It will be interesting to see what the upcoming trade changes do to the utility of trade habitats, and whether whatever gestalts get for trade habitats ends up being any good.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Habitat sizes with the upcoming changes will also be tied to deposit sizes. This will affect them quite a bit.
Surveyor may become a most have in tall empires if that's the case. Surveyor + VD + One system = infinite habitat ?
The number of special districts (mining, energy, and science) will be tied to deposit size, not the max number of all districts.
- 2
- 1
Yep, I've got 14 crystal gatherer jobs in my Azilash Habitat.
That's going to cover a lot of my needs for the rest of the game.
I'm not sure tall empires will be able to get the Surveyor trait before they stop expanding...Surveyor may become a most have in tall empires if that's the case. Surveyor + VD + One system = infinite habitat ?
I think they mean the relic you get from killing the Home Base Ore Grinder in the Ancient Mining drones home system
I'm waiting for them to fix the unemployment cycling bug and/or amenities zones, but following habitat-related posts in the 3.99.3 thread, it sounds like:
- Habitat districts currently give 90 jobs base each, +50% for void dwellers = 135 jobs each for void dwellers. By comparison, pops have been multiplied by about 100 and planetary districts give about 200 jobs, so... habitat districts have been deeply, deeply nerfed.
- Habitat districts now cost 0.5 alloys/mo upkeep each instead of 0.25? alloy/mo upkeep. I guess this is supposed to replace the upkeep that orbitals used to add, but it sounds worse earlygame when I wasn't building orbitals. Paying double the alloy upkeep for less than half of the jobs we used to get. Splendid. I booted the beta real quick and loaded in some void dwellers and habitat capitals still have 5 alloy/mo upkeep, so it's not like it has been added to compensate for the removal of the capital's upkeep. My initial habitat complex had a max size of 11 districts at start, up from the 8 I would've expected in 3.14 but if all the stuff in the void dweller home system only gets you three extra max district slots, we're gonna have a lot of small habitats. Re-reading the dev diary, it's 0.25 extra districts per star or planet in the system per capital tier, so this does go up with capital upgrades but if we still only get three tiers of capitals this is actually a reduction in maximum districts on a habitat in a system with a given number of large / major bodies (max of 0.75 * bodies, vs 1 * bodies in 3.14). I guess building slots from other zones are the effective-replacement for building slots from minors, which seem to not have been replaced any other way.
- Habitat districts cost alloys instead of minerals to build, to the tune of 180 alloys for me (not sure whether Functional Architecture's bonus was being applied) vs 500 minerals in 3.14. This seems very bad; in energy credit terms, this is about a 45% price increase per district (again, for districts which now give 45% as many jobs as they effectively used to).
- The third city zone for habitats is locked behind one of the habitat upgrade techs. So now instead of having the max size of a habitat limited by the tech, it's sort of the maximum different number of advanced resources that the habitat can produce which is limited by the tech.
- Guaranteed habitable systems with size-1 deposits now give few guaranteed resource districts and are kinda worthless. In general, the current number of raw resource districts provided by different sizes of deposit is I think slightly a nerf relative to 3.14. In 3.14, any deposit of any size gave you three raw resource districts if you built an orbital over it. To get three raw resource districts in 3.99.3, a deposit must be size 4 or 5. Deposits of size 2 or 3 only give two districts, while deposits of size 6-7 give four. I think deposits of size 2 are much more common than deposits of size >=6. This might not matter that much for minerals, because you only really only need one or two good mining habs (well, used to, before they cut the jobs they provided in half). I'm concerned about what this will do to energy district availability, which was already a pain point, but haven't looked at it in play yet.
- Getting to keep the output of the mining station is nice, but... a size-4 deposit is worth about one miner. An increased focus on deposit quality kind of runs counter to what I liked about old void dwellers, which was that you could take a poor-RNG start and still make a game of it.
- Not habitat specific, but: researcher output per pop has been effectively cut by 55% - previously a researcher produced 9 total research, but under the new three-way split each 100 pops of eg physicists produces 4 physics research. At least their upkeep is also only 1 CG/mo now (still, 4 research per CG is worse than 9 research per 2 CGs). Putting up the same kind of science output numbers is going to require twice the pops working researcher jobs.
Last edited:
Hi hello, yea, Habitats/Void dwellers are in a functional state currently, though the start is quite painful.
Having the third zone for your capital be locked behind a fairly late tech does mean you're essentially stuck with 2 zones per habitat for a relatively long time, and also all habitats that aren't your capital habitat need the Habitat Expansion technology to unlock the second zone. You can quite easily solve housing/amenity problems at the start of the game by plonking down a luxury apartment on your government zone immediately after starting the game.
Essentially you'll have to spam habitats where you can to get the most out of them. I'm not really that big of a min/max or math gamer, so I can't really give any hard data on how good/bad it is compared to previous versions, but it's quite playable.
I do think that at least unlocking the 2nd zone on your non empire capitals needs to be made easier/faster, it is kinda painful to have 1 zone habitats laying around for the production you need.
I also do think that the current version of void dwellers is slightly bugged with techs. I think it might be skipping some key techs needed for mega engineering and jump drives or something as I never unlocked those, so something to keep in mind.
Having the third zone for your capital be locked behind a fairly late tech does mean you're essentially stuck with 2 zones per habitat for a relatively long time, and also all habitats that aren't your capital habitat need the Habitat Expansion technology to unlock the second zone. You can quite easily solve housing/amenity problems at the start of the game by plonking down a luxury apartment on your government zone immediately after starting the game.
Essentially you'll have to spam habitats where you can to get the most out of them. I'm not really that big of a min/max or math gamer, so I can't really give any hard data on how good/bad it is compared to previous versions, but it's quite playable.
I do think that at least unlocking the 2nd zone on your non empire capitals needs to be made easier/faster, it is kinda painful to have 1 zone habitats laying around for the production you need.
I also do think that the current version of void dwellers is slightly bugged with techs. I think it might be skipping some key techs needed for mega engineering and jump drives or something as I never unlocked those, so something to keep in mind.
Would having all zones be immediately open for habitats be too much of an overcorrection? Since we can't spam a lot of habitats in a single system anymore, I think habitats should have a much higher development ceiling. For Void Dwellers at least.
Personally would say so, they're still way more plentiful than planets even when limited to a single per system.
They should have 2 unlockable earlygame though.
I'm hearing bad things in discord, it looks like deposit generation is super-sparse now (possibly bug?) and the hydroponics zone was removed from habitation districts so RIP food production.
Last edited:
Some observations from spending a couple hours with hive void dwellers yesterday (to 2265) and machine intelligence void dwellers (into the 2220s) today.
The number of raw resource or research districts you get is not clear at any point until the colonization process completes. You don't know how many you'll get when you choose to construct the habitat, nor even when you send a colony ship. I have been unpleasantly surprised several times. The tooltip on mousing-over a system now only shows you the max districts (consistently 9 to 13 for me).
Districts still cost alloy to build like they did in the beta. They also still have alloy upkeep. At least district and building upkeep reductions seem to be working correctly on them now.
The math on jobs from zones is very strange with habitats. With Void Dwellers, unspecialized raw resource districts are giving 150 jobs (vs 200 from raw resource districts on a planet). With specialization, that goes up to 300 for both. So we're no longer getting more jobs than planet-side districts; if anything we're getting fewer early and then coming up to parity. Similarly, getting a second specialization for city districts on normal planets comes from Colonial Centralization, a tier-2 society tech, while getting a second specialization for habitation districts is blocked on the upgraded habitats tech, which I finally got as my hive in 2265. While void dwellers are getting 150 jobs per habitation district from just the one specialization vs 100 at game start for planet-dwellers, planet-dwellers are getting the upgrade to 200 jobs per city district much, much earlier. I do appreciate being able to specialize most of my science into Engineering to help get that habitat upgrade out though.
The job efficiency bonus from the new version of the species trait is pretty good since it now stacks multiplicatively with lots of +% output modifiers. idk whether that's a big enough bonus to make up for fewer jobs per district.
I'm still feeling fairly squeezed for energy and relying heavily on solar panels and hydroponics bays. Habitats still have the problem they've had since the rework where you never get enough of either mining or generator districts to make it really worth specializing heavily in either, and still lack a rural designation. Several new factors put habitats at an additional comparative disadvantage for raw resource production: habitation districts can't select the Mining Support or Generator Support specializations (which would be perfect for eg a 10-district habitat with 6 max mining districts), and habitat mining/generator districts can't build the new +max districts buildings like Conductive Works Complex.
The research district specialization situation is also a bit weird, where on a regular planet you could do double engineering specialization on your city districts and only build the engineering support building, while a research district with engineering spec sticks you with a mix of scientist types plus some extra engineers (45 / 45 / 195), and then in the city slots you can only build Archives to support it. I guess ultimately 195 engineers plus 90 other jobs is kinda coming out ahead of 200 engineers for a double-spec'd city district though.
The planetary deficit / trade changes also seems like it hits habitats hard, since when you have lots of tiny planets, you're going to run lots of deficits. Maybe the best way to play habitats now is to build short, integrated supply chains on individual habitats. Sounds expensive in strategics for upgraded buildings, but at least refining seems very productive these days? Sadly habitat designations are still stuck in the days before the previous rework, with no support for mixed-use.
(or play Mercantile, megacorp, etc and just produce lots of trade rather than gestalts who don't get support buildings like Galactic Stock Exchange or a trade designation on their regular worlds, never mind habitats, I guess)
The number of raw resource or research districts you get is not clear at any point until the colonization process completes. You don't know how many you'll get when you choose to construct the habitat, nor even when you send a colony ship. I have been unpleasantly surprised several times. The tooltip on mousing-over a system now only shows you the max districts (consistently 9 to 13 for me).
Districts still cost alloy to build like they did in the beta. They also still have alloy upkeep. At least district and building upkeep reductions seem to be working correctly on them now.
The math on jobs from zones is very strange with habitats. With Void Dwellers, unspecialized raw resource districts are giving 150 jobs (vs 200 from raw resource districts on a planet). With specialization, that goes up to 300 for both. So we're no longer getting more jobs than planet-side districts; if anything we're getting fewer early and then coming up to parity. Similarly, getting a second specialization for city districts on normal planets comes from Colonial Centralization, a tier-2 society tech, while getting a second specialization for habitation districts is blocked on the upgraded habitats tech, which I finally got as my hive in 2265. While void dwellers are getting 150 jobs per habitation district from just the one specialization vs 100 at game start for planet-dwellers, planet-dwellers are getting the upgrade to 200 jobs per city district much, much earlier. I do appreciate being able to specialize most of my science into Engineering to help get that habitat upgrade out though.
The job efficiency bonus from the new version of the species trait is pretty good since it now stacks multiplicatively with lots of +% output modifiers. idk whether that's a big enough bonus to make up for fewer jobs per district.
I'm still feeling fairly squeezed for energy and relying heavily on solar panels and hydroponics bays. Habitats still have the problem they've had since the rework where you never get enough of either mining or generator districts to make it really worth specializing heavily in either, and still lack a rural designation. Several new factors put habitats at an additional comparative disadvantage for raw resource production: habitation districts can't select the Mining Support or Generator Support specializations (which would be perfect for eg a 10-district habitat with 6 max mining districts), and habitat mining/generator districts can't build the new +max districts buildings like Conductive Works Complex.
The research district specialization situation is also a bit weird, where on a regular planet you could do double engineering specialization on your city districts and only build the engineering support building, while a research district with engineering spec sticks you with a mix of scientist types plus some extra engineers (45 / 45 / 195), and then in the city slots you can only build Archives to support it. I guess ultimately 195 engineers plus 90 other jobs is kinda coming out ahead of 200 engineers for a double-spec'd city district though.
The planetary deficit / trade changes also seems like it hits habitats hard, since when you have lots of tiny planets, you're going to run lots of deficits. Maybe the best way to play habitats now is to build short, integrated supply chains on individual habitats. Sounds expensive in strategics for upgraded buildings, but at least refining seems very productive these days? Sadly habitat designations are still stuck in the days before the previous rework, with no support for mixed-use.
(or play Mercantile, megacorp, etc and just produce lots of trade rather than gestalts who don't get support buildings like Galactic Stock Exchange or a trade designation on their regular worlds, never mind habitats, I guess)
- 1