Hello and welcome back to the Stellaris dev diaries! Today we're going to start talking about the next major update, which we have dubbed 2.2 'Le Guin' after Ursula K. Le Guin. Right now we're not ready to reveal anything about the precise nature of the update or whether it is accompanied by any DLC, other than to say that the Le Guin will have focus on trade and the economy, and that its release date is far away. Today's dev diary is going to be a bit on the foundational side, going over the new economic back-end we've implemented for 2.2.
New Economy System
The original economy system for Stellaris has always been something of a limitation for us. It's a sort of hybrid system, with resources being both scripted (and thus accessible to modders) and hard-coded (and thus inaccessible) in about equal measures. For example, under the old system ships would always cost minerals, as the code was set up for them to always cost minerals, and the only thing you could change was the amount of minerals they cost. Similarly, most things in the game that had an upkeep were hard-coded to use energy for upkeep, and again, only the amounts were able to be changed. A few things (such as for example Resettlement or the precise resources produced by a building) were more open than this, but generally the system made it quite hard to introduce new resources or change the way a particular empire might use a particular resource. The old system was also quite performance-intensive.
When we decided that we wanted to make the next major update be about the economy, the first thing we knew that we needed to do was to rewrite this system entirely. For the new system, we set out a number of goals:
1: The new system should make it easy to add new resources and swap the way resources are used
2: The new system should be as open to modding as we possibly could make it
3: The new system should improve performance
From this, we've created a new system that we call Economic Templates. Where previously there would be a jumble of different systems for how cost, production and maintenance of the different features in the game would work, there is now one unified system. Any single object in the game that can be owned by an empire and have an impact on the economy is called an Economic Unit. In the database files, an Economic Unit looks like this:
For those who cannot read our scripting language, this is an example I just created of how the new system can be used. It's for a regular assault army, which normally costs 100 minerals to build and has an upkeep of 1 energy, just as before. However, if your empire is a Hive Mind, the army will instead cost 50 minerals and 50 food, and costs 1 food in upkeep instead of 1 energy. Additionally, if you have the Barbaric Despoilers civic, armies that are located on enemy planets will produce 3 energy/month, paying for themselves and then some through wide-scale looting. This isn't an actual example from the internal build, but something I just created while writing this dev diary to show the possibilities that the new economic system opens up for for both us and modders - we could have fully biological empires that use food instead of minerals to build infrastructure, ships that produce research while in certain systems, leaders that give Unity... the possibilities are endless.
Advanced Resources
With this system in place, we've been able to add several new 'advanced' resources to the game. They are as follows: Alloys, Rare Crystals, Volatile Motes and Exotic Gases. These resources are either manufactured from basic resources or found in rare planetary deposits (or both!) and are used to construct more advanced things in the game, such as ship components, megastructures, certain buildings and so on. There is also still a number of strategic resources such as Dark Matter and Living Metal that provide unique benefits, though precisely how many of these we will keep and how they are used is something we're still in the process of figuring out.
As part of these changes we're also in the process of reworking the top bar. Since we will now have rather too many resources to show them all, the top bar will now only show individual entries for resources that are important for your empire to always keep track of, with the rest shown as a consolidated entry that can be tooltiped for greater detail. Science is also consolidated into a total output of all 3 sciences, with tooltip showing the individual production of each. We're going to ensure that only relevant resources are shown individually, so most Machine Empires wouldn't have Food appear as an individual entry in the top bar, for example. We're also considering letting the player manually override this and decide which precise resources they want to keep track of within the available topbar space.
(Please note that the new topbar is nowhere near final and will have some ugly graphical issues. This is not how it will look on release)
That's all for today! I know this dev diary was rather technical and perhaps primarily of interest to modders, but I felt it was important to explain the fundamental changes that have taken place in the game's back-end, both in relation to the changes coming in 2.2, and the possibilities that this opens up in the future for having empire types with radically different approaches to resource production and consumption. Next week we're going to finally start talking about the new Planetary Management system. See you then!
New Economy System
The original economy system for Stellaris has always been something of a limitation for us. It's a sort of hybrid system, with resources being both scripted (and thus accessible to modders) and hard-coded (and thus inaccessible) in about equal measures. For example, under the old system ships would always cost minerals, as the code was set up for them to always cost minerals, and the only thing you could change was the amount of minerals they cost. Similarly, most things in the game that had an upkeep were hard-coded to use energy for upkeep, and again, only the amounts were able to be changed. A few things (such as for example Resettlement or the precise resources produced by a building) were more open than this, but generally the system made it quite hard to introduce new resources or change the way a particular empire might use a particular resource. The old system was also quite performance-intensive.
When we decided that we wanted to make the next major update be about the economy, the first thing we knew that we needed to do was to rewrite this system entirely. For the new system, we set out a number of goals:
1: The new system should make it easy to add new resources and swap the way resources are used
2: The new system should be as open to modding as we possibly could make it
3: The new system should improve performance
From this, we've created a new system that we call Economic Templates. Where previously there would be a jumble of different systems for how cost, production and maintenance of the different features in the game would work, there is now one unified system. Any single object in the game that can be owned by an empire and have an impact on the economy is called an Economic Unit. In the database files, an Economic Unit looks like this:
Code:
resources = {
category = armies
# Normal empires pay for armies with minerals
cost = {
trigger = {
owner = { is_hive_empire = no }
}
minerals = 100
}
# Hive Minds pay for armies partially with food
cost = {
trigger = {
owner = { is_hive_empire = yes }
}
minerals = 50
food = 50
}
# If Barbaric Despoilers, produce Energy while on enemy planets
produces = {
trigger = {
owner = { has_valid_civic = civic_barbaric_despoilers }
planet = { owner = { is_at_war_with = root.owner } }
}
energy = 3
}
# Normal empires pay army upkeep with energy
upkeep = {
trigger = {
owner = { is_hive_empire = no }
}
energy = 1
}
# Hive Minds pay army upkeep with food
upkeep = {
trigger = {
owner = { is_hive_empire = yes }
}
food = 1
}
}For those who cannot read our scripting language, this is an example I just created of how the new system can be used. It's for a regular assault army, which normally costs 100 minerals to build and has an upkeep of 1 energy, just as before. However, if your empire is a Hive Mind, the army will instead cost 50 minerals and 50 food, and costs 1 food in upkeep instead of 1 energy. Additionally, if you have the Barbaric Despoilers civic, armies that are located on enemy planets will produce 3 energy/month, paying for themselves and then some through wide-scale looting. This isn't an actual example from the internal build, but something I just created while writing this dev diary to show the possibilities that the new economic system opens up for for both us and modders - we could have fully biological empires that use food instead of minerals to build infrastructure, ships that produce research while in certain systems, leaders that give Unity... the possibilities are endless.
Advanced Resources
With this system in place, we've been able to add several new 'advanced' resources to the game. They are as follows: Alloys, Rare Crystals, Volatile Motes and Exotic Gases. These resources are either manufactured from basic resources or found in rare planetary deposits (or both!) and are used to construct more advanced things in the game, such as ship components, megastructures, certain buildings and so on. There is also still a number of strategic resources such as Dark Matter and Living Metal that provide unique benefits, though precisely how many of these we will keep and how they are used is something we're still in the process of figuring out.
As part of these changes we're also in the process of reworking the top bar. Since we will now have rather too many resources to show them all, the top bar will now only show individual entries for resources that are important for your empire to always keep track of, with the rest shown as a consolidated entry that can be tooltiped for greater detail. Science is also consolidated into a total output of all 3 sciences, with tooltip showing the individual production of each. We're going to ensure that only relevant resources are shown individually, so most Machine Empires wouldn't have Food appear as an individual entry in the top bar, for example. We're also considering letting the player manually override this and decide which precise resources they want to keep track of within the available topbar space.
(Please note that the new topbar is nowhere near final and will have some ugly graphical issues. This is not how it will look on release)
That's all for today! I know this dev diary was rather technical and perhaps primarily of interest to modders, but I felt it was important to explain the fundamental changes that have taken place in the game's back-end, both in relation to the changes coming in 2.2, and the possibilities that this opens up in the future for having empire types with radically different approaches to resource production and consumption. Next week we're going to finally start talking about the new Planetary Management system. See you then!
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. More resources, better modding support and a focus on the economy and trade for the next expansion sound like a great thing for Stellaris - great work (to you and the rest of the team) on doing what you've had to do to lay the foundation, look forward to seeing what you've come/will come up with 
