Rare resource economy: A method to diversify planets, sectors, ship designs, and promote empire interactions

[Frydendahl89]

So first of all, this is going to be a very long post, I will try to summarize the main arguments at the end.

This post mainly inspired by my own dissatisfaction with how samey and 'bland' the galaxy ends up feeling during a game, the new sprawl changes coming in 3.3, and from conversations and posts on this forum (especially the planet design thread currently ongoing).

As sprawl can no longer be directly mitigated, there is a serious opportunity cost associated with acquiring systems - however, the vast vast majority of systems currently are incredibly uninteresting, usually just giving you a handful of base resources and maybe some research. With sprawl punishing your edicts, traditions, and research speed, this is likely to result in a kind of 'Swiss cheese' meta where players only take the handful of systems where the economic gain are thought to outweigh the sprawl penalty.

A way to fix this is to change how the galaxy map is created. On map creation, have the galaxy be partitioned into pre-defined sectors of systems. Hyperlanes will be generated in such a fashion that each sector behaves as a kind of 'closed bubble' with only a few hyperlanes in and out, but with a relatively dense hyperlane network connecting the systems within the sector. This will make a sector actually feel like a sector - it is its own little microcosm in the galaxy. An example can be seen here. Now, when fully in control of all systems associated with a sector, the empire will be rewarded with a bonus to the sprawl from that sector's systems - something like a 25-50% reduction, as well as perhaps additional bonuses (such as being able to hire a governor for the colonies in that sector, and being able to release the sector as a vassal, etc). A sector system like this will also have the bonus of encouraging empires to develop their borders along the 'natural terrain' of the galaxy's hyperlane network, and it will stop players from 'Swiss cheesing' their borders. It will also give clear and well-defined war goals for the AI and the player, as both will now compete to be fully in control of a sector that may be contested.

However, the problem now perhaps becomes instead of only picking up the valuable systems, the player will just not bother expanding much at all beyond 1-2 sectors, as anyway the commitment to take another sector is too much effort for basically no real interesting outcome. This is where rare resources come into play. Each sector will also be roughly balanced to contain a set number of valuable elements. This can be special planets like Gaia and Relic worlds, unique systems (like the tiyanki breeding ground, etc.), broken megastructures, wormholes, L-gates, Alien Enclaves (Curators, Artisans, Traders), but most importantly rare/strategic resources.

I only started playing Stellaris about 2 years ago, long after the 2.0 rework, so I was kind of shocked to read Pancakelord's post on how diverse the resource system actually used to be. My suggestion is to perhaps make a merge of the old and the new. Resources could be divided up in the following way:

Basic resources - made by worker jobs who extract them from planets' natural resource stores and commonly found in deposits in space:

• Food (very rare to find in space, only from anomalies).
• Minerals.
• Energy Credits.

Basically keep things as they are now, more or less.

Manufactured resources - made by specialists in refineries/districts:

• Alloys - made from minerals in industrial districts (same as now).
• Consumer Goods - made from minerals in industrial districts (same as now).
• Advanced Polymers - made from food and energy, made in refinery buildings by chemist specialist jobs.

Advanced Polymers replaces the current Exotic Gasses, Volatile Motes, and Rare Crystals as the upkeep resource for upgraded job buildings - research and unity production is now purely driven by raw resources and conversion of those into more advanced resources from refining jobs. Another goal here is to diversify a bit the basic resource economy. Right now minerals are far and above the most important resource, with food basically being worthless (the recent changes to use food for Cloning Vats and Catalytic Processing are a welcome change). Needing food for Advanced Polymers may be problematic for Robotic/Lithoid empires - but maybe that's OK? (at minimum just give them access to hydroponic farms).

Basically all these resources are the backbone of your main resource economy, and are not anything that should prevent you from expanding your colonies and developing regularly. My next suggestion is then to include a set of rare strategic resources that will be essential to promote your empire's economy to the next level. This is achieved by them being essential for your Ascension paths, required for the most powerful ship components, required for species modification and terraforming, running powerful edicts, etc:

Strategic resources - only found rarely as planetary features and deposits in space (each sector rarely has more than 1 or 2 rare resources inside of it):

• Neutronium Ore - found from neutron stars in space. Required for building the highest levels of starbases. Also a component in ship armor from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship hull and armor strength by a +%.
• Lythuric Gas - found from brown dwarf stars in space. Required to build planetary shield generators and a starbase shield upgrade module. Also a component of ship shields from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship shield strength by a +%.
• Orillium Ore - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building explosive weapons (missiles/torpedoes) above level 3. Powers an edict improving explosive weapons.
• Teldar Crystals - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building mass drivers (basic kinetic weapons) above level 3 (and any level of autocannons and launchers). Powers an edict improving kinetic weapons.
• Engos Vapor - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building lasers (basic energy weapons) above level 3 (and any level of plasma launchers and particle launchers). Powers an edict improving energy weapons.
• Garanthium ore - found in planetary deposits and in asteroids in space. Required for building and upgrading megastructures.
• Terraforming Gasses - found rarely from gas giants as space deposits. Spent to terraform planets, powers an edict that speeds up terraforming, and an edict that increases habitability (basically give the resource a use before you unlock terraforming fully).
• Living Metal - found in planetary deposits or from molten worlds deposits. Needed to convert pops to synthetics (both for the ascension event and later assimilation). Powers an edict that improves resource output from synthetic pops in all job stratas by some small +% (basically supercharges a synth ascension economy).
• Directed Evolution Virus (DEV) - found in planetary deposits or from toxic worlds deposits. Required for organic pop modification, with the traits from the biological ascension path requiring even more DEV per pop modified. Powers an edict that improves organic pop happiness and habitability.
• Zro - found in planetary deposits or from broken worlds deposits. Required to access the shroud and for all psionic ship components. Powers an edict that improves colony stability and base intel on other empires.

The motivation behind locking features like advanced ship components and Ascension paths behind resources is to force empires to expand or trade with each other. It's no longer possible to just sit in a little corner of the galaxy and then come blasting out with the best most advanced ships, empires have to compete over the map (or form good trading relationships). It also potentially forces empires to specialize their ship designs more, as you most likely do not have access to build whatever ship components you want, which stop the samey cookie cutter ship designs (probably requires a rebalance of ship weapons, admittedly)

The final tier of resources to add would be a set of rare luxury resources, that while not essential, allows an empire to excel:

Luxury resources - found in planetary deposits that only spawn on 1 planet per galaxy, from alien trader enclaves, or from killing space fauna:

• Nanites - found in the L-cluster. Enables the nanite repair ship utility component (with the regen being %-based in 3.3 this is now very attractive), a +% bonus to research edict, and a +% construction speed edict for megastructure construction.
• Satramene Gas - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict that reduces pop sprawl and increases governing ethics attraction.
• Pitharan Dust - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict that gives +% bonus to empire unity production.
• Tyrian Fluids - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict increasing specialist output by a +% and increase pop happiness.
• Muutagan Crystals - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that gives pop happiness.
• Riggan Spice - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that give +% leader experience gain and + leader level cap.
• XuraGel - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that gives habitability.
• Tiyanki Oil - Gained from killing Tiyanki space whales. Powers an edict that increases organic leader lifespan by +80 years. After killing the matriach, it becomes possible to make a synthetic version that powers an edict giving +40 years leader lifespan. Empires get a positive planetary modifier if unharmed Tiyanki are within their borders to not encourage their wholesale slaughter.

These are obviously not a comprehensive list and just some ideas (there could be a long list of resource, with only some spawning per galaxy to keep each game different). Ideally each resource should be powerful enough that empires would consider going to war over controlling the system/sector that produces it, especially if the empire holding control of it is not willing to trade.

Anyway, I promised to try and summarize everything at the end (thank you if you stuck around and read it all, by the way), here's the TLDR:

• Make pre-defined sectors on map-gen.
• Give a bonus to an empire that fully controls a sector to encourage sensible galactic borders.
• Populate these sectors with special resources that are more or less needed to power an advanced economy to make them unique and encourage expansion, despite the sprawl penalty.
• Rare resources limit an empires defensive/offensive capabilities. This is done to encourage empires to compete more over specific territory and its resources, and to empower galactic trade among empires (not all resources will be useful for all empires).
• Luxury resources can be found on rare unique planets in the galaxy, giving the owning empire a big economic advantage from selling this resource (or just consuming it themselves).

Addendum:

I should probably also add, it will likely be required to implement some kind of trade interface, where the player can quickly see which empire has which resources, and can directly initiate a trade from that screen. Otherwise hunting down who exactly has what resource you need at the time will be unbearable. Likewise the resource names potentially need to be renamed to keep them more distinct from each other, otherwise you're probably not going to remember which kind of crystal does what and which one is it exactly I need, etc.

Edit 06/02/22:

Simplified manufactured resources by consolidating Exotic Gasses, Volatile Motes, and Rare Crystals into one advanced manufactured resource, "Advanced Polymers", which powers upgraded job buildings instead of the three distinct resources.

 

[Bezborg]

I hope I inspired you for the pre-defined sectors, as part of a community of people advocating it for years

I have nothing to add, I agree fully, these changes would make Stellaris better and take it out of the bland grey zone it’s in.

With predefined cluster/sectors, you could even “discover” new ones over the course of the game, via events or technological advances. Lots of potential there

 

[BrokenSky]

Manufactured/special resources - made by specialists in refineries/districts and uncommonly found as deposits in space:

• Alloys (made from minerals).
• Consumer Goods (made from minerals, not found in space).
• Exotic Gasses (made from Food).
• Rare Crystals (made from Minerals).
• Volatile Motes (made from Energy Credits).

The main goal here is just to diversify a bit the basic resource economy. Right now minerals are far and above the most important resource, with food basically being worthless (the recent changes to use food for Cloning Vats and Catalytic Processing are a welcome change). Needing food for Exotic Gasses may be problematic for Robotic gestalt empires - but maybe that's OK? (at minimum just give them access to hydroponic farms).

I wonder if it would be possible to give certain resources triggered localizations for certain situations (e.g. when playing as a non-servitor robot gestalt, "food" is renamed "organic materials")

Rare/Strategic resources - only found rarely as planetary features and deposits in space (each sector rarely has more than 1 or 2 rare resources inside of it):

• Neutronium Ore - found from neutron stars in space. Required for building the highest levels of starbases. Also a component in ship armor from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship hull and armor strength by a +%.
• Lythuric Gas - found from brown dwarf stars in space. Required to build planetary shield generators and a starbase shield upgrade module. Also a component of ship shields from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship shield strength by a +%.
• Orillium Ore - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building explosive weapons (missiles/torpedoes) above level 3. Powers an edict improving explosive weapons.
• Teldar Crystals - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building mass drivers (basic kinetic weapons) above level 3 (and any level of autocannons and launchers). Powers an edict improving kinetic weapons.
• Engos Vapor - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building lasers (basic energy weapons) above level 3 (and any level of plasma launchers and particle launchers). Powers an edict improving energy weapons.
• Garanthium ore - found in planetary deposits and in asteroids in space. Required for building and upgrading megastructures.
• Terraforming Gasses - found rarely from gas giants as space deposits. Spent to terraform planets, powers an edict that speeds up terraforming, and an edict that increases habitability (basically give the resource a use before you unlock terraforming fully).
• Living Metal - found in planetary deposits or from molten worlds deposits. Needed to convert pops to synthetics (both for the ascension event and later assimilation). Powers an edict that improves resource output from synthetic pops in all job stratas by some small +% (basically supercharges a synth ascension economy).
• Directed Evolution Virus (DEV) - found in planetary deposits or from toxic worlds deposits. Required for organic pop modification, with the traits from the biological ascension path requiring even more DEV per pop modified. Powers an edict that improves organic pop happiness and habitability.
• Zro - found in planetary deposits or from broken worlds deposits. Required to access the shroud and for all psionic ship components. Powers an edict that improves colony stability and base intel on other empires.

The motivation behind locking features like advanced ship components and Ascension paths behind resources is to force empires to expand or trade with each other. It's no longer possible to just sit in a little corner of the galaxy and then come blasting out with the best most advanced ships, empires have to compete over the map (or form good trading relationships). It also potentially forces empires to specialize their ship designs more, as you most likely do not have access to build whatever ship components you want, which stop the samey cookie cutter ship designs (probably requires a rebalance of ship weapons, admittedly)

One thing which is probably worth flagging is that for pacifist empires, getting the resources via expansion may well be unachievable and I feel like it could easily be frustrating if you're looking to play pacifist diplomacy, but the resources you need for ascension features are locked behind conquering another hostile civilization or (for militarists) if there just isn't enough in the galaxy for an empire of your size.
I feel like, with the last 5, having some other route to the same end (presumably slower) or additional (but investment-heavy) ways to get hold of these resources (for example espionage to siphon them off via privateering or corruption, or GC mandated resource sharing as part of high level versions of the Greater Good line)

 

[exi123]

I am always interested in ideas to bring back the old rare resources and some kind of system for empires to get unique ways to play a campaign. This shouldnt get to complex, your system looks quiet simple and i like it. This feels a bit like a Civ5 system, where you really need to fight for resources from time to time. I also like your approach to special resources, binding them to not only to minerals is a good idea.

What i dont like is a system of overusing edicts. With a static amount of a resource and growing empire size you maybe dont have enough to run the campaign later on, so the resource becomes worthless or you cant run it all time. I like the old approch where the bonuses are passive and always there, i would favour a system where the amount of the resource combined with my sprawl defines how much benefit i get from these. The resources are also not stockpiled and always consumed as a whole.

Also starting at tier4 weapons with the need for rare resources is maybe a bit early. And using them for weaponry should only be a thing of excess to them, not like special resources having a real amount of cost attached to it. Another way would be cool if we would get some new weapon-paths from these rare resources, leaving the ones we have now as they are. Once researched they stay and have no need of the resource to be present, like dragonscale armor. This would also lead to different types of weapons depending on your location in the galaxy.

 

[Frydendahl89]

One thing which is probably worth flagging is that for pacifist empires, getting the resources via expansion may well be unachievable and I feel like it could easily be frustrating if you're looking to play pacifist diplomacy, but the resources you need for ascension features are locked behind conquering another hostile civilization or (for militarists) if there just isn't enough in the galaxy for an empire of your size.
I feel like, with the last 5, having some other route to the same end (presumably slower) or additional (but investment-heavy) ways to get hold of these resources (for example espionage to siphon them off via privateering or corruption, or GC mandated resource sharing as part of high level versions of the Greater Good line)

Yea, it's definitely a concern. Pacifists (especially Inwards Perfection players) are going to be in a bit of tough bind. However, I still think it is thematically appropriate for pacifists that they need to trade for their resources (they normally get an opinion bonus from other empires, no?). Regular pacifists still have the option for Liberation Wars, to basically force an aggressive neighbour empire to become their friend. Potentially resources used for Ascension can also be sold from the Alien Trader enclaves, although I feel it will water the concept down a little bit. The galactic market is also still going to be an option, of course.

 

[DeanTheDull]

So first of all, this is going to be a very long post, I will try to summarize the main arguments at the end.

As a good-faith feedback on form rather than content, I would recommend you give an upfront TL;DR/Executive Summary at the start. It provides the framing of what the person should understand as most important, and makes their response focus on the overall point rather than the first, non-central argument that is assumed to be most important by presumed order of priority.

Separately, a key critique of many of your proposals is 'how will the AI deal with it', because many of your suggestions, while interesting in an abstract sense, are the sort of planning challenges that the AI really, well, can't.

This post mainly inspired by my own dissatisfaction with how samey and 'bland' the galaxy ends up feeling during a game, the new sprawl changes coming in 3.3, and from conversations and posts on this forum (especially the planet design thread currently ongoing).

As sprawl can no longer be directly mitigated, there is a serious opportunity cost associated with acquiring systems - however, the vast vast majority of systems currently are incredibly uninteresting, usually just giving you a handful of base resources and maybe some research. With sprawl punishing your edicts, traditions, and research speed, this is likely to result in a kind of 'Swiss cheese' meta where players only take the handful of systems where the economic gain are thought to outweigh the sprawl penalty.

I will note that economically nearly all systems have net-positive economic gains. in the sprawl economy. As 10 sprawl is a 1% science cost increase and 2% unity tradition increase, Sprawl per system being one is is about .1% tech growth penalty. As long as total resources in a system support a .1% or higher increase to your science economy, directly (science deposits) or indirectly (2 minerals that turn into 2+ CG that feed a 4-science scientist), it outweighs the sprawl penalty, even before Habitats are considered.

A way to fix this is to change how the galaxy map is created. On map creation, have the galaxy be partitioned into pre-defined sectors of systems. Hyperlanes will be generated in such a fashion that each sector behaves as a kind of 'closed bubble' with only a few hyperlanes in and out, but with a relatively dense hyperlane network connecting the systems within the sector. This will make a sector actually feel like a sector - it is its own little microcosm in the galaxy. Now, when fully in control of all systems associated with a sector, the empire will be rewarded with a bonus to the sprawl from that sector's systems - something like a 25-50% reduction, as well as perhaps additional bonuses (such as being able to hire a governor for the colonies in that sector, and being able to release the sector as a vassal, etc). A sector system like this will also have the bonus of encouraging empires to develop their borders along the 'natural terrain' of the galaxy's hyperlane network, and it will stop players from 'Swiss cheesing' their borders. It will also give clear and well-defined war goals for the AI and the player, as both will now compete to be fully in control of a sector that may be contested.

A counter-argument you will want to anticipate sooner than later is how, exactly, this interacts with recognizability.

Pre-defined sectors will face an issue of signature recognition. If the player can know what, exactly, each sector is likely to hold within a few passes, it will create a natural tier list/prioritization scheme of first expansion targets. This will lead to things like a science ship racing around the neighborhood to identify which high-value sectors they have and then not exploring entire sectors in the name of meta-knowledge, which is in contrast with the current RNG-delivered 'mystery and exploration' where, by virtue of randomness, every galactic start is random.

On a player vs player context, it faces a context where sector RNG replaces galactic spagetti RNG, where multiplayer competitiveness comesdown to who can race down the highest payoff sectors at game start. Rather than a shared burden of everyone being at the mercy of fates, players project success/failure on their sector tier list setup. (I got stuck with a bunch of resource sectors and bad planet sectors- how was I supposed to compete?) Additionally, AI has no future planning capability, and thus no way to fairly compete in this recognition and planning dynamic. Either you end up cheating by giving the AI secret knowledge of where to prioritize exploration (on Hard Difficulty, AI will prioiritize exploring [insert tier list]), OR you have a system set up that only the player can exploit.

Now, there are ways to challenge this...
-Randomize system and planet names, to avoid signature system recognizability
-Randomize in-sector system links, based on settings
-Have so many pre-defined sectors they're too many to tier
-Avoid recognizable sectors by making specific types of deposits, planet classes random.

...but when you have to go out of your way to make pre-defined sectors unrecognizable as pre-defined, you've basically just re-introduced procedural generation. Which is what the game already has.



An example of what this can be like, and a way to approach this, is the Fireaxis map design principle between XCOM and XCOM 2.

XCOM 1 had pre-defined maps- sectors in your parlance- where different maps had defined key buildings, assets, priority terrain, and so on. It also got incredibly boring over the course of the game's lifetime, because after the first hundred+ times there stopped being any mystery in a game that was thematically about the mystery of the alien presence. You would get a general sense of 'if I see this thing HERE, then enemy/important objective will be THERE' and mega-gaming the map became rampant, to the point that on viewing the starting area you could devise a plan on how to sweep the map with minimal time or risk. (In Stellaris terms- bee-lining expansion to the important parts and ignorring the rest).

XCOM 2 went back to procedural generation, but with a patch-work/quilt approach. Instead of purely scripted maps (sectors) or purely procudural generation (Stellaris galaxy gen), they would design a map template, but let procedural generation fill in certain blocks randomly within defined parameters. IE, on this map this 12-x-12 sector is a [Random Residential Building], but which Residential building type was random. An apartment vs a club, etc. Similarly, [Objective Building] could swap between various vaguely-justifaible targets, but which target- or in your context which [special world/mega structure/sector specialty]- was random, as was where the ojbective building was (in your context, which system in the sector has the Special Thing).


A way to develop your proposal further would be to hone in an effective procedural RNG in a patchwork sector system. This can mitigate the problems of purely-defined sectors and meta-gaming, while still trying to approach the concept of weighting sectors between planets and resources and rewards.

I only started playing Stellaris about 2 years ago, long after the 2.0 rework, so I was kind of shocked to read Pancakelord's post on how diverse the resource system actually used to be. My suggestion is to perhaps make a merge of the old and the new. Resources could be divided up in the following way:

Basic resources - made by worker jobs who extract them from planets' natural resource stores and commonly found in deposits in space:

• Food (very rare to find in space).
• Minerals.
• Energy Credits.

Basically keep things as they are now, more or less.

Manufactured/special resources - made by specialists in refineries/districts and uncommonly found as deposits in space:

• Alloys (made from minerals).
• Consumer Goods (made from minerals, not found in space).
• Exotic Gasses (made from Food).
• Rare Crystals (made from Minerals).
• Volatile Motes (made from Energy Credits).

The main goal here is just to diversify a bit the basic resource economy. Right now minerals are far and above the most important resource, with food basically being worthless (the recent changes to use food for Cloning Vats and Catalytic Processing are a welcome change). Needing food for Exotic Gasses may be problematic for Robotic gestalt empires - but maybe that's OK? (at minimum just give them access to hydroponic farms).

I want to say here that I feel your Manufactured resource concept is both the most interesting suggestion you make, but also one of the most counter-productive for the premise of making sectors with resources something key to fight over. This is a down-stream consequence of the existence of refineries, which itself is downstream tendency for empire demand for resources to exceed natural supply.

When a resource is vital and limited to geography, you fight over geography. But when a resource is vital and producible, you re-orient to securing the means of production of it. Raising the cost of production doesn't help either, as any factor of cost is going to favor the empires who can most afford it, ie the widest empires with the most planets to get resources and sectors which already have it naturally.

For a defined sector strategic deposits to be truly significant and fought over, artificial refineries need to go away. But if artificial refineries go away, everything that depends on refineries (upgraded buildings, mega-world districts) needs to be rebalanced as well. Further, you'd need some mitigating factor if you are RNG cursed and don't have the access to the resources because you got the bad-luck templated sectors in your area. Which brings back refineries. Which brings back-

Basically all these resources are the backbone of your main resource economy, and are not anything that should prevent you from expanding your colonies and developing regularly. My next suggestion is then to include a set of rare resources that will be essential to promote your empire's economy to the next level. This is achieved by them being essential for your Ascension paths, required for the most powerful ship components, required for species modification and terraforming, running powerful edicts, etc:

Rare/Strategic resources - only found rarely as planetary features and deposits in space (each sector rarely has more than 1 or 2 rare resources inside of it):

• Neutronium Ore - found from neutron stars in space. Required for building the highest levels of starbases. Also a component in ship armor from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship hull and armor strength by a +%.
• Lythuric Gas - found from brown dwarf stars in space. Required to build planetary shield generators and a starbase shield upgrade module. Also a component of ship shields from lvl 3 and up. Powers an edict that improves ship shield strength by a +%.
• Orillium Ore - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building explosive weapons (missiles/torpedoes) above level 3. Powers an edict improving explosive weapons.
• Teldar Crystals - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building mass drivers (basic kinetic weapons) above level 3 (and any level of autocannons and launchers). Powers an edict improving kinetic weapons.
• Engos Vapor - found in asteroids and planetary deposits. Required for building lasers (basic energy weapons) above level 3 (and any level of plasma launchers and particle launchers). Powers an edict improving energy weapons.
• Garanthium ore - found in planetary deposits and in asteroids in space. Required for building and upgrading megastructures.
• Terraforming Gasses - found rarely from gas giants as space deposits. Spent to terraform planets, powers an edict that speeds up terraforming, and an edict that increases habitability (basically give the resource a use before you unlock terraforming fully).
• Living Metal - found in planetary deposits or from molten worlds deposits. Needed to convert pops to synthetics (both for the ascension event and later assimilation). Powers an edict that improves resource output from synthetic pops in all job stratas by some small +% (basically supercharges a synth ascension economy).
• Directed Evolution Virus (DEV) - found in planetary deposits or from toxic worlds deposits. Required for organic pop modification, with the traits from the biological ascension path requiring even more DEV per pop modified. Powers an edict that improves organic pop happiness and habitability.
• Zro - found in planetary deposits or from broken worlds deposits. Required to access the shroud and for all psionic ship components. Powers an edict that improves colony stability and base intel on other empires.

The motivation behind locking features like advanced ship components and Ascension paths behind resources is to force empires to expand or trade with each other. It's no longer possible to just sit in a little corner of the galaxy and then come blasting out with the best most advanced ships, empires have to compete over the map (or form good trading relationships). It also potentially forces empires to specialize their ship designs more, as you most likely do not have access to build whatever ship components you want, which stop the samey cookie cutter ship designs (probably requires a rebalance of ship weapons, admittedly)

The final tier of resources to add would be a set of rare luxury resources, that while not essential, allows an empire to excel:

Luxury resources - found in planetary deposits that only spawn on 1 planet per galaxy, from alien trader enclaves, or from killing space fauna:

• Nanites - found in the L-cluster. Enables the nanite repair ship utility component (with the regen being %-based in 3.3 this is now very attractive), a +% bonus to research edict, and a +% construction speed edict for megastructure construction.
• Satramene Gas - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict that reduces pop sprawl and increases governing ethics attraction.
• Pitharan Dust - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict that gives +% bonus to empire unity production.
• Tyrian Fluids - Unique planetary deposit. Powers an edict increasing specialist output by a +% and increase pop happiness.
• Muutagan Crystals - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that gives pop happiness.
• Riggan Spice - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that give +% leader experience gain and + leader level cap.
• XuraGel - Bought from trader enclave (discount if within your borders). Powers an edict that gives habitability.
• Tiyanki Oil - Gained from killing Tiyanki space whales. Powers an edict that increases organic leader lifespan by +80 years. After killing the matriach, it becomes possible to make a synthetic version that powers an edict giving +40 years leader lifespan. Empires get a positive planetary modifier if unharmed Tiyanki are within their borders to not encourage their wholesale slaughter.

These are obviously not a comprehensive list and just some ideas (there could be a long list of resource, with only some spawning per galaxy to keep each game different). Ideally each resource should be powerful enough that empires would consider going to war over controlling the system/sector that produces it, especially if the empire holding control of it is not willing to trade.

The issue with advanced resource economies is the AI basically can't engage with them at all, because the AI can neither forward plan nor has the ability to use them in an economically responsible, let alone optimal, way.

AI is really, really, really bad in dealing with moving between conceptual categories. One of the classic examples in strategy game designing is transports- AI programming is notoriously very, very bad at understanding how to use, or how to prioritize, putting assets (units) into one thing (the transport) to get to another context (delivering units). In Crusader Kings, CK3 basically gave up on the concept of navies simply because they were never able get it to work well. In this proposal, the AI has to understand when it is appropriate to pursue an edict, seek the resources to fund it, and then use it at the appropriate time... when functionally the AI has no forward planning skills, but can only act based on what it's current situation is and what might work in a little while going forward. The AI functionally has to already have the resource- and the means to exploit it- to start considering using it.

How much time and resources- including developer work hours that could be spent on other systems- should be spent on a system that the majority of empires in the galaxy (read- everyone but the players) will be incompetent at using?

Addendum:

I should probably also add, it will likely be required to implement some kind of trade interface, where the player can quickly see which empire has which resources, and can directly initiate a trade from that screen. Otherwise hunting down who exactly has what resource you need at the time will be unbearable. Likewise the resource names potentially need to be renamed to keep them more distinct from each other, otherwise you're probably not going to remember which kind of crystal does what and which one is it exactly I need, etc.

What, specifically, would be the relative value of these advanced/unique resources to eachother? They don't have equivalent effects, so either don't have equivalent value (and the value of some should be changing over time), or they do have equivalent value and the AI will trade low-utility resources for higher-payoff resources.

 

[Nevars]

they normally get an opinion bonus from other empires, no?

No, they don't, that's xenophile bonus.

Regarding pre-defined sector, it make no sense either from mechanic perspective (too easy to exploited) or fluff perspective (government would structured their administration from their own circumstance, not from this nebulous concept of pre-defined sectors).

Also you seem to have a misunderstanding about what sector is, it is not a geography of galaxy but something government created (developed?) for administration purpose, akin to state, province, etc. of country irl.

 

[Shadowstrike]

I like the idea of an uneven distribution of rare resources. Civ6 does this with having 4 luxuries appear per continent, so that foreign continents would always have luxuries you couldn't find at home - this encouraged both expansion, but also trading with the AI for those resources. As long as there are multiple ways to get access to those resources (i.e. not just conquering them), and that a wide empire doesn't just hog all of the rare resources (which could be dealt with by reducing the benefits of each rare resource by some size-based factor), this would create more of an incentive to secure those systems. While flat percentage based bonuses aren't bad, it would be more interesting if there were unique ship components, technologies, buildings and jobs that are only accessible with a supply of them.

With regards to the motes/gases/crystals triad that are used in advanced buildings, those need to be present everywhere (like how Civ distributes iron, oil and so forth). But I would prefer the game to emphasize natural deposits more - you should be getting the majority of your volatile gasses from extraction, rather than refineries. That might be helped by having somewhat larger deposits (or more jobs per deposit), and by pushing the refining techs further into the tech tree.

 

[BrokenSky]

A counter-argument you will want to anticipate sooner than later is how, exactly, this interacts with recognizability.

Pre-defined sectors will face an issue of signature recognition. If the player can know what, exactly, each sector is likely to hold within a few passes, it will create a natural tier list/prioritization scheme of first expansion targets. This will lead to things like a science ship racing around the neighborhood to identify which high-value sectors they have and then not exploring entire sectors in the name of meta-knowledge, which is in contrast with the current RNG-delivered 'mystery and exploration' where, by virtue of randomness, every galactic start is random.

On a player vs player context, it faces a context where sector RNG replaces galactic spagetti RNG, where multiplayer competitiveness comesdown to who can race down the highest payoff sectors at game start. Rather than a shared burden of everyone being at the mercy of fates, players project success/failure on their sector tier list setup. (I got stuck with a bunch of resource sectors and bad planet sectors- how was I supposed to compete?) Additionally, AI has no future planning capability, and thus no way to fairly compete in this recognition and planning dynamic. Either you end up cheating by giving the AI secret knowledge of where to prioritize exploration (on Hard Difficulty, AI will prioiritize exploring [insert tier list]), OR you have a system set up that only the player can exploit.

Now, there are ways to challenge this...
-Randomize system and planet names, to avoid signature system recognizability
-Randomize in-sector system links, based on settings
-Have so many pre-defined sectors they're too many to tier
-Avoid recognizable sectors by making specific types of deposits, planet classes random.

...but when you have to go out of your way to make pre-defined sectors unrecognizable as pre-defined, you've basically just re-introduced procedural generation. Which is what the game already has.



An example of what this can be like, and a way to approach this, is the Fireaxis map design principle between XCOM and XCOM 2.

XCOM 1 had pre-defined maps- sectors in your parlance- where different maps had defined key buildings, assets, priority terrain, and so on. It also got incredibly boring over the course of the game's lifetime, because after the first hundred+ times there stopped being any mystery in a game that was thematically about the mystery of the alien presence. You would get a general sense of 'if I see this thing HERE, then enemy/important objective will be THERE' and mega-gaming the map became rampant, to the point that on viewing the starting area you could devise a plan on how to sweep the map with minimal time or risk. (In Stellaris terms- bee-lining expansion to the important parts and ignorring the rest).

XCOM 2 went back to procedural generation, but with a patch-work/quilt approach. Instead of purely scripted maps (sectors) or purely procudural generation (Stellaris galaxy gen), they would design a map template, but let procedural generation fill in certain blocks randomly within defined parameters. IE, on this map this 12-x-12 sector is a [Random Residential Building], but which Residential building type was random. An apartment vs a club, etc. Similarly, [Objective Building] could swap between various vaguely-justifaible targets, but which target- or in your context which [special world/mega structure/sector specialty]- was random, as was where the ojbective building was (in your context, which system in the sector has the Special Thing).


A way to develop your proposal further would be to hone in an effective procedural RNG in a patchwork sector system. This can mitigate the problems of purely-defined sectors and meta-gaming, while still trying to approach the concept of weighting sectors between planets and resources and rewards.

To be clear, I read this as
"During galaxy generation, rather than generating each system and then building hyperlanes between them, sectors of systems are generated as a cluster together, with pre-set lists of resources somewhere in those systems".

One way this might work could be something like: having sectors such as
Sector Alloy_12 =
1x Habitable planet (normal normal world, size 17-21)
1x Habitable moon (small normal moon, size 8-12)
2X Volatile Motes (1)
2x Alloy/mineral deposit (1-2/2-4)
1x Alloy deposit (2-3)
3x Mineral Deposits (2-4)
2x Mineral deposit (1-2)
4x Energy deposit (1-2)

On galaxy generation, first the game selects 137 regular sectors and 30 starting sectors (1000 stars, 30 civilisations). It then generates clusters of 5-7 stars and populates them. For the example above, the this looks something like first substituting a barren planet for the habitable one (a continental world), then putting the alloy/mineral deposits on molten worlds in two systems and and the alloy deposit on an asteroid ring, replacing a frozen world with a gas giant and putting a tundra world moon in orbit, putting the medium and small mineral deposits on various worlds and the energy deposits on various stars and gas giants.

Once all the clusters are formed, hyperlanes and wormholes are formed between them and broken gateways added etc.

In this case there isn't the recognizability problem since the sectors themselves aren't set - rather, the game-relevant content is.

 

[SteelCrow]

I find some neat ideas here, although I don't agree with pre-defined sectors affecting sprawl.
I find trader enclaves totally useless. If I'm not mistaken, they trade gas/motes/crystals at galactic market rate sans market fee. I think it would be good if they had a rotating offering of an unusual resource like Living Metal or Zro.

For 'rare' resources to be truly rare, both the sources and sinks must be in minute amounts, or even not quantified at all, like in Civ 5. Constructing ships using 0.1 of some resource should work based on the math, but player perceptions may find that odd.

Galaxy generation already clusters up precursor anomalies, so it should be no stretch to cluster up unique resources.

Nanites - found in the L-cluster. Enables the nanite repair ship utility component (with the regen being %-based in 3.3 this is now very attractive), a +% bonus to research edict, and a +% construction speed edict for megastructure construction.

In case somebody missed it, % hull/armor regen is how ship repair has worked for quite a while. Docking at a starbase sticks on 2% to both.

 

[DeanTheDull]

To be clear, I read this as
"During galaxy generation, rather than generating each system and then building hyperlanes between them, sectors of systems are generated as a cluster together, with pre-set lists of resources somewhere in those systems".

One way this might work could be something like: having sectors such as
Sector Alloy_12 =
1x Habitable planet (normal normal world, size 17-21)
1x Habitable moon (small normal moon, size 8-12)
2X Volatile Motes (1)
2x Alloy/mineral deposit (1-2/2-4)
1x Alloy deposit (2-3)
3x Mineral Deposits (2-4)
2x Mineral deposit (1-2)
4x Energy deposit (1-2)

Right. Or you might formulate it as

Sector Alloy_12=
5 system X pattern (random placement of systems in X pattern)
Internal sector links randomized; total number dependent on hyperlane density setting
3 entry node systems (number of lanes to other sectors dependent on setting)
System 1 has 2 size 2 [random resource deposit], 1 [random strategic resource], 1 alloy
System 2 has 1 [colonizable planet], 1 [colonizable moon]
System 3 has 1 alloy, 2 [science deposit]
System 4 has 1 [anomaly category group] guaranteed, 1 [random strategic resource]
System 5 has 1 alloy, 1 [Enclave]

These (should) accomplish similar effects, but the late address some issues of lopsided RNG. If you procedurally define the sectors in terms of 'sector contains this, but I don't care where,' you'll likely still end up with swiss-cheese issue trying to be avoided, as the 'important' resources will- by random distribution- generally be concentrated in the systems with the greatest number of stellar objects to be scanned (and thus be placed). This retains the issue of bypassing/ignorring 'low value' systems.

By defining a relative value of system in a sector (the 'quilt'), but randomizing the exact inputs (the 'patch'), you can meet the intent of ensuring there are no negligibly-low-value systems you'd rather bypass in contests for larger (and deposit-dense) systems.

On galaxy generation, first the game selects 137 regular sectors and 30 starting sectors (1000 stars, 30 civilisations). It then generates clusters of 5-7 stars and populates them. For the example above, the this looks something like first substituting a barren planet for the habitable one (a continental world), then putting the alloy/mineral deposits on molten worlds in two systems and and the alloy deposit on an asteroid ring, replacing a frozen world with a gas giant and putting a tundra world moon in orbit, putting the medium and small mineral deposits on various worlds and the energy deposits on various stars and gas giants.

Once all the clusters are formed, hyperlanes and wormholes are formed between them and broken gateways added etc.

In this case there isn't the recognizability problem since the sectors themselves aren't set - rather, the game-relevant content is.

Yes. The modularity is the key to mitigating recognizability, and the meta-gaming. The issue of recognizable landmarks may be an issue- say for mega structures- but this can be mitigated by making it unclear where a sector begins/ends, and by randomizing megastructures by [category].

For example, if the defined structure of a mega-structure sector is, say 'A Matter Decompressor is always at the same position of an X pattern sector', then even if you randomize the hyperlanes, if you find the matter decompressor system you can meta-game that the closest X-pattern systems, even if they don't have hyperlanes in an X, and whether to prioritize them for exploration or not.

Whereas if you say 'megastructure is an X pattern, but where in the X the megastructure is is random, and which megastructure it is in random,' then if the player finds a Matter decompressor they don't know if they're on the edge or middle of a sector, or which sector design it is. Mental sector maps break down without knowing where they stop or end, bar very distinct landmarks, and it's less a map than a flimsy model that will still surprise them. Especially if you have more mega-structure sectors than you use (say you have 20 potential mega-structure models, but only 7 are used in any game, and every one of them randomizes the placement within the sector).

You'll probably need multiple categorizes of sectors for the geographic dynamics of the map- edge sectors that may be 2-3 systems large, core-adjacent sectors, arm-linking sectors to fill the gaps- and that's a non-trivial math problem. But it should be doable if you design the system to do it from the ground up in a 'quilt of quilts' format.

 

[Grobb]

As far as rare resources and also making planets feel important goes, I saw some rumblings in that other thread about the lack of rural and outpost worlds. It would be nice if we could get planets which are more like glorified Stations with defensive armies and local politics, where we don't have the Habitability or size or anything to justify true settlement, but can still harvest a large deposit of one of these rare resources. There are lots of cases in fiction of planets which are very lightly inhabited rural worlds, but will still be fought over because they're gold mines despite being so inhospitable.

That kind of inhospitable, low population, rural gold mine world is missing from the game right now.

 

[BrokenSky]

Right. Or you might formulate it as

Sector Alloy_12=
5 system X pattern (random placement of systems in X pattern)
Internal sector links randomized; total number dependent on hyperlane density setting
3 entry node systems (number of lanes to other sectors dependent on setting)
System 1 has 2 size 2 [random resource deposit], 1 [random strategic resource], 1 alloy
System 2 has 1 [colonizable planet], 1 [colonizable moon]
System 3 has 1 alloy, 2 [science deposit]
System 4 has 1 [anomaly category group] guaranteed, 1 [random strategic resource]
System 5 has 1 alloy, 1 [Enclave]

These (should) accomplish similar effects, but the late address some issues of lopsided RNG. If you procedurally define the sectors in terms of 'sector contains this, but I don't care where,' you'll likely still end up with swiss-cheese issue trying to be avoided, as the 'important' resources will- by random distribution- generally be concentrated in the systems with the greatest number of stellar objects to be scanned (and thus be placed). This retains the issue of bypassing/ignorring 'low value' systems.

By defining a relative value of system in a sector (the 'quilt'), but randomizing the exact inputs (the 'patch'), you can meet the intent of ensuring there are no negligibly-low-value systems you'd rather bypass in contests for larger (and deposit-dense) systems.

Yes. The modularity is the key to mitigating recognizability, and the meta-gaming. The issue of recognizable landmarks may be an issue- say for mega structures- but this can be mitigated by making it unclear where a sector begins/ends, and by randomizing megastructures by [category].

For example, if the defined structure of a mega-structure sector is, say 'A Matter Decompressor is always at the same position of an X pattern sector', then even if you randomize the hyperlanes, if you find the matter decompressor system you can meta-game that the closest X-pattern systems, even if they don't have hyperlanes in an X, and whether to prioritize them for exploration or not.

Whereas if you say 'megastructure is an X pattern, but where in the X the megastructure is is random, and which megastructure it is in random,' then if the player finds a Matter decompressor they don't know if they're on the edge or middle of a sector, or which sector design it is. Mental sector maps break down without knowing where they stop or end, bar very distinct landmarks, and it's less a map than a flimsy model that will still surprise them. Especially if you have more mega-structure sectors than you use (say you have 20 potential mega-structure models, but only 7 are used in any game, and every one of them randomizes the placement within the sector).

You'll probably need multiple categorizes of sectors for the geographic dynamics of the map- edge sectors that may be 2-3 systems large, core-adjacent sectors, arm-linking sectors to fill the gaps- and that's a non-trivial math problem. But it should be doable if you design the system to do it from the ground up in a 'quilt of quilts' format.

You're right, this is a better way to do it.

The one thing worth flagging is that I believe that the intention is that the borders of sectors are supposed to be known to the player as these clusters are (in the OP) supposed to correspond 1:1 with political sectors?

 

[Frydendahl89]

As a good-faith feedback on form rather than content, I would recommend you give an upfront TL;DR/Executive Summary at the start. It provides the framing of what the person should understand as most important, and makes their response focus on the overall point rather than the first, non-central argument that is assumed to be most important by presumed order of priority.

Separately, a key critique of many of your proposals is 'how will the AI deal with it', because many of your suggestions, while interesting in an abstract sense, are the sort of planning challenges that the AI really, well, can't.

I'm not a big expert on the AI, but for everything except the Ascension resources I don't think it's a major issue. The rare/strategic resources are still intended to be common enough that a reasonably sized empire will get access to at least 3-4 of them. They will all be available on the galactic market as well - perhaps a simple workaround is to let other empires buy them from the market as soon as another empire starts selling it to the market.

I will note that economically nearly all systems have net-positive economic gains. in the sprawl economy. As 10 sprawl is a 1% science cost increase and 2% unity tradition increase, Sprawl per system being one is is about .1% tech growth penalty. As long as total resources in a system support a .1% or higher increase to your science economy, directly (science deposits) or indirectly (2 minerals that turn into 2+ CG that feed a 4-science scientist), it outweighs the sprawl penalty, even before Habitats are considered.

That's assuming pops exist to work those jobs - pops who by the way are going to contribute their own sprawl. If you just rapidly claim systems you will build up a large amount of sprawl that will set you back for a while before your empire can actually convert those raw resources into anything meaningful (not to mention the opportunity cost of claiming a lower value system over a higher value one). Your economy is going to have several different things bottlenecking it at different points in the game, sometimes it's raw resources like minerals, sometimes it's simply a lack of specialist pops.

A counter-argument you will want to anticipate sooner than later is how, exactly, this interacts with recognizability.

Pre-defined sectors will face an issue of signature recognition. If the player can know what, exactly, each sector is likely to hold within a few passes, it will create a natural tier list/prioritization scheme of first expansion targets. This will lead to things like a science ship racing around the neighborhood to identify which high-value sectors they have and then not exploring entire sectors in the name of meta-knowledge, which is in contrast with the current RNG-delivered 'mystery and exploration' where, by virtue of randomness, every galactic start is random.

On a player vs player context, it faces a context where sector RNG replaces galactic spagetti RNG, where multiplayer competitiveness comesdown to who can race down the highest payoff sectors at game start. Rather than a shared burden of everyone being at the mercy of fates, players project success/failure on their sector tier list setup. (I got stuck with a bunch of resource sectors and bad planet sectors- how was I supposed to compete?) Additionally, AI has no future planning capability, and thus no way to fairly compete in this recognition and planning dynamic. Either you end up cheating by giving the AI secret knowledge of where to prioritize exploration (on Hard Difficulty, AI will prioiritize exploring [insert tier list]), OR you have a system set up that only the player can exploit.

Now, there are ways to challenge this...
-Randomize system and planet names, to avoid signature system recognizability
-Randomize in-sector system links, based on settings
-Have so many pre-defined sectors they're too many to tier
-Avoid recognizable sectors by making specific types of deposits, planet classes random.

...but when you have to go out of your way to make pre-defined sectors unrecognizable as pre-defined, you've basically just re-introduced procedural generation. Which is what the game already has.



An example of what this can be like, and a way to approach this, is the Fireaxis map design principle between XCOM and XCOM 2.

XCOM 1 had pre-defined maps- sectors in your parlance- where different maps had defined key buildings, assets, priority terrain, and so on. It also got incredibly boring over the course of the game's lifetime, because after the first hundred+ times there stopped being any mystery in a game that was thematically about the mystery of the alien presence. You would get a general sense of 'if I see this thing HERE, then enemy/important objective will be THERE' and mega-gaming the map became rampant, to the point that on viewing the starting area you could devise a plan on how to sweep the map with minimal time or risk. (In Stellaris terms- bee-lining expansion to the important parts and ignorring the rest).

XCOM 2 went back to procedural generation, but with a patch-work/quilt approach. Instead of purely scripted maps (sectors) or purely procudural generation (Stellaris galaxy gen), they would design a map template, but let procedural generation fill in certain blocks randomly within defined parameters. IE, on this map this 12-x-12 sector is a [Random Residential Building], but which Residential building type was random. An apartment vs a club, etc. Similarly, [Objective Building] could swap between various vaguely-justifaible targets, but which target- or in your context which [special world/mega structure/sector specialty]- was random, as was where the ojbective building was (in your context, which system in the sector has the Special Thing).


A way to develop your proposal further would be to hone in an effective procedural RNG in a patchwork sector system. This can mitigate the problems of purely-defined sectors and meta-gaming, while still trying to approach the concept of weighting sectors between planets and resources and rewards.

As BrokenSky already mentioned, the idea is more to have a set of procedural rules that generates sectors, ensuring a roughly even distribution of interesting features such as resources, etc. Not a kind of 'puzzle piece' system where handmade sectors gets assembled. Of course, an 'algorithm' for generating such sectors will still lead to a kind of recognizability, i.e.: "I already found 2 rare resources in this sector, it's less than 5% probability I will find a third, better survey these other systems first...". Sure, it's a definite problem with sectioning parts of space up into clusters and saying "good stuff is in here", but I personally think it's a relatively minor problem.

I want to say here that I feel your Manufactured resource concept is both the most interesting suggestion you make, but also one of the most counter-productive for the premise of making sectors with resources something key to fight over. This is a down-stream consequence of the existence of refineries, which itself is downstream tendency for empire demand for resources to exceed natural supply.

When a resource is vital and limited to geography, you fight over geography. But when a resource is vital and producible, you re-orient to securing the means of production of it. Raising the cost of production doesn't help either, as any factor of cost is going to favor the empires who can most afford it, ie the widest empires with the most planets to get resources and sectors which already have it naturally.

For a defined sector strategic deposits to be truly significant and fought over, artificial refineries need to go away. But if artificial refineries go away, everything that depends on refineries (upgraded buildings, mega-world districts) needs to be rebalanced as well. Further, you'd need some mitigating factor if you are RNG cursed and don't have the access to the resources because you got the bad-luck templated sectors in your area. Which brings back refineries. Which brings back-

The idea is mainly to keep base resources that power your ability to collect research and unity away from too much 'bad luck RNG'. It's in some sense also a concession for the AI - it can basically just follow a set of planet blueprints and always be able to get good tech and tradition progress.

The issue with advanced resource economies is the AI basically can't engage with them at all, because the AI can neither forward plan nor has the ability to use them in an economically responsible, let alone optimal, way.

AI is really, really, really bad in dealing with moving between conceptual categories. One of the classic examples in strategy game designing is transports- AI programming is notoriously very, very bad at understanding how to use, or how to prioritize, putting assets (units) into one thing (the transport) to get to another context (delivering units). In Crusader Kings, CK3 basically gave up on the concept of navies simply because they were never able get it to work well. In this proposal, the AI has to understand when it is appropriate to pursue an edict, seek the resources to fund it, and then use it at the appropriate time... when functionally the AI has no forward planning skills, but can only act based on what it's current situation is and what might work in a little while going forward. The AI functionally has to already have the resource- and the means to exploit it- to start considering using it.

How much time and resources- including developer work hours that could be spent on other systems- should be spent on a system that the majority of empires in the galaxy (read- everyone but the players) will be incompetent at using?

The rare/strategic resources are still intended to be common enough that a reasonably sized empire will have access to at least 2-3 of them within the sectors they control. Hence the AI empires will end up specializing into the ship designs they can most easily manufacture on their own. As the AI expands by conquering other empires, it will add their unique resources and associated components to their ships as well.

The main issue I can foresee is how to get the AI to plan its terraforming, pop modification, and ascension paths, but I'm not even sure the AI right now is actually doing that? I agree it's a challenge, but other games like the Civilization series has been able to have their AI deal with strategic resources before in some capacity.

What, specifically, would be the relative value of these advanced/unique resources to eachother? They don't have equivalent effects, so either don't have equivalent value (and the value of some should be changing over time), or they do have equivalent value and the AI will trade low-utility resources for higher-payoff resources.

I guess rare/strategic resources should trade roughly at a 1:1 ratio, but the AI should probably keep a kind of weighted list where it does not wish to trade away its least common type of strategic, but be very willing to trade its most abundant for a strategic resource it doesn't currently have. Otherwise the values will be largely dictated by they value on the galactic market. The AI could potentially be set up to check every year if it has a certain surplus of energy credits, and then go and try and do a trade to get some luxury that can boost it. I don't know, I'm not an expert on the topic, but other games have definitely had their AI interact reasonably rationally with limited/strategic resources before.

 

[Frydendahl89]

You're right, this is a better way to do it.

The one thing worth flagging is that I believe that the intention is that the borders of sectors are supposed to be known to the player as these clusters are (in the OP) supposed to correspond 1:1 with political sectors?

Basically something like this:

Black dots are systems, lines are hyperlanes, and the dotted outlines mark a sector border (exact numbers of systems in a sector would be governed by galaxy size and another 'sector size' slider when starting the game, and of course within a random range. Each sector has a dense formation of hyperlanes between its systems, while having natural chokepoints to neighbouring sectors. Once able to fully see the hyperlane network connecting member systems, the sector would be clearly labelled for the player/AI.

I feel like the existence of the hyperlane network in Stellaris should naturally result in a kind of 'galactic archipelago' where sectors are recognized as closed system clusters with clearly defined chokepoints. I know political sectors are normally different in other Sci-Fi, but generally their FTL technology does not have the same restrictions as the hyperlanes do in Stellaris where you can only travel between specific systems.

 

[DeanTheDull]

You're right, this is a better way to do it.

The one thing worth flagging is that I believe that the intention is that the borders of sectors are supposed to be known to the player as these clusters are (in the OP) supposed to correspond 1:1 with political sectors?

To be clear, I think this is a bad idea from a design perspective, and creates problems the OP hadn't considered (or sufficiently adressed). I say this respectfully / in good faith.

 

[klopkr]

I like more specialized resources.

I think there should also be 'illegal' resources that can be outlawed by the GC and unacceptable to certain government types.

Examples:

• Javorian Pox Sample: Same as now but obviously would probably be considered a warcrime.
• Megafocusing Crystals: Necessary to build a colossus.
• Sapient Meat: Like food but made from pops. Not popular as a trade resource.
• Sadistic Weapons: Increases moral damage and war exhaustion from ground combat for your enemy but sure is cruel.
• Addictive compounds: Makes Chemical bliss cheaper but reduces pop growth and makes leaders get addicted and die sooner. Self chemical blissing pops when available in the empire.
• Hallucinogenic Gasses: Spread them from your Atmospheric Hallucinogen event world with all its ups and downs.
• Social Herbs: Space Marijuana/cigarettes. Just a nice little happiness booster for a minor pop growth trade off that for some reason is often made illegal.
• WMDs: For Armageddon Bombardment.
• Radical Texts: Increase ethics shift, can be used to do spy stuff to increase ethics shifts in other empires too!
• Positronic Processors: Can be illegal for religious nations.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I'm not a big expert on the AI, but for everything except the Ascension resources I don't think it's a major issue.

Unless you are a modest-sized expert on AI and going for humorous understatement, this would be a bit of a red flag for the validity of a design proposal.

In the same way that any military strategy that ends with 'and they they lose the will to fight and give up' is highly suspect, 'I don't know this topic, but I don't think it's a big issue' to 'the system can not do this' is not something you want to lead off with. Disagree if you can disprove, but don't ignore if you want to be taken seriously.

The rare/strategic resources are still intended to be common enough that a reasonably sized empire will get access to at least 3-4 of them. They will all be available on the galactic market as well - perhaps a simple workaround is to let other empires buy them from the market as soon as another empire starts selling it to the market.

This goes against the premise that resources should be fought over. The more available/less restrictive a resource is, the less of a need there is to fight for it.

In Civilization, strategic resources and luxuries drive conflict because there's literally no other source. If you want it, you either have to give the owner something of greater value (to them) in exchange, or take it yourself. If you make resources something you can procure with more common resources, players will naturally default to these safer/more productive options rather than riskier/more expensive actions.

That's assuming pops exist to work those jobs - pops who by the way are going to contribute their own sprawl. If you just rapidly claim systems you will build up a large amount of sprawl that will set you back for a while before your empire can actually convert those raw resources into anything meaningful (not to mention the opportunity cost of claiming a lower value system over a higher value one). Your economy is going to have several different things bottlenecking it at different points in the game, sometimes it's raw resources like minerals, sometimes it's simply a lack of specialist pops.

Pop shortages and resource bottleknecks are precisely what make even minor space based resources a greater asset than burden. If you have a bottlekneck of minerals, a science deposit is science you couldn't afford the researcher for, and a mineral deposit is what gets you closer to breaking the bottlekneck. If you have a specialist shortage, science deposits are science you don't have the scientist to research, and minerals are what afford you to move miners to industrial workers.

Pop-free minor resource systems only become net economic systems in two contexts: when the alloy cost is the margin of a war being lost or more costly than it could have been (basically never, since you'd only invest the alloys for such a minor bonus after you've secured higher value resources and military defenses), or if your empire's economy is so large that the 1 admin sprawl costs more than the boost to science (which happens at somewhere around 1000 science mark, way too late for it to be a significant drag).

 

[Ludaire]

I don't think the premade sector idea is needed. You only need something like 0.1-0.3 more unity and research to maintain the same tech and tradition pace after adding a system. The specific number varies based on your size and output, but even those systems with nothing but 3 physics research on the star are worth more than they "cost" in terms of size. Yeah, perception is an issue, but I think it's better to just work on the presentation of size effects instead of introducing more ways to reduce your size.

I like the idea of making strategic resources more interesting, but I don't like this approach. I'd much prefer improving what we have now over throwing a bunch more resources into the mix. More is not always better, and I think Stellaris has benefitted when it's taken the approach of prioritizing quality of features, systems, and options over quantity. "Less is more" feels very true to me when it comes to resources, and I really appreciated the move to fewer resources with more uses. Motes, gas, and crystals are much more memorable and compelling to me than the dozen resources we had before. It's harder for any one thing to be meaningful if you're drowning in different resources to track.

I think the main issue with the strategic resources is the fact that they're required for the basic function of your empire and thus, you have to have a way to manufacture them to not be frustrating. I'd prefer they cut down on what uses them, sticking mainly to plant unique buildings, special districts, edicts, ship cost, and at on. Then remove the refineries so you can't generate an unlimited amount.

This would mean finding a deposit of two volatile motes is exciting because it you can now plop a +25% boost on your biggest mining world and your forge ecumenopolis that you could not get in any other way. It also means you can't use those buffing buildings on every planet; you have to pick and choose. You're a lot more likely to go to war to claim that system with 2 exotic gas if that 2 exotic gas means your empire can support two more ring world research districts.

Quite a few things in the game would need to be adjusted, but I think this direction would be a huge improvement to how meaningful the strategic resources are.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I don't like the concept of predefined sectors. Missing one or two systems in a sector shouldn't prevent me from hiring a governor for all the colonies in the other 10 systems. If you allow governors for partial sectors and I own half of one sector and half of another adjacent sector, I shouldn't be forced to treat them as separate and pay for two governors.

I think a better solution for swiss cheese is increasing the influence cost of starbases if they're more hyperlanes away from your capital than the unclaimed system nearest your capital (ignoring bypasses and systems with hostiles), possibly with a one or two system cushion. Or maybe increasing empire size from sectors relative to the number of hyperlanes they have to systems you or your allies don't control.