I've been working on an (increasingly extensive) Stellaris mod playing around with bits and pieces but one thing that's struck with me is the dominance of minerals as a resource, especially in the early game, and I've been trying to work out what the problem is and how it might be addressed within the scope of the current game assets. One solution I'm playing with is to turn habitats into a core game mechanic rather than a specialised path, taking over some or all of the role of mining/research stations. But I've not really played Stellaris enough to have a good sense of the implications, so am looking for thoughts from others before spending time working on it.
Explanation and proposed system below
The Problem:
For me, the core problem is that economic expansion - for at least the first half of the game - is heavily gated by minerals:
- Minerals build mining and research stations. On average, I'd estimate that one station is worth about 1/2 of a pop producing on a low-yield building (factoring in tile, species and other bonuses). So every two stations you build is like gaining +1 pop (early game) and therefore each system you claim in the region of one to two pops. The rate at which you can expand to claim systems and build stations by far outpaces population growth, so the core way of building your economy during the critical early stages of the game are heavily contingent on minerals.
- Minerals build colony ships (they have an energy cost too but you don't use energy very much early game so it's not as important). Colony ships are worth a free pop (i.e. the one that spawns with the colony). Because planets have their own growth counter, building colonies also hugely increases overall pop growth (i.e. notwithstanding the benefit of excess food, an empire with two colonies will grow twice as fast as an empire with one colony). Finally, low-population colonies grow more quickly, resulting in more colonies increasing pop growth even further. All of this is achieved with almost no additional food (beyond what is required to maintain pops), thus making minerals (and to a lesser extent, energy) critical for early game pop-growth and so economic expansion (beyond space stations).
In the final analysis, then, food (and to a slightly lesser extent, energy) become nothing more than taxes to be paid while minerals fund all economic growth and development. This is very unlike other similar games (the case in point I have in my head is Civ but applies to other 4x games) where population growth is what supports basic economic growth, with production being a *consequence* of that and being used to develop specialist economies through (e.g.) building bonuses, and to build military assets. Hence, in other games, other resources are also more useful, from the off, which is what I would like to see in Stellaris.
A Solution?
Let's look at this in parts:
1) Mining stations underpin most early-game economic development. So let's get rid of them, or at least limit them.
2) In their place, let's have habitats. Habitats are available from the beginning of the game. They have significantly reduced size (I imagine ~3 tiles/habitat). Their initial cost is comparable to current mining stations (let's say 100 minerals). Because habitats inherent the resource bonus of a planet, building a habitat and populating it gives the same resource bonus as building a research/mining station. (But you can build buildings on top of it, and fill out the rest of the habitat too, making them overall more powerful in the long run, compensating for the extra resources you will need to maintain them.)
3) Colony ships still cost a lot of minerals and so are still gating economic expansion. So let's reduce their mineral cost (let's say 100 minerals like other civilian ships) but in exchange give them a food cost (say 200 food). So if you want to expand your economy, you need food as well as minerals (and the total cost of habitat + colony ship has an equal mineral and food cost), as well as having the energy cost from maintaining the ship and colonising the habitat (which comes to ~200 energy as well). Numbers will be different for synths, for obvious reasons.
4) Colonising lots of habitats will massively increase population growth because of all the free colony growth points. So lets remove most of the free growth for colonies and make excess food the primary determinant of pop growth speed (which splits between colonies meaning growth rate says roughly the same no matter how many colonies you have). For good measure, we might also want to change (my preference is invert) the rate at which pops grow so it is slower on low-population planets and faster on high population planets, again to remove the benefit of mass-habitat spamming on pop growth. I'll leave out numbers here but I already have what seems to be a reasonable system for this.
5) Mining stations may be retained for certain types of celestial body (e.g. asteroids and moons), following the vanilla game in forbidding habitat construction in orbit of them.
Positive Implications:
1) Food is now a critical resource for economic expansion. You still need minerals (see below) but you need as much food to fund expansion as you do minerals (due to colony ships) and food costs overall are up as additional pops running habitats need food upkeep
2) Energy is also more important, as you will need more colony ships and therefore have to pay more colonisation maintenance
3) Economic expansion becomes at least a bit more tailored to resource availability (i.e. you may expand differently depending on what is/is not in abundance). E.g. having lots of minerals but limited energy might result in building "tall" (i.e. filling out habitats and planets with buildings rather than building new habitats that need colonising). Having lots of food might make planet rather than habitat construction (since that will use less minerals overall). Etc.
Negative Implications:
1) Slower economic growth, especially in the early game. The inability to mass-build stations means that early economic development will be slower. Although if mining/research stations can still be build over asteroids/moons then it might still be ok. Additionally/alternatively, the base yields from habitats could be increased to compensate for the slower rate of expansion. (May work better in galaxies with more Empires, which in fact is my preference, as greater empire density will mean quicker contact, making wide expansion less important for that aspect of the game)
2) Minerals still gate economic expansion. I.e. you still need minerals to build colony ships/habitats so they can't be ignored. I think this is mitigated by the fact that food and energy are both more important than in vanilla, however, so I think the overall effect is still in the direction I would want to take it.
3) Can the AI cope? That's ultimately an empirical matter but might kill the whole idea if it can't.
4) Loads of "planets" to manage. Although their small size and simple buildings means there's not a lot too them and sectoring them should be fine. The main issue here for me is UI clutter, but that's already the case with Voidborn empires anyway.
Balance Implications:
1) Species production bonuses become more powerful as almost all economy is based on pop output now
2) Voidborn ascension perk may be redundant (although I can see it working with an effect similar to land clearance to increase habitat size)
3) Conquest is more complex/time consuming as habitats will need to be assaulted. That adds an extra bonus to Empires with ground combat bonuses.
4) Tech/Tradition costs for colonies would need adjusting, as mass habitats would nerf these (I'd be inclined to flatten it to e.g. 2% per planet for traditions and 1% per planet, or something like that).
So, does anyone have any (ideally constructive!) thoughts on this? Either in terms of how well it might work, or what else might be needed for it to function well without disrupting the balance of the game too much.
Explanation and proposed system below
The Problem:
For me, the core problem is that economic expansion - for at least the first half of the game - is heavily gated by minerals:
- Minerals build mining and research stations. On average, I'd estimate that one station is worth about 1/2 of a pop producing on a low-yield building (factoring in tile, species and other bonuses). So every two stations you build is like gaining +1 pop (early game) and therefore each system you claim in the region of one to two pops. The rate at which you can expand to claim systems and build stations by far outpaces population growth, so the core way of building your economy during the critical early stages of the game are heavily contingent on minerals.
- Minerals build colony ships (they have an energy cost too but you don't use energy very much early game so it's not as important). Colony ships are worth a free pop (i.e. the one that spawns with the colony). Because planets have their own growth counter, building colonies also hugely increases overall pop growth (i.e. notwithstanding the benefit of excess food, an empire with two colonies will grow twice as fast as an empire with one colony). Finally, low-population colonies grow more quickly, resulting in more colonies increasing pop growth even further. All of this is achieved with almost no additional food (beyond what is required to maintain pops), thus making minerals (and to a lesser extent, energy) critical for early game pop-growth and so economic expansion (beyond space stations).
In the final analysis, then, food (and to a slightly lesser extent, energy) become nothing more than taxes to be paid while minerals fund all economic growth and development. This is very unlike other similar games (the case in point I have in my head is Civ but applies to other 4x games) where population growth is what supports basic economic growth, with production being a *consequence* of that and being used to develop specialist economies through (e.g.) building bonuses, and to build military assets. Hence, in other games, other resources are also more useful, from the off, which is what I would like to see in Stellaris.
A Solution?
Let's look at this in parts:
1) Mining stations underpin most early-game economic development. So let's get rid of them, or at least limit them.
2) In their place, let's have habitats. Habitats are available from the beginning of the game. They have significantly reduced size (I imagine ~3 tiles/habitat). Their initial cost is comparable to current mining stations (let's say 100 minerals). Because habitats inherent the resource bonus of a planet, building a habitat and populating it gives the same resource bonus as building a research/mining station. (But you can build buildings on top of it, and fill out the rest of the habitat too, making them overall more powerful in the long run, compensating for the extra resources you will need to maintain them.)
3) Colony ships still cost a lot of minerals and so are still gating economic expansion. So let's reduce their mineral cost (let's say 100 minerals like other civilian ships) but in exchange give them a food cost (say 200 food). So if you want to expand your economy, you need food as well as minerals (and the total cost of habitat + colony ship has an equal mineral and food cost), as well as having the energy cost from maintaining the ship and colonising the habitat (which comes to ~200 energy as well). Numbers will be different for synths, for obvious reasons.
4) Colonising lots of habitats will massively increase population growth because of all the free colony growth points. So lets remove most of the free growth for colonies and make excess food the primary determinant of pop growth speed (which splits between colonies meaning growth rate says roughly the same no matter how many colonies you have). For good measure, we might also want to change (my preference is invert) the rate at which pops grow so it is slower on low-population planets and faster on high population planets, again to remove the benefit of mass-habitat spamming on pop growth. I'll leave out numbers here but I already have what seems to be a reasonable system for this.
5) Mining stations may be retained for certain types of celestial body (e.g. asteroids and moons), following the vanilla game in forbidding habitat construction in orbit of them.
Positive Implications:
1) Food is now a critical resource for economic expansion. You still need minerals (see below) but you need as much food to fund expansion as you do minerals (due to colony ships) and food costs overall are up as additional pops running habitats need food upkeep
2) Energy is also more important, as you will need more colony ships and therefore have to pay more colonisation maintenance
3) Economic expansion becomes at least a bit more tailored to resource availability (i.e. you may expand differently depending on what is/is not in abundance). E.g. having lots of minerals but limited energy might result in building "tall" (i.e. filling out habitats and planets with buildings rather than building new habitats that need colonising). Having lots of food might make planet rather than habitat construction (since that will use less minerals overall). Etc.
Negative Implications:
1) Slower economic growth, especially in the early game. The inability to mass-build stations means that early economic development will be slower. Although if mining/research stations can still be build over asteroids/moons then it might still be ok. Additionally/alternatively, the base yields from habitats could be increased to compensate for the slower rate of expansion. (May work better in galaxies with more Empires, which in fact is my preference, as greater empire density will mean quicker contact, making wide expansion less important for that aspect of the game)
2) Minerals still gate economic expansion. I.e. you still need minerals to build colony ships/habitats so they can't be ignored. I think this is mitigated by the fact that food and energy are both more important than in vanilla, however, so I think the overall effect is still in the direction I would want to take it.
3) Can the AI cope? That's ultimately an empirical matter but might kill the whole idea if it can't.
4) Loads of "planets" to manage. Although their small size and simple buildings means there's not a lot too them and sectoring them should be fine. The main issue here for me is UI clutter, but that's already the case with Voidborn empires anyway.
Balance Implications:
1) Species production bonuses become more powerful as almost all economy is based on pop output now
2) Voidborn ascension perk may be redundant (although I can see it working with an effect similar to land clearance to increase habitat size)
3) Conquest is more complex/time consuming as habitats will need to be assaulted. That adds an extra bonus to Empires with ground combat bonuses.
4) Tech/Tradition costs for colonies would need adjusting, as mass habitats would nerf these (I'd be inclined to flatten it to e.g. 2% per planet for traditions and 1% per planet, or something like that).
So, does anyone have any (ideally constructive!) thoughts on this? Either in terms of how well it might work, or what else might be needed for it to function well without disrupting the balance of the game too much.
