After playing a number of games in 2.2 i have come to the conclusion that stellaris in its current state has some annoying quirks, pointless complexity and exploits derived from those.
I have been thinking of a way to make it a little simpler and less annoying without dumbing things down and this is what i came up with.
Feel free to point out the flaws and share your own ideas as well.
1. Unlock building slots by # of city districts rather than pops.
The idea is simple, 1 city district = 1 building slot. This would fix 2 issues at once:
Preventing the exploit of servants and livestock to unlock building slots with minimal or no district at all.
Prevent needless unemployment on specialized planets or ones with too few resource districts to keep them busy.
2. Merge housing and amenities into one.
They have mostly the same penalty and odds are your planet is going to run out amenities before housing.
So by combining them into one simply reduces pointless complexity.
!EDIT: To be more specific, i'm proposing to remove the housing resource and add the penalties from negative housing the penalties from negative amenities.
3. Limit servants and livestock by tying them to ruler and farmer jobs.
The idea is simple, for each active farmer 1 livestock job is created and for each active ruler 1 servant job.
This would limit how many can be used and would turn them into a reasonable efficiency boost rather than the madness they currently are.
4. Planetary features as a bonus to district efficiency rather than as a limit to their number.
Give the first X number of districts a +1 job bonus based on planetary features rather as a hard cap.
This would limit the frustrations from poor luck while at the same time keeping planetary features relevant.
It would also lessen the competitive advantage gestalt empires get from their hive/machine worlds.
5. Combine the sciences into a single resource and create a policy to focus on a specific field.
With specialized labs having been removed in 2.2 paradox has practically already consolidated the sciences into one resource and taken away our ability to specialize in the process.
However by truly combining them into a single resources a new policy can be added to change the allocation to each field.
For example a player focusing on physics could split the science into 50% physics / 25% society / 25% engineering.
6. Rebalance the admin cap, sprawl values and penalties.
Tall empires have gone the way of the dodo with 2.2 as the winning formula to everything is going wide. This almost deserves a separate thread on its own.
With the introduction of the admin cap empires are able to delay the empire size penalties that would have been imposed from the very first outpost prior to 2.2. On top of that the penalties for planets are almost completely proportional to planet size so multiple small planets are just as efficient as one large planet. And if that wasn't enough the tech penalty per system is lower, 0.6% vs 1.0%.
The fix:
Step 1 is to reduce the gap between the highest possible admin cap and its base value.
Step 2 is to increase the the base cost per colony to make large planets more efficient, but not by so much that medium sized planets become worthless.
Step 3 is to increase the tech and unity penalty for going over the cap. Because the admin cap delays the onset of the penalty it is only fair for the penalty to be at least as severe as before 2.2.
Though i have no experience modding stellaris i will at least attempt to turn these ideas into a mod.
I have been thinking of a way to make it a little simpler and less annoying without dumbing things down and this is what i came up with.
Feel free to point out the flaws and share your own ideas as well.
1. Unlock building slots by # of city districts rather than pops.
The idea is simple, 1 city district = 1 building slot. This would fix 2 issues at once:
Preventing the exploit of servants and livestock to unlock building slots with minimal or no district at all.
Prevent needless unemployment on specialized planets or ones with too few resource districts to keep them busy.
2. Merge housing and amenities into one.
They have mostly the same penalty and odds are your planet is going to run out amenities before housing.
So by combining them into one simply reduces pointless complexity.
!EDIT: To be more specific, i'm proposing to remove the housing resource and add the penalties from negative housing the penalties from negative amenities.
3. Limit servants and livestock by tying them to ruler and farmer jobs.
The idea is simple, for each active farmer 1 livestock job is created and for each active ruler 1 servant job.
This would limit how many can be used and would turn them into a reasonable efficiency boost rather than the madness they currently are.
4. Planetary features as a bonus to district efficiency rather than as a limit to their number.
Give the first X number of districts a +1 job bonus based on planetary features rather as a hard cap.
This would limit the frustrations from poor luck while at the same time keeping planetary features relevant.
It would also lessen the competitive advantage gestalt empires get from their hive/machine worlds.
5. Combine the sciences into a single resource and create a policy to focus on a specific field.
With specialized labs having been removed in 2.2 paradox has practically already consolidated the sciences into one resource and taken away our ability to specialize in the process.
However by truly combining them into a single resources a new policy can be added to change the allocation to each field.
For example a player focusing on physics could split the science into 50% physics / 25% society / 25% engineering.
6. Rebalance the admin cap, sprawl values and penalties.
Tall empires have gone the way of the dodo with 2.2 as the winning formula to everything is going wide. This almost deserves a separate thread on its own.
With the introduction of the admin cap empires are able to delay the empire size penalties that would have been imposed from the very first outpost prior to 2.2. On top of that the penalties for planets are almost completely proportional to planet size so multiple small planets are just as efficient as one large planet. And if that wasn't enough the tech penalty per system is lower, 0.6% vs 1.0%.
The fix:
Step 1 is to reduce the gap between the highest possible admin cap and its base value.
Step 2 is to increase the the base cost per colony to make large planets more efficient, but not by so much that medium sized planets become worthless.
Step 3 is to increase the tech and unity penalty for going over the cap. Because the admin cap delays the onset of the penalty it is only fair for the penalty to be at least as severe as before 2.2.
Though i have no experience modding stellaris i will at least attempt to turn these ideas into a mod.
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