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

[HFY]

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

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.

Also, it can still be interesting. It increases the importance of mining district slots massively, which makes sense.

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

I still think it's kind of funny that egalitarians (or at least fanatic ones) even have access to penal colonies in the first place as they are right now, because the flavor text surrounding them (and the artificial moral codes tech) seems pretty questionable for such a society. I mean, labor camps, really? How do you rationalize that?

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.

 

[Ajacoba]

Food has to be renamed 'Biomass' just so we don't get discrepancy gripes from people who would dispute the transmutation potential of a Xenana.

except Stellaris Food canonically includes tasty space salts - which arguably aren't biomass

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Once upon a time, there was a suggestion that the three different types of refinery jobs should use different raw materials for different strategic resources. Minerals for crystals, food for gasses, and energy for volatile motes. It would reduce the over-reliance on minerals and give a new use for food and energy credits.

It would be consistent if a similar distinction was also made for the extraction of the resources. This would not contradict the descriptions of the strategic resources (see the link above), and could also make sense for the deposit feature descriptions.

The three strategic resources' corresponding technologies should then also be distributed evenly across the three technology areas, matching the technologies that increase production of resources that can be refined into strategic resources. For volatile motes, this is already the case as those technologies are in Physics, together with the technologies that boost energy production. The same goes for rare crystals, currently in Engineering together with the mineral production boosters. Only exotic gases would need to be relocated, from Engineering to the technology tree where the food production boosters are located - i.e. Society (Biology).

(Moving those two technologies from Engineering to Society would also slightly improve the content balance of the tech trees.)

Having food produce one of the rare resources would have the unfortunate side effect of forcing non-food using empires to either have almost none of that resource, or to produce a vast amount of wasted food.

 

[Ajacoba]

yeah, at least minerals and energy are universally useful

 

[HFY]

Having food produce one of the rare resources would have the unfortunate side effect of forcing non-food using empires to either have almost none of that resource, or to produce a vast amount of wasted food.

Yeah, food into gas should be ONE option, but not the default, and certainly not the only option.

yeah, at least minerals and energy are universally useful

True, but there's a disconnect because energy does not equal Technicians, and minerals do not equal Miners.

There are plenty of empires which use very few Miners -- a Catalytic Overlord for example, or anyone who lucks into a bunch of amazing Arc Furnace systems.

 

[mrt1212]

except Stellaris Food canonically includes tasty space salts - which arguably aren't biomass

I'll take that exception with a grain of...biomass.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Having food produce one of the rare resources would have the unfortunate side effect of forcing non-food using empires to either have almost none of that resource, or to produce a vast amount of wasted food.

Why would there be "a vast amount of wasted food", if food is used to synthesize the rare resource?

 

[GCaelann]

Having food produce one of the rare resources would have the unfortunate side effect of forcing non-food using empires to either have almost none of that resource, or to produce a vast amount of wasted food.

Theoretically you'd still need that food for the refineries, as well as for the bio-reactor. Perhaps empires that don't use food should have higher throughput of exotic gases, seeing as they can afford to convert all that food into other resources.

Actually, now that I think about it, there is already precedent in this, seeing as the advanced bio-reactor already makes farmers produce a little bit of exotic gases.

 

[HFY]

Actually, now that I think about it, there is already precedent in this, seeing as the advanced bio-reactor already makes farmers produce a little bit of exotic gases.

I like the advanced bio-reactor as an option.

The energy generation is a bit weird and inefficient, but the idea of reducing food in trade for exo-gas is good.


I would hate it if that was the only way to generate gas.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

After thinking about it for a bit, I think getting rare resources as add-ons from miner jobs rather than as dedicated extractor jobs may work better than it first appears. Without the upkeep-free extractor jobs, you will have an increased demand for minerals - as upkeep for a few extra refiners. You don't want to look at it as working miner jobs just for the rare resources and wasting all the minerals output, but as the bonus output offsetting how many refineries you need to build & staff. You'll end up saving a couple building slots across your empire and having more control over where they're used, since refineries aren't restricted by planetary features.

Aye, that might need a bit of a rework. Either turn it into a regular tech instead of rare or make it a bit more accessible (lower tech tier, unlocked by traditions like Domination, whatever works). The same goes for thrall worlds. I feel they need to come online a bit earlier than Ecus.

Maybe the Civil Exclusion agenda from the Domination tradition could grant Thrall Worlds / Penal Colonies as research options, similar to how Conquer Nature from the Adaptability tradition gives access to terraforming techs?

 

[Radenmar]

Hi, love the change of the dev diary.
I have one question, it's possible to create a penal arcology with the rework or no? It's should be great to have the new districts adapted to an ecu.

 

[captainbeastfeast]

While it may make more sense, we figured it would feel too limited when you might want to use things like Xenomorph or other special armies (which we can assume undergo special training on your thrall worlds training alongside your Battle Thralls).

Edit: @Gruntsatwork points out this sounds like a movie plot.

So you can train FACEHUGGERS?

Teach me master

 

[HFY]

After thinking about it for a bit, I think getting rare resources as add-ons from miner jobs rather than as dedicated extractor jobs may work better than it first appears. Without the upkeep-free extractor jobs, you will have an increased demand for minerals - as upkeep for a few extra refiners. You don't want to look at it as working miner jobs just for the rare resources and wasting all the minerals output, but as the bonus output offsetting how many refineries you need to build & staff. You'll end up saving a couple building slots across your empire and having more control over where they're used, since refineries aren't restricted by planetary features.

"To get this exotic gas, we must either mine minerals we don't need, or grow food we don't eat."

"Or we could build a Habitat. That one system would give us 5 jobs which don't require any mining or farming."

"Yep. That's just how Habitats are."

"Why can't we use those same jobs on a planet?"

"Space God hates planets."

"Amen."

 

[Jay Sherman]

I looooove the changes to planet types and resource extraction! Still, I do think this suggestion improves the implementation quite a bit:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/paired-relationships-between-basic-and-strategic-resources.1702410/

Also the worries about not being able to unlock the technology needed for thrall and penal worlds are real, and the suggestion of linking them somehow to the Domination tradition is *chef's kiss*. To roleplay that kind of empire is exactly why you take Domination in the first place.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Why would there be "a vast amount of wasted food", if food is used to synthesize the rare resource?

Because of the way that food production seems to work.

Once your worlds start producing food, they seem to keep building those jobs - whether needed or not.
If you're not eating some of it, it spirals out of control, especially once you get food production boosting technologies.

If you're manually babysitting *all* your production I guess it's less of an issue, but there's a practical limit on that.

Plus unless you're building outrageous amounts of refineries or they have incredibly high input you end up with the balance being hard to find on a non-food empire.

Other resources at least have places to use them, more or less regardless of the type of empire you are. Power and minerals are *almost* always used by something.


It isn't insurmountable, but it wouldn't be a simple or trivial matter to adjust for non-food empires to have *some* food production without it getting out of hand.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

Once upon a time, there was a suggestion that the three different types of refinery jobs should use different raw materials for different strategic resources. Minerals for crystals, food for gasses, and energy for volatile motes. It would reduce the over-reliance on minerals and give a new use for food and energy credits.

It would be consistent if a similar distinction was also made for the extraction of the resources. This would not contradict the descriptions of the strategic resources (see the link above), and could also make sense for the deposit feature descriptions.

The three strategic resources' corresponding technologies should then also be distributed evenly across the three technology areas, matching the technologies that increase production of resources that can be refined into strategic resources. For volatile motes, this is already the case as those technologies are in Physics, together with the technologies that boost energy production. The same goes for rare crystals, currently in Engineering together with the mineral production boosters. Only exotic gases would need to be relocated, from Engineering to the technology tree where the food production boosters are located - i.e. Society (Biology).

(Moving those two technologies from Engineering to Society would also slightly improve the content balance of the tech trees.)


Edit:
link to new suggestion thread

I just remembered that as far as climate and Deposit features goes each strategic resourse is already paired with a basic resourses, pairs which are the same ones as the suggestion.

Currently volatile motes and Generator Districts are common in dry planets; exotic gases and Agriculture Districts in wet planetas, and rare crystals and Mining Districts in cold planets.

This creates a problem with the 3 strategic resourses being mined, because planets rich in Mining Districts will be more likely to have rare crystals and planets with rare crystals will probably have more Mining Districts, making it easier to get naturally when compared with the other strategic resourses.

 

[HFY]

Other resources at least have places to use them, more or less regardless of the type of empire you are. Power and minerals are *almost* always used by something.

Yeah, agreed.

One suggestion I saw (and maybe posted) was to swap Bio-Reactor from affecting Farmers and have it affect Technicians / Tech Drones instead.

Give the Tech jobs +X food upkeep in trade for +1 energy production, which gives you as a player a nice way to scale how much food you want to burn.

Advanced Bio Reactor would just have its name changed ("Exotic Fermentation Silos") and work on Farmers as it does already, just with a bit more gas and no energy output.

Then you'd have a few choices:
- Reduce food production from Farmers to create gas (requires that you use Farmers)
- Spend food income to produce energy (requires ZERO Farmers, works for Overlords and Livestock-keepers)
- Spend minerals to produce gas via Refinery
- Spend minerals to produce motes via Refinery, then spend motes to produce more food via building
- Spend Energy and Unity for an Edict to boost any basic resource

There would still be a lot of room for places to spend excess Food, but at least there would be a nice mechanism for making excess non-Farmer food income into something you usually want (Energy)

 

[GCaelann]

Currently volatile motes and Generator Districts are common in dry planets; exotic gases and Agriculture Districts in wet planetas, and rare crystals and Mining Districts in cold planets.

This creates a problem with the 3 strategic resourses being mined, because planets rich in Mining Districts will be more likely to have rare crystals and planets with rare crystals will probably have more Mining Districts, making it easier to get naturally when compared with the other strategic resourses.

Yeah, honestly this is the thing that's bugging me the most about this. We're going to be running into a lot of worlds with gas and motes deposits but potentially very little in max mining districts, with a very small base output, rendering those deposits essentially useless.

At that point, you might as well just have the deposits create the jobs themselves, be that directly, or through the x-per-pop model, which I still think is more interesting.

 

[Jekson20level]

It would be better if the deposits provided unique mining districts where only gas/crystals could be mined. It is not logical that each mine has a gas/crystal deposit.

 

[Exasperation]

Yeah, agreed.

One suggestion I saw (and maybe posted) was to swap Bio-Reactor from affecting Farmers and have it affect Technicians / Tech Drones instead.

Give the Tech jobs +X food upkeep in trade for +1 energy production, which gives you as a player a nice way to scale how much food you want to burn.

Advanced Bio Reactor would just have its name changed ("Exotic Fermentation Silos") and work on Farmers as it does already, just with a bit more gas and no energy output.

Then you'd have a few choices:
- Reduce food production from Farmers to create gas (requires that you use Farmers)
- Spend food income to produce energy (requires ZERO Farmers, works for Overlords and Livestock-keepers)
- Spend minerals to produce gas via Refinery
- Spend minerals to produce motes via Refinery, then spend motes to produce more food via building
- Spend Energy and Unity for an Edict to boost any basic resource

There would still be a lot of room for places to spend excess Food, but at least there would be a nice mechanism for making excess non-Farmer food income into something you usually want (Energy)

A while ago, as an experiment, I made a little mod for myself. It adds an "auxiliary reactor" building (+2 technician jobs, limit 1 per planet) that can be upgraded into either an "auxiliary bio-reactor" (+energy from technicians, +food upkeep from technicians) or an "auxiliary thermal reactor" (same deal, but +mineral upkeep instead of +food upkeep). Basically, giving you an extra way to burn whichever of the two your economy has a bigger surplus of.