Stellaris Dev Diary #221 - Balance and Quality of Life Improvements

[WindingArc]

Assorted QoL Changes

As mentioned above, the planetary designation for consumer goods has been renamed to Factory World, because we’ve added an Industrial World designation.

View attachment 750644
Multiple planetary designations for your various needs

The new Industrial World designation is ideal for planets where you don’t want to focus the Industrial districts on a single job type, instead providing a minor upkeep discount to both Artisan and Metallurgist jobs.

View attachment 750645
Industrial World Designation

The basic mechanics behind planetary designations could use a rework. They don't promote specialization as much as they promote micromanagement. I often find myself switching to designations that reduce build cost or increase build speed for districts I'm constructing for a single day. Sometimes I even leave planets as Urban Worlds for decades as I'm building them up despite having every intention of making them some type of rural world later on because Urban Worlds reduce the cost of city districts, which I need to get building slots, which I like to focus on first to maximize population growth.


I'd suggest two changes to the way designations work:

1. Make Rural World the default designation for planets with Planetary Administrations. The default designation for planets that have few districts seems to be Refinery World, which is confusing and slightly annoying.
2. Impose costs on switching designations. I suggest a combination of time, influence, and energy scaled to the current population of the planet, with the latter two weighted by the rights of the pops. (It would be cheaper to switch the designation of a Mining World full of slaves than a Research World full of scientists just as it's cheaper to resettle a bunch of slaves than it is to resettle a bunch of specialists with residence or citizenship rights.) Ideally, it would also cost something like 5-10 days per pop to switch a designation, which could be queued up alongside decisions and building/district construction.

The slave market is just flawed.

You always want to buy pops, even as a slaver empire, as you actually have a place for them to work (moar slaves!) - unlike classical scifi slave traders that just deal in slaves - slaves are a means of production in stellaris, not just a commodity. And energy is dirt cheap. Why make 500 EC when you can just put those pops to work.

What it needs is 2 things

1. Roaming marauder/pirate-like fleets of AI "Slavers" to steal pops from across the galaxy.
   • They will spawn randomly (e.g. in nebulae systems, uncharted space, on the borders of two empires) and go on a rampage, stealing pops.
   • They will then try to "escape" the territory they were raiding in.
   • If they do, a short time later, those stolen pops then appear on the galactic slave market. This means slaves will be appearing from across the galaxy, even if there arent slave empires selling (and the GC has one more "evil" thing - slaver operations - for it to hunt down).
2. A special kind of primitive/non-empire thrall planet "Slave farm"
   • ruled over by a despotic class, these worlds exist to breed and export slaves - either directly on to the slave market if it exists - or they'll send caravaneer-like slave merchants to the local (slave-using) rulers, to sell them pops directly (via dialogue popup).
     • Edit - they could also sell them to gestalts as... food and Building a starbase over their system gives you better slave-rates or something too.

This way the Gal Slave market gets a more steady supply of slaves, at least in to the midgame. Beyond that, upping base slave prices might help, too.

It would be great if the slave market could be turned into an auction. "Buying" a slave could start a countdown period - three months seems fair - during which other empires could "buy" the slave for 110% of the base cost, which would then restart the countdown period, during which other empires could "buy" the slave for 120% of the base cost, and so on.

Speaking of Ecumenopoli, I think it would be cool if we got to build Commercial arcologies for regular empires, like we do on Ringworlds. I think it would make perfect sense for Ecumonopoli to potentially function as trade hubs.

Trade in general could use an overhaul. I agree that greater concentration of trade on specialized worlds would be a good thing, though.

 

[majikero]

If they're gonna make "shattered ring" a planet type, you should be able to terraform the broken segments into a liveable "shattered ring". It would make every broken ringworlds in the game just as useable as any relic world even without the tech to restore it.

 

[Shimohi]

Proper UI scaling please.

 

[monatomic]

What this means is your Void Dwellers pops are most productive and happiest on habitats, have their bonuses removed on ringworlds and have production and happiness penalties if they settle on planets (best to leave those for immigrants or robots!)

All this sounds great. Will this trait or happiness penalty be part of migration (selecting a new pop to grow) and auto-resettlement (selecting which new planet to go to)? Presumably they have the same habitability. I really hope we are not stuck with using migration controls and/or micro-management to keep these pops off of planets.

Edit: Also can void dwellers species preferentially grow on habitats, so that other species don't crowd them out? I'd like to be able to have a few planets with xenos and robots, and preferably the void dwellers would mostly stay on the habitats and the xenos would mostly stay on the planets. After getting the Voidborne AP and/or habitability techs, habitability no longer keeps xenos from filling up the habitats. If I use migration controls, then auto-resettle no longer works and it becomes micro-management again.

 

[Arithmetician]

@PtY Going off your idea of auctions, it would be good if the slave market was responsive to supply and demand, like other market commodities. If too many slaves are put on the market at once, the price drops, and the AI re-evaluates it and decides to sell less of its pops on the market. Though we could also have the problem of rapid depopulation when demand and prices are high, as the AI would rush to sell off their pops even more readily than they already do.

In either case, ~1000 energy credits is dramatically undercosted for a pop.

 

[rubert]

Void Dwellers

We’ve been aware that the implementation of Void Dwellers of having two separate traits, one positive and one negative resulted in behaviour that we weren’t happy with - in particular being able to gene-mod the negative aspects of the trait out of existence. To solve this we’ve made some changes to how the traits work:

• There is now only a single Void Dweller trait, so it can’t be exploited via genetic modification of your species.
• The modifiers on the trait itself have changed, previously it gave:
  • +15% Resources from Worker and Specialist jobs & -10% growth speed (for the positive version)
  • -60% growth speed (for the negative version)
• The new version of the trait is now:
  • +15% Pop Resource Output on Habitats.
  • -15% Pop Resource Output on Non-Artificial Worlds.
  • -10% Growth Speed
  • -30% Happiness on Non-Artificial Worlds.

View attachment 750637
The new, improved, Void Dweller trait with its modifiers.

What this means is your Void Dwellers pops are most productive and happiest on habitats, have their bonuses removed on ringworlds and have production and happiness penalties if they settle on planets (best to leave those for immigrants or robots!)

Good looking changes, though I wonder if there if the void dweller pops will be more likely to grow in the habitats of a multispecies empire with free xeno-pops (or xeno-pops less likely to grow in habitats of void dwellers)? Previously when I tried play Void Dwellers I had to be constantly microing pops and moving "wrong" pops out from the habitats so that I would have room for my vod dveller pops. Or take even bigger hit to the pop growth and egalitarian faction happiness by using population controls and selecting specific species or preventing migration.

 

[Kiwibaum]

What about giving the shattered ring start a 10% or so completion on mega engineering at the game start? This would allow empires that pick it get it earlier and more reliable, since a good amount of the power of that start is locked through that technology.

 

[Arithmetician]

@Kiwibaum

That, or unlock it through an event chain (like Galactic Doorstep and Gateway tech), or otherwise increase the weight of it appearing even more it already would be for having a megastructure in your territory.

 

[WindingArc]

@PtY Going off your idea of auctions, it would be good if the slave market was responsive to supply and demand, like other market commodities. If too many slaves are put on the market at once, the price drops, and the AI re-evaluates it and decides to sell less of its pops on the market. Though we could also have the problem of rapid depopulation when demand and prices are high, as the AI would rush to sell off their pops even more readily than they already do.

In either case, ~1000 energy credits is dramatically undercosted for a pop.

I'm guessing supply and demand logic would be hard to implement for the slave market, which would be fairly imperfect due to the trait differences in pops and the small number of them sold compared with the volumes of other resources being bought and sold.

Raising the base price of a slave and adding AI logic for selling slaves sound like good ideas, though. The AI should probably have few available worker jobs, a good basic resource income, and high population growth before selling slaves. It should probably also not want to sell more than x% of its population per year.

 

[Ninjamestari]

Next do something about species traits. Like "Resilient" which should absolutely give universal army health instead of just defense army damage, and additionally should perhaps give 5% habitability, although that might be a bit too much. Either way the current trait is COMPLETELY worthless. Also Charisma should affect ruler opinion impact like it used to, or at the very least improve the diplomatic output of envoys.

 

[Pancakelord]

@PtY Going off your idea of auctions, it would be good if the slave market was responsive to supply and demand, like other market commodities. If too many slaves are put on the market at once, the price drops, and the AI re-evaluates it and decides to sell less of its pops on the market. Though we could also have the problem of rapid depopulation when demand and prices are high, as the AI would rush to sell off their pops even more readily than they already do.

In either case, ~1000 energy credits is dramatically undercosted for a pop.

Rapid depopulation isnt actually the fault of the slave market, per se, its the fault of the AI struggling to build ... which is a chicken and egg thing, in a way.
Below are all the defines that control the slave market (beyond this, some traits drive up or down slave prices over base amount - like 'strong'). Its mostly defines driven as it's code, not script, driven (so isnt really moddable beyond what you see below - and a few trait properties).

SLAVE_MARKET_SLAVE_BASE_COST_RESOURCES    = { "energy" }
SLAVE_MARKET_SLAVE_BASE_COST_AMOUNT    = { 500 }
SLAVE_MARKET_SIZE_CAP    = 100            # Max amount of slaves allowed on the market

SLAVE_BUY_EC_THRESHOLD = 1000             # if we have less ec than this, dont buy slaves
SLAVE_BUY_UNEMPLOYMENT_THRESHOLD = 2     # if any one planet has this many unemployed pops, don't consider buying slaves for it
SLAVE_BUY_HABITABILITY_THRESHOLD = 0.4     # if we cant find a planet with at least this much habitability for a prospective slave, dont buy it

SLAVE_SELL_EC_THRESHOLD = 3000             # if we have more ec than this and a positive net income, then don't sell any slaves
SLAVE_SELL_UNEMPLOYMENT_THRESHOLD = 1     # if any one planet has this many unemployed pops on it, consider selling one as a slave
SLAVE_SELL_MIN_POPS = 1                    # do not sell slaves from this planet if it has this amount of pops, or less

AIs only sell pops if

1. EC cashflow is negative
2. They have <3k EC in the bank
3. There is unemployment on a planet with 2+ pops (how it then picks which pop to sell is unknown to me... probably just random off any valid planet)

This means that AIs that play well and routinely expand their colonies to keep up with employment, don't actually sell (m)any pops either.
I often see this on Starnet - even with a galaxy full of slavers and watching the slave screen, you don't see pops routinely posted for sale (those that are, don't hang around long).

Going off your idea of auctions, it would be good if the slave market was responsive to supply and demand, like other market commodities.

Base price falling as #listed slaves rises to 100 (the vanilla cap) is a good idea. Increasing the base cost of a slave to 2k wouldnt be unreasonable then, with the price falling to like 50 EC if 100 slaves are all on the market, unsold.

I like this more than a true auction, which would be both micro intensive (without a proper bid/ask spread) and would probably bog down the game with AI market actions - depending on how its implemented.

One other thing I'm wondering about testing in a mod, looking again at those above defines, is making the following changes:

SLAVE_MARKET_SLAVE_BASE_COST_RESOURCES    = { "mod_slave_coupon" }
SLAVE_MARKET_SLAVE_BASE_COST_AMOUNT    = { 1 }

SLAVE_BUY_EC_THRESHOLD = 0 # if we have less ec than this, dont buy slaves

SLAVE_SELL_EC_THRESHOLD = 0 # if we have more ec than this and a positive net income, then don't sell any slaves

Adding a new resource - traded exclusively through the market for EC for some base price per 1 coupon - would let you have dirty-floating prices for slaves.
If everyone's buying slave coupons, just like alloy prices in a war, the price of coupons would rise.
The AI can be told (in the economic plan section of files) to always try and hold, say, 5 coupons. Then when a slave appears, it should (this is the "test" bit) insta-buy it if it's got a valid planet with open jobs, causing it to go back to the regular market and buy more coupons, driving the price of coupons up when new slaves appear, or sell its 5 coupons if no slaves have been on the market for a bit, dropping coupon prices.

 

[evilcat]

Industrial destination is great idea.

Even better to look at unused/weak civics. If nobody use them, might as well buff them, since nobody will miss old version.

Personally i thought that Functional Architecture was a good starting civic since it helps you in what you do in first 50 years anyway. But, heavy focus on building slot is nice, since there are other source of energy and having that uniqueness (building slots) makes it even more interesting, especially for some tech builds.

 

[SteelCrow]

So you're talking about balance changes, how about finally giving Gestalt Empires Ruler traits and Agendas? Because not having access to 10% Additional Mineral Output of 10% research speed from an Agenda is huge difference.

Ruler traits are random, however many of them are quite powerful, especially the ones which decrease ship costs. We have talked about this numerous times in the past, so when are Gestalts going to get their ruler traits back? We know they used to have them, but you just removed them at some point.

Why not go further and add some gameplay difference aswell? Make Gestalt players be able to choose the ruler traits themselves. After all we are playing the same Ruler throughought the whole game. We should be able to customize our ruler as we are able to customize our whole empire, because thats basically the same thing as a Gestalt empire, is it not?

Overall, having improved balance is great and much appreciated. But yet again, it seems like the power gap between non-Gestalts and Gestalts is increasing. This is worrying and I had hoped for the exact opposite.

If you think about it a different way, picking your Civics as a Hive Mind is the same as customizing the Hive Mind's ruler.

But that means the Civics should be tripled in power to compensate the lack of ruler traits and agendas.

 

[Arkton]

Oof. RIP Functional Architecture. Removing the upkeep reduction is quite the nerf.

The same goes for constructionBots. It will costs you in the end buidling slots for additional upkeep. As far is i understand it, you are still stuck 12 slots, you just get them earlier. Which ist at least for a ME empire with machine world a joke.

I would really like to know by which logic this is supposed to be a buff.

 

[mergele]

The most excited I have been from a DevDiary for quite a long time now.

 

[Grenartia]

I still wish yall hadn't made technocracy locked behind fanatic materialist. Hopefully the new nerf will justify giving it back to all materialists.

 

[Blackadder23]

It has also been argued, several times in the past, that meritocracy is not unique to democracies and oligarchies - that there are several historical empires where the introduction of meritocracy was even a defining feature (imperial China being a frequently mentioned example).

If a nation has a group of inbred, horse-faced degenerates (i.e., "royals" or "aristocrats") claiming to be better than literally everyone else by birth, I really don't see how you can call that nation a meritocracy with a straight face.

 

[Kapi96]

That functional architecture nerf

I take it as my 3rd civic a lot! The -10% upkeep is great for helping alleviate the need for strategic resources. Without that it's a rubbish civic that I see no use for.

 

[HFY]

I'd really like it if Technocracy gave +0.5 Unity and did NOT increase CG expense.

The same goes for constructionBots. It will costs you in the end buidling slots for additional upkeep. As far is i understand it, you are still stuck 12 slots, you just get them earlier. Which ist at least for a ME empire with machine world a joke.

I would really like to know by which logic this is supposed to be a buff.

Maybe the devs play with one of the 36(+) building mods?

Adding a new resource - traded exclusively through the market for EC for some base price per 1 coupon - would let you have dirty-floating prices for slaves.
If everyone's buying slave coupons, just like alloy prices in a war, the price of coupons would rise.
The AI can be told (in the economic plan section of files) to always try and hold, say, 5 coupons. Then when a slave appears, it should (this is the "test" bit) insta-buy it if it's got a valid planet with open jobs, causing it to go back to the regular market and buy more coupons, driving the price of coupons up when new slaves appear, or sell its 5 coupons if no slaves have been on the market for a bit, dropping coupon prices.

Yes.

Dirty Slave Coupon is an excellent mechanic, and belongs in the game.

 

[fourteenfour]

With regards to Void Dwellers.

Please look into the upgrade cost from T1 to T2 Habitats as its usually better to just build another habitat rather than upgrade them; the alloy cost is steep for only two new districts. Then top it off early on that research cost for that upgrade is obscene and should have some discount for Void Dwellers

I do agree with others, Gestalt need access to multiple edicts as well.

The Technocracy change isn't going to curtail many people, the ten research speed is very good