Stellaris Dev Diary #306 - Habitat Experiments

[ryanbeolve]

The Stellaris Custodian team looks to three primary categories when deciding what to pursue:

• Community: Things you ask for. Pain points, quality of life improvements, bug fixing, and other good ideas from the community.
  
  
  Response:
  Hi, I thought I would chime in with a quality of life improvement. it doesnt really pertain to habitats but I was struck by what you said here. I love Stellaris, but I have been hesitant to play the game because the many alien races make it impossible for me to play with the roleplaying I had in mind. Would it be feasible to make it possible to have only humans as a species? At least in the beginning. I am totally okay with, in fact I would be thrilled by, pre-FTL species developing into factions in the game. But I would really prefer a game where I could know that the only species at the start are human and robot.

 

[Delterius]

Void Dweller's quickly become my favorite in terms of thematics and style, so I'm really interested to see how these changes are slated to rebalance it. I find that with Void Dweller I'm often systems poor but densely built, as I save all my influence for internal development. But now I won't have 5-10 planets per system, but one 'built up' central habitat. I guess the dynamic won't change 100%, but it's still much closer to a planet-driven playstyle. Only you pay in alloys for the ability to develop systems regardless of livable planets or not.

A Void Dweller empire with 12 systems would have 12 colonies rather than, say, 20-30 or more. Rather than dozens of different colonies racing against the ceiling, you have something much closer to a traditional empire. Something else that might feel different is that early game bottlekneck of specializing a handful of habitats for further growth. We used to start with 3, and need to produce balance our standard needs with a greater need for Alloys to maintain and unlock new habitats. So those first few habitats are mixed use. The first 3 new ones are on a premium for CGs, Tech, Alloys, and basic resources. Instead we are getting one Big Central Habitat at first, which I guess is gonna be no different from a standard homeworld with mixed uses.

So, I assume Void Dwellers could stand to lose their pop growth malus then? They won't start with 3 colonies to grow out of. And besides, it felt a bit arbitrary. I also assume the standard VD trinary system and VD Sol are gonna be balanced to jumpstart that early VD economy, with a central habitat that is built up just enough to allow you to crank out those alloys. Influence costs too might need to be tweaked, given that we won't be able to just lock ourselves into a handful of systems. VDs might have to expand a lot, into systems that can be well exploited and maintain big central stations, rather than just any start with a deadrock on it.

 

[rylasasin]

Speaking of Void Dweller, here's a kind of wacky idea specifically for them to fit with their theme:

New planetary decision: Harvest Habitable Planet. As it says on the tin, this world will be harvested, and then turned into a shattered world. In exchange, you gain 0.25 habitat material per size (1 per planet size in the case of Gaia worlds.) What this does is two things:
1st, it replaces part of the habitat build cost the with habitat material. 1 habitat material = ... oh I don't know? Say... 10-50 alloys?
2ndly, every habitat material used this way starts the construction of the habitat by 5%.

Also making it so void dwellers have their planet habitability capped at 50% (like how subterrainian has a minimum of 50% habitability but in reverse). This makes it less able to 'cheese' void dwellers by using secondary species to occupy habitable worlds.

Also, merging Habitat preference and Ring World Preference into "Artificial Preference". After all, Ring Worlds are very big habitats. The above would also effect them, but only when building segments (the final step) and habitat material only increases the construction start by 1% instead of 5%?

 

[Harakani]

Thank you for looking at this, and for the look at why decisions are being made.

I would like to reiterate a previous poster's point; people have asked for PC Nomads for a very long time, and the void dwellers were the closest match, so if there is a way to do this that makes nomads easier that would be a serious advantage.

I think you could possibly do a Nomads DLC and revamp Void Dwellers in that, if the intention is to move to adding a new idea to Stellaris.

Everyone can build habitats, eventually. Habitats are now essentially mini-megastructures (though ring worlds are gated).

I really like the idea of them being system-based somehow, with small ships travelling through the system to the various <noun> set up around the system.

It can get fiddly to set these up, but planetary blockers would be a good way to do this *so long as there is still an in system graphical representation*.

Possibly this could be 'upgrading' already existing mining stations.

I do think that hab stations would be good as this would allow the 'three station' setup we currently have. I would suggest these hab stations control the growth rate. So if your system is nothing but luxurious holiday resort hab centres you would get much better pop growth.



I'm not sold on habitability being an issue for habitats, but agree there needs to be something. Increasing costs to represent travel makes sense, and could probably be done with a cost per pop. Possibly in energy, and possibly even in alloys. As the system gets more <noun> the cost per pop could go up. I think you could also just ramp up the maintenance cost of the various components - like the 'mining district' representing the mining station on jupiter might have an upkeep of 4 energy instead of the normal 2. If this is district + station (and subsumes both) this might make more sense.



If you do do system based please think about whether various normal system based things can be incoporated; mining, research, wierd resources like motes, but also the various station-based aliens. Possibly if there are Curators in the system you can get a bonus to research much like a planetary modifier on many planets.



I'd also really love it if at close in zoom level there were streams of shuttles moving between the important points in the system.

 

[Delterius]

Probably outside the scope of these experiments, but have you considered spawning a couple of these built up habitats in the core systems of marauder empires? Sometimes the Khan is a complete pushover simply because he conquered few or no actual worlds. Even when their empire stays together.

 

[Vanquished Void]

After going through this, and noting how people brought this up, I want to reiterate why this is a heavy nerf for voidborne playstyle beyond the point of being unusable.


First of all, like people are saying, you are paying for half a habitat's cost for 1/4 of the districts involved with it's construction and none of the growth. You also lose a lot of the empty build slots that people would use for things like "refinery habitats". If you want to turn orbitals into 1/4 of a habitat, I'd say making it 25-50 influence cost while bringing the alloy cost down to about 300-400. If orbitals do have an upkeep cost, please keep it 1/2-1/4 of a normal habitat's upkeep. Voidborne is a very alloy/influence expensive playstyle, and if we are losing the pop growth, at least cut down on the associated costs.

Next thing, Orbitals should give 1 district to the habitat, not give the transit hub an extra job. You also either want to make orbitals themselves upgradeable, or that the habitat itself gets an additional .5 districts per tier level after the first for each orbital in system. If you go the later route, you can increase the alloy cost to upgrade the habitat by x 1.5-2.5. Basically, the orbitals give 2 districts when the hub/orbitals are maxed at T3. Keep the transit hub upgrade as a housing, clerk, and maybe reduced upkeep for orbitals, feel free to remove the extra districts from it. You could also put a pop growth rate penalty per orbital with the transit hub negating it. If it's coded so that you need the hub to give districts, please make it 3 tiers with 1/1.5/2 districts per orbital. We REALLY need districts for how much we spend.

You are VERY rarely going to get 7 celestial bodies in a system. So with all I've seen, we aren't going to get more than 14 TOTAL districts in a great system as in the blog as long as you use a transit hub/interchange. With a 7 celestial system, my recommendation would have 15 districts at T2, or 20 at T3. (I understand that you would have to limit the starting system to 10 planets to allow this). Getting the district count to 18/20 would bring it somewhat in line with planets. Many systems have 3-5 constructable celestial bodies, 12/16 districts with 5 planets at T2/T3 respectively. This is close enough to a planet. Reminder that this is in comparison to a voidborne player that currently will have 20/30/40 districts considering T1/T2/T3 habitats in a system with basically 5x popgrowth as other players.

The growth penalty nerf is understandable (between the actual penalty which falls off and the growth inherent to losing 5 habitats), but the sheer amount of districts and jobs you would lose in the proposed systems are horrifying to think about. It's bad enough I can't really develop planets without a client species or triggering the low habitability event on planets to remove void habitability. Also, 1 district and 1 job for 750 alloys while blocking a spot for a megastructure is a joke and a quarter.

Hub being like current habitats where you can build up to your district max, and then the orbitals increasing it based on a tier system is fine. but please don't go, "You have to spend 3k alloy for a second unupgradeable habitat in a 5 celestial system with none of the benefits of having two habitats and a drastically increased alloy upkeep".

Also, I vote all upgraded Habitats and/or orbitals should be locked by voidborne ascension perk. So that they can still can be used, but they are basically only there to exploit a resource lightly, or as a manned military outpost at the border.

 

[Bossman Zero]

Put me down in the "I don't like this" column, it's removing the thematic feel of habitats while papering over the reason habitats are being spammed: growth. Habitats should feel like small, planned planets that can't do everything on their own, so they should be specialized and rely on other habitats and planets to fill their missing needs. While the orbitals system abstracts the latter, it kills the specialization aspect. And it won't fix the fact that habitats are the second-best way to turn alloys into growth after warfare. AI empire bottled in by empires it can't take in a fight? Spam habitats instead of building anchorages and a larger fleet. Player wants to work around the pop growth scale instead of accepting their current population size? Spam habitats since they give 3 base growth each.

My proposal: to fit the theme of small, planned planets, non-Void Dweller pops get 0 base population growth on habitats. Instead, they grow through migration, and habitats should get increased migration pull for having both open job slots and housing; lack one of those two, and the increased pull goes away. In exchange, biological non-Void Dweller pops on habitats do not count towards the growth scaling.

This will turn habitats into places where pops are moved to free up space on planets, while planets remain the primary population growers for non-Void Dweller, non-machine empires. In addition, habitats would have a negative impact if used in conjunction with ring worlds and large ecus: they will drain away pops that could move to fill those worlds. The player now has to choose if a much smaller population growth boost is worth the increase in micro that comes with habitats, instead of using habitats as meta. The AI would probably need to be adjusted to take into consideration existing open space on habitats before building new ones.

 

[Soranya]

Put me down in the "I don't like this" column, it's removing the thematic feel of habitats while papering over the reason habitats are being spammed: growth. Habitats should feel like small, planned planets that can't do everything on their own, so they should be specialized and rely on other habitats and planets to fill their missing needs. While the orbitals system abstracts the latter, it kills the specialization aspect. And it won't fix the fact that habitats are the second-best way to turn alloys into growth after warfare. AI empire bottled in by empires it can't take in a fight? Spam habitats instead of building anchorages and a larger fleet. Player wants to work around the pop growth scale instead of accepting their current population size? Spam habitats since they give 3 base growth each.

My proposal: to fit the theme of small, planned planets, non-Void Dweller pops get 0 base population growth on habitats. Instead, they grow through migration, and habitats should get increased migration pull for having both open job slots and housing; lack one of those two, and the increased pull goes away. In exchange, biological non-Void Dweller pops on habitats do not count towards the growth scaling.

This will turn habitats into places where pops are moved to free up space on planets, while planets remain the primary population growers for non-Void Dweller, non-machine empires. In addition, habitats would have a negative impact if used in conjunction with ring worlds and large ecus: they will drain away pops that could move to fill those worlds. The player now has to choose if a much smaller population growth boost is worth the increase in micro that comes with habitats, instead of using habitats as meta. The AI would probably need to be adjusted to take into consideration existing open space on habitats before building new ones.

Read to me like the whole pop growth mechanic needs to be reworked (again) so that it works better (and does not have tobe slowed doen due to performance reasons)

Still habitat spam in its current is annyoying for any reason, so either make it undesirable (which is an undesireable solution) or reign it in otherwise (easier to manage/conquer what ever).

Still, main reason seems to be pop growth mechanic that is borked.
So a major rehaul of this (whith tackling the problem of performance as well as getting rid of the arcane ways to min max this, oh and the disappointing results when you build ring worlds late game, b.c. you basically never will fill them up with out min maxing, and even then barely).

So please: Population mechanics (probably as a whole now that i am thinking about it) need some rework to be more immersive AND better for performance.

 

[Starfire Breeze]

Read to me like the whole pop growth mechanic needs to be reworked (again) so that it works better (and does not have tobe slowed doen due to performance reasons)

Still habitat spam in its current is annyoying for any reason, so either make it undesirable (which is an undesireable solution) or reign it in otherwise (easier to manage/conquer what ever).

Still, main reason seems to be pop growth mechanic that is borked.
So a major rehaul of this (whith tackling the problem of performance as well as getting rid of the arcane ways to min max this, oh and the disappointing results when you build ring worlds late game, b.c. you basically never will fill them up with out min maxing, and even then barely).

So please: Population mechanics (probably as a whole now that i am thinking about it) need some rework to be more immersive AND better for performance.

The pop growth behavior is certainly in an odd spot, in that it from the tooltips at galaxy creation time etc. one presumes that it's there for performance reasons, yet there are all these mechanics the developers have kept adding in (whether habitats or many-vassals or pop growth bonuses to "special" planets like Ecumenopoli, or pop growth boosters from ascension paths as the developers did not too long ago, etc.) to undermine the pop growth limit's effectiveness.

Reworking pop growth is likely worth contemplating, but it's also likely a pretty invasive/large change in own right, and of course the AI needs to be taught to deal with it (i.e. hopefully it doesn't happen like with 3.8/Paragons where the AI had no idea how to deal with the new mechanics that were critical in order to play well with the result that it seriously reduced the AI's ability to play well.)

I might be in the minority, but I've never found "AI empires make a lot of habitats" to be a substantial nuisance in my own gameplay. (At least, when I think of "big problems/disappointments with the game", "many habitats" is so far down on my own, personal list, as opposed to all the many bugs/regressions in just-released content broken by the N+1 expansion pack, etc. that I trip over every day.) In that regard, the habitat rework, to me, doesn't feel like much of a necessity, but others might well have their own differing views. It is a bit of of extra overhead to set up the cookie-cutter mining/generator habitats (all of which are carbon copies of one another), and I wish that could be automated in an intelligent fashion (which the planet automation doesn't seem capable of handling), if one is going to make a lot of habitats, but that's more on the building my own habitats than the invasion side. Invasion always has the (absolutely terrible) mess that the AI makes out of every colony, and it's already too much for me to deal with even if it's only "regular" planets, so I typically just make someone into an ally or a vassal instead of holding on to the management burden for invaded planets, anyway, during my own gameplay.

I do share a lot of the worries that the rework isn't going to go over very well & leave habitats in a particularly usable or fun state... but without having actually tried things out, it's certainly possible that it might turn out better than I hope.

Edit: Fixed omitted paragraph (ugh!).

Edit2: Fixed word substitution (vassals->habitats; sigh.)

 

[Silesian Burd]

Habitats as a unique entity were a mistake. They raise the question of why you don't just slap apartments on your Starbases and your Space-Station Megastructures. The Xenonion joke of "New Budget Habitat Just Six Colony Ships Duct-Taped Together" comes to mind.

- Frankly, your Science Nexus should not provide bulk Research on its own, but should instead support Roboticists (for building Droids to man the computers) and Researchers, with a huge Research bonus on them. The Droids should be able to work here regardless of your AI laws.
- Your Strategic Coordination Center should not provide Naval Capacity on its own, but should instead support Roboticists (for building Droids to handle the infrastructure) and Soldiers, with a huge bonus to the effect of the locals.
- Your Matter Decompressor should provide fewer Minerals on its own, but should also support Roboticists (for building Robotic Workers to work next to the Black Hole) and Miners to extract useful stuff from the Decompressed Matter, with a huge bonus to the effect of the locals.
- Your Dyson Sphere should provide fewer Energy Credits on its own, but should also support Roboticists (for building Robotic Workers to maintain the Sphere) and Technicians to handle the Sun energy, with a huge bonus to the effect of the locals.
- Your Mega Art Installation should probably support a couple of Culture Worker pops.


Since Food is now a universally-transferrable resource, you can now do this without much trouble. It also means your foe has to interact with the Megastructures a bit more in war; or at least, they can take them over during the war.

As for balance, I think the Habitability on Habitats should be capped at their current 70/90 values, and should have their base Habitability reduced to 50 or 60. Void Dwellers should still be as weird as they are.

 

[Ohirra]

Are you going to fix Orbital Surveying for Void dwellers or is it still going to be RNG?

 

[Fas Est]

Space Nomads = Revamped Void Dwellers

How about Nomads being their own thing?
Fleet based insteam of habitat based?

I have a thread about it "Worldships" (basically moving planets/habitats as your base with flotillas of ships in tow) and I consider that rough idea superior to straightup eating up Void Dwellers.

Only be greatly expanding VDs(and losing DLC money) one could achieve it and possibly break them, so why break a good thing when a new thing could do.

 

[Syroc]

Okay, this sounds interesting enough that I'd willingly play vanilla to check these out. I really hope this makes the final cut.

 

[Standstill]

Honestly, I'd be completely fine with habitats mechanics staying as they are and simply having the possibility to destroy them with my fleets, so I don't have to invade them one by one.

 

[SpankinHead001]

I kind of already responded to this post, but I need to give a more detailed reasoning as to why I don't like this change.
This change is being done to solve the problem in SP where the ai spams habitats. I hate dealing with that too, don't get me wrong, but Paradox's solution to the problem is to severely overhaul habitat mechanics. Imo, that's an over-complicated solution for said problem when simpler solutions exists. I already offered this solution earlier on this post, but to reiterate, just limit the number of habitats per system by starbase level; a citadel can support 4 habitats for example. As for VD, the origin can have you start off with a star fortress to support the three habitats you have at the start, but said star fortress has blockers in the last 4 module slots and the 2nd & 3rd building slots (they can be named habitat support node or something like that) and they can only removed after researching the starhold and star fortress tech. That way, ai empires now have to build and upgrade their starbases in order to build habitats in a system.
That's my two cents, concerns?

 

[Fas Est]

Honestly, I'd be completely fine with habitats mechanics staying as they are and simply having the possibility to destroy them with my fleets, so I don't have to invade them one by one.

They could just be treated like "mini space stations" and disabled after a few % o devastation, based on their level. And given a secondary status to space station, defenses and fleets. But no.

 

[Phantomcreator42]

Now that we are able to actually play around with this, or at least that I was able to get a shot at it (I don't know when the beta became available), I don't think this is really a fun approach? Habitats just feel bad and unrewarding now to play with at this point with a bunch of resource problems and having to build planets in exchange for, what exactly in return? What makes them unique now other than mechanics which explicitly punish you for playing them?

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I agree that there could be better solutions to the problem of AI spamming habitats, I'm sure after all this time lots of people have decided on their ideal solution. (Locking them behind the origin or ascension perk, linking them to starbases in some way, limiting the construction rate or costs, reducing the pop-growth incentive for spamming them and relying on migration to fill them instead... and so on).

Linking starbases to habitats in some way seems fitting from both a gameplay, balance and thematic point of view. Especially now that planets get starbase modules with orbital rings at the same tech level (also a bit odd that those don't cost starbase cap when they do everything starbases do). That habitats, built in space, lack the orbital modules and orbital buildings that planets now have feels like the biggest oversight possible. But there would be a few details that would need to be ironed out:
1. What happens when you deconstruct the starbase/habitat, or it gets destroyed via crisis attacks? (hopefully not for them to flee like currently)
2. What happens when you gain lots of habitats via conquest? Need a way to dismantle habitats+starbases that are beyond your ability to manage them. Or ways to increase your limits need to be added. (Hopefully not to make it even harder to abandon colonies like currently)
3. What about being trapped in a small region of space and lacking the extra starbase capacity from systems? Is the +5 Starbase Ascension perk enough or should there be other ways to increase the starbase/habitat limits just like we had to add the eagerness trait? (I don't like the eagerness trait implementation)
4. Would going over capacity lead to economic death-spirals? (we've seen how harsh leader capacity was for XP gain, caps can be tricky to get right).

No solution is perfect. I'd have settled for requiring either the origin or ascension perk to limit AI spamming of habitats and give each empire a bit more uniqueness. But I think there are lots of solutions that could have worked better.

So, instead of the current Beta I wish they had taken almost any other steps to limit habitat numbers. I'm spamming habitats more now than before (they're cheaper to make just for pop growth, cheaper in terms of sprawl, and more efficient for labs+forges than before as they don't need the upgrade tech to have high output and lots of districts, just luck and some major orbitals or empty minor orbitals for cheap building slots, but habitats now make far less satisfying trade/generator habitats). Sadly as well as spamming them it also takes far, far more clicks and effort to fully upgrade each habitat and not all of it is logical (orbitals giving fractional benefits or no benefits)... and they still lack the orbital building effects or any defensive capabilities despite being literally in space when even planets can shoot back now thanks to rings.

I wish they had taken inspiration from Guilli's mod, spending alloys to upgrade habitats adding thematic modifiers, features and special jobs to make them feel different from planets and needing tech to perform those upgrades. I want a few high output specialist versions of worker jobs, or jobs with unconventional inputs and outputs, and for you to pick the direction you want your habitat to go and what districts to unlock. I want theme and flavour, I want to put a habitat over a special anomaly to study it and get something cool in return.

Playing today I keep thinking that the new habitat complexes feel like taking the old tile-system, sticking it in space, but forgetting about the fun parts like adjacency, difficult choices and how good the UI was for reading it all at a glance (the new habitat systems are not a treat for the eye on the system view). Now building each habitat has no hard choices, build more stuff when you can afford it. You aren't struggling to decide what type of orbital to build or where to place them, you just build it all and once it's all built you can't tell what's going on in the system at all just by looking (you don't see a production chain with asteroids being diverted into a big factory with Mineral and Alloy icons visible, or traders passing between trade stations with Trade Value visible, or science stations scanning nearby moons with Science values visible, or floating gardens in the sky with food icons visible), and there's still no UI for planning future expansions (Now we need both an expansion planner for habitats and branch offices).

I feel like this is a failed experiment, and could do with much more time cooking before it's ready. It's sad because I almost exclusively play void dwellers and I really wanted them to get some love. I also play Resource Consolidation... but that's only because machines lack a void equivalent... If anyone is interested I'd give Machines slightly different and more expensive habitat districts with mineral and alloy costs, like they have more expensive energy nexus buildings. And to slow the spread onto normal planets have 2 colony ship variants, a cheap one for habitats only, and a far more expensive colony ship (extra alloys and influence) for when they want to land on planets to slow them down, or simply adding habitability-equivalent penalties on the colony shelter instead of via pop traits.

So on top of all that I'm also salty that machines were left out of the habitat rework.

TLDR:
1. Beta habitats need lots more work (so much more work)
2. Habitat spam is alive and well (still adds pop growth, building slots and districts... so yes, obviously they'll still be spammed)
3. Habitats take more micro to upgrade (it's turning into a hidden object game trying to find the moons)
4. Habitats could be limited in other ways (so many better ways)
5. Habitats still don't get orbital buildings and orbital modules that planets do (despite being... you know... in orbit)
6. Machines still can't live in space until decades after organics (despite not needing oxygen, liquid water, or gravity)

 

[Abdulijubjub]

3. Habitats take more micro to upgrade (it's turning into a hidden object game trying to find the moons)

Just select it from the construction ship, and it will highlight every valid building spot (like every megastructure).

 

[DrFranknfurter]

View attachment 1017786

Just select it from the construction ship, and it will highlight every valid building spot (like every megastructure).

I am aware of that, I wasn't right clicking each moon individually (That would be even more horrible!) it's just the banners for all the objects stack in one big list in the middle that obscures objects behind so I'm zooming in and out to move the banners out of the way (like the planet below Toph'lnanut being partially obscured in your picture, and the moon Teth'Ubasis also being completely covered. The major orbitals in the picture are much larger and easier to spot than the tiny minor moon orbitals.

My current way of adding orbitals is:
1. Go to Habitat blockers and look at the 1/5 4/6 orbitals tooltip to see if there's any upgrade potential
2. Select a nearby constructor
3. Find the system again, select the minor orbital type (it's cheaper) and zoom in and out until I can actually see the icon behind all the fleets, then notice it wouldn't actually give me what I want (wrong deposit type) so would be pointless to build
4. Repeat for major orbitals, zoom in and out a little and check if any match what you need to build
Repeat for each habitat
(it's about 10 clicks, two zooms in and out, a bit of a hover and far longer than needed per habitat)

It's fine for the first habitats, but I was on habitat 10 before the first ringworld section was complete and it was annoying for me. I noticed that I started counting the number of clicks and wondering why it had been designed to take so many more clicks than clearing blockers while doing the same thing.

I would rather:
1. Go to the habitat blockers and look at the orbitals (see all the planetary bodies listed below)
2. Click to clear the blocker and construct an orbital, with the blocker indicating what I would get for clearing it, just like how on planets clearing blockers shows you that you would get motes, district slots or access to mining deposits.
3. Profit!
(one scroll, one hover for tooltips and one click per habitat)

I'd also like an expansion planner that shows this information, just like new planets show the state of blockers and districts available.
(You aren't expected to judge a planet by eye and work out how many districts it could support by calculating the radius, ditto for systems and habitats)
We also could still use an expansion planner for megacorp branch offices to be able to sort new branches by distance or trade value, it also gets annoying when you have 10 commercial pacts running as you have to manually check each option.