Greetings to the void-dwellers and planet-bound alike!

This week we’ll be talking about some changes we’re planning on making to the engineering marvels that are Orbital Habitats. These are currently slated for the May update that grekulf mentioned two weeks ago.

Introduced in Utopia, Orbital Habitats provide a way to continue some form of limited expansion after colonizing all of the habitable planets within your empire. In the 2.3 “Wolfe” update, we added some specialized districts to them based on the celestial body they orbited, opening up the possibility for things like building dedicated astro-mining facilities, and recently in Federations, we added a Void Dwellers origin which let you start your empire among the stars in three habitats.

This May, we’ll be introducing multiple tiers of habitats. These will be accessible to anyone with the Utopia expansion or using the Void Dwellers origin from Federations.

The first tier of Orbital Habitats now comes a bit earlier in the tech tree and require fewer alloys to build. The basic Orbital Habitat is smaller than the old version, starting with 4 district slots. They also have a simpler appearance than the ones currently in the game, a core of a station to build upon later.

Fungoid Orbital Habitat

The Habitat Expansion engineering technology is placed around where the Habitat technology used to be in the tech tree, and will allow you to upgrade an Orbital Habitat that has filled all of its districts to an Advanced Habitat using a planetary decision that costs some time and alloys.

Upgrading to an Advanced Habitat provides 2 additional district slots and allows basic housing buildings to be built even for normal empires.

The Advanced Habitat upgrade adds a ring of modules around the central core.

Avian Advanced Habitat

A third technology permits upgrading a fully developed Advanced Habitat that has a Habitat Central Control into a Habitat World.

Habitat Worlds have 8 districts, shown as another ring of modules around the habitat.

Humanoid Habitat World

The Voidborne Ascension Perk has undergone a few changes as well.

The perk now gives each of your habitats 2 additional building slots and automatically grants access to the Habitat upgrade technologies. Regular empires with the perk can also build advanced housing buildings on their Advanced Habitats and Habitat Worlds instead of being limited to only basic structures.

Void Dwellers will automatically start with the Habitat Expansion tech option available for them to research, and their primary habitat will begin as an Advanced Habitat while the other two will begin as somewhat cramped regular Orbital Habitats. In our internal playtests, we’ve found that Voidborne is exceptionally valuable for them to pick up early for the extra building slots, and the reduced alloy cost of building new habitats should relieve some of the additional pressure caused by the smaller starting size of their secondary habitats.

During this pass we’ve taken care of a handful of other habitat related issues, such as those built above nanite deposits now retain the nanite production, and habitats built above Zro, Dark Matter, Living Metal, or Nanite deposits are now treated as research habitats. As a quality of life improvement, you no longer need to remove orbital mining or research stations to build a habitat, the construction process will automatically disassemble them upon habitat completion.

Here are the full tiers of a few of the habitat types:

Humanoid Habitats

Plantoid Habitats

Lithoid Habitats

---

Next week we’ll have another sneak peek at the May update, see you then!

 

[arosenberger14]

Very nice, these should be a great improvement to habitats. It'll also give empires that are boxed in without many planets an early game option to keep up with larger empires which is a good meta-balance move. Hopefully the AI won't spam uncolonized habitats like they have previously though...

One note of concern though, currently pop growth is the key variable in getting stronger, and the best way to get more pops is to colonize more planets. With earlier and better habitats will the meta now be to spam as many habitats as possible to grow pops until the micromanagement makes you give up, or are there downsides preventing you from just churning them out?

Also, to go along with this, another look at planet/sector automation to reduce lategame micromanagement hell is desperately needed.

 

[Borgratz]

This is great

Any plans on changing some traditions and techs that are only usefull for planet dwellers for habitat dwellers like you did with hive minds and such?

 

[fodazd]

I think the big reason for this is that none of the techs or traditions that effect cities effect habitat districts.

Yes. On a normal planet, a city district gives you 8 housing and 2 clerks with all techs and traditions. For habitats, you can choose between a district with 8 housing and zero clerks, and a district with 3 housing and 5 clerks, both of which are significantly worse than a normal city-district.

...Gestalts DO get maintenance drones from the housing district on habitats, which is hilarious because gestalts are precisely the empire-type that can't be void-dwellers.

 

[Eladrin]

Does this mean that the bonuses on Voidborn are going away and being replaced by the above?

Yes. The screenshot is the modified version.

(Several comments on traditions.)
I'm not thrilled with current interactions between traditions and habitats, but major changes to them are likely out of scope at this time.

Are you aware of the bug where the Capital habitat loses its Capital destination when you develop it for a time?

Yeah, capital habitats are intended to retain their capital designations instead of having it changed on them.

What are your ideas about 'upgradable' mining/research stations? That is, you upgrade them directly into habitats rather than destroy them and build in its place?

You'll no longer have to destroy them to build them, it'll dismantle them automatically.

Will the two extra building slots be permanently unlocked for any habitat that passes through the hands of an empire with the Voidborne perk?

Shouldn't be. It's a triggered modifier on the capital building. Excess buildings should get ruined if the habitat changes hands.

I'm assuming influence cost remains the same? Will this be applied when building the new 'basic' style, or be a cost for upgrading one to the normal/advanced tiers?

Currently the influence cost is still front loaded. The upgrade decisions are currently just alloys and time.

 

[PetStark]

Please, just focus on fixing the AI. If this is gonna help the AI to use habitats is welcome

Why do we need more cool features if the IA still not able to manage the basic ones?

 

[Zoston]

Here's a bit of a crazy idea:

Have you considered removing construction ships?

Imo, none of the interesting construction decisions in this game involve how many constructions ships you build and where you put them. It's by and large just meaningless micromanagement.

The only meaningful thing added by construction ships right now is as a test to see if you can actually get to a surveyed by unclaimed system before trying to claim it. I don't think you need to force us to micromanage annoying worker units for the whole game just to get that one constraint on building.

Just let us right click systems and planets to build on them. It'll remove a ton of needless clicks and pretty much no meaningful decisions. (The interesting and meaningful building decisions are about resource expenditure, never construction ship placement/availability.)

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

The Voidborne Ascension Perk has undergone a few changes as well.

Interesting changes in this update. Right now, the Voidborne perk is extremely lackluster. Habitability is usually easy to pick up thanks to 4 times 5% technology bonuses any empire will most likely end up with 100% habitability on Habitats eventually. Before this update, we still get +2 maximum districts from voidborne, which is now added to the advanced habitats baseline.

Do I understand this correctly, are these buildings slots additional maximum building slots? Or do these building slots simply get unlocked earlier, just like how Hiveminds have a tradition to unlock an additional building slot earlier on planets?

Because if this does not add maximum building slots and you also removed the +2 district effect, then I don't see myself ever using this Ascension perk.

And I would like to remind you guys, please allow Gestalts to start on Habitats. Its so sad to see you guys focus on one aspect of the game, but Gestalts are getting left out again. Its such a big missed opportunity. You could roleplay a Devouring Swarm Organism which escaped a research Habitat and spreads out into the galaxy or something similar.

I have the same thought about Scion Start for Gestalts. The Materialist FE calls you "an experiment" and there were many before you. Isn't the Contingency just the same thing? And experiment by their creators gone wrong? So much potential with these Origins for Gestalts. I hope you reconsider lifting the restrictions.

 

[Spaceception]

or considering the moon's resources for the habitat?

Someone made this exact request on the Facebook comments to this. Using the moons resources if you're around its planet is a great idea.

 

[Matt516]

Could you look into another solution for void dwellers not liking planets? The subspecies solution isn't really ideal. The subspecies sometimes grows on your normal habitats and you can genemod the planet ones to be the regular ones. It would also be nice if void dwellers wouldn't hate living on ring worlds.Isnt that just a gigantic habitat?

A ring-world is more akin to living on a planet in terms of environment - wide open outdoor areas. A habitat is explicitly much more of an urban type environment, so it make sense that a population used to habitats would still be uncomfortable on a ring-world.

 

[strangebloke]

Voidborne without extra 2 districts seems so useless. 2 extra building slots dont do much, basicly that means you build one housing building and one researchlab on tech habitat and each of them still cost rare resource to maintain. Maybe this makes refinery habitats betters, i suppose that was aim of this "upgrade".
Ignore voidborne and take any other perk. Almost all of them except maybe mastery over nature is better if you are void dweller.

You're missing the point where it also gives you advanced housing buildings that don't require rares. Housing is very much the crunch point for habitats so getting a housing boost is a big deal. It means you can actually use the research/trade districts in the mid game, and it increases the potential of 8-districts habs in the late game.

EDIT: other big thing is that your first AP usually isn't anything too fancy anway.

 

[Spyre2k]

The reason why pops is power is because of building slots. Resources is really easy to come by but getting more building slots needs more pops and more pops is more drain on resources. If my 10 pop habitat already makes more alloys than your 20 pop world, I'm in a stronger position than you.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on building slots being what makes pops have power. The reason pops are power is because they are your primary source for everything in the economy. Once you grab space resources their production only increases slightly with a few limited techs. After that if you want more of anything, be it resources, unity, science, and etc. then you need pops to get it for you.

Building slots are rather limited in the start but having more of them can easily lead into a trap. You talk about a low pop Habitat making more than a higher pop planet and I'll assume that's cause you have more Alloy factories. Well that's nice and all but you need raw resources to run those factories as it requires energy to upkeep and minerals to process.

In my experiance starting out as VD it's minerals more than Alloys that is a major limiting factor. You need minerals to grab up all those space resources, you need minerals to build districts which are more expensive on habitat, you need minerals to build those extra buildings, and of course you need minerals to run those alloy factories. I often find myself buying some extra minerals so that I can build districts so my pops have jobs.

As the game progresses building slots become even less important as 2 Alloy factories Mk2 and 1 Motes Fabricator gives you 11 jobs vs the 6 jobs you would get from having just 3 Alloy Mk1 buildings. This is even less of an issue if you got with City Worlds as you have Alloy and CG districts which let you focus more on just having strategic resources fill up your building slots. And Ring worlds let you do the same with R&D.

I usually end up having to make several worlds are pure extraction worlds (aka energy/minerals/food) and use specialized worlds with Alloys/CG/R&D which consume so much they can take multiple worlds to supply them. Once you get mega engineering you can get Matter Decompressor and Dyson Sphere which lets me just more large groups of people in mass to the city worlds or ring worlds.

But ultimately late game I often find myself with unused building slots because nothing there would help my economy. The pops need to stay in the mines/fields to get me the raw resources I need and if I need more people in Factories I just move them over to a specialized world. I often have so many extra strategic refineries that I got like +10 or more per month in all 3.

 

[Bentusi16]

Does this mean that the bonuses on Voidborn are going away and being replaced by the above?

 

[Saluki.exe]

This looks really cool! I can't wait for the May update!

 

[fodazd]

My personal opinion: The main reason habitats are not very good right now is that their districts and capitals are pretty bad compared to the capitals on normal planets. Can we have regular capitals and housing-districts with clerks please?

 

[Fjolsvid]

Does this raise the amount of buildings on habitats to 18?

 

[Bentusi16]

My personal opinion: The main reason habitats are not very good right now is that their districts and capitals are pretty bad compared to the capitals on normal planets. Can we have regular capitals and housing-districts with clerks please?

I think the big reason for this is that none of the techs or traditions that effect cities effect habitat districts.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Are you going to make proper habitat models for fallen empires? Or models for starbase tiers in-between unupgraded Starbase and fully upgraded Citadel? It's weird to see those replaced with Mammalian or Avian placeholders.

 

[Wirsing]

Thank you for this nice Dev Diary @Eladrin

I have some questions pertaining Void Dwellers:

Do you plan to give the Void Dweller Origin some unique Traditions (like Life-Seeded f.e.) that replace some of the obsolete ones like Prosperity?

Are you aware of the bug where the Capital habitat loses its Capital destination when you develop it for a time?

An answer would be much appreciated. o/

 

[BrokenSky]

What about the issues habitat-only empires have with Traditions (i.e. some traditions only giving planet bonuses)? Will these be swapped out for players with the void dweller origin?

Edit: ninja'd