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Stellaris Dev Diary #21 - Administrative Sectors

Hi again folks!

Today I am going to talk about one of the great pitfalls of strategy game design; dull micromanagement. That is, features which require too much player attention. The trick, of course, is determining how much is “too much”, but it’s useful to consider how central the feature is to the core gameplay, how well it scales between small and large states, and how repetitive it gets with time.

In Stellaris, one feature which risked causing bad micromanagement was the planetary tile system; assigning Pops to tiles and deciding which buildings should go where. It is a fairly central feature and it is fun to use… but if you had to worry about 20, 50 or more planets, it would scale poorly. The obvious solution to this type of scaling issue is automation; you can let the AI handle it for you. This is indeed what we did in Stellaris, but not in a “traditional” fashion... Instead, we opted for something a little bit more akin to the vassals in Crusader Kings through something we call Administrative Sectors.

stellaris_dev_diary_21_02_20160215_edit_sectors.jpg


A Sector is an administrative region under the control of a Sector Governor. You can control a few planets directly (your “core worlds”), but once you go past the limit, you will start suffering penalties to your Influence as well as Empire-wide income. The exact limit for how many planets you can control directly depends on various factors, like your government type and technologies, but, as with the “Demesne Limit” in Crusader Kings II, it will never be a huge number. At this point, it is best to start dividing your territory into Sectors. You can decide the Sector capital and which planets should belong to it (but they must all be connected to the capital, i.e. form one cohesive sub-region.) You are also allowed to name your Sectors, for fun.

Unlike proper Vassals, Sectors remain an integrated part of your Empire, but they will handle development of planets and the construction of mining stations within their region for you. You can give them a focus (Industry, Research, etc), an infusion of Minerals or Energy Credits to help them along, and decide if you want to tax them for Minerals and Energy Credits. Sectors do not possess any military fleets of their own, nor do they perform research (they have access to the same technologies you do, and their research output is all given to you.)

stellaris_dev_diary_21_01_20160215_sectors_list.jpg


While Sectors and Sector Governors cannot demand more autonomy, or directly rise up in revolt (things I’d love to explore in an expansion), over time their population tends to diverge ideologically from that of the regime, and create their own identity. Like-minded Pops will tend to migrate there if allowed to. In the same way, aliens of the same species will also tend to coalesce in the same Sectors. Thus, when Factions form, they will often tend to have their main seat of power in a specific Sector. And Factions can demand autonomy and achieve independence. However, this is something that warrants its own dev diary...

That’s all he wrote folks. This time. Next week, I plan to talk about Alliances and Federations!
 
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Guys, give RickInVA a break. I think he's got a point; more options are nice, even if most people only ever use one of them. Ridiculing others because of a difference of opinion (for example, calling them a "vocal minority") is not cool, not cool at all. If given the option, I personally would go for the sectors pretty much every time, but that does't mean that the option shouldn't exist. Other people (such as, for instance, RickInVA) might well prefer the other choice; this doesn't mean that they are wrong, only that they have other tastes, and that is not a bad thing. In fact, it's far better than the alternative.

The thing is, the option is already there, he just doesn't like that there are mechanics he doesn't approve of attached to it.
 
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The thing is, the option is already there, he just doesn't like that there are mechanics he doesn't approve of attached to it.
Fun fact: if you shared his preferences, you wouldn't like it either.
 
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Fun fact: if you shared his preferences, you wouldn't like it either.

If I don't like something I don't whine at the developers to change it on my behalf, I just mod it out myself, or if the game is beyond my ability to mod, I wait for someone else to mod it in the way I want, an example being the Xcom2 turn counter. I think its terrible myself but I don't go whining to Fraxis to take it out.
 
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If I don't like something I don't whine at the developers to change it on my behalf, I just mod it out myself, or if the game is beyond my ability to mod, I wait for someone else to mod it in the way I want, an example being the Xcom2 turn counter. I think its terrible myself but I don't go whining to Fraxis to take it out.
That's great. Just keep in mind that most people think differently than you, and they're entitled to do so. That's all I'm saying. There's no need to disparage them because of it.
 
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To be honest, I don't like the EU4 based diplomacy and war goals, nor a cap on the number of ships in a fleet. Tactical combat would be great! Sign me up!

I am not a game designer, and the odds are you are not either. It might be very difficult to code these items as options, or it might not be. I do not have any personal knowledge.

I am sure of two things though. 1) Having more options is more likely to entice more purchasers than fewer options. 2) I personally deplore this movement to make things "easier", to reduce "micro management" and make games "more accessible". I like things to be hard. There is much more satisfaction to achieving something when it is hard than when it is easy. Especially as I know this is not the "modern" view I try to take every opportunity I see to fight back against these trends. I may be the King Canute of gaming, but I will continue to agitate for what I want, and I expect that others will agitate for what they want.

It's not necessarily dumping down dude. People like control with their games naturally and Micro management is fine but most peopel have a point where to much Micro is a flipping pain in the rear end.

Ever tried playing a game of Civ III late game and trying to manage every single city you have not to mention very unit, it's not fun it's just tedious. Granted this will be a real time game but still something to cut down on Micro management is a welcome addition for most I reckon.

It's a choice from the sounds of it, you can ignore building Sectors if you wish but there will be some penalties. Not quite a hardcap like in CKII where it makes sense givne feudal realms... you can't have all the land in a large realm with that kind of administration. Like wise trying to run a centralised empire in space over vast differences if going to cause some problems and inconveniences for the empire in question as the price they pay for direct oversight and decision making etc.
 
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I played Galactic Civilizations 3 and having to manage every planet and every starbase was a huge drag. It's a shame because the ability to build a huge sprawling interstellar empire is supposed to be something you're excited about, not something where you dread the micro you're going to have to do down the road. Glad to see Paradox is observing the mistakes made by other 4X games and trying a different approach, not just copying the status quo.
 
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I played Galactic Civilizations 3 and having to manage every planet and every starbase was a huge drag. It's a shame because the ability to build a huge sprawling interstellar empire is supposed to be something you're excited about, not something where you dread the micro you're going to have to do down the road. Glad to see Paradox is observing the mistakes made by other 4X games and trying a different approach, not just copying the status quo.

Heres hoping it works. Master of Orion 3 tried to do a similar approach by making planets automatically build certain things without oversight and all the player could do outside of directly intervening to give orders was loosely guide them via some sliders.

The end result was a broken mess.
 
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I challenge any of you that think centralized empires don't have administrative sectors to find me ONE large empire where there were NO administrative sectors at all.
 
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I don't know, I played Gal Civ 3 at insane maps to a domination victory, I think there were over 400 planets in my control. I did find updating the space stations tedious but it was just click thru, the planets were easy, only had to handle a dozen or so planet each turn and it only took a few seconds each.
 
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I did find updating the space stations tedious

Agree 100% man. Space station management was the worst but yeah, the micro in general really held GC3 back. The micro was so bad that it ruined the more exciting parts of the game. They played up the fleet builder and empire customization as a big selling point, but nobody cares about personalizing an empire when that empire is such a boring drag to maintain. Again, glad to see PI is learning from the mistakes of others and trying a different approach.
 
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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.

One person's reward is still seen a punishment for those that don't use it though.

If you'd like, consider the reward of using sectors to be more optimal usage of said planets.
 
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I don't agree. 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.

I disagree. Optimal play will to some extent always be boring, at least for those not interested in details, since it requires finetuning, finetuning, finetuning... But some people actually like that, and in any event it makes the sense for players to decide whether to (micro) manage themselves directly, or to delegate to a Sector Governor.
 
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A better choice would have been to let the player decide if he wants to micromanage 20-50 planets or not.
That would make many people (like me) feel guilty or noobish for choosing to use the automated sector system. (which is way more sci-fi-ee thus cooler)
 
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That would make many people (like me) feel guilty or noobish for choosing to use the automated sector system. (which is way more sci-fi-ee thus cooler)

Your feelings of guilt and inadequacy are your own responsibility and should not affect game design.

Besides, one way to set it up could be to give certain minor benefits (as outlined earlier in this thread) for creating Sectors.
 
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Making sure sector AI is good enough that most players won't feel frustrated letting it run their planets is *very* high on my priority list.
Hopefully you will not make the sector AI too good. The reason is another great argument for sectors not mentioned yet. Sectors will be a usefull factor balancing wide empires vs tall ones.
 
First, how does it impact you or anyone else if "optimal play is boring" (boring for you that is), so long as you have another method that you enjoy? Why should you care if I micro all 989 planets in my empire?

Second, I love micro-managing planets in these type of games. I do not do so to min-max (although if that was my goal I don't think there would be anything wrong with that), but because I like it! Why should game design take that option away from me? Does the Civilization series demand that you put city development on "auto"? No! It gives you the option! Giving the players options, what a concept.

Third, planet development is one of the things to do in a space 4x game. One of the main things to do in my opinion. Without that you have taken one of the "x"s (eXploit) away from the game, and degraded the purpose of another (eXpand). For the sake of "player convenience" (that I don't want myself) you are left with only eXplore (which generally ends by a point in the game anyway) and eXterminate. So, by design, Stellaris is to become a 1x game in the endgame? That sounds like a problem to me.

I've liked what I saw in all 20 previous DDs, but this really frustrates me. Why go to the trouble to create all that planetary detail to then deny us the management of it? Seriously, why bother to have it at all? And the paternalistic view "oh, these players don't like having tedious tasks, let's prevent that", well it just offends me. One man's tedium is another's meat and drink!

It doesn't impact me at all when OCD people like you micro manage every single one of your 200 counties in CK2, going over the vassal limits and demesne limits due to game balance features. Just like in real life though, trying to micromanage your job, friends, company, and everything else in reality, makes your income go down.

Civ auto feature is a way to force the AI to play like an average OCD player. Because the omni que feature was designed to be interesting for humans to fiddle around, not for computer AI thought code efficiency.

That's light years from CK2's design of creating AI vassals that play like a human would, without the shortsightedness that comes from being OCD or being forced to code an AI that is OC.

Simulated hierarchies like demesne limits or sector governors are gameplay balance changes designed to simulate actual functions on par with a human hierarchy's functions. It is not designed solely to ensure OCD humans have things they can fiddle around with in a game designed for bean counting. Although there's nothing stopping people from bean counting their way to all 500+ counties in CK2, even without mod support.

If a gameplay feature is fun enough, humans will do it irregardless of what direct rewards they get inside the game. Roguelikes play on that, even though people lose their progress at game's end. When people like micromanage so much, that they obviously can't do without it, then they won't care what strategic or logistical benefits they get in game by delegating. They Don't Understand How to Delegate in the first place. And that's why CK2 vassal limits, demesne limits, and Stellaris sector governors exist for. To simulate what happens when a human actually does try to micromanage too many things at once.
 
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That would make many people (like me) feel guilty or noobish for choosing to use the automated sector system. (which is way more sci-fi-ee thus cooler)
So, because you can't\don't want to perform as good as other person you want to strip him from using some features so he can't do it too?. Well, that certainly not the nicest thing i read there.

And, btw, i think ppl should go and read Stardock forums on GC3. The had tried all approaches to planet management problems.
1) At first there were no automation at all. And that was rather tedious for some ppl to manage.
2) Later they introduced governors. And we discovered the real reason why where were no governors in initial release. They suck on grand scale. They were dumber than bread. They where the reason why players outperform AI that much. And don't forget Stardock was almost boasting about how good their AI was! And what's why, with all due respect to Paradox and Stardock, i'm extremely caution toward all: "our AI will be good". GC3 and HoI3 showed me that it wouldn't.
3) They tweaked AI a bit and made governors mandatory the same way the are supposed to be in Stellaris. A couple of manually controlled planets and other must be controlled by AI. Players performance still decreased significantly.
4) Now they returned to p.1 with governors being optional but still took a good part of customization after removing planetary wheel and changing it to focuses.

So, in the end, artificial restrictions of players doesn't turn out well.
 
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I'm surprised this move only earned the DD one disagree.
Still looking forward to this.
 
Hopefully you will not make the sector AI too good. The reason is another great argument for sectors not mentioned yet. Sectors will be a usefull factor balancing wide empires vs tall ones.

If I manage to make the sector AI so good that it's outperforming an experienced player, I'd worry less about game balance and more about skynet.
 
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