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Stellaris Dev Diary #9 - Planets & Resources

Greetings Earthlings!

We have spoken earlier about how the galaxy is generated, and today I aim to expand on that somewhat by telling you about the planets and how they differ from each other.

Planet Tiles
Each habitable planet has a number of tiles on its surface, representing the planet’s size. Some tiles might be blocked by natural barriers, such as mountains, and can be cleared to open up new space. When the galaxy is generated, each tile generates a random number and checks if a deposit will be spawned there. A tile can be worked by having a Pop placed in it.

Buildings can also be constructed in tiles, and they often have adjacency bonuses for the resource they are producing. Therefore it will be advantageous to construct your power plants in proximity to each other, to achieve optimal efficiency.

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Planet Modifiers
Celestial objects come in many different sizes and shapes, and planet modifiers are a part of what can set two planets apart. In the example above, Omaggus III has particularly large lifeforms on it, which could prove fruitful to study.

Deposits
Resources are generated as deposits and they spawn on planets depending on the type of planet, and which modifiers can be found on the planet. Certain resources are also more likely to be found in systems that lie in specific parts in the galaxy, like inside a nebula. All resources cannot appear on all planets, and some planets have a higher chance of hosting certain resources. Asteroids are very likely to have minerals on them, for example.

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Orbital Resources
Planets that cannot be colonized do not use surface tiles, but they can still generate deposits. Each planet has an orbital resource slot that can be worked if a Mining Station or Research Station is built in orbit around that planet. Sometimes you encounter planets that you could potentially colonize, but that is not habitable enough for you to want to colonize it. In those cases you may also want to construct an orbital station.

The Basic Resources
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Food is a requirement for Pops to grow. If there is plenty of Food, Pops will grow faster. If there is a lack of Food, Pops will be unhappy.

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Minerals are used to produce most things in the game. If Minerals represent matter, Energy Credits represent work.

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Energy Credits represent all liquid assets and energy produced by our Empire. Actions, such as clearing tiles, cost Energy Credits to perform. This resource is mainly used for upkeep, and although it can be hoarded, that might not be the best way of handling it.

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Physics Research, Society Research and Engineering Research are used to advance technologies in different fields of science.

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Here, have a bonus screenshot! As an interstellar rogue I'm used to breaking the rules.

Join us again next week when we will be telling you about Rare Resources and the Spaceport.
 
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Well beautiful is completely subjective

You're right, I should say "dynamic." The background is dynamic, with unique colors and shapes. The holdings box is boring and dull.
 
Victoria 2 had 3246 provinces. There are up to 1000 stars in Stellaris. Even if every system has ten planets that is still only three times the number of provinces a six year-old game can handle.
You can't compare like that and I have a real problem understanding why people don't understand that. Stellaris and Victoria 2 is not the same game, they do not share any game code, and the different calculations the games does differ in significant ways. It is like claiming that the system requirements between a FPS 10 years ago and a FPS today should basically be the same since they just about shooting someone in first person.
 
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You can't compare like that and I have a real problem understanding why people don't understand that. Stellaris and Victoria 2 is not the same game, they do not share any game code, and the different calculations the games does differ in significant ways. It is like claiming that the system requirements between a FPS 10 years ago and a FPS today should basically be the same since they just about shooting someone in first person.

So...Victoria 3 confirmed?
 
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I dont see the problems with tiles... we have'em in CK II and EU IV as well. Its might not "Taht" perfect solution but it worked great in these games
and nobody cared much about it.. Why start now?
 
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I dont see the problems with tiles... we have'em in CK II and EU IV as well. Its might not "Taht" perfect solution but it worked great in these games
and nobody cared much about it.. Why start now?

Here you will be more or less forced to use the screen to put the building there. In EU for example you did not but here you must place it in a specific tile and look for the best place. That will be very different and take up much more time. In EU you could just spam buildings on a dozen provinces with a few clicks.

In my opinion that is a huge difference.

If you have played a game called GalCiv you will be aware of how boring it becomes to place buildings on planet after the first couple of planets that you have.
 
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I think the basic reason for the planets being represented in such yields is because the planets themselves are not supposed to be super detailed. This would in turn mean that they would HAVE to have a complicated ground combat for people to be happy, which I don't see that big of a need for. People are not complaining about the siege mechanics of EU4, are they? I think space combat should be the main focus of the war part of the game. Perhaps they can improve the planets with an expansion. Not sure if it is because of this, but I'm sure there is a good reason for this.
 
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I like so far almost everything I saw in the DDs, and I will wait a little before I start writing/complaining about game mechanics I barely know. We have still so few information.
If a game is fun to play, and the mechanics are working well together, than I don't mind for example if the POP is not 3.265.158 just 3.
Nobody can make a perfect game for everyone, because people are different, and want different things.
 
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Here you will be more or less forced to use the screen to put the building there. In EU for example you did not but here you must place it in a specific tile and look for the best place. That will be very different and take up much more time. In EU you could just spam buildings on a dozen provinces with a few clicks.

In my opinion that is a huge difference.

If you have played a game called GalCiv you will be aware of how boring it becomes to place buildings on planet after the first couple of planets that you have.

How woud you know if there is not a Constructionscreen like EU as well....?
 
Buildings can also be constructed in tiles, and they often have adjacency bonuses for the resource they are producing. Therefore it will be advantageous to construct your power plants in proximity to each other, to achieve optimal efficiency.
(unpopular) Opinion here. Personally I never got the logic behind this gimmick in strategy games.
How often do you see dozens of nuclear plants together? For some reason close to large power sources you usually find large production facilities instead. For some reason we don't have all our energy plants in South America, research labs in Africa, factories in North America and cities in Asia. Maybe our world doesn't make much sense, but ten nuclear plants together being more efficient doesn't make either.
 
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You can't compare like that and I have a real problem understanding why people don't understand that. Stellaris and Victoria 2 is not the same game, they do not share any game code, and the different calculations the games does differ in significant ways. It is like claiming that the system requirements between a FPS 10 years ago and a FPS today should basically be the same since they just about shooting someone in first person.
Quiet interessting how some people react. Its oftenmore or less some sort of ignorance. Also there seems to be quiet a vicky boom.
Never the less.. I hope there may be more details to POPs soon, so the unrest must not be ended with a bloody sword ;)
 
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(unpopular) Opinion here. Personally I never got the logic behind this gimmick in strategy games.
How often do you see dozens of nuclear plants together? For some reason close to large power sources you usually find large production facilities instead. For some reason we don't have all our energy plants in South America, research labs in Africa, factories in North America and cities in Asia. Maybe our world doesn't make much sense, but ten nuclear plants together being more efficient doesn't make either.

i can see where you're coming from but earth isn't exactly united as planets usually are in theses games. not that all powerplants are out together within a nation either. adjacency is one of those things that add some strategy to the building, but doesn't always make a lot of sense.
maybe adjacency for everything exept powerplants and have a malus for powerplants next to each other? either have them be less efficient or, depending on type, have them explode if they get damaged, damaging other buildings around it but othere powerplants surrounding it also detonate and share the destruction around. would make some sense for nuclear powerplants.

i like the idea of cities appearing naturally (exept the original colony) and giving bonuses to nearby buildings due to proximity of workforce but getting angry if they're close to health hazards, even if they were the ones stupid enough to settle where i was going to build lots of smelly factories (poeple aren't logical in the real world after all):)
 
You can't compare like that and I have a real problem understanding why people don't understand that. Stellaris and Victoria 2 is not the same game, they do not share any game code, and the different calculations the games does differ in significant ways. It is like claiming that the system requirements between a FPS 10 years ago and a FPS today should basically be the same since they just about shooting someone in first person.
I do realise that - I was answering to someone who claimed it was unrealistic to expect it due to the scale of the game and technical limitations. It's possible, but it's not what you folks want to do with the game. I'm sure you'll understand that some people who were excited that this could take heavy inspiration from Victoria 2 are disappointed. Here, let me get you a few quotes from the original announcement thread :
POPS IN SPACE :D :D :D
Since Stellaris will have POPs this means it will have a seriously complex and versatile population simulation, probably more complex and nuanced than any space game ever afaik.


I don't understand the problem with tiles. They are just holdings like in CK2. Have a sprawling metropolis on one tile (city barony) and have a big military instilation/spaceport on another (castles).
What's the big deal?
CK2 leaves me with only a handful of holdings to manage myself, the rest is done by the AI. It's also pretty simple in its handling, doesn't happen that often since you need a lot of money, and isn't the focus of peacetime (that would be the family politics we know and love). This looks like it requires actual decisions every few turns for every single planet, and it looks like what every other 4X has. It's not interesting and I've already done it a thousand times.
 
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You can't compare like that and I have a real problem understanding why people don't understand that. Stellaris and Victoria 2 is not the same game, they do not share any game code, and the different calculations the games does differ in significant ways. It is like claiming that the system requirements between a FPS 10 years ago and a FPS today should basically be the same since they just about shooting someone in first person.
Yes Stellaris and Victoria make different calculations, but the claim I was refuting was that Stellaris couldn't be made to do the exact same calculations that Victoria two makes because of size. I'm obviously not suggesting that you import all the vicky code over the top of Stellaris or making any claims about performance in a game I've seen only a dozen screenshots of.
 
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I do realise that - I was answering to someone who claimed it was unrealistic to expect it due to the scale of the game and technical limitations. It's possible, but it's not what you folks want to do with the game. I'm sure you'll understand that some people who were excited that this could take heavy inspiration from Victoria 2 are disappointed. Here, let me get you a few quotes from the original announcement thread :

Just replying as you quoted me - as far as I can recall (and I've got the unfortunate benefit of enjoying all of PDS' games, so I sometimes lose track of things, so correct me if I'm wrong) early on in the dev process we heard that pops would have a political affiliation and a species, and that would be their main role. The 'only' thing that's missing from Vicky 2 is the whole economy and underlying pops needs things, but I think this is perfectly understandable and actually quite sensible - only Vicky/Vicky 2 fans coming to Stellaris would expect anything like that, and all the space strategy fans that had never played a Paradox game would get blindsided. In the context of Stellaris, pops that 'just' have politics and species is still a good thing, and there's always scope to deepen the economy through DLC down the track, if that's what the devs and players want.
 
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Hey guys so far I feel in this new game PDS has taken some bold and intuitive moves with their development process including government types, species' ethos and most of technology. Now there proposal with POP's has definitely got some good things and not so great things about but overall I think it's a good addition. here's why now most of you guys because we are an educated bunch believe that this system just isn't realistic and even saw one guy go "If they are a space faring civilization food wouldn't be an issue for them." Now I'm sure you guys are familiar with the Warhammer 40k universe and this system makes sense to me because in the Imperium because they are hell bent on survival means they have created a system of having planets purely for reason like the aforementioned with disgust agri-worlds but they also include cool ones like Forge Worlds (Factories), Hive worlds (Large amount of POP's for recruiting armies) and even science planets even though they use these planets for only weapons testing science but you catch my drift and don't think all is bad in fact I am actually upbeat. NOW IMPORTANT FOR ALL PEOPLE many have complained about only having POP integers which fits the tile system but not reality. Now I have played distant worlds and am a massive fan of the galaxies population is so fluid in it's migration e.g If you tax to much and they are unhappy literally billions of people will leave your empire. Now in my current game I have played well beyond any point of playing just for fun of seeing the massive empires duke it out. NOW I MEAN MASSIVE my current empire consists of 290 BILLION PEOPLE while the two other empires who are my rivals are 260 BILLION and a whopping 360 Billion who is in the lead and i just love the fact that when the other empires catch up we could duking it out between each other with empires of A TRILLION PEOPLE. This is pretty much the core reason why people hate integer POP's you just lose that mind-boggling scale of running a massive empire. I HAVE A SOLUTION what you have is actually a regular number of people on the planet say in 2100 there are 10 million people on your newly colonised planet but by 2150 there are 50 million people (sorry the terrible maths here). Now this number is what effects the amount workers you get to work your planet so say 10 million means you get one worker and 50 million means you get 25 workers. WHAT I WOULD HATE TO SEE is you have the actual workers of or integer people have a stat based of them somewhere in demographics list this is absolutely terrible COUGH Civ5 COUGH.

So please support this post and I reckon we can change the Dev's minds about this after all they're still in alpha development. Also if anyone has any other ideas please post I would love to discuss with you. THE DARK WARMONGER OUT
 
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Oh god please not the synergy bonuses
i wanted to kill myself after playing gal civ 3 trying to achieve synergy bonuses it made game incredibly annoying to play with just 10 planets


i at very least hope we can mod synergy bonuses out of the game i don t want my game to become tedious work instead of being fun
 
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Square tiles not hexagonal..interesting
 
I think I'd really much rather see planets represented in terms of population centres and settlements, not these rather alienated and abstract tiles. A galciv style planetary map would be nice too (one of the few things that game got right)

I want my planets to feel like places with some character of their own. I want my newly colonized world to have a few isolated settlements and a planetary capital that's nothing more than a space port, a few government buildings and a trade post and my developed worlds to have vast cities and continent crossing infrastructure. Not just a dude standing in front of a building which has no roads or anything else nearby.

This system we have, I'm sure it's fine *mechanically* but it seems devoid of personality. Feels very 4x-like and very unlike the rest of the game which always seems to be striving to make it's galaxy feel like a place were people live, not just an abstract set of mechanics.

Oh well, I didn't expect to be 100% happy with everything in Stellaris. Maybe one day we'll get a Common Sense style DLC that will rework planet management into something with a little more personality and sense of place.
 
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