Stellaris Dev Diary #384 - The Art of BioGenesis

[Tannhäuser Cake]

It's strange that rulers, specialists and workers all produce pops that then can become unemployed or move to jobs. It's confusing and its not making sense.

It may actually be kind of realistic that there can be an "overproduction" of Elite pops. Some have argued that it (having more people born or elevated into elite classes than there are positions for) is a contributing reason to recent years' rise of populism that is fascinatingly often led by people from the elite stratum - people who failed to advance within the elite to their desired status.

Like a few people said before, do we really need unemployment anymore ?
The bonus of shared burden, utopian abundance and the like compared to stratified society can be entirely done with bonus and malus to civilian happiness and outputs. Having always 4 or 5 unemployed rulers on the planet because rulers generate rules makes no sense optimization wise. Those 5 rulers have 0 impact on stability (5 compared to the working 1000 rulers is nothing) but they generate a group that requires its own calculation. Having all pops generate civilians solves that as civilians already try to fill better jobs.
We will lose on the stability hit of removing buildings but is this interaction really necessary for the game balance ? I doubt it.

This argument, however, I can sort of sympathise with. If unemployment does not make a meaningful impact, it should either be removed or changed so that it does make an impact.

If unemployment is removed, I would personally like to see new mechanics for pop promotion and demotion that incorporate the species traits that currently only affect leaders (such as xp gain modifiers and lifespan modifiers), but "realistically" should have a societal impact as well. There are at least two different paths for that.

The first could be that pop groups get experience points, which earns them ranks, that in turn give job bonuses. In this post-pop / pop-group world, this could translate to each pop group having an experience point distribution where the number of pops at each rank would be a function of xp gain, lifespan and traits like Talented. This would however require monthly recalculations and might interact with the Workforce assignment system in very complicated ways, and it would "only" be another way to get output/workforce bonuses, so it could be much work and cpu burden for an effect that might not be terribly exciting.

The other, more exciting alternative could be a pop education/training/promotion system. Here is one potential implementation:

• All pop growth and assembly occurs in the Civilian stratum (assembly jobs would still exist, to represent the physical production of new bodies from physical resources, but the throughput capacity of assembly jobs could depend on the number of Civilians; it takes a village to raise a child).
  • Performance benefits are manifold:
    • much fewer population growth checks, since only Civilian pop groups need to be checked for pop growth
    • fewer pop groups would exist, since strata would no longer spawn pops into unemployment, which also means fewer pop groups to check
  • Design benefits:
    • it makes Civilians desirable, even essential, without relying on bonuses that can make them directly outcompete "military/government sector jobs"
      • since Research and Unity (and Alloys) are investments that draw on the other job outputs, one straightforward solution to make Civilians truly "competitive" is to make them an investment as well, rather than a source of outputs normally produced by other jobs and then used by Research and Unity (and Alloy) jobs
      • this could be a final resolution to the ancient Clerk dilemma, where a position is mostly "worthleast" but can situationally be buffed enough to outcompete other jobs in their own outputs (previously it was energy credits from Technicians, now it can be traded goods in general); Civilians could hold a unique role, with a main "output" that is desired alongside, not instead of, all other jobs' outputs
    • it opens up whole new strategic considerations, since population growth becomes a function of how much the player chooses to (not) put into Research and Unity (and Alloys)
      • it would become possible for empires to focus hard on population growth, by sacrificing progress in other areas
        • there would no longer be as rigidly linear correlations between empire/population size and population growth rate; population growth rates would vary naturally over time, representing varying degrees of societal "hardships" / changing socioeconomic priorities
      • "breast-feeding" recently enlightened empires could help them catch up faster, by providing them with security and technology and allowing them to focus on growth; taxing subjects harshly can similarly be about long-term power balance as much as the resources gained
      • becoming the subject of a "sugar parent" empire could be a strategy to gain a growth opportunity, by spending less on defense and technology (which they provide) and letting more pops fill the Civilian role
        • if subjects tended to focus more on growth/Civilians (since they are supposedly protected by their overlord) it could become harder for overlords to stay on top in the long run
    • it makes logical-sociological-economic sense, since Civilians cover all of the civilian jobs that facilitate the raising and integration of new individuals into society; the premise is that in the future, family planning and societal integration capacity would effectively go hand in hand (it is not that Miners and Entertainers would stop being fertile, it is just that their family planning would depend on how well their society accomodates the raising of children; pop growth rates do not reflect the theoretical biological growth capacity, but rather the societal growth capacity)
    • (it could also allow a whole new take on the Economic Policy's options; a Militarized Economy could be better for naval capacity, war exhaustion, alloy production and perhaps also promotion times, while a Civilian Economy could be better for growth, trade and amenities)
• Education/training jobs are added as the sole gateways to higher strata.
  • Pops cannot normally take a job in a stratum, unless they are already in that stratum.
  • Apprentice, Student and Aspirant "jobs" are added, to funnel pop promotion from the Civilian stratum to the Worker, Specialist and Elite strata.
  • The number of education positions is equal to the number of job openings in the respective strata. Job weights could similarly be derived from the vacant positions (or, alternatively, the education positions could be where pops get sent if they want to apply for a job vacancy; or, alternatively, each job could create education positions of its own, with the same job weights).
  • Upon graduating from an education job, a pop is "demoted" to the respective higher stratum.
  • Pops finish their educations at a rate that depends on the xp gain rate of the pops involved; Swift Learners would graduate faster.
    • The mean time to happen for a promotion could be 2 years for Apprentices, 5 years for Students, and 10 years for Aspirants.
      • Policies, edicts and other modifiers could alter these values, while also providing job bonuses. Longer training for bigger bonuses, at the cost of a shorter worklife - or the other way around...
    • This means that Transcendent Learning (the ascension perk), Meritocracy (the civic) and similar bonuses could also influence graduation rates.
• Pops retire from jobs to Civilian status at a rate that is a function of their lifespan.
  • Either as a "demotion" to Civilian, or as an actual deletion of the pop.
  • This creates population turnover and new job openings that need to be filled via education, helping oil the socioeconomic machinery against pops holding entrenched positions.
    • Barring discrimination, demographics will now definitely eventually reach the higher strata as well.
    • Pops living in a bad climate will eventually get a chance to emigrate away as Civilians, even if they are currently imprisoned by job weights in an Elite job against their will.
  • Lifespan traits now matter for the economy, because they allow pops to spend a larger share of their lives in jobs before they retire.
    • Pops with longer lifespans would be naturally over-represented in the cushy, non-Civilian job positions.
  • Lifespan modifiers for pops would give the developers another tool for adding flavour and impacts of various choices.
    • Living standards could now give different lifespan modifiers for different strata, giving more egalitarian empires the benefit of workers who live longer (and who thereby spend a smaller share of their worklife on training, though perhaps they also spend 1 more year in education on average).
    • Oppressive edicts that work pops really hard could result in more frequent demotions/retirements/deaths, representing a substantially shorter lifespan for those affected. Yes, I am looking at you, Extended Shifts.
    • A number of Happiness modifiers could probably be replaced with Lifespan modifiers, and many events that enable lifespan bonuses for leaders could now also feature more egalitarian alternatives.
      • The Tree of Life could offer a population lifespan modifier of +1 year, instead of the current Happiness bonus. (This could arguably be replaced with a special "Tree of Life" policy choice, since we may change our minds in the future, after a glorious revolution or two.)
  • Aristocratic Elite could stop the lifespan-based demotion for the Elite stratum. Or at least, for pops working Noble jobs. They would be really entrenched, just like the tooltip says!
• Lifespan and experience gain traits would now influence the number of jobs that are vacant, while the replacements are being trained. Swifter learners would spend less time in education, while longer-lived pops would keep their jobs longer before they retire. These traits would, finally, no longer be irrelevant for the economies and societies of Stellaris. (The Talented trait could perhaps also be worked into this system, or perhaps it could be revamped as a small bonus to Specialist jobs, similar to the Strong trait for Worker jobs. And perhaps Intelligent could become the equivalent to "Very Strong". Or perhaps there is some better solution for Talented/Jinxed.)

 

[Huskermax5]

DD got a hotfix!

 

[Darlf]

please make better pop growth and asemble system it tereble you have 0 control over it in BIO uptade !!!!! LITERALY last one and first one where 10 bettere in evry way

 

[Lorenerd11]

There are some civics I do not recognize, what were those supposed to be?

 

[Idle America]

Did you restore the pie charts?

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

There are some civics I do not recognize, what were those supposed to be?

My highly educated guess would be that the middle, corporate civic was called "The Fast and the Furyan" and was about not entirely legal space racing involving the performance of riddickulously unlikely stunts in prohibitively expensive vehicles, running from bounty hunters, and treasuring familial units so much that your eyes start to shine.

 

[Bobwoodword]

For what it’s worth I thought the art and ship designs were some of the best yet. It’s a small thing but I particularly liked the icons for the purity route of biogenesis.

 

[Lazy Name]

There are some civics I do not recognize, what were those supposed to be?

View attachment 1299927

A few of the species traits seem to have been unused, too.

I'm kind of curious what that saxophone trait was for.

 

[StragaSevera]

My highly educated guess would be that the middle, corporate civic was called "The Fast and the Furyan" and was about not entirely legal space racing involving the performance of riddickulously unlikely stunts in prohibitively expensive vehicles, running from bounty hunters, and treasuring familial units so much that your eyes start to shine.

And now I officially require this civic to be added to Stellaris.

After they fix the horrible state of the current game, of course.

 

[couriervictor]

Would anyone happen to know where these are in-game, or are they unused?
Those organic assets look super cool and I haven't seen them before so I wondered!

 

[Lorenerd11]

A few of the species traits seem to have been unused, too.

I'm kind of curious what that saxophone trait was for.

The saxophone trait is actually in the game, it is one of the automodding targets for Malleable Genes/Adaptive Mutations.

 

[SteelCrow]

The species portraits are getting better and better! Reasonable sensory organs, sturdy musculature, and aesthetic flair. If I were an extraterrestrial alien, I would also want to be adaptable, strong, and beautiful. These are a meteoric improvement over the originals, please keep this level of quality going forward!