The Sectors as they are now, do not succeed with their intended purpose on any front. They do not reduce micromanagement, they just change what form the micromanagement has. I am someone who detests micromanagement, and the sectors sounded so great and I have loads of them. Then I realized that they are a micromanagement, just from a single menu so better interfaced micromanagement.
The other purpose, that they increase internal problems doesn't seem to apply to normal difficulty. My 300 pop 14 sector human empire has 0 factions, and has had 0 for the whole blobbing game. My vassalizing materialist spiders have factions but every single rebellion is crushed in a month or two. It's like the old CK2's "death of a king into instant civil war that quickly gets crushed" time.
The sector system is also lacking in clarity. I do not even know if sectors will spend influence, or if anything that costs influence is barred, or if it is free. What if I want a sector to have a research institute? Then I have to remove the planet (which is cheap) and do it manually. What micromanagement removal? What hindrance to internal stability? It is a convenience that is force upon the player with a stipend of penalties.
So here is my proposal:
Each distant system gets something called drift. Your empire gets something called administrative power.
Every system, planet, miner, frontier outpost, fleet, and pop costs administrative power to maintain. This scales with size and distance for systems, and ship size for fleets. Every government has a set number "for free" it costs nothing to have this much. This is should be possible to increase with government, tech, trait, leader etc.
When you go over the free limit, it starts to exponentially cost in energy and influence. Your empire starts to struggle to maintain itself. It also increases drift.
Drift is every system's desire for self-government. It scales heavily with differing ethos, happiness, and distance to empire capital. When it gets high enough they form factions, as currently. The earliest tools of factions is passive resistance which reduces productivity and increases administrative cost. So yes, drift increases admin cost, and overextended adminwise increases drift. No you are not supposed to like it.
The fix? Sectors. Sectors cost only a fraction of their total admin cost, and the admin cost and drift of systems within them scales with distance to sector capitol, which you should be able to reassign at a small influence cost. However, each sector now has a drift, averaged over all the systems within it, its relative power to the whole empire/core planets, and the distance between empire capital and sector capital.
You should be able to give sectors control of starbases, constructors, fleets, etc. Doing so removes their admin cost entirely, in return for making the sector more powerful. However, those should always default to your control and you have to relinquish them. Sectors with starbases should build ships. Those ships should stay in the sector and not count to your fleet cap. They should assist in defensive wars, but stay out of offensive wars.
You should be able to spend influence to reduce drift in sectors. A mix of what Stellaris currently has with vassal/colony interaction from EU4 would probably do the trick.
So how could it tie into the current game? Well Direct democracy should reduce drift, not increase number of core planets. Calls for self-governance would be lower if all sector members actively take part in election. Enlightened monarchy should reduce influence cost for lowering drift. Pacifist rebels should be much more behind passive resistance, while militarists might skip the passive part entirely. Individualists should quickly gain drift, but be smaller in scale, as loyalist sentiment will be present. Collectivists should lose drift slowly, but when they rebel they are 100% commited.
And my biggest gripe with the current system should be addressed. The non-existance of player investment and immersion. No sector ever feels alive, and all of them are just poorly run factories you assign a leader and goal to then forget about. There are no events, no demands, no requests, no election changes, no inter-sectorial feuds, no internal vying for dominance. It's like a army/mineral/tech/energy factory sometimes literally run by monkeys, that sit and demand to be invaded. As much as I want to like sectors, I just can't right now.
The other purpose, that they increase internal problems doesn't seem to apply to normal difficulty. My 300 pop 14 sector human empire has 0 factions, and has had 0 for the whole blobbing game. My vassalizing materialist spiders have factions but every single rebellion is crushed in a month or two. It's like the old CK2's "death of a king into instant civil war that quickly gets crushed" time.
The sector system is also lacking in clarity. I do not even know if sectors will spend influence, or if anything that costs influence is barred, or if it is free. What if I want a sector to have a research institute? Then I have to remove the planet (which is cheap) and do it manually. What micromanagement removal? What hindrance to internal stability? It is a convenience that is force upon the player with a stipend of penalties.
So here is my proposal:
Each distant system gets something called drift. Your empire gets something called administrative power.
Every system, planet, miner, frontier outpost, fleet, and pop costs administrative power to maintain. This scales with size and distance for systems, and ship size for fleets. Every government has a set number "for free" it costs nothing to have this much. This is should be possible to increase with government, tech, trait, leader etc.
When you go over the free limit, it starts to exponentially cost in energy and influence. Your empire starts to struggle to maintain itself. It also increases drift.
Drift is every system's desire for self-government. It scales heavily with differing ethos, happiness, and distance to empire capital. When it gets high enough they form factions, as currently. The earliest tools of factions is passive resistance which reduces productivity and increases administrative cost. So yes, drift increases admin cost, and overextended adminwise increases drift. No you are not supposed to like it.
The fix? Sectors. Sectors cost only a fraction of their total admin cost, and the admin cost and drift of systems within them scales with distance to sector capitol, which you should be able to reassign at a small influence cost. However, each sector now has a drift, averaged over all the systems within it, its relative power to the whole empire/core planets, and the distance between empire capital and sector capital.
You should be able to give sectors control of starbases, constructors, fleets, etc. Doing so removes their admin cost entirely, in return for making the sector more powerful. However, those should always default to your control and you have to relinquish them. Sectors with starbases should build ships. Those ships should stay in the sector and not count to your fleet cap. They should assist in defensive wars, but stay out of offensive wars.
You should be able to spend influence to reduce drift in sectors. A mix of what Stellaris currently has with vassal/colony interaction from EU4 would probably do the trick.
So how could it tie into the current game? Well Direct democracy should reduce drift, not increase number of core planets. Calls for self-governance would be lower if all sector members actively take part in election. Enlightened monarchy should reduce influence cost for lowering drift. Pacifist rebels should be much more behind passive resistance, while militarists might skip the passive part entirely. Individualists should quickly gain drift, but be smaller in scale, as loyalist sentiment will be present. Collectivists should lose drift slowly, but when they rebel they are 100% commited.
And my biggest gripe with the current system should be addressed. The non-existance of player investment and immersion. No sector ever feels alive, and all of them are just poorly run factories you assign a leader and goal to then forget about. There are no events, no demands, no requests, no election changes, no inter-sectorial feuds, no internal vying for dominance. It's like a army/mineral/tech/energy factory sometimes literally run by monkeys, that sit and demand to be invaded. As much as I want to like sectors, I just can't right now.
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