Spammable buildings should be removed.

[Metallichydra]

With the new specializations and how districts now work, I find it strange that we still have spammable buildings that add a fixed (flat) amount of jobs. I think most players were expecting the new system to remove these types of buildings, with buildings being relegated to modifying jobs.

The most obvious problem that the current flat-job buildings cause is the fact that the most efficient way to build your planets is to make one of each of the specialized districts (Or sometimes rural) and build the flat-job buildings in the building slots you get.

From a lore and roleplaying perspective building slots are supposed to represent the infrastructure that you have created for the district that the building is placed on. We can see this with many of the buildings that modify jobs. Your mineral purification plant works for all districts, whether you are using ubogleelt or somehow terraformed a deceptive giant with azaryn. It affects the whole planet, because it isn't a single building in a specific location. It is an integrated part of the mineral harvesting infrastructure. Yet the flat-jobs buildings break this narrative. If the planet-spanning network of mineral purification plants is competing for space with the mine for 200 miners, doesn't that mean what I said before cannot be true? Simply put, these are two conflicting systems.

From a gameplay perspective the flat-jobs buildings aren't doing much for us either. The best course of action is to hyper-specialize your planets, which is most evident on ecumenopoli, ringworlds and other special planets. Building one of each specialized district and setting them to the same specialization as the main district to get more building slots is the current meta. This leads to some very unintuitive and illogical gameplay where you can get more jobs by building a singular sepatate district to get up to three or more districts worth of jobs, even if logically there should be no difference between expanding your foundry district or building a new foundry district, while using the same amount of space.
This also clashes with the very idea of specialized districts. When each type of job has a number of modifying buildings that need to be used in order to reach the highest efficiency for the jobs, any new type of job introduced on the planet is going to be a very unequal choice.

As an example, say you have an ecumenopolis on which you have foundry specializations in your main district.
The specialized district slots could be used for either more foundry districts or a factory specialization to alleviate the planetary deficit.
But if you choose factory, you're going to lose out on a lot of jobs. Those three building slots spent on making your artificers could instead hold multiple districts worth of jobs in the form of flat-job spammable buildings. On an ecumenopoli, each time you choose to use a specialized district slot for a non-foundry specialization, you're throwing away upwards of 3 districts worth of jobs. With 3 specialized district slots, that's 9 districts!

Now, I do think that there should be incentives to both specializing and trying to avoid planetary deficits, but there already are.
If you specialize to the point of only having one job type, you're saving on the resource upkeep of the buildings.
If you're making a factory on your foundry world you're saving on planetary import fees.
But if we have spammable buildings, you'll also be losing out on potentially multiple districts worth of jobs.

Comparatively, if all buildings were purely modifier buildings (Like the Mineral Purification Plant) we would not have this problem as there would be little incentive to create one of each specialized district, as no extra jobs would be created.

 

[DelphineasSD]

Counter-point: How many empire starts would be shafted by not having a Civilian Industry building.
What else would you put in the fifth or sixth slot of a double specialized world.
Have you forgotten that Fortresses provide Soldier jobs? How would you fight crime with a Precinct to provide more Enforcer jobs?

 

[Metallichydra]

Counter-point: How many empire starts would be shafted by not having a Civilian Industry building.
What else would you put in the fifth or sixth slot of a double specialized world.
Have you forgotten that Fortresses provide Soldier jobs? How would you fight crime with a Precinct to provide more Enforcer jobs?

Having jobs-per-district buildings could allow for Precincts and other such buildings to function without running into most of the problems spammable buildings have, and would also avoid the problem that really big planets have where they need multiple precincts (Thus reducing the amount of building slots you can use for other things). Alternatively for enforcers and such jobs, the jobs could come from the district itself (the base district) as is currently the case for Ringworld segments.

As for the Civilian Industries, I'd say that perhaps it is time to balance some of the starts. We have this problem even with the current Civilian Industry building, so obviously this isn't a problem that the Civilian Industries are fixing, but rather one it is acting as a band-aid solution for.

 

[Danny5072]

With the new specializations and how districts now work, I find it strange that we still have spammable buildings that add a fixed (flat) amount of jobs. I think most players were expecting the new system to remove these types of buildings, with buildings being relegated to modifying jobs.

Yes!!
I've always wanted a system where, for each type of resource production, there are 1-2 'cherry on the cake' type of building, such as mineral purification plants for minerals. And ideally you would only be able to have one specialization per planet. Making the whole planetary management much more streamlined in the sense that you're working on a specialization and later (once you have some districts built for that purpose) add this final productivity building for that particular resource.
For example: colonize a world and designate it as mining => open with pop growth buildings (gene clinics, clone vats, etc.) => spam mining districts as needed => get the final building(s) for the production boost => planet done, and the only thing you'll ever be doing further, is adding more mining districts.
As such, you would only really have 4-5 buildings per whole planet (gene clinics, clone vats, mineral purification plants, holo-theaters - and THAT'S ALL) in a very simplistic system.
It seems obvious to me that simpler systems are easier to 'teach' to the AI, create templates for, and are more intuitive for players to work with.

Instead we got a system that's admittedly more nuanced but unnecessarily complex. For example on an ecumenopolis it is optimal to open the three bottom districts (build at least one) to enable their building slots and have more jobs; that's the better play but it's a really weird emergent interaction which doesn't make sense game design-wise because you've already specialized the ecumenopolis via the city district zones and such.
And we also have things like 'research support' for rural districts or alternatively 'farming support' for urban districts. This creates areas for potentially interesting minmaxing but that will only be used by like 5% of players, and the majority of the players (as well as the AI) will not care to utilize the system to its fullest potential.

I honestly have no idea why planetary management is so complex. It basically punishes you for playing wide with bad QoL and UX. Automation is awful so (unless you're willing to deliberately play lazily) you need to micro every one of your planets and that's a massive administrative burden in a game where I could be discovering ancient mysteries, fighting contagious space worms or ascending as a psionic god. So if you play wide you just quit the save because of all the slop. Game's been out for 10 years and we don't got any automation or templating for freaking starbases, meaning every time you annex a vassal you need to manage 20 starbases by hand and rebuild them and etc. and planets are much worse than that.
My most enjoyable way to play wide in Stellaris is to enable Gigastructures, build system killing weapons (Nicoll-Dyson, QSO, +vanilla Colossus) and then blow up entire chunks of space instead of conquering so that I don't have to manage them.
So basically Stellaris is designed such that you stay in your 20 systems with your 4 planets and read events and whatever. Such that building any single bit of planetary infrastructure is an interesting RP decision that you spend hours pondering over.

I don't know. Maybe I have the boomer enjoyment for numbers going up and map painting. But I really like simple systems.
If I designed Stellaris 2 it would have the planetary management of Polaris Sector (2016). basically the state management of HOI4. As few decisions as possible. Build mining buildings for mining and that's it. No modifier stacking: specializations, governors, buildings vs. districts. In fact I probably wouldn't design Stellaris 2 to have an openable planet view and everything will be managed on a system basis. (I anyway always disliked that IRL there are people who want to colonize Mars, like, right now, but Stellaris empires with reality bending technology are still obsessed with living on 'habitable planets'.) I could even simplify this further and remove the system view and only have the galactic map.

Sorry, this reply is quite all over the place, but I wanted to vent my feelings about the game design, and another one of these threads about the latest update seemed like a perfect place to do so

 

[Nerisande]

"+200 Job_Name" buildings are very useful in early game for avoiding shortages, giving 200 jobs for 400 minerals. Specialization is extremely expensive early on (1k minerals for 100 jobs), as much as city districts (500 minerals for the same 100 jobs before unlocking second specialization). I usually go for hyper-specialized planets and this "spammable" buildings really saves the life before collecting all the specializations.

Also they are the filler for excess building slots. E.g. 2 alloy specializations gives 6 slots for industry-related buildings. 3 of them are occupied by alloy-boosting buildings (Alloy Reclamation Plant, Metallurgical Research Lab, Ministry of Production), but other 3 slots would remain empty if you don't need rare resources because they are produced somewhere else.

 

[Metallichydra]

Also they are the filler for excess building slots. E.g. 2 alloy specializations gives 6 slots for industry-related buildings. 3 of them are occupied by alloy-boosting buildings (Alloy Reclamation Plant, Metallurgical Research Lab, Ministry of Production), but other 3 slots would remain empty if you don't need rare resources because they are produced somewhere else.

I think the solution would be to make more buildings. Interesting buildings, like the bio-reactor for farmers.

 

[TSBasilisk]

I would appreciate having more rural support specializations for other urban focuses. Obvious examples are converting mining districts to have lower production in exchange for buffs to industrial quarters or armies getting experience boosts from working in the rural districts as a form of strength training.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I think the +X00 job buildings should be locked to the capital zone and the per-district benefit buildings locked out of the capital zone. That way the capital zone is for literal buildings and the city and rural specialisation slots are for per-district or job modifiers.

The +X00 miner job buildings are a bit of a thematic outlier but they can just go away tbh.

 

[DelphineasSD]

I think the solution would be to make more buildings. Interesting buildings, like the bio-reactor for farmers.

There is already too damn many buildings that do largely the same thing. Augmentation Bazaars and Centers. Genomic Research Facilities, Cloning Vats, Spawning Pools.

Dread Outpost gives Soldier Jobs like a Stronghold, but doesn't get an FTL Inhibitor. The Starlit Citadel building DOES get one once you research the tech.

There are probably a lot more Civic buildings that really should just "Acts as" or upgraded from general buildings.

 

[Critical Ethics]

There is already too damn many buildings that do largely the same thing. Augmentation Bazaars and Centers. Genomic Research Facilities, Cloning Vats, Spawning Pools.

Dread Outpost gives Soldier Jobs like a Stronghold, but doesn't get an FTL Inhibitor. The Starlit Citadel building DOES get one once you research the tech.

There are probably a lot more Civic buildings that really should just "Acts as" or upgraded from general buildings.

Sounds like the problem is doubling up a specialisation getting you doubled building slots.

 

[Red Death]

"+200 Job_Name" buildings are very useful in early game for avoiding shortages, giving 200 jobs for 400 minerals.

Maybe they shouldn't be? That's a very cheap solution, compared to how much it costs to "properly" get those jobs: by building a district. That sounds like a balance problem.

Specialization is extremely expensive early on (1k minerals for 100 jobs), as much as city districts (500 minerals for the same 100 jobs before unlocking second specialization). I usually go for hyper-specialized planets and this "spammable" buildings really saves the life before collecting all the specializations.

Perhaps make specialisation cheaper, but increase the cost for how many districts it applies to have already been built? Conversely increase the build cost of already specialised districts?

Also they are the filler for excess building slots. E.g. 2 alloy specializations gives 6 slots for industry-related buildings. 3 of them are occupied by alloy-boosting buildings (Alloy Reclamation Plant, Metallurgical Research Lab, Ministry of Production), but other 3 slots would remain empty if you don't need rare resources because they are produced somewhere else.

This could also be fixed by instead of removing these buildings, changing them from +x jobs to +x jobs per district.

 

[Metallichydra]

There is already too damn many buildings that do largely the same thing. Augmentation Bazaars and Centers. Genomic Research Facilities, Cloning Vats, Spawning Pools.

Dread Outpost gives Soldier Jobs like a Stronghold, but doesn't get an FTL Inhibitor. The Starlit Citadel building DOES get one once you research the tech.

There are probably a lot more Civic buildings that really should just "Acts as" or upgraded from general buildings.

The dread outpost, I assume, changes soldier jobs to necromancers? If not, then it sounds like it's just a remnant from the 3.14 building and job system.

I don't advocate for more buildings that do the same thing though. Buildings should change what the job produces or modify it in a way, or change how the districts work.

 

[TSBasilisk]

I think the devs also need to consider the balance of how many modifier buildings there are for different categories.

Compare for example the stronghold vs science world. Without civics, defense districts can build Strongholds, one Academy, and one Shield. That's it for six building slots, and one of those can be built on the orbital ring to free a job slot on the surface.

Science worlds? A depot, a logistics center, three science specialization buildings, a supercomputer, an Astral threads building, one of two storm buildings, and the once per empire archaeo studies building. And none of these can go onto the orbital ring, so they're all going in a building slot.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I think the devs also need to consider the balance of how many modifier buildings there are for different categories.

Compare for example the stronghold vs science world. Without civics, defense districts can build Strongholds, one Academy, and one Shield. That's it for six building slots, and one of those can be built on the orbital ring to free a job slot on the surface.

Science worlds? A depot, a logistics center, three science specialization buildings, a supercomputer, an Astral threads building, one of two storm buildings, and the once per empire archaeo studies building. And none of these can go onto the orbital ring, so they're all going in a building slot.

Or they could use the specialisation system to only allow three modifiers buildings like they originally said they were going to. Then you can have a dozens of possible science buildings with no power creep because any one scientist is only ever being impacted by the three modifiers chosen for that planet.

 

[Nabil ad Dajjal]

It would make a great deal more sense most of the time if buildings were for modifiers, but there are some exceptions.

There are certain job types where you really only should have a few jobs. Either because the job is only useful in small numbers (e.g., Enforcers) or because the job is way too good in large numbers (e.g., Medical Workers / Genomics Researchers). Having a building with a flat number there makes sense.

My suggestion for a rule of thumb is any job that you can get from a district specialization should be off-limits for buildings. So fortresses could give a bonus to soldiers in planetary defense districts but wouldn't create new soldier jobs.

 

[Critical Ethics]

It would make a great deal more sense most of the time if buildings were for modifiers, but there are some exceptions.

There are certain job types where you really only should have a few jobs. Either because the job is only useful in small numbers (e.g., Enforcers) or because the job is way too good in large numbers (e.g., Medical Workers / Genomics Researchers). Having a building with a flat number there makes sense.

That's why I think the dividing line should be whether it goes in a capital building slot or a city/rural specialisation slot. If it's in a capital zone slot it's literally a building in your honest to god planetary capital and that's why it provides a fixed number of jobs. If it's in a city or rural specialisation slot then it's less a building and more a wide-scale infrastructural design decision that gets stamped onto the science/alloy/whatever zone in every new city you churn out.

So any planet can have a little CG as a treat but if you want to do anything more complicated than a few bog standard artisans you're going to need to make a specialisation.

 

[BookHermit]

Personally, I like the +X00 job buildings as they make small planets with only a few available districts more useful. Housing and amenities are easy, but finding jobs for all the pops that I'll end up with on a size 8 planet is tricky.

A building that trades a limited building slot for another district level worth of jobs is useful as it uses a different limited resource (building slot instead of a district slot).

I don't really understand the idea that buildings are confusing lore wise, it is just building jobs tall instead of wide. Instead of using more planetary space to spread out mining or whatever operations, it is building denser in one spot. A borehole concentrating miners in one spot instead of another country-sized strip mine, etc.

Buildings vs Districts is just tall vs wide like everything else in the game. Building a denser cluster of employment vs building more across the planet surface.

 

[Red Death]

Personally, I like the +X00 job buildings as they make small planets with only a few available districts more useful. Housing and amenities are easy, but finding jobs for all the pops that I'll end up with on a size 8 planet is tricky.

Perhaps a hot take: size 8 planets should just be bad. A size 16 planet should just be twice as good.

A building that trades a limited building slot for another district level worth of jobs is useful as it uses a different limited resource (building slot instead of a district slot).

But it's a per-planet resource, which is just weird. Why should two size 8 planets be much better than a size 16 planet?

I don't really understand the idea that buildings are confusing lore wise, it is just building jobs tall instead of wide. Instead of using more planetary space to spread out mining or whatever operations, it is building denser in one spot. A borehole concentrating miners in one spot instead of another country-sized strip mine, etc.

Then why isn't a mining district just a country-sized series of boreholes instead of a strip mine? Why can you only build three of these regardless of how large the planet is? It doesn't actually make sense at all.

Buildings vs Districts is just tall vs wide like everything else in the game. Building a denser cluster of employment vs building more across the planet surface.

Drawing the poorly defined concept of tall vs wide into this also makes no sense. That's about having a large or small number of systems/planets.

 

[Dr Pippy]

I also like having the option to build +X00 jobs buildings, and don't have any problems with them thematically. In fact, I really like this quite a lot, and would be rather upset if it got taken away at this stage.

For the basic resources, each of them gives +200 jobs, which is 2/3 of a district. It's hard to argue that this is overpowered. The more powerful buildings (e.g. the T3 research complexes, which are 540 jobs iirc) are tied to particular specializations in the city districts, and so you're not doing the whole thing where you build a district to unlock the building slots.

If there were more building options that made these a less attractive option, that would be fine. Not to put too fine a point on it, though, it seems like the proposal is to take away my options to satisfy someone else's thematic preferences (reasonable though they may be). I am not down with this.

Edit: I will also add that this would require a level of wholesale economic rebalancing that absolutely should not be what the developers are focusing on right now.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Edit: I will also add that this would require a level of wholesale economic rebalancing that absolutely should not be what the developers are focusing on right now.

>Re<balancing implies it's even vaguely balanced right now, and having to account for a single district being worth anywhere between 200 and 900 jobs is probably making fixing everything else a little bit trickier than it needs to be.