Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Now that the 1.7.2 update is out, we can officially start talking about the next update, which has been named 1.8 'Čapek'. This update will include the reworked AI crisis and other changes to crises outlined in Dev Diary #72. More information will be forthcoming in future dev diaries on the exact nature and release date of 1.8, but for today we'll be going over some changes and improvements to Habitability and Terraforming coming in 1.8.

Habitability Changes
Ever since the changes to the habitable planet classes and habitability back in Heinlein we have continued to discuss habitability, and in particular, the frequency of habitable worlds in the galaxy. A general feeling among the designers has been that habitable planets are too common and do not feel special enough, but that reducing the base number of habitable worlds wasn't really feasible while most empires only had access to colonizing a third of them at the start. We also felt that the sheer abundance of habitable worlds that become available to you when you do achieve the ability to colonize/terraform other climate types also meant that there is little pressure to expand your borders - not when you can triple your planet count simply by utilizing the planets already inside your borders.

For this reason we've decided to make a number of fundamental changes to habitability. First of all, the habitability at which Pops can live on a planet was reduced from 40% to 20%, meaning that by default, most species will be able to colonize most habitable worlds in the galaxy from the very start. We have also changed the actual effects of habitability: Rather than acting as a cap on happiness, it now acts as a modifier on it (in addition to affecting growth, as before), with each 10 points of habitability below 100% reducing happiness by 2.5% (so at the base 20% habitability, a Pop would get -20% to their happiness). This means that while low-habitability planets are possible to colonize, it may not be a good idea to do so unless you have ways to compensate for the negative effects of low habitability.

With these changes, we have cut the base number of habitable worlds in the galaxy in half. For those that prefer to play with more (or even fewer!) habitable worlds, there is of course the habitable worlds slider in galaxy setup as before. Overall, the changes should result in habitable worlds and terraforming candidates feeling like more significant finds in the early game, and contribute to mid and late game friction as empires run out of worlds to colonize inside their borders.


Planetary Deposits
Along with the change to habitability, we have also changed the way resource deposits are generated on habitable worlds. Rather than all habitable worlds having the exact same chance to generate the different kind of resource deposits, we have now broken it up a bit by climate as follows:

Wet Climate planets (Continental, Ocean, Tropical) are more likely to generate food and society research deposits.
Frozen Climate planets (Arctic, Tundra, Alpine) are more likely to generate mineral and engineering research deposits.
Dry Climate planets (Desert, Arid, Savanna) are more likely to generate energy and physics research deposits.
Gaia planets are more likely to generate mixed deposits and strategic resources.

Of course, this does not mean that you will *only* find those types of desposits on such planets - it simply means they are more likely to be found there.

Terraforming Interface Improvements
Also coming in 1.8 are a couple changes to improve Terraforming and Terraforming Candidates. First of all, we've introduced a concept called 'significant planetary modifiers'. This is a flag (accessible to modders) that can be set on any planetary modifier, and will result in that planet appearing in the Expansion Planner even if it not of a habitable planet class. For now, the only significant modifier is Terraforming Candidates (such as Mars), so you should no longer find a Terraforming Candidate only to forget which system it is located in, but we expect to make more use of this functionality in the future.

We also spent some time cleaning up the Terraforming interface in general, hiding the button for planets where it is never applicable (such as non-Terraforming Candidate barren worlds) and improving the sorting and style of the actual terraforming window.

That's all for now! Next week we'll be talking about some significant changes coming in the area of genetic modification.

 

[Red192]

Mines, farms and nuclear power plants can only be built in the territories where these resources actualy are, Increasing their performance by 40-50%, but making a planet with lots of minerals really special

I was thinking it would also help the IA decide what to build on the tiles

 

[Derenegade]

So this is massive buff to habitats, right?

 

[Alex_brunius]

I actually liked how you can build tall in the current version of the game by terraforming instead of expanding outwards. Why do you hate players who want to play tall? Playing tall instead of wide is already super hard to do well in Stellaris due to megastructures not appearing until the game is already over, and requiring half the galaxys resources to afford...


But I do agree that terraforming was a bit too cheap and easy. Why not have it require a high energy upkeep cost while in progress as well and take 2-3 times as long time, so your kind of limited to one or max two terraforming projects at the same time and they don't instantly unlock 3x as many planets for anyone with a decent energy economy?

This gradual and slower ramp up of colonizable worlds for players who want to play that style and like to invest to build tall rather then investing in fleets to expand and push back your neighbors would be much better IMO.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

In relation to the happiness penalties (again), while I really don't think a higher happiness penalty is a good idea, I'm considering adding in a resource production penalty to represent the difficulties of extracting resources in a hostile environment. Going to see how the balance of that plays out.

In my opinion, adding resource production penalty due to poor habitability isn't good idea as it will be already penaltied by happiness malus. It was already suggested multiple times in this thread to increase consumer goods cost due to low habitability. I would also suggest to increase unrest generated by slaves with low habitability. In that case slavers would care about planet types as well. And it would also make more scence as nobody cares how much slaves suffers while doing their jobs. And hiveminds would recieve a little buff.

 

[Jorrhast]

But I do agree that terraforming was a bit too cheap and easy. Why not have it require a high energy upkeep cost while in progress as well and take 2-3 times as long time, so your kind of limited to one or max two terraforming projects at the same time and they don't instantly unlock 3x as many planets for anyone with a decent energy economy?

Also, why not make megastructures work the same, i.e. they should cost minerals/months and maybe a construction unit on-site, instead of demanding saving up gigantic quantities of minerals?

 

[rhaak]

Any word on when we can dismantle robots again ? See https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/we-cant-dismantle-robots-anymore.1010995/

 

[Alex_brunius]

Also, why not make megastructures work the same, i.e. they should cost minerals/months and maybe a construction unit on-site, instead of demanding saving up gigantic quantities of minerals?

Actually, maybe you could have a special UI for all "Epic" projects like terraforming & megastructures where you can also modify the funding to speed up / slow down the progress of each project when you have extra minerals or have a shortage for energy due to a temporary war for example.

For example 4 settings for a project requiring normal 360 months funding to complete:

Paused: Progress decays 0.1% per month
Low Funding: 24 minerals / month for 540 months to complete (13.0k total) - 33% slower construction for 40% lower cost
Medium Funding: 40 minerals / month for 360 months to complete (14.4k total)
High Funding: 80 minerals / month 240 months to complete (19.2k total) - 50% faster construction for 100% higher cost.

 

[Marconius]

Maybe instead of making the habitability bonus only negative, set the baseline at 60% or so, and if it's above that, actually add a bonus. Right now there's really very little point in all the late-game techs relating to habitability and terraforming, since it's pretty easy to make planets livable. This is especially true for Gaia Transformation, which I find entirely pointless, besides the cool factor: there's pretty much no reason to turn a planet Gaia when you can just turn it into whatever planet your species prefers, at a fraction of the cost and (more importantly) time. Adding a bonus to happiness for high habitability, and maybe even something extra beyond that for gaia worlds would be a nice encouragement to actually get and use some of that stuff.

 

[Red192]

In relation to the happiness penalties (again), while I really don't think a higher happiness penalty is a good idea, I'm considering adding in a resource production penalty to represent the difficulties of extracting resources in a hostile environment. Going to see how the balance of that plays out.

In my opinion, adding resource production penalty due to poor habitability isn't good idea as it will be already penaltied by happiness malus. It was already suggested multiple times in this thread to increase consumer goods cost due to low habitability. I would also suggest to increase unrest generated by slaves with low habitability. In that case slavers would care about planet types as well. And it would also make more scence as nobody cares how much slaves suffers while doing their jobs. And hiveminds would recieve a little buff.

I find it right, you have to imagine that the pop are not a definite amount of people, they indicate more than an area of the planet is actually inhabited enough to exploit its resources. If a planet is inhospitable, fewer people live, and it is more difficult for them to use those resources, so I find just the double malus, just to point out how unsuitable it is

 

[Red192]

Also coming in 1.8 are a couple changes to improve Terraforming and Terraforming Candidates.

I appreciate devs listening to the community over this issue

 

[PaulMClem]

So to sumarise:

• There are 50% less habitable planets than before
• Habitable now means 20% not 40%

Is this correct? If so, I definitely think it's a good move to have habitable planets being rarer. In around 100 hours of Stellaris I think I terraformed one planet. You just didn't need to as there were so many perfectly habitable worlds to choose from, especially when you have Robot tech. However, with a 20% planet being deemed habitable and perhaps one such planet the best there is around, Terraforming will become more of a factor.

 

[Comediene]

I can already predict that Races who like dry planets will become very popular after this update, but don't you think there are other more pressing problems that should be handeled instead? Was it so terribly hard to move a slider to the side if one needed more or less planets?

 

[HallBregg]

Currently AI empires suck at colonizing 20% habitablity planets, leading to the player outperforming the AI in the mid game onwards. I reckon this change is mainly to help the AI in the mid game.

 

[hart30]

Ok, wet, dry, frozen and gaia planets have different chances to spawn certain ressources. What is with tomb worls? Do they have a low Chance to spawn any ressources? Because already a failed civilization lived there and robbed all the ressources? And do ringworlds have the same Chance as gaia worlds to spawn ressources? The crisis will be upgraded, so is there a Chance to find out who the mysterious "hunters" are, who chase the prethorin through the galaxys? So many questions. Another is, does it mean by halfing the habitable planets that automatically the fleets are halfed too? I mean fewer planets, fewer orbital ports and Pops, that means lower fleet maximal capacity, which u can reach. If then otherwise the size of the fleets of fallen Empires, awakened FE and the crisis stays the same they can easy wipe the Player and the ai Empires out.

 

[Yamori Yuki]

Using the second dimension on the planet class grid for different resoure, as mentioned before seems like a much better than doin it by climate group that already has a significant purpose.
Other than that, interesing changes will make things interesting, as long as it goes through proper playtesting first (1.7 beta was a move in the right direction but was still released to live prematurely)

 

[Wizzington]

Tomb worlds already have basically only science deposits.

 

[lrbaumard]

I was disappointed by no announcement of Half Life 3 in this Dev Diary.
Shame on you paradox

 

[Garfazz Steamfang]

Tomb worlds already have basically only science deposits.

Speaking of tomb world , can we finaly have proper Tomb world Background and tiles ?

 

[fetusthebard]

Not sure doing this is the right way to do it, but I'll trust that the balancing works out (or this is being used for further advancement).

I just don't see how making habitability=happiness again will help. It certainly won't have any effect on a Hive Mind, and a 20% happiness malice just seems way too tame.

 

[Bluegrass Geek]

Not sure doing this is the right way to do it, but I'll trust that the balancing works out (or this is being used for further advancement).

I just don't see how making habitability=happiness again will help. It certainly won't have any effect on a Hive Mind, and a 20% happiness malice just seems way too tame.

Hive Minds are apparently being reworked, according to what people saw in the new stream.