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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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If this game doesn't have pie charts I will be disappointed. Every strategy game worth playing has at least one pie chart.
 
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Pops could be like Vicky I. Each pop represents actual numbers (1-1,000,000), once the pop grows big enough (eg: 900,000+), it splits in two. This way you get both the ppt (pop per tile) and actual population figures at a glance.

(You could go on manual pop splits like in Vicky, but that was micro nightmare and although I enjoyed it I know many didn't)
 
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A scientist might. But are you going to go halfway across the world to work the mines of Chiron Beta Prime ?

If there's an economic incentive and the voyage is affordable, you can be sure that migration will happen. Maybe those mines yield rare, valuable metals?
 
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Space Empires IV

just thought I'd leave this here.

Stellaris seems to me more and more of an improved version of SE IV. The basics are the same, from the ships to the resources, from the buildings to the races, from the racial traits to everything else.

Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's just that it is one of my all time favourite games.
 
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If there's an economic incentive and the voyage is affordable, you can be sure that migration will happen. Maybe those mines yield rare, valuable metals?

So you mean like, I don't know, basically every mining town in history? People went long distances, including crossing oceans, to find meaningful employment and an increase in quality of life (or the hope of it) all throughout the modern era. Then there's also the reverse - kids born in some mining town or steel worker community don't always end up doing the same job; some brilliant coal miner's son might end up working the same shafts, or they might end up going to school elsewhere and moving far away.

That's how modern economies work, and there's zero good reason to assume that a futuristic economy would move backwards to some kind of pre-enlightenment type of manor system and away from rational modern economics, . The only reason to have some kind of rigid locked (what I keep calling serfdom) economic system is either your game is mostly built around that (eg civilization starting in 4000bc) or you don't care about economic systems and want simplicity. If you care about economic systems, have a modern or future era game, and still implement a pre-industrial economics structure... that's bad or lazy design. I certainly hope Stellaris doesn't do that.
 
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dude, are you out of your mind? You talk about Stellaris wont do taht and taht and be lazy about that.Over a Screenshot? With no information wahtsoever?

It seems to me you're extremly Arrogant. Damn taht gets me raging

The screenshot gives plenty of info, food as a major resource as one. Also we can work off paradox conventions that are standard across their games when dealing with a resource value that we will keep track of in the top bar.
 
Space Empires IV

just thought I'd leave this here.

Stellaris seems to me more and more of an improved version of SE IV. The basics are the same, from the ships to the resources, from the buildings to the races, from the racial traits to everything else.

Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's just that it is one of my all time favourite games.

The Space Empires series has almost no empire management - no pops, no government types, no leaders, no ethics, no special research projects or anomalies, and it has tactical combat and detailed ship design. Hell, you can design troops, fighters, bases and satellites. In Space Empires V you can even design mines.

But in SE, Empire management is more or less limited to deciding what buildings to put on your planets.

I like Space Empires too, but it's almost the polar opposite of what Stellaris is trying for and, indeed, Paradox's entire approach to making strategy games.
 
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So you mean like, I don't know, basically every mining town in history? People went long distances, including crossing oceans, to find meaningful employment and an increase in quality of life (or the hope of it) all throughout the modern era. Then there's also the reverse - kids born in some mining town or steel worker community don't always end up doing the same job; some brilliant coal miner's son might end up working the same shafts, or they might end up going to school elsewhere and moving far away.

That's how modern economies work, and there's zero good reason to assume that a futuristic economy would move backwards to some kind of pre-enlightenment type of manor system and away from rational modern economics, . The only reason to have some kind of rigid locked (what I keep calling serfdom) economic system is either your game is mostly built around that (eg civilization starting in 4000bc) or you don't care about economic systems and want simplicity. If you care about economic systems, have a modern or future era game, and still implement a pre-industrial economics structure... that's bad or lazy design. I certainly hope Stellaris doesn't do that.

Exactly. I really do hope that we get nice migration mechanics, and that a planet's production doesn't boil down to "assign pops to this"
 
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So, again, having planets with pops that are tied exclusively to that planet is unreasonable. What you say does make sense - there need to be rational limits to population mobility - but that does not mean enforcing serfdom. Perhaps allow inter-solar-system movement free, and then have it cost something to have a specialized population relocated outside it?
FYI Intersolar would mean moving between solar systems. I know you mean INTRAsolar but it bothers me when people don't know the difference.
Anyway, I completely agree that having serfdom like planets were social and physical mobility is impossible is wrong unless the governt type allows it or the access to FTL travel is limited, like in early game. In Star Wars for example, Coruscant has no farmland whatsoever and imports nearly all food and water for its population of over a trillion permanent residents.
 
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To be honest I don't like the building adjacencies. They are a shallow minigame that don't add anything meaningful to a game and will most likely be a terrible micromanagement burden. I think developer budget should be better spent elsewhere, either improving other features or creating a system with real depth. The planet tiles screen doesn't even look good.
 
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A scientist might. But are you going to go halfway across the world to work the mines of Chiron Beta Prime ?
You will if I say so.;) I plan to build a profitable company store for my "workers", can't call them slaves because that would be just wrong. :)

Edit - just in case anyone missed it, I was kidding about the if I say so. I even placed a wink icon as a hint. -SR
 
Thinking about the pop numbers, I'm not actually sure how abstracted they are. Stellaris will very likely involve billions of people, if not trillions. Given such large numbers, it makes sense for each pop to represent 100 people at the least. Since we have only seen the pop numbers for a single tile with no apparent buildings, it would be pretty reasonable for the population to be 1500, particularly since the 50 appears to be the amount you need to do something (establish a settlement, perhaps), judging by that partially-filled bar. 15/50 = 0.3, and 0.3*8 (the number of bars) is 2.4 (which looks like the number of filled bars).
 
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Thinking about the pop numbers, I'm not actually sure how abstracted they are. Stellaris will very likely involve billions of people, if not trillions. Given such large numbers, it makes sense for each pop to represent 100 people at the least. Since we have only seen the pop numbers for a single tile with no apparent buildings, it would be pretty reasonable for the population to be 1500, particularly since the 50 appears to be the amount you need to do something (establish a settlement, perhaps), judging by that partially-filled bar. 15/50 = 0.3, and 0.3*8 (the number of bars) is 2.4 (which looks like the number of filled bars).

Yes, I am wondering if the 15/50 is a normal POP level or if it's a temporary POP level due to the planet still being colonized, like how EU3 handled it.
 
Yes, I am wondering if the 15/50 is a normal POP level or if it's a temporary POP level due to the planet still being colonized, like how EU3 handled it.
Yeah, since all of the other tiles have a full bar, it's probably temporary. I don't know about EU3, but EU4 had colonial population be x/1000, and it would become a full province after 1000 population.
 
Yeah, since all of the other tiles have a full bar, it's probably temporary. I don't know about EU3, but EU4 had colonial population be x/1000, and it would become a full province after 1000 population.

EU3 had the same thing for colonies, but all provinces had population also. So a colony might be 15/1000, while Paris could be 999,999.