Stellaris Dev Diary #21 - Administrative Sectors

[Artess]

And so do I, in several posts, in earlier parts of that thread. Which you couldn't know about.

(My preference towards Sector Governors is only IF I HAVE to choose...)

Sorry, I must have missed it. I did go through the thread, but there is just so much of it...

It's also good that you seem to recognize that to allow that control, something has to give. If not control of planets, then research, militancy, or corruption. Centralising control is costly and difficult, both in real life and in Paradox games in general. That said, I don't see an issue with giving a player the choice to dramatically increase their planet cap through intensive research or investment. The net result is that something else will be sacrificed to make that possible, and the choice as to whether it will be worth the cost will add to the game rather than detract from it. The caveat is that the costs of raising said cap should not be linear, but scale upwards.

To quote Sid Meier: "A game is a series of interesting choices"

I'm cool with choosing between increasing my planet cap and researching a new gun, assuming such choices come up often enough. Or I'm cool with launching a lengthy resource-consuming mission when I need to do that. I'm not cool with reaching a point where the game says "you either give up one planet or get +1 unrest on the entire empire forever" or something similar.

I am trying to not get sucked in to the entire discussion about sector governors vs. micro management, but i cant help myself.

First:
I am firmly on the side of the sector governors.
from a game perspective (i dont want to micro manage 50 planets) and from a RP perspective (every country in the world has several layers to it. from cities, to counties, to states to the federal level)

Well, this control is still a huge approximation, and an enormous amount of managing will be performed (or implied) automatically behind the scenes regardless of who owns the planet. I hardly imagine that on your "core" worlds you'll be making decisions about building roads and buildings.

if i paraphrase these arguments is that people want to be able to play the 'perfect' game. IMO this fundamentally misses the concept of every game Paradox has ever build. Paradox games will put barriers in your way (random -1 stability modifiers are a perfect example in EU4). It forces you to think not in perfect solutions but acceptable compromises (CK2 vassels) .

Random bad events don't feel nearly as bad to me as permanent negative modifiers. They are annoying, but they are one-time. Permanent modifiers remain with you forever.

I wonder if the player can control one planet in a system directly whilst the rest is controlled by a sector governor (e.g. I control Sol III whilst Sol IV is looked after by Bob my governor for that sector)

I hope that's the case.

But the difference between:

20% of your population want to enforce Pacifism or they will break away

and

1 planet in the 200 you own wants to enforce Pacifism or they will break away

is rather massive. Without sectors the threat of internal factions pretty much disappears unless they come up with an entirely new way of doing it (hence the whole 2 game argument) This will especially be the case if, like Vic2, your army / fleet units link themselves to a sector. All the ships from sector Orion breaking away is more scary than the one scout which happened to be built on arrakis 3 leaving your fleet.

You seem to think that the sectors are only about less micromanagement. But thats not true. The sectors play a vital role in a major feature. Factions of your Empire. If you take away sectors your impact this feature and through that probably many more. And with that in mind.. if they officialy provide an option for "no sectors" they would need to reprogram the whole thing about how Factions work.

I don't know how they're doing it, but I hope factions and species have other mechanics than sectors that can work against you. If the purple reptiloids decide they don't like you, you get problems on every planet where they live - proportional to their population percentage. They don't have all to be in one sector for that. And planets with high share of reptiloids will naturally attract even more over time; again, no need for them to be in any 'sector' for that to happen.

 

[Skaaros]

Let's look at the USA. Most of the area ist controlled by the federal states, the build the normal infrastructure, schools etc.. The US Gov controls the military, the foreign policy and, the federal law AND Washington DC. The Congress has exclusive jurisdication oder the city. You can have a strong central government, but even the emperor needs the grand moffs.

 

[Madzai]

Let's look at the USA. Most of the area ist controlled by the federal states, the build the normal infrastructure, schools etc.. The US Gov controls the military, the foreign policy and, the federal law AND Washington DC. The Congress has exclusive jurisdication oder the city. You can have a strong central government, but even the emperor needs the grand moffs.

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to play as analog of US in Stellaris

But on the other hand...
Here, in Russia, even if we formally have large amount of Republics, Autonomous Districts and such, local Governments is useless until central Government intervene. And it happens each time on every occasion.

 

[huyderman]

It seems to me like an issue of getting the message through to people. Make it seem that sectors are the right way to go, and everyone will be using them. And then only the really good players might figure out that you can get more of it through additional effort. As it stands now, the diary says that not using sectors will actively be punished instead.

And as I said, it should give only a small edge by being a significant investment, so that plenty of people, even knowing about it, would decide "I don't need that much hassle in my life, I'll just go simple".

You are aware you are right now doing just what I described, promoting the idea of the "pro-gamer" who micros everything, giving them an edge because they know how the game really should be played, and per extension that if you too want to be a pro, you should micro. But that's the thing, that's not how the game is designed to be played.

And what you propose would still require a lot of careful balancing to avoid making micro the obvious "optimal" way to play, while not making the penalties so harsh people will complain they are being punished. And each time they make any changes, they have to be careful to not upset that balance, thus limiting their design space.

The end result is a lot of extra work, for a play style the game is not intended for, for a minority of players. And it's unlikely the game will be better for it, it might well be worse for it.

The devs should pick one path and stick with it. Either the design they are implementing, where the focus is on a few worlds and delegating the rest, with gameplay and features built around and integrated with this concept. Or it should should be built around microing every planet, designed to make this a good streamlined experience, and with automation as training wheels while you learn the game. Both have different trade-offs and design choices attached to them, you can't really have both and do both well.

 

[Yenzen]

US states are a good example.

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to play as analog of US in Stellaris

But on the other hand...
Here, in Russia, even if we formally have large amount of Republics, Autonomous Districts and such, local Governments is useless until central Government intervene. And it happens each time on every occasion.

Think about it like this: The central government isn't going to change permits to building industry though, or whenever or not to clear forests for new mines - nor does it particular care about who's running the schools or balancing the local hospital budget.

It will, however, object to the idea of all individual states having an autonomous army or passing laws that are in contradiction to federal ones. In Stellaris, it's apparently assumed that major industry is always done by the state (?), and this is what the sectors represent.

Sectors, like regional subdivisions, may diverge strongly from the average political leanings or demographics of the nation entire as well, and this may cause friction (Scotland, Catalonia, Texas, Chechnya, North/South Italy - all to varying degrees).

 

[Artess]

You are aware you are right now doing just what I described, promoting the idea of the "pro-gamer" who micros everything, giving them an edge because they know how the game really should be played, and per extension that if you too want to be a pro, you should micro. But that's the thing, that's not how the game is designed to be played.

You don't have to play perfectly for the game to be fun, though, do you?

And what you propose would still require a lot of careful balancing to avoid making micro the obvious "optimal" way to play, while not making the penalties so harsh people will complain they are being punished. And each time they make any changes, they have to be careful to not upset that balance, thus limiting their design space.

The end result is a lot of extra work, for a play style the game is not intended for, for a minority of players. And it's unlikely the game will be better for it, it might well be worse for it.

The devs should pick one path and stick with it. Either the design they are implementing, where the focus is on a few worlds and delegating the rest, with gameplay and features built around and integrated with this concept. Or it should should be built around microing every planet, designed to make this a good streamlined experience, and with automation as training wheels while you learn the game. Both have different trade-offs and design choices attached to them, you can't really have both and do both well.

The difference is only big if the AI sucks really badly compared to a human. The better the AI is, the less they have to worry about this balance. So I personally am now worried that the sectors aren't meant to relieve the player from having to do too much work, but instead are there simply to cripple the player by forcing him to rely on the bad AI.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

 

[Artess]

Sectors, like regional subdivisions, may diverge strongly from the average political leanings or demographics of the nation entire as well, and this may cause friction (Scotland, Catalonia, Texas, Chechnya, North/South Italy - all to varying degrees).

The thing is, though, - all those regions you mention are relatively small parts of their countries, apart from Italy. Meanwhile, in Stellaris you have to assign most of your planets to sectors. You can only control "a few" core worlds directly - let's say, a few means ten. And your empire has a thousand planets. This means that 99% of your empire will diverge strongly from the average political leanings or demographics of the nation and cause friction.

 

[Yenzen]

The thing is, though, - all those regions you mention are relatively small parts of their countries, apart from Italy. Meanwhile, in Stellaris you have to assign most of your planets to sectors. You can only control "a few" core worlds directly - let's say, a few means ten. And your empire has a thousand planets. This means that 99% of your empire will diverge strongly from the average political leanings or demographics of the nation and cause friction.

If your empire spans 1000 planets, you've probably just completed the conquest of the entire galaxy. But I get what you're saying.

However, using Russia as an example - most regions are still majority or plurality Russian, most are democratically dominated by United Russia, and most have a similar culture. The central government still will perform mostly a limited set of tasks and delegate the rest.

In Stellaris, if you have many sectors, there is no guarantee that most sectors will be vastly different, though there certainly will be more heterogeneity, if you've conquered many enemies and uplifted many species... Well, in case you didn't go full genocide.

Using the US as an example, the south East would be a notch more spiritual than the central government, and maybe a notch more individualist.

 

[ashbery76]

Give me space opera anyday.A emperor does not build movie theatres on a planet let alone a galaxy.Moo2,GC3 planet building is stupid at this scale as I was surprised Paradox even went this route for the limited planets we get.

 

[Tiaexz]

Speaking of Space Opera, has anyone played Twilight Imperium board-game?

I thought that was always interesting in the sense that to win the game, you don't need a big fleet to curb-stomp everyone, it is all about those victory points and diplomacy. Plus, it has a bunch of different races which lead to different playstyles (which Ethos in Stellaris reproduces in some fashion).

 

[Safehold]

That is how I have come to see Stellaris. Let us go dashing amongst the stars! Friends and evil doers alike await your bidding! Great mysteries are yours to discover! But don't worry too much about those annoying details, they just distract from another rousing musical number!

Um, pretty sure Stellaris is strategy gameplay in advance of CK2, like CK2. So I notice you have a CK2 badge, so I assume you've played it long enough to know whether you like that kind of gameplay flow or not.

If you wanted a personal adventure... well, you might want to do some RPGs or text or graphics adventure games like Torment or Witcher 3.

for the player it would feel like your empire consist of 1000 planets, but in the end the game has only 10 sectors to calculate

I think I can reliably predict that Stellaris planets will be simulated on all levels, just like CK2 baronies and counties. You just aren't controlling all of them directly, but all the functions are there as if someone else was controlling them. That's different from abstracting individual planets into larger organizations. They create layers above a planet, to simulate the political intrigue and context. As well as micromanage vs macromanagement for the player.

Their only issue is that Clausewitz engine is still 32 bit, that means they are limited to 2 something gigs of ram. And CK2 is already pushing that limit, because of all the characters, all the traits, in every court/character for each county or upper tier title. So in one sense, 1000 planets is not that hard to put into 2 gigs of ram, it probably compacts better than CK2's characters.

 

[Safehold]

say if you uplift a species in a system where you already directly control another planet, can you make them effectively self-govern without adding to your burden or splitting systems between sectors?

Uplifted species from non sentient, may only just add pop units to your colonies. Sort of migrate around as previously mentioned, to the best climates. A species that you have enlightened or interfered with, comes on as either a protectorate or higher up, as a vassal. So they would be their own unified system with their own military and political ai, working as your ally.

Another thing about sector governors is that political leaders form part of the pool for that. And military governments have generals/admirals for use in politics, like colonial governors. Scientists can also be used, for certain gov types. That adds another layer of strategy to the internal political context. Stellaris was said to be limited to 30 leaders. So the sector system includes not only the faction system, but also the hero/leadership trait and ranking up system as well. It's not some "AI Automation" button people can "choose" to press or not. It's the difference between a rocket engine and your crow bar, in terms of design depth.

 

[RickInVA]

Um, pretty sure Stellaris is strategy gameplay in advance of CK2, like CK2. So I notice you have a CK2 badge, so I assume you've played it long enough to know whether you like that kind of gameplay flow or not.

If you wanted a personal adventure... well, you might want to do some RPGs or text or graphics adventure games like Torment or Witcher 3.

A reasonable observation deserves a reasonable answer.

I very much enjoy CK2. I also feel that the game systems, like the personal county limit, are historical for the times.

A millennium later, however, the central governments can exert considerably more influence on local matters (IMHO) than in the times of CK2.

Therefore it seems reasonable to me that in another millennium or two that we will be ever better at that. As a result I think the Administrative Sectors feature is placing a medieval limitation on a far more advance society, which is, to me, unreasonable.

Regarding the RPG suggestion...I don't blame you if you have not read all 22 pages of the discussion, but you have totally mistaken the import of my statement. I am saying that I think Stellaris is a Grand Space Opera, not that I want it to be. I heartily do not want it to be so, but that is what I have concluded the developers' vision for the game is.

 

[Oscot]

A reasonable observation deserves a reasonable answer.
A millennium later, however, the central governments can exert considerably more influence on local matters (IMHO) than in the times of CK2.

Asimov's Foundation series had what I thought was a neat counterpoint to this attitude. Trantor was the capital of the galactic empire, but its actual day-to-day management of the systems was extremely limited because, and I paraphrase, "Transmitting and processing all the data that would have been necessary to govern each world directly from Trantor, would have produced so much thermal radiation as to raise the average temperature of the city-world by 20 degrees, rendering it largely uninhabitable".

Decentralisation by physics, natch.

 

[ParagonExile]

My Grandfather smoked his whole life. I was about 10 years old when my mother said to him, 'If you ever want to see your grandchildren graduate, you have to stop immediately.'. Tears welled up in his eyes when he realized what exactly was at stake. He gave it up immediately. Three years later he died of lung cancer. It was really sad and destroyed me. My mother said to me- 'Don't ever smoke. Please don't put your family through what your Grandfather put us through." I agreed. At 21, I have never touched a cigarette. I must say, I feel a very slight sense of regret for never having done it, because this thread gave me cancer anyway.

 

[RickInVA]

Asimov's Foundation series had what I thought was a neat counterpoint to this attitude. Trantor was the capital of the galactic empire, but its actual day-to-day management of the systems was extremely limited because, and I paraphrase, "Transmitting and processing all the data that would have been necessary to govern each world directly from Trantor, would have produced so much thermal radiation as to raise the average temperature of the city-world by 20 degrees, rendering it largely uninhabitable".

Decentralisation by physics, natch.

If I remember correctly Azimov has some 25 million inhabited planets in the Foundation galaxy, so while I have to agree that there is an upper limit, and where to draw that line is a matter of conjecture, I would put it far above the possible number of planets in Stallaris.

 

[Teodosio7]

There can be no victory over the micromanagers, they will keep coming and coming.
Luckily the devs have their priorities straight and they have good experience with grand strategy games.

 

[Darustet]

A millennium later, however, the central governments can exert considerably more influence on local matters (IMHO) than in the times of CK2

A good point, but I'd say that by the time Stellaris timeline starts we might just have the tech and experience of what it takes to govern one planet. Of course we could never research FTL at that time and the game is sci-fi but in your example all we needed was to invent things like phones, computers and coherent bureaucrazy but in the terms of a galactic empire we are facing the limits of physics. Namely that sending a message might take a hundred or thousands of years to reach the end of our empire.

The problem isn't so bad at the stars near us, since the planets would still be fairly close for us to FTL there relatively quickly, which to me justifies a soft cap of directly ruled planets but running the whole empire by couriers ironically takes our relative level of technology back to a time where we used horses and ships to carry the message.

 

[Artess]

There can be no victory over the micromanagers, they will keep coming and coming.
Luckily the devs have their priorities straight and they have good experience with grand strategy games.

Well excuse me for talking about how I believe the game could be made better for different groups of people.

 

[Yenzen]

A reasonable observation deserves a reasonable answer.

I very much enjoy CK2. I also feel that the game systems, like the personal county limit, are historical for the times.

A millennium later, however, the central governments can exert considerably more influence on local matters (IMHO) than in the times of CK2.

Therefore it seems reasonable to me that in another millennium or two that we will be ever better at that. As a result I think the Administrative Sectors feature is placing a medieval limitation on a far more advance society, which is, to me, unreasonable.

Regarding the RPG suggestion...I don't blame you if you have not read all 22 pages of the discussion, but you have totally mistaken the import of my statement. I am saying that I think Stellaris is a Grand Space Opera, not that I want it to be. I heartily do not want it to be so, but that is what I have concluded the developers' vision for the game is.

In medieval times, the "central government" effectively administered a few thousand square kilometers. In modern times "Central government" administrates a country (in some parts of the world, in others it's Mad Max style) that makes up as much as about 10% of the world's landmass (most of it relatively uninhabited) - though it still delegates most non-military/foreign relation jobs to either local government or private industry. In 200 years, "Central government" administrates multiple planets.

Every law you pass will effect every star system, all research you perform will be available to the sectors, you set boundaries for the sectors and they will just have to deal with it. In many ways you have *more power* than most federal governments over the subdivisions.