Habitat not worth it in 2.2

[Pragmatic]

They aren't useless, but honestly, I don't feel they are worth a whole ascension perk just to unlock them.

(Novice speaking.)

There are a lot of perks that aren't worth it in the late game. Perhaps this is an early-game perk?

Others have mentioned they're good for immigration push, for refineries, and for early alloy/consumer goods production. Also for border protection.

 

[Cynoid]

It's not really an early-game perk, conseidering you need the "Star Fortress" tech. It's unlikely that you'll be able to unlock Habitats before your 3rd perk (even with a Mecanist/Technocracy tech-heavy build).

 

[WhapXI]

One thing that habitats are great for, for example, is manufacturing advanced resources.

Third, you can offload your manufacturing to habitats, particularly strategic resources, but also alloys and consumer goods if you didn't opt for an ecumenopolis. This frees up the building slots on your regular planets for efficient unity, science, and raw resource production.

Honestly, the best thing about habitats is that you get some free building slots. Lacking in strategic resources? Fill a habitat with housing and synthetic gas plants. Want an FTL inhibitor but don't want to build a starbase? Drop a stronghold on a habitat. Or if you want to increase your resource capacity you can build a few silos.

I must disagree with this idea that habitats are worthwhile as manufacturing hubs. I've always understood habitats to be useful in the sense that they're a small and repeatable unit that can be spammed out. Taking Voidborn to build one or two habitats to shift metallurgists and artisans to is kind of like taking Interstellar Dominion to fill in the safe space you've already secured with chokepoints.

I've never found myself struggling for building slots on planets to boost my production. The largest factor that limits industrial development is raw resource availability, with which Habitats won't help at all. Paying alloys per month to maintain a small, less versatile planet that produces no minerals or food strikes me as a pretty dreadful idea. At least an ecumenopolis can support hundreds of metallurgists and artisans with no rare resources or innate upkeep required, still have the versatility of a planet, and can have more and more poweful buildings, owing to the massive population. If you want to shift industry to one spot, an ecumenopolis is the far better choice.

Again, Habitats should be used in quantity. They used to be dynamite for research and energy production. Now it appears that the only thing they'll be consistently good for (i.e., not a disproportionate drain on raw resources) is trade value, and to be honest it's probably more profitable to build a ringworld and murder the bastard with generator districts. More self-sustaining too, considering you can also build so many farm districts that you can probably move all food production there and also will get enough pops to build 16 regular planetary buildings.

 

[GC13]

It's not really an early-game perk, conseidering you need the "Star Fortress" tech. It's unlikely that you'll be able to unlock Habitats before your 3rd perk (even with a Mecanist/Technocracy tech-heavy build).

That's what confuses me about these megastructure perks. Why are they available so early in the AP line when their technology requirements are so high that you're going to have to sit on empty perks for a long time in order to take them that early?

 

[Pragmatic]

I thought habitats were a "build while you're building the one megastructure at a time" thing?

I.e., habitats and gateways don't apply to the limit.

 

[Zealote]

Not to shit on Habitats, but I used to spam them as an alternative to planets on my Life Seeded. Now they are just a defense option. Seriously, choke point control with Fortress Habitats is pretty insane. But! I'd like to see them a bit better due to cost. Aside from this purpose, they don't seem cost effective at all.

 

[B3ndolf]

I think that it is good that habitats are no longer the must have ap they used to be but I also think that they could do with a small boost to make them worth the cost.

Something lime increasing researcher jobs to 5 or having the non housing districts provide a couple of housing would do.

 

[Pragmatic]

Not to shit on Habitats, but I used to spam them as an alternative to planets on my Life Seeded. Now they are just a defense option. Seriously, choke point control with Fortress Habitats is pretty insane. But! I'd like to see them a bit better due to cost. Aside from this purpose, they don't seem cost effective at all.

Think of them as taking over some of the burden from planets and starbases.

You can put resource silos on them, so you don't need to do so on planets (max of 16 building slots) or starbases (max of 4 building slots).

You can put refineries (10 minerals to produce one rare resource) on them, allowing planets to have buildings that offer more jobs.

You can build the science district, which is a boost to your research without using a rare resource.

As you mentioned, they're great for border systems. But you can move anchorages off of starbases using soldier jobs, even in core systems.

And given their limited housing/jobs, they will push emigration to fill up your planets, ring worlds, etc.

 

[Delthor]

* You can use it as a manufacturing platform, but Eucumenoplises are much more efficient at this, it doesn't really make sense.

I think ecumenopolises being absurdly overpowered is probably one of my biggest balance complaints of this patch/expansion. They are so efficient in terms of districts that they render everything but raw resources and research worthless on any other kind of planet. They really need to give them a significant nerf so that they don't totally outclass everything else in the game. Just to start, the districts for ecumenopolises should cost at least 2 admin cap each, if not more. An entire forge arcology providing 10 housing and 5 jobs shouldn't contribute the same empire size as an agriculture district providing 2 housing and 2 jobs. That's absolutely ridiculous. The fact that they have this job density without needing rare resources is equally ridiculous.

Setting aside ecumonopolis domination, habitats are very strong in their niches as others have pointed out. In my megastructure-focused file, I've moved pretty much all alloy/consumer goods production to habitats with a 6/2 split of housing and entertainment districts. You can fill them out with mostly alloy/consumer goods buildings, plus a few refineries for the strategic resources they require. The result is a habitat that outputs about 60-70% of the alloy/consumer goods that a planet can, but only needs a few strategic resources from elsewhere, all for only 10 empire size.

I do agree that the science and trade districts feel extremely lackluster. I think these districts should probably provide the housing needed for their own jobs, but I haven't really done any experimentation. The relative efficiency of the districts and not needing strategic resources might be more powerful than it seems.

 

[westamastaflash]

Here's an example of a filled habitat I have right now.

Fanatic Authoritarian and Spiritual empire. I have syncretic evolution, police state, and byzantine bureaucracy civics.
Note the crime lord deal modifier which gives +10 stability.

This habitat isn't fully optimized - the pops I have working there are Fertile, Erudite, Communal, Thrify, and Nonadaptive.

I was maximizing for housing at the time, but my Eucmenopolis is opening for business so the factories and alloy plants are going off-world, which should allow me to reduce the pop on the habitat and give them Robust instead of Fertile/Communal for the +5% to all resource production. 50 pops gives that really nice merchant though.

Also, that numistic order building? Fantastic for habitats. 2 merchants and 2 priests solve your amenity problems.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

Also, that numistic order building? Fantastic for habitats. 2 merchants and 2 priests solve your amenity problems.

Sure, assuming you're lucky enough to get it.

Not a bad habitat, but not particularly awesome either. With that district setup (which requires two ascension perks) you basically get as many scientist jobs as two tier 3 planetside labs. Sure, you save a bit on exotic gases, but in return the habitat itself costs alloys for maintenance so it's not such an awesome deal at the end of the day.

The bottom line for habitats is that their buildings don't complement their districts very well and their districts mostly suck. They're good for moving alloy and consumer goods production off your planets, but an Ecumenopolis can do it way better. Lacking research labs and commerce megaplexes, the main building employment workhorses once manufacturing is moved to an ecumenopolis, means they won't ever generate a ton of research or trade. But they can do an ok job as trade/research/unity hybrids, along with certain niches like soldier spam and rare material production. But mostly, playing with habitats just feels very...awkward.

 

[Objulen]

I'm not seeing much benefit to Habitats over colonizing a small world. Even with the research districts that don't cost special resources, you're capped at 8, or 25, research jobs max (with a super computer). A few gas refineries would cost a few extra pops and some extra credits, but 4 or 5 fully upgraded research labs will give you many more research jobs than the habitat would for a nominal additional cost.

There are some cases where Habitats are very useful - like when there aren't any small planets to colonize - but Habitats are better for manufacturing, IMHO, since you can actully build forges and civilian manufactering buildings.

Habitats would be very good if you could build them early enough, but by late-mid game they don't offer enough.

 

[westamastaflash]

When you're out of planets to colonize and you want to expand, habitats are your only option aside from war until ringworlds.

Sure, assuming you're lucky enough to get it.

They can do an ok job as trade/research/unity hybrids, along with certain niches like soldier spam and rare material production. But mostly, playing with habitats just feels very...awkward.

Yeah I'm convinced the Numistic building is the only thing keeping any of by habs afloat. They're definitely very awkward and you have to do a heck of a lot to get them up and working. 4 exotic gas = base 40 minerals so it's not nothing.. but 5 alloys costs base 10 minerals so you only net 30. Habs really need more district housing and jobs.

 

[Objulen]

Very true. They're much more useful in games with smaller numbers of inhabitable worlds.

But is a Habitat better than getting the Ascension perk to terraform Gaia worlds? They take longer, but Gaia worlds get 10% extra production. And given the alloy to energy market ratios, are probably less expensive.

 

[ShoGuL]

Very true. They're much more useful in games with smaller numbers of inhabitable worlds.

But is a Habitat better than getting the Ascension perk to terraform Gaia worlds? They take longer, but Gaia worlds get 10% extra production. And given the alloy to energy market ratios, are probably less expensive.

Yes, because Gaia World transformation is bugged and destroys most planetary features

 

[Bobylein]

The problem I have with habitats is that, at least in my feeling, they are supposed to be for "tall" empires but their districts/buildings don't really support that.

Fast and dirty comparsion between habitat and a small planet:

Habitat: 8 districts (you gonna take Master builders in tall build) with 3x Habitation and 5x Research = 8+2 = 10 empire size.
Equals 30 pops of which 15 researchers plus 15 other pops that work something else

Planet: 8 city districts, something you can often build together with the mineral districts you usually want to max out.
Equals 8 x 8(with the second city tech?) = 64 pops which alone means 6.8 more building slots which you can easily use to build 3 tier 2 labs and 3 synthetic gas plants.
Then you are still left with 46 pops that work something else.



What I want to say is: Habitats are horrendously inefficient empire-size wise and only worth it once you have no, even small, planet left in your space.

That wasn't that way before 2.2, so I guess we'll just have to get used to the new role of habitats but I am still not really happy with it, I feel that should be at least as efficient as planets in what they are doing considering they take an AP, constant alloys, infuence and are limited in what they can produce.

 

[westamastaflash]

What I want to say is: Habitats are horrendously inefficient empire-size wise and only worth it once you have no, even small, planet left in your space.

Pops consume lots of consumer goods on lower habitability worlds, habitats are 100% habitability. I wonder what a size 9 planet with, say, 70% habitability rates against a habitat in total pop maintenance?

 

[Bobylein]

Pops consume lots of consumer goods on lower habitability worlds, habitats are 100% habitability. I wonder what a size 9 planet with, say, 70% habitability rates against a habitat in total pop maintenance?

When the time for habitats comes, I tend to not have any planet with lower than 90% habitability because of tech and terraforming :/

 

[Alastor]

Habitats are rather underwhelming, the combination of a small number of districts and an inability to build housing on them greatly limits their potential. Still I was happy in my game to have found a use for them. I basically build a few science districts on them for the advanced-resource free research and just add fortresses. They provide housing for their soldiers and increase my navy cap. A few habitats and I can build another full fleet.

 

[Treybor]

The best thing I’ve found about habitats is they are an extra growth slot that you can use to resettle on worlds that need the population

The actual buildings on habitats are meh and I just use them to store pops for new worlds or filling job slots on existing worlds

Population is key and there’s rarely enough to go around til super late game