Planet design leads to sameness everywhere

[Losttruppen]

It won't matter if a planet is cut off from the empire if it can just coast for the next decade off its stockpiled food.

There have been 3 sieges in recorded human history that have lasted a decade or more: Ceuta, Candia, Ishiyama Hongan-ji. I do agree that production has been on the absurd side since at least 2.2 though.

I would also like the Trade network to factor in Sectors and their capitals, as either a bonus for coherency, and/or as redundancy if your major supply chains are broken so you don't immediately lose the game with the loss of one very important starbase.

It would be great if those planets felt like something dynamic and alive

I made a suggestion recently to apply the underutilized Trade network system to apply for unity/culture/pop migration. It might be relevant to this discussion.

 

[HFY]

Local stockpiles might be a good addition, although I worry that this might add a lot of complexity for relatively little payoff.

Sectors already have a stockpile like this, but it seems to be ignored because it's related to sector automation.

The existing mechanics could be re-worked to do something more useful.

 

[Losttruppen]

The existing mechanics could be re-worked to do something more useful.

This game sometimes feels like an ancient decrepit Space Hulk, empty infrastructure and decaying systems, secrets lost in a dark age of technology. I am glad the Custodians are here to brush out the cobwebs. I hope they start to find some juicy STCs and innovations to build on what is there.

 

[Bankipriel]

Frankly, I would really like to see planets become a lot more rare, but substantially more unique. Having 30+ planets is completely unmanageable.

Alternatively, have planet designations become more extreme, giving a different set of buildings and districts available. Rural worlds could be similar to thrall worlds. They don't support city or industry districts, and have a fixed set of buildings, but they crank out pops to the rest of the empire.

Unique resources from specific planets would also help 'spice' up the game a lot (get it? Spice?). Right now I never care about conquering a specific part of an other empire, except maybe a system with a ruined megastructure.

I still strongly believe a superior system of planet/pop/space management (possibly in Stellaris 2, whenever that happens, due to the amount of systemic change necessary) is to make habitable planets *much* more rare, much more difficult to conquer (ground combat? I would enjoy it if it's well done), and then add a layer of development possibilities over systems around habitable planets.

*****
The types of infrastructure possible would be determined by the stellar bodies in each system. The amount of interstellar infrastructure that can be worked at any one time (not built, but operated) would be determined by the available population/workforce, and the distance those pops could travel to work "off-world" would be determined by technology and off-world habitation infrastructure (which would require resources and use up infrastructure "real-estate").
*****

I'm not saying that bare-bones suggestion is perfect, but abstracting population and focusing on interstellar real-estate: un-inhabitable planets, asteroid mines, gas-mining stations, etc., would make the vast reaches of currently worthless space interesting and worth going to war over, and not just an time-gate between capital worlds and their doomstacks. If non-habitable systems were actually vital to an empire's economy, there would be a legitimate reason to defend them, rather than turtling over habitable worlds.

Essentially, I think that "sectors" of space should function similarly to the way that habitable planets do now, and populations should be reduced to a number, returning this game firmly to realm of grand-strategy 4X hybrid. Instead of fiddling with pops and managing how many peons are mining .Vs. producing amenities in a given month, let us be galactic emperors and manage whole sectors of the galaxy.

 

[DanielPrates]

Ach why bother. This game lost its way a long time ago. All this skidsing left and right doesnt lead anywhere. Unity now is going to be used for something else. Sprawl was one way, now its going be another way. Planetary tiers: you get first 10% more of everything, then 20% more of everything, then a final 30% more of everything!

There are real changes that could be made to the game, they pop constantly in the forums, but it is clear they are far, far from the roadmap. Everytime I come back here to see how things have been, it's the same. A pity.

 

[methegrate]

Sectors already have a stockpile like this, but it seems to be ignored because it's related to sector automation.

The existing mechanics could be re-worked to do something more useful.

Very true!

Although my concern with using sector stockpiles kind of overlaps with my concern about using local stockpiles. By midgame the economy in Stellaris is so big that it's easy to stockpile tons of resources. If sectors could just coast off their stockpiled resources, then we might have yet another mechanic with no teeth.

Spoiler: TL:DR Rant

I often find it easy to forget how many really cool ideas Stellaris has because the game gives you so much room for error that those mechanics rarely come up. Scientists technically influence your research options and anomaly outcomes, but you'd never know it without reading the wiki. Rebellions are in the code... and nowhere else. There's enough galactic geography to fill an atlas, but every part of the map feels the same. Strategic resources are supposed to drive diplomacy and conflict, but you can always just produce or buy what you don't have. Alliances can theoretically shift during the game, but in practice ethics and envoys lock diplomacy in stone. Piracy sounds like a very cool part of your empire's space opera, but a handful of corvettes can usually eliminate piracy altogether. Heck, the economy is supposed to drive decision making, but you can afford to buy literally everything.

The less said about pop happiness and factions the better.

Stellaris seems to sand the edges off its best ideas to the point where it's pretty rare for those cool mechanics to actually come up in play. I feel like it's driven from that sense of trying to let everyone have everything every time. The fewer trade-offs players have to make, the more they'll be able to do in each game... but also the less interesting every decision will be. After all, when you can choose everything, then you really don't have to choose anything.

I love the idea of civilian logistics, but I feel like adding stockpiles would do much the same thing. Once again we might have an idea that's very interesting and high-stakes in theory, but easy enough to prevent that it's rare to see in practice. Personally, I'd balance it by getting the timers right. Cut-off populations begin to starve, defect or try to escape, and unmaintained infrastructure begins to fall apart. That should happen quickly enough to be urgent, but slowly enough that players can respond. Get that balance right and I think you don't need to worry about stockpiles.

You could even have some buildings or decision affect that. Having a fortress on the planet, for example, might slow those timers down (they do have a local stockpile of food, fuel and ammo). You could have a planetary decision "Prepare For Invasion" that, for a high cost, creates a buffer before timers kick in. Etc.

There have been 3 sieges in recorded human history that have lasted a decade or more: Ceuta, Candia, Ishiyama Hongan-ji. I do agree that production has been on the absurd side since at least 2.2 though.

I would also like the Trade network to factor in Sectors and their capitals, as either a bonus for coherency, and/or as redundancy if your major supply chains are broken so you don't immediately lose the game with the loss of one very important starbase.


I made a suggestion recently to apply the underutilized Trade network system to apply for unity/culture/pop migration. It might be relevant to this discussion.

Re: sieges, I didn't know that. Interesting! But, agreed. That's basically what I was trying to say. If a planet can stockpile that kind of food/resources, then sieges won't matter. They can coast along indefinitely without needing you to rescue them. Without a local stockpile, the siege of Albion III is a crisis.

Re: redundancy... To me needing multiple starbases feels like a feature, not a bug. If you build one critical starbase that connects an entire section of space, then you're taking a gamble. It's easier to defend a single system, and it's a more efficient use of your starbase capacity, but you risk having the enemy cut off those systems with a single strike. Dedicating multiple bases to trade and logistics is less efficient, but more elastic.

I think that would be especially useful because (as above) it's so rare for things in Stellaris to feel like they really matter. The game is designed to feel big, but I feel like often "big" overlaps with "impersonal." Having a couple of key systems far from your empire's core that absolutely, positively need defending might help raise the stakes in a way that the game could really use.

 

[Losttruppen]

I still strongly believe a superior system of planet/pop/space management (possibly in Stellaris 2, whenever that happens, due to the amount of systemic change necessary)

I don't think this is such a distant dream for Stellaris 1.

As @HFY @methegrate have noted, with the mechanics, knowledge, and data gathered since release, and the addition of funding, devtime, and manpower from the Custodian Initiative, the solutions to the problem brought up in the OP are quite attainable with what we have now. As long as Paradox has the vision and follow-through to try.

As for planet/sector management, I wouldn't hate a return to something akin to the 1.x Core Systems system, as micromanagement is a serious burden after 10 worlds, even with the auto migration. I would grant absolute control to at least your Capitol sector, and any Sector Capitol worlds, but outside of these planets could be managed by the AI using Planet Designations determined by the player as a template for how they develop.

If you want to redevelop a planet, you can change the designation, but the pops will be on an unemployment cooldown, and the Planet would need to draw from the local stockpile of minerals to reconstruct. If your sector doesn't have enough power to support it's infrastructure in the local stockpile you need to establish a trade to them the same as you do with the Market and at similarly inefficient rates. If you want to have an army in place for a upcoming invasion or a brewing rebellion, you need to bring them from somewhere with a Fortress or Military Academy. If you have a Shipyard Starbase it needs access to your empire's trade network or local Alloy stockpile to build new ships. If you want to send ships through a territory, they have onboard power reserves and need access to your infrastructure to restore supply at a connected Starbase.

Very true!

Although my concern with using sector stockpiles kind of overlaps with my concern about using local stockpiles. By midgame the economy in Stellaris is so big that it's easy to stockpile tons of resources. If sectors could just coast off their stockpiled resources, then we might have yet another mechanic with no teeth.

Spoiler: TL:DR Rant

I often find it easy to forget how many really cool ideas Stellaris has because the game gives you so much room for error that those mechanics rarely come up. Scientists technically influence your research options and anomaly outcomes, but you'd never know it without reading the wiki. Rebellions are in the code... and nowhere else. There's enough galactic geography to fill an atlas, but every part of the map feels the same. Strategic resources are supposed to drive diplomacy and conflict, but you can always just produce or buy what you don't have. Alliances can theoretically shift during the game, but in practice ethics and envoys lock diplomacy in stone. Piracy sounds like a very cool part of your empire's space opera, but a handful of corvettes can usually eliminate piracy altogether. Heck, the economy is supposed to drive decision making, but you can afford to buy literally everything.

The less said about pop happiness and factions the better.

Stellaris seems to sand the edges off its best ideas to the point where it's pretty rare for those cool mechanics to actually come up in play. I feel like it's driven from that sense of trying to let everyone have everything every time. The fewer trade-offs players have to make, the more they'll be able to do in each game... but also the less interesting every decision will be. After all, when you can choose everything, then you really don't have to choose anything.

I love the idea of civilian logistics, but I feel like adding stockpiles would do much the same thing. Once again we might have an idea that's very interesting and high-stakes in theory, but easy enough to prevent that it's rare to see in practice. Personally, I'd balance it by getting the timers right. Cut-off populations begin to starve, defect or try to escape, and unmaintained infrastructure begins to fall apart. That should happen quickly enough to be urgent, but slowly enough that players can respond. Get that balance right and I think you don't need to worry about stockpiles.

You could even have some buildings or decision affect that. Having a fortress on the planet, for example, might slow those timers down (they do have a local stockpile of food, fuel and ammo). You could have a planetary decision "Prepare For Invasion" that, for a high cost, creates a buffer before timers kick in. Etc.




Re: sieges, I didn't know that. Interesting! But, agreed. That's basically what I was trying to say. If a planet can stockpile that kind of food/resources, then sieges won't matter. They can coast along indefinitely without needing you to rescue them. Without a local stockpile, the siege of Albion III is a crisis.

Re: redundancy... To me needing multiple starbases feels like a feature, not a bug. If you build one critical starbase that connects an entire section of space, then you're taking a gamble. It's easier to defend a single system, and it's a more efficient use of your starbase capacity, but you risk having the enemy cut off those systems with a single strike. Dedicating multiple bases to trade and logistics is less efficient, but more elastic.

I think that would be especially useful because (as above) it's so rare for things in Stellaris to feel like they really matter. The game is designed to feel big, but I feel like often "big" overlaps with "impersonal." Having a couple of key systems far from your empire's core that absolutely, positively need defending might help raise the stakes in a way that the game could really use.

An easy solution to the stockpile issue might be to actually base your stockpile in Resource Silo buildings. Isn't the major complaint with the Market that it's an infinite resource fountain with no basis in the game? If you only have a stockpile as large as your Resource Silo infrastructure, which can be captured, cut off, raided, or destroyed, then I don't see a problem with rewarding the player for making effective use of the system. It would certainly be dumb now where resources are magically collected in an empire wide Bag of Holding.

And right there we have a new planet type, give it a Warehouse designation or something, with an in game reason to exist beyond "it's cool" like we see with some of the other unique planets. Like when fortress worlds became more than memes outside really nice chokehold systems by granting Naval Cap.

With the starbase redundancy I was referring more to natural hyperlane chokepoints where a large percentage of your Trade flows, but yes, diversity and redundancy of collection points would be nice and solve that problem.

“This is pretty good, but it can be even better!”

 

[Ferrus Animus]

You guys know that when a planet is blockeded it si cut off from your empiures resources? (Might have been changed in a patch not long ago though, but I haven't seen anything in the patch notes)

Well there have been many improvements in the last several years, and sectors and pops events have largely been off the table in this regard.

There has been no major patch for Stellaris ever that has not tried to address, fix and change at least one of these things. Often multiple. That part has been a constant construction site. And the idea that all these non-working ideas suddenly coalescale intoa functioning result seems...naive.

 

[Losttruppen]

You guys know that when a planet is blockeded it si cut off from your empiures resources?

You aren't wrong, but what are the consequences of this? One planet in a late game empire is a teardrop in a rainstorm. Your pops don't starve, they don't die off from lack of access to medicine, climate controls, or water/nutrient sources. I'm pretty sure pop growth doesn't even stop. All the lights are still on as far as the game is concerned, it just stops your resource gain.

It's also only cut off when the planet is blockaded and occupied, not when your starbase Trade network is broken. How does my Forge world distribute enough Alloys to build a megastructure past a system I can't even move a construction ship through?

 

[Pancakelord]

It’s an unpopular suggestion to most here (because of m’min/max) but I think they need to take some control away from players when it comes to planets, in particular with pops and societal events.

The ‘situations’ changes that are on the way may go some way to fixing this, but I digress. Planets would feel more unique if you had less certain control over pops, what jobs they do, and their reaction to things you are doing.

Right now, you can get pops to work whatever job you want (from disabling jobs to promote others, building districts etc). Unhappiness can largely be dealt with by occasionally building an entertainment district on all planets, or tweaking some policies at the flip of a switch.

This is definitely going to be contentious but I agree.

The jobs system can be modified in such a way that players never have to look at / touch pops outside of death spirals. Its possible (and indeed we're starting to see it with a few of the 3.3 changes) for Pops to be "intelligently" (lol) moved between jobs, per empire needs (i.e. only take enough amenities to be surplus, then funnel everything in to alloys - provided minerals wont go negative - and so on).

That really just moves planet management back towards districts and buildings, in the latter's case, solving research labs and commercial zones (as the last two "spammable" buildings), such as by adding research districts a lot, and allowing you to build districts {+upgrade the capital} via the colony planner screen [so you'd only ever have to actively look at a planet to build/upgrade a building], would also cut down on micro a lot.

Worm I hope the custodians overhaul the Sector/Planet screen soon.​

Alternatively, there is one thing that nobody really talks about, that slipped through the changes years ago. Planets have gotten bigger. Minimum planet sizes were 8 (with minimum moon sizes being 6) - this was patched up to 10+ a long time ago (I forget which patch).

I've modded this down to 1 for moons and 6 for planets in a test game (using a script, that applied a reversed S-curve to planet-size distribution, make size larger worlds - scaling up to size 30 worlds far less common) and the game works fine. When most of your planets are in the 6-12 range, you find that

1. worlds complete SO much faster - planets are quite easy to finish when you dont have to slap down 20 odd districts (brings back some of the tile zen feelings imo).
2. resource bloat is far less of an issue (unless using >1x habitable worlds) and

Per the thread. I think it does come down to quantity of planets AND the time taken to resolve the economy on each planet, taken together, which makes things exponentially more unwieldy.

Habitats are the most egregious form of this in that I can have several dozen of the bloody things before midgame, as a voidborne, and its so bad that I dont even take the time to hit randomise name, preferring to use their star-system names to keep track of them.

Slight aside - if you could only build 1 habitat around a star, but could grow it by 4 districts a number of times = #planets in that system (with the game spawning a habitat gfx around each planet to give the illusion of there being many of the things), would that not solve 1 fortress spam, 2 improve performance (fewer worlds to check) and 3 technically count as a habitat buff all at once? [it would probably ruin habitat designations, but i'd happily lose them for a size 40 habitat that shows me everything]​

Planets aren't as bad as this - purely because colonies take longer to spring up. I made a suggestion here for extra galaxy settings. Whilst I didn't elaborate on it specifically, one of them includes making a ratio of habitable worlds (that can normally be colonised right from 2200.1.1.) in to Terraforming candidates.

• This way you could have (say) 3x habitable worlds, but "2.5x-worth" of planets are actually still barren at game start.
• They'll only open up slowly later in the game as you terraform them. adding a small influence cost to terraforming barren worlds specifically (offset by an AP maybe) - in line with Habitats and RingWorlds still costing influence to build - would also further stifle this.
• This still means that late in the game you can have oceans of colonies, but for most of your games it would be more managable (whilst making terraforming a more valuable mechanic).

Unique resources from specific planets would also help 'spice' up the game a lot (get it? Spice?). Right now I never care about conquering a specific part of an other empire, except maybe a system with a ruined megastructure.

I think that alongside making planetary features more prominent (the things hidden in the popout side window that dictate district count and so on), rare resources are the best way to distinguish planets.

I wrote up a post long ago on the resources we've lost over the course of stellaris (2.0-2.3 did clean a lot of them out with the economy rework), which may be worth a read, for the curious, on what they all did and how they uniquely spawned in the galaxy (spoiler: most were streamlined away in to the existing strategic gas/crystal/motes, special galactic spawns were cut).

One thing that stood out to me in 3.3. Power Projection's maths offers an interesting way to make "resourceless-deposits" (like betharian stone, or the alien zoo - as @HFY pointed out) stand out - without all the extra steps of actually managing a new resource (like minerals) that will likely be over-produced.
One of the problems with the old resources like "Neutronium Ore" (it only spawned around neutron stars) was that you only needed 1 and you were done. It didnt scale. Whilst it also didnt give you any real way to spend it actively, or at least make strategic decisions on how to use it (do I want neutronium armor, or kinetic rounds, for example?).

• Power projection uses the (I think) formula of 1-fleetuse/sprawl * 2 to output influence scaled between 0 and 2.

In theory, with the new scripted values @Caligula Caesar mentioned here, you could add in rare deposits with unique effects that also scale with empire size (or other things, like fleet cap usage and so on). Using the alien zoo as an example, one could modify it to output happiness in your empire for all free pops between 1-10%, with this % scaling down from the 10% cap, the larger your empire is. And if you somehow found 2 planets with alien fauna deposits and built 2 zoos, you could, potentially, boost this "zoo happiness buff" up to the 10% cap.

I think that deposits like these with unique (scalar) effects are probably the only thing I would really want to care about in the current version of the game, as they arent "resources" (like alloys) that I can manufacture. And their scalar nature would encourage me to seize multiples of them them through war (unlike the old rare resources, where you just needed 1).

• These could be orbital deposits (e.g. Neutronium ore adds 10% armor points, scaling betwen 10% and 1% based on up to 250 ships using at least 1 armor component or whatever) or
• Planetary deposits [like the zoo above], with conditional effects like, idk, betharian stone makes all lithoids super horny, so it can give +30% lithoid pop growth empire-wide (at X lithoid pop count, falling if >X lithoid pops) OR you can use it to boost power production - again empire wide (scaling inversely number of generator districts).

 

[ASGeek2012]

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'd like to see the planet designation have a social effect on the colony that develops over time.

An industrial or factory world? Unions are going to be big there
A tech world? Perfect breeding ground for the rise of a snooty intellectual elite.
A forge world? Companies may cut corners on alloy quality to undermine competitors on price
A refinery world? Higher incidents of workers becoming injured from breathing in toxic fumes

In other words, I'd like to see specialization have other effects that make the player think more strategically about it.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I like a lot of the ideas behind stellaris's systems.
I like districts and pop jobs, and deposits.
It's just, it seems the developers applied those ideas in the most boring ways possible.

The whole game is detail without distinction, like looking at the SF genre without my glasses.
Aspires to dune and Culture, but barely has the temporal reach of Trek.

 

[Lanferite]

There's an aspect of Civ-like games that gets neglected in Stellaris, and arguably in other space games, and I'm talking about the terrain.

In Civ, you see a hilly, foresty terrain - you know that's it's there where you setup your production centre; when you see grasslands and rivers - you know it screams food; where there is snow or sand - you'll get either nothing or science and money, depending on which game it is. There's a great importance to which kind of land do you spawn in. You get into thinking of "It's grassy and rivery so I'm strong in food, so my course of action is <...>"

In Stellaris it doesn't work that way. Your capital A is predetermined, you get, by default, two habitable planets B and C, and probably there will be planets D and E nearby. While all the planets have different affinities for minerals, food and energy, it's not that impactful until later when you actually reach the district caps, and, really, it's not the biggest of deals. As to where to set up which kind of industry or other advanced activity - they are all the same (spoiler: science in capital).

In Stellaris it matters greatly how many planets there are and how well do they happen to match your species preference. But that's about it, no further nuance. Point to the case is competitive multiplayer, where you will see a player following exactly the same decades-long build order from game to game. Which is not the case for ground-based Civ-likes, where it's always about the terrain.

What I'm getting at, is we have planetary modifiers in Stellaris, like "asteroid belt", "strong gravity", "'strong magnetic field"' etc, but they a) rare b) weak. "+10% minerals -5 habitability" doesn't cut it. Developing on this framework may greatly help with what is being discussed here, and would be a welcome step in making it a bit more like Civ and less like Starcraft.

 

[Unseelie]

What I'm getting at, is we have planetary modifiers in Stellaris, like "asteroid belt", "strong gravity", "'strong magnetic field"' etc, but they a) rare b) weak. "+10% minerals -5 habitability" doesn't cut it. Developing on this framework may greatly help with what is being discussed here, and would be a welcome step in making it a bit more like Civ and less like Starcraft.

I usually play with mods, and mostly mods that just do this. stuff like Guilli's planet modifiers which...scatters a bunch of decent modifiers over every celestial body. Its really nice to have a planet and know longterm that it is your breadbasket because its got +15% food. And there's another wrinkle that vanilla stellaris usually lacks: planets often have 2 conflicting modifiers. You can have a planet that's got a few bonuses to science and a bonus to alloys, and then you have this very interesting choice.


So, yeah. I think there's a thing missing from the core game, which is...planet flavor. But this won't change the fact that star systems are just big, empty circles. There's not a lot I can suggest here, except possibly...gravity. Even then, most of the map would still be flat.

 

[Pancakelord]

And there's another wrinkle that vanilla stellaris usually lacks: planets often have 2 conflicting modifiers. You can have a planet that's got a few bonuses to science and a bonus to alloys, and then you have this very interesting choice.

Thats probably because there doesnt seem to be any sort of "story manager" (to borrow an RPG term) for Galaxy generation. Outside of advanced start & FE AIs and guaranteed habitable worlds, its entirely random - which is fine - but if you want standout planets, you need some logic applied to the system too.

For example, if I flagged every planet with "Optimal for [resource]" and a ranking from 1-3, then pulled from a sub-set of modifiers that benefitted that resource (and multiplied the magnitude by 1x-2x-3x, with 3x adding in other negative modifiers) - and synchronised this up with district distributions (so +25% food is more likely to trigger when agri districts are the majority of rural districts and greater than 40% of planet size), you'd see a lot more clear archetypes for planets, you could also force (say) 35% of planets to be very min-maxed like this, 25% to be conflicted modifiers - or outright negatives(encouraging terraforming) and the remainder to be like most stellaris planets - a random set of modifiers (or no modifiers) with roughly equal district weights.

You can have all sorts of flags and modifier groups setup in a script too, not just resource impacting ones (e.g. +pop job energy output), like

• carry capacity (so some planets get low average or high average populations) or
• base crime generation (maybe the planet is in a nebula, attracting pirates - or messing up gestalt psychic thoughts, or whatever)
• benefits to certain species types (e.g. plantoids or necroids).
• bonus resistances to bombardment (if the planet is in a chokepoint, or has a natural wormhole in its system - or even adjacent to it) and so on

 

[Bezborg]

Frankly, I would really like to see planets become a lot more rare, but substantially more unique. Having 30+ planets is completely unmanageable.

Alternatively, have planet designations become more extreme, giving a different set of buildings and districts available. Rural worlds could be similar to thrall worlds. They don't support city or industry districts, and have a fixed set of buildings, but they crank out pops to the rest of the empire.

Unique resources from specific planets would also help 'spice' up the game a lot (get it? Spice?). Right now I never care about conquering a specific part of an other empire, except maybe a system with a ruined megastructure.

I also agree.

Planets should be far more rare, and systems in general should be more interesting and more scarce.

What's the point of having so many systems with 2 or 5 minerals in them, etc? Pointless clutter.

They should go back to an idea that was once mentioned in a dev diary, but then the idea was abandoned in silence: make the galaxy spawn with pre-defined clusters that are also pre-defined sectors.

Just having a thousand stars, equidistant to each other, scattered all over the map... it's just so boring and pointless.

 

[DanielPrates]

I often find it easy to forget how many really cool ideas Stellaris has because the game gives you so much room for error that those mechanics rarely come up. Scientists technically influence your research options and anomaly outcomes, but you'd never know it without reading the wiki. Rebellions are in the code... and nowhere else. There's enough galactic geography to fill an atlas, but every part of the map feels the same. Strategic resources are supposed to drive diplomacy and conflict, but you can always just produce or buy what you don't have. Alliances can theoretically shift during the game, but in practice ethics and envoys lock diplomacy in stone. Piracy sounds like a very cool part of your empire's space opera, but a handful of corvettes can usually eliminate piracy altogether. Heck, the economy is supposed to drive decision making, but you can afford to buy literally everything.

The less said about pop happiness and factions the better.

It is like 100s of interesting ingredients were put in a container, but that container was the blender's container and someone pressed the button and now it's all a mash.

 

[DeanTheDull]

There's an aspect of Civ-like games that gets neglected in Stellaris, and arguably in other space games, and I'm talking about the terrain.

In Civ, you see a hilly, foresty terrain - you know that's it's there where you setup your production centre; when you see grasslands and rivers - you know it screams food; where there is snow or sand - you'll get either nothing or science and money, depending on which game it is. There's a great importance to which kind of land do you spawn in. You get into thinking of "It's grassy and rivery so I'm strong in food, so my course of action is <...>"

In Stellaris it doesn't work that way. Your capital A is predetermined, you get, by default, two habitable planets B and C, and probably there will be planets D and E nearby. While all the planets have different affinities for minerals, food and energy, it's not that impactful until later when you actually reach the district caps, and, really, it's not the biggest of deals. As to where to set up which kind of industry or other advanced activity - they are all the same (spoiler: science in capital).

You're making a distinction without a difference between Stellaris and Civ in this comparison. You say that district spread isn't an issue until you have the pops to fill them, but this also applies to how Civ works on city tile field. A city with a godly 18-30-whatever tiles spread is no different than a city with a just-as-good-first-8 tiles until you reach the 9th tile-working pop.

Long-term/'what could I do if I have the pops' dynamics are the same, as are special resource considerations (strategic resource deposits on planets, claiming systems with digsites and strategic resources), strategic/chokepoint strategy considerations, neighbor aggressiveness considerations, etc.


The bigger distinction between Civ and Stellaris is Civ lets you put as many cities as you want down, but depending on the game there are reasons you might not want to, while Stellaris sharply limits the number of places you can put colonies (habitable planets) but you never not want to. This is, in other words, the principle of 'make it more important by having less of it' put into practice.

In Stellaris it matters greatly how many planets there are and how well do they happen to match your species preference. But that's about it, no further nuance. Point to the case is competitive multiplayer, where you will see a player following exactly the same decades-long build order from game to game. Which is not the case for ground-based Civ-likes, where it's always about the terrain.

What I'm getting at, is we have planetary modifiers in Stellaris, like "asteroid belt", "strong gravity", "'strong magnetic field"' etc, but they a) rare b) weak. "+10% minerals -5 habitability" doesn't cut it. Developing on this framework may greatly help with what is being discussed here, and would be a welcome step in making it a bit more like Civ and less like Starcraft.

I do love me my Planet Modifiers mod, but I'd also consider it horrendously unbalanced from a design perspective.

As far as a strategy game goes, Stellaris is one part design of knowing what your build should do, one part managing risk like applied gambler, and maybe 8 different parts of pure RNG. How many planets are in your zone of control? Are you blocked off by a fallen empire who will let you pass or shoot you if you claim one system too close? Will you draw Cruisers in year 30, or year 80? Neighbors, planets, dig sites, everything that is RNG is very uneven in impacts, and the more important the RNG thing is, the more uneven/less balanced it becomes, even before second/third order effects. If a modifier is big enough to be Very Interesting (read- very strong), it's big enough that whoever wins the RNG lottery for the most/best modifiers in their area has the better chance at winning, strategy or player skill be damned.


And this is before you address how bad the AI is at any of it, especially since it's future planning principles are effectively non-existent. The planet of upteen gajillion % food bonus is something a player can plan around, going 'I'll start developing this planet as an energy world now, and eat the inefficiency of purchasing because I can grab that planet within a few years and solve my food needs forever.' The AI will go 'I need food now and will develop food everywhere now, and when I get the food planet I need energy so I'll build energy there.'


And again- I like me my Planet Modifiers mod. But for people who treat Stellaris as a skill-management game, or designers who have stepped away from a 'who cares about balanced, lol' approach to trying to rebalance things in a systemic manner like the Custodian Team, powerful planet modifiers just throw an already unbalanced system further out of whack, and make it harder to make in balanced.

(Favorite example from good old Guile, I believe it was- there were Precursor modifiers for 100% energy production, but no equivalent for trade. A major part of the Stellaris development for the last year has been to bring Trade economies from being a meme to being reasonable alternatives. How does a meta- which already favors conquest and now has only one origin give extra influence for claims ALSO be the one with worker bonuses and slavery suitable for working for energy- consider that sort of modifier?)

 

[Frydendahl89]

I think that alongside making planetary features more prominent (the things hidden in the popout side window that dictate district count and so on), rare resources are the best way to distinguish planets.

I wrote up a post long ago on the resources we've lost over the course of stellaris (2.0-2.3 did clean a lot of them out with the economy rework), which may be worth a read, for the curious, on what they all did and how they uniquely spawned in the galaxy (spoiler: most were streamlined away in to the existing strategic gas/crystal/motes, special galactic spawns were cut).

My response from reading your original post is far too long and off-topic from this thread, so I started a new thread on how a rare resource economy could help bring a lot of diversity to the game, both in ship designs, planets, etc. It's honestly something I've been think about a lot when playing Stellaris. The strategic and luxury resource system in Civ 6 really encourages expansion to specific areas of the map, which often creates conflict between players because everybody wants iron, oil, or silk, etc. It is really something I think Stellaris is lacking right now.

 

[Lanferite]

Long-term/'what could I do if I have the pops' dynamics are the same, as are special resource considerations (strategic resource deposits on planets, claiming systems with digsites and strategic resources), strategic/chokepoint strategy considerations, neighbor aggressiveness considerations, etc.

Look, there's a game of chess where you have the board and there's a game of cards where you play your hand. There's Starcraft archetype, where maps are syymetrical, and no matter the map you get the natural, "the 3rd" etc. And then there's Civ archetype where pretty much nothing is mirrored and guaranteed. First one makes up for great competitive play, for concrete build-orders, the second one is just more... adventurous if you will. I think that's a fair dichotomy.

Now, you're getting your details right (tbh I was thinking of Humankind and E.Legend mechanics), but my point was that Stellaris is much more closer to the ways of Sc than to Civ in that regard. And which of these does better suit Stellaris, the roleplay, emergent side of it? I don't want the game to go full chaotic and "play your hand", but I wish it made few steps that side of a slider.

It's just the topic at hand I felt is right place to voice that concern.