Habitats are nerfed to irrelevance?

[Stars_and_Bars]

Is it just me or are habitats nerfed incredibly in the Le Guin update? Before the update they could provide energy, minerals, research, food, and unity; and each one could give insane amount of bonuses, and be specialized.
Now with the new update we have more basic type resources and needs. Now a habitat can only (for non gestalt) can only provide housing, research,trade value, unity, and amenities.

Housing and amenities can't be transfered between planets, so it's worthless if you wanted to use these to support your growing home planets. Research is good, but dyson sphere is so much better. Unity is good, but not enough reason to build habitats. Now, I know trade value is a mixed bag, you can have trade value do straight energy, or half energy with half consumer goods, or half energy with small unity boost. The problem is that trade value is an empire wide policy, so you can't specialize individual habitats like you could before. Also there is no way to use habitats to build minerals or food.

Now I now with the new expansion, it is possible to buy everything using energy, but having to rely on imports for most of your food/minerals is a bad way to run an empire or a country. Especially with the game's system of supply and demand. The more your need for a resource grows as a proportion of the market, the more energy you will have to pay through the nose. It's not an efficient system and with the new megastructures that can create unity or minerals, habitats just aren't all that useful anymore.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

But this means you don't need to produce as much trade, unity and research on regular worlds and can concentrate them on other stuff. To be honest I don't see the problem. More stuff is always great. Habitats also holds a bit more POP per districts than regular planets do so you get slightly more for less empire penalties.

I think it is way to early to judge how useful these things are before we played a bit more.

 

[Jorrhast]

Probably that is why Terkardians went for RW without building many habs. I was wondering why, now it seems obvious.

 

[Qilue]

Habitats were only ever useful in systems where you couldn't build a ringworld. With the planet cracker, you can increase the number of ringworld-suitable systems.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

But this means you don't need to produce as much trade, unity and research on regular worlds and can concentrate them on other stuff. To be honest I don't see the problem. More stuff is always great. Habitats also holds a bit more POP per districts than regular planets do so you get slightly more for less empire penalties.

I think it is way to early to judge how useful these things are before we played a bit more.

I'm not super knowledgeable about how the trade value system works, but as far as I can tell that via your empire policy, trade value can only give you energy,unity, and consumer goods. Not super useful, unless you want to so many energy credits into the galactic market that the basic food and minerals you need quadruples in price.

 

[Jorrhast]

While it can't be argued that fully built and populated RWs are better than habs, RWs take a long time to build. Habs give much quicker payoff, also you can build them in already colonized systems.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Habitats were only ever useful in systems where you couldn't build a ringworld. With the planet cracker, you can increase the number of ringworld-suitable systems.

While it can't be argued that fully built and populated RWs are better than habs, RWs take a long time to build. Habs give much quicker payoff, also you can build them in already colonized systems.

Yeah, habitats were useful because they provided smaller benefits than ringworlds with less cost of investment, and you could get them earlier. Plus another reason they were super useful was that if you build habitats in a system that already had a planet, the increase costs of unity and research would only increase because of the population penalty, not the planet system penalty. Now maybe that was an unintended benefit, but now with the new system where unity and tech costs scale with districts,planets, and systems they are just as costly for tech/traditions as a regular planet but way less versatile.

Before the Le Guin expansion, I was building habitats as mean to feed, produce minerals, produce energy, and tech for my main planets (particularly my capital) which provided me with unique buildings that I can't get anywhere else, and my other planets that also had some cool buffs here and there. Now the only reason to build habitats would be because you simply don't have any more planets to colonize and you can't build ringworlds yet.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I haven't bothered with Habitats since 2.0, when they nerfed them a second (third?) time. Now with 2.2 out I see even less reason to build them, especially now that you can get 8 megastructures from 1 AP. It is bizarre that Voidborn unlocks a single, nearly useless, megastructure while Galactic Wonders provides 8 actually useful ones (the Strategic Coordination Center stacks with itself for hilarious results btw). The Voidborn perk is such a joke at this point that it should be a tech instead. The only good thing it has going for it is that it makes getting Mega-Engineering a lot easier but I refuse to waste an AP slot just for that. Hire a Curator instead.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Habitats are less powerful in the sense that you don't want to just spam them everywhere anymore - at least, as long as you don't have access to quasi-infinite Minerals (Machine Worlds, Hive Worlds, Matter Decompressor).

That being said, they are still quite good. Their primary use is to provide you with more building slots, which allows you to move your manufacturing industry off-world and synergizes well with the fact that you can easily get high amenities on a Habitat by building a few Trade Districts (which gives you high stability and thus a significant job yield bonus).

Trade Habitats are also quite solid - it's not uncommon to get 120+ TV from one, which means you'll generate a decent surplus of Energy and Consumer Goods for the rest of your empire (which in turn reduces M consumption, by allowing you to remove some of the CG factories).

There is also a chance that they might get slightly reduced build cost and upkeep in the future. I did lobby for it. But no guarantees.

 

[pryr]

As i see habitats are good because they have a few powerful districts so they contribute less to administrative cap with higher efficiency.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

As i see habitats are good because they have a few powerful districts so they contribute less to administrative cap with higher efficiency.

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Habitats are less powerful in the sense that you don't want to just spam them everywhere anymore - at least, as long as you don't have access to quasi-infinite Minerals (Machine Worlds, Hive Worlds, Matter Decompressor).

That being said, they are still quite good. Their primary use is to provide you with more building slots, which allows you to move your manufacturing industry off-world and synergizes well with the fact that you can easily get high amenities on a Habitat by building a few Trade Districts (which gives you high stability and thus a significant job yield bonus).

Trade Habitats are also quite solid - it's not uncommon to get 120+ TV from one, which means you'll generate a decent surplus of Energy and Consumer Goods for the rest of your empire (which in turn reduces M consumption, by allowing you to remove some of the CG factories).

There is also a chance that they might get slightly reduced build cost and upkeep in the future. I did lobby for it. But no guarantees.

Something can be both good and consistently inferior to alternative options at the same time; however, as you have surely played more 2.2 than I have, how do Habitats compare to Ecumenopoli? They both seem to be good at TV/consumer goods while both contributing to administrative cap in an efficient manor. By this standard, Habitats seem to be the cheaper, quicker, but ultimately inferior versions of Ecumenopoli. Short term profit vs long term profit and all that jazz. Given the huge number of AP options compared to the only 8 AP slots, you have to consider what is ultimately the superior choice, even if the inferior ones are still technically good.

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

I thought districts cost 1 admin cap. Is this not the case?

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I thought districts cost 1 admin cap. Is this not the case?

You may be correct, the numbers are a bit hazy for me. I played a game today, I think systems cost 2, planets cost 6, so maybe districts cost 1?
Still whatever they cost, do habitat districts cost less than normal districts, in terms of the admin cap?

 

[pryr]

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

I mean that districts on habitats come with lesser numbers and higher efficiency.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I mean that districts on habitats come with lesser numbers and higher efficiency.

but habitats can only have 6 or 8 districts, but I think they still contribute the same base cost to the admin cap as any other planet.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

I am pretty sure districts increase empire size by 1, not 2.

Something can be both good and consistently inferior to alternative options at the same time; however, as you have surely played more 2.2 than I have, how do Habitats compare to Ecumenopoli? They both seem to be good at TV/consumer goods while both contributing to administrative cap in an efficient manor. By this standard, Habitats seem to be the cheaper, quicker, but ultimately inferior versions of Ecumenopoli. Short term profit vs long term profit and all that jazz. Given the huge number of AP options compared to the only 8 AP slots, you have to consider what is ultimately the superior choice, even if the inferior ones are still technically good.

Disclaimer: Due to my playstile (tall + Agarian Idyll), I am not a big fan of Ecumenopoli and I do prefer Ringworlds over them.
That being said: They serve very different purposes.

Ecumenopoli have two functions: (1) To provide living space for pops and (2) to provide manufacturing capability.
The idea here is to squeeze as many pops into each bit of planet size as possible. The manufacuring districts look great on paper, but are, ultimately, just a low-maintenance no-slot-use version of the regular buildings. What many people overlook is that to get the Ecumenopolis, you have to give up ALL deposits on a planet. So you lose resource production to save some resources. Don't get me wrong - they have their place. They are great for an empire that has access to lots of M and they are okay at keeping empire size down.

Habitats have two functiions as well: (1) To provide living space and (2) to provide building slots. That is a completely different niche than the Ecumnopolis and caters to small and medium sized empires that want to maximize efficiency.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

You may be correct, the numbers are a bit hazy for me. I played a game today, I think systems cost 2, planets cost 6, so maybe districts cost 1?
Still whatever they cost, do habitat districts cost less than normal districts, in terms of the admin cap?

I don't know about systems (I'll have to check, but I can't imagine they are more than 1), but my first colony only cost 4 admin cap before districts.

I mean that districts on habitats come with lesser numbers and higher efficiency.

Ecomenopoli have the efficiency covered already. They are not as spammable, but do not cost as much admin cap in the long run if you compare one to the 4 or 5 Habitats that you would have to make just to equal the one.

@GAGA Extrem I love how you accidentally put your reply inside my quote. It confused the heck out of me for a moment Also, I can't imagine that Habitats have their own deposits.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

I believe he's saying that a habitat pays better.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Remember guys, the question isn't "Are Habitats better than normal planets?" The question is "Are Habitats better than other available APs?" Your mileage may vary. The "best" choice in the long run is sometimes the one that pays off the fastest, but then again, sometimes it's not. Still, I am of the opinion that Habitats have no right to call themselves an Ascension Perk. As a useful mid-game tech yes, but not as an AP.

 

[sbytheway]

A normal district on a normal world gets you 2 point closer to reaching your admin cap. Are you saying that habitat districts require less than 2?

No he's saying habitat districts house more pops and jobs than normie districts, so you need fewer of them to get the output, so they're relatively more admin efficient