Hi all!

As mentioned last week, our plan for today is to go over some changes to automated colony management and pop resettlement. As a reminder, these are still under development, and as such may undergo significant changes and won't be going live for quite some time.

Major goals here were to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game when individual decisions are less oppressive, and to significantly decrease the need to manually move pops at all. As with the economic changes we were discussing before, a lot of this is still a work in progress to varying degrees.

Automated Colony Management

Some sector management improvements have already been made in the 2.8.1 test branch (you can experiment and leave feedback on it by following the instructions in this thread), but here we’ll be focusing on planetary designations and individual planet automation.

A major pass has been done on automated colony management to improve its effectiveness. After manually setting a colony designation and turning on automated colony management, our intent is for the colony to develop into something you would reasonably expect if you were building it on your own. It should build districts, clear deposits as necessary, and upgrade buildings when there is a need for it.

Planet automation will upgrade capital buildings whenever possible (gotta unlock those building slots!), and will otherwise generally try to build or upgrade from its list if there are less than 3 open jobs. We’ve erred a bit on the side of caution, so it is currently extremely opposed to running deficits. It may require manual intervention if, for example, your energy credits per month are negative, but we figured it was better to leave those sorts of risky economic decisions in the player’s hands.

Spoiler: Foundry Automation (Hive) - Click to Expand

automate_foundry_hive_planet = {
    available = {
        has_designation = col_foundry
        owner = { has_authority = auth_hive_mind }
        free_jobs < 3
        has_building_construction = no
    }

    prio_districts = {
        district_industrial
    }

    buildings = {
        1 = {
            building = building_hive_capital
        }

        2 = {
            building = building_spawning_pool
        }

        3 = {
            building = building_clone_vats
        }

        4 = {
            building = building_hive_node
            available = {
                owner = {
                    hive_node_upkeep_affordable = yes
                }
                num_buildings = { type = building_hive_node value = 0 }
            }
        }

        5 = {
            building = building_foundry_1
            available = {
                owner = {
                    foundry_1_upkeep_affordable = yes
                }
            }
        }

        6 = {
            building = building_galactic_memorial_1
            available = {
                owner = {
                    has_valid_civic = civic_hive_memorialist
                }
                NOR = {
                    has_building = building_galactic_memorial_1
                    has_building = building_galactic_memorial_2
                    has_building = building_galactic_memorial_3
                }
            }
        }

        7 = {
            building = building_betharian_power_plant
        }

        8 = {
            building = building_mote_harvesters
        }

        9 = {
            building = building_crystal_mines
        }

        10 = {
            building = building_gas_extractors
        }

        11 = {
            building = building_chemical_plant
            available = {
                num_buildings = { type = building_chemical_plant value = 0 }
            }
        }

        12 = {
            building = building_hive_node
            available = {
                owner = {
                    hive_node_upkeep_affordable = yes
                }
                num_buildings = { type = building_hive_node value < 2 }
            }
        }

    }
}

This script will attempt to build a forge world for a hive empire. If there are less than 3 free jobs and there is nothing currently in the build queue, it will check to see if there is anything that it can build. Planetary automation has a tendency to favor districts over buildings, but will construct buildings if there are 1.5 times as many districts already built than there are buildings. (This ratio is able to be set in 00_defines.txt as COLONY_AUTOMATION_DISTRICT_PREFERENCE.) When selecting a building, it will move down the list until it finds something that it is capable of building and meets the scripted restrictions. The building’s upkeep is always taken into consideration. The scripted “_affordable” checks are to estimate whether you can afford the jobs it creates as well.

Blockers are fairly low priority for planetary automation, and will only be cleared if they are blocking a district slot that it actively wants to construct, or if there are no free district slots remaining. (Thus it will eventually clear all those random blockers once the rest of the planet is finished.) You can, of course, intervene and clear those Sprawling Slums or sleepy Lithoids earlier.

Buildings (other than the capital) will be upgraded if there are no other things that it wants to build right now, it can upgrade without causing resource deficits, and there are pops available that would want to work there. (Either because they’re unemployed or they prefer it to their current jobs.)

The scripts will attempt to handle various issues that may crop up on a planet such as low amenities, high crime, or failure to build buildings dedicated to extra-dimensional beings that love you and just want to be loved in return. These are tucked away in 00_crisis_exceptions.txt.

Spoiler: Amenity Crisis Exception (Regular Empire) - Click to Expand

automate_amenity_management = {
    available = {
        free_amenities <= -5
        owner = {
            NOR = {
                has_authority = auth_machine_intelligence
                has_authority = auth_hive_mind
            }
        }
        OR = {
            NOT = { uses_district_set = city_world }
            free_district_slots = 0
            has_resource = { type = exotic_gases amount < 75 }
        }
    }

    crisis = yes

    buildings = {
        holo = {
            building = building_holo_theatres
            available = {
                owner = {
                    is_spiritualist = no
                    is_megacorp = no
                }
            }
        }

        temple = {
            building = building_temple
            available = {
                owner = {
                    is_spiritualist = yes
                    is_megacorp = no
                }
            }
        }

        commerce = {
            building = building_commercial_zone
            available = {
                owner = {
                    is_megacorp = yes
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

This "exception" will intervene if a planet’s amenities are -5 or below, and it’s either not an ecumenopolis or if it is an ecumenopolis, it’s either totally full or you’re running low on exotic gases. Based on your ethics and authority, it’ll pick one of the amenity buildings to add to the queue.

A few jobs, buildings, and planet designations have gotten a bit of a touch-up during this pass. Notable examples of designations include the Urban World, which now has a Trade Value bonus, and the Colony, which is now intended to satisfy the needs of a newly colonized world rather than provide pop growth bonuses.

Urban and Colony Designations

The old Colony bonus was changed because it was a bit problematic - growth bonuses made it somewhat stronger than many other more specialized bonuses. We’d greatly prefer if you could flag that newly settled Mining World as such right away and immediately turn on automation, rather than it being optimal to manually develop the world until it reached 5 pops and no longer qualified for Colony.

Due to its inherent terror of deficits, the automation scripts tend to be a little bit more conservative than players may be, but I’ve personally enjoyed the dramatically reduced mental burden my mid to late game colonies require. It’s also convenient that several designations (such as Forge, Factory, Tech, and Urban) will build out colonies that qualify for the Arcology Project decision. In our dev multiplayer games, I've been making a point of using colony automation as much as possible in order to give everyone else a chance get a feel for what it's doing. (Except my capital. I'll admit that I do manually build that so I can take care of sudden shifts in priority.)

If you're using planetary automation but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, the three most common things to check are:

• Is the colony in a Sector?
  • Colonies have to be in a (non-Frontier) Sector in order to use either sector or planetary automation.
• Am I running an energy deficit?
  • Most districts and buildings have energy upkeep. While it's possible for the district or building to theoretically produce enough energy to overcome that and help work off the current deficit, the automation scripts are as light as possible and without deeper analysis can't assume that pops moving into those jobs wouldn't worsen the shortage. Manual intervention is necessary to dig out of an energy crunch.
• Do I have resources in the automation pool for it to use?
  • There's a notification for this, but if the pool is running low it might not be able to afford whatever it is it wants to build. Remember, you can hold Ctrl to change the units moved from hundreds to thousands.
    
    
    
    Save mouse-clicks, use Ctrl.

Resettlement

Manual resettlement and the mitigation of unemployment is a huge burden in mid to late game Stellaris. It is generally our belief that manual resettlement should be an extremely rare occurrence, not something done expected to be done as part of the core game loop. When you must, it should be a simple process, but it should be an unusual act.

One quality of life change we’ve made is to filter Unemployed pops up to the top, and highlighted them. The pops underneath are then sorted from lowest stratum to highest.

You're unlikely to see this specific scenario unless you intentionally create unemployment problems by turning off jobs in every pop strata.

We've also adjusted resettlement costs, and added an Influence cost to many pop types. These influence costs are nominal for worker tier pops, but get fairly expensive when you're forcing Rulers to move.

Slave Resettlement and Worker/Drone/Bio-Trophy Resettlement

Specialist Resettlement and Ruler Resettlement

Slaves and unintelligent robots can still be moved without expending Influence, and certain civics permit you to waive these Influence costs.

Hey wait, what's that about colony abandonment?

Despite their best efforts the Servitors still haven't found a good way to get their Bio-Trophies to shift their consciousness to a different planet using OTA updates, so you still have to pay for them.

Manually resettling the last pop off a colony you own carries an additional influence surcharge in our dev builds. There will very likely be an exception made for Doomed planets and Holy Worlds that are risking initiating a war with a Fallen Empire. A planetary decision to abandon a recently conquered planet is under consideration, though it'll likely use displacement purging to do so. (With the diplomatic penalties associated with it.)

But we just finished building it!

With Federations, we introduced a galactic resolution in the Greater Good line that provided limited automated resettlement called Greater Than Ourselves. As noted by some, that was partially intended as a means to allow Egalitarian leaning empires a way of handling resettlement without forcing it on their pops. There have been many requests to make that core game functionality, but we’ve been somewhat wary of doing so without some restrictions.

We've come up with a way for every empire to have easier access to a similar effect. The following new Starbase Building will handle it, unlocked by the Hyperlane Breach Points tech. (The Hyperlane Registrar has moved to Interstellar Economics.)

They like to move it.

The tooltip effect is a bit of a mouthful.

The Transit Hub will operate as a limited variant of Greater Than Ourselves, moving unemployed low strata pops between planets that are in systems with Transit Hubs. (This will allow movement within a system as well, for example if you have a bunch of habitats in a single system.) We're investigating ways to expand the scope of pops it's willing to move - the original Worker limitation was put into place because while a Worker could promote themselves to fill any free job, a Slave or Specialist might find themselves restricted from the free job on the new planet. We're currently experimenting with a more robust variant - if it works out without performance concerns, the Transit Hub will prioritize high strata unemployment and then move down the ranks.

Building out the Transit network does function best when you have a developed starbase above most of your colonies since it will only move pops between nodes on the network.

Tangentially related, we've also cut demotion time in half across the board, and made some changes to give each Authority type a unique bonus.

Yes, Shared Burdens pops demote pretty much instantly.

We have some other experimental changes going on that have significant effects on the number of unemployed pops in the late game, but we're not ready to talk about them quite yet.

The empire type that perhaps faced the most obnoxious burden of frequent manual resettlement were Terravores, the Lithoid Devouring Swarms. When devouring planets, they occasionally created pops on the consumption world. As a quality of life improvement, when they’ve finished the planet off we now resettle them back to the capital. (Since gestalts can also use the Transit Hub, I highly recommend that Terravores build one in their main system to send those drones someplace where they can be of use.)

Oh, and we also clear that pesky red habitability planet marker from completely consumed planets that was unnecessarily cluttering your map.

HP/MP restored! ...But you're still hungry.

As a reminder, we have an ongoing feedback thread related to AI improvements we have in beta on the stellaris_test branch. We'd love to get more people on it and telling us what they think about them. (Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.)

Next week we plan on going through some more of the remaining economic balance changes. See you then!

 

[Brael]

4.) Imperial: I like the idea of giving them +1 Edict capacity, though if we end up giving some of the other authorities buffs like I'm suggesting I might suggest giving them a small buff to go alongside them as well.

Note that Imperial already has +1 edict capacity, and that ability also stacks with the civic Imperial Cult which is incredibly powerful letting you have 3 edict slots at base and with a rather decent point discount (I had one game where I took this, and the 20% one, and started with a ruler that gave me an additional discount which had me at I think 55% or 65% cost reduction on year 1 of the game)

 

[-Marauder-]

RE: Transit Hub

I’m personally leaning heavily towards Starbase buildings being the best fit. There is already an incentive to have Starbases in colonized systems due to the Deep Space Black Site; this would add another building that feels worthwhile for those Starbases.

With the upcoming changes to planet building slots, and the fact that they will be more limited (no guarantee of maxing out building slots on a planet), the Transit Hub would feel like a must-have that eats up a potential choice.

The problem with that is, you simply do not have enough starbases. Unless you're playing on a tiny map you will have way more systems with habitable planets than starbases by an ever-increasing margin. Starbases for some reason scale with systems owned, not fleet capacity, not populated planets, not population. No, the random system with +2 science increases them.

But that never happens in any meaningful fashion. You simply won't have enough of them to really cover your needs.

As for building slots. Potentially reducing them to 12 seems, not like a very good solution to begin with.

But not TOO high either, as you want to make sure they still build other needed buildings. Maybe make the weight increase as their planet or pop # increases?

That's easily solved. Make it planet unique and give it a few jobs. Clerks, merchants, and even administrators would make sense. Would just need to find the right spot for it. While it reshuffles pops, in RP it would also be the equivalent of a planetside starport, where tourists and other folks would come and go.

Next week we plan on going through some more of the remaining economic balance changes. See you then!

There is one thing I've not seen addressed in this thread, at all. How is this automatic resettlement going to work with slaves? Because right now, it seems those are never resettled even when unemployed. And as the current system will always enslave unemployed pops over-employed pops even when using Indentured Servitude or Chattel Slavery where you most decidedly do not want that to happen, this seems as it will have the same issues GTO has for slaver empires.

 

[Sledjer]

There is one thing I've not seen addressed in this thread, at all. How is this automatic resettlement going to work with slaves? Because right now, it seems those are never resettled even when unemployed. And as the current system will always enslave unemployed pops over-employed pops even when using Indentured Servitude or Chattel Slavery where you most decidedly do not want that to happen, this seems as it will have the same issues GTO has for slaver empires.

In my opinion, slaves should resettle just fine with it, and them not mentioning slaves suggests that that is the case. The only reason it made sense for GTO is that it thematically works since GTO is in the workers rights line.

 

[Brael]

Largely for performance reasons. If they operated in an aura, every time they want to move someone, they'd have to scan all of the planets in their system and adjacent systems (and possibly up to six systems away if they functioned like trade hubs) for pops to take, and then do the same while looking for places to send them to. My choices were basically planet or starbase buildings, and I initially opted for starbases to give a bit of a benefit to dense systems with multiple colonies. (Of course, those are relatively rare outside of habitats.)

Granted, I'm a fairly casual player of the game but I work in game dev. Making the assumption that memory isn't an issue here (possibly a big assumption), is this actually a performance issue? I would think you could make this a fairly non intensive decision. Basically, for each planet if there's a starbase in that system and an unemployed pop you can run the migration check periodically.

How big a scan is this? Since planets are mostly finite the majority of the processing can be done at map creation and just held as map data, keeping a list of all possible planets and then a set of those which are the valid resettle targets. On colonization or habitat creation, that new planet can update all planets in it's radius (as it's generating them anyways) with it's new status as a valid target. Same with border changes. I suppose wormholes, l-gates, and gateways make this a bit more complex though as I imagine those significantly expand the potential radius of planets. But, I suppose optimizations like only checking the planets owned by your civ can cull the checks considerably.

In any event, I bring this up because I think a network of planets might be more performance intensive. A large spread out empire could be 15 to 20 planets that would need scanned, while a a 6 system radius might only be 7 to 8 in the average case. I think (again, I'm fairly casual so maybe there's common map settings I'm not thinking of) that your system scans would only be smaller as a building/starbase only in the case of tall empires. Basically, they seem to have the same worst case, a building/starbase having a significantly better best case, but the average case at least at default map settings seems like it would favor a radius.

 

[-Marauder-]

In my opinion, slaves should resettle just fine with it, and them not mentioning slaves suggests that that is the case. The only reason it made sense for GTO is that it thematically works since GTO is in the workers rights line.

Neither one mentions slaves, both talk about unemployed pops moving. Slaves don't seem to count as unemployed pops. The current algorithm will free employed slaves so it can enslave unemployed pops (which outside of the worst slavery type is not beneficial at all). Simply assuming this one would work differently seems like a good way to get stuck with the GTO problems.

GTO resolution 3 absolutely works with slavery. It only bans chattel slavery. Indentured Servitude, Academic Privilege living standards, etc are all still absolutely viable and allowed under it. Yet the resettlement does not occur.

 

[Millbot]

For the most part these changes look like an improvement for the most part.

Gonna spoiler this in case there is someone new to the game that doesn't want to be spoiled on how this event plays out.


When this change goes into effect, would be feasible to go back to that event and make the above mentioned outcome not seem like such a kick to the gut. You could still keep the creepy factor of the chain, but make it feel more rewarding to get that outcome. I should feel like it's worth taking a roll of the dice, I might have a preferred outcome but I should each one makes my investment worth it.

One possible idea.


I only bring this up because the resettlement change will impact how some of us deal with it and it really could use some adjustment, so that we just don't have an interest in using resettlement to deal with it and possibly game it.

 

[Jaxck]

Reposting from Reddit...

More influence costs are not what the game needs. Influence already creates massive deadzones between meaningful decisions. Pop resettlement should cost Unity. That gives a much softer cost, as well as making Unity an actually useful resource past the early game. It also fits the theme of what each resource is supposed to represent. Unity is your national cohesion, which declines as massive populations moves around. Influence represents political power, why is it being spent to relocate the unemployed?

Another option I’d love to see is a game setting which allows us to increase/decrease Influence gain across the board. A low density small galaxy needs less influence than a high density, 10,000 star one. Additionally, it would help experience players play the game without waiting literal hours between meaningful decisions.

 

[Kharrus]

I am very much of the opinion that Democratic authority and Xenophile authority should be reworked to provide significantly stronger bonuses, in order to counterbalance the slavery meta that has developed for this game. Adding influence to pop resettlement (and resettlement costs in general) adds further relative burden to societies that are opposed to slavery, and subsequently suffer from pop logistics and performance issues. I think one way to go about this would to have Democratic authority reduce pop emigration growth penalty by 33%, and having Xenophile trade its bonuses to Trade Value for a 15/30% Pop Growth from Immigration. To compensate, Authoritarian could get its influence bonus replaced by a 10/20% reduction in resettlement costs.

 

[Kharrus]

Changes are good and have been long-needed.

 

[King Harkinian]

Why should there be a limit on how much we can micro? Some people will want to have a heavier hand in the movement of their pops for optimal results, whereas others will be happy for the AI to take control. Why should the players who want to manage their empire be punished and forced the let the AI control their pops for them? It makes no sense to me. It should be a choice per player.

That feels to me like saying "well people are using micro too much in starcraft, so we've limited the apm you can do."

You forget the large amount of people who feel compelled to do all the micro because it's optimal, while hating the tedium of it. This isn't a real-time strategy game, your comparison is a completely false equivalency. All actions you take in Starcraft come at the expense of doing different actions - it's a set of choices. In Stellaris you can pause and do all the possible actions at no opportunity cost. As such, the game must be designed so that doing your best doesn't require wasting tons of time on tedium. That's why policy changes are on cooldown, so you aren't compelled to change those constantly. And that's why resettlement needs to be restricted as well. Same for changing planet designations.

 

[GeorgieBest]

If you're going to ignore player feedback and insist on making the transit hub a starbase building, please at least consider changing the starbase capacity so that we can more realistically afford to put them in each habited system.

 

[Benjie164]

You forget the large amount of people who feel compelled to do all the micro because it's optimal, while hating the tedium of it. This isn't a real-time strategy game, your comparison is a completely false equivalency. All actions you take in Starcraft come at the expense of doing different actions - it's a set of choices. In Stellaris you can pause and do all the possible actions at no opportunity cost. As such, the game must be designed so that doing your best doesn't require wasting tons of time on tedium. That's why policy changes are on cooldown, so you aren't compelled to change those constantly. And that's why resettlement needs to be restricted as well. Same for changing planet designations.

If you're playing a strategy game from Paradox, you expect to come in and micromanage to a degree. If you're playing on the hardest difficulties then micromanaging for optimum results is what a lot of people will want to do, and the auto system provided here will not do that for you. Not to mention that this could actually be a more micro intensive system anyway if you look back at mine and a few other's comment on the previous pages. Resettlement does not need to be restricted, taking choice away from the player is a terrible idea, especially for builds that require a lot, or specific pop movements. I think the multiple people agreeing with this on here, steam and reddit, reinforces my point.

I agree my example was hyperbole, but if you're not managing your empire, or that so called "tedium", then there really isn't huge amounts more to do in the game between that. For me it is a big part of the gameplay. I guess it could go like EUIV did a few years ago and turn into sitting around until your next war, but honestly who wants that.

 

[-Marauder-]

Reposting from Reddit...

More influence costs are not what the game needs. Influence already creates massive deadzones between meaningful decisions. Pop resettlement should cost Unity. That gives a much softer cost, as well as making Unity an actually useful resource past the early game. It also fits the theme of what each resource is supposed to represent. Unity is your national cohesion, which declines as massive populations moves around. Influence represents political power, why is it being spent to relocate the unemployed?

Another option I’d love to see is a game setting which allows us to increase/decrease Influence gain across the board. A low density small galaxy needs less influence than a high density, 10,000 star one. Additionally, it would help experience players play the game without waiting literal hours between meaningful decisions.

I also have no idea why they would think we'd need an Influence cost sink. Every goddamn thing cost influences! From mastery of nature to building outposts, to Galactic Community proposals, to treaties, to mega structures, etc. Unity is one of the most scarce resources we have. And unlike virtually every other resource it barely increases over the game.

Edicts not costing unity anymore every X years is a joke compared to that. Most of them weren't worth using, to begin with. And you used them every 20-30 years. That was a really minuscule amount of influence.

 

[Kalenicus]

While I have no issue with the idea of assigning an Influence cost to resettling pops, I have to wonder how this works in practice. Take Necrophage empires for example. It is very easy to end up with Necrophage pops in Worker jobs on some planets for a variety of reasons, including purging Xeno's into Necros. The extremely punishing negative modifier these pops have towards Worker jobs makes it sometimes necessary to resettle Necros to other worlds with open Specialist jobs, and Prepatent pops to replace them. If you don't do this it's a huge hit to your economy vs non Necro empires. While this micro isn't ideal, at least it's doable. If resettling these pops costs Influence, it won't be practical and Necrophage empires will be stuck with some planets being gimped, at least for a time.

I'm sure there are other playthroughs that would run into similar issues, this one comes to mind because of my current save game.

 

[Silyus]

I like the changes, and most importantly the direction of these dev diaries. What I find strange is that the transit hub looks like something local to the system. It's common practice to build a single starport that covers several adjacent systems collecting trade values. Since the automatic resettle is a desirable effect on every single planet, we are now somewhat forced to build a starpot in every major system, which is expensive and impractical, due to its limit.

What's the real problem in implementing the automatic resettle? It would solve a lot of problems.

 

[Lorenerd11]

What I find strange is that the transit hub looks like something local to the system. It's common practice to build a single starport that covers several adjacent systems collecting trade values. Since the automatic resettle is a desirable effect on every single planet, we are now somewhat forced to build a starpot in every major system, which is expensive and impractical, due to its limit.

What's the real problem in implementing the automatic resettle? It would solve a lot of problems.

As Eladrin already said, performance. He's considering planetary buildings as an alternative though.

Largely for performance reasons. If they operated in an aura, every time they want to move someone, they'd have to scan all of the planets in their system and adjacent systems (and possibly up to six systems away if they functioned like trade hubs) for pops to take, and then do the same while looking for places to send them to. My choices were basically planet or starbase buildings, and I initially opted for starbases to give a bit of a benefit to dense systems with multiple colonies. (Of course, those are relatively rare outside of habitats.)

I'm going to experiment with them as planet-side buildings - while I preferred the decision point of whether to build your starbases exclusively at chokepoints or as support for your planets, I accept the arguments that it may be better as the other alternative.

 

[AytaL]

I'm against the change to add influence cost in order to resettle pops. You are adding this cost to prevent players to use the resettle options because you believe forced resettlement shouldn't be a common occurrence but you failed to address the core issue why players are actually resettling pops manually. It's clearly a burden for us to do so and if there was a built-in and working solution within the game we would chose it instead.

Now i see you plan to implement a new starbase module to give players a solution to automatically migrate unemployed pops, that's a first good step but this is again a new module in the already limited module slots for starbase and since we have a starbase soft cap we are not able to build starbase in each system we own a planet. I continue to believe it's much better to implement a planetary edict which will allow this automatic migration mechanic.
I still failed to understand why only egalitarian should be the only one having access to an edict to automatically move pops around, all the other ethics which already allow forced pop resettlement should have as well a similar edict, a global edict or a planetary edict but not a starbase module. If this is already in place for egalitarian ethics then it's not a performance issue related.

The last point i'm concerned is the influence cost to abandon colony and especially the case we are invading other species world. Sometimes i'm not really interested to settle on these newly conquered planets because it's bad planets (too small, bad habitability...), or because it has been so badly manage by IA that i should demolish/rebuild everything or because i'm an exterminator who just want to exterminate other species resettling them on my planets without having a single interest in their world. By adding this 200 influence cost to abandon a planet it will make the burden of micro management really heavy because as an extermiator i will have to handle all of these newly conquered panets. Especially when IA is building like 4 habitats in their systems it will drive me crazy.

thanks for reading my 2 cents.

 

[xani]

I don't really get what's the point of buffing pop demotion time.

It is only really useful if for some reason you're going to reorganize planet with a lot of high level jobs to planet with a lot of low level jobs

That almost never happens.

Democracy bonus is almost functionally useless.

The Transit Hub will operate as a limited variant of Greater Than Ourselves, moving unemployed low strata pops between planets that are in systems with Transit Hubs. (This will allow movement within a system as well, for example if you have a bunch of habitats in a single system.) We're investigating ways to expand the scope of pops it's willing to move - the original Worker limitation was put into place because while a Worker could promote themselves to fill any free job, a Slave or Specialist might find themselves restricted from the free job on the new planet. We're currently experimenting with a more robust variant - if it works out without performance concerns, the Transit Hub will prioritize high strata unemployment and then move down the ranks.

And what, play on 0.25 habitable worlds forever ? In any other case most players will have way more planets than slots for starbases. For it to be any use it needs to have decent range. Even if it runs the code to migrate at slower rate to compensate for performance.

Also the tradeoff of "put starbase in place that makes sense" vs "put it over that planet just to avoid drudgery of moving pops" is not a fun decision to make.

 

[Hansatron]

I don't really get what's the point of buffing pop demotion time.

That almost never happens.

Well, pop demotion time totally screws with the automated systems they have managing this for both you and the AI. There was a whole fiasco in (2.6? 2.7?) where upgrading your ship shelter to a planetary capital would unemploy the 2 colonist jobs but place worker pops into the new administrator jobs, leaving you with 2 specialists who couldn't do anything for 10 years unless you build a holotheater or something.
So as they look at cleaning up this stuff, they are probably finding that relaxing pop demotion is way more efficient (especially performance and effort wise) than fine tuning every inch of the job placement algo to try and minimize this. Look at the context of this change - moving unemployed pops from one planet to another. It's taxing enough to automatically figure out where to move a pop to the best open job for it.

(It's also just more proof of the superiority of the Gestalt consciousness.)

 

[StormyStrife]

I'm just gonna stick with 2.8, I'm gonna look forward to when people inevitably get upset because Paradox implements more half-baked ideas with no concept in their heads as to say... the problems those updates create. Funnily enough, I've even just straight-up made a copy of every moddable file incase 2.8 has no beta branch so after I likely hate 2.9, I can go back to playing a version I actually enjoy more.

Here's a question I have, any thought to reducing the initial pop growth penalty on new Colonies since you're removing the Colony designation's current effects, which can only be active for as long as said colony is "newly colonized" and as such, has a 50% reduction on pop growth? You guys make a big deal out of the pop growth speed bonus, but you completely ignore that it still has less than 100% due to that. So I guess everyone's fine with having 1.5 growth speed on Colonies?

If y'all are, Cool.

Well, pop demotion time totally screws with the automated systems they have managing this for both you and the AI. There was a whole fiasco in (2.6? 2.7?) where upgrading your ship shelter to a planetary capital would unemploy the 2 colonist jobs but place worker pops into the new administrator jobs, leaving you with 2 specialists who couldn't do anything for 10 years unless you build a holotheater or something.
So as they look at cleaning up this stuff, they are probably finding that relaxing pop demotion is way more efficient (especially performance and effort wise) than fine tuning every inch of the job placement algo to try and minimize this. Look at the context of this change - moving unemployed pops from one planet to another. It's taxing enough to automatically figure out where to move a pop to the best open job for it.

(It's also just more proof of the superiority of the Gestalt consciousness.)

Honestly if Paradox really wanted to level the playing field, just reduce Pop Demotion time to a maximum of 1 year, 10 is and pretty much always was just utterly overkill, people love Gestalts due to the currently peerless pop versatility that begins at no pop demotion time, and maybe it ends there, no CSG and Happiness doesn't really equate to versatility (maybe it does? I dunno tbh)

Also when can we get a Unity-based planetary Designation?

I like the idea of changing an entire system so as to redesign one civic per gestalt type and for non gestalts so it becomes a mandatory pick for anyone who micros their game, in a game where, if something is a mandatory bonus to get, it should then just be something you always have.

Two major updates prior, the game couldn't sort pop jobs like a beagle couldn't navigate out of a paper bag, and so the Transit Hub is implemented, and the devs say they won't give it Collection range-levels of effect due to performance constraints.

How often does the migration happen, and if it happens frequently, allow me to ask, how will it not worsen performance anyways if you have 35 of them in a 35-colony empire?

How will this not otherwise nuke performance in 1000 star galaxies that go past 100 years (as all fun games of Stellaris do) if you have a ton of AI Empires, like around 30?