Is it finally time to overhaul the citizenship system?

[HFY]

It is possible that the universal reset to default does not start a cooldown period for any specific templates, i.e. they could be corrected immediately before unpausing the game. At least, I imagine that I remember this being the case in the past.

Does it cancel an ongoing cooldown, or am I stuck if I changed rights on someone recently?

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Does it cancel an ongoing cooldown, or am I stuck if I changed rights on someone recently?

Speculating based on my imagined remembrance, of one or a couple of versions before 4.0, I would guess that ongoing cooldowns keep going on (but perhaps with the newly applied default in place). But the potential sources of error in this statement are so numerous that you probably should test it yourself to verify. Should be as easy as starting a Syncretic Evolution game and playing around with the Serviles' rights.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Getting back on topic, there is an issue which I am still unsure about: the handling of undesirable traits.

In the low end, there are traits like Repugnant and Quarrelsome, which seem like things that should give a species a harder time advancing in society. There are also traits like Necrophage, which seems like a trait that would be perfectly reasonable for other pops to be afraid of. In the high end, there are traits like Noxious which are objectively undesirable. It seems reasonable that players/empires should be able to react to them somehow, but I am not entirely sure how.

One option could be that some traits enable descent into the "None" Citizenship Type, where they could become optionally purgable, or an even lower "Undesirables" Citizenship Type where all affected pops are subjected to purging.

Another option could be that more traits harm job competition, making those species end up as Civilians more often and thereby be more likely to emigrate.

What other options are there?

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Some things considered for the fourth edit:

• "Undesirables" included as a sixth citizenship level, for pops with even less than no value / less than no Citizenship Rights.
  • Purge Type is no longer determined on a per species basis. Instead, it is merged with the Purge policy and applies to all purging.
    • (One Purge Type at a time should be sufficient for most, if not all, purging empires. Unlike slavery, purging is only a temporary state with much less presence in the game, and it could also be changed over time depending on what the main targets are. By being a single-setting empire-level policy choice, it could also function as a statement of identity by the empire. In the case of violent purging options, they could always use Extermination as a fallback whenever the main choice is not viable.)
  • A big implication here is that it would now be possible for an empire to purge members of its founder species, if they sink / are suppressed too far. For instance, after joining the wrong faction.
• Suppressed Traits policy/setting: suppresses pops that are afflicted with certain traits, because nasty traits cannot be allowed to run free in a nice society.
  • The simplest implementation of this list of traits would be to "hardcode" it as including all negative traits, Necrophage, Noxious and Invasive Species, except for any traits held by the founder species. Another variant would let players edit the list of undesired traits. A third variant would be that the list can be populated with traits via events, over the course of the game; this last option has big potential for ingame content and emergent storytelling.
  • The policy has big implications for gameplay:
    • A non-psionic majority might fear a psionic minority, subjecting it to various restrictions in order to control it (which might make the psionic minority resentful and revolutionary).
    • It would become possible to discriminate against Brain Slug Hosts, which means that they could now sometimes be revealed as a threat - since the player would have tools to deal with an internal same-species threat.
    • It would become possible for organic pops to discriminate Lithoid pops.
    • If phenotypes were always marked with traits, similar to Lithoid and Mechanical/Machine, it would also be possible to discriminate other specific phenotypes.
      • Edit: various ingame events could trigger specific trait/phenotype phobias, such as rivalry, declarations of war or your species being purged, where the main species of the offending empire would bear the blame and inspire the specific phobia/suppression. Genocidal empires could give their phenotypes a bad name, in empires where the phenotype is not already present, and the galactic opinion of the trait Necrophage could differ greatly between games where the Necrophages are gentle egalitarian pacifists who take consent very seriously, and games where the Necrophage empire engages in Necrophage purging - in the latter case, they should be universally considered as undesirables.
• Fear Campaign could suppress pops of the founding species of empires which the current empire is rivalling, or at war with.
  • Because Xenophobes/Nativists could expect pops related to another empire to be loyal towards it, and potentially traitorous to their new home... Even if the xenos really wanted to get away from that other empire, and really wanted to live in this one.
• A small note emphasising something important that is already implied but easily overlooked: the changes mean that Chemical Bliss would be applied to citizenship levels.
  • For instance, the "Servitude" or "Indentured Servitude" citizenship levels, if the player is in a dystopian mood.
  • A fallback solution is needed for non-biological species. Perhaps the lowest available alternative, i.e. Basic Subsistence unless used for Full Citizenship?
  • Edit: basically, the Chemical Bliss living standard would finally be practically useful, and not just a roleplaying/sadism gimmick.
• Edit: probably also a small note pointing out that we would no longer need to treat the new pops in The Waiting World (Horizon Signal) as trusted citizens.
• Edit: probably also a suggestion for a Suppression policy, which could cover suppressed factions, suppressed traits, and anything else that needs suppression. Could have negative effects for Citizenship Level ascension/descension, Political Power, Growth Rate, emigration willingness, eligibility for losing all rights and becoming undesirables, and so on... Xenophile/Cosmopolitan could be disinclined to use these, while the Fear Campaign of Xenophobe/Nativist could boost the effects or reward ongoing suppression with Unity.
• Edit: probably also a suggestion that Political Power could be moved from Living Standards to Authority Types, since Living Standards would be tied to specific Citizenship Types now, in parallell ranked order (where lower citizenship levels often mean lower living standards). It is enough that one of them is strongly tied to Political Power. Together, these two changes would put another chunk of meat on the skinny bones of internal politics.

 

[CrazyJ]

I'm going to give this the same response I've given every other major rework proposal since 4.0

Stop trying to redo the leaky plumbing while the building is actively on fire.

The game in such a state that the devs should be wholeheartedly focused on fixing it instead of breaking even more stuff with a rework.

The citizenship system isn't perfect, but it works well enough that even if the game were in a state comparable to 3.14 I'd still say to leave it alone and focus on actual problems.

 

[HFY]

Stop trying to redo the leaky plumbing while the building is actively on fire.

If the plumbing worked, then the sprinkler system might actually help with that fire.

 

[CrazyJ]

If the plumbing worked, then the sprinkler system might actually help with that fire.

Note that I said leaky, and not broken. My point was that existing systems that work, if imperfectly, should be left alone until the biggest problems have been handled.

In terms of the metaphor the building doesn't have a sprinkler system, and the plumbing is mostly irrelevant to the fire. As most of the proposed reworks have very little to do with the current issues.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I'm going to give this the same response I've given every other major rework proposal since 4.0

Stop trying to redo the leaky plumbing while the building is actively on fire.

The game in such a state that the devs should be wholeheartedly focused on fixing it instead of breaking even more stuff with a rework.

The citizenship system isn't perfect, but it works well enough that even if the game were in a state comparable to 3.14 I'd still say to leave it alone and focus on actual problems.

Nowhere is it suggested that the changes discussed in this thread should come before the major 4.0 issues have been resolved. That they need to be handled first is so obvious that it should not need to be mentioned.

 

[HFY]

Note that I said leaky, and not broken. My point was that existing systems that work, if imperfectly, should be left alone until the biggest problems have been handled.

That's a false binary though.

In terms of the metaphor the building doesn't have a sprinkler system, and the plumbing is mostly irrelevant to the fire. As most of the proposed reworks have very little to do with the current issues.

You're wrong about that.

As one example, we don't know how many pop mechanic bugs exist, and it's very difficult to know if bugs exist because the UI is so poorly done that a lot of critical information must be assumed (since it's never displayed anywhere). Having a better user interface than the unsorted "pop group" list would bring a lot of potential mechanical problems to light.

The mechanical problems are the house fire, but you can't report a fire that you can't locate, and the UI may be lower-priority to you than the game mechanics but we can't fix the game mechanics if they're hidden by a garbage UI.

 

[SS Boss]

Please no more overhauls, just end Stellaris so at least we have a definitive and stable (one day, i hope) thing to play and bring Stellaris 2 already.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

I feel like the ideas here would pair well with the Internal Politics rework that we'll eventually get.

Right? Right? (Copium)

Seriously though, this looks like a great idea that could be tied into any new faction mechanics and other related mechanics.

One thing I've always wanted was for planets in the empire to feel more distinct, rather than just resource dumps for the Empire. Managing planetary loyalty, individual cultures and societal developments would make the mid-late game far more engaging as each planet develops its own identity, creating more dynamic relations and impactful vassals/rebellions.

At the risk of asking too much, I'd also like to see an overhaul of the shipping lanes/trade mechanics with Piracy. Planets with deficits need to import resources from other planets, and protecting those shipping lanes should be a higher priority for empires, rather than just sapping Trade Value. Planets being deprived of resources they need to function would struggle to meet projected results and result in planetary unhappiness/tension, resulting in lower levels of loyalty and faction shifts.