Hi everyone!

Way back in Dev Diary 152, we discussed some planetary changes that we experimented with during summer 2019. At the time, we decided that while we learned a lot from the experiment, they required significant additional refinement before being something we wanted to incorporate into Stellaris.

Summer 2020 gave us the additional time we needed to revive these (and some other) experiments. Our primary objectives were to reduce the mid to late game micromanagement burden and provide quality of life improvements, including generally making the prebuilding of planets more viable, making planetary automation reliable enough to be trusted in the mid to late game, and making dealing with unemployment and pops easier.

We’ll be talking about these subjects in multiple dev diaries over the next couple of months.

Industrial Districts

Azure Chalice is… er, was... a lovely place.

The planet view has shifted things around a bit and now supports the display of up to six district types. Most planets will have five district types available. This extra real estate could also be of special interest to modders.

The new brownish-orange district next to the City District is the revived Industrial District. Industrial Districts are treated as urban districts (and as such are not limited by planetary features), but rather than the Laborers that split their output from the original experiment, we’ve decided to have the districts provide regular empires one Artisan and one Metallurgist job. Gestalts have either two Foundry Drones or Fabricators as appropriate.

Work, work, work.

Factories and Foundries will still exist but are now planet unique, with the first tier building adding 2 jobs to the planet just like the old versions. The upgraded versions, however, will now add either 1 or 2 jobs of the appropriate type to each Industrial District on the planet.

Ecumenopoli will retain their specialized districts, but can be boosted by the Foundry or Factory buildings. The number of jobs per district on ecumenopoli have been adjusted somewhat as part of an overall economic balance pass. Since Industrial Districts are considered urban, a planet with a mix of City and Industrial Districts can be paved over and turned into an Ecumenopolis using the Arcology Project decision.

Since districts are now much more critical to the development of your civilization, the average size of homeworlds has been increased by 2, and as an additional side effect, the Mastery of Nature Ascension Perk may also become a bit more desirable.

Building Slots

I’m sure you’ve already noticed from the above screenshot, Building Slots no longer list population counts. Instead of relying on population, they're opened up by increasing the infrastructure of the planet. This is generally done by building City Districts (or their equivalent) or by upgrading the colony's Capital building. As a pleasant side effect of this, your buildings will no longer get ruined when a pop gets resettled, ritually killed, or eaten by mutants.

Build up that infrastructure.

Two new technologies that unlock additional Building Slots have also been added, Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure and Durasteel Infrastructure. They represent the civilian adoption of military technology, and as such require some government techs and the associated armor technologies. The Adaptability tradition tree, for those that have it, still has a tech that grants a Building Slot as well.

As specialized and advanced worlds, Ecumenopoli, Ring Worlds, Hive Worlds, and Machine Worlds start with all of their building slots unlocked.

Habitats are intended to feel a bit cramped, so while Habitation Modules do not open up Building Slots, the Voidborne Ascension Perk will continue to grant two Building Slots to those that choose to embrace living in space.

The MegaCorps out there may ask “but what about our Branch Offices?” - we’ve got you covered.

Insider Trading. Institutionalized corruption exploited by the upper classes, or just greasing the wheels of trade?

Branch Offices will tie their slots to the level of the colony’s capital building. For example, a Planetary Administration building will grant one Branch Office Building Slot, a Planetary Capital will grant two, and a System Capital-Complex would grant three. If the target empire has the Insider Trading tradition, you’ll have one extra Branch Office Building Slot. (This may grant you a Branch Office building even on newly colonized worlds, if your business plan expects it to be profitable.)

But Why?

By decoupling the building unlocks from population growth, it makes it much easier to “prebuild” a planet to varying degrees. It removes some of the tedium of waiting for that last pop to finish growing before a slot unlocks, as well as the negative experience that occurred when a critical pop moved or died right at the wrong time. This change went through many iterations - in one of them the rural and industrial districts added "fractional" slots, in another the capital buildings gave more slots at each upgrade. The combination of having both City Districts and the Capital Building contributing to the slots, along with the additional techs, finally felt right. It's nice when even a newly founded Colony possesses at least one open building slot since it lets you immediately begin construction of a Spawning Pool or other high value building right away.

Moving the essential secondary resources of Consumer Goods and Alloys to districts frees up the building slots a little bit and creates a greater differentiation between heavily urbanized or industrial planets and resource generating colonies. Qualitatively we also felt that it "feels nice" to be getting more of your physical resources from the district level, leaving the Building Slots for more unique and specialized needs.

Both of these changes also happen to make some planetary automation decisions a little easier - your Tech Worlds should clearly build a mix of City and Industrial districts, for instance, to make room for Research Labs as well as to provide the Consumer Goods needed to pay for them. We do recognize that it may be difficult - or even impossible - to unlock all Building Slots on a planet that has not been urbanized, but those resource generating planets often do not have quite as strong a need for a large number of buildings.

Ideally in the mid to late game you could colonize a planet, set the colony designation you want for the planet, turn on automation, and reasonably expect the planet to be in decent shape - and doing what you told it to - the next time you look at it. (In the early game it's certainly possible, but your empire's economy may not be stable enough to support dedicated worlds and your colonies may be better off with direct caretaking.)

We have a few other experiments that are still ongoing that affect the relationship between urbanized vs. less developed planets that are not entirely conclusive yet. If they prove out we'll discuss them later on in this series of diaries. Our current plan for next week's diary is to talk more about the automated colony management overhaul as well as the automatic and manual resettlement of pops.

As a reminder, we have an ongoing feedback thread related to AI improvements we have in beta on the stellaris_test branch. We'd love to get more people on it and telling us what they think about them. (Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.)

Thanks!

 

[GnoSIS]

@Eladrin As others suggested for designations, their Ideas are indeed nice, but let me add some more points:

1. Research designation : Gives more jobs, or output bonus.
2. Fortress designation: more naval capacity and defense armies, or just more soldier jobs, make the fort unique - and add more levels to it - solves invasion issues and balances planet defense.

Also using designations to provide buffs to build speed (fringe rural): BAD!! Invites endless amounts of micro!! Introduce decision that adds a planet buff to build speed instead!

General Idea is to go towards EU4 buildings, clear the building clutter and make it easier for the player to understand what's there at a glance. Currently I have to search to find specific buildings. I'd welcome having specific slot positions for specific buildings (but keep it moddable for people to add their own). It's better to add more building levels rather than having to build more bildings. So going to level 4 or 5 should be considered. This will help the AI as well, You have written such code for AI for EU allready.

Adding numerals and resource icons to buildings helps. I always play with such a mod - it should be default!

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

Significantly mitigated by the fact that the Forge World designation switches the CG jobs for more Alloy jobs.

The Dev Diary doesn't say that. If that's indeed the way it confirmed DOES work by the devs, then it needs to be in the dev diary, and would mitigate some of the problems (not all, but some)

 

[Tamwin5]

The Dev Diary doesn't say that. If that's indeed the way it confirmed DOES work by the devs, then it needs to be in the dev diary, and would mitigate some of the problems (not all, but some)

As of the time the dev diary was written, it wasn't the case. Due to discussion in the comments, the devs tried it out and found it worked fairly well. By next Thursday, it may have been replaced by a planetary decision instead. This is active development, and they aren't going to go back and edit old stuff whenever they make a change. There is a button you can hit which is "show only dev responses", it's very useful.

 

[Spaceception]

The Dev Diary doesn't say that. If that's indeed the way it confirmed DOES work by the devs, then it needs to be in the dev diary, and would mitigate some of the problems (not all, but some)

It was a recent dev reply after community feedback, there's other info in the overall dev replies with clarifications and stuff.

No. The Foundry and Factory lines currently fill the same planet unique slot - you have to pick one industrial focus for the planet.

Although since the designation change gave the regular worlds the ability to specialize in a more flexible way than an Ecumenopolis, I changed it a little bit today so an Ecumenopolis waives the restriction and can build both. (They don't have combined Industrial Districts though, the buildings add to the affiliated District type.)

Regular base Industrial District: 1 Artisan, 1 Metallurgist.
Regular Industrial District with a tier 3 Foundry: 1 Artisan, 3 Metallurgist.
Regular Industrial District with a tier 3 Foundry and Forge World set: 0 Artisan, 4 Metallurgist. (One Artisan converted.)
Regular Industrial District with a tier 3 Foundry and Factory World set: 2 Artisans, 2 Metallurgist. (One Metallurgist converted.)

Gestalt base Industrial District: 2 Alloy Drones.
Servitor with a tier 3 Factory: 2 Artisan Drones, 2 Alloy Drones.
Servitor with a tier 3 Factory and Forge World set: 1 Artisan Drones, 3 Alloy Drones. (One Artisan Drone converted.)
Servitor with a tier 3 Factory and Factory World set: 3 Artisan Drones, 1 Alloy Drone. (One Alloy Drone converted.)
Servitor with a tier 3 Foundry: 4 Alloy Drones.
Servitor with a tier 3 Foundry and Forge World set: Still 4 Alloy drones since there's no Artisan Drones to convert.
Servitor with a tier 3 Foundry and Factory World set: 1 Artisan Drone, 3 Alloy Drone. (One Alloy Drone converted.)

Note: I don't expect you to use the cross-designation often except occasionally in emergencies or when you're planning something big, since you'll lose the other beneficial bonuses of the designations. "I need alloys right now, convert all the Factory Worlds into Forge Worlds temporarily!" A full and proper refitting of your industrial base HOI style from Civilian to Military would involve replacing the Factory line of buildings with the Foundry line and thus take some time.

I'm actually really happy with how this designation thing worked out. Good idea, forum.

Colors for clarity, hopefully it looks decent on the blue background or I'll be sad.

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

As of the time the dev diary was written, it wasn't the case. Due to discussion in the comments, the devs tried it out and found it worked fairly well. By next Thursday, it may have been replaced by a planetary decision instead. This is active development, and they aren't going to go back and edit old stuff whenever they make a change. There is a button you can hit which is "show only dev responses", it's very useful.

If it's something as noteworthy as that, it's defintiely worth making a note where more people will see it. Changing something right off the bat after a dev diary isn't normally their MO, which is why I didn't go searching that hard (I did read through all the responses on the steam page, and a few pages of this thread). Thanks for the clarification, though.

 

[Lorenerd11]

How about clerks creating +1 Andiminstrative capacity?

Oh, I'd love this. It'd be a minor boost, but it would make it feel like clerks contribute to the management of the broader empire.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Could I suggest moving the capital out of the building list? There really hasn't ever been a reason it should be in there ever since the shift away from the tile system.

 

[GnoSIS]

Could I suggest moving the capital out of the building list? There really hasn't ever been a reason it should be in there ever since the shift away from the tile system.

Would you be ok if you had +1 building slot? Because other than that, I see no reason.

 

[Cassilda]

I really like the content of this dev diary: colony pre-plan, industrial districts and especially something that can help reduce the micro-managing of the unemployment problem in late game are all welcome additions to Stellaris.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

1. The trouble with doing this is that it's very easy to have, say, 3 or 4 refineries on a planet with no cities. Now, it's admittedly unlikely to get that far, but I could see slapping down several refineries on a newly colonized planet because you need those resources (and you already have spare building slots due to the 2 from technology). Similarly, Habitats don't get building slots from habitation districts, and those habitation districts grant no jobs, so I could easily see a habitat with only refineries built. With this new update I think it's going to be much more common for dedicated refinery worlds to exist (likely on habitats), as you no longer need extra pops to keep the slots open. Considering this, I think the refinery world designation is fine, but I wouldn't mind the upkeep reduction being increased to 20%.
2. See above, same potential problem. I colonize a small, low habitability planet at a chokepoint, and just slap down some fortresses. They even provide housing, so no need for districts until a few more pops grow. I think the best way to make this designation stronger is to have it give +1 (or 2) naval cap from jobs, as that way it provides some benefit beyond just local defensiveness.
3. The benefit from urban worlds should be them better capable of handling a large amount of pops: lower amenity usage or increased production, lower housing usage or more housing from city districts. Even something like -10% sprawl from pops. I very much disagree with it adding ruler jobs, as that basically ensures you never want to ever change off, as you'll be dealing with multiple unemployed rulers. It also makes upgrading to an ecumenopolis annoying for that same reason.
4. For rural world, just buff the worker bonus to 10%. If you have more than half of the planet as a specific job, then you should specialize. I honestly don't think this should be something you consider for a dedicated mining or farming world.
5. I 100% agree with removing the 100% habitability. It just makes no sense, especially since the pops actually living on the world aren't tourists. If you are working all day catering to entitled people on vacation, the fact you are living in a blasted radioactive wasteland is going to make things so much worse. I disagree that it should be scaled off of amenities though, as it does make sense people would enjoy going to some super hostile or extreme location for a quick adventure. Either the bonus amenities should be scaled based on excess amenities on the planet (with a bonus for tomb or Gaia), or it should be flat, with bonuses from being a tomb world, Gaia world, or various special features: Atmospheric hallucinogen/aphrodisiac, Natural Beauty, Titanic life etc. That way you want to select an "interesting" world to be your resort world, rather than just a random one. As for how the mechanics of a resort world will work in the new system, It'll have to change. I think resort worlds should allow city districts, but come with a massive penalty to available districts. Something like -75% or -12. Tourists would need some urban areas for their hotels and gift shops. I really don't like the idea of a "relaxing" job, as the people on a resort world are the people who live and work there, not the people temporarily visiting.
6. Yep, Crime needs some actual teeth, and the negotiate with crime lords deal needs a hard nerf. Under no circumstances should a planet with the crime lord deal be better off than a planet with no crime at all.
7. Have you been skipping the neural implants technology? It's the one which lets you build slave processing facilities, and it's a required pre-req for thrall worlds. I suspect there is some coding reason why they need there to be no districts, no reason to add the requirement otherwise.

Good points about the flaws and I agree with most of what you said. I was trying primarily to highlight the designations that I don't use and why, I hope that part was clear.

The changes to build slots alone may indeed make small refinery worlds and the designation more viable. They aren't currently because you need 70+ other jobs to unlock all the slots to be able to even build them, if you get enough building slots for free they could make up a decent proportion of jobs on the planet, enough for the designation to be optimal in some cases.

Any designation changing the numbers of specialist/ruler jobs would indeed run into issues with Strata and Demotion times on swapping (though that's more of an issue with Demotion times being frustrating and annoying and limiting design space). So yes I can see that being an issue sadly making the suggestion a bit rubbish.

For resort worlds I always assumed that the +1 clerk job per 2 pops represented roughly half the population of the planet being unemployed/vacationing and the other half serving their needs/providing amenities (i.e. Around half the total planet population at any one time is made of tourists). Having a tourist 'Job' to take so that while they're not actually working they don't trigger unemployment penalties/unhappiness would be good for me.
But I can see the idea that the unemployed instead represent people who live on the world full time and can't find a job in the tourism industry and live in misery on paradise... it's not what I like to imagine though as it's quite sad to think that all those unemployed pops don't represent tourists enjoying the beaches, going on titanic safaris or exploring the Ancient Battlefield and Irradiated Ruins but instead represent the abandoned poor begging some unknown number of tourists for money and wallowing in misery (-20% happiness, or just as bad as being neutered)... though that's probably closer to an accurate representation of the mechanics.

Also it's possible I have been skipping Neural Implants... the +5% from the building often feels underwhelming to me (I hate seeing these small % modifiers), partly as the building gives no new jobs so I only feel like adding it in once I've unlocked all the building slots with regular buildings and have lots of pops that could benefit from even a small positive modifier (5% of 20 is 1. Most buildings add 8 jobs. To be better than adding 8 new jobs you'd need 8x20=160 slaves for +5% to equal the benefit of adding 8 jobs from a building slot... or for it to be impossible to afford adding extra jobs due to lack or pops or resources which is more likely)... so I perhaps wrongly put off building it until later in the game. (I miss when the building gave large adjacency bonuses to nearby tiles and was much more fun to build thanks to the food and mineral output). So yes, that could indeed be why I miss seeing thrall worlds, thank you.

 

[Lorenerd11]

The benefit from urban worlds should be them better capable of handling a large amount of pops: lower amenity usage or increased production, lower housing usage or more housing from city districts. Even something like -10% sprawl from pops.

For rural world, just buff the worker bonus to 10%.

Oh, I really like those. Yeah, Rural Worlds should be buffed to +10% output from worker jobs.

The problem with Urban Worlds is making them interesting and worthwhile enough to be used, but not too useful as to not discourage using other designations.

Extra ruler jobs might have felt fitting, but like you point out, sudden unemployment on designation switch would be a problem.

Out of your suggestions, −10% sprawl from pops is by far the best one. I love it.

 

[Tamwin5]

Good points about the flaws and I agree with most of what you said. I was trying primarily to highlight the designations that I don't use and why, I hope that part was clear.

The changes to build slots alone may indeed make small refinery worlds and the designation more viable. They aren't currently because you need 70+ other jobs to unlock all the slots to be able to even build them, if you get enough building slots for free they could make up a decent proportion of jobs on the planet, enough for the designation to be optimal in some cases.

Any designation changing the numbers of specialist/ruler jobs would indeed run into issues with Strata and Demotion times on swapping (though that's more of an issue with Demotion times being frustrating and annoying and limiting design space). So yes I can see that being an issue sadly making the suggestion a bit rubbish.

For resort worlds I always assumed that the +1 clerk job per 2 pops represented roughly half the population of the planet being unemployed/vacationing and the other half serving their needs/providing amenities (i.e. Around half the total planet population at any one time is made of tourists). Having a tourist 'Job' to take so that while they're not actually working they don't trigger unemployment penalties/unhappiness would be good for me.
But I can see the idea that the unemployed instead represent people who live on the world full time and can't find a job in the tourism industry and live in misery on paradise... it's not what I like to imagine though as it's quite sad to think that all those unemployed pops don't represent tourists enjoying the beaches, going on titanic safaris or exploring the Ancient Battlefield and Irradiated Ruins but instead represent the abandoned poor begging some unknown number of tourists for money and wallowing in misery (-20% happiness, or just as bad as being neutered)... though that's probably closer to an accurate representation of the mechanics.

Also it's possible I have been skipping Neural Implants... the +5% from the building often feels underwhelming to me (I hate seeing these small % modifiers), partly as the building gives no new jobs so I only feel like adding it in once I've unlocked all the building slots with regular buildings and have lots of pops that could benefit from even a small positive modifier (5% of 20 is 1. Most buildings add 8 jobs. To be better than adding 8 new jobs you'd need 8x20=160 slaves for +5% to equal the benefit of adding 8 jobs from a building slot... or for it to be impossible to afford adding extra jobs due to lack or pops or resources which is more likely)... so I perhaps wrongly put off building it until later in the game. (I miss when the building gave large adjacency bonuses to nearby tiles and was much more fun to build thanks to the food and mineral output). So yes, that could indeed be why I miss seeing thrall worlds, thank you.

Even on larger refinery planets, you can build a bunch of city districts and then just have tons of free housing and clerk jobs, so they should be much more viable with this change.

Stellaris is a game about horrible things happening to entire species, of course you'd have people wallowing in misery on paradise (although with all the extra amenities from all those clerks, they do get a happiness boost)

Yeah, I basically never build the building either, but it is worth grabbing the tech to get thrall worlds. The -25% political power from slaves is actually a decent part of the building, as it effectively halves the amount your slaves contribute to your popular approval. With the changes to districts and housing, it might actually be semi-viable now, as a dedicated forge world only needs a few building slots.

I do disagree with your math. The buildings which add 8 jobs do so at an upkeep rate of 2 rare resources, which themselves require a building slot and 10 minerals upkeep. For just a basic 2 job building, you'd need 2x20 = 40 slaves for it to be worth... except that's also wrong because slaves ALREADY have often close to +100% output bonuses from various sources, so you actually need to count that 5% bonus as really 2.5%, meaning you actually need 80 slaves (and remember that's 80 slaves, not 80 pops. Potentially worth it on large planets late game, but not really.

 

[Tamwin5]

Oh, I really like those. Yeah, Rural Worlds should be buffed to +10% output from worker jobs.

The problem with Urban Worlds is making them interesting and worthwhile enough to be used, but not too useful as to not discourage using other designations.

Extra ruler jobs might have felt fitting, but like you point out, sudden unemployment on designation switch would be a problem.

Out of your suggestions, −10% sprawl from pops is by far the best one. I love it.

Remember, it can be multiple. -10% housing usage and -10% sprawl from pops seems like a good combination.

I'd also like to see the generic Ecumenopolis designation get something similar, as the -5% district cost is super weak and never used (or if it is used, it's for micro of swapping over, building some districts, then swapping back). I'd also like to see a culture ecumenopolis and trade ecumenopolis designation.

 

[MadCrow96]

Literally my first comment ever in the forum lol

I'm feeling pretty excited with this new direction, I think that this idea of planet development instead of pop for planet slots is a right call (even for branch offices), a really good idea from the devs!! I wanted to send good vibes to this initiative, feeling can't wait to try it out right now :v

I also wanted to support the idea of the industrial districts, it's pretty cool even with that "one building per planet" thing to open more jobs... have a really good feeling about it, but I have to say that mixing CG and alloys is not a good idea even if it works for the AI, having to shut down those artisan jobs and having to build 2 districts for having the same output of our fellow alloy foundrys is simply not funny, it would be wiser to have 2 sepparate districts. Planet decisions, planetary designations or the militarized/civil economy policies aren't good ways to deal with this matter for plenty of reasons, one of them can be the AI programming (I think, maybe I'm wrong).

If I could give some advice: make it easier, make it pleasier.

¿Ecumenopolis will be the same but bigger?, probably, make it a tech or make it juicier. ¿Why not make new districts for it? We, the gamers, won't be mad if the devs wanted to implement some soldier districts (let's make Cadia great again!). Research districts on a ecumenopolis would be just too OP so pls don't lol

I don't know guys, the solutions are there and there are tons of cool ideas, but I'm really pleased with this thread. To end I will say mine! (probably have been said, I stopped reading after page 12, sorry)

Planet blockers nowadays can be pretty much skippable untill late midgame, but let´s say we wanted them to be a real threat to development. As I can see with this new set of things, If planet blockers could block building slots the player would need to get rid of them earlier, making expansion harder as it should be! Also there is an opportunity to show the planet blockers directly in the building tabs instead of in a new page (planetary features page), so one could go planet to planet eliminating those blockers easily and faster. Having to open that planetary features tab is just painful when one have many planets. Also the amazing art for planets will be visible everytime you look at the planet, but that have been said before.

I'm really excited about this and I have high hopes in the dev team. I must say the hype is real !!

 

[Lorenerd11]

having to shut down those artisan jobs

You will be able to shift jobs to 2 Artisan jobs or 2 Metallurgist jobs through planet designation (or maybe planetary decision, if devs take that suggestion).

 

[StormyStrife]

Hi everyone!

Way back in Dev Diary 152, we discussed some planetary changes that we experimented with during summer 2019. At the time, we decided that while we learned a lot from the experiment, they required significant additional refinement before being something we wanted to incorporate into Stellaris.

Summer 2020 gave us the additional time we needed to revive these (and some other) experiments. Our primary objectives were to reduce the mid to late game micromanagement burden and provide quality of life improvements, including generally making the prebuilding of planets more viable, making planetary automation reliable enough to be trusted in the mid to late game, and making dealing with unemployment and pops easier.

We’ll be talking about these subjects in multiple dev diaries over the next couple of months.

Industrial Districts

View attachment 649584
Azure Chalice is… er, was... a lovely place.

The planet view has shifted things around a bit and now supports the display of up to six district types. Most planets will have five district types available. This extra real estate could also be of special interest to modders.

The new brownish-orange district next to the City District is the revived Industrial District. Industrial Districts are treated as urban districts (and as such are not limited by planetary features), but rather than the Laborers that split their output from the original experiment, we’ve decided to have the districts provide regular empires one Artisan and one Metallurgist job. Gestalts have either two Foundry Drones or Fabricators as appropriate.

View attachment 649586
Work, work, work.

Factories and Foundries will still exist but are now planet unique, with the first tier building adding 2 jobs to the planet just like the old versions. The upgraded versions, however, will now add either 1 or 2 jobs of the appropriate type to each Industrial District on the planet.

Ecumenopoli will retain their specialized districts, but can be boosted by the Foundry or Factory buildings. The number of jobs per district on ecumenopoli have been adjusted somewhat as part of an overall economic balance pass. Since Industrial Districts are considered urban, a planet with a mix of City and Industrial Districts can be paved over and turned into an Ecumenopolis using the Arcology Project decision.

Since districts are now much more critical to the development of your civilization, the average size of homeworlds has been increased by 2, and as an additional side effect, the Mastery of Nature Ascension Perk may also become a bit more desirable.

Building Slots

I’m sure you’ve already noticed from the above screenshot, Building Slots no longer list population counts. Instead of relying on population, they're opened up by increasing the infrastructure of the planet. This is generally done by building City Districts (or their equivalent) or by upgrading the colony's Capital building. As a pleasant side effect of this, your buildings will no longer get ruined when a pop gets resettled, ritually killed, or eaten by mutants.
View attachment 649588View attachment 649589
Build up that infrastructure.

Two new technologies that unlock additional Building Slots have also been added, Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure and Durasteel Infrastructure. They represent the civilian adoption of military technology, and as such require some government techs and the associated armor technologies. The Adaptability tradition tree, for those that have it, still has a tech that grants a Building Slot as well.

As specialized and advanced worlds, Ecumenopoli, Ring Worlds, Hive Worlds, and Machine Worlds start with all of their building slots unlocked.

Habitats are intended to feel a bit cramped, so while Habitation Modules do not open up Building Slots, the Voidborne Ascension Perk will continue to grant two Building Slots to those that choose to embrace living in space.

The MegaCorps out there may ask “but what about our Branch Offices?” - we’ve got you covered.

View attachment 649590
Insider Trading. Institutionalized corruption exploited by the upper classes, or just greasing the wheels of trade?

Branch Offices will tie their slots to the level of the colony’s capital building. For example, a Planetary Administration building will grant one Branch Office Building Slot, a Planetary Capital will grant two, and a System Capital-Complex would grant three. If the target empire has the Insider Trading tradition, you’ll have one extra Branch Office Building Slot. (This may grant you a Branch Office building even on newly colonized worlds, if your business plan expects it to be profitable.)

But Why?

By decoupling the building unlocks from population growth, it makes it much easier to “prebuild” a planet to varying degrees. It removes some of the tedium of waiting for that last pop to finish growing before a slot unlocks, as well as the negative experience that occurred when a critical pop moved or died right at the wrong time. This change went through many iterations - in one of them the rural and industrial districts added "fractional" slots, in another the capital buildings gave more slots at each upgrade. The combination of having both City Districts and the Capital Building contributing to the slots, along with the additional techs, finally felt right. It's nice when even a newly founded Colony possesses at least one open building slot since it lets you immediately begin construction of a Spawning Pool or other high value building right away.

Moving the essential secondary resources of Consumer Goods and Alloys to districts frees up the building slots a little bit and creates a greater differentiation between heavily urbanized or industrial planets and resource generating colonies. Qualitatively we also felt that it "feels nice" to be getting more of your physical resources from the district level, leaving the Building Slots for more unique and specialized needs.

Both of these changes also happen to make some planetary automation decisions a little easier - your Tech Worlds should clearly build a mix of City and Industrial districts, for instance, to make room for Research Labs as well as to provide the Consumer Goods needed to pay for them. We do recognize that it may be difficult - or even impossible - to unlock all Building Slots on a planet that has not been urbanized, but those resource generating planets often do not have quite as strong a need for a large number of buildings.

Ideally in the mid to late game you could colonize a planet, set the colony designation you want for the planet, turn on automation, and reasonably expect the planet to be in decent shape - and doing what you told it to - the next time you look at it. (In the early game it's certainly possible, but your empire's economy may not be stable enough to support dedicated worlds and your colonies may be better off with direct caretaking.)

We have a few other experiments that are still ongoing that affect the relationship between urbanized vs. less developed planets that are not entirely conclusive yet. If they prove out we'll discuss them later on in this series of diaries. Our current plan for next week's diary is to talk more about the automated colony management overhaul as well as the automatic and manual resettlement of pops.

As a reminder, we have an ongoing feedback thread related to AI improvements we have in beta on the stellaris_test branch. We'd love to get more people on it and telling us what they think about them. (Please note that 2.8.1 is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.)

Thanks!

1. I like the idea of pre-planning colonies, however, based on how starbases will opt to arm themselves sometimes with some T1 weapons when you have T2 weapons of a different type, I'll never use it because if the AI before now couldn't even do their own colonies, and AI literally ignore closed borders at times, I'm sorry, but I don't true the dev team to not catch some wierd bugs with this idea.
People are all like "This'll cut down on some of the later-game micro!" when you forget this simple idea: Stop playing Wide if you can't handle a ton of micro. There is basicaly no late-game micro with Tall playstyles, that's the point. If you play wide and the micro is too much to handle, it's your fault for biting off more than you can chew, not the game's.
Next Point.

"We want tech worlds to build some city and industry"
2. What's the point of Planetary Designations then? Does this mean we get to just say "haha nevermind!" when it comes to getting a 20% minerals discount on artisans? Why remove options for players to min-max and play how they want to? What if I don't need more CSG, but I need A TON more Alloys? CSG is practically a worthless resource at this point, it's barely used for anything that isn't actually worthless late-game, spoiler alert: Almost every CSG purchase aside form Colony Ships is worthless beyond the early or even mid game for normals.
So... what. I just get to choose between a bonus for my artisans, a bonus for my metallurgists, or a bonus for my labs? Are you guys going ot combine Foundry and Industrial world designations now, or are you going to use half-measures with these changes?
Also? Players will still build more City districts than Industrial as they do not have the housing necessary to be relevant. They'll discount them, but with a fully maxed Tech-World that isn't a large planet, you need Cities almost primarily, so this point is, in practice, not applicable.
Next Point.

"Moving the secondary resources of Alloys and Consumer Goods from buildings to Districts frees up some building slots and we're framing it as a good thing"
3. You wanna know what buildings almost have no practical use, according to that logic?

Resource Silos, seriously, I know 0 people who use them, elaborating further, they give 1 maintenance drone or clerk job each and provide 2000 resource storage. This is worthless because A: City/Nexus districts already give those jobs, but way more per mineral invested, and they give housing. and B. Resource Storage doesn't matter literally at all in base Stellaris beyond the Mega-Engeering storage buff allowing you to even do megastructures without silos. You guys planning on removing that storage buff at some point? Incase it needs to be said, that would be a terrible idea, because you would literally need over 50 silos to even get close, and that would be too much to the point of tedious and boring, you'd be better off essentially bringing maintenance depots back, and combining silos with them, or conversely, doing the same with commercial zones and silos, only, make both versions have an equal number of upgrades this time, yeah? AS it is though, just remove it, they're such a waste of resources that it's hilarious.

Hydroponic Farms, you could say, "Food is a primary resource" and to that I ask "Oh yeah? Why is it then that I can't spend it on hardly anything then huh? It ain't nothing compared to Energy or Minerals, it's a resource that's just there for the sake of "you gotta have food sources in a 4X game tho!" 99% of the time, I'm selling my food due to how actually pointless it is, to have a ton of it in positives. One Agri-world is all you need with only Agri districts to sustain ten planets. If it has a 20% modifier, that's another 5 it can sustain, another 20%? 20 planets in total, with all bonuses researched of course.

If you guys really wanted to free up building slots, you'd remove those two, but honestly I couldn't begin to figure out why you'd actually do this, but the given reason doesn't make logical sense.

What you are doing, is not freeing up building slots for more "useful buildings" (Literally what are you even talking about?), It's limiting players and giving them less options, you're just choosing to frame it as an overall net positive, just like how you did so with Maintenance Depots, and I'll admit that I thought that change was better, but no, it simply wasn't. If you are actively cutting out options and limiting players in how they can do things, you cannot say the change is for the sake of "player Agency" when it's really just the development equivalent ofrunning in circles and it just creates a less fun game altogether.

Also... All these changes will kill Habitats, they only have one upgrade, you guys gonna effectively buff Habitat capitols to compensate? If you don't, I know many will be upset, and that'll be more disenfranchised players, and you guys certainly don't want that right?
Next Point.

4. Can't speak to the Megacorp change, I don't play them, like practically ever. Spending influence and getting free bonuses because I put stuff on someone else's planet just sounds actually too easymode to enjoy, considering normal empires are actually easy enough prior to the above changes, though maybe I'm totally wrong on that.
Next Point.

"Uncoupling building slots from pop growth is a cool idea that removes tedium of waiting for pops to grow"
5. You guys decided to make the Jobs system, of which that "Tedium" is a symptom of. Are unworked buildings or even districts going to stop having energy upkeep? Planet micro-management only exists in a few areas, of which this change does almost nothing to fix it by the way.
These areas are as follows:
- Colony Setup: This can be setting up planetary designations, renaming it because the game still defaults to naming it to "Prime" instead of just using the actual name the planet has (Literally Why lol) and you forgot to delete the Prime part and type in the number yourself, building districts and resettling pops to the planet to get earlier building slots so it builds up faster (say if you put a Gene Clinic on it for example on the first day of it being a colony no longer under construction?) and that's about it.

- Upgrading buildings. This is just one click, you can't really even call it microing, the only real micro is doing this often due to waiting for unemployment to happen, and this "problem" isn't really much of a problem unless you play Wide, and if micro isn't your thing, again... Stop playing Wide. Actually that simple.

- Limiting job availability: This is only a thing because the current AI for placing pops into jobs is horrible. The fact it at one point ever reassigned pops to different jobs tells you all you need to know, that feature is/was painfully unnecessary and just added bloat to the game (and killed the optimization for no payoff at all). I classify this as a problem because if someone wants to frame Micro as tedious and an actual problem, this will be the start of that conversation since it kinda shouldn't be mandatory, the system is too clunky for there to be any other conclusion unfortunately.
The fix is simple: The AI literally can't unassign pops, new pops are created as unemployed pops, and uneployed pops are added to fill available jobs based on resource deficits first and foremost, and afterwards, then it will default to whatever fits the planet's given designation type. In this fix, designation types would default as Rural or Nexus based purely on planetary modifiers.
This fix would allow you to upgrade buildings willy-nilly without causing a disastrous lack of jobs on important worker/simple drone jobs, thus creating deficits much harsher than the influx of greater job upkeep amounts, since you also just generate less in those jobs anyways.

- Leader dies or gets Arrested Development (which is a problem with Machine Empire Governors, because there are still so few traits for them that you essentially have a 25% chance of getting it). honestly if Paradox wants to reduce the micro in the game, make all leaders immortal but halve all sources of XP from anomalies and whatnot, or simply implement a system that'll automatically hire a replacement leader and unassign that other leader, giving you the option to not do so of course, just make it an event popup with three choices, a "replace them but don't fire them" option, a "replace and fire them" option, and a "Cool, whatever" option that does nothing, which of course should just do nothing if the leader dies in combat and the fleet they commanded is also gone, or a science leader and their ship both died.

- I... don't really know anything else, I play wide and these are mostly the only bits of micro in the late game honestly, at least as far as I know. So if there are any others, forgive me for not having the same experience.

6. Industrial districts being available at all times also makes Ecumenopoli more pointless. What's the point of them if Foundry and Industrial districts are now just combined with half the power and are now available without spending at least 23K minerals. From what I thought of it, the Ecu is supposed to be something for powerful civs to use, and as a normal empire, I use them in every single game, but with this district being available for literal free, requiring no techs or ascension perks, I now have 0 reason to use Ecus, if I want trade, I'll just make commercial hubs on a maxed Habitation Habitat, also there's no planetary designation for Trade, so Ecus are also still super unimportant with this change.
TL;DR - This change is a direct ubernerf to Ecumenopolis, even if they simply gave more jobs per district, you can still have 20 more Industrial-spamming colonies for the exact same mineral cost of one Ecu, not to also mention that this district would also be available for Machine Empires, allowing them to create their own soft Ecumenopolis for almost no comparitive cost.
If anything, let's ignore all that I said, that it's a good idea, that it won'tseverely contrast with several different parts of the game and no problems will be made by this.

Let's argue that they provide as many potential alloys as Nano-Forges do in the long run due to any planet being able to get them, including tech worlds, but not agri worlds ofcourse. In this way, even if it's 1/4th the alloys, it's still for no strategic resource upkeep, and only 2 energy upkeep. The mineral cost won't matter at all with Machine Empires, their default state of being, like us being solids, is them drowning in minerals from deposits alone.
If you guys, the Developers are okay with Machine Empries getting Nano-Forge-level alloys and being able to sit on 20 colonies going half and half on energy districts and industrial, well then I suppose I will be too.

Because I'll look forward to people saying MEs are OP again, since Alloys are all their Colony Ships cost. Giving them a 400 CSG cost alongside a 400 Alloy cost, thanks to this change will do literally nothing, because you generate x2 CSG for every Alloy now. You can argue that it'll force Machine Empires to get more generator districts, but it really wont. Late-game they'll be sitting fine regardless with a greater economy by near default, since it's now easier to invest into massing Alloys, meaning Habitat spam will become stronger and more viable, and they default create with Reactor districts and even if they don't, they'll own so many deposits that it might as well default with having them.

7. Conclusion.

At the end of the day, there's literally nothing I can do beyond just saying how little I care for these changes. I know from experience that, prior to them, the game is actually just fine on the micro-end of it. From similar experience in playing the game modded, I just love the game more not just when it gives me more ways to be silly and broken if I simply put in the effort, but more importantly, when the game gives me, the player, the tools i need to fix every problem my empire has.

With this change, a problem arises. My enemy has far more ships than me, I have far more colonies, how do I effectively counter their alloy production and meet them before I face a war when each district only increases my alloys by 4? What if I'm playing tall and I can't afford a single Industrial District? It's possible, and it will happen to somebody, so what is my solution? To not play Tall?
This change is just directly a nerf, it'll cost more minerals to get as many alloys in this next patch, as it will to get as many alloys now in the current version. This isn't how you balance overbuffing orbital mineral deposit availability, sorry to say, it's messy and it will create more problems than it will fix, and that's no way to develop anything.

But that's just my opinion, hope you guys all have a good day, but... Honestly? I'm just gonna seek a mod to negate the Foundry/Industry change, I can see this being bad for balance as well, but I won't argue that here. Take care!

PS: Don't think I don't see that you generate 1 less Alloy and 2 less CSG per job in this new patch, Hahahaha, that's just... Really?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Resource Silos, seriously, I know 0 people who use them, elaborating further, they give 1 maintenance drone or clerk job each and provide 2000 resource storage

I agree that resource silos need to be buffed to at least 5000 resource storage and provide 2 or 3 maintainance drone jobs instead, and that's about it.

 

[StormyStrife]

I agree that resource silos need to be buffed to at least 5000, especially if we account for the fewer building slots. And that's about it.

I probably wouldn't build them even then, even if it was buffed to 10K each. Resource Storage practically doesn't matter, at least to me, mostly because I spend every resource as soon as i can, time is limited, minerals basically aren't. I'd build them if they gave 2 more Maintenance Drone/Clerk jobs. Anything else is better, even a Luxury Residence/Drone Storage, regardless of playstyle, from to a mineral efficiency standpoint.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Anyway, speaking of building buffs, can we please get some meaningful buff to Alien Zoos?

With only 2 Culture Worker jobs and 1 Entertainer job, there's currently no reason whatsoever to build an Alien Zoo instead of a Holo-Theatre or a Culture Worker building. It would need to provide at least a double of that, 4 Culture Workers and 2 Entertainers, in order to be worth it.

 

[MadCrow96]

You will be able to shift jobs to 2 Artisan jobs or 2 Metallurgist jobs through planet designation (or maybe planetary decision, if devs take that suggestion).

that's not flexible at all, it means that every planet has to be over specialized in order to pump out alloys or CG effectively, I feel it's really punishing in that regard...