As a follow up to my
previous thread, here are a bunch of random relatively simple ideas that I think would make the game better. I tried to keep more concrete suggestions at the top and less fleshed out ones at the bottom.
- Have battle thralls give +1 naval capacity from jobs.
Currently, there is very little reason to use Battle Thrall slavery. they don't have as severe happiness, sure, but you lose out on the 10% production from jobs for some army damage and the ability to work a couple extra jobs.
- Crime Syndicates can sign commercial agreements. Doing so has -20 modifier to acceptance and gives +10 crime to all planets.
Values subject to change, of course. Just because someone is a crime syndicate doesn't mean they can't establish legal commercial agreements. This would be a way for a 'friendly' criminal syndicate to get better trade value out of their branch offices. It might also reduce the opinion penalty per branch office, to make it possible for a criminal syndicate to maintain exploited friends.
- Make Chemical Bliss take Exotic Gases as upkeep and produce unity when unemployed. Unemployed pops on Chemical Bliss give 2 unity.
Originally inspired by my response to
this thread. Currently, chemical bliss is pointless. By making the living standard be either decent conditions(1/0.5/0.25/0.05) or basic sustenance(0.5/0.25/0.05/0) CG cost, plus 0.1 exotic gas, you make the standard cheaper while also adding flavor. People should get high off of the
good stuff, not iPhones and toasters. Chemical bliss also currently gives -20% happiness for being unemployed, which makes no sense. Someone drugged out of their mind should be happy to not have to work.
- Give Gaia Worlds +20% pop growth.
Currently, the 10% happiness and 10% job output is pitiful compared to the 20% job output, 50% growth, and special districts of an Ecumenopolis. So both as a general buff to Gaia Worlds and a specific buff to Life Seeded, I think 20% extra growth is good. It's a literal paradise, what type of mood do you think that would put people in?
- A new policy for machine empires regarding leaders.
- Safe: +100% leader upkeep. -50% leader failure chance. Constant backups and redundant servers minimize the chances of our semi-autonomous drones being lost.
- Normal: no change. A balance of caution and costs is the most prudent approach.
- Risky: +25% leader experience gain. +100% leader failure chance. Semi-autonomous units are ultimately expendable. No great care needs to be taken for their safety when compared to the survival of the collective.
This is another original idea I'm proud of. The fact that robot leaders can die is something I've seen complained about every so often, but people generally accept the game balance aspect. This would allow the people who want it to have perfectly immortal leaders(this plus tradition perk)... at a small cost. This idea naturally lead to adding an option for the other side: risk your leader more and they can learn faster. The values of 25% experience gain and 100% leader death chance likely need to be balanced, I haven't crunched numbers for the costs and benefits.
- Make Gene clinics give +5% habitability and Cyto-Revitalization Centers give +10% habitability.
Medical workers are pretty bad jobs, as several previous thread have proved. Instead of a direct buff to medical workers, I thought it might be more interesting to add a buff to the building itself. Is it a better solution? Not really. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Add +1 Housing for Fortresses to Imperious architecture. Add +1 soldier jobs from Fortresses to Judgement Corp.
Both Stronghholds and Fortresses, ofc, but it was too much for the title. This is addressing two separate problems. First, that the Domination tree is the weakest. Second, that in terms of defense armies per building slot, building precinct houses(4) or halls of judgement(10) is ALWAYS better then building Strongholds (3) or Fortresses (9). That just doesn't quite sit right with me. Cadia is manned by soldiers of the guard, not a bunch of arbites. Full credit to
@Mastikator for this idea, originally from
this thread.
- Allow Space creatures to grow and repopulate.
- Mining Drones: If any mining drone station is destroyed, and at least 10 years have passed with the system not in the borders of any empire, the mining drone hub will send out a fleet. The fleet will be made of drones and a prospector (which could just re-use the destroyer model), and will be neutral until it has re-set up the mining station. Local mining stations would be able to re-build mining drones, as well.
- Tiyanki: Tiyanki should reproduce when two fleets meet, merging for a period of more than a year, then splitting off into 2-4 fleets with more total creatures. There would be a cool down on how often this could happen, and a limit on how many total fleets could exist/exist in an area.
- Space Amoeba: Space amoeba should passively grow and then split into separate fleets. Mitosis!
- Crystaline Entities: Crystaline entities should be able to "hibernate" next to pulsars to grow. Once a crystal fleet gets big enough, it will split into many new equal shard fleets. Each will spend some time hibernating, before going off on their own.
- Void Clouds: Void clouds should occasionally spawn from The Great Wound or unstabilized wormholes. For people with void cloud pacification(which would be added and available to pacifists, spiritualists, or materialists), there should be an edict that could be done on black hole systems to crate a void cloud fleet.
Currently, neutral creatures will respawn if the system they are in isn't within the sensor range of any empire. This is a kinda weird system, and not one that is particularly interesting. To fix this, I came up with a unique method for every type of space creatures to grow and reproduce fleets. Upon observing one of these events for the first time, there would be a special notification that pops up, informing you of what happened and giving some fun flavor text.
In addition, some more interactions would be added between the different space creatures. Space Amoeba Hunters would try to chase and kill Tiyanki, which would run away. Mining Drones would attack any crystalline entities that came in system.
- Allow claims persist when outposts are destroyed, and allow that space to be rebuilt in with -10% influence cost per claim.
This idea recently popped up on another thread, but I've had it for a while. The main purpose of this is so that when you lose a bunch of systems to the grey tempest or end game crisis, you don't have to pay out the nose to reclaim those systems. Any space that you owned automatically gives you a level 10 claim, so it will be free.
- Add a "Remove claims" Cassus Belli. If successful, removes 5 levels of claims on systems you currently own.
On a similar note to the above, add a way to remove claims. The reason I chose 5 was I didn't want to make having an empire completely forget about the space they used to own too easy. Requiring three wars would have seemed too annoying and a slog. I should note that if you take territory in a claim war, you don't reduce the claims on that newly taken territory.
- Make Livestock and purging pops not give building slots.
This is partly for flavor, but mostly to stop habitat cramming, weaken 1 planet purge stations, and other exploits. Both livestock and purging pops get MASSIVE housing cost reductions, and require no upkeep, making it incredibly easy to get a ton of building slots for free/cheap. Stuffing several million/billion sentient chickens or cabbages into your habitats shouldn't let you run more buildings. Similarly, population actively being exterminated would have far too easy access to cause sabotage, as well as no reason not to. This would make jobless domestic servant slaves the best way to get more building slots, which makes much more sense lore wise.
- Temples level 3 and 4 should have 1 high priest.
This could EITHER be as a general buff to spiritualists, or as a specific buff to Exalted Priesthood. Currently a temple gives 2/4/7/10 Priest jobs. A high Priest produces 2 more unity than a normal priest, but the same amount of society and amenities, with no upkeep. They are also ruler instead of specialist strata, which matters for living standard and political power.
- Make all worker jobs (miners, technicians, farmers) give 5 resources base.
For normal empires and hives, Technicians and Miners give 4, while farmers give 6. For machine empires Technicians give 6, miners give 4, and farmers give 5. Synthetically ascended empires have Technicians and Farmers that give 6, while miners give 4. This is ridiculously convoluted, and leads to absurdity like the best way to get energy being to make food and sell it. It also makes machine empires very strong, as energy is much more useful and flexible than food is.
- Add Resettlement decisions to Planets.
- Subsidized Resettlement (Resettlement Allowed)[50 influence]: Unemployed pops will automatically resettle to a planet with housing and jobs, paying the energy required.
- Subsidized Migration(Resettlement Prohibited)[25 influence]: Unemployed pops have a chance to resettle to a planet with housing and jobs. Chance increases if planet has negative amenities, overcrowding, migration push, etc. Doing so pays the energy required.
- Resettlement Target [100 influence]: +50% migration attraction. All pops resettled by the above policies will target this planet, regardless of available jobs/housing there or elsewhere.
This would be a system to completely automate pop shuffling late game, while working completely within existing systems. Once a planet is full, you can choose to pay some influence to set up an automatic transfer, and never have to touch that colony again (atleast until ALL your planets fill up). By making the target decision cost 100 influence, I'm hoping to encourage that the player just picks an Ecumenopolis or Ringworld to target until it fills up, and discourage a min max or constantly shuffling targets from planet to planet.
- When Primitives nuke themselves, allow intervention.
I'd love to see a full expansion of primitives, with more event chains, primitive hive minds, being able to actually interact with them with more than just buttons on the observation post, etc. But as a simple change, after the primitives nuke themselves have it take a year or so for the pops to actually die off, so you have a chance to try and save what's left of them. Ideally there would also be a chance of pops surviving and gaining the survivor trait.
- Zro, Dark Matter, and Living Metal should all have building uses.
- A Tier 2 research institute for Dark Matter. (+30-50% research output)
- Either a T5 Temple or T2 Psi Corp for Zro.
- A special Starbase Building for Living Metal. (-10% ship cost, +25% ship construction speed) or (+10 Armor/Hull Regeration monthly)
- A completely new building!
Currently, these resources just pile up, being used occasionally for edicts or ship building. They desperately need more uses, so that they become something in demand that is sought after. If you have more than 1 source, or even sometimes you have 1, you just end up selling it. Add some powerful buildings that requires these resources, and suddenly they become MUCH more valuable. I thought about a special building for living metal that increased megastructure capacity, but the fact that it can be bought off of the galactic market makes that non-viable.
- Give Marauders and Enclaves actual habitats with pops on them.
Pretty simple, has come up before. Make them feel like actual places, not just a menu you click through every 10 years. Potentially even give them special buildings, districts, or jobs. Let me see a bunch of duelists, soldiers, and unemployed pops smashed together in a crime infested overcrowded station. The curators with legions of researchers and science directors. The artists with 100+ excess amenities.
- Allow the ability to sell/rent ships on the galactic market.
This is much more complicated, and would likely be a major part of the DLC for an update. There would be some formal for determining the value of ships (like with slaves) and your ships could be sold at that price. Alternatively, it could be more like condottieri form EU4, where you rent out a fleet for a time period or war. Perhaps both!
- Modules/Buildings for starbases to boost system mining/research stations.
There are really only five uses for starbases in game right now: Defending chokepoints, collecting trade, building ships, surpassing piracy, or giving naval capacity. There are a limited amount of chokepoints, you really only need one starbase each for trade and shipbuilding (maybe 2), piracy is either covered by border stations or you need 1 or 2 internal (or just use ship patrols), and then the rest you use for naval cap. There really isn't much interesting decision making going on. Even the interesting buildings are buildings, meaning you can just through an anchorage starbase there and not have to make a choice, really.
Add more modules that provide economic benefit. Let me choose between expanding my naval cap or juicing up the output from that 14 mineral system I have. Make those starbases precious. Make the player consider if they really need a border station with their friendly neighbor, and could instead use it somewhere else.
