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Stellaris Dev Diary #143 - Changes to megastructures

Hello everyone!

We are back with a dev diary outlining some of the changes we’re making to megastructures in a future update. We’ve recently felt that the Galactic Wonders ascension perk feels a little bloated when it unlocked up to 8 different things, in addition to it being a little awkward that you suddenly got access to so many vastly more powerful structures.

We didn’t like that Galactic Wonders became so much of a non-choice due to unlocking so many things, so it will now be possible to unlock most of the megastructures without having to dedicate an ascension perk for it.

Galactic Wonders
We are making some changes to Galactic Wonders so that it no longer unlocks all megastructures, but rather only unlocks the most powerful megastructures. In addition, they are also unlocked as technology options rather than as finished schemes ready for construction. This means that you will still have to research the technology to build a Dyson Sphere, which also means it becomes a choice if you want to first focus on the Dyson Sphere or the Matter Decompressor (they are both Physics technologies).

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Megastructures
The other megastructures – Strategic Coordination Center, Mega Art Installation, Interstellar Assembly, Science Nexus and Sentry Array – are now instead of their own unique technologies. It is now possible to build these without having the Galactic Wonders ascension perk.

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The megastructures are split into different research categories. Strategic Coordination Center, Mega Art Installation and Interstellar Assembly are all Society research. Science Nexus and Sentry Array are Physics. All of these new technologies have mega-engineering as their prerequisite.

At the same time we are also taking the opportunity to look over the placement rules for megastructures, as they were not entirely consistent. The 5 mentioned here above should now follow similar rules for placement.

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That’s it for this week! Next week we’ll be back again :)
 
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It's a good direction, but I really hope it's not all.
  • Habitats and Ringworlds need a serious buff and reworking to be viable and true to their lore purpose. Currently Habitat districts and building choices are insultingly weak, and Ringworlds just behave as huge Gaia worlds with no minerals, which with the way admin cap and building limit works, makes them sub-optimal. Fewer but bigger districts would be a good way to go. And please give us more building slots if we just made a whole solar system into one artificial planet!
  • Dyson Spheres and Matter Decompressors need to produce more resources to be worth having - currently a couple of systems geared towards high trade value can produce more energy than the full output of a star, which is quite unrealistic. Or leave them at 1000 resource but let us build more of them!
  • Mega Art Installation would need an empire % Unity Production increase like Science Nexus does with Research Speed to be worth building.
  • And for the love of The Worm give us a way to build more than 1 Megastructure at the same time if we can afford it!
 
It's a good direction, but I really hope it's not all.
  • Habitats and Ringworlds need a serious buff and reworking to be viable and true to their lore purpose. Currently Habitat districts and building choices are insultingly weak, and Ringworlds just behave as huge Gaia worlds with no minerals, which with the way admin cap and building limit works, makes them sub-optimal. Fewer but bigger districts would be a good way to go. And please give us more building slots if we just made a whole solar system into one artificial planet!
  • Dyson Spheres and Matter Decompressors need to produce more resources to be worth having - currently a couple of systems geared towards high trade value can produce more energy than the full output of a star, which is quite unrealistic. Or leave them at 1000 resource but let us build more of them!
  • Mega Art Installation would need an empire % Unity Production increase like Science Nexus does with Research Speed to be worth building.
  • And for the love of The Worm give us a way to build more than 1 Megastructure at the same time if we can afford it!

For the most part I agree, but I can't guarantee that it will all happen simultaneously, or as you say. I do know I would like to have multiple levels for habitats tho.
 
I don't know if I am the only that thinks this, but I feel like Ring Worlds are quite underwhelming, specially since Ecumenopolis are available. The only way in which Ring Worlds seem to be worth is that they provide huge space for farming districts, and you can completely avoid those with livestock slaves. They way I see it, Ecumenopolis are just too damn OP.
 
Respectfully, I'd like to suggest that the perk should give the other megastructures' research projects as unlocked / guaranteed available. That resolves the complaints about the RNG not throwing you the tech cards - you can still always take the perk to guarantee getting the tech options - and also gives a reason to pick the perk even if you don't have MegaCorp (and thus access to matter decompressors), don't care about ringworlds (they're... kind of meh right now, by the time you can get them you have planets and food/energy galore), and don't care about Dyson spheres (because, let's be honest, they're bad).
 
Speaking of which, can you *please* buff Dyson spheres? They're embarrassingly underpowered. Here's some fun math:
  • Assume no production or district bonuses whatsoever, for some reason.
  • Get a complete ringworld.
  • Fill all two hundred districts with farms.
    • You need 400 pops to work them.
    • The pops produce 2400 food (or 2000 if machines).
    • The pops eat 400 of that food (or 400 energy, if machines).
    • You have 2000 food left over.
  • Fill all 60 (non-capital-building) building slots with bio-reactors.
    • Yeah, I know bio pops don't get those, even though in reality they're very much a thing that biological species, such as 21st-century humans, build.
    • Bear with me, there's a reason I chose that specific building anyhow.
    • The reactors consume 1500 food, leaving 500.
    • The reactors produce 1200 energy.
  • Observe that the ringworld produces more energy than a Dyson sphere!
    • ... even though a ringworld captures an almost-infinitesimal portion of a star's energy output, and a Dyson sphere captures all of it; the actual difference should be orders of magnitude greater for the sphere.
    • ... even though I specifically chose to represent the energy output of the ringworld 100% using energy from the star's continuous output (no generator districts that might be burning uranium from old supernovae or something; every bit of energy the ringworld produces is from plants capturing sunlight).
    • ... even though plants aren't even all that great at capturing energy, compared to what futuristic solar panels could do.
    • ... even though bio-reactors are only 80% efficient, which is just straight-up wasting a bunch of energy.
    • ... even though the ringworld *also* produces a large surplus of food, sufficient to feed a small empire singlehandedly.
    • ... or feed another 20 bio-reactors somewhere else, producing a total of 1600 energy entirely through inefficiently-harvested ringworld-captured sunlight.
    • ... even though in practice, you'd have bonuses to food production that would result in probably having an excess of well over a thousand.
  • Sadly, this is an astonishingly inefficient way to get energy from a ringworld
    • 400 generator districts would produce at least 1600 energy (though the pops would need food, too).
    • ... unless they're machine pops, in which case they'd produce 2400 energy and consume 400 of it, for an energy surplus of 2000.
    • ... and if you had the various +20% production bonuses from tech, the +15% bonus from Ingenious, the +5% bonus from Generator World, the +25% bonus from Energy Nexus (and also the extra jobs), and other things like stability bonuses... you'd have a total bonus over 100%, for an energy production of over 3200 for bio empires, or nearly 5000 for machine empires.
  • Even just using trade, you could get 200 clerks from city districts (400 energy from Wealth Creation trade value), plus another 300 clerks from 60 commerce buildings (600 trade value, for a sum total of 1000 trade value and thus energy. If you upgraded the buildings and get the second clerk job from each district and the merchant from every 40 pops, you'd get...
    • 400 clerks from city districts
    • 600 clerks from buildings
    • 60 merchants from buildings
    • 250 pops per segment gives another 6 merchants each, for a total of 24 merchants from pops
    • 1000 clerks * 2 TV each + 84 merchants * 8 TV each = 2672 trade value
    • That's enough that you could use the consumer goods trade policy, get 668 CGs (probably more than enough to support your whole ringworld of 1000 workers and less than 100 rulers), and still have 1336 energy, which is more than you get from a Dyson sphere!
    • ... and that's without considering any of the many bonuses to trade value.
Seriously, Dyson spheres in Stellaris are a joke. They should be at least 10x as good as they are now, though even being only 2x as good as they are now would at least make them better at their one-and-only job than a ringworld full of farms and bio-reactors! 3x-5x as good might be a decent compromise, without wrecking game balance too badly.
 
I like these changes.
Wouldnt it be also cool if megastructure mastery perk would unlock policy which would allow us to set higher limit to parallel building of megastructures at cost of increased cost?

for example:
1 -> 100% build cost
2 -> 120% build cost
3 -> 160% build cost

Also, continuous drain of resources while building instead of up-front cost would be so cool :)
 
I would love the opportunity to build more megastructures at a time. I'm the kind of self-flagellating masochist that'll go huge galaxy, lots of AIs even if my pc can't handle it. Simultaneous megastructures would appropriately feed my gaming habits rather than force me to improve them.
 
Changes look good! But what's this "Doctrine: Strange loop" tech that gives "Future glimpse: Omega Theory"? Haven't seen that before. Is it something I've missed, or is it new?
 
While you are rethinking Megastructures: Whats the point in first building the site and after that the first tier? Why not directly build something thats useful from the start?
 
Shouldn't Science Nexus require researches in all fields of science, considering that it grants research in all 3 fields? Like, base version comes from physics, gives all the physics bonus, then one upgrade each from/for engineering and society?
 
Have there been any thoughts about integration of megastructures with the jobs system? (Besides needing alloys)
  • Maybe make construction cost x# special 'megastructure modules' per month until completion.
  • So you'd convert alloys into a 3rd tier resource (like consumer goods to unity)
  • But in return you could build as many MS simultaneously as you would like, provided you could meet the monthly module cost.
  • Adding a very expensive tech to let you produce these modules more efficiently would also make tall empires (which often have higher research speeds Vs wide) more competitive Vs sprawling empires.
 
That's just not how it works... I've had entire games with a lot of techs missing because RNGesus saw it fit to throw repeatables at me instead of things like "Star Fortresses" or "Titans".
Also "Just research it when it pops up" is also not viable because it might just soft-lock me out of something else that might be more situationally useful.

Yeah, me too. Glad I'm not the only one that faced this problem from time to time. Especially when going for ascension and not getting the required tech.
 
so since most mega structures aren't an ascension perk any more, is there a reason why Habitat's are still a perk?

I do partly understand why they would be, since starting to live in space is a massive investment/step forward.
but.... a habitat does seem easier to build then a science nexus.

maybe link habitat sizes with starbase upgrade techs?
this could allow for habitats to be an earlier option while still scalable into the late game.
 
so since most mega structures aren't an ascension perk any more, is there a reason why Habitat's are still a perk?

I do partly understand why they would be, since starting to live in space is a massive investment/step forward.
but.... a habitat does seem easier to build then a science nexus.

maybe link habitat sizes with starbase upgrade techs?
this could allow for habitats to be an earlier option while still scalable into the late game.

I would like to have multiple levels of habitats, but that also requires more planning since you want the visuals to also reflect that. I can't promise anything more than saying I like the idea.