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Stellaris Dev Diary #9 - Planets & Resources

Greetings Earthlings!

We have spoken earlier about how the galaxy is generated, and today I aim to expand on that somewhat by telling you about the planets and how they differ from each other.

Planet Tiles
Each habitable planet has a number of tiles on its surface, representing the planet’s size. Some tiles might be blocked by natural barriers, such as mountains, and can be cleared to open up new space. When the galaxy is generated, each tile generates a random number and checks if a deposit will be spawned there. A tile can be worked by having a Pop placed in it.

Buildings can also be constructed in tiles, and they often have adjacency bonuses for the resource they are producing. Therefore it will be advantageous to construct your power plants in proximity to each other, to achieve optimal efficiency.

stellaris_dev_diary_09_01_20151116_planet_tiles_2.jpg


Planet Modifiers
Celestial objects come in many different sizes and shapes, and planet modifiers are a part of what can set two planets apart. In the example above, Omaggus III has particularly large lifeforms on it, which could prove fruitful to study.

Deposits
Resources are generated as deposits and they spawn on planets depending on the type of planet, and which modifiers can be found on the planet. Certain resources are also more likely to be found in systems that lie in specific parts in the galaxy, like inside a nebula. All resources cannot appear on all planets, and some planets have a higher chance of hosting certain resources. Asteroids are very likely to have minerals on them, for example.

stellaris_dev_diary_09_02_20151116_build_station_2.jpg


Orbital Resources
Planets that cannot be colonized do not use surface tiles, but they can still generate deposits. Each planet has an orbital resource slot that can be worked if a Mining Station or Research Station is built in orbit around that planet. Sometimes you encounter planets that you could potentially colonize, but that is not habitable enough for you to want to colonize it. In those cases you may also want to construct an orbital station.

The Basic Resources
food.png
Food is a requirement for Pops to grow. If there is plenty of Food, Pops will grow faster. If there is a lack of Food, Pops will be unhappy.

minerals.png
Minerals are used to produce most things in the game. If Minerals represent matter, Energy Credits represent work.

energy.png
Energy Credits represent all liquid assets and energy produced by our Empire. Actions, such as clearing tiles, cost Energy Credits to perform. This resource is mainly used for upkeep, and although it can be hoarded, that might not be the best way of handling it.

physics_research.png
society_research.png
engineering_research.png
Physics Research, Society Research and Engineering Research are used to advance technologies in different fields of science.

stellaris_dev_diary_09_03_20151116_galaxy_view.jpg


Here, have a bonus screenshot! As an interstellar rogue I'm used to breaking the rules.

Join us again next week when we will be telling you about Rare Resources and the Spaceport.
 
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Can someone explain to me how this isn't basically just GalCiv's planet structure? Not some minor detail either; I realize it's not identical, but it looks like basically the same thing. I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong, but given the modifier and tiles and especially adjacency, yeah, I may as well be looking at a GalCivIII mod.
 
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Thanks for the diary entry. I'm impressed by the amount of work going into this, but I'm also becoming apprehensive at the apparent size and complexity of the game, as I see more of it. Some people have an appetite for size and complexity, but for me the ideal game is strategically interesting, mechanically simple.

When you eventually produce this game, I hope I won't be frightened off by the difficulty of getting to grips with it, or the amount of micromanagement needed to play it. That would be a shame.

For comparison, I've played Crusader Kings II, and I found it unnecessarily complicated, but tolerably playable.
 
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I really really want to be excited for this game but the shininess of the graphics make me worry about whether my laptop will be able to handle it, even though it runs other Clauswitz engine games fine. I believe it's been said this game will have the same engine, but do you devs have any idea about whether it will take significantly more computing or graphical power to run Stellaris than, say, EU4?
 
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yerm said:
Can someone explain to me how this isn't basically just GalCiv's planet structure? Not some minor detail either; I realize it's not identical, but it looks like basically the same thing. I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong, but given the modifier and tiles and especially adjacency, yeah, I may as well be looking at a GalCivIII mod.
Click to expand...

Square tiles instead of hexes? I kid...

-The buildings look to be additive, rather than multiplicative as in GC3. I think that's an improvement, since the multiplicative economy is hard to balance.
-Tiles have to be worked, as in the civ franchise
- Tiles locked for reasons other than terraforming
- Base resources in the tiles themselves, rather than (or in addition to) special resources with multiplicative bonuses

Overall, there is a lot of similarity, however, especially the potential for micromanagement.
 
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Hmmm . . . not really terrain. At least not in the sense that would allow detailed ground combat. Looks like ground combat is going to be highly abstracted.
 
Looks so good!

btw, is anyone else wondering whether buildings provide adjacency bonuses to tiles that are vertically and horizontally adjacent? In the screenshot they only provide horizontal bonuses, but I assume that is because the horizontally adjacent tiles have hazards on them.
 
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This looks very micromanagement-heavy. None of it is new to 4X, and yet I don't think people consider this to be an engaging part of their experience. In Civ 5, I tend to simply leave my cities' tileworking automated after the initial few dozen turns, occasionally changing focus when I feel production or food should be emphasised over the other. The worker force, whose main task is to improve those tiles, ends up being largely automated halfway through as well. I'm hoping for Paradox games to have interesting peacetime through internal politics and instead, what I'm seeing is a perfect communist utopia with everybody happy to be working wherever I want them to be for the needs of my interstellar war machine. Which is entirely standard as far as videogames go, but that is the point : I was hoping for Paradox to stray from the norm and bring depth to places that others left shallow.

On the tile view, am I right in guessing that the blue bar underneath that topmost tile, the one with no buildings, indicates colonisation progress ? With the full green bar on other populated tiles indicating a completed colony on this tile ?

Completely unrelated : That political map in the last screenshot is disgustingly unreadable. Fog of war and unexplored territory are well represented, as is warp range (at least I'm guessing that's warp/supply range, the green dotted line). But the rest ? I'm having a lot of trouble telling where the stars are, with their overhead hexagon taking focus away from their location. The space lanes just meld into the background to the point of invisibility within the yellow area. The red question marks, which I'm assuming denote points of interest, look like they should be associated with stars, but are oddly hanging away from them. Same thing with the green arrows : Do they denote fleets hanging in Fillamir and Omaggus ? Is one of them in transit ? Endless Space tackled this problem by removing most of the info from the far views, to let players enjoy their backgrounds - but really, I'm looking for something informative here, make it schematic like your historical games can be in the political map mode.
 
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yerm said:
Can someone explain to me how this isn't basically just GalCiv's planet structure? Not some minor detail either; I realize it's not identical, but it looks like basically the same thing. I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong, but given the modifier and tiles and especially adjacency, yeah, I may as well be looking at a GalCivIII mod.
Click to expand...
VIdeo-games copy features from each other all the time! It's called iteration. It comes as no surprise that Stellaris would copy from GalCivIII if GC3 has the best planetary management of any space sim. Besides, this is just one feature of Stellaris, not the whole game. So saying it's a GalCivIII mod is an hyperbolic overstatement IMO.
 
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yerm said:
Can someone explain to me how this isn't basically just GalCiv's planet structure? Not some minor detail either; I realize it's not identical, but it looks like basically the same thing. I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong, but given the modifier and tiles and especially adjacency, yeah, I may as well be looking at a GalCivIII mod.
Click to expand...

I am not awfully familiar to GalCiv, but rather than a copy of that system, I feel it is more like a merge of it and classic Civilization. In Stellaris, the tiles are not just places where you build your buildings. Instead, the first thing you do to them is assign pops to work the place, like you do with population in Civ, with the difference that, unlike Population, Pops grow within the tile, producing more out of it. The "build improvement in planet tiles" is indeed similar to GalCiv, as far I can tell, but that is just part of what the tiles are there for.

Now it is speculation, but this system allow different pops to live in different parts of the planet. This open the possibility for the planet to be shared between two different factions, which would be quite cool. I also wonder if this tiles will be used during invasions. Maybe the enemy armies will march and occupy one tile at time, allowing you to respond before full occupation or even stalemates within a single planet. If that is the case, the system will be vastly different from GalCiv.
 
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Hm. This might be the first glimpse of the game that I actually dislike.

When I first heard of the tile system, I was thinking of something akin to Masters of Orion or GalacticCivilisations. So a topographic map of the surface, divided into tiles.
This gave you a good idea of how the planet actually looked up close, as well as an overview of where your cities were.

At best I was hoping for a "mini-map" ala Europa Universalis when zooming in.

The tiles just being a picture in a list - and no zoom to the surface whatsoever- feels a lot less atmospheric :/
 
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Omg. I saw growth and POPs: this is Vic2 in space. Please, take my money now.

Thank god this will not be another EUIV conquest blob simulator: this has internal growth, which means there is internal peacetime power buildup and strengthening. Thank god!

Praise the Swedes!
 
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Held der Arbeit said:
Hm. This might be the first glimpse of the game that I actually dislike.

When I first heard of the tile system, I was thinking of something akin to Masters of Orion or GalacticCivilisations. So a topographic map of the surface, divided into tiles.
This gave you a good idea of how the planet actually looked up close, as well as an overview of where your cities were.

At best I was hoping for a "mini-map" ala Europa Universalis when zooming in.

The tiles just being a picture in a list - and no zoom to the surface whatsoever- feels a lot less atmospheric :/
Click to expand...

Me too. I was hoping for a simple world-map in which combat could take place. The tiles in this map aren't even connected to each other.

Of course, it may well be that detailed ground-combat would just be too much micro for this game, but still . . .
 
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FOARP said:
Me too. I was hoping for a simple world-map in which combat could take place. The tiles in this map aren't even connected to each other.

Of course, it may well be that detailed ground-combat would just be too much micro for this game, but still . . .
Click to expand...

The tiles are connected to each other, though. Otherwise, there couldn't be adjacency bonus. I mean, detailed ground combat will probably not be in the game, but I am still hoping the armies will move through the tiles as they invade and conquer. It would be a very simplified system, but still more detailed than many space 4x games.

I do wish the tiles are arranged in a GalCiv style mini map, though. But maybe the devs concluded it wasn't worth the hassle. Each tile have a distinct terrain, so procedure generating them while also procedure placing them in a way that make sense might be too hard.
 
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I've never played a space game before; I've never heard of Masters of Orion or Galactic Civilizations before Stellaris was announced and I started reading this forum. I don't have anything to base my judgement on besides my own opinions. That said, I'm pretty underwhelmed by the economy so far. The tile landscapes look boring and dull. Why are they all the same lackluster brown and gray? These are alien worlds, show me some color! Where's the blood red grass and bright yellow trees? Make it interesting to look at, especially if I'll apparently be looking at those tiles a lot to micromanage.

Speaking of micromanaging, that's another disappointment. When I heard that Stellaris would be using a POP system, I thought the economy would be similar to Victoria II, with pops working where they want to work, where there are jobs, not because I, the invisible hand of the state, told them where to go. Maybe that was too much to hope, but this system seems extremely boring by comparison. I don't want to say that Vicky's economy system was flawless either, there were tons of problems, but damn if they weren't unique problems!

I look at this tile system and I'm reminded of the city screen in Civilization 4, except less interesting and dynamic. The advantage that Civ IV (and Civ V, I suppose) had was that you could change the landscape around you yourself. Need more food? Build a farm on the world map. Production? Build a mine. Gold? Cottages. You actively changed the world. One of the things I loved about that game is how, in 4000 BC, the world was all forests. By 2000 BC you'd be lucky to find forests on the world map, everything is replaced by towns, farms, mines, and railroads. Stellaris doesn't have that, it looks like if I want food or production, I'll click an improvement from a list and wait a few years for it to build without my input. Basically, it looks like Stellaris has the same city selection screen from Civ 4, but without the color, interesting visuals, or the ability to shape the world around your city. It's just a list, with some small square pictures.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm really underwhelmed by this system.
 
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One thing I just noticed. I was assuming that each pop grew within a tile, like Pops do in provinces in Vic2. I assumed that because different tiles were yielding different quantities of resources. But I just noticed that this is probably because some tiles have buildings and others do not. Does that mean each all pop are uniformly sized? And that there is a hard limit of 25 pop in a planet? If so, that is terribly disappointing. I was really hoping for a more granular system.
 
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