I just don't get habitats

[fourteenfour]

I have tried both Void Borne as well as aiming for habitats; which in most games where I bee line them I end up with systems not suitable; but I have built out to Habitat Worlds and still don't understand the appeal other than I spend alloys to make "planets".

are science habitats really useful? I can upgrade science facilities on planets but what about science districts? I liked energy and mining habitats the most but still found them to be a population nightmare running out of housing or such as it never lets me build additional housing until HW

 

[wundergoat]

The point of a science habitat is that you can have a higher proportion of scientists on the hab since your get your science jobs from districts and you don’t need to use building slots. However, those building slots you do get can ALSO be labs. You barely need any worker tier jobs. As your tech level grows, you can steadily add more lab buildings while swapping the sci districts for more housing.

The great strength of habitats is that you can specialize them easily and get a lot of building slots. A mining or energy hab gives a lot of high quality districts of that chosen type. An easily accessible perk gives you a pile of extra building slots, enabling dedicated foundry or otherwise specialized districts.

You did find the weakness though - housing is at a premium.

 

[CrazyJ]

The point of a science habitat is that you can have a higher proportion of scientists on the hab since your get your science jobs from districts and you don’t need to use building slots. However, those building slots you do get can ALSO be labs. You barely need any worker tier jobs. As your tech level grows, you can steadily add more lab buildings while swapping the sci districts for more housing.

The great strength of habitats is that you can specialize them easily and get a lot of building slots. A mining or energy hab gives a lot of high quality districts of that chosen type. An easily accessible perk gives you a pile of extra building slots, enabling dedicated foundry or otherwise specialized districts.

You did find the weakness though - housing is at a premium.

the trick to using habitats is to spam housing use reductions and make sure every pop in the tin can is doing something useful, ie avoid pops like enforcers or bureaucrats, and keep amenities at bare minimum needed to keep stabiity. basically habitats are incredibly strong but require some serious micro to make them worth the cost. since i play with gigastructural engineering i tend not to use habitats as there are much better and less micro intensive options, i haven't used habitats since 2.6 so my advice may not be accurate to current version

 

[Angelic_Daemon]

In the most recent incarnation, I haven't worried about housing. As long as they're working, and have amenities, they don't care.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

In the most recent incarnation, I haven't worried about housing. As long as they're working, and have amenities, they don't care.

It's true, as long as you can produce enough amenities to pop up your stability the only real downside to overcrowding is that pop growth *eventually* stops if your population is 1.5x your amount of housing. (And then declines if your population somehow reaches 2.0x your housing.)

 

[Less2]

Habitats = more pop growth, more districts, more buildings, research districts that replace research labs. Simple as.

You really do need to stack housing bonuses though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

A bit late, but Habitats also make pretty good refinery stations. Unless it was changed (I haven't played for a while) their specialization modifier (-20% job cost, iirc?) was better than the one of regular planets.

 

[Wintermist]

I find habitats ludicrously powerful. First one I build will always be my "Administrations" hab, where I stack... administrations. One hab has always supported my whole empire.

Second is a Hydroponics hab. Third and onward tend to be just miners and hydroponics where needed..

Then I start turning planets into ecumenopolises and can start to phase out building consumer goods thanks to getting trade. I couldn't imagine not having habs lol.

 

[tobias.mb]

Habs are a bit situational but can be a great addition. A few examples:

• A science Habitat (over science deposit) using lab districts instead of science lab buildings. This has the advantage of not using gases, so it is a pretty good option in the mid game (when you unlock Habitats).
• A Bureaucratic Habitat. Bureaucrats are more efficient, if you stack all of them on a few (bureaucratic) worlds. Might as well stack them on 1-2 Habitats instead of "wasting" a planet for it. This is usually one of the first things I do after unlocking Habits: Relocate (and replace) all bureaucrats in the empire to Habitats.
• Refinery Habitats. Habitats are pretty good at unlocking building slots, since you can get 5 jobs from a single district (which is also uncapped). For empires, that can't unlock extra building slots on their resource worlds with servants or livestock, this is often the best (or only) place to get more building slots for refineries.
• When talking about Refinery Habitats it should also be mentioned, that you can use Habitats to double (or more) space rare resources. If you build a Habitat over a space deposit, you can build the corresponding rare resource building there. You can build one building for every size of the deposit, but rare resource miners generate 2 output (+ whatever modifiers you have).
• Fortress Habitats. Self explanatory: Fill a Habitat with Fortresses. You can never have too much naval cap, and the advantage compared to a planet is, that you can place it wherever you want (e.g. a chokepoint).
• Not to mention Habitats are excellent for balancing your resources. For example if you're running low on energy, because you suddenly increased your fleet, or running low on minerals, because your ecus are still growing but your resource worlds are already full, you can build a Habitat over the respective resource. And the reverse works as well. If you have too much minerals (for example after getting a new mining tech or mining repeatable) or CGs (your ecu is still growing) you can build a foundry or research habitat to use those resources. That's way less hassle than rebuilding / changing your existing planets.
• Also Habitats generate the same pop growth as every planet. Before you reach the end game (and have several filled up planets), it's actually a good thing, that Habitats are filled so quickly. You can resettle those excess pops somewhere else.

 

[stavern]

Never cared much about habitats either. In current game encountered Sanctuary quite early and my entire focus after that was to conquer the system. Now i have 4 ringworlds and 3 habitats built in the system doing all my food production.