Space in 2.2

[Losttruppen]

I've played a couple of games in 2.2 so far and I'm really disappointed in the state of the game outside of the planets.

PDX set out to make planets more interesting with a complete overhaul that while I feel will probably alienate people who liked stellaris because it was so different from the other PDX grand strategy games, does add a lot of potential to the game and increases the depth.

The problem I see is they focused entirely on how the new resource system works on planets, and completely forgot about the whole space between them. Not only are planets producing exponentially more resources than before, space based resource production actually was nerfed substantially.

Anomalies, one of the coolest parts of exploration have had most of the resource rewards nerfed by upwards of 50%. Most systems give a paltry +2 energy from their sun; a giant ball of nuclear fire gives less resources than a single "pop" working at one of 30 power stations on a planet. Cracking open a planet gives less minerals than a single mining district.

I used to love sending out my science ship and finding a nearby Black Hole or Neutron Star so I could double my science early game. Now I get ~30 of each from my starting research building and the coolest things in our entire galaxy are hardly even worth the extra upkeep from owning another sector. I used to play tall and only colonize 5-10 planets in a game before moving on to habitats and ringworlds but now I need to colonize a bunch of inadequate low-habitability planets just to harvest a sustainable amount of minerals.

I applaud the boldness and effort this patch must have taken but it feels like the job is only half done in implementing this new resource system. I was drawn to this game because it took me to the stars, but in 2.2 all I've found was a cold empty space with very little to keep me there.

I believe we will probably see this in the future, but I feel we should have had the new worker system implemented into stations. This would allow them to grow as your empire does which was always a complaint about them. You could offload workers from overcrowded planets without needing to go wide.

Give us stations that can house our slaves and offworld workers. Let them spawn small revolts that could spread to other stations and systems and build into a threat if not dealt with quickly but not cause us to lose a fully developed planet unless we really neglect the rebels. Let us specialize the resource production of an asteroid belt system or one with an abundance of gas giants and not rely on these planets getting lucky when they spawn to even provide resources. They could have modifiers from unique systems and stellar bodies.

If it doesn't add too much strain to performance, I feel every stellar body should have the potential for planetary features and modifiers. Let me go tall on the galaxy map, not just planets.

I feel this new resource system opened up a lot of possibilities, but in its current implementation is only really half finished and not at all balanced.

 

[Evangeline]

I agree with some of your points, except when you say that it's unbelievable that a sun would give less energy than one pop: one pop is generally defined (according to developer streams) as around 500 million people. So a generator district means that 2 times 500 million people (one *billion*) are all working on solar panels, wind energy, atomic power, whatever. Whereas there is only so much space in a mining station orbiting a sun - sure the sun itself may produce a lot of raw energy, but it's realistic that not much of it can actually be gathered and processed with a mining station.

If you want more, learn to build one of the megastructures and habitats - plus space stations can produce huge amounts of trade now. It's just that now you need to do more than build little mining stations to actually make better use of all the space in between the planets. [Disclaimer: I usually play with the setting for the number of habitable planets turned up quite a bit so I don't have much empty space, anyway - more planets means more fun for me.]

In addition, nerfing "space" as a resource production source in favor of planets makes tall strategies more viable, which must be great for people who find themselves boxed in in early game or those who like tall empires.

 

[Losttruppen]

So why can't I build up a space station to house a couple pops? In the expanse books humans have resource bases on many of our local stellar bodies, some with upwards of a million people, I would love the ability to make full use of a star system like this and not have literally everything tied to planets. In an effort to make planets more unique and special, they've implemented a meta game that favours going really wide and colonizing a large number of planets to get the minerals needed to snowball.

 

[lemmox]

So you hijack an entire other thread complaining about how the game is too complicated for you now, after starting a thread proposing adding more complexity?

I agree, there are plenty of areas for potential improvement - I even like some of your proposals here - but I am entirely unclear about what you actually want out of this game. What you proposed here is very much like the development direction of Paradox games, and represents a minor redirect, if at all, from their current trajectory.

The patch needs some debugging, they definitely need to flesh out the galaxy more and work on balance. But they're on track to do all those things, and the current patch was a huge improvement in that regard.

 

[SpectralShade]

So you hijack an entire other thread complaining about how the game is too complicated for you now, after starting a thread proposing adding more complexity?

I agree, there are plenty of areas for potential improvement - I even like some of your proposals here - but I am entirely unclear about what you actually want out of this game. What you proposed here is very much like the development direction of Paradox games, and represents a minor redirect, if at all, from their current trajectory.

The patch needs some debugging, they definitely need to flesh out the galaxy more and work on balance. But they're on track to do all those things, and the current patch was a huge improvement in that regard.

seriously, are you stalking the dude just to hurl insults at him?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

So why can't I build up a space station to house a couple pops? In the expanse books humans have resource bases on many of our local stellar bodies, some with upwards of a million people, I would love the ability to make full use of a star system like this and not have literally everything tied to planets. In an effort to make planets more unique and special, they've implemented a meta game that favours going really wide and colonizing a large number of planets to get the minerals needed to snowball.

You can. They're called Habitats.

 

[Linusz]

I think the idea behind the "one starbase per resource, not expandable" is, that only a fraction of an actual stellaris pop may live on a star base (mining, research or whatever). Even if it is 1 million, it is still only 0,2 % of a pop if we take that 500 billion per pop number as a reference. So how much resource there will be available does not matter. What will matter is how easy that resource is accesible and I think that is what actual numbers of in-space resources represent.

There are several possible ways (that I see) to change this:
1. Refrain from mining stations as actual "miners". Instead, create "mining convoys" that travel to a resource source, mine from it, and bring it back to a planet. This can be abstracted by building a kind of "depot" on the planet the miners come from. Every resource has a certain size which allows for a specific number currently active mining convoys (starting with 0 or 1 or whatever mining slots). The more far away a resource is, the more convoys are needed to use the full potential of a source (due to distance and travel time). This might actually be useful to make the galaxy more crowded and lively. Though I think displaying single mining convoys will crush performance even more. Hence just put in numbers and make it abstract with no physical presence on the map.

2. Make pop have digit numbers and mining stations upgradeable. This would also allow to get rid of the unrealistic pop growth model. It still seems strange to me that pops grow and from one moment to the next 500 million new pops show up. Why making digit number pops available, shoud not be that much of a programming hassle. This would also allow for space stations to actually house pops, e.g. on a space station there live 0,002 pops in the beginning. This is upgradeable through investment until one might get a space station that is worth a megastructure but also yields similar amounts of resources.


Final remark: I totally see the OP's point. Space feels useless these times. But there has also been this other idea of "free space worlds", like the city states in Civ. So leaving space empty would also yield other future possibilities.

 

[Evangeline]

You can. They're called Habitats.

Exactly, I just don't get this criticism since there are so many off-world things such as habitats you can build in late game. OP, have you reached the late game yet? There's really a lot you can do then that you can't do in the beginning. There are also new research options that improve the output of mining stations, so it doesn't actually stay at the lackluster +2 energy that you get in the beginning.

 

[evilcat]

It is very rare now that system is worth it. The administrative cost is high 2x district. So system need to produce around 20 minerals. It happens to have something close, but more often it has 5.
It is very rare to have systems worth it.

We can have habitats, to fill with slaves and other stuff. However it said that habitats are now worse.

 

[Hyomoto]

I have a different experience because I have guaranteed planets turned off. Space is full of valuable resources, and it's hardly uncommon to find systems that have 9 minerals or energy in them. Now, the difference is that space doesn't keep up with planets. And that's where I can agree with you. Your planets become more and more densely populated, more and more jobs, and the buildings improve with bonuses. Your mining stations can get +10% bonuses, but at no point are you able to build more of them.

I don't think space is as anemic as you make it out to be, but I agree it has no potential for redevelopment and that's one of the strongest, and most valuable, aspects of planets. If we could build upgraded mining stations that perhaps used rare minerals to boost output that would pretty much solve that.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

The problem I see is they focused entirely on how the new resource system works on planets, and completely forgot about the whole space between them. Not only are planets producing exponentially more resources than before, space based resource production actually was nerfed substantially.

Anomalies, one of the coolest parts of exploration have had most of the resource rewards nerfed by upwards of 50%. Most systems give a paltry +2 energy from their sun; a giant ball of nuclear fire gives less resources than a single "pop" working at one of 30 power stations on a planet. Cracking open a planet gives less minerals than a single mining district.

Don't think about this too hard.

Realistically, almost everything should be automated, but Stellaris being based on works like Star Wars, has slaves doing manual labor and workers with space pickaxes in 19th-century-style space mines.

Whereas there is only so much space in a mining station orbiting a sun

Are you suggesting that there's a space limitation... in space?

 

[Evangeline]

I don't understand why two separate people have refused to read the word "mining station" in my sentence about there not being as much space in a mining station as there is on a planet. Are you guys trolling me? It's a small mining station, not space itself. In the beginning, you're not even able to build anything larger than a corvette. So we can assume that a mining station is about as large as a corvette ship, maybe a little larger. That's not as big as a planet. We don't have the technological means in the early game to support lots and lots of people working and living in space, that only becomes possibe once we research habitats.

Furthermore, it's only in the very beginning that you see something like "2 energy, 3 minerals" in a system. With your own technological advances, these numbers get bigger and bigger, reflecting your own ability to build more in space, until the numbers suddenly look exactly like in the old days in mid-game. The only thing that's changed is that we no longer have the early game mining station rush and that their usefulness now scales in proportion to your empire. Compare this screenshot from my current game which reflects how space looks in midgame:

As you can see, these systems give me tons of minerals, research, trade goods, etc.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I don't understand why two separate people have refused to read the word "mining station" in my sentence about there not being as much space in a mining station as there is on a planet.

...build a bigger mining station?

 

[Linusz]

Don't think about this too hard.
Are you suggesting that there's a space limitation... in space?

Yep, in terms of needed resources. The more room you want to create in space, the more resources you need. Since all stations cost the same, I assume they are all of the same size. So why should the identical station mine more or less in terms of different resources with the same potential in terms of housed workers? Simply because there it is easier to mine them in the case of some resources, so the same amount of people can mine more.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Yep, in terms of needed resources. The more room you want to create in space, the more resources you need.

Step 1. Harvest resources.
Step 2. Use some of those resources to build a bigger station.
Step 3. Harvest more resources.
Step 4. Use some of those resources to build a bigger station.
Step 5. Repeat ad infinitum.

Which leads to:

Since all stations cost the same, I assume they are all of the same size. So why should the identical station mine more or less in terms of different resources with the same potential in terms of housed workers? Simply because there it is easier to mine them in the case of some resources, so the same amount of people can mine more.

This is a strong argument for why mining stations should be upgradeable, which in itself is directly related to OP's concern that the game is too planet-based.

Both you and the person I quoted are being incredibly unimaginative with your responses. All stations don't have to cost the same or even be the same. They also don't have to have people on them either; one could imagine a scenario with a station with resource-harvesting drones that use technology that already exists in the real world.

...and there's also the fact that if you can't have bigger stations, you can just build more stations. The whole reason I quoted that other person was because he implied that there was some real estate limitation around stars that somehow didn't apply to planets.

 

[Evangeline]

Mining stations already ARE upgradable, as I've shown you, they just upgrade AUTOMATICALLY when you research the necessary tech. You research the tech and voilà suddenly your station harvests twice as much. You research another tech and again it is upgraded, just without you having to do so manually.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

Space is full of resources and energy, but being able to extract, process and store all of this is the hard part. The headcanon I've had for mining and research deposits is that the represent particularly easy to extract deposits of raw resources or interesting phenomena. Obviously every barren planet is going to be chock full of minerals, but it may not ever be economical to extract them, so they don't show up as mineral deposits. Same with energy deposits. Of course stars are pouring out energy, but it's over a very large and diffuse area. Stars that have an energy deposit associated with them might have, for example, strong solar flares at predictable intervals that result in energy being concentrated in one place for easy collection in large enough amounts to be worthwhile.

We already have station upgrades in the form of technology that increases station output. I think the increase percentages are too low, so they could be buffed a bit. I absolutely would not want upgradable stations because that would be a nightmare for all but the smallest empires.

I also agree that space-based resources need to be buffed so that they are comparable with what planets produce, or at least in the same sort of ratio as we had with 2.1.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Mining stations already ARE upgradable, as I've shown you, they just upgrade AUTOMATICALLY when you research the necessary tech. You research the tech and voilà suddenly your station harvests twice as much. You research another tech and again it is upgraded, just without you having to do so manually.

Yes, and I ignored that part because it's irrelevant.

You implied that there was some real estate limitation, which is entirely about the size and amount of space stations, not how technologically advanced they are. We're talking about development and infrastructure, not how advanced the space pickaxes are.

My home system has been part of my empire for centuries, but it harvests the same amount of resources from its star as a fringe system? Surely somebody across my vast empire would have thought to build a second mining station around my home system's star.

That's the entire point of this thread: for some reason, the actual space in this space game is forgotten about.

 

[Losttruppen]

I don't understand why two separate people have refused to read the word "mining station" in my sentence about there not being as much space in a mining station as there is on a planet.

The problem I see is that a single mining station produces less than a single district, not a whole planet. It's also just really depressing to survey my immediate surroundings in the early game and see less resources in 10 systems than a size 10 planet could produce.

I understand that there are habitats, megastructures, and station output techs, but these all come very late into the game and require you to have established a bunch of colonies to even get the research and resources they require. The new economy just completely screwed over very tall, low colony playstyles for the first 60-100 years where before we could supplement them with a viable space economy.

Perhaps its just a matter of tweaking values to be more competitive, as with certain technologies that have been left behind by 2.2(looking at you +2 unity), but I feel there is a great opportunity to include the new system into the space stations that would open up not only gameplay options but increase the lore and feeling that we have colonized the systems and not just a couple planets with a void between them.

 

[Linusz]

Yes, and I ignored that part because it's irrelevant.

You implied that there was some real estate limitation, which is entirely about the size and amount of space stations, not how technologically advanced they are. We're talking about development and infrastructure, not how advanced the space pickaxes are.

My home system has been part of my empire for centuries, but it harvests the same amount of resources from its star as a fringe system? Surely somebody across my vast empire would have thought to build a second mining station around my home system's star.

That's the entire point of this thread: for some reason, the actual space in this space game is forgotten about.

Dude, please read all of my posts in this thread. I made 2 suggestions of how this could be changed, very similar to your ideas. So please stop judging if you are not willing to take all information into account. That is trump-style.

The second thing is: My 2nd and 3rd post described the present system and how it might break down realtiy under possible assumptions made. It says NOTHING about what is realistic or might be a possible solution. Which brings me back to: read the stuff presented to you more carefully and do not make up your mind too quickly.