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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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Calvax said:
Is there a chance that this will be changed in future? I get that it makes sense for monarchies and the star empire but with the other autocracy types it seems like different processes could be taken to gain new life-time leaders. As an IRL example the Pope is a ruler for life but when he dies a council decides on who will be the new pope, that could apply well for theocratic autocracies. In Despotic Hegenomies and Advanced neural networks computer systems could select the new autocrat based on life-time evaluations that judge that person suited to their role.
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Only the monarchy is hereditary. So I don't think his statement applies.
 
Velorian said:
One distinction worth making is that while workers might be self-sacrificing or even barely sentient there'll still be the queens or whatever their leaders are who can fight or disagree with the others.

It could even be that for such a species each pop is in fact a queen and her hive.
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I've RPed that! I had a butterfly-portrait species where I decided that each POP was actually a "hive" or "nest"- a queen and her pheromone-dominated worker-drone masses. Enslaved POPs were hives being aggressively worked in brutal conditions at the behest of their queen.
 
I am not sure...
At my current game roleplaying a "xenophile" where every xeno species is purged except for 1 pop that is enslaved (procreation not allowed) and shipped to a farm in a core world.
Can it be done under the new rules?
 
nfmarque said:
I am not sure...
At my current game roleplaying a "xenophile" where every xeno species is purged except for 1 pop that is enslaved (procreation not allowed) and shipped to a farm in a core world.
Can it be done under the new rules?
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Not that I can tell. If you want to purge a species, you'll purge all of them or none of them- but you can actually use those species as livestock, and probably still resettle one of each of them to a particular planet.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
Not that I can tell. If you want to purge a species, you'll purge all of them or none of them- but you can actually use those species as livestock, and probably still resettle one of each of them to a particular planet.
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I just want to "preserve" 1 pop for each species, as a slave at a farm (zoo), i also make them charismatic so my pops are happy to visit them at the zoo.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
Not that I can tell. If you want to purge a species, you'll purge all of them or none of them- but you can actually use those species as livestock, and probably still resettle one of each of them to a particular planet.
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Yeah it's probably going to be difficult. You could probably activate a method that slowly decimates them and then change the policy when there's few left.

It really ought to be possible to assign "ideal numbers" of slaves so the rest can be disposed off or new replacements allowed to grow forth to replace losses.
 
I just thought of a new option kind of already in the game but could be related to purge. What about an option to preserve only one pop and purge the rest. Kind of like the fallen empire preserve but in reverse.
 
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Gutie said:
What about species that are hive minded or perhaps psionically linked (future tech add?) wouldn't an isolated or Militant Xenophobic faction be able to purge out other ones if they have a lockstep mentality themselves, or are you changing that from being possible too (makes little sense in terms of Sci-fi lore to not being possible for a insectlike hivemind race to be possible given this update is all about having customization freedom).
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The only time hive minds have appeared in Stellaris thus far have been as an Endgame Crisis.

Though I suppose I could see it as a side-effect of the Psi and Cybernetics Ascension paths.
 
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Not sure about the Livestock thing. I like it as an idea, thematically, but:

Do they take up a precious tile? If so, is keeping them as livestock any/much better than just building a farm (particularly a high tier farm)? Otherwise it seems kind of pointless, mechanics-wise.

(I could also go into why feeding someone and eating them will produce less food than just eating the food you fed them in the first place, but I like the idea too much to argue with the thematics)
 
jonniemarbles said:
Not sure about the Livestock thing. I like it as an idea, thematically, but:

Do they take up a precious tile? If so, is keeping them as livestock any/much better than just building a farm (particularly a high tier farm)? Otherwise it seems kind of pointless, mechanics-wise.

(I could also go into why feeding someone and eating them will produce less food than just eating the food you fed them in the first place, but I like the idea too much to argue with the thematics)
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From what I gather, Livestock POPs make food. Like, the POP itself will produce some food. Just stick 'em on farms or on buildings that don't produce anything (monuments etc).

EDIT: Also the counterargument to "it wouldn't be efficient" is... well, livestock. Cattle. Cows take vast amounts of farmland we could repurpose for more efficient purposes- but we eat lots of cow anyhow.
 
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BlackUmbrellas said:
From what I gather, Livestock POPs make food. Like, the POP itself will produce some food. Just stick 'em on farms or on buildings that don't produce anything (monuments etc).

EDIT: Also the counterargument to "it wouldn't be efficient" is... well, livestock. Cattle. Cows take vast amounts of farmland we could repurpose for more efficient purposes- but we eat lots of cow anyhow.
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Yup, they produce food. But if you put them on a farm, won't that farm be essentially unused (because they don't really "make" anything)? As in, wouldn't it be better to have a pop that can actively produce food on the farm than one that passively does so? As described I think livestock going to be more of an (ahem) flavour option than a viable gameplay mechanic but A.) I hope I'm wrong B.) There's nothing wrong with "flavour" stuff - I've had way more fun with Stellaris when I'm roleplaying than when I'm min-maxing.

As for your second point: I'm no vegetarian but we really would have more food if we didn't eat meat. But like I said though this idea is too fun for me to dismiss it on those grounds :p
 
jonniemarbles said:
Yup, they produce food. But if you put them on a farm, won't that farm be essentially unused (because they don't really "make" anything)?
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...no? They can't produce anything but food. So you use them to work farm tiles and they produce bonus food on top of working that tile.

EDIT: Also, vegetarian/vegan lifestyles are not viable for everyone, have their own inefficiencies, and would not be viable in the first place for, say, an obligate carnivore species.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
EDIT: Also the counterargument to "it wouldn't be efficient" is... well, livestock. Cattle. Cows take vast amounts of farmland we could repurpose for more efficient purposes- but we eat lots of cow anyhow.
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Yes and no, cattle can use land and/or food source that are marginal to human and unlike human they don't care about visual quality, so their food is actually lot more efficient to cultivate, as you can actually use the vast majority of it, while, for plant based human food, a lot just get thrown away, as it simply does't look good enough and anything that not AAA quality basically sell for almost nothing, as there is too much of it for it to get process into something where the visual quality will be of no importance.
 
iniudan said:
Yes and no, cattle can use land and/or food source that are marginal to human and unlike human they don't care about visual quality, so their food is actually lot more efficient to cultivate, as you can actually use the vast majority of it, while, for plant based human food, a lot just get thrown away, as it simply does't look good enough and anything that not AAA quality basically sell for almost nothing, as there is too much of it for it to get process into something where the visual quality will be of no importance.
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Beef is a terrible meat to be cultivating on a massive scale. Cattle are one of the least efficient livestock to raise (versus, IIRC, pigs as one of the most?). It's mostly the Western world that does so, and I've seen more than enough examinations of why that land could be put to infinitely better uses.

But ultimately my point is that "it's inefficient to feed something stuff and then eat it" isn't really an applicable argument, because we already do that. Livestock are, by nature, an energy-inefficient method of food production. You get less out than you put in. The value is that its converting one type of biological energy-mass into another; us omnivores like our meat. We get stuff out of eating livestock that we wouldn't get out of eating veggies.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
...no? They can't produce anything but food. So you use them to work farm tiles and they produce bonus food on top of working that tile.

EDIT: Also, vegetarian/vegan lifestyles are not viable for everyone, have their own inefficiencies, and would not be viable in the first place for, say, an obligate carnivore species.
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You know what? I totally missed the word "other" in the description. So I guess they are just superfarmers? Who farm... themselves? A little weird but if the mechanic works I'm all for it.
 
Will there be an option to enslave refugees that come to your empire, saving them from outright genocide by making them enslaved labor? Also, maybe there could be a form of slavery where conquered POPs are made slaves but their offspring(other pops of the conquered species) are born free.
 
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