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Stellaris Dev Diary #59: Megastructures

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Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to cover the headline feature of the Utopia Expansion that we announced mere hours ago: Megastructures.

Megastructures (Paid Feature)
Have you ever looked at a Fallen Empire's Ringworld and thought 'I want to build one of those?'. Well, so have we, and in the Utopia expansion you will be able to do so. Megastructures are massive multi-stage construction projects that require an enormous investment of resources and time but offer quite spectacular pay-offs. There are four Megastructures that you can build: The Ringworld, the Dyson Sphere, the Sentry Array and the Science Nexus. In order to build a Megastructure you will need to unlock a number of advanced technologies and pick the appropriate Ascension Perk. This will unlock the ability for your construction ship to build a Megastructure Construction Site in an appropriate location. The Construction Site alone is a project that takes a large amount of resources and takes several years to complete.
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Once you have built the Construction Site for a Megastructure, you will be able to upgrade it to the first construction stage for a Megastructure. For the Ringworld and Dyson Sphere, this is an initial frame that provides no benefit, while the Science Nexus and Sentry Array gets a partially completed structure that provides some of the benefit of the finished version. From here, you can upgrade the unfinished Megastructure to the next stage(s) by investing more time and resources. For the Dyson Sphere, Science Nexus and Sentry Array, you upgrade one stage at a time, with increasing benefits from each finished stage until you have the completed Megastructure. The Ringworld Frame has four segments that can all be upgraded into finished Ringworld Sections simultaneously.
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The four different Megastructures work as follows:

Ringworld: Can only be built around a planet-rich star in your borders and, once finished, provides four maximum size 100% habitable planets. The Ringworld construction project will consume all planets in the system to be used as building materials. Cannot be built around Black Holes, Pulsars or Neutron Stars.
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Dyson Sphere: Can only be built around a star in your borders and provides a huge amount of energy each month, with the amount increasing for each stage of the Dyson Sphere completed. Once completed, the Dyson Sphere will cool down the system, turning most planets there into frozen worlds. Cannot be built around Black Holes, Pulsars or Neutron Stars.
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Science Nexus: Can be built around any non-inhabitable non-moon non-asteroid planet (similar to Habitats) and provides a huge amount of science each month, with the amount increasing for each stage of the Science Nexus completed.
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Sentry Array: Can be built around any non-inhabitable non-moon non-asteroid planet (similar to Habitats) and functions as a sensor station, providing sensor range in a radius that grows for each stage of the Sentry Array completed. Once fully finished, it will give complete sensor view of the entire galaxy.
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Building a Megastructure is hardly a subtle affair, and once an empire starts construction on such a project, all other empires that have communications with them will be notified about the start, progression and completion of such a project. As monumental undertakings involving the resources of a whole empire, these projects can also have unintended political and diplomatic consequenses. Also, much like the Ringworlds already in the game, you are not the first civilization to conceive of the idea of Megastructures, and you may encounter ancient, ruined Megastructures while exploring.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about yet another feature of the Utopia expansion: Psionic Transcendance and The Shroud.
 
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I love the idea of a true Ringworld but have to point out that Niven's Ringworld that actually circles the star has a habitable surface area of 3 million earths. Your version isn't on anything like that scale so it can't be encircling the star. It's "only" a supersized space habitat.
Writers sometimes get carried away and don't properly think through what the scale of such things actually are. The Niven ringworld is an absurdity, the scale of that thing and the materials needed would likely cause it to directly implode upon itself and form a black hole.
 
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Writers sometimes get carried away and don't properly think through what the scale of such things actually are. The Niven ringworld is an absurdity, the scale of that thing and the materials needed would likely cause it to directly implode upon itself and form a black hole.

Didn't he basically use unobtanium to construct it?
 
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My concerns/hopes:
The Megastructures, especially the ringworlds, will be so late-game that the benefits of having them will be of little use by the time we access them. They will be pretty neat to have and give plenty of resources, but just how much power will the massive dyson sphere project give us? Or how useful will four extra planets with Ringworlds be? How will having a sensor signal across the entire galaxy be when we could easily get the same effect by doing a few trades with some empires (which works best by offering Zro in return, hence doubling the return on your investment. Pro tip ;)). How much science will the science nexus give us? That one was the most underwhelming one presented here personally, since science becomes very easy to obtain in the late game when you have room to allocate science to sectors.

I think the ringworld issue is especially concerning given the fact that the most desirable trait they have in Fallen Empires is their special structures. Will we see similar things or be able to unlock them? I for one think, at least for Ringworlds and Gaia planets, that fallen empire buildings should be constructible for a hefty price.
 
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@Wiz will the 4 habitable ringworlds have any modifiers to research/production etc.?

Yeah basically this
I think the ringworld issue is especially concerning given the fact that the most desirable trait they have in Fallen Empires is their special structures. Will we see similar things or be able to unlock them? I for one think, at least for Ringworlds and Gaia planets, that fallen empire buildings should be constructible for a hefty price.
 
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If you're at the point where you are legitimately building a dyson sphere, you have the technology to keep it from falling into the star.

Also, artistic license is very much in play here.

I don't think you grasp the sort of forces involved here. Ask any physicist, and he'll tell you a rigid shell Dyson sphere is highly improbable, or for a ringworld for that matter. Molecular bonds simply aren't strong enough - and that includes materials like nanotubes. That's to say: you'd need to create a sort of material that's not made up out of individual atoms, but exploits the extremely strong and short ranged forces that ordinarily only exist within the nucleus of the atom.
Not taking that bit into account you already run into problems of having enough matter in the solar system to construct a Dyson shell. Now remember that bit about how all the atomic nuclei on earth would fit inside the tip of your finger? That's the category of coverage such a material would yield.

All of this is not to say that you couldn't build a Dyson sphere at all, it's just that the presented structural design is very impractical. You could make ultra-thin solar "kites" which float on solar radiation, absorbing of the radiation part for energy, part for kinetic push. Or you could make make a swarm of solar satellites with different orbits, using simple orbital mechanics rather than overcoming the suns gravity head on. People have thought about this quite thoroughly and have come up with a myriad of solutions.

I'm just slightly annoyed that with all the effort paradox usually puts into getting their historical research straight, they're like "well it's the future, anything's plausible". Science fiction includes the word science you know. It'd have taken all of 5 minutes on google to find designs that'd be practicable. Sorry for the unintentional rant.
 
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In the event that you build a ringworld in a system and then trigger the Horizon Signal end event, will you then have a ringworld consisting of tomb world segments orbiting a black hole?
 
Ringworld: Can only be built around a planet-rich star in your borders and, once finished, provides four maximum size 100% habitable planets. The Ringworld construction project will consume all planets in the system to be used as building materials. Cannot be built around Black Holes, Pulsars or Neutron Stars.
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Where are the ringworld shade panels? Permanent day doesn't seem like a good idea for life.
For example:
 
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Where are the ringworld shade panels? Permanent day doesn't seem like a good idea for life.
For example:
I suppose it'd be much easier and cheaper to just have ways to use window blinds and such? Or are you talking about heat?
 
I suppose it'd be much easier and cheaper to just have ways to use window blinds and such? Or are you talking about heat?
The original creator of the ringworld concept did write a book on this topic, and they said the constant heat of the sun would destroy the habitable spaces on ringworlds, hence a need for some sort of panel system going around the sun to temporarily block off light. He even added that these mini-rings could include solar panels which could beam collected energy to the ringworld using lasers to increase energy output.
 
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I suppose it'd be much easier and cheaper to just have ways to use window blinds and such? Or are you talking about heat?
Well, a lot of life on Earth depends on the day-night cycle. I am not saying there isn't life that could live it in, but even so.

And yeah, I guess the heat would also be an issue? Depending on the distance from the sun and such. With with this level of technology, I guess a shield that blocks the heat isn't unthinkable. Could even make a day-night cycle with advanced enough shields I guess.
But traditional ringworlds have shade panels.

EDIT: Found another nice ringworld picture.
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Ringworld consuming planets is meant to explain why the tiles have resources, basically.

(Also, a system with a ringworld + planets can have issues with visuals)
So will the ringworld have all the resources from the former planets, randomly assigned to its tiles when built?
 
Just wondering, what happens when you build a ringworld in a habitated system, for example you homesystem. Will the habited planets at one point simply disappear and the pops and a part of the buildings reappear on the sections or is that something like a system-wide purge, killing every pop and building and creating a colonizable but empty ringworld?
 
Ring-World:
Cool ! ... It's way over the Top-Stuff, but Cool !
Fallen Empire ringworlds have 4 habitable sections.
Just a Tip to improve a Ring-World in the Future without too much Work: A World of multiple Rings and 2 "Connectors" ...
B.jpg

Dyson-Sphere:
Cool ! ... It's way more over the Top-Stuff, but Cool !
I think, It's the "pure" Version of an Energy-Absorbtion-One, so that It's not a "Hybrid", Which can habit People, too ?

Can one system have ringworld and Dyson sphere at the same time?
Bull-Shit^^ !

Science-Nexus: ///

Sentry-Array:
NOOOT Cool ! - Aren't There any Performance-Issues ? + Aren't There any Notification-Spam-Issues ("Hostile Fleet detected !") ? ...
I'm of two minds here. I don't really mind the idea of building megastructures that much, and I feel disappointed that the sensor array is a wonder that reveals the whole galaxy. Then again, there might be smaller stations that just reveal the space around them, so that you can use them to "spy" on enemy territory to prepare for an invasion.
I have similar Thoughts, that "Sensor-Stations", Which provide a certain Sensor-Range and are buildable without major Restrictions would do It.
 
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Writers sometimes get carried away and don't properly think through what the scale of such things actually are. The Niven ringworld is an absurdity, the scale of that thing and the materials needed would likely cause it to directly implode upon itself and form a black hole.

I completely agree. This and the habitable Dyson sphere are impossible with any materials we know of. However you don't need to destroy every planet in the solar system to make something with the surface land area of a few earths. Using one planet is more than enough. If you were being that unambitious you could just shift the rocky planets into the habitable zone and terraform, leaving the others well alone apart from stabilising their orbits for the new configuration.
 
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My concerns/hopes:
The Megastructures, especially the ringworlds, will be so late-game that the benefits of having them will be of little use by the time we access them.
That is my main concern.
From what I've read so far, they seem neat for roleplaying but too gimmicky for regular play.

Considering the resource costs and technology requirements, they definitely sound like a late-game thing. And at least in my experience, it's far too late to try to shift the balance of power at that point. So they'll be built by the empire that's already the clear winner.
 
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i wish paradox would just straight up copy halo for its ringworld designs. it's the least implausible design for any absurdly scaled sci-fi artificial habitat. they're almost as far across as the earth (so nearly the same surface area not even counting beneath the surface) they can be placed ANYWHERE, the construction cost would presumably make more sense than they will in the DLC and they don't look ridiculous.

at least dyson spheres are meant by design to be insane concepts.
 
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So we pretty much know about all mayor features of Utopia, right? I am really disappointed that this expansion does not add a single new mayor systemic feature like trade, private sector enterprise, multilateral organizations, espionage, different nation entitites like nomads, etc. How does that justify a whole expansion? Its only minor stuff, worth a DLC.

The new major systemic feature is the remaking of the ethics system, as well as factions, traditions and species rights which all kind of go along with it. I agree that the expansion is mostly fluff, but I'm sure that was intentional so that everyone could enjoy the more meaty changes that are coming about. It might not be "new", but it's replacing a system that isn't nearly as dynamic, and offers almost nothing in the way of interesting choices.

Think about it, before all you had to do was minimize ethics divergence, probably just through buildings, and suppress factions when they got troublesome. Your playstyle was largely determined from the start of the game. Now ethics divergence depends on how you run your empire, and you have to balance the realities of your situation in game with what your people want you to do, and the demographic shifts that will occur. It's at least as big a change as something like trade routes.
 
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