Specialist Clerks and Soldiers?

[TheIronRelic]

Something that always seemed weird to me about the job system is that soldiers and clerks are workers. And sure, shopkeepers, transportation people, infantry etc can be workers, but what about lawyers, financiers, property owners, politicians, mid-level bueracrats, IT people, therapists, teachers, medical people, architects and military officers? While the Ruling class Administrator seems to represent both high-level government workers and the general social elite, what about more mid-level people?

People always talk about how the future of the economy in post-industrial societies is uniquely service based, or knowledge based, on tertiary and quatenary sectors of the economy, yet even in utopia-esque stellaris civs, vast amounts of my population are dedicated to raw resources and production not really comparable to advanced nations today.

My proposal would be to have every city district and every commercial zone produce one "Professional" job, which act as a more advanced clerk, producing extra amenities and trade value. In addition, as long as there is at least one fortress on a planet, a job called "officer" is added, which produce tons of defensive armies, unity and some lowered crime.

Of course, the number of normal clerks produced by city districts and commercial zones would be rebalanced, but it would at least help with roleplaying certain societies.

 

[AGenericAccount]

Jeez, stellaris society isn't stratified enough? Now we need like one special supervisor for every 4 workers.

I honestly have come to appreciate the caste system in stellaris, it's simple enough but still cool.

 

[TheIronRelic]

In addition, I think it would be cool that in any free, non-authoritarian socities, to have at least one pop forcibly unemployed no matter what, to represent the elderly, children, severely disbaled and other people who need to be cared for and can't work jobs. So if you have no social welfare, these people just kind of suffer and do nothing, but if you are socialist you have to spend resources to care for them.

 

[AGenericAccount]

but that's what the planet blockers are for... I have cleared so many sprawling slums, not to mention the events where slums get added to my planet

 

[beckermt]

but that's what the planet blockers are for... I have cleared so many sprawling slums, not to mention the events where slums get added to my planet

Best event ever! Spend 100 EC, get a Pop!! So good.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

In addition, I think it would be cool that in any free, non-authoritarian socities, to have at least one pop forcibly unemployed no matter what, to represent the elderly, children, severely disbaled and other people who need to be cared for and can't work jobs. So if you have no social welfare, these people just kind of suffer and do nothing, but if you are socialist you have to spend resources to care for them.

I have mixed feelings. I like simplicity (and a lot of 2.2 has taken a while for me to enjoy because of the added complexity) while also wanting planets to feel more real and alive. I do like the idea of the game representing other groups like children, disabled and elderly. But I don't think the suggested implementation would work in the current system, certainly not with the current UI - you'd have posts saying "why can't we just kill the children to make the outliner nice and clear" because of the permanent unemployment icons.

Instead I'd add an extra stratum like pre-sapients. Lots of extra jobs, preferably with those pops not being considered in the planet population figures and being given freely to the planet on upgrading the capital, when your normal/imperial population grows and for the bonus civilians to have low upkeep, but with civics and techs that can make them more significant.

A planet could have 2 children, 3 elderly, 1 disabled, 6 civilians in training for example. I'd have the number of these jobs be based on the administration building/capital with some like "disabled" being increased by planetary devastation and have a more significant impact (i.e. extra disabled pops are technically promoted to those jobs from regular workers, demoting back to normal jobs over 10 years once devastation is lowered and the disabled jobs are removed).

I admit it wouldn't add much more than a small bonus to certain living standards as well as a roleplaying aspect. But if the system required very little interaction and was balanced so as to not interfere with other gameplay elements it would be an interesting addition. Also I can imagine if the system was implemented it could be easily tied into other systems like civics granting some thematic named civilian jobs, showing other industries on the planet, planetary specialization swapping some of the civilian jobs into something different, education policies granting extra research output for children/in training etc.

e.g.
Planetary Administration
Civilian Strata
+1 children (+1 per 5 pops)
+1 civilian (+1 per 5 pops)
(pops given for free, do not apply to housing, amenity, building unlocks etc.)
Planetary Capital
+2 children (+1 per 10 pops, +1 for rapid breeders, -1 for slow breeders/enduring/venerable)
+4 civilian (+1 per 5 pops)
+1 elderly (+1 per 10 pops, +1 for fleeting pops on planet, -1 for venerable on planet)
+1 disabled (+1 job slot per 10 planetary devastation, pops taken from normal pool, reducing effective planetary population - potentially ruining 2 buildings without killing 10 pops)

I think the reason I like this idea is that I always liked in Sword of the Stars (1 not 2) how the population figures were split between imperial and civilian, and how different the Zuul felt because they lacked civilians. Stellaris after 2.2 could do something similar. You could move some current mechanics over to this system to fully integrate it, e.g. income from "trade value per population" moved to civilian job output - so your slave miners aren't buying lots of space ipods but your free civilians are. Higher tier living standards could then also apply to these civilian pops without requiring every world to have high emigration due to unemployment and lost growth. Also if you had injured pops 5 years after a war, long after the planet was repaired it would be an interesting reminder of the planet's history. Or more elderly pops in a fleeting empire. More children in a rapid breeders empire etc. It's all possible with the new system... It would just need a good UI, to not interfere with the current system and require little direct interaction.

 

[Chthon]

Something that always seemed weird to me about the job system is that soldiers and clerks are workers. And sure, shopkeepers, transportation people, infantry etc can be workers, but what about lawyers, financiers, property owners, politicians, mid-level bueracrats, IT people, therapists, teachers, medical people, architects and military officers? While the Ruling class Administrator seems to represent both high-level government workers and the general social elite, what about more mid-level people?

People always talk about how the future of the economy in post-industrial societies is uniquely service based, or knowledge based, on tertiary and quatenary sectors of the economy, yet even in utopia-esque stellaris civs, vast amounts of my population are dedicated to raw resources and production not really comparable to advanced nations today.

My proposal would be to have every city district and every commercial zone produce one "Professional" job, which act as a more advanced clerk, producing extra amenities and trade value. In addition, as long as there is at least one fortress on a planet, a job called "officer" is added, which produce tons of defensive armies, unity and some lowered crime.

Of course, the number of normal clerks produced by city districts and commercial zones would be rebalanced, but it would at least help with roleplaying certain societies.

The 3rd from the left top row of traditions gives you something along this line already. It gives you 1 merchant job for every 50 populations. This is someone who produces trade value, and is a ruler job. By and far it's a very useful bonus, but now you're saying that it should be free, rather than a choice you give your citizens. As such I'm going to have to disagree with you because you're taking something from the tradition tree, giving it for free, and not leaving something in it's place.

In fact, what you are proposing is far better than the tradition tree.

 

[TheIronRelic]

Based on that logic, has Earth in the 21st century, which has all of these white-collar type workers have a merchant pop? I don't see how the merchant pop represents lawyers or teachers at all, they represent merchants, and I presume, the associated business stuff they set up. Obviously the professional job provided should be inferior in value than the merchant pop, and perhaps not even be that useful, but I think it would still flesh out the roleplaying aspect.

It's just weird to have clerks represent everything from pink collar work to white collar work, all at the lowest social stratum, at the same level with miners and farmers. Surely these people are at least definitionally middle class!

 

[Chthon]

Based on that logic, has Earth in the 21st century, which has all of these white-collar type workers have a merchant pop? I don't see how the merchant pop represents lawyers or teachers at all, they represent merchants, and I presume, the associated business stuff they set up. Obviously the professional job provided should be inferior in value than the merchant pop, and perhaps not even be that useful, but I think it would still flesh out the roleplaying aspect.

It's just weird to have clerks represent everything from pink collar work to white collar work, all at the lowest social stratum, at the same level with miners and farmers. Surely these people are at least definitionally middle class!

Do you really think most Teachers are above the worker stratum, especially in the USA? They are by and far the most underpaid profession and most do it still simply because someone has to help the next generation.

Professors are better, but less numerous by a whole factor.

Also, stop equating 1 pop in game with one real life job in real life. That will never work. A pop and job in game are a concept of a set of positions of some unknown quantity.

 

[EvilTom]

In addition, I think it would be cool that in any free, non-authoritarian socities, to have at least one pop forcibly unemployed no matter what, to represent the elderly, children, severely disbaled and other people who need to be cared for and can't work jobs. So if you have no social welfare, these people just kind of suffer and do nothing, but if you are socialist you have to spend resources to care for them.

I always assumed that a POP never represented everyone, but represented the "useful" people, ie: those who can work. I know when you remove the last pop a colony is abandoned, but that's a proxy.

Otherwise I thought Clerks didn't just represent low level civil servants, but shop sales people, waiters, waitresses, call centre people, low paid non-manual intensive jobs.
Merchants would be the skilled people who are in the private sphere, whereas administrators were high level in the public sector.
I assume teachers were bundled in with researchers.

There's a lot of assumptions in there for me, but you need a little bit of proxy-work and imagination.

 

[TheIronRelic]

I'm not equating 1 pop in game with 1 pop in real life, I'm just showing how having all "amenity+trade value" producing jobs as only ruler strata and worker strat is nonsense by giving examples of major specialist/middle class fields that, in stellaris logic, produce amenities and trade value. The proposed professional job obviously doesn't represent a single job, it represents an abstract "middle-class amenity/trade value producing job." I brought up examples like academics and lawyers as examples of well paid and politically influential types of people who are represented as worker strata.

There are just entire sectors of the economy totally unrepresented in Stellaris' pop system. If I want to make an empire of accountants, lawyers, managers, and auditors and the like, then it is literally unrepresentable. The proposed Professional job just allows the potential for a specialist job to produce amenities and trade+value, without having the high-class merchant job be a stand in for that.

 

[EvilTom]

So there should be a specialist tier clerk job inbetween the worker tier and ruler tier?

Sure. I'm up with that.

 

[Chthon]

Honestly, I worry that adding more to the mix will just make the economy too complex. It doesn't need to perfectly represent reality, because none of us know the reality of a hive of space mushrooms, or a collective of robot exterminators, or even a lizard democracy, and how they would work.

Equating everything to what we have on Earth is a very humanocentric view of things, and not necessarily how a Giant Killer Space Bug Oligarchy would do things.

 

[Bearjuden]

In addition, I think it would be cool that in any free, non-authoritarian socities, to have at least one pop forcibly unemployed no matter what, to represent the elderly, children, severely disbaled and other people who need to be cared for and can't work jobs. So if you have no social welfare, these people just kind of suffer and do nothing, but if you are socialist you have to spend resources to care for them.

I think this can be sufficiently assumed to be entailed within one pop. So one pop in game comprises an entire age range from birth to death. The upkeep of that pop entails the total upkeep of all those ages, no matter the form that upkeep takes, while the jobs output is handled only by the working age portion of it.

Thus, this is not necessary. What you could do is make certain authoritarian societies have access to a civic called, say, "Cradle to Grave" which significantly reduces worker strata upkeep and/or increases worker strata output (representing the same effect you want with less finagling).

 

[TheIronRelic]

That's fair, that one pop unemployment idea is just a random thing i thought of last minute. The consumer good cost for a working pop probably also covers that pop's dependents or however you want to write it off.

Still, having a specialist tier strata clerk is all I'm asking, I don't think its that complicated. Oh and then maybe a dedicated military specialist tier strata job would be nice, but technically I suppose enforcers covers that, although I find it weird that the Police are on a higher tier than the military.