Stellaris Dev Diary #21 - Administrative Sectors

[Mackus]

Im just gonna relate to Governors as Moffs from now on

Game could have localisation system, so instead of vanilla governors, we could have Magistrates, Moffs, Viceroys, etc.

 

[Torgrim]

I enjoy micromanagement

 

[Vohbo]

I'm an obsessive micromanager myself, but as long as you can manage the important planets, I don't see a need to manage all the periphery.
Even in Civ 5, where I try to squeeze out every last bit of yield from my poor citizens, I tend to only tightly manage my capital and then reasonably manage cities 2-5.

 

[hsuzy1987]

But the one thing bugs me though is why would species tend to coalesce in sectors. I'm hoping that policies/ethos w.r.t. citizenship status/discrimination will be able to counteract this trend, either in part or completely.

Gut feel however is that Pdox wants to ensure that large empires will have fracture points that complicate blobbing.

 

[Thana]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, YESSSSSSSS!

This dev diary makes me a very *happy camper*, indeed!

 

[CassCD]

That could very well be but Doomdark claims that the decision was made to reduce micro-management.

Words designed to soothe the prospective, more casual players about how the game is going to play in the mid- to late-game, I suspect.

 

[SirRobin]

Interested to see how this plays out. Would prefer them to have some sort of local forces. Maybe they'll show up in a mod or expac.

 

[hsuzy1987]

A better choice would have been to let the player decide if he wants to micromanage 20-50 planets or not.

Workaround would be to do an EU4 and set the limit of directly controllable planets without malus at 99999 or something, similar to how you could prevent colonial nations from forming. I doubt it'll be difficult to achieve.

 

[Tiaexz]

Sector love from here at least.

 

[racionador]

i see a factions menu there, so this means that i can made some plots?

 

[Kollatius]

One way I see some players could manage sectors to prevent them from revolting: constantly changing them (meaning you constantly reassign planets to a new sector).
Are there mechanics in the game to prevent this?

Also, I'm quite disappointed I can't have weaker local defense militia fleets running around...

 

[sketchyalpha]

Will you be able to remove planets and such from the sectors easily?
It sounds less of a problem than CK2 due to inheritence shenanigans and such, but you explicitly said your cap for core worlds depends partially on technology. If i've expanded and reached the point where i'm surrounded by admin regions, and my tech goes up, am I going to be stuck on 7/8?
Will demanding one of their planets make the entire empire upset with me? That wouldn't make sense necessarily, but considering it's factionalized, it also kind of needs to have some limit on how much you can just cripple a sector by demanding its planets and redistributing them.

I can imagine some fixes for this though, just wondering how this will be dealt with.

The admin sectors thing looks like it's rife with potential though, especially in democracy set ups. Gerrymandering time! Yay!

 

[LordEnglish]

Is there a limit to how big sectors can be?

 

[Lecktra]

So, at leasr there are 6 DD according to the lasr diaries.

 

[AKicebear]

@Doomdark We can rename sectors, but can we also opt to redraw a name from Paradox (or modders') lists with a single button? I sometimes like to change the names, but often prefer drawing one randomly rather than OCDing about what to call it that sounds consistent with 'lore'.

Also, I second the suggest that any pop units, military numbers, etc be scaled to give a sense of how populous planets are in terms we can relate to, rather than just "X pop units". At least in the Ledger and other summary reports...

 

[Ezumiyr]

I find it weird that, with time, different Pops and alien species tend to regroup in different areas. Our history seems to prove the contrary (with time, more different people tend to live in the same place, and instead of regrouping, people with similar ideas go to different places). Israel seems to be the only counter-example.
Fleeing a place because there is an oppressive ideology is not the same thing as regrouping in the same place because you share an ideology (seems even a bit suicidal).

But I imagine that gameplay-wise, it's better for factions to be more centralized.

Otherwise, I really love how micromanaging will be handled in Stellaris. I always find it fun in the beginning of my strategy games, but not later in biggest maps when I have douzens of cities/planets/whatever to manage.

 

[Artess]

It's a very common scenario that people do things that aren't fun but give them some advantage. A player that is willing to micromanage a large number of planets will always be able to squeeze out some advantage over a sector governor. You don't want optimal play to be boring.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to make it so that putting in more effort gives you more rewards, would we?

I understand your sentiment and I partially agree with you, but I would do it differently: rather than punishing people for not using sectors, I would reward people for doing so. Maybe just give some bonuses to somewhat offset the possible advantages that meticulous micromanagement could give you.

 

[henzington]

Love this as the bane of 4x game late game is tons of colony management. I am curious does retaking a planet give a opinion malus similar to how does in ck2?

 

[Artess]

As much as I sympathize with this, I think this design choice was purposely made the way it is less so about cutting out mini-management and more about replicating the decentralization that would certainly be a thing in a galaxy-spanning empire.

True, but I imagine some rulers, especially if their empire is not solid and stable, would rather prefer to give them autonomy on the per-planet basis and not allow them to band into multi-planet coalitions that can easily get out of control.

One way I see some players could manage sectors to prevent them from revolting: constantly changing them (meaning you constantly reassign planets to a new sector).
Are there mechanics in the game to prevent this?.

I bet there will be, whatever the Stellaris' equivalent of paper mana or stab hits will be.

 

[Ex Mudder]

Not thrilled about this. There sorts of limits are one of the reasons I do not like CK II, could not stand Warlock 2 once I was forced to give up cities I had built, and hated Civ V's Happiness system. I do find excessive micro to be a pain, but that point is around 20 cities / planets / provinces, which seems to be about twice the average. I also play larger maps then the average, usually the largest available (except GalCiv III, where I play Gigantic and most play Small).

So while this is probably a good decision in terms of business and broad appeal, it will sour me to the game the same way mandatory CNs did to the EU IV colonial game,

I'd rather see a greater degree of meaningful choice given to the player, rather than some sort of "one size fits all" arbitrary limit. They eventually added a no limit of cities option to Warlock II, for example, and removed the Large Empire Penalty in GalCiv III. For this game, I'd like to see a game setup option about micro management, that allows you to have a much higher demense limit. Like being able to choose CNs to form at 10 provinces instead of 5, or choosing faster or slower game speed, like Marathon in Civ V or faster or slower tech research in GalCiv III, or disabling tech brokering.

For this game, if demense limit was around 10 for the base game (for example), I'd like an option prior to game generation to set to 20 (or twice as much everything, including modifiers) for those single player control freaks (like me) who don't want to let their planets go until we are done with them.