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Stellaris Dev Diary #370 - 4.0 Changes Part 4

Hello everyone!

This week we’re going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update.

Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but I’m going to save that until next week since there’s quite a bit to cover here (especially if you’re into the technical details), and I’d rather not split the feedback.

Pop Groups and Workforce​

As mentioned in Dev Diary 366, the Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ has always had significant performance implications in the late game, and we’ve been working on incremental improvements ever since. In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, we’re changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate groups of 100. The new systems can manipulate any number of Pops within a Pop Group just as easily as manipulating one, and I’ll go into some of the benefits of the finer resolution below.

Our primary desire with these changes is to improve late-game performance, but while working on it we took the opportunity to streamline some aspects of planetary management and improve the planet UI.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the details.

Workforce​

In Stellaris, the core economic loop since 2.2 has been: Pops fill Jobs, and Jobs produce resources.

With the 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re making a subtle but important change - Pops will now generate Workforce, which is used to fill Jobs, and planets themselves will produce resources.

At a basic level, this works almost the same way. By default, every Pop generates 1 Workforce, so Jobs are still filled at the same rate. However, this shift is crucial for backend performance improvements, reducing the number of calculations the game needs to make each month.

Example: Then vs. Now​

Before (3.14):
  • Take a planet with 100 Pops working Metallurgist Jobs, where 20 of them have a +10% Production Bonus from a Species Trait.
  • These 100 Pops produce 612 Alloys per month.
  • Every Pop is individually checked - 80 produce the standard amount, while 20 get a 10% Alloy production bonus from their species trait.

Now (4.0):
  • Instead of tracking individual Pops, we track Workforce filling Jobs.
  • The Jobs are now filled by 10,000 Workforce (since Pops are scaled up by 100).
  • 8,000 Workforce comes from regular Pops, while 2,000 Workforce comes from the bonus-earning Pops.
    • The species bonus is now “10% bonus Workforce when working Alloy jobs” - those Pops contribute an extra 200 Workforce, making the total 10,200 Workforce. Bonus Workforce is allowed to go over the required Workforce for a job, yielding extra production.
  • If 100 Workforce still produces 6 Alloys, the planet still produces 612 Alloys - same output, different system.

Why This Matters:​

The key benefit is efficiency. Instead of iterating through and calculating production for every individual Pop, the game now only checks once per planet. This makes the system more scalable and improves performance, while still allowing for species based bonuses and modifiers.

Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta.

There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively.

Pop groups are currently split up by Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction. If you end up in a case where a Pop group is not completely uniform (for example, if 20% of the Pop group are recent refugees and thus happier than the rest), then the differences get averaged across the Pop group.

If none of this feels like it makes sense - it’s okay. It’s mostly a behind-the-scenes change. Jobs require Workforce to fill them, and that’s generated by Pops. We have some ideas about ways to expand upon this in the future, such as replacing part of the Workforce with automation by using a building.

Pop Growth​

With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month.

This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal.

Xeno-Compatibility will pool all species on a multi-species planet together to calculate their growth rate, then split the growth proportionally across the various species.

Assembly works largely the way it did before, except that fractional Assembly will become “microPops” thanks to the finer resolution of Pops. Machine and Organic Assembly will no longer conflict with one another, as the Organic Pops will handle their own growth, while all mechanical assembly will be channeled towards the highest “score” mechanical Pop templates available.

Colonization and Civilians​

Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities. Unemployed Pops will still exist and downgrade through the strata, with unemployed Worker stratum Pops demoting to Civilians over time. This will have an impact on stability, as Civilians are largely content and non-disruptive.

This is mostly for you modders out there to abuse, but in the new system, “Unemployed Specialist” will technically be a Job - there’ll be one for each stratum. Every Job can have a demotion target assigned to it, and a time.

In our implementation, all of the Specialist stratum Jobs will demote to Unemployed Specialist; Unemployed Specialist will demote to Unemployed Worker, and Unemployed Worker will demote to Civilian as they give up on their dreams of productivity and veg out in front of the holoscreen.

There are actually going to be many more Strata than I listed there.

Our current list includes the following for regular empires:
  • Elites
  • Elites (Unemployed)
  • Specialists
  • Specialists (Unemployed)
  • Specialists (Slave)
  • Specialists (Slave, Unemployed)
    • For Indentured Servitude
  • Workers
  • Workers (Unemployed)
  • Workers (Slave)
  • Slaves (Unemployed)
  • Civilians
  • Residents
  • Criminals
  • Pre-Sapients
Gestalts would have:
  • Complex Drones
  • Menial Drones
  • Maintenance Drones (Civilian Equivalent)
    • Unemployed Complex and Menial drones demote directly to here, skipping the Unemployed state
  • Deviant Drones
  • Slaves (For Grid Amalgamation, Livestock, etc.)
  • Bio-Trophies
  • Bio-Trophies (Unemployed)
  • Pre-Sapients
There are likely to be more once we’re done, including the various Purge types.

Like many of the other changes, it’s all about removing iteration. Instead of going through the Pops to find the unemployed ones, we already know that any Pops in the Specialist (Unemployed) stratum are, in fact, unemployed. When a Specialist Job opens up, we have a smaller pool of candidates that are pre-identified, and we already have a clear priority of who has dibs on the Job.

In this model, Slaves would demote to the Slaves (Unemployed) Job/stratum and go no further, so they’ll never hit the content state of Residents and Civilians. Based on playtesting, we might end up adding a Slaves (Specialist, Unemployed)

Modders: Technically, there’s nothing stopping you from having a Job “demote” to a higher strata, like if you had a Worker stratum “Academy Cadet” that led to a Specialist stratum “Officer” Job. Just make sure you comment your script.

Your homeworld will start with a fairly large pool of Civilians to support your early expansion. We’re a bit worried about early conquest of homeworlds being too easy of a snowball with this increased starting Pop count, so are considering various ways of making it more challenging to take homeworlds in the early to mid game. One idea we have includes having Civilians create impromptu defensive militias to help defend their home, and possibly starting you off with a few Defensive Platforms. Another idea is for aggressively invaded Civilians to take “Resistance” Jobs that they must then “demote” out of over time. The number of Civilians converted to this new Job and how long it takes them to drop out of it would be modified depending on how their people are being treated by their new and old masters.

We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!​

We’re currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - it’s likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than “Civilians”.

We’re also renaming the Ruler stratum to “Elites”, so “Ruler” isn’t double-dipping between your Empire’s ruler at the top economic stratum.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be going through the new Planet UI, and how all of this changes things there.
 
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So most of this makes sense and seems like a step in the right direction to help optimize performance and open up new possibilities for mechanics and systems. But there is one thing that kind of seems like a step backward, unless I'm misunderstanding. By making robot pop assembly no longer mutually exclusive with organic pop assembly, you re-introduce the problem of robot-having empires just strictly being better off than those without robots. Hive minds and to a lesser extent spiritualists are currently in a good place because they can still assemble bio-pops. If everyone else can just do both (have their cake and eat it too), then they're left behind again. Bio-pop assembly was a great equalizing force to prevent robots from dominating the meta.

Maybe the change could have a max total pop assembly, and if you're doing both, you have to split it up between the two? Because stacking them without a cap just brings back robot meta again. The alternative I suppose would be to make everyone able to build robots.
 
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Eladrin said:
In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs.
Click to expand...
Assuming that ethics and factions will not directly affect member pops, would it not be more CPU efficient for economic calculations to instead separate pop groups only by species and strata, and instead treat ethic and faction shares attributes/properties of the pop groups?

The effects of faction approval on a pop group's Happiness, and derived values such as Crime, could be calculated from the relative shares within a pop group - separate pop groups for different factions are not inherently necessary for that. Though I guess that the increased CPU cost for Happiness calculations (first check for the presence of each faction, before doing the actual Happiness calculations per faction, and then calculating the resulting average for the pop group) could potentially exceed the CPU gain from having fewer pop groups.

Even if separating pop groups by factions is more CPU efficient, pop ethics is a different matter. Unless pop ethics affect anything in the economy (keeping in mind that faction approval is mediated via pop faction rather than pop ethic), it seems to me that dividing pop groups by ethics will just create a greater number of pop groups and cost more CPU resources in economic calculations, while not avoiding any CPU costs elsewhere. Furthermore, pop group separation by ethics would also clutter the interface more while not providing any substantial benefit for the player. It would also be quicker to mouse-over a single pop group and get a tooltip readout of the ethic distribution, than to mouse-over several different pop groups to see which ethics they belong to.

To offer a more concrete example of the point I am trying to make: unless pop ethics matter directly for the economy, I would probably prefer to have a single Manifesti pop group (per species and stratum), where a tooltip shows me the shares of Egalitarians, Pacifists and Xenophiles, rather than different pop groups for Manifesti Egalitarians, Manifesti Pacifists and Manifesti Xenophiles (per species and stratum). Especially if the single pop group also is more CPU-efficient.

(There is also the issue that until more multi-ethic factions are added, there is not much point to separating pops by both factions and ethics, since ethics and factions have a nearly complete overlap. With the exception of the multi-ethic Manifesti faction, the ethic-grouping check seems like a waste of CPU resources. Though I may also be ignorant about the way the new code is being structured.)

Eladrin said:
Workforce
Click to expand...
Will the method (job weights) for pop Workforce allocation be updated?

AFAIK, some factors currently are not factored in, even though they arguably should be - especially on the cost side of pops. All else being equal, pops that have a higher cost for pop upkeep should lose the competition for jobs, as that produces the economically most efficient outcome.

This would also have important gameplay implications in regards to living standards (especially slavery), species traits and habitability.
  • Slaves and servitude robots should generally displace free citizens from eligible jobs, as the former are much cheaper to employ.
  • A xenophobic society where the ruling species has a higher living standard and exploits resident xenos, or a society that exploits robots or zombies or replicants, should similarly liberate its citizens from having to perform undesirable jobs (i.e. those jobs that xenos, robots, zombies or replicants can do instead).
  • Pops with low habitability (and thereby high upkeep costs) should lose jobs to pops better suited for the world's climate, eventually demoting the wrong-climate pops to the Civilian pool of pops eligible for automatic resettlement.
  • Species with traits affecting pop upkeep should also fare differently. All else being equal (i.e. no production bonuses), a Conservationist pop should win the competition for a job against a Wasteful pop, because the former costs much less to hire.
This would also have some implications for Stellaris' default template for the Human species, and the default empires that use it as their primary species (i.e. the United Nations of Earth and the Commonwealth of Man). In default Stellaris, Humans have the traits Adaptive, Nomadic and Wasteful. The Wasteful trait (+10% CG upkeep) would make them more inclined to get demoted from competition, making them trend more towards the Civilian stratum and eligibility for automatic resettlement. At the same time, their Adaptive trait (-10% CG upkeep climate penalty) nullifies that competition penalty for Humans in less-than-ideal climates (for both species competing for the job), as well as making Human procreation less impacted by climate. These effects would go very well with the third trait, Nomadic, in making the default Human template nearly optimal for creating a widely spread galactic diaspora; rarely making it to the top of societies, Humans would be seen as coarse and rough and irritating and getting everywhere. Though of course, the implications are different for the UNE and the COM. In the UNE, acquiring sufficient bonuses to Habitability (or turning Earth into an Ecumenopolis or Gaia world, or genemodding the Humans) would mean that xenos could start outcompeting Humans from Earth itself (unless beyond-100% Habitability becomes a thing), but the UNE would also have more migration pacts that allow Human migration to other empires, thereby creating the aforementioned widespread Human diaspora (especially if automatic pop resettlement to other empires becomes a thing). In the COM, xenos could be treated differently...

Eladrin said:
Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta.


There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively.
Click to expand...
Nice to see species traits become more relevant.

Eladrin said:

Pop Growth​

With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month.

This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal.
Click to expand...
A welcome change.

However, colony-spamming may still be motivated by the free pops, especially for empires that get bonus pops on new colonies. Is anything being changed in this regard?

With the more granular pop units, an alternative could be to cut the starting pop of a colony from the old 1 (equivalent to 100 in the new system) to the new 1 (equivalent to 0.01 in the old system). Colony ships could even cost 1 pop unit to build. The old "free pop" bonuses could also be replaced with bonuses to migration/resettlement to new colonies - or perhaps bonuses to the number of Colonist jobs, whose main purpose could now be to facilitate resettlement to, and development of, new colonies (in which case getting extra Colonist jobs could remain a very nice bonus). Or just reductions to resettlement cost (or time, if resettlement delays are added).



Eladrin said:

Civilians​

Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities.
Click to expand...
Eladrin said:

Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!​

We’re currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - it’s likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than “Civilians”.
Click to expand...
Clerks can finally say, "I'm not even supposed to be here today"?

Pop-culture references aside, this looks like a very good opportunity to consider adding "unemployment jobs", i.e. things that Civilians contribute Workforce to - while remaining available for emigration if opportunities arise elsewhere. There are already a couple of such jobs in the current version of Stellaris, i.e. those jobs that are created out of nothing for pops when no other job is available (except that AFAIK those jobs currently block emigration, but this should not be an obstacle if emigration availability is decided by being the Civilian stratum).
  • Servant (Domestic Servitude slavery)
  • Toiler (Thrall-Worlds)
  • Livestock, Grid Amalgamated and Organic Specimen could also fit in here, as they are barred from taking any "real jobs" and get a number of jobs equal to their population size.


One model would be to have a civilian-military split of the Workforce contribution from the Civilian stratum, where pops in the Civilian stratum contribute Workforce to two different "jobs": Clerk (Trade Value) and Militia (Naval Capacity, Planetary Defense Army). These contributions would be on top of whatever contribution pops make by being in the Civilian stratum to begin with.

The ratio of contributions to Clerk and Militia could normally depend on the Economic Policy of the empire; perhaps 50% each at Mixed Economy, 100% Clerk with Civilian Economy, and 100% Militia with Militarized Economy (edit: or perhaps 75/25 with Mixed Economy, 100/0 with Civilian Economy, and 50/50 with Militarized Economy). Special circumstances could, however, override this with other ratios for the affected pop groups.
  • Exempt (from Military Service): 100% societal contribution (Clerk).
  • Domestic Servitude slavery: 100% societal contribution (Clerk).
  • Battle Thralls slavery, Thrall World designation: 100% military contribution (Militia).
  • (Edit: Fortress World designation: 100% military contribution.)
The job assignments could also be swapped by special circumstances.
  • Decadent Lifestyle (from Pleasure Seekers / Corporate Hedonism) swaps Clerk to Hedonist (already exists as a Fallen Empire job - for otherwise unemployed pops).
    • This would pair very nicely with pop upkeep factoring into job competition/demotion. The expensive Decadent Lifestyle pops would eventually be liberated from all jobs that their xeno/robot/zombie/replicant servants can do instead, allowing them to retire into a completely decadent lifestyle of hedonism.
  • Other living standards could add unique assignments of their own (Utopian Abundance, Shared Burdens and Dystopian Society may be candidates for this).
  • Domestic Servitude slavery swaps Clerk to Servant.
  • Thrall-World planetary designation swaps Clerk to Toiler.
  • Penal Colonies could add Prisoner, or just reuse Toiler with a rephrased tooltip.
  • Warrior Culture could swap Militia for a new Warrior assignment.
  • ... and so on...
The one-job slavery types could be integrated into this system by swapping Clerk for their target job, and forcing societal contribution to 100%.



Eladrin said:
We’re also renaming the Ruler stratum to “Elites”, so “Ruler” isn’t double-dipping between your Empire’s ruler at the top economic stratum.
Click to expand...
A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.



On the topic of Civilians and population migration, is there any chance of the old migration system being merged into the newer resettlement system? It seems like a waste of CPU resources to run two parallel systems that ultimately serve the same purpose, when one of them (automatic resettlement) could cover entirely for the absence of the other (pop growth shifting). Especially so, now that we are getting pop growth per species on a world (i.e. multiple growth trackers that pop growth shifting/migration could affect, per world).
 
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Pootino said:
Society won't be looking very good if truck drivers, freight ships crewmen or even everyday shop clerks or garbage disposal workers suddently stop working either though. The problem is that Civilians are treated as jobs that are virtually useless, but at the same time they are (as far as I understood) the main source of trade, which is very much necessary unless you make every planet self-sufficient.


I guess the main problem is that specialists alone are able to produce what society need without any menial labourer doing the actual physical work. A bunch of entertainers can provide amenities for an entire planet, without the need of mechanics, plumbers, janitors, cashiers etc. factory floor jobs don't exists, Traders can probably churn out trade too without anyone working in physical shipping and selling etc.
Click to expand...
As I also said, I think the problem is that the abstraction of a job and pop just breaks down. The game right now abstracts spouses, the elderly and children into the same pop unit that works in the mines or as as rulers.

The new civilian thing implies a different model and abstraction. For instance you would be ok, if an empire had androids for all the jobs and everyone else, all the meatbags being civilians. That's perfect, that's exactly what you would like if you wanted an automated utopian society, where all the work is done by mindless machines. But in the current game, if you do that you would end up having all your species pops unemployed and unhappy - and if you were to get rid of them, the empire would end up being just a machine empire.
 
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Finally, I'll have a better idea of how many people live on my planets/are dying as I carpet bomb the Fallen Empires!
 
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I'm assuming Virtuality is going to be changed a lot seeing how pops work differently and also the lost of clerks is gonna be a big hit towards trading, will they be allowed to generate Civilians? Tbf as long as they make playing tall still fun im all for whatever you guys have in store for them!
 
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My idea to stop a snowball by taking homeworlds is by making the civilian creation stop until the penalties for taking over the planet are gone. You can make these penalties last longer and reduce these penalties with techs, civics ect.
 
There's a lot of interesting things here. I have some questions:

1. Does all this mean that population growth now generally scales with population (with modifiers) ? IE does a size 100 planet with 10 pops grow as fast as 10 size 10 planets with one pop each? If not we will still need to grab planets as "pop growth factories".

2. I think early game homeworlds having loads of defense armies will work well. It will mean the early game meta will be extracting tribute and conquering starbases and colonies. You'll have to work your way up to having big enough armies to conquer home worlds.

3. What will be the new system for migration and forced migration?

4. Will robot assembly still be capped per planet? This has always felt immersion breaking to me.
 
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Roooiboooi said:
I'm assuming Virtuality is going to be changed a lot seeing how pops work differently and also the lost of clerks is gonna be a big hit towards trading, will they be allowed to generate Civilians? Tbf as long as they make playing tall still fun im all for whatever you guys have in store for them!
Click to expand...
It's going to be a new and different game mate, dressed up as Stellaris. All of that is going out the window....

4. Will robot assembly still be capped per planet? This has always felt immersion breaking to me.
Click to expand...
It depends on the important question of: Do Synths have the capability of making baby Synths? If they need the Synth Factory then it should be capped.
 
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GnoSIS said:
As I also said, I think the problem is that the abstraction of a job and pop just breaks down. The game right now abstracts spouses, the elderly and children into the same pop unit that works in the mines or as as rulers.

The new civilian thing implies a different model and abstraction. For instance you would be ok, if an empire had androids for all the jobs and everyone else, all the meatbags being civilians. That's perfect, that's exactly what you would like if you wanted an automated utopian society, where all the work is done by mindless machines. But in the current game, if you do that you would end up having all your species pops unemployed and unhappy - and if you were to get rid of them, the empire would end up being just a machine empire.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying that this kind of scenario shouldn't happen at all. I always wanted to do that sort of post-labour society and even tried to (unsuccessfully) mod it in, however it should be something that is exclusive to empires that are willing to support this kind of occupations, not poverty ridden, slum-filled super dystopias
 
GnoSIS said:
As I also said, I think the problem is that the abstraction of a job and pop just breaks down. The game right now abstracts spouses, the elderly and children into the same pop unit that works in the mines or as as rulers.

The new civilian thing implies a different model and abstraction. For instance you would be ok, if an empire had androids for all the jobs and everyone else, all the meatbags being civilians. That's perfect, that's exactly what you would like if you wanted an automated utopian society, where all the work is done by mindless machines. But in the current game, if you do that you would end up having all your species pops unemployed and unhappy - and if you were to get rid of them, the empire would end up being just a machine empire.
Click to expand...

Pootino said:
I'm not saying that this kind of scenario shouldn't happen at all. I always wanted to do that sort of post-labour society and even tried to (unsuccessfully) mod it in, however it should be something that is exclusive to empires that are willing to support this kind of occupations, not poverty ridden, slum-filled super dystopias
Click to expand...
One possibility that comes to mind is splitting Civilian into two Job categories. "Infrastructure Jobs" are generated when building any districts or buildings. "Independent Labor" covers all other Civilians.

Infrastructure work generates no resources. However, empty Jobs will impose an efficiency penalty on the planet to reflect understaffing of services and how it impacts the larger economy. Low staffing levels could also cause negative effects like the formation of slums, districts/buildings being damaged, etc. In the worst case, you could get a Situation where the infrastructure breaks down the the point that it's essentially a disaster recovery.
 
Sounds very promising.
Speaking of Xeno Compability, any plans to allow for a change of the population by means of birth control? Humans and Blorgs getting more kids than within their own species? Slowly replacing the whole population by Blumans?
 
ok so xenophilia without its special perk will be total garbage if there are no major changes planned in its bonuses... let's assume that they won't change anything which is unlikely but for...

what if xenophilia were like crime syndicates only less directly harmful? XD

what if xenophilia had such a sick increase from immigration that a migration pact with them would guarantee emigration on almost every planet that is not some paradise. BUT, also a bonus for xenophilia would be giving a 5-10% bonus to production on every planet of the empire with which they have a pact XD... so we steal your population but you have slightly more production in return. Of course, the scale of emigration should be adjusted so that the pact sometimes pays off, and also a pact with many xenophiles should have scaling so that instead of losing twice as much growth from immigration, you would lose 1.5 times as much and then 1.75 with three xenophiles... these numbers are not necessary when it comes to scaling, but I think we all know what it's about, and the production bonus would be constant so it would pay off to play like that more than once... what's more, xenophiles should steal your immigration even without a pact, where it would work less on ISOLATION diplomacy, certain empire perks, and xenophobe pop groups. The effect itself should not be greater than 15% of the effect given by the migration pact and just like with the migration pact with many xenophiles, the effects should be worse (for a xenophile) with every other xenophile in the galaxy who knows the target empire. Yes, xenophiles would be like corporations that lose when other corporations are in the galaxy, but not entirely because although their migration pacts would usually negate each other, they would still have this % for production :D

and what about spamming the creation of a vassal as a xenophile to have a lot of bonuses to production, first of all, vassals should not have this effect, and according to the effect should depend on the size of the empire a bit like the rivalry effect, if you are too big you get instead of 5, 4 and then 3,2,1,0 %, i.e. 10-8-6-4-2-0% for fanatical xenophiles. and xenophiles themselves would lose a lot of growth from immigration for each other xenophile so they wouldn't want to make too many of them... and some cap would be useful how much immigration xenophilia can steal for the galactic sacral and for the home world or capital so that no one in the mutli trolls using this mechanic.

would this xenophile action system be stupid? yes totally it would be totally stupid... but also comical and if paradox didn't come up with a good change that would make xenophiles without xeno compatibility good gameplay-wise... this change would definitely be interesting even if sometimes it would create total monsters blocking half of the galaxy from developing their colonies.
 
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I love the idea of "Resistance" jobs.
It could technically mean the ground combat isn't over once you conquer the planet since the resistance might strike at you anytime, so you have to choose what to do about it, negotiate, give them better living standards, repair the planet or just wage an intra-empire campaign to crush resistance with ground forces.

Of course intra-empire ground combat would require to be somewhat automated, there's no point in adding something too complex, but it would be fun seeing to the pacification of the newly conquered worlds. Perhaps resistance situations get resolved faster with ground forces present or with some types of ground forces? (Xenomorphs and robot terminators come to mind) or by love-bombing the civilians with visions beyond their wildest dreams (like chemical bliss).

Think of it, "The Matrix" scenario could exist outright if you have resistance pops while the rest is grid-amalgameted.

Also, it provides ample a chance for new warcrimes inmersive storytelling choices like releasing xenomorphs into your own planets to bring the resistance into submission.

One of the big points of having a slaver empire is precisely as that barbarian despoiler said, is to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations, and currently there is a shortage in the lamentation area. I think dealing wit the resistance and the pops of the conquered pieces who are trying to raise in arms would provide infinite oportunities to do this.

Also these "Resistance" jobs could provide oportunities to attempt to start ground combat with rebellions inside your empire before the actual rebellion takes place and they fracture your empire. I'd rather release the xenomorphs until they see the error of their ways! :)

TLDR: Love this idea, and I think with this "Resistance", You don't just beat those determined exterminators, you get the chance to either spare their pops or inflict horrors with a narrative flair on them on them just like they did on others.
 
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All of this is really cool and I think it's a big step forward for the game as a whole. I do have a problem with the Workforce thing - it seems way too complicated for a beginner. Stellaris already has a massive learning curve, partly from all of the systems, and partly from the immense amount of feature debt in the game (did you know that if you don't have Nemesis, the Assets icon partly overlaps the Launch button) and the core economy mechanics are probably not a great place to pile more on them. It would probably be a better idea to hide the workforce amounts (just use them for calculations) and let players see the bonuses/maluses like how they appear now.
 
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I could see a lot of balance revolving around pop traits. Strong and Very Strong could provide 1.5 and 2 Worker and Slave Workforce per pop, for example.

I look forward to these changes!
 
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Jamaican Castle said:
It takes decades* for them to acknowledge that they'll have to give up the privileges of their previous social stratum and go scrabble in the dirt for minerals or sell fast food to their former peers. That's not something that should be instant.

*only rulers should routinely see actual decades, for specialists it's usually more like a year or two
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I do like the idea of jobs requiring qualifications though, so it takes some investment for pops to do more complicated jobs, depending on what they did before (that probably wouldn't be worth the performance downsides though).
 
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