Stellaris Dev Diary #152 - Summer Experimentation

[Cat_Fuzz]

I could be up for seeing current districts become 'infrastructure' which becomes a planets capacity for generating raw resources, such as food, alloys or people, and buildings to become 'districts', which provide modular bonuses or affect the internal workings of the planet, such as mineral processers, leisure districts, or enforcement hubs. It fits better with what planetary building overall feels currently.

 

[Kayden_II]

I know, it's way too logical, that the size of a world may have an impact on the number of its buildings as well as its districts.

As I understand, a district is a large, expansive netwok of specialized structures. A city district can easily be is about as large as NYC, or London. In contrast, I see a structure like a giant campus, say a research lab is about as big as Apple’s HQ. Large for sure, but not as large as a district. I can see why districts are limited by planet size, but structures are much smaller and would surely fit even on the smallest planet.

01. That's a "nice" explanation, but doesn't fit the actual gameplay since a building offers up to 5x more jobs (through upgrades) or at least as many jobs as a district ...
02. If I "follow" such an explanation then it doesn't really hold a reason to limit the number of buildings at all, certainly not an arbitrary one like 16 and certainly not for any colony-size, too.

 

[methegrate]

Stability/crime would really be an excellent way to balance it. Unfortunately both things are too easy to deal with in the current version of the game, being almost inconsequential if you play semi-competently.

Stability/crime have the same problem as piracy, imo. Each system is so abstracted that there's no actual gameplay there, so they kind of have to be inconsequential.

With crime, I build a few enforcer buildings and that takes care of it. There aren't any other decisions to make, so if building those enforcers didn't fix the problem it would just be frustrating. And you can't have it require too many enforcers because that would just be frustrating too; players would spend all their time just building those damn precinct houses.

If crime was a system with lots of moving pieces then it could be complicated and hard to deal with. As is, it's so simplified that the only real options are for it to be easy or frustrating.

 

[UltimateTobi]

Buildings are definitely smaller-scale than Districts, but their scale is usually quite clearly explained by their descriptive text.

Yeah, I always thought that if you build one "building" that actually a couple buildings of that sort are dotted around that planet.
At least that made sense in my head.

 

[Methone]

Yeah, I always thought that if you build one "building" that actually a couple buildings of that sort are dotted around that planet.
At least that made sense in my head.

Iirc, in one of the dev diaries leading up to 2.2, it was explicitly stated that this is the case for most of them.

 

[ccabal86]

And POPs are represented by a single portrait. But you don't assume they're just a single person, do you?

Buildings are definitely smaller-scale than Districts, but their scale is usually quite clearly explained by their descriptive text. Some are singular structures, others are massive complexes or a broad block of industrial processes.

01. That's a "nice" explanation, but doesn't fit the actual gameplay since a building offers up to 5x more jobs (through upgrades) or at least as many jobs as a district ...
02. If I "follow" such an explanation then it doesn't really hold a reason to limit the number of buildings at all, certainly not an arbitrary one like 16 and certainly not for any colony-size, too.

In the end, the game uses abstractions and representations for all its systems, so while we all have our own ideas about the size of things like districts, buildings and pops, there is no demonstrably right answer (by design), so we are ultimately debating how many angels can dance on the tip of a pin.

In the end, it all comes down to game mechanics, and I will restate that I think the present resource system is fundamentally OK. This is not to say it can't be tweaked, but I have serious reservations about any plans to significantly change it.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Job provision from districts, job provision from buildings. Some buildings provide more jobs than districts do, so that makes my abstracting a lot easier.

 

[BrokenSky]

I mean should there be a (feasibly reachable) upper limit on the number of buildings then? Why not have the building menu have a little slider so it can go to however many and maybe have it have an option to visually 'stack' replica buildings (so the buildings part of the UI could show the capital, forges, forges and yet more forges and, say, a hospital or it could show the capital, forge x 3, hospital), and set the upper limit at, say, 50 buildings or 100 building slots?

At least it might be worth trying out if they're still running experiments like this; dunno if it would actually be a good idea for gameplay but on the other hand I don't know it wouldn't.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

Hello everyone!

Summer vacations are reaching their end and most of the team is back as of last week. Work has started again and we're really excited for what we have in store for the rest of the year.

While most of us have been away during most of the summer, we’ve also had some people who worked during July. July is a very good time to try out different designs and concepts that we might not otherwise have time to do, and today we thought it might be fun for you to see some of the experiments we ran during that period of hiatus.

Although we learned some useful insights, these experiments didn’t end up being good enough to make a reality.

Industrial Districts
As I have mentioned earlier, I have wanted to find a better solution for how we handle the production of alloys and consumer goods. I often felt like the experience of developing a planet felt better with an Ecumenopolis rather than with a regular planet. I think a lot of it had to do with their unique districts and that it feels better to get the jobs from constructing districts rather than buildings. Not necessarily as an emotion reaction to the choice, but rather that the choice perhaps feels more “pure” or simple.

An experiment I wanted to run was to see if it was possible to add an industrial district that provided Laborer jobs, instead of having buildings for Metallurgists and Artisans. Laborers would produce both alloys and consumer goods but could be shifted towards producing more of either.

This meant we added a 5th district, the Industrial District. By adding another district we also needed to reduce the number of building slots available. Since there would be no more need for buildings that produced alloys and consumer goods, this should still end up being similar.

View attachment 506184​

A Laborer would consume 8 minerals to produce 2 alloys and 4 consumer goods, and that amount could be modified in either direction by passing a Decision. What I wanted was to have an industry that could have a military and civilian output, and where you could adjust the values between these outputs.

Having a laborer job that generates an “industrial output”, which could be translated into either alloys or consumer goods did feel good, but the specific solution we used didn’t feel quite right.

City Districts & Building slots

Another experiment was to see how it felt if city districts unlock building slots instead of pops. This experiment didn’t have a specific problem or issue it was trying to address but rather it was to investigate how that would feel and work. It was interesting but ultimately it felt less fun than the current implementation. It would have needed more time to see if it could be made to work.
​

View attachment 506185​

This experiment did include increasing the number of jobs you would get for the building, so a research lab would provide 3 jobs instead of 2.

City District Jobs from Buildings
At the same time, we also tried a version where buildings applied jobs to city districts instead of providing jobs by themselves. One upside would be that you’d need less micromanagement to get the jobs, but the downside is that it would also be quite a large upswing in new jobs whenever you built a city district. In the end, it felt like you had less control and understanding of what a planet was specializing in.

Summary
Although these experiments were interesting, they didn’t end up quite where we wanted to, so they never became more than just experiments. We did learn some interesting things though, which we will keep in mind for the future. The industrial districts are still something I want to keep looking into, but we have to find a better solution.

Dev diaries will now be back on a regular schedule, but we will be looking into changing the format a bit this time around. For now, dev diaries will be coming bi-weekly, which means we will be back again in another 2 weeks with a similar topic.

while I like the idea of Consumer Goods coming from districts, I'm not so sure about Alloys, I feel like those being district output on Ecumenopolis is a better fit and lets them keep something special; consumer goods are a necessity for most pops under most living standards, but alloys are a specialized thing, and tying them together seems a bit silly.

and reducing the max number of buildings at the same time also feels a bit silly; what's the point of shifting Consumer Goods production to being a district type if not as a way of freeing up building slots? I always feel like I don't have enough building slots as it is in part due to needing to use up a planet's earliest slots on consumer goods production.

but moving on to the topic of building slots, linking them to city districts instead of POP numbers seems like a good Idea, makes planet size a factor in how much infistructure it can hold, plus giving players more control over when they can build what they need, as well as making so that loosing pops doesn't wreck buildings, just leaves the jobs unfilled and the maintenance costs become wasteful if you don't turn them off.

but at the same time I feel like this leaves planets that focus/specialize on one of the other district types behind... maybe have building slots open up from total districts built(and maybe City districts still add one on top of contributing to that total)? lets say every 5 districts give you +1 building slot, so on a size 25 planet you'll get 6(5+the starting slot that the planet's capital is using, or maybe the planetary capitals should be moved to a different spot) building slots if you max out all your districts but with no cities, while pure cities gives you a total of 31(1 start+5 from districts built+25 from cities) slots.

EDIT: actually, on the topic of planetary capitals, maybe they can become their own government tab on the planet window? planet speciation/policies/decrees would come from, or at least be effected by, the implementation of offices or bureaus you'd build there, as we'll as being a place to implement internal politics/diplomacy(and espionage?). EDIT2: this would also help give different government types more things to effect/change to make them feel distinct.

 

[Malonex]

I think you were absolutely right in your judgement, and the industrial district I think sounds awesome. I hope you stick with trying to improve the little things like that.

 

[Longherin]

Mind, a big issue pre-2.2 was people complaining that there was never any point colonizing anything below size 16 planets unless you had ZERO other options.

Sure, but the integral building block of the 2.2+ economy is pops, not building slots. Even in this theoretical system of having building slots hard-tied to planet size, two size 12 planets will ultimately out-produce 1 size 24 planet by virtue of having double pop growth and/or robot growth. A hard tie just makes it less likely/reasonable for a player to try and stuff a moon with housing to unlock all 16 building slots.

...It might also solve the whole "special habitat districts are somewhat useless" problem that comes with those districts being less valuable than the ability to unlock two building slots without repercussions.
As in, a housing district on a habitat will definitively unlock roughly two buildings slots since it gives +10 housing(if I'm remembering right) while a research district only gives...what, +3 housing and +3 researchers? So a housing district will, effectively, provide 10 housing and 16 researchers if the two slots are dedicated to research buildings, or else 8 researchers and 1 gas refiner if you're into the whole 'localized with no cost' business.

...Though I do think this goes back to a problem as stated while 2.2 was being developed in the form of the ex-planetary trait 'Infrastructure'. In our case, it would be players filling out a planet with all the buildings they want on it before the pops needed to work it arrives, which feels a little odd.

 

[Kayden_II]

Another experiment was to see how it felt if city districts unlock building slots instead of pops.

It was interesting but ultimately it felt less fun than the current implementation.

By the way, I want to know, why it was "less fun" ? ...

It would have needed more time to see if it could be made to work.

I have some sort of a guess: If 1 city-district unlocks 1 building-slot then you have the situation, that 1 city-district opens up 1 building-slot for 1 UPGRADEABLE building and 1 UPGRADEABLE building is way more incentive than 1 NOT upgradeable district for food / ECs / minerals: To make something like this workable, the food-/EC-/ and mineral-districts have to be upgradeable as well, so that they're "competitive" (against buildings), too. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure, that everyone will pave his / her colonies with city-districts, EXCLUSIVELY.

 

[vv221]

Stellaris Twitter posted a picture of an Ether Drake miniature, is there going to be some more official channel about that? (How does that work anyway, did they ask if they can make a miniature about it, or something?)

EDIT: Forgot the link: https://community.ttcombat.com/2019/08/08/stellaris-ether-drake-miniature/

It looks like it’s from a partnership between tabletop games makers and Paradox, about a Stellaris tabletop game:
Stellaris - TTCommunity

 

[Ancilliu]

To reply directly to the DEV Diary....
this experiment is totally misguiding.

True: The ecumenopolis is much more rewarding in any way. This is because the special districts fulfill all basic neeeds, and things like alloys can be constructed by upgradable buildings.
False: Cahnge Buildings to give more slots to districts does not change that, it just moves the basic problem to a couple of years later in the game.

You do not get the basic problem. Since the map generator seems to generate universes where players usually don't have high chances to get big planets, an even if, the distribution of the districts is fixed and often useless (foot for robots, no food for organics, since its bidirectional "this is the disadvantage of robots" is a meaningless and false argument), you end up having the planet completely full after a few years and struggle to get the basic needs done.

There are techs that reduce the problem by things like giving more housing to districts and buffing workslots provided by districts, but in the end it all comes down to overpopulation very early (or otherwise not beeing able to maintain order and/or provide). On a bigger planet this problem occurs very much later since it has more districts available the planet is much longer self sustaining and growing, yielding in more productive population, yielding faster research, yielding win.

Now I see, the AI is still far inferior to any human beeing playing stellaris, so they need bigger planets... or do they? No they dont. I never seen big AI planets grow to full size (at least not in a usefull way).

So the real experiment should be to vastly revamp the districts system and weaken the influence of planet sizes by far through tech/perks/events whatever.

Possible ideas:
Have districts not limited by slots. Compensate this with "mineral / energy / housing and food multiplierts".
Have interstellar workplaces (having jump drives, should enable me to work on other planets through portals), so you could have a central living space and specialized other planets. Thus small planets could make sense.
Reduce the "impact" of pops to the game. There is no real way to beat rapid breeders in efficiency at the moment. Either the pop malus is to low, or there should be a compensation. For example give Pops a lifetime (also the workers) and skills (self learning for organics/cyborgs, special research events for real robots). Transfer those skills partially with schools / databanks to the next generations.

Those ways should be explored.

 

[performer]

I still dislike the dictrict+buildings-concept. So, more disctricts and less buildings is in any case the better solution.

 

[Jamey]

We don't know yet, it depends on how our timeline will actually end up looking like in reality.

I sincerely hope that there will be at least one performance patch for 2.3. My experience with both 2.2.x and 2.3.3 is that the mid to late game becomes tediously slow.

I find these late game performance problems exceedingly frustrating because they result in me spending quite a few hours playing the game only to not accomplish the objectives I set out to accomplish (e.g. defeat the endgame crisis).

 

[Duuk]

Also... go back to immigration being ACTUAL POPS moving between worlds, not a modifier of growth. Unhappy pops move. Period.

That way full worlds will bleed off their POPs to empty worlds.

 

[The_Draco]

some other ideas, about ringworlds, in my oppinion, ringworlds actually don't feel like they should, as "one immense Band encyceling the Star" its more like "4 off cutted Segments..."
so well, i had the idea to make some modifiers of ringworld districts and buildings systemwhide instead of planetwhide, so like if i build on one segment city districts, they add housing and jobs to the other segments too, like you have a housing segmend with (better as) the "Capital City", one for farming, one for industrial (consoomer goods and alloys) and one left for whatever, maybe as generator for energy credits or else, but theese districts on the 4 segments working together like they would be one planet instead of four...

that is piont one, poit two is the millitary part, why can't we use troups for planetary combat the whole 4 segments of a ringworld as once? they should be able to "walk" around the whole ring, why not? also enemy forces that took a segment could be able to walk around to the next segment....
well that part not automaticly, but with a little mikromenagement it should be possible to move troops manualy to other segments for defense, conzentrate them maybe on the "city segment", to defend the people, maybe to the "industrial segment" if the enemy starts to inwade it and also be able to retreat the troups to another segment, if needed to attack the landed forcec later from two (or even tree) sides, the both connected segments and from space to take back the lost segment...

well, thats some ideas i had and tryed to mod but.... well i'm not that deep into modding or even into the way, jobs, ressources, troups and housing is menaged on planets and ringworlds, so i personaly stopped this project, but if you devs ar trying out some experiments, and having some extra time left, you could also try out my ideas, if you think they are interesting and worth it.
if not its ok too, i'm not here to tell you what to do xD but if i can inspire you for future stuff.... well still just ideas


and another thing i would like to ask around here, is there a germen modder who have some time to take a "trainee"? xDDDD would like to learn a bit more about modding and how to do what without destroying my game every second try xDD

thx

 

[Rip Off Productions]

Also... go back to immigration being ACTUAL POPS moving between worlds, not a modifier of growth. Unhappy pops move. Period.

That way full worlds will bleed off their POPs to empty worlds.

that's what POP growth decline is for, it can eventually remove POPs if their living conditions get bad enough on a given planet.

migration is a slow and gradual thing, so having it be represented by growth buffs and debuffs to represent the arrivals and departures to and from these worlds makes perfect sense to me.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

01. That's a "nice" explanation, but doesn't fit the actual gameplay since a building offers up to 5x more jobs (through upgrades) or at least as many jobs as a district ...

100 people can work in a stripmine that takes up vastly more space than an office building where 500 people work.