The current system with leaders has its issues. In theory, these persons should add some personality to the game. But am I the only one for who this does not quite work and who doesn’t even bother to look at the portraits but only and the stats and maybe at age if the scales need a tipping? Am I the only one who finds it tedious to have to replace leaders or shuffle scientists around to optimize tech and anomaly research speed?
I would like to suggest replacing leaders with institutions. In Hearts of Iron 2 research teams were either persons (who didn’t gather experience and often were available for most of the game) or institutions, for example big companies like Boeing or state agencies like an arsenal or a naval yard. I would suggest something similar for Stellaris. You would have a couple of institutions, each with its own unique benefits (though able to be assigned multiple times to different tech-fields/planets). Some examples:
Governors: Various Guilds (miner’s, slaver’s, merchant’s), political parties or other groups to boost one or several colony outputs, or to increase government ethic attractiveness, increase immigration or emigration to new colonies or reduce crime. The groups available may depend on your civics, which might also boost particular groups. Some of these could also have drawbacks to balance out stronger benefits.
Scientists: Universities, Think Tanks, Academies and so on. I would suggest doing away with boons to specific fields of a tech (like propulsion, computers or biology) as this seems like busy-work with no real decision-making behind it to me. Instead, general, normal boosting research speed is of course available, but what about for example one that gives a very big boon to research speed but you cannot tell it what to research? Or one that researches slower but you get a bigger selection of available techs to research, maybe even skipping a prerequisite tech? Or one that reduces resource consumption by research?
Now, a personal touch is still a nice thing to have, for this, I am opening up another thread.
I would like to suggest replacing leaders with institutions. In Hearts of Iron 2 research teams were either persons (who didn’t gather experience and often were available for most of the game) or institutions, for example big companies like Boeing or state agencies like an arsenal or a naval yard. I would suggest something similar for Stellaris. You would have a couple of institutions, each with its own unique benefits (though able to be assigned multiple times to different tech-fields/planets). Some examples:
Governors: Various Guilds (miner’s, slaver’s, merchant’s), political parties or other groups to boost one or several colony outputs, or to increase government ethic attractiveness, increase immigration or emigration to new colonies or reduce crime. The groups available may depend on your civics, which might also boost particular groups. Some of these could also have drawbacks to balance out stronger benefits.
Scientists: Universities, Think Tanks, Academies and so on. I would suggest doing away with boons to specific fields of a tech (like propulsion, computers or biology) as this seems like busy-work with no real decision-making behind it to me. Instead, general, normal boosting research speed is of course available, but what about for example one that gives a very big boon to research speed but you cannot tell it what to research? Or one that researches slower but you get a bigger selection of available techs to research, maybe even skipping a prerequisite tech? Or one that reduces resource consumption by research?
Now, a personal touch is still a nice thing to have, for this, I am opening up another thread.