Stellaris Dev Diary #352 - Stellaris 3.13 'Vela' Improvements and Preliminary Release Notes

[Methone]

When update?

 

[Ajacoba]

When update?

6 pm, in 23 minutes

 

[HFY]

When update?

Glanced at game computer and mine is updating right now, just about finished installing too.

 

[Maethendias]

Whilst I think thats an interesting concept, what you are proposing is that we should get miners without any investment into building mines.....

Also, it can still be interesting. It increases the importance of mining district slots massively, which makes sense. Is it worth it to devote part of an excellent agriworld to the mines if it has a rare resource deposit? Your call.



Also, a world with MANY mining district slots and some rare resource features will become Arrakis, which is always nice since right now the only way to increase non-refinery rare resource production is through really gimmicky ascensions and % bonuses to rare resource gatherer output, through expanding your territory onto planets with a couple more rare resource deposits, through becoming a Prospectorium or through The Surveyor relic.

no... he was talking about getting the advanced ressources without REQUIRING mining
which always is something you never bother to actually DO on your planets come midgame
you only need like 1 or 2 mining planets at MOST for all the minerals youd EVER need

its a dumb change that forces you to build usless mines, a dumb change that kills planetmanagement even more
and its a moronic change that has literally no point to it since... instead of building ressource mines ur just gonna spam refineries even more... so what IS the point here
and ironically, guess what... IS GONNA MAKE TICK LAG EVEN WORSE

 

[Ajacoba]

Just use worlds with strategic resources as your one or two mining worlds then

And then build a habitat somewhere and fill it to the brim with refineries

 

[HFY]

And then build a habitat somewhere and fill it to the brim with refineries

That's what I did in 3.12 and earlier, how is that supposed to be a 3.13 improvement?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

no... he was talking about getting the advanced ressources without REQUIRING mining
which always is something you never bother to actually DO on your planets come midgame
you only need like 1 or 2 mining planets at MOST for all the minerals youd EVER need

its a dumb change that forces you to build usless mines, a dumb change that kills planetmanagement even more
and its a moronic change that has literally no point to it since... instead of building ressource mines ur just gonna spam refineries even more... so what IS the point here
and ironically, guess what... IS GONNA MAKE TICK LAG EVEN WORSE

Before the change:

• Best mining planet has maybe +15% minerals from jobs.
• A few planets have gatherer jobs, which you can choose to fill (instead of a refinery job somewhere else) to save ~12 minerals in upkeep, but they're building slot inefficient compared to Ancient Refinery.
• Most of your strategics come from Ancient Refineries scattered all over.

After the change:

• Best mining planet has maybe +0.6 base strategics per miner (3 single-features or 1 double-feature and a single-feature).
• No planets have gatherer jobs, everything must come incidentally from miners or from refiners.

The net change is that before, e.g. 20 miners on your best planet make an extra 8*0.15=1.2 minerals each (+24 minerals). That pays for 2 refiners in build-slot-efficient Ancient Refineries instead of gatherers, saving you 1 building slot*. Now, e.g. 20 miners on your best planet make an extra 0.6*~2=1.2 strategics each (24 strategics). That completely replaces around 6 refiners (maybe only 5), saving you 2 building slots and 6 pops.

---

*If you weren't short on minerals, such that you would have to build useless miners in order to take advantage of these features... then you weren't short on minerals and wouldn't have used the gatherers, because the refinery is just more efficient.

Either the change doesn't affect you at all (because you didn't have miners before and won't have miners after) or it's a net improvement in power (not that this is a good thing in itself) and ability to specialize worlds.

There are reasons to dislike it (power inflation, more RNG in planet value), but "it makes you build useless mines" isn't a thing that actually happens.

 

[HFY]

No planets have gatherer jobs,

Habitat: "I am no planet!"

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

Habitat: "I am no planet!"

To use a LotR reference earns +1 from me.

But as for 3.13, all they did was shift 1 Strategic Gatherer job(and 1 Build Slot) to Miners that requires using 10 Miners(5 Mining Districts) just to get the same Strategic Output. In other words 5 Districts + 10 Pops = 1 Build Slot + 1 Pop. If you were going to use Miners anyway, great, no harm/foul done. Yet on planets where you were intending to use Technicians or Farmers based on Planetary Features/Modifiers and it just happens to have 1-2 Volatile Motes/Exotic Gas deposits, what are you supposed to do? Before I was able to build my Generator/Agriculture Districts while simultaneously exploiting those deposits(albeit not as efficiently as if it were a Mining/Refinery World) because I had ample Build slots to do so. Yet now I have to take 5 District slots that I wasn’t planning on using and 10 Pops to mine Minerals I may not need just to exploit those Strategic Deposits at the same rate I enjoyed prior to 3.13.

I mean I understand that 3.13 is really a benefit to Ocean Paradise and especially Life Seeded origin where the 6 SR deposits you start with largely go wasted because you want the build slots for Tech/Unity but outside of that and Relic Worlds(Industrial Sector feature), where else is 3.13 going to really help you? I’d argue that Relic Worlds are better off as Ecumenopolis as opposed to Mining Worlds as you get former Relic World bonus towards Research while also acting as strong Forge/Factory/Unity powerhouses. If anything 3.13 only encourages the status quo of building Ancient Refineries everywhere rather than building multiple Mining Worlds for the explicit purpose of mining Strategics and inflates the production of Rare Crystals since they typically spawn on Frozen worlds with a high amount of Mining District features(making them ideal Mining Worlds).

That is why a suggestion is growing in support to shift the benefit to all three Worker jobs. Technicians would mine Motes(typically found on Dry worlds), Farmers would mine Exotic Gas(typically found on Wet worlds) that has strong synergy with Advanced Bio-Reactor and Miners would retain the ability to mine Rare Crystals(typically found on Frozen worlds). For Relic Worlds and their Industrial Sector, they would generate Gas Refiners/Mote Harvesters/Crystal Miners as Event jobs(similar to Central Spire generating 8 Researcher jobs). These jobs would retain their old production of 2 Strategics and would be buffed by Mining/Refinery Designation but would go away if turned into an Ecumenpolis(hence a notable trade-off).

As for Gas Exraction Wells, Mote Harvesting Traps and Crystal Mines, they ought to remain in the game as opposed to being outright removed. They could be updated to behave like Mineral Purification Hubs/Plants such that they can be built on planets with the respective Deposit yielding the old Gatherer jobs while improving Strategic Resource output of Technicians/Farmers/Miners and Strategic Gatherers. An example is below:

Gas Well Extractor
Planet limit: 1
Cost: 180 Minerals
Upkeep: 1 Energy
Produces: 1 Gas Extractor jobs
Exotic Gas from Gas Extractors: +1
Exotic Gas from Farmers: +0.15

Gas Well Plant
Planet limit: 1
Cost: 600 Minerals
Upkeep: 5 Energy
Produces: 2 Gas Extractor jobs
Exotic Gas from Gas Extractors: +2
Exoctic Gas from Farmers: +0.30

Gas Well Plant would be a new Tier 2 upgrade for the old Gas Well building. It’d be unlocked when researching Gas Refining Technology and would require Gas Extraction Technology to be researched first. Never made sense that I could unlock Exotic Gas Refineries before I unlocked the means to exploit Exotic Gases but that’s just how Tech RNG rolls I suppose. Anyways, the building buffs output on Gatherers from base of 2 to an output of 4 while simultaneously buffing the output of Farmers from 0.20 per Deposit to 0.50 per Deposit. In other words, 10 Farmers produce 5 Gas as opposed to 2. May seem to be a bit strong but the aim here is to reduce the reliance on Refineries, most notably Ancient Refinery.

Edit*: I was going to include Relic Worlds with the old Gatherer Buildings but they lack the appropriate Planetary Feature to build them and Habitats are Orbital Platforms. They don’t need any more buffs

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

This is just factually incorrect. The refinery buffs all jobs that produce gas/crystals/motes: both worker gatherers and specialist refiners.

View attachment 1185480View attachment 1185481

After the patch, it should even buff the gas/motes/crystal that get incidentally added to miners.

My information came from the Wiki: Ancient Refinery where it states that it only affects Refinery/Specialist jobs. Either the Wiki is wrong(which is indeed possible) or the Refinery is not meant to apply to Strategic Gatherers and now Miners as of 3.13. Having 3 Refiner jobs in one Build slot is strong enough but to then get a universal 40% boost is straight up OP. It’s bad enough we build this thing everywhere but that 40% modifier should only apply to Specialist jobs(aka Refineries) as I see it.

 

[HFY]

My information came from the Wiki: Ancient Refinery where it states that it only affects Refinery/Specialist jobs. Either the Wiki is wrong(which is indeed possible) or the Refinery is not meant to apply to Strategic Gatherers and now Miners as of 3.13. Having 3 Refiner jobs in one Build slot is strong enough but to then get a universal 40% boost is straight up OP. It’s bad enough we build this thing everywhere but that 40% modifier should only apply to Specialist jobs(aka Refineries) as I see it.

The post you quoted included screen shots and code from the game files.

Believe me when I say that screenshots from the game and the code in the game files should be trusted over the wiki.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

But as for 3.13, all they did was shift 1 Strategic Gatherer job(and 1 Build Slot) to Miners that requires using 10 Miners(5 Mining Districts) just to get the same Strategic Output. In other words 5 Districts + 10 Pops = 1 Build Slot + 1 Pop. If you were going to use Miners anyway, great, no harm/foul done. Yet on planets where you were intending to use Technicians or Farmers based on Planetary Features/Modifiers and it just happens to have 1-2 Volatile Motes/Exotic Gas deposits, what are you supposed to do? Before I was able to build my Generator/Agriculture Districts while simultaneously exploiting those deposits(albeit not as efficiently as if it were a Mining/Refinery World) because I had ample Build slots to do so. Yet now I have to take 5 District slots that I wasn’t planning on using and 10 Pops to mine Minerals I may not need just to exploit those Strategic Deposits at the same rate I enjoyed prior to 3.13.

This is not what they did. Regular refineries still exist. You replace your gatherer buildings with refineries (except now, with the freedom to put them anywhere, including a refinery world).

It's not "5 Districts + 10 Pops = 1 Build Slot + 1 Pop". It's 0.5 districts + 1 build slot + 2 pops = 1 build slot + 1 pop. You use the same building slots, but you need 1-2 extra miners to pay the upkeep.

You should not swap from 1 gatherer to 10 miners, then throw away the ~60-150 minerals produced by those miners. That's simply a misuse of the feature.

As for farming/generator planets with strategic resource mining features: you will not use every strategic mining feature in 3.13, just like you don't use every farming/energy/mining district granting feature. You will just use the strategic resource mining features on your best mining planets, just like you only use all the other deposits on the best planets for the relevant job.

The change didn't replace 1 gatherer with 10 miners. The change replaced 1 gatherer with 1 refiner and 1 miner (just as if you had no gatherer features). Or, if you were already making optimal use of the features (and incorporating them into a mining world), it replaced e.g. 10 miners and 1 gatherer with just 10 miners (and freed up a building slot along with the pop).

I mean I understand that 3.13 is really a benefit to Ocean Paradise and especially Life Seeded origin where the 6 SR deposits you start with largely go wasted because you want the build slots for Tech/Unity but outside of that and Relic Worlds(Industrial Sector feature), where else is 3.13 going to really help you? I’d argue that Relic Worlds are better off as Ecumenopolis as opposed to Mining Worlds as you get former Relic World bonus towards Research while also acting as strong Forge/Factory/Unity powerhouses. If anything 3.13 only encourages the status quo of building Ancient Refineries everywhere rather than building multiple Mining Worlds for the explicit purpose of mining Strategics and inflates the production of Rare Crystals since they typically spawn on Frozen worlds with a high amount of Mining District features(making them ideal Mining Worlds).

Everyone who needs minerals, not just Ocean Paradise can use these. The change creates demand for minerals (by replacing refiners with gatherers) and also a feature that can only be used by miners that generate those minerals. For Relic Worlds: this change makes it even more tempting to leave them as Relic Worlds, instead of restoring the ecu ,than before. Previously, you had to choose: use them for research, or use them for mining/strategic gathering. They both used building slots, so you couldn't do both. Now you can have your cake and eat it too: you can both fill the building slots with labs and also use it as a powerful mining world.

It is unfortunate that non-crystal strategics will be less common, since cold worlds tend to have more mining districts. But the fact that the strategic resource deposits add mining districts covers for that.

That is why a suggestion is growing in support to shift the benefit to all three Worker jobs. Technicians would mine Motes(typically found on Dry worlds), Farmers would mine Exotic Gas(typically found on Wet worlds) that has strong synergy with Advanced Bio-Reactor and Miners would retain the ability to mine Rare Crystals(typically found on Frozen worlds). For Relic Worlds and their Industrial Sector, they would generate Gas Refiners/Mote Harvesters/Crystal Miners as Event jobs(similar to Central Spire generating 8 Researcher jobs). These jobs would retain their old production of 2 Strategics and would be buffed by Mining/Refinery Designation but would go away if turned into an Ecumenpolis(hence a notable trade-off).

This does not address the problem at all, even if one were to accept that it's a problem in the first place. If you claim the problem is needing e.g. 10 miners to do the job of a single gatherer, it doesn't become any different if you need 10 farmers. The main thing this accomplishes is making mote production from workers (in non-trade empires) scale into the stratosphere (as energy demand scales much more aggressively than mineral demand) and making gas production from workers either scale even worse than the current version or scale even harder than minerals currently do if the empire is Catalytic. It's exactly the same dynamic, you've just changed which resource the incidental production is tied to toward one that isn't consumed by refiners for motes/gas (or motes/crystals for catalytic).

It would be fine (it's different, but not unhealthy, I think), but it wouldn't actually address any of the issues that you claim create the need for it.

The only thing I think it would actually achieve is let you do the "put your workers on a planet that makes X extra resource" thing 3 times as often, as you can put your farming on a gas planet, your generation on a motes planet, and your mining on a crystal planet, instead of being forced to choose which of the 3 you would like to incidentally generate from mining.

Again, that's fine, but it's just an entirely different change than what you're implying you're making, at least based on the supposed issues it's supposed to fix.

 

[Maethendias]

Just use worlds with strategic resources as your one or two mining worlds then

And then build a habitat somewhere and fill it to the brim with refineries

thats not how this works... especially with how strat ressources are spread around the galaxy either

 

[Maethendias]

Before the change:

• Best mining planet has maybe +15% minerals from jobs.
• A few planets have gatherer jobs, which you can choose to fill (instead of a refinery job somewhere else) to save ~12 minerals in upkeep, but they're building slot inefficient compared to Ancient Refinery.
• Most of your strategics come from Ancient Refineries scattered all over.

After the change:

• Best mining planet has maybe +0.6 base strategics per miner (3 single-features or 1 double-feature and a single-feature).
• No planets have gatherer jobs, everything must come incidentally from miners or from refiners.

The net change is that before, e.g. 20 miners on your best planet make an extra 8*0.15=1.2 minerals each (+24 minerals). That pays for 2 refiners in build-slot-efficient Ancient Refineries instead of gatherers, saving you 1 building slot*. Now, e.g. 20 miners on your best planet make an extra 0.6*~2=1.2 strategics each (24 strategics). That completely replaces around 6 refiners (maybe only 5), saving you 2 building slots and 6 pops.

---

*If you weren't short on minerals, such that you would have to build useless miners in order to take advantage of these features... then you weren't short on minerals and wouldn't have used the gatherers, because the refinery is just more efficient.

Either the change doesn't affect you at all (because you didn't have miners before and won't have miners after) or it's a net improvement in power (not that this is a good thing in itself) and ability to specialize worlds.

There are reasons to dislike it (power inflation, more RNG in planet value), but "it makes you build useless mines" isn't a thing that actually happens.

the problem isnt efficiency, the problem is the fact that planets become more and more faceless which ALREADY is a massive problem with stellaris
planetary features literally are the only thing that differenciates planets from each other

 

[Abdulijubjub]

the problem isnt efficiency, the problem is the fact that planets become more and more faceless which ALREADY is a massive problem with stellaris
planetary features literally are the only thing that differenciates planets from each other

This makes planets less faceless. Previously, the optimal way to play was to completely ignore gatherers unless you were swimming in building slots. Now the strategic resource features are actually useful, and you take them into account while deciding which place to mine on.

 

[Getty]

No, Miners would require that you build Mines.

Gatherers -- people who gather an abundant resource -- would just be there for the cost of tech research when you settle the planet.

Make it a colony Decision with a cost if there must be some resource expenditure, but don't attach those resources to Miner jobs when there are some empires which don't need nearly as many Miners as other empires.

This planetary decision that you are asking for is an absolute no brainer. Literally no dilemma whatsoever. What you are proposing is that there should be, in practice, no sacrifice, in terms of planetary infrastructure, to extract strategic resources. I disagree. Whilst consuming building slots is quite annoying, having to "waste" districts is a lot better IMO.

No, that part makes no sense at all. That's the part which needs a justification and currently has none.

You do realize that strategic resource gatherers and miners, lore wise, are essentially almost exactly the same thing? Whether be exotic gases, or crystals, or motes, these things are overwhelmingly extracted and harvested from the ground and soil. Occasionally harvested from vents in the case of exotic gases or gas giants. Just like how there is a meaningful degree of crossover and shared skills and equipment between oil extraction and coal mining, it is implied even in the game, such as through the mining planetary designation also increasing strategic resource gatherer output, that lorewise the people in Stellaris that manage the mines and the people that gather strategic resources work in the same broad industrial " inert resource extraction" field.

IMHO a Penal Colony should push you towards the Authoritarian ethic.

It should be an option for non-Fan Egalitarians, but not a good idea for them -- their major Egal faction should oppose it, and it should generally harm that faction's membership numbers if you run one for a long time -- but it should be an option just in case you need that short-term worker enhancement (e.g. if you conquered a bunch of Serviles or Nerve-Stapled pops and you just need to push through to Synth Ascension to save them from their DNA).

But yeah a Penal Colony should not be a happy & harmonious decision for an Egalitarian.

I disagree. I think there could still be crime or bad people to be “rehabilitated” in an egalitarian and also fanegalitarian society. You can already determine the living standards of the prisoners anyways. Just put utopian abundance if you want to roleplay utopian. Also, reminder that you can be fanegalitarian and still have little to no internal political consequences for nuking an entire planet in war if you are militarist also.

 

[HFY]

This planetary decision that you are asking for is an absolute no brainer. Literally no dilemma whatsoever. What you are proposing is that there should be, in practice, no sacrifice, in terms of planetary infrastructure, to extract strategic resources. I disagree. Whilst consuming building slots is quite annoying, having to "waste" districts is a lot better IMO.

Incorrect, I am not asking for a planetary decision. I'm asking for free gatherers (if you have the tech and own the planet) which make the planet more valuable.

If there must be some kind of speed-bump, make it a planetary decision -- but I'm not asking for the speed bump. I'm asking for free gatherer jobs to be created directly by the planet's features.

Gatherer jobs should influence colonization and claim priority.

You do realize that strategic resource gatherers and miners, lore wise, are essentially almost exactly the same thing?

Incorrect, gathering gas in a swamp or crystals in a forest does not sound anything like mining.

I disagree. I think there could still be crime or bad people to be “rehabilitated” in an egalitarian and also fanegalitarian society. You can already determine the living standards of the prisoners anyways. Just put utopian abundance if you want to roleplay utopian. Also, reminder that you can be fanegalitarian and still have little to no internal political consequences for nuking an entire planet in war if you are militarist also.

Egalitarians are about the freedom of their citizens. That is directly contrary to imprisoning their citizens.

And it has nothing to do with nuking an enemy made of non-citizens (who might be Terminators or Tyranids or Fanatic Purifiers).

You seem to be confusing some issues which are irrelevant.

 

[Getty]

Incorrect, I am not asking for a planetary decision. I'm asking for free gatherers (if you have the tech and own the planet) which make the planet more valuable.

If there must be some kind of speed-bump, make it a planetary decision -- but I'm not asking for the speed bump. I'm asking for free gatherer jobs to be created directly by the planet's features.

Gatherer jobs should influence colonization and claim priority.

I just disagree. I think it should be dependent on infrastructure and expenditure. Unless you are proposing for the decision to be repeatable, which would be insanely overpowered, I think that tying strategic resource generation to mining districts is far more reasonable than strategic resources used for highly advanced technology just popping from the ground and being grabbed. It makes sense for colonist jobs to appear suddenly and with little infrastructure infrastructure, that is literally the job definition. The rare and strategic resource "gatherers" dont "gather" them with their hands. They manage and operate the machines and infrastructure that gather the resources.

Incorrect, gathering gas in a swamp or crystals in a forest does not sound anything like mining.

You are just being completely obtuse right now. Modifiers in game applied to miners are, consistently, also applied to RR gatherers. Going and harvesting the rare gas from a swamp is literally just a more sophisticated sci fi version of extracting natural gas. The game itself hints at this and states this with mining planetary designation also affecting resource gatherers. The mining edict also affected rare resource gatherers. And now rare resources come from miners, because the mcguffin job requiring you to consume a whole building slot is annoying. The fact that the developers themselves implemented this change is a clear statement in favour of the simple, obvious reality that there is significant overlap between mining and RR gathering.

Egalitarians are about the freedom of their citizens. That is directly contrary to imprisoning their citizens.

And it has nothing to do with nuking an enemy made of non-citizens (who might be Terminators or Tyranids or Fanatic Purifiers).

You seem to be confusing some issues which are irrelevant.

Firstly, the people in the prison planet dont necessarily have full citizenship rights, that is why they are in the prison planet. Quite simple.

Secondly, egalitarians value "citizen freedom", but they are not "about it". They are about opposition to inequality and "oppression" of those considered to be within the community. That is why resettlement, free movement restrictions, and even autocracy, generally angers them less than reproductive freedoms restrictions or stratified economy. People being put in a permanently ordained situation of poverty as a result of being workers (stratified) or being discriminately prevented from "having children" actually bothers them more than dictatorship itself or being prevented from migration. The continually "unjustified" oppression of the "downtrodden" within the ingroup receives greater attention than some ostensible notion of freedom by egalitarians, even if they do care about the latter.

 

[HFY]

The rare and strategic resource "gatherers" dont "gather" them with their hands.

It would be funny if I believed you were trying to make a joke.

The colonists didn't swim through space to get to the planet with their hands either. They came in a space ship will space-age equipment in it. They repurposed the hull to be their capital building. Some of the interior equipment is being used for these automatic jobs.

Literally nobody was talking about "gathering with their hands", that's just you misunderstanding.

You do realize that strategic resource gatherers and miners, lore wise, are essentially almost exactly the same thing?

You are just being completely obtuse right now. Modifiers in game applied to miners are, consistently, also applied to RR gatherers.

You're flip-flopping from "lore-wise" to mechanical modifiers while making personal attacks. You were wrong about the lore.

Regarding the mechanics, those have only aligned since the mining designation changes in 3.x -- if you think the game has been consistent about this over time, you're wrong about that too.

Firstly, the people in the prison planet dont necessarily have full citizenship rights, that is why they are in the prison planet. Quite simple.

Ah, you're debating in bad faith. Okay.

Here's the definition:

egalitarianism​

i-ˌga-lə-ˈter-ē-ə-ˌni-zəm​

1 : a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs​

2: a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among people​

​

Prison colonies are in opposition to that.

Prison colonies are not compatible with the definition Egalitarianism.

 

[GCaelann]

Strategic resource gatherers were a separate job (and IIRC still are in habitats), and refiners continue to be separate jobs, because they imply specialized tools and know-how, they aren't just retooled miners. There are event/feature-based jobs that are separate from standard jobs when the event/feature could just as easily add a standard job instead but it doesn't, so for that reason I think the jobs themselves should continue to be separate, just reformulated.

As for the Penal colony for egalitarians, the flavour text surrounding it gives plenty of authoritarian vibes so as an egal player I don't think it's currently inRP for it to exist the way it does for egals and especially fan egals, but that's just me 2c onion.