Stellaris Dev Diary #370 - 4.0 Changes Part 4

[Tilarium]

Not gonna lie, this is one of the harder changes to wrap my head around and understand. I'm getting more of a sense of what's going on from reading the follow-up dev comments though. I'm sure it'll all make sense with the next dev diary. Pictures guys, pictures really help some of us understand what's being talked about. Now that I'm getting a sense of the changes though, they do sound good.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Civilians getting their own bonuses would be good. I think a good one would be planetary construction speed. At the moment it seems that buildings and districts just build themselves because construction workers simply don't exist. Granted, one could argue that there is some degree of automation within spacegoing empires beyond the AI techs and robots. But even on pre-FTL worlds it seems that buildings just build themselves.

I'd be incredibly happy if this patch came with buildings consuming their materials over time during construction rather than a pure up-front cost. Then it could count as a planetary expense and the whole deficit system kicks in. That would mean that for your first few colonies becomes very beneficial to drop a mine early on to help pay for the construction of the rest of the colony, while also being pretty much ignorable for your 20th or 30th colony because seriously who cares about a couple of trade at that stage.

 

[Everstill]

Other users have already suggested "Dependents", which I think is better than "Underclass".

"Underclass" is I think too explicitly "lower", and not applicable for living standards like Shared Burdens or Utopian Abundance.

Dependents pass the idea that they are.... welll, dependents, which will not be true in a lot of Empires...? Most people even today scrap by their own as they can, without support of anyone other than family and community.

The "Jobs" of the Underclass should of course be thematic on civics or rights like Utopian Abundance. So while an Underclass in a social welfare woul have a 'dependent' job, an Underclass job for Utopian Abundance would have I dont know the "Leisurer" job. And here we can have various other thematic jobs.

Shared Burders needs to be an special case, because the idea is to both not have an underclass and not have an elite class (we have elite politicians for them lol), so they would have something like "Proletariat" jobs to fill the role of the underclass jobs.

Anyway, they just need to pick anything other than Civilian...

 

[Thiend]

I don't know if this is within the scope of 4.0, but if workforce is so much more granular you could also remove multi-yield jobs, or at least some of them.

Scientists, for example, produce 3/3/3 of each science. But instead of (as throwaway numbers) 90 maximum workforce for one job producing all three, it could be 30 maximum workforce for three jobs producing one type each.

I am, admittedly, mainly suggesting this because I still pine for specific science lab upgrades under the tile system allowing me to actually specialize. Other example jobs aside, science has three branches with three science types and absolutely no way to actually specialize... which kind of undermines having three types of science at all.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

It would be good if Districts became the primary source of jobs and buildings provided only bonuses. So there should be more district types, covering all resources.

Stop looking at the DD371 draft.

(You're close. Not exactly on target with what we're planning, but pretty close.)

Perhaps assembly buildings give a number of jobs per planet population, or they add assembler jobs to city districts.

@Gruntsatwork , double check that the DD371 draft isn't publicly available.

Will buildings provide their jobs indirectly via districts?
(Be still, my circulatory pumping organ!)

If so, this could also offer a new way to tackle the extraction jobs for strategic resources on habitable worlds: rather than modifying the Miner job, the strategic resource buildings could be readded and add a small amount of strategic resource extraction jobs. Perhaps 20 jobs per deposit size and district? (As opposed to jobs normally being added in batches of 100 at a time?)

The auto-migration system that moves unemployed pops around will replace the push and pull based migration system entirely.

The auto-migration system that moves unemployed pops around will replace the push and pull based migration system entirely. Unemployed pops and civilians may choose to migrate to the capital of an empire you have a Migration Treaty with (after which they may migrate elsewhere in that empire, or potentially, even back.) We're going to be tweaking some of these numbers for a while once we have everything running according to the base model.

We are planning on using the auto-migration system to handle all migration, rather than the growth push-pull one. We're planning on letting them move to other empires that have Migration Pacts.

Excellent news!

Will emigration be limited while a world suffers from devastation?
(Seems like a potential exploit otherwise - just bomb a world into lacking jobs for the population, then watch them leave in droves before the world recovers.)

Our current thought is to send them to the capital even if it's not where they actually want to be, and the next wave of migration would send them to a planet they'd rather be on or potentially to a different empire. We wanted to minimize the number of extra planets being added to the automatic migration checks.

Will migrating pops be aware of what climate types exist in the other empire?
Or will the international / first step migration happen regardless of climate availability in the rest of that empire?
(With pops potentially returning after being disappointed by reality not living up to the advertisements.)

The hybridization mechanic of xenocompatibility is likely going to be removed. It was cool, but pooling all of the species together for logistic growth calculations feels like a good enough niche for the AP. (I'm actually a bit concerned that it might feel too "required" for Xenophilic empires.)

This is perhaps an ignorant question, but what are the implications of the pooling?

A broad civilian underclass is present in a lot of sci-fi, usually subsisting on some variant of universal basic income or odd jobs. We envision the Civilians as fitting into that sort of role - they're not exactly happy about their position, and are ready to jump into an opportunity on another world, but aren't generally causing trouble as long as they have their bread and circuses. Living standards, civics, and the like are very likely to have a significant effect on exactly how happy they are.

I think that I like Dependents better than Civilians as the name for that population group.

OK naming the lowest tier of society after another paradox game is an incredible flex @Eladrin you can't not do this

I agree that the name "Civilian" does not feel optimal; it makes me think of the term in the sense "non-military", which feels wrong in relation to all the other jobs, and also in regards to using pops in this stratum as militia/resistance. I am also not sure if a "civilians" stratum would even be appropriate in a Warrior Culture society.
(As per my earlier comment, I also think it would make some sense to divide the stratum into civilian and military service functions, that can be swapped out for other assignments like Hedonist, and have their relative shares modified by circumstances.)

At first I liked the "Underclass" suggestion better than "Civilian", but the term is plain wrong for very egalitarian societies (Utopian Abundance, Shared Burdens, or even Fanatic Egalitarian overall).

"Dependents" is definitely better than both "Civilian" and "Underclass" in my ears, but it still feels inappropriate somehow for very egalitarian societies.

"Hoi polloi" is a useful term, and it would spawn plenty of delightful opportunities for linguistic snobbery in regards to people writing "the hoi polloi". Joking aside, if Paradox players could learn such terms as "casus belli", "de jure" and "demesne", surely Stellaris players can also learn the term "hearts of iron polloi" for pops that are not engaged in better activities.

Other alternative, descriptive names for the stratum could include "Common Worker", "Service Worker", "Service", or "Underemployed".
("Servant", while not an inherently negative word, would clash with the existing Servant job and cause confusion.)

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.

If pop assembly jobs are no longer limited per world, biological and mechanical assembly jobs would compete for the same Workforce input. Given that pop growth is becoming more proportional to the existing population, it makes sense for pop assembly to be changed the same way.

The alternative I suppose would be to make everyone able to build robots.

IMO, common Spiritualists should have no issue with programmed robots existing in servitude; they are just machines, it's only autonomous AI that should grind their gears.
(Though there should be some "iconoclast" civic for fanatic robot-smashers that want to take things further. A lot further.)

 

[Jashkar]

Dependents pass the idea that they are.... welll, dependents, which will not be true in a lot of Empires...? Most people even today scrap by their own as they can, without support of anyone other than family and community.

Forgive me, Everstill...but in which way someone who need to get support from family and community to "scrap by" could not be called anything but dependent?

Even a beggar wouldn't probably get much support from the State in most Western societies, but if he survives by begging he's still dependent from the rest of the society.

The concept is that these people don't count as "Worker" because they either don't work or don't do works that allow them to be truly independent. This makes also more meaningful their position in the social ladder under the "Worker" stratum, because not being independent isn't a desirable condition, but people might have to "go with it" to survive...if no "Worker job" is available!

Also would explain why they aren't upset as unemployed workers but still would readily jump at an opportunity to migrate to a colony!

 

[Jashkar]

"Dependents" is definitely better than both "Civilian" and "Underclass" in my ears, but it still feels inappropriate somehow for very egalitarian societies.

Well...still they are a stratum (social class) which is lower than "Worker" and that is so undesiderable to be into that they would readily migrate to a colony as the opportunity arise...moreover, let point out a couple of big issues you don't seem to have noticed even in the most fanatic egalitarian societies in Stellaris:

- They still have a pyramidal structure with the Elite at the top, Specialists at the middle and Workers at the bottom (and now Dependents at the bottom).
- They still have unemployed Elite, unemployed Specialists and unemployed Workers who are upset because they don't have the kind of jobs they want and they have to "gulp down" a demotion!

In essence, you seem to focus on the politically correctness of the term, but you don't seem to consider that there is no horizontal society in Stellaris and the concept of a social ladder and of demotion are applied to all societies independently from which ethics is chosen!

Please note that the existence of rulers/elites or even of some security jobs wouldn't be acceptable for a truly anarchic society, which is probably what one think for a truly extreme egalitarian society...

P.S.: The kind of society which would not tolerate the existence of such stratum would not even tolerate the existence of different classes and all people would be put all into the "Worker" stratum, but that possibility isn't really viable in Stellaris...

 

[Toby-wan_Strife]

I'd be incredibly happy if this patch came with buildings consuming their materials over time during construction rather than a pure up-front cost. Then it could count as a planetary expense and the whole deficit system kicks in. That would mean that for your first few colonies becomes very beneficial to drop a mine early on to help pay for the construction of the rest of the colony, while also being pretty much ignorable for your 20th or 30th colony because seriously who cares about a couple of trade at that stage.

I think Stellaris would benefit from a sort of “down payment” system when it came to construction. Imagine if you have a large initial investment, but then you pay the rest of it off over time until you get to the total cost of the building/district. In a way buildings and districts under construction would have an upkeep in the form of minerals and at the start of the game you could queue up multiple districts and every other building/district not immediately under construction will have a mineral upkeep cost of 1. Whereas buildings under construction will have a mineral cost equivalent to the total cost of the building minus a third of it’s grand total as a down payment divided by the amount of time it takes to build it. Assuming a building takes a year and costs 500 minerals, that will be 166 minerals initially and 27 minerals monthly until it’s finished.

 

[Everstill]

Forgive me, Everstill...but in which way someone who need to get support from family and community to "scrap by" could not be called anything but dependent?

Because everyone is dependent of someone in the end. There is a very very small amount of people that can literally live by themselves alone and not depend on a single other person, everyone in all the stratum are "dependent" of someone else. So, in this context, i'm sure the "dependent" means being dependent on the government or other institutions (like churchs and charities) to scrap by.

Even a beggar wouldn't probably get much support from the State in most Western societies, but if he survives by begging he's still dependent from the rest of the society.

Who here in this forum don't depend on the rest of society to live...?

The concept is that these people don't count as "Worker" because they either don't work or don't do works that allow them to be truly independent. This makes also more meaningful their position in the social ladder under the "Worker" stratum, because not being independent isn't a desirable condition, but people might have to "go with it" to survive...if no "Worker job" is available!

Your idea for this stratum is different from what people are understanding of it. People are thinking that even space mcdonald workers are in this stratum, and a mcdonald worker is 'independent'.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

I don't know if this is within the scope of 4.0, but if workforce is so much more granular you could also remove multi-yield jobs, or at least some of them.

Scientists, for example, produce 3/3/3 of each science. But instead of (as throwaway numbers) 90 maximum workforce for one job producing all three, it could be 30 maximum workforce for three jobs producing one type each.

I am, admittedly, mainly suggesting this because I still pine for specific science lab upgrades under the tile system allowing me to actually specialize. Other example jobs aside, science has three branches with three science types and absolutely no way to actually specialize... which kind of undermines having three types of science at all.

We've been discussing something like this internally already

 

[Gorehuchi]

The auto-migration system that moves unemployed pops around will replace the push and pull based migration system entirely.

Two questions:

1. How will the handful of "Pop growth from immigration" bonuses be reworked in light of this change?
2. Will restricting planetary growth to any particular species still be a mechanic?

Making sure a planet was growing only regionally appropriate species was sometimes useful. Will this control now only exist by disabling free movement entirely?

 

[Gorehuchi]

The hybridization mechanic of xenocompatibility is likely going to be removed. It was cool, but pooling all of the species together for logistic growth calculations feels like a good enough niche for the AP. (I'm actually a bit concerned that it might feel too "required" for Xenophilic empires.)

Can Pops on multi-species worlds still get the bonus trait pick?
Maybe they can get a "hybrid" trait that doesn't necessarily tie them to another species, but that they were grown on a shared world? And the trait can give them some form of heterosis, be it an extra trait pick or something else. I feel like Xeno-Compatibilty will be pretty robbed thematically if hybrids are done away with...

 

[Soranya]

Our current thought is to send them to the capital even if it's not where they actually want to be, and the next wave of migration would send them to a planet they'd rather be on or potentially to a different empire. We wanted to minimize the number of extra planets being added to the automatic migration checks.

How will the different targets be reflected in the calculations then?
When the homworld of a neighbour has no jobs, currently a large civilian population but there is a brand new planet that fits the foreigners but not the native population of the empire - how will the foreigenrs "know" that the other empire is a good migration target?

 

[lordvagrant]

Two questions:

1. How will the handful of "Pop growth from immigration" bonuses be reworked in light of this change?
2. Will restricting planetary growth to any particular species still be a mechanic?

Making sure a planet was growing only regionally appropriate species was sometimes useful. Will this control now only exist by disabling free movement entirely?

Pop growth from immigration -> Extra civilian pops that migrate in the same tick.

 

[Critical Ethics]

We've been discussing something like this internally already

If you're discussing science mana I'd like to suggest you also take a look at the current science categories, as engineering is still pretty oversized compared to other science groups. Part of the issue is "engineering" is a pretty wide scope since thematically it basically covers the entire concept of implementation. For a (bad) example you could split engineering into small fiddly mechanisms and big bulky things and push computers into the former and certain parts of terraforming into the latter. Or keep it at 3 but reshuffle the categories a bit.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Two questions:

1. How will the handful of "Pop growth from immigration" bonuses be reworked in light of this change?
2. Will restricting planetary growth to any particular species still be a mechanic?

Making sure a planet was growing only regionally appropriate species was sometimes useful. Will this control now only exist by disabling free movement entirely?

I think the answer to 1 is just that pops will transfer faster and the growth aspect will be removed. It always felt odd to me anyway. It'd be neat if nomadic pops got a little happiness boost on arrival as a bonus.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Our current thought is to send them to the capital even if it's not where they actually want to be, and the next wave of migration would send them to a planet they'd rather be on or potentially to a different empire. We wanted to minimize the number of extra planets being added to the automatic migration checks.

Would it be worth it to cache some manner of maxof of each planet type every time an empire gains or loses a planet or overall habitability change? Basically a tourism pamphlet rather than a census. An ocean species doesn't need to know how many ocean planets you have, just what the best one is like. So the maximum checks per empire would be 9 + Tomb + Gaia + Ecu + Hab + Ring = 14, and only if they have a full spread. Yes it may result in your 50 planet empire having your single ocean planet overwhelmed by squids but that seems like the fun middle ground to me.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

How will the different targets be reflected in the calculations then?
When the homworld of a neighbour has no jobs, currently a large civilian population but there is a brand new planet that fits the foreigners but not the native population of the empire - how will the foreigenrs "know" that the other empire is a good migration target?

The way I read it, it is possible that they will not. If so:

• Pops will migrate "internationally" on a purely random basis.
• Once they are in another empire, the availability of attractive migration targets determines whether they stay in that empire or migrate elsewhere.
• The net result is that pop migration will still ultimately flow towards the attractive migration targets, just in a non-direct fashion with "experimental missteps" on the way. When pops migrate into dead ends, they will migrate back, making the net migration flow 0 in the direction of the dead end.
• Having the migrating pops be aware of the availability of attractive worlds in a target empire may seem like the most straightforward way to achieve "smart" migration patterns. However, a "random walk" can actually achieve superior results in this regard, because it allows the migrating pops to pass through one or more inhospitable empires before arriving in an empire with attractive worlds.
  • Put differently: if the resulting migration patterns are determined by the availability of attractive worlds in the first-step empire, a lack of attractive worlds there stops the migration flow before it even begins - whereas in a "random walk" model, pops are able to "overlook" the inhospitability of intermediary empires if there are attractive worlds in second- or even third-step empires.
  • This is not necessarily unlike historical migration experiences, which have often not been straightforward processes where "location A is better than B for everyone, so migration only flows in that direction". For instance, back when the USA was the land of opportunity, a lot of "return migration" happened naturally as many discovered that their intended new country was not as good for them as they had hoped, or that they missed their loved ones in the old world too much.
• Another implication is that if empires want to be good at "capturing" incoming emigration, they should make sure their capital has 100% habitability for everyone. If pops arrive on a homeworld that is unpleasant for them, they are likely to emigrate from it - which carries the risk of them migrating to another empire with migration access. If the homeworld is pleasant for them, however, they will stick around.
  • Put shortly: if you want to keep all of the incoming international immigration, make your homeworld an Ecumenopolis with open housing and job spots - or a Gaia world, from which you periodically manually resettle pops to your other worlds.

A suggestion for the developers:
It would be very nice if we could set another immigration target than our political capital.

• Precedent-wise, it can be noted that historically immigration has often arrived via other cities than countries' capitals. Back when the USA was the land of opportunity, New York was the main entry point for most immigrants - not Washington D.C.
• Some ways this could be done:
  • A new planetary decision
  • A new planetary building: "Immigration Office"?
  • A starbase building: "Transit Hub", or "Immigration Hub"?
• Would it be very CPU-intensive if we could designate a list of immigration targets, from which worlds are chosen aftera pop has decided that it wants to emigrate from empire A to empire B?
  • If a list of immigration targets would not be too much of a CPU burden, then the existing starbase building Transit Hub could be used to designate systems/worlds that are valid targets for international immigration (the capital would be the default if there are none). Since only a small number of Transit Hubs are likely to be constructed, the CPU impact of managing immigration target lists should be quite manageable when compared to the gameplay value of being able to choose immigration targets.
  • This selection could be random, or it could be based on a precalculated distance from the sender's capital. The latter would be more "realistic", as pops from Space Europe would tend to arrive in Space New York rather than in Space San Francisco on the far side of the United Space America, but it would also require slightly more CPU work for the distance-based selection (though the distance calculations would only need to be updated upon the relocation of the sender's capital, the creation of new hyperlanes, or the construction of new space infrastructure).

Two questions for the developers:

• Will immigrants and refugees still be fully integrated and productive immediately upon arrival, or will they initially hold "Immigrant" and "Refugee" "jobs" for some time before they are "demoted" out of that situation?
  • (If the "Immigrant job" was in the "Civilian" stratum, this could still allow immigrants to leave swiftly if they are dissatisfied with their current location.)
  • Slightly related previous suggestion: Integration
    • (integration time needed before resettled pops and refugees become "productive";
      Nomadic trait speeds up integration while Sedentary slows it down;
      civics and other factors also modify integration time;
      refugees can be desirable for empires good at integration, but undesirable for empires bad at integration)
• How will assimilation and undesirable pops be treated, job-wise?
  • (I could see both of these being turned into assignments in the Civilian stratum, possibly with a flag that allows those pops to depart the empire as refugees. Plus a chance of pops instead choosing a "Resistance" "assignment".)

 

[Critical Ethics]

Well...still they are a stratum (social class) which is lower than "Worker" and that is so undesiderable to be into that they would readily migrate to a colony as the opportunity arise...

I work a well paid job that's pretty analogous to one of the existing Stellaris jobs and if someone invented a space drive tomorrow and found a colonisation planet the day after I'd be on the first ship out that would have me.

 

[Jashkar]

Because everyone is dependent of someone in the end. There is a very very small amount of people that can literally live by themselves alone and not depend on a single other person, everyone in all the stratum are "dependent" of someone else. So, in this context, i'm sure the "dependent" means being dependent on the government or other institutions (like churchs and charities) to scrap by.

Sorry, but that is sophistry...there is a substantial difference between depending functionally (which is a consequence of work specialization and involve an exchange of benefit) and being unable to earn enough to survive because you aren't paid enough or you don't work at all (which involve little or no exchange of benefit) ...the latter is Dependent. Then he or she might tell himself or herself whatever story might be sugarcoating his or her real condition.

It's not matter of dependence from Government, Church or charities...it is matter of "being unable to scrape by" without having to "attach" himself or herself to someone else in a purely transactional way*.

*= One might put it in sense that even "employees" and "employers" depend on each other, but that is a transactional relationship:
The employee gives "work", employers reap the benefits of "leveraging such work". Someone who needs his or her family or community as a crutch is in no way different from someone depending on the Government, Church or charity to "scrape by"...the only difference is in the (deluded) way in which he or she portrays oneself.