[4.0 Beta] Habitat Zones and Research Districts Feedback

[Vrenshrrg]

The preliminary habitat update of v3.99.4 makes habitats play very strangely.

Void dwellers suffer immensely under the tier 4 tech requirement to unlock additional zones, this should be reduced to a tier 2 tech for this origin specifically. Ceramo-metal infrastructure is a good candidate tech. The final zone can be locked behind the guaranteed habitat expansion tech in my opinion, it is a good challenge and further motivation to start to research it early.

The changes to orbital and district caps being dependent on total system deposit feels amazing, though total districts should probably be equivalent to total deposits for better intuition (guaranteed void dweller systems should be nerfed for this). There is one exception.

Capped research districts on habitats have no place in 4.0, where the main source of researchers is now uncapped city districts. But science deposits should still be relevant.

My suggestion is to allow research zones in habitation districts, with a twist. They should provide less researcher jobs per district than regular planets, but each science deposit in the system should increase this amount until they provide more jobs than planet-bound research zones at, say, 6+ total deposits. This makes location important, but doesn't provide such a hard cap to science production on habitats.

As an example, a current research zone provides 90 researcher jobs per district on a planet. A habitat research zone could provide 60 and an additional 6 per science deposit. That makes for an even 90 at 5 total deposits and 120 if you can find a very good system with 10 total deposits.

Without research districts, what to put in that UI slot then? Perhaps a refinery district with zones that define the type of strategic resource that gets produced, that's a job habitats are traditionally good at. Or you have an opportunity to do something wild, like shipyard districts that have jobs that increase ship build speed. Or gun batteries that give habitats fleet power for that khan feel.
(Personally I wouldn't say no to seeing trade districts return, but they're well-represented via the trade zone already.)

 

[Navar]

I agree with your point, that Research zones feel weak and uninteresting compared to using a zone in an uncapped district. That said, I think your solution would be counter-intuitive to how every other zone works currently.

I'd prefer they make it so that Research districts are uncapped, like Urban districts. I don't think they'll go with this though, as they mentioned in a comment on 3.99.3 beta patch notes that if they were to even round up the district count, they're remove the base +1. Seems they'd prefer the Research district be low in count for whatever reason.

That said, I do think there's a solution to this that they could go for, that being giving the various Research deposits, or one of the five other deposit types that grant districts currently, unique zones that customize the district's job output.

For a simple example, Physics, Engineering, or Sociology deposits could create zones that add extra jobs of their type per Research district.

For a more unique example, having a Minor Artifacts deposit could create a Museum zone that adds unity production to scientist jobs. Or having a Living Metal deposit adds a Liquid Metal zone that adds megastructure build speed to scientist jobs. Or having a Nanite deposit adds a Nanite Production zone that adds Nanite production to scientist jobs. Things like that would spice up the Research district, making it stand out but work as you'd expect (since planets can have fancy zones dependent on planetary features).

This would still work better if they increased the cap on research districts, but even without that this change would add some variety to your research-based habitats.

 

[Mortimus]

It's the same problem as the Ringworld Arcologies. Probably the simplest fix they could do for now is just to multiply the jobs per research district by between x2 and x3 so that it is comparable with the main habitat district with double or triple science zone. That way, there's the option to use the research districts for your researcher jobs and still use the city district zones for something else entirely. It's a quick easy fix without having to rework the mechanics a lot.