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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's all for now! Next week we'll be talking about some significant changes coming in the area of genetic modification.
 
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Just a thought but what about sector policies? We have planet and empire wide policies, although very few empire ones, but nothing to see for sectors other than the focus settings.
Sectors and core worlds should probably be reworked in the sense that you apply one governor to your core worlds and edicts+policies to them as a group. Then make it so sectors have a limited number of systems in each of them (probably the same as core systems) and let the player apply edicts and policies to them as a group.
 
Ive just been playing the game again. I don't have enough leaders for all my colonies. I think if you have a governor on one planet in a core system, he should as governor for the entire system. I have 5 planets and orbitals etc in one system. Its a little annoying.
 
first of, i like the "fewer colonizable planets" way. All my last rounds where at 25% colonizable and as long as you don't play with only 2-3 enemies i think this would be fun for everyone. Even in a 1000 Stars Galaxy.

I am not an pro gamer but i have the slight feeling that authoritarian slavery seems a little less powerful than diplomatic egalitarian. Now, when they start to make every planet colonizable right from the start, i sense a huge boost for the egalitarian. I wonder what this will do to migration ? Now i can colonize a frozen planet with my desert mushrooms and start a new migrationtreaty to get my planet filled. Where Coloniziable planets are rare, i think thats a huge buff.
 
I like the idea to make habitable planets more precious, so that's good.
But the problem is still that once a planet is colonized, it cannot be terraformed anymore. I never understood why the previous terraforming interface was changed (it was more logical, more immersive and allowed more strategic choices). Having to build an actual station tasked with terraforming, and then doing the deed, and being able to do it even there was a colony on it.
This change just make planets more easily colonizable, with a lower penalty. It doesn't change the core problems, nor does it make terraforming more fun.

I'd say, keep this change but bring the old terraforming method back.
 
I like the idea to make habitable planets more precious, so that's good.
But the problem is still that once a planet is colonized, it cannot be terraformed anymore. I never understood why the previous terraforming interface was changed (it was more logical, more immersive and allowed more strategic choices). Having to build an actual station tasked with terraforming, and then doing the deed, and being able to do it even there was a colony on it.
This change just make planets more easily colonizable, with a lower penalty. It doesn't change the core problems, nor does it make terraforming more fun.

I'd say, keep this change but bring the old terraforming method back.

There's a new tech to fix that "not on colonized worlds", far as I am aware.
Could be a Mod, though.
 
Wrong ... Ecological Adaptation which became part of the game in 1.6.0 makes it so you can terraform inhabited planets
Oh, haven't played since 1.5 so I never encountered that :p
Nice ^^

Still would prefer to go back to terraforming requiring a full satellite infrastructure and the like, making it feels a real project with lots of requirements, instead of just spending magic energy to start a clock ticking.
 
I don't suppose we could try completely reworking planet types, and the notion of "competitive balance", here?

A major problem, as I see it, is that, if I'm playing a "wet"-preferring race (such as continental world preference), then anything that isn't "wet" is all the same 20% habitability to me. It's all the same to terraform one to my race's tastes as another. And with a "planet class determines resources" change, as people mention, it basically means that planet class is a direct choice of which resource or tech path you want to focus upon.

As a rule, I don't like the notion of symmetric balance in these sorts of games. (The mindless drive to min-max over all else, eschewing role-playing or any real exploration (that is, finding anything but temples (anomalies) that just give a random generally-positive bonus to whoever finds them first) is why I hate 4X as a genre, and only played Stellaris because I believed Paradox could cure the problems of the genre. I rather like that in Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis, I can choose to play as some West African nation and upturn history by playing as a serious underdog that conquers everything. Competitive balance makes things boring.) There is a mod ("Planetary Diversity Mod") that changes the number of planet types to 17, for example, and makes races with a preference for one type have habitability for other types be something other than 60% or 20%. The maker of the mod pretty openly states he's more interested in simulationism/role playing than game balance (2 planet types can only live on their type, and have 0% habitability on other types), but even without that, you could easily make a system that has asymmetric balance over this perfectly symmetric balancing nonsense.

As an example of asymmetric balance, you can have a rare type of planet that has 15% or even 0% habitability relative to other planets (say, oceanic world that mandates aquatic or amphibian species, or even a "toxic" world or other world normally not habitable), so that you can ONLY live on your one type of planet without terraforming, and make terraforming more expensive for them (transplanting a whole ocean is nearly impossible). As the counterbalance, you can then stack the deck for resources in those world's favor and make those types of planets have unusually abundant resources, always have large (20+ tiles) planets, and more likely to get good modifiers, so that races based on those planets have precious few planets, but very rich ones. Meanwhile, you could make several planet types that are similar (say, 5 different types of "dry" planets, presuming all planet types have an equal chance of spawning) that all have 60% or so habitability to one another so that you're relatively more likely to run into habitable worlds, but lower odds of getting any good resources on them, such that you can either expand mindlessly, and/or try to cherry-pick from the available worlds for the few that got lucky rolls and have decent resources or special traits. This would, at the very least, add some more dimensions to the choice and its gameplay impact over simply "which tech path are you focusing on?" Players with super-rare habitable worlds will be far more desperate to build frontier outposts to claim their rare worlds and fight those who block access to them, while players that have a more

At the very least, make it so that there are worlds with 10%, 30%, 40%, 50%, or 70% habitability before modifiers. For example, a species could get +10% habitability to the planets on its planet preference row, but -10% for the row of planets below it (with wrap-around), and maybe gets -30% instead of -40% for the column on its left. That way, a tropical world (bottom middle) preference will have 10% habitability on the top-right world (arctic), and the ocean is only 50% to you, but the bottom-left world (savannah) is 40%. That way, worlds go from 10% to 60% instead of everything being either flat green or flat red.
 
They EXPLICITLY stated that you still adjust the number of inhabitable planets via the slider. Read please before stating your worries and spreading negativity.

And what about people who already play with 5x habitable worlds? (In particular, those who prefer smaller maps for one reason or another, and want to make the worlds clustered. The slider for galaxy size is already a pretty crude instrument that jumps from 150 to 400, for example, so having the habitability slider is useful as a fine-tuning device for actual useful world number.) Is there going to be a slider that goes up to 10x habitable worlds, or is this change functionally just chopping the slider in half?
 
I posted a question in the sector discussions / quarantined thread, asking whether devs actually read this huge thread. No response thus far, and its a shame since there are many good suggestions there and a lot of discussion if the problem.
 
no response doesn't equal not being read, and asking for validation by requesting them to say they read it aren't going to help your course

No response doesn't mean that have read and decided not to respond, it could just as walk mean they didn't read.
 
No response doesn't mean that have read and decided not to respond, it could just as walk mean they didn't read.

That's not necessarily wrong, but neither does it mean its true ... inconclusive at 'best' ... but asking for validation and making a huff when they aren't complying (doing the summer holidays where Paradox makes absolutely no secret that they're running on skeleton crew) are certainly not helping your case
 
That's not necessarily wrong, but neither does it mean its true ... inconclusive at 'best' ... but asking for validation and making a huff when they aren't complying (doing the summer holidays where Paradox makes absolutely no secret that they're running on skeleton crew) are certainly not helping your case

Interesting theological implications :). Anyhow, its not ''my case'' but rather our shared interest. Mine as a costumer/enthusiast, and the devs as producers/content providers.
 
Hmm. I have mixed feelings with tying resources to specific planet types. Food doesn't make sense to restrict because the definition of food is dependent on Race. Food to a mullosc is different than an Avian and Planetoid? My worms must eat desert sand, not ocean algae. By definition Societal research should be based on a society and not a really a planet. Any planet might have some special "creature" that might give it +x Society (as done with anomalies). Isn't Physics universal? Creating differential will probably result in everyone playing the similar species setups to not feel disadvantaged....

Also, changes need to factor in multi-species empires. In one game I found a Gaia planet early and had three species of different climate types. This allowed my empire to expand more quickly than other empires that were limited to one grouping (initially).

I think focusing on habitability is better. If you want to boost resources, then maybe introduce "anomaly" type tile boost when removing a tile blocker. Or just leave at the planetary level as it is currently with planet modifiers.. Just trigger more or less of them...
 
Since you are changing the Expansion Planner, can you give it a bit more face lift? Someone already mentioned being able to select within vs outside of borders. Just give us more filtering options besides the habitability level. Maybe I want to see only Ocean planets, Tomb worlds, Gaias,... Or all three in a specific group. Max pop threshold rather than just sorting large to small, etc.

When planning, folks what to be able to slice and dice different ways and to narrow huge lists into something manageable.
 
Since you are changing the Expansion Planner, can you give it a bit more face lift? Someone already mentioned being able to select within vs outside of borders. Just give us more filtering options besides the habitability level. Maybe I want to see only Ocean planets, Tomb worlds, Gaias,... Or all three in a specific group. Max pop threshold rather than just sorting large to small, etc.

When planning, folks what to be able to slice and dice different ways and to narrow huge lists into something manageable.

Make this a separate thread?
 
I especially like that different planet types have their own "flavours" now.