space, just like two neighbouring empires.
 
Alfray Stryke said:
It seems to me that being able to change the designation of a planet at will with no cost a bit odd. I'd suggest making the initial designation free, but after that it should have an influence cost, with a cooldown on how often it can be changed.
Click to expand...

The influence cost would work if it's completely trivial, 5 or 10 at the most. That way it's low enough that you don't notice setting the designation once for each planet, but high enough that spam-swapping between bonuses to get the build speed buffs isn't free. It's more of a psychological issue than a gameplay one, some people will feel bad that they're throwing away 'free' bonuses if they don't micro every last detail.
 
ShockMeSane said:
Sounds great. One question: it looks like we are seeing some archaeology icons. We already have so many icons with starbases, megastructures, wormholes, gateways, and L-gates, it can already be difficult to find wormholes or whatever you might be looking for. Is there any chance you could color code them for clarity? I realize there is a mod for that, but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable vanilla request, especially with archaeology giving us more symbols to visually scan.
Click to expand...
Hi, can you name the mod you mentioned or perhaps link it?
Thank you.
 
Love it, this is exactly what we wanted, although i would make the range a bit bigger, 4 jumps isnt a whole lot and still meansyoure gonna have sectors with 2-3 worlds in them unless you get really lucky.
 
"Tie faction to sectors somehow", personally i feel that not just factions and secros need to be tied together but somehow leaders and pops as well in different ways.
 
Darkrenown said:
Perhaps you haven't played in a while, but you are thinking of how pre-2.2 sectors worked. Since 2.2 sectors do not have a self-contained economy, all produced resources go to the empire stockpile and automatic sector building depends on the empire giving the sector back some of those resources.
Click to expand...

And if you have given the sector resources and then destroy it, where do those resources go? Are they destroyed, or are they returned somehow?
 
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