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StellarMaps: create stylized and customizable maps for your Stellaris AARs

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I Couldn't Decide said:
For what it's worth, it might be a good idea to have a tutorial of sorts (or a manual).
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I think it's not worth maintaining a manual or tutorial at this stage. For now I'll focus on clarifying wording/UI and adding more tooltips. Perhaps I'll add an in-app FAQ with the time-lapse release

I Couldn't Decide said:
Maybe I should start learning computer science
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Not as hard as people make it out to be, and it can be a very rewarding hobby :) Plus, StellarMaps is all open source, so in theory anyone could contribute to it or fork it

Thanks again for sharing the feedback. Hearing folks' sticking points and feature requests really helps me prioritize things (even if I don't always follow my priorities haha)
 
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GIU2340s small.png


Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Obviously some user-error (terra incognita should not be set to max brightness), but the final product's still amazing. Some notes:
  • Starscapes should probably be adjusted to either follow hyperlanes or fill out the whole galaxy (similar to the circular borders option). It looks fantastic within the main areas of the galaxy, but it looks a little weird it places (especially in the south-western spur of the Union of Ava-Fobb).
  • The base file size is massive.
  • Union customization options are very nice, but Hegemonies could be separated into their own section (as they're a halfway-point between feds and vassalage). Some way of customizing borders within unions would be nice.
  • A date would also be welcome (whether it be in the editor or the final image).
At any rate, this is the map of the known galaxy as of 2345 (roughly).
 
Very starry! Just curious, what did you set the starscape star count to?
I Couldn't Decide said:
Starscapes should probably be adjusted to either follow hyperlanes or fill out the whole galaxy
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Filling out the whole galaxy while still following the general shape of the galaxy is tricky. Following hyperlanes (instead of just following solar systems) is a good idea. I'll make a note to experiment with that.
I Couldn't Decide said:
The base file size is massive.
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The exported PNG file? Currently the default size for that is 4096x4096, so a 4K image. (I'm considering making the default smaller.) You can change the size before you export. A map with starscapes, glow, and fade will generally be larger too, since there's less compression that can happen ("flat" images with lots of pixels sharing the same color can have their memory optimized)
I Couldn't Decide said:
Hegemonies could be separated into their own section
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Yeah... I'm a little hesitant, because there's nothing directly in the data to indicate that hegemony members are semi-subjects, so it would just be a kinda arbitrary special case (so it wouldn't work with a conceptually similar modded federation type). I should probably do this anyway. Modded federation types are pretty rare.
I Couldn't Decide said:
A date would also be welcome
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That'll be in the timelapse release!

I should probably share the general roadmap:
  • 0.11: translation support and labeled solar systems
  • perhaps a detour to make Discord bot and browser versions (limited features compared to desktop version)
  • 0.12: timelapses
  • 0.13: map modes (all in-game modes + more) and legends
  • who knows? the future is vast and full of wonders
No dates on any of the above since this is all just a hobby, but that probably covers several months
 
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MichaelMakesGames said:
Just curious, what did you set the starscape star count to?
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150,000. Would have liked 1M+, but I have to think of my poor computer.

MichaelMakesGames said:
The exported PNG file? Currently the default size for that is 4096x4096, so a 4K image. (I'm considering making the default smaller.) You can change the size before you export.
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Correct. FWIW, it was 15 megabytes.

MichaelMakesGames said:
Yeah... I'm a little hesitant, because there's nothing directly in the data to indicate that hegemony members are semi-subjects, so it would just be a kinda arbitrary special case (so it wouldn't work with a conceptually similar modded federation type). I should probably do this anyway. Modded federation types are pretty rare.
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Fair point.

MichaelMakesGames said:
can you expand on what you mean?
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(I may have missed something, but) the borders between overlord and subject (for example, the GIU-Gatod border just north of the Fareen Chroniclers) or federation members when "joined borders" are on are currently gray, solid, and non-glowy. While it does look nice, it would also be nice if they could be changed (so that subjects could look more like sectors, for example). Same options as with the sector borders, basically.
 
I Couldn't Decide said:
Same options as with the sector borders, basically
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If shared borders union mode is enabled, there's a new option in the "Borders" category for the union border style (width, smoothing, dashed, glow). Currently, you can't set the union border color though (it uses the sector border color). I think that's just an oversight on my part... I'll add union border color to the next version
 
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It might be interesting to have relative fleet/tech/trade shown on the map. This could be based both on power relative to a specific empire (similar to Terra Incognita) as well as an absolute scale, with the most powerful in bright green, least powerful in red, with a gradient through yellow (a la New Civilisation's relative fleet power map mode).

An "industrialization" map mode would be interesting, though maybe a little hard to do. Basically, take all the districts + buildings on all the worlds in a sector, divide by how many possible districts + buildings there are, factor in how many jobs are currently filled, and put it at a value between 0 (utterly undeveloped planets with no buildings/districts) and 100 (every planet has every building slot and district built, and every job filled). It might also be interesting to factor in various space buildings (megastructures, hyper relays/gateways, and maybe starbases). It'd be neat to see which regions are highly developed and which are being developed. An empire-wide version should be fairly easy to do: take the average of each empire's sectors.
 
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Power and relative power is a good idea!

For development/industrialization, I'll need to look at what's available in the save file. (I'd probably want separate modes for "planetary" and "space" development; I can't think of a way to combine that into a single number that doesn't feel arbitrary.) Something like that could be cool. I want to explore displaying data that's more granular than just "this empire is this color". I'm thinking maybe something like this (see attached photo). Each little pie chart is a system. The size of circle represents the total potential development of the system. The angle of the pie chart represents how much is actually developed. That would enable seeing both absolute and relative development in the same view.

(I also want to use that visualization for species population, where the size of the circle is the total population of the system, and the angle is the portion of a specified species. So you could view the distribution of, for example, humans throughout the galaxy.)
 

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Hm, as I think on it, even planetary development is very complicated to measure. A unbuilt district on an ecumenopolis should count more than an unbuilt district on a standard planet... so how do you measure the potential of an unbuilt district? And how should planetary ascension measure in? And how unemployed pops that produce resources (eg utopian abundance)? How to consider building upgrades?

I browsed the related save data a bit, and much of this is not directly represented in the save file. A lot of data would be needed from Stellaris script files. While not technically impossible, that would require essentially implementing a large portion of the Stellaris script engine.

I think a simple implementation (num_districts + num_buildings) / (planet_size + max_building_slots) * (employed_pops / total_jobs) might be possible. Not entirely sure about the jobs; their representation in the save is a little weird. Also how should infinite jobs (like livestock) fit into the equation? :confused:
 
If you can fit pie charts in without either crowding the map or making them illegible, absolutely. Definitely a good idea, though.

MichaelMakesGames said:
A unbuilt district on an ecumenopolis should count more than an unbuilt district on a standard planet... so how do you measure the potential of an unbuilt district? And how should planetary ascension measure in?
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MichaelMakesGames said:
I think a simple implementation (num_districts + num_buildings) / (planet_size + max_building_slots) * (employed_pops / total_jobs) might be possible.
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That works. Since you're doing it by planet, it should be possible to account for the planet being an ecumenopolis or ascended. Ascension is fairly easy:

((num_districts + num_buildings) / (planet_size + max_building_slots) * (employed_pops / total_jobs)) * ascension_level, with ascension_level starting at 1 and ending at 11.

Ecumenopoli are harder. Maybe if the planet is an ecumenopolis, multiply the above equation's result by 150%?

And how unemployed pops that produce resources (eg utopian abundance)?
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(employed_pops + (unemployed_pops / 0.1) / total_jobs).

How to consider building upgrades?
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I honestly have no idea. Maybe just factor in the level of the capital and use it as a rough average (so, (num_districts + num_buildings * capital_level)?

MichaelMakesGames said:
Also how should infinite jobs (like livestock) fit into the equation?
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Subversive jobs should decrease it, other jobs should be ignored (so, ((employed_pops - PES_pops) + (unemployed_pops / 0.1) / (total_jobs - criminals)) (PES for Purging, Event, and pre-Sapient). Granted, it's not perfect, but it's easier than factoring in every single job.
 
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I appreciate the discussion :) @I Couldn't Decide

I don't think that a fully ascended planet is 10x more developed than an unascended planet. I could change your proposed equation to eg * (1 + 0.1 * ascension_level), but to me that points out that the value given to ascension level would be arbitrary. There's no objectively correct answer. I'm not sure that arbitrary equations are something I want to get into...

There is nothing in the save data to indicate that an ecumenopolis is more valuable than a standard planet (or for that matter, a gaia world, or a ring world, or a hive world but only in a hivemind empire etc). I could add special cases for various planet classes, but I don't want because it would make the code harder to maintain, and that doesn't work well with mods (unless I also add special cases for a bunch of mods, which exacerbates the maintainability issue). The other option is parsing Stellaris script files, which is a massive project, and not an option I'm seriously considering for now.

There's nothing in the save data indicating if an unemployed pop produces resources or not.
And nothing indicating building tier.
There's nothing explicitly indicating subversive jobs, but I could special case the categories "criminal", "deviant_drone", and "corrupt_drone"; mods usually don't change that
(For all the points about save data, that's as far as I can tell; if anyone knows otherwise, please share!)

Another thought, the empty jobs should probably be weighted differented (an empty clerk job should not count for as much missed potential as an empty science director), but that's another value judgement that isn't in the save data :(
 
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MichaelMakesGames said:
Anyone else ever wished for "occupation stripes" in Stellaris? ;)
View attachment 1144734
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Reminds me of the old "dual owner" stripes that used to be in older versions of the game, back when it was possible for multiple empires to own a star system (multiple planets, multiple owners. It was crazy)
 
Macavity116 said:
Reminds me of the old "dual owner" stripes that used to be in older versions of the game, back when it was possible for multiple empires to own a star system (multiple planets, multiple owners. It was crazy)
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Haha, I remember that. Even triple+ owners. It was a mess, but iirc you could enlighten pre-FTLs and then share the system with them, which was neat
Fun fact, the save files still do not directly store who "owns" a system. It is very indirect, system->starbase->ship->fleet->country. I wonder if that's a holdover from the 1.x days
 
I've heard you're planning an upgrade to Stellar Maps that would allow us to create maps of individual star systems. Do you have any thoughts on if/when it'll be released?

This sounds like a feature that could get a lot of mileage in my next Stellaris story and I'd love to try it out. (I'm currently running v0.10.3 of Stellar Maps)
 
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