Buildings not occuping a (specific) tile

[redomer]

I think that the current building system is not really cut out to represent all buildings correctly. It is too simple. I will try to list my concerns/ issues and maybe offer some solution. In addition my interpretation of tiles: Tiles represent a part of a world that is dedicated to a specific function/ task/ etc or whatever we want to call it.

Sorry if I made some errors. I am feeling a bit sick today and can't really concentrate.

Some buildings are too "big"
Buildings like a monument of purity use too much space in regard to what they actually represent and what the player gets out of them. The monuments in this example only give some happiness but requires one entire pop work it and one entire tile to exist.

I don't think a whole tile is justified or even nessesary for balance. It also creates weird situations where small planets don't have the same amount of "development" as bigger worlds have if the player wants to have the colony carry it's weight.

Possible Solution
Give certain buildings like (or just) the colonial center have a number of slots for buildings similar to starport. Better colonial centers allow to use more slots.

A new feature like this could also be used to introduce more buildings/ dept in the future while keeping the building list somewhat tight.

No plantwide structures
As of now we don't really have a representation of infrastructure that would imho be interesting or even benifitial to to have. A newly colonized world is basicly as good as older worlds as soon as they are colonized. All my world have basicly 100% habitablity when I colonize them and don't gain or lose any traits aside from very few events.

Possible Solution
Add plantwide structure that serve a specific purpose as an additional number of slots like starports but seperate from the building slots in the colonial centers as a planetwide structure doesn't really take up space in one speciic place but everywhere.

We could have structures that step by step improve habitablity on a planet or bomb shelters to protect the lives when being bombarded or step by step transportation network that increases resource production and happiness.

A bit off topic
It would also be nice too have some sort of population density. I am still dreaming of overcrowded worlds like Coruscant from Star Wars or a "Hive World" from Warhammer. It is kind of fitting to have highly productive population centers that outclass normal worlds.

Possible Solution
Allow multible Pops on one tile once a specific requirement like a (leved) plantwide structure is met. More pops increase the output of the tile they work while decreasing the output per pop depending on technology and number of pops working it.

Farms and mines should most likely excluded from this because vast numbers of people in mines and on farms doesn't really increase productivity after a certain point and this kind of production imho shouldn't be part of a population center. We do however needsomething like factories that process at least minerals into goods to represent industrial potential similar to industrialized areas in our world.

 

[Emraldis]

Although interesting, I think that it might overcomplicate things a bit too much. Consider how annoying the current army attachment system is, do you really want to have to click through every tile on every planet to add multiple different buildings? The current system works well enough as an abstraction, I just wish they would do more with adjacency bonuses.

 

[redomer]

Although interesting, I think that it might overcomplicate things a bit too much. Consider how annoying the current army attachment system is, do you really want to have to click through every tile on every planet to add multiple different buildings? The current system works well enough as an abstraction, I just wish they would do more with adjacency bonuses.

Well if my thoughts on that are that if things get too complicated then only the colonial center has buildings attached to it and we can see everything with as many clicks as we do now.

Kind of like this:

 

[Emraldis]

Well if my thoughts on that are that if things get too complicated then only the colonial center has buildings attached to it and we can see everything with as many clicks as we do now.

Kind of like this:
View attachment 241394

That might work, have a basic colony center that you can upgrade? perhaps it only starts out giving a little bit of energy, and then as you level it up, you can add structures in the slots to improve its resource output, or improve its adjacency bonuses.

 

[redomer]

That might work, have a basic colony center that you can upgrade? perhaps it only starts out giving a little bit of energy, and then as you level it up, you can add structures in the slots to improve its resource output, or improve its adjacency bonuses.

Yes, better colonial centers give more slots as I imagine it. Well I didn't really had adjacency in mind but that works too.

 

[ColZimin]

I think that the current building system is not really cut out to represent all buildings correctly.

Some buildings are too "big"

No plantwide structures

I understand your complaints here, but I wouldn't solve it quite the same way. I blame Paradox, who chose to name and design (most of) their colony improvements as actual, single buildings. That kind of abstraction makes even less sense than in the Civilization games; in Civ, you can build one library per city, one granary, one castle, etc. Bad enough for a single city of millions, but for a planet? Preposterous. Even 15 power plants on one planet in Stellaris sounds very skimpy, unless they run by magic.

To me it would have made more sense if the "buildings" in Stellaris were named and fluffed more like regional specializations, since each tile would logically represent a decent chunk of a continent. The Mining Network sounds about right, indicating a larger network of single mines. By that pattern you might rename Power Plants to Generator Grids and Hydroponic Farms to Vertical Farming Districts, or whatever. Scale everything up to regions, rather than single constructions.

Harder to do for the special buildings, but not impossible. I choose to believe Pdox has creativity enough to manage that - why they chose not to, I don't know.

A bit off topic: It would also be nice too have some sort of population density.

This I fully agree with. My own pet system would have pops establish like they do now, representing the minimum population necessary to actually work a tile, and then grow further in population/density after they're active, affecting happiness and ethics drift etc.

 

[Emraldis]

This I fully agree with. My own pet system would have pops establish like they do now, representing the minimum population necessary to actually work a tile, and then grow further in population/density after they're active, affecting happiness and ethics drift etc.

This would be interesting, and probably not too hard to implement, given the new consumer goods mechanic. I can see this as implemented, where pops activate the tile at 50% growth time, and then finish growing. once they've finished perhaps they could grow some more, if you had some population density improvement techs or edicts, which would basically make the pop require more food and consumer goods, as well as affect the resource output of the tile. There would have to be a cap at some point though, to represent the area not being able to hold any more people.

 

[Mauer]

I like the population density idea, it would make farms actually useful as currently you can support an entire planet's population just with the capital and orbital hydroponics, some times a frontier hospital and that's it.

It could work like Victoria's factories, where you keep upgrading them and they can employ more and more people, or just have something like civilization's specialists, not everyone has to work the land.

 

[Cagliostro]

Population density a great idea.

Also having planetwide buildings is a great idea. Perhaps as suggested could be thematically added to the colonial center, though I would rather see them physically off to the side somewhere (so you didn't have to locate where you built the center on a given planet).

 

[Xoatl]

Population density would add a lot to the game, you think about the global food and refugee mechanics coming in banks. Population density down the road would be great. Three different species pops (I assume a max of 3 would be fine and sort of visually appealing, maybe enlarge the planet management window for this) could occupy a single tile, depending on their xenophobia level (the ethos obviously contributing to that the most) they would start trouble with one another. Having an alien species pop ontop of a xenophobe pop would cause more unhappiness than just having a neighbour, and even more than having an alien pop somewhere on the planet. Would add a lot to the management of pops on tiles.