Make the acquisition of building slots more comprehensible.

[Ninjamestari]

Constructing buildings on a planet is weird in Stellaris, and not in a good way. You get 1 building slot per city district, but there are also building slots from other weird sources that make no sense like technologies, traditions etcetera, and then there is the worst problem that really makes the system wonky: building slots have a hard cap. This leads to all sorts of weird situations, such as the fact that you can't build any more buildings on a size 25 planet than you can on a size 12 planet, which not only doesn't make any sense, but also makes planet balance quite wonky and weird.

So my suggestion is to make the whole thing more comprehensible by simply having 1 city district provide 1 building slot, remove building slots from all other sources and remove the hard cap completely, so that if you have a size 25 planet and build 25 city districts on it, you'll get 25 building slots. This will require a larger area dedicated for building slots in the UI, but it would make much more sense gameplay and fantasy-wise.

Naturally you'd need a habitat version of city districts added to habitats, and perhaps change ringworlds to just act like size 25 planets with special districts that are not any larger than normal planet districts. Either that or ringworld "city" districts would add 6 building slots so that you'd get them to act like size 24 planets if filled with buildings instead of other districts.

Specialized districts for science/alloys/consumer goods/etc. would still have their place as they'd be cheaper to produce than a city district + building + upgrades, although this change would make it possible to remove those districts from the game altogether.

 

[GOLANX]

I'd like to see the limit raised especially for bigger planets, and allowing habitats to get building slots from habitation districts at the cost of slots from the capital and technology (except for Void Dwellers). I basically disagree with everything else, there should be a hard limit that isn't just how many city districts you can build, even if larger planets should have a higher cap. Adding building cap from other sources is fine, especially the civic, as it's the first time functional architecture has been a worthwhile civic pick.

 

[Ninjamestari]

there should be a hard limit that isn't just how many city districts you can build,

Why?

 

[GOLANX]

Why?

Balance, meaningful decisions within limited building slots. If RNG makes you lucky and you get big planets it shouldn't be game over for other empires that RNG screwed, granted the difference would be small. I'd say size 5-10 planets get get 9 slots at max, 11-15 get 12 slots 16-20 get 15 slots and 21+ gets 18 slots. This would mean editing the UI for allowing 1 more row of building slots and thus doesn't mean too much alteration to the UI the devs just reworked, and I doubt they are eager to rework it again.

 

[Ninjamestari]

Well, at least what you're suggesting would let bigger planets have more buildings. Still, I don't see how 1:1 buildings to city districts would break game balance, as by the time even a medium planet begins to run out of building space you're going to get upgraded buildings and more jobs that way, not to mention that you've probably already been building habitats to expand your empire for a while by that time. Sure, the bigger planets would be better in the long run, but by mid game they wouldn't be that much different.