One thing I've noticed upon getting back into Stellaris with the new beta is how identical and non-distinctive each planet actually is. The only difference between any two planets lie in size, climate type, and district numbers (plus the occasional modifier and rare resource deposit). As a result, after the early game, we simply choose a designation and then develop out each planet as needed. There's a meta for an alloy planet, a CG planet, a research planet, a fortress planet, etc. But there's literally nothing that differentiates between any two alloy planets - we develop them the same way, because that's what gives us the maximum number of alloys. It's like the whole planetary development system breaks down to selecting a planet designation, and then slowly building it into its final form, while not running too far ahead of upkeep costs. I'd like to point out that I'm not nostalgic for the tile system, either. The issue with the tile system was that every tile was basically predefined based on its bonuses, so the optimal path was to build the building that fit the tile bonus. In fact, it was so straightforward and the sector AI so likely to mess up that I remember just building out every single building on a new colony when I founded it. What both of these systems lacks is any uniqueness to each planet, after you've selected what kind of planet you want it to be.
I can't help but feel like this compares unfavorably to other games where you have centers that constitute most of your production. The cities in Civilization for instance feel more distinct because there's a lot more to each one. Civ6 focused on the placement of districts that gave bonuses to advanced resources - so you wanted to maximize those bonuses. A spot with a great bonus for science would be a nice find, but it also didn't mean that it would crowd out other. But you had strategic choices in exactly where to place each city and how it might interact with your other nearby cities. Now a whole part of this is that Civ has a game map where all cities have a place in relation to each other, whereas each planet in Stellaris is essentially a distinct island. But even Master of Orion's system where each planet had different amounts of productivity for food/minerals kind of had more character, because not every job was the same everywhere.
I'm not sure how Stellaris' planets can be changed to make them more distinctive than just being "the science planet" or "the alloy planet", but I feel like that's a direction that's worth moving towards. One path that seems interesting to me would be to make ethics and species diversity on a single planet more important to the gameplay experience. It might mean something if your alloy planet was full of materialists in a spiritualist empire, for instance (and thus more vulnerable to separatism), or if the population had internal tensions because you just resettled a bunch of aliens there to boost alloy production. More planetary events would of course be interesting - the underground civilization, for instance, adds something to the uniqueness of a planet. But they can't just be flat modifiers or things without strategic choices, because all that does is push the player to make a planet "the alloy planet" just because it has a +5% bonus to alloy production. Perhaps a different approach might be to include some sort of simulation of where resources are coming from and moving to, rather than just being a singular national stockpile. Your alloy planet might get a boost if it is fewer jumps away from your mining planets, or your research planet might get a boost for being closer to a materialist neighbor. Or maybe each planet has two or three slots for specialization, so you'd end up with an alloy-science planet, and a unity-consumer goods planet, instead of singularly an alloy planet. I'm not sure if my ideas are really all that great, but I feel like each planet really could use more character and interest, as well as being a place to make more important strategic choices instead of just picking a designation based on what you need/what the planet modifier is.
I can't help but feel like this compares unfavorably to other games where you have centers that constitute most of your production. The cities in Civilization for instance feel more distinct because there's a lot more to each one. Civ6 focused on the placement of districts that gave bonuses to advanced resources - so you wanted to maximize those bonuses. A spot with a great bonus for science would be a nice find, but it also didn't mean that it would crowd out other. But you had strategic choices in exactly where to place each city and how it might interact with your other nearby cities. Now a whole part of this is that Civ has a game map where all cities have a place in relation to each other, whereas each planet in Stellaris is essentially a distinct island. But even Master of Orion's system where each planet had different amounts of productivity for food/minerals kind of had more character, because not every job was the same everywhere.
I'm not sure how Stellaris' planets can be changed to make them more distinctive than just being "the science planet" or "the alloy planet", but I feel like that's a direction that's worth moving towards. One path that seems interesting to me would be to make ethics and species diversity on a single planet more important to the gameplay experience. It might mean something if your alloy planet was full of materialists in a spiritualist empire, for instance (and thus more vulnerable to separatism), or if the population had internal tensions because you just resettled a bunch of aliens there to boost alloy production. More planetary events would of course be interesting - the underground civilization, for instance, adds something to the uniqueness of a planet. But they can't just be flat modifiers or things without strategic choices, because all that does is push the player to make a planet "the alloy planet" just because it has a +5% bonus to alloy production. Perhaps a different approach might be to include some sort of simulation of where resources are coming from and moving to, rather than just being a singular national stockpile. Your alloy planet might get a boost if it is fewer jumps away from your mining planets, or your research planet might get a boost for being closer to a materialist neighbor. Or maybe each planet has two or three slots for specialization, so you'd end up with an alloy-science planet, and a unity-consumer goods planet, instead of singularly an alloy planet. I'm not sure if my ideas are really all that great, but I feel like each planet really could use more character and interest, as well as being a place to make more important strategic choices instead of just picking a designation based on what you need/what the planet modifier is.
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