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Stellaris Dev Diary #57: Species Rights

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be a meaty one, covering several new features in the 1.5 'Banks' update, as well as some paid features coming in the (unannounced) expansion accompanying Banks. Please note that because of some sickness, we're a little behind in the interface department, so the interface graphics shown today are placeholders and not what will be in the final product.

Species Rights (Free Feature)
The big new feature we'll be talking about today is Species Rights. Previously, what rights your species had were controlled through a set of policies that could only discriminate between 'your founder species' and 'everyone else'. We felt that this was an area in need of more granularity, both to make playing a multispecies empire more interesting and also to create more of a sense of distinction between your pops. Thus, in Banks, it will now be possible to individually determine the rights and obligations of each species in your empire. In addition to setting rights for a species currently in your empire, you can also set rights for species outside your empire (for example granting species you would like to attract to your empire via migration Full Citizenship and a good living standard) and have a default set of rights that is applied to any species you have not specifically configured the rights for.

The most fundamental status of a species in your empire is Citizenship. Citizenship is the overall set of rights and privileges given to a species: Whether they are free or unfree, whether they can participate in the political processes of the country, what restrictions can be placed on them and even whether they have the right to live in your empire at all. In addition to rights and obligations, citizenship also affects Pops' migration attraction: A Pop that is currently enjoying Full Citizenship is unlikely to move to another empire where their rights would be curtailed, and Pops living under second-class citizen conditions are more likely to move somewhere that promises them a better life.
  • Full Citizenship: Species with full citizenship are fully integrated populations in your empire. They have the right to vote in democracies and can become leaders of all types. You are also forbidden from enacting population controls on them.
  • Caste System: Species with a caste system have a mix of full citizenship and slavery, with pops working in the farms and mines being enslaved and the rest being free to enjoy the fruits of the serfs' labor.
  • Limited Citizenship: Species with limited citizenship are tolerated but not integrated populations in your empire. While not enslaved, their right to vote and stand for political office is curtailed, and you can place population restrictions on them and restrict them from being able to settle on your core worlds (more on that below).
  • Slaves: Species with this setting are all enslaved without exception. They have no rights whatsoever and live under the most squalid of conditions.
  • Undesirables: Undesirables are species that you do not wish to exist in your empire. Depending on your purge policy this can either mean that you mean that you target them for extermination, or just try to drive them off from your worlds (more on that below).

Military Service is the martial obligations placed on this species by your empire. It can range from allowing Full Military Service as both soldiers and officers, allowing you to recruit generals and admirals from the species even if they would normally not be allowed to be leaders (for example due to Limited Citizenship) all the way down to a full exemption from all military service.

Living Standards represents how economically favored a population is, for example whether they benefit from social welfare or have restrictions placed on what kinds of occupations they can be employed in. The higher the living standards of a Pop is, the more Consumer Goods it will use, and the happier it will be (more on Consumer Goods below).

Migration Controls determines whether a species is allowed to freely migrate between worlds or not. Restrictions on migrations are always in place for slaves and pops that are being purged.

Population Controls determines whether a species is allowed to grow its population or not. Species with population control will not grow new pops, but neither will their existing pops die off.

In addition to determining what a species is able to do, species rights will also affect a variety of other factors such as happiness and consumer goods (for example, Pops are generally not very pleased about being enslaved or having population controls placed on them). Different factions in your empire will also have different preferences for what species rights you employ, such as Authoritarian pops liking Caste Systems and Supremacist factions being less than happy with granting Full Citizenship to aliens.
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Purge and Slavery Types (Paid Feature)
In addition to the free species rights given to everyone in the Banks update, there is also a paid element, namely the special Purge and Slavery policies that allows you define in which manner your empire utilizes slavery and purging vis-a-vis specific species. The default options (Chattel Slavery and Extermination) are always available even without the expansion, and those without the expansion can also make use of Displacement via a policy, but the rest are only for expansion owners.

The slavery types are as follows:
  • Chattel Slavery: This represents forced labor on a massive scale. Chattel Slaves have a bonus to food and mineral production and a large penalty to energy/science production and under a Caste System all Pops producing Minerals and Food will be enslaved.
  • Domestic Servitude: This represents a combination of plantation slavery and indentured servitude. Domestic Servants have no boost to any resource production and a small penalty to mineral/energy/science production, but increase the happiness of all non-enslaved citizen pops on the planet.
  • Battle Thralls: This represents a system of enforced martial serfdom. Battle Thralls have no boost to any resource production and a moderate penalty to energy/science production, but armies recruited from them are stronger.
  • Livestock: This represents a species that is regularly culled to be used as food. Livestock produce a fixed number of extra food, but are completely unable to produce any other kind of resource.
The purge types are as follows:
  • Extermination: The species is systemically killed off by any means available. This is the fastest form of purging, but pops subject to it are unable to produce any resources while they are busy dying off.
  • Displacement: The species is driven away through the use of forced resettlement and destruction of their homes. Displaced pops will not be killed, but rather will attempt to flee the empire to other, more welcoming empires, and might even try to settle uncolonized planets. This process is slow, but generates less outrage among other empires than the other forms of purging.
  • Forced Labor: The species is placed in camps and forced to do hard labor under brutal conditions with inadequate food and shelter, effectively working them to death. Pops doing Forced Labor will be killed off more slowly than through extermination, but will continue to produce minerals, food and (at a significant penalty) energy.
  • Processing: The species is processed into food for the consumption of other Pops. Pops being Processed generate a fixed amount of food and die off at a fairly fast pace, but cannot be put to use producing any other resources.
  • Neutering: The species is prevented from reproducing through chemical castration or biological modification, eventually dying off naturally. Neutered Pops continue to function normally and may even be given a high standard of life, but have a large penalty to their happiness. The speed at which they die off varies based on the species' natural lifespan, but is typically very slow.
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Consumer Goods (Free Feature)
Another issue we're trying to tackle in Banks is mineral inflation. Mineral production has a tendency to snowball in the mid- and lategame, particularly in large, sprawling empires. In order to address this we've introduced a new mineral cost called Consumer Goods. Consumer Goods represents the portion of your industrial base that is occupied with seeing to the needs of your population, ie producing butter instead of guns. Each Pop in your empire will use a certain amount of Consumer Goods each month, with the amount primarily dependent on their living standards. Each unit of consumer goods costs a certain number of minerals dependening on factors such as ethics, traditions, whether your empire is engaged in a defensive war and so on.
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Refugees and Core Worlds (Free Feature)
The last thing we'll be covering today is some new policies that tie into the mechanics of species rights. The Core Worlds Population policy determines which Pops are allowed to live on your core (non-sector) planets, and can be set to either allow only citizen Pops (Full Citizenship/Caste System), citizen and slave Pops (Full Citizenship/Caste System/Slaves) or open them up to all species. If you restrict your core worlds and there are prohibited Pops living there, they will move away, either migrating to your sectors or fleeing your empire altogether if there is another empire willing to take them. It is also possible for Pops that are enslaved or targeted for extermination to escape your empire, particularly if there is an influential Xenophile faction that is helping them flee.

Whether or not another empire is willing to accept those fleeing purges, slavery and resettlement depends on your Refugees policy. You can choose to accept other species will open arms, allowing refugee Pops to freely move into your empire, be more restrictive and accept only those Pops you have deigned to grant citizenship, or simply shut down acceptance of refugees altogether.
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Right, that's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about something I know a lot of people have been wanting for some time: Orbital Habitats. Don't miss it.
 
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Vishaing said:
Looks Good. My only complaint, because of course I have one, is that I'm not too happy with "Living Standards" being an Empire Wide Policy that magically improves everyone's standard of living.

Instead, what I would recommend is giving each planet a "Living Standards" or "Prosperity" value. The higher this value, the higher Pop Happiness is, and it also provides boosts to Energy and Science Production, while incresing the Consumer Goods consumption of Pops on the planet.

Instead of setting an extra Policy for each species regarding their Standard of Living, the other policies controlling their Citizenship Status, Slavery Type, etc, would work kinda like Habitability, and provide a Cap on how much of the Prosperity Modifier they can use.

Instead of having a Species Wide Policy, you could instead have a set of Welfare Policies and Edicts that artificially increase the Prosperity Value for those pops, but only as far as increasing Happiness and Consumer Goods Consumption goes, or at double the Consumer Goods Consumption increase.

I think this system would make more sense, and help diversify planets. Now, a Rich Planet becomes way more important. AND, way more vulnerable, because Concentrated Bombardment, Blockades, and even just destroying stations in the system will affect Prosperity quite a bit. Since Prosperous Planets will become your primary source of Energy, that means Raiding is now a bit more useful. Letting an enemy blockade a Prosperous Core World for a month won't just remove their direct energy contribution, but may knock it down to half or a quarter of what it was for Years to come.

So with that said, would it be possible to mod this to work like the system I propose above? Is it possible to add "pop_consumer_goods_rate" to a Planet or Pop Modifier which can be added and removed by event? In a pinch, can Buildings influence the Consumer Goods Consumption of the Pop that works that Building? Is it possible to restrict the effects of Planet Modifiers to only affect certain pops?

Other than that complaint it looks good.
Click to expand...


I think this has merit and should be looked at.
 
I would like to echo the people who want sector-wide settings, like "I welcome refugees in this sector and no others", or "Tingeling Dragons have voting rights in Sector II, and nowhere else".

Evilfisher said:
now what would be really cool next is, each pop having its own age and sex, so that eventually they would die off and they would have to give birth to replacements, their age also depends on their traits and research

also recruiting units would actually drain from the populations on the planets
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Since every "pop" represents many, many people, no, I would not want this. Then you'd have like, what, eight people living on an entire planet. No thanks.

Edit:
To expand on this, what would be interesting would be to have each pop be a "container" like armies and divisions in EU and HOI. In other words, every "pop" can grow to x amount of people, with tresholds for 100% productivity and for overpopulation. These tresholds would be modified by various factors, of course.

This I feel would also make things like migration, resettlement, and deaths from bombardment a lot more "smooth". Instead of a whole pop leaving you would have part of that pop relocate.

Think I'll make a separate thread on this rather than derail this one, though.
 
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I just had a nerdgasm - Stellaris is already my favorite game (and tbh, some of these features have been kind of available in some form in mods - orbitals, slavery mechanics) and now I'm all hyped for the patch + DLC :D

EDIT: Oh yeah, loving the "food" options... I'm so going to munch my way across the Galaxy now!
 
Vishaing said:
Looks Good. My only complaint, because of course I have one, is that I'm not too happy with "Living Standards" being an Empire Wide Policy that magically improves everyone's standard of living.

Instead, what I would recommend is giving each planet a "Living Standards" or "Prosperity" value. The higher this value, the higher Pop Happiness is, and it also provides boosts to Energy and Science Production, while incresing the Consumer Goods consumption of Pops on the planet.

Instead of setting an extra Policy for each species regarding their Standard of Living, the other policies controlling their Citizenship Status, Slavery Type, etc, would work kinda like Habitability, and provide a Cap on how much of the Prosperity Modifier they can use.

Instead of having a Species Wide Policy, you could instead have a set of Welfare Policies and Edicts that artificially increase the Prosperity Value for those pops, but only as far as increasing Happiness and Consumer Goods Consumption goes, or at double the Consumer Goods Consumption increase.

I think this system would make more sense, and help diversify planets. Now, a Rich Planet becomes way more important. AND, way more vulnerable, because Concentrated Bombardment, Blockades, and even just destroying stations in the system will affect Prosperity quite a bit. Since Prosperous Planets will become your primary source of Energy, that means Raiding is now a bit more useful. Letting an enemy blockade a Prosperous Core World for a month won't just remove their direct energy contribution, but may knock it down to half or a quarter of what it was for Years to come.

So with that said, would it be possible to mod this to work like the system I propose above? Is it possible to add "pop_consumer_goods_rate" to a Planet or Pop Modifier which can be added and removed by event? In a pinch, can Buildings influence the Consumer Goods Consumption of the Pop that works that Building? Is it possible to restrict the effects of Planet Modifiers to only affect certain pops?

Other than that complaint it looks good.
Click to expand...
Living standard is on a Species basis not empire basis.
 
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SnakeInATopHat said:
Maybe something like a fuel system where hyper/warp ships only have so many jumps untill they would need something like a tanker ship (AI controlled) to come refuel them and if you cut off the ships then they are stuck in that system unless they could break your blockade this would also help the doomstack problem as you would need to keep at least one smaller fleet for blockade breaking and maybe another for blockading the enemy

And if combined with the damaged ships retreat idea you could potentially have a long war with need to use tactics for once

Wormhole empires have WH generators to deal with so intercepting already kinda works there
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I don't like the whole different propulsion techs available at the start. I think it fundamentally messes with balance, but that's a whole different story. I think implementing a system like CKII for battles where you can assign more than one commander and it is the commander's traits combined with the ship designers that affects tactics. One ship retreating at a time might be annoying and micro intensive, but I could see groups of ships under a single commander retreating if they took a beating.

Looking at some other 4x games, giving the ships general supplies that they burn through by firing weapons, moving, and just existing (feeding crew, maintenance, etc). Anything that breaks doomstacks and makes for a more strategic experience is a plus in my book.
 
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Wiz said:
We're not removing the ability to enslave or purge, it's only the special-flavor types of purging/slaving that are expansion locked. Displacement is also available to everyone, as the DD explicitly says.

At the end of the day, developing Stellaris not free. We have to charge for some things, and in this case we choose to keep most of this massive feature free and charge for extra flavor.
Click to expand...

This update seems to be a great one. I usually buy all my DLC's only once they become available on sale, but I'm seriously considering to buy this upon release as a 'thank you' for the update.
 
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Czaristan said:
I don't like the whole different propulsion techs available at the start. I think it fundamentally messes with balance, but that's a whole different story. I think implementing a system like CKII for battles where you can assign more than one commander and it is the commander's traits combined with the ship designers that affects tactics. One ship retreating at a time might be annoying and micro intensive, but I could see groups of ships under a single commander retreating if they took a beating.

Looking at some other 4x games, giving the ships general supplies that they burn through by firing weapons, moving, and just existing (feeding crew, maintenance, etc). Anything that breaks doomstacks and makes for a more strategic experience is a plus in my book.
Click to expand...

With the ships retreating the idea behind it is they would fall back to the nearest spaceport and repair and if you lose the battle you would have most if not all of your fleet in a (hopefully) heavily fortified system and the enemy would have to go repaired before they could mount an attack against that system giving you time to reinforce your fleet
 
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This stuff should've been in release but I am happy the game is getting closer to what we expect from a Paradox game.

Sort out strategic combat doomfleet issues that make war very dull too and then it would've got 9 on metacritic rather than middling release scores it has.
 
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Could add "Revered" status to citizenship. Triggered from evens or Accession perks. Pops that share ethos with the revered pop and gain +5% happiness and are less likely to migrate from the world. Pops that have low living standards gain less of a penalty and are less likely to create factions.
 
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I am disappoint.


There was no Soilent Green reference in the first page.
 
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@Wiz

It would be a really awesome touch if other species had dialogue lines occasionally specifically relating to how you are treating other species. So instead of merely chastising you for having slavery, they would recognize that you're in Livestock mode: "You are EATING the Kerfluffians?! How deplorable!" Or that you are in Domestic Servitude mode: "I guess someone has to clean your boots." Could probably work in a line that occasionally pops up for each check box in the new screen, including living conditions, purging types, etc.
 
I wonder if in 1.5 the composition of a planets population will affect something. A planet only inhabited by slaves or lifestock should revolt pretty quickly or at least the pops there should flee much more easily than on mixed planets.
 
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Ixal said:
I wonder if in 1.5 the composition of a planets population will affect something. A planet only inhabited by slaves or lifestock should revolt pretty quickly or at least the pops there should flee much more easily than on mixed planets.
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Maybe not though, if they are all in the same bad state they might not see a problem in it, on the other side a bunch of abused slave within sight of a prosperous free city they might get enraged

Just a thought
 
There are so many ways to be mean... Is it at all possible to play a peaceful respectful nation and win? (Instead of being enslaved, neutered, eaten and exterminated?)
 
Ixal said:
I wonder if in 1.5 the composition of a planets population will affect something. A planet only inhabited by slaves or lifestock should revolt pretty quickly or at least the pops there should flee much more easily than on mixed planets.
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Actually scratch that. Now that I think about it this is too much micro and another area the sector AI can screw up.
 
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Wiz said:
Correct, you no longer do it on a per pop basis.
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So there will be no good way to reduce populations of recently conquered planets when you already have integrated pops of that species in your empire, without affecting other worlds?
Killing off half a planet to make room for some POPs to migrate in was pretty useful. Also helped with getting mixed planets for xenophile bonuses..
 
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