How do you utilize habitats in 2.2?

[shandou]

Is it just me or are habitats really lacking since LeGuin? While I haven't yet used them I looked into them using console commands.

On paper they look kinda cool: they have research districts which planets do not and can build up to 16 buildings. My problem is: how do I keep stability on a highly populated habitat? There are no amenity-producing buildings, no housing buildings and no research labs. So if you want to make a research-focused habitat, I expect it is going to be unstable as hell. To keep the population happy, you need to allocate some of the already very few (6-8) available districts to housing and leisure, which then makes it a pretty weak, tiny unfocused planet.

So how do you utilize habitats? What are they really good for?

 

[The Boz]

Frontline bastions (Stronghold for FTL inhibitor, planetary shield, precinct, military academy), resource silos. Maybe a small refinement or trade hub world.

 

[Bouchart]

8 housing districts and livestock slaves.

3 housing districts, 5 trade districts, at least one stronghold and a few refineries.

3 housing districts, 5 science districts, a stronghold and a few other buildings.

 

[Losttruppen]

They fill pretty niche roles right now, and can't really compensate for a lack of accessible habitable planets like the used to pre-2.2.

I usually build trade, research, or fortress/fleet power habitats. Trade ones are nice because you can build Stock Exchanges and fill out with silos to increase your storage and provide additional clerks and can net about 150 trade value. Research ones are nice since you can get ~150 per science with 3 housing 5 research and a Research Institute. For amenities I get enough from temples and clinics, which help fill them with pops and use them as incubators to resettle when they fill up. Fill the rest of the buildings with hydroponics farms, fortresses, or more silos.

 

[DeathSheep]

Also, in single-player, where there's not so much of a rush to settle, you can use habitats to manipulate the sector generation system. In my current game, if I'd settled every world as I'd found it, there was a region where that would have resulted in three one-planet sectors. By building a habitat in the right system and settling it before any of the other planets, I instead wound up with one sector with a habitat and three planets.

 

[AppleBeam]

Some other possibilities are listed here

Basically, abusing fortresses and low-housing pops (robots, serfs/livestock, or ordinary slaves to some extent) can make habitats quite awesome, especially for cramped starts.

 

[Agamemnic]

Basically habitats have gone from fairly versatile little planets to 1or 2 trick ponies. Disappointing really and I hope the devs reconsider

 

[Arcvalons]

Bio Trophies.

 

[sortulv]

Habitats: Useful mostly for pop-growth.
Districts will be Habitation and clerks, and tend to use the building spots for rare productions.

 

[HisRotundity]

Personally I think the main problem Habitats have is the high Influence point cost + two Ascension perk slots taken. Even if Habitats were a technology, I don't think they'd be broken because you really don't want to spam them everywhere - they have real value and you'd probably build a few for specific reasons, but the 200 influence point cost is seriously painful, given that in the early game you'll want to use those influence points on grabbing more systems, and in the mid- and late-game you'll use them for claiming enemy systems and on edicts, which have fairly potent empire-wide effects. I think even 150 or 100 influence points would make them a lot more palatable.