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Stellaris Dev Diary #192 : Perfectly Balanced, As All Things Should Be...

Hello!

This week we’re going to look at some more changes we're planning, as well as a review of how some of the experiments mentioned in the last few dev diaries have evolved.

Thank you for the massive amount of feedback in those threads.

Reduction in Pops

Due to the effects on performance and a desire to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game, some of the things we’ve been deeply looking into are different ways of dramatically reducing the number of pops in the galaxy.

These experiments have generally revolved around modifying the growth (or assembly required) for pops as an empire’s population grows, with some variants trying a logistic pop growth (where growth follows an S-shaped curve as planets develop, based on a carrying capacity of a planet). These experiments have reduced the end date pop count to somewhere around one half of the old numbers with the expected performance improvements.

Organic pops will follow a curve where they begin at standard population growth, increase growth as the approach a midpoint between population and the planetary carrying capacity, then slow down to zero as they reach the top of the curve. Pop Assembly, on the other hand, is generally slow but consistent. The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does.

A significant reduction in pops has a cascade of major implications for the overall economy, production, and other gameplay effects. As such, these also require a pass on buildings, technologies, and even seemingly minor ripple effects like what the value should be for the trade value generated by pops.

There will be a lot of patch notes.

Most buildings have been standardized to now give 2 jobs per tier rather than the old 2/5/8 progression.

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Just one example of many.

We’ve also changed a few buildings to have new or additional features, such as the Spawning Pool and Clone Vats, which have had their Pop Growth modifiers replaced with the new Organic Pop Assembly. This fills the same slot on the planet as Robotic Pop Assembly, so generally you’ll want to pick one or the other. (Clone Vats also picked up a food upkeep cost to represent simple materials to break down.)

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Pops is Soylent Green!

A few other jobs got minor perks added to them, like the Medical Workers from Gene Clinics making it a little easier to live on less hospitable worlds.

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Doesn't normally produce exotic gas, this one happens to be a lithoid.

And a few new techs have been added to help compensate for lost productivity. One tech line increases both the job production of a planet as well as job upkeep - those fewer pops are still capable of producing the work of more on a developed planet.

Ring Worlds

As part of the balance pass, Ring Worlds have been bumped up to 10 segments from 5, and the jobs per segment have been adjusted.

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The Shattered Ring origin now possesses a warning that it may be a Challenging Origin for Lithoids due to a scarcity of minerals, and now also applies the Ring World Habitability Preference to your pops. We’re considering adding a similar warning for Hives selecting the origin, since the habitability preference change puts a serious crimp in their expansion.

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Put a ring on it?

Their starting blockers have also been adjusted to give a more balanced spread of jobs.

Ecumenopoleis

Like the Ring Worlds, these start with all building slots open. As mentioned before, you can now use the Arcology Project decision on a planet that has a mix of City and Industrial Districts.

Note: Empire has all technologies but no traditions active.
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The ecumenopolis has a unique distinction of being able to have both the Factory and Foundry building lines on the same planet.

Habitats

The changes to Habitat modules are much smaller in scope, but here’s the list of their districts.

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Void Dwellers have gotten a bit of attention as well with some tradition swaps for those that had minimal or no beneficial effects for them.

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Replacing Public Works Division:
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And for Void Dwellers with the Adaptability tree:
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Interstellar Franchising and Imperious Architecture now also function for Habitats.

Updates to Dev Diary 190

Some of these updates may not be new to people following the forum threads, but it's easy to miss things so I figured we should go over them.

Many people requested the ability to fully specialize their foundry and factory worlds. We've modified the Forge and Industrial World planet designations to shift one pop on each Industrial District to the appropriate job if possible.

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We've also upgraded the Food Processing Center, Mineral Purification Hub, and Energy Nexus to provide an extra job to each of their associated resource production districts. (The Food Processing Center will also improve Hydroponics Farms.)

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One of the suggestions made in the thread was to add a civic that increases unlocked Building Slots. Sounded like a great addition to Functional Architecture.

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Functionality increased!

Updates to Dev Diary 191

We’ve explored some additional options regarding the resettlement system we outlined in Dev Diary 191, and after trying a few things, and have settled on some extensive modifications to the system.

All planets with free sapient unemployed pops that are not locked down by migration controls will have a small chance every month of moving one to another planet within their empire that has jobs that they are willing and able to work, housing, and habitability of 40% or higher. This chance is increased if there are multiple unemployed pops that meet the criteria.

The system now prefers to move higher strata pops first, so rulers and specialists will move before workers, and this system also functions for gestalt empires. It will not relocate non-sapient robots or slaves. It will generally prefer to move pops to the planets with the most free jobs.

After some experimentation we’ve chosen to keep the Transit Hubs as Starbase Buildings that provide a system wide buff to the chance of auto-resettlement occurring. (Rather than being essential to have it occur in the first place.)

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Doubles the chance the pops choose to resettle themselves.

Greater Than Ourselves has been rewritten to also massively increase this chance when the edict is active, with a +200% bonus.

We initially had these pops considering destinations available through Migration Pacts as well, but decided against keeping that since it introduced a new Migration Controls micromanagement element that we didn’t find desirable.

We’ve also done a minor update to the Authority bonuses that seemed a little bit weak.

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Democracies now have a bonus encouraging their pops to seek their dreams, and Dictatorships have a bit of an easier time holding things together when they’re a bit overstretched.

Closing Thoughts

One other little quality of life improvement that was just added is this filter on the colonization interface.

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That’s probably long enough for today. We’re looking forward to your feedback on these as well.

Next week w̷e̵'̸l̸l̴ ̴b̸e̴t̵̮̄ǎ̸͈l̷̠̈k̴͔͂i̴̞͒n̷̪͊g̸̳͗ ̸͚̎a̵͉̐b̵̤̿ȯ̴̲ṵ̵̀t̸͇͂ ҈҂▒©╛⅜

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Great Update, really nice to see you guys paying attention to player feedback

Just a few questions and suggestions. Since we're getting the S Curve like baby booms for pop growth, where does rapid breeders fit in with this. Will it just be a flat rate to pop growth in general, or will it increase change the thresholds/dynamics of how the S curve works?

As someone who is an avid Fan Egalitarian player I'm loving the bonus to Democratic gov types and the general gov types in general. What I do want to get at though is if the Base Egalitarian edict (The one that increases ethic shift chance) Will be getting an overhaul to be more in line with the new resettlement aspect?

Me and my friend came up with some idea such as replacing it with an edict that increases faction influence gain by +15% or something (Faction debates or something) but tying more into the automatic resettlement might be more in line.

Just my two cents of course but please keep up the great work!
 
I agree. I would love to see something like the deposits giving jobs per X pops (like spore vents event deposit does!) and then the extraction building could be a planet unique +25% output bonus + a job.

That would be great! The +2/+2/+2 from Gaia Worlds deposit would be so much useful and feel that it has actual special value under this idea.

Yes! please.
 
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Life seeded could do with a little bump.
"Gaia World terraforming option"​

I feel like them starting with the terraforming option to gaia worlds would allow them to catch up trough the mid game. You'd still have to rush terraforming techs though. It'd keep them distinct from Voidborne and Ring world starts if they have this clear path without having to take an ascension perk.


Making Life Seeded ACTUALLY unique would be nice. Changing the District count to 30 would be an easy way to do that - not a major change, but again - unique. At one time one of the FE had a 30 count homeworld, so it is not unheard of as a concept.

Should also have like x5 chance for Terraforming techs.
 
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At one time one of the FE had a 30 count homeworld, so it is not unheard of as a concept.
The celestial throne (spiritualist FE) is currently size 30. It makes for a wonderful machine world with all those slots.

With all homeworlds getting +2 size, and the Lifeseeded start really needing some help as it is, going above 25 wouldn't be a bad choice (Remnants is size 22 already, should be going to 24.) If they don't want to change the planet size over 25, throwing it extra district slots, like the expansion finisher or the reward for the subterranean event chain, could work too.

That said, lifeseeded could use other benefits; for example, starting with a few extra pops (it's a fertile paradise after all) or with the new pop system, perhaps their homeworld is exempt from logistics curve slowdown in growth until they hit carry capacity, etc.
 
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The celestial throne (spiritualist FE) is currently size 30. It makes for a wonderful machine world with all those slots.

With all homeworlds getting +2 size, and the Lifeseeded start really needing some help as it is, going above 25 wouldn't be a bad choice (Remnants is size 22 already, should be going to 24.) If they don't want to change the planet size over 25, throwing it extra district slots, like the expansion finisher or the reward for the subterranean event chain, could work too.

That said, lifeseeded could use other benefits; for example, starting with a few extra pops (it's a fertile paradise after all) or with the new pop system, perhaps their homeworld is exempt from logistics curve slowdown in growth until they hit carry capacity, etc.

Life seeded could also just get guaranteed Gaia planets. If one planet was made to be a perfect paradise, why not more? Part of the problem is just Gaia planets themselves being fairly underwhelming though, just buffing Gaia planets as a class might do it.
 
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I think these changes are not really getting at the FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE with population. The goal of these changes seems to be to reduce population by simply reducing the rate at which they grow. But this approach fundamentally fails to address the real issue at play. POPs = Power.

When Stellaris changed over to the new economic system there was a drastic shift in the mentality of the economy which everyone seems to have noticed but no one every truly addresses. The issue of more pops means more power is a direct result of the way the job system functions. The majority of the tech, buildings, and districts bonuses revolve around giving you more jobs which means to get any benefit from that you need more people.

This is a stark contrast to how release version Stellaris and other 4X/GS games tend to function. Where increases focus more on improving the output of existing populations. This is what makes TALL builds possible as various bonuses from Techs, Buildings, Empire Bonuses, and etc can make it so that empires with fewer population can compete with empires that have large populations since the Tall empires's production per pop is higher. Granted not all games do this well but the general attempt to find this balance is there. Stellaris release had a great attempt at this as building upgrades meant the population working that building would produce more. Also being on a grid system the building placement mattered a lot because of adjacent bonuses which if done right could make a huge difference. The AI could not handle proper placement well which is what lead to it being scraped for the current system.

Sure no game gets this balance of Tall vs Wide perfect but in the current Stellaris "Balance" discussion I see no mention of this issue even being considered. Instead it's all about lower pop growth, district/building changes to make it easier for AI to function. Sure the performance gains from smaller pops will be nice but it feels more like a bandage rather than getting at the root of the issue. The new system seems a lot like the current system with slower pop growth. I mean I've played lots of mods, including those that added new districts for alloys/CG/etc. And my take away was yeah it's great to have more district options and it should be in base game, but it doesn't really change the game economy's need for pops at all.

In my opinion they should move all base production to districts. Get rid of those research labs and bureaucrat centers as they are the only remaining hold out from the old building system and simply turn them into disctricts as well. After all according to the Devs the AI does poorly at proper building management. Instead buildings should primarily be bonuses. Like the Mineral/Energy/Food hubs that give +10%/+25% based on their upgrade. And with a focus on buildings as specialization I think there should be MORE buildings of that type since we no longer need to building spam tons of Alloy/CG on planets. The upgrade could be split into two separate buildings so instead you have a +10% and +15% building and it's fine if buildings still give jobs they just shouldn't be the primary source of jobs. You should pick the building based on how it improves the planet specialization rather than the job count it gives.

With more building focus can come more content and flavor to the game. Currently a LOT of buildings are one off bonuses which kinda suck. For example the Betharian Power Plant. Sure it gives 10 energy with some tech jobs but let's face it that is nothing mid-late game. How about instead it's a +1 energy per Tech on the planet. This encourages players to specialize the planet and the more Tech jobs they have the bigger the bonus. After all this is a unique building it should feel like it is influencing the planet's economy and not just a one off flat bonus. The same goes for Alien Zoo which could give bonuses to clerk/entertainers as the sell unique merchandise and put on shows with the exotic animals.

Also making stratigic mines actually worth something would be nice. I find strategic resource mines are often so rare they are a nice oddity early on and practically useless late game. Mid-Late game you need so many strategic resources the stuff coming out of the natural mines is like a drop in the bucket. I find I end up with whole worlds making synthisied strategic resources just to feed all my buildings. In keeping with the more productive pops is better than more jobs I think the mines should give a strategic material production amount to miners on the planet. It's like the deposits are mixed in with the minerals they can just refine it now. Perhaps 0.25 of that resource on the planet. This would make planets with strategic resources extremely valuable as they could produce lots of them cheaply. Balance testing would be needed for the exact amount of course.

Another way to combat the Tall vs Wide is with production penalties. There is already a Tech/Culture penalty for being over your Empire sprawl but how about also having increased Crime and upkeep cost for food/CG? After all in the current setup it's far to easy to simply expand fast earlier on and disregard your sprawl. Then once established with some bureaucrats rush to catch up. This is pretty much my strategy every game as my tech may fall behind but my economy more than makes up for it and once empire sprawl is balanced back out I shoot past every other empire in tech because I can afford a ton of scientist.

The only current TALL option is not really TALL it's just compact as it's a bunch of habitats in a few systems, thus same number of "planets" with a ton of people and less space to defend.

The point of all this is they need to make a reason for players to not see pops as the only path to power. Also to add a bit more flavor to the game as I feel the goal of buildings should be the choices of which to build feel like they matter and help define the planet compared to the current need another factory/lab/etc. Where lots more planetary features and unique buildings can help give planet wide bonuses rather than flat one off amounts to encourage specialization. Meanwhile districts are simply where your pops go to work and live.
 
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Here's a question about modding and industry district. How does adding a job to a district work? At the code level, it is written in the modifier of building or just written in the district to check whether there is the building in this planet?
It is very important to the modding, it affects the game performance in multiple mods.
 
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Another way to combat the Tall vs Wide is with production penalties. There is already a Tech/Culture penalty for being over your Empire sprawl but how about also having increased Crime and upkeep cost for food/CG? After all in the current setup it's far to easy to simply expand fast earlier on and disregard your sprawl. Then once established with some bureaucrats rush to catch up. This is pretty much my strategy every game as my tech may fall behind but my economy more than makes up for it and once empire sprawl is balanced back out I shoot past every other empire in tech because I can afford a ton of scientist.
Today's the penalty rules is useless, pop provide sprawl, and pop can rise the cap too(and this part is important for the hole cap), it can't limit the growth of pops(maybe it isn't designed to reach this). And the penalty grows liner instead of quadratic. In a word, the new Empire Sprawl is just nerf our economy and increase the cost to keep pop(consume goods) indiscriminately

The line of techs is currently:
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The higher bonuses are tied to higher tiers of capital buildings, so resource gathering backwaters are less likely to reach maximized production levels than your heavily populated core worlds.
What does it run? A planet gets +60% produce and upkeep bonus when it has a lv3 capital building? And can it be closed? You know, the raise of upkeep not means good thing in every situation, and if I ban some jobs, it may cause unemployment and spend me more consume goods to make them satisfied.
 
And what exactly is wrong with following a gamey tactic in a game?
For a player: nothing.

From a development pov: the rulebook of a strategy game should be consistent within it's lore. Having people f*ck less the bigger your empire because potato in your rulebook is bad design.

It makes no sense that a colony grows faster by being independent than by being supported by the infastructure that an established galactic empire provides. It makes no sense that to increase pop growth you should grant independence/vassalage to your colonies for a few years and reconquer/annex them later.
 
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Concerning the whole "more growth needed the more pops your empire already owns" ... I've been thinking about it, and one possible, if still tenuous, lore explanation could be that as your empire grows bigger, the actual number of people in a single pop also goes up. This has a number of problems (and current inconsistencies with mechanics) with it, I'm well-aware. But at least it's "an" explanation, game balance aside.
 
By the way, to resolve a question that came up when I was discussing with another user - regarding buildings like Gene Clinics, Holo Theatres, Admin Parks, and Halls of Judgement that currently cap out at 5 jobs: do they now cap out at 4 jobs to fit into the 2/4/6 sequence that you're using for jobs like researchers from research labs and their upgrades? Or are they unchanged? Or have they changed differently?

What about Commercial Megaplexes, which used to support more jobs than the 2/5/8 model that's becoming the 2/4/6 model?
 
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With all homeworlds getting +2 size, and the Lifeseeded start really needing some help as it is, going above 25 wouldn't be a bad choice (Remnants is size 22 already, should be going to 24.) If they don't want to change the planet size over 25, throwing it extra district slots, like the expansion finisher or the reward for the subterranean event chain, could work too.
I like this, increasing the size to 27 or adding some subterranean features would work well.

You could even reduce the size slightly from 25 to 24, and then add the subterranean features increasing district capacity by +3 or even +6 if you wanted to bump it up to 30.

Life seeded could also just get guaranteed Gaia planets. If one planet was made to be a perfect paradise, why not more?
You can easily do this by text editing the empire's home planet in user_empire_designs.txt to Gaia, it works exactly like this. I've used it to make the neighboring planets of Determined Exterminators spawn as Tomb Worlds.
 
Most buildings have been standardized to now give 2 jobs per tier rather than the old 2/5/8 progression.
You could decrease the number of POPs even further if you give the respective building ITSELF positive production-modifiers.
The main-problem with habitats is still the spamming. Try to find something else ( like to put habitats under the starbase-cap ) instead of just delays ( like higher influence-costs ).
All planets with free sapient unemployed pops that are not locked down by migration controls will have a small chance every month of moving one to another planet within their empire that has jobs that they are willing and able to work, housing, and habitability of 40% or higher.
Chances, chances, chances ...
Implement 2 new screens ( emigration and immigration ) in the colony-view and let the resettlement ( migration ) work like the growth of POPs: At the value of 100 a POP will resettle. How many points gets added per month ( till 100 is reached ) is "just" the tricky part.
After some experimentation we’ve chosen to keep the Transit Hubs as Starbase Buildings that provide a system wide buff to the chance of auto-resettlement occurring.
Same as above.
 
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So when this update is coming?December?January?No mood to start another playthrough in the current state of the game.Tired of abandoning playthroughs halfway.Cant play anything else besides purge/slay them all empire atm
 
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So when this update is coming?December?January?No mood to start another playthrough in the current state of the game.Tired of abandoning playthroughs halfway.Cant play anything else besides purging/slay them all empire atm
When it's ready™

Only the devs will know. A release around christmas time would make sense, however I'd prefer a more complete update with a later release date.
 
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I quite like everything that I see here, except for the void dweller buffs. That was already one of the strongest origins by far; and the buffs seem very out of touch.
Hopefully pop growth will be veeeery slow in their habitats to balance them abit more. Right now I agree with you, they have given the most crazy OP origin even more crazy OP stuff to help them snowball even more crazy then they already do.
 
When it's ready™

Only the devs will know. A release around christmas time would make sense, however I'd prefer a more complete update with a later release date.

Yes. Megacorps was released too soon, and there were a lot of bugs.
Federations got much more time, and it was one of the best releases I ever have seen!
 
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Theory-time: The reason Envoys are so bare bones isn't because Paradox wanted to minimize micromanagement, but because they're going to be used in the espionage update and they didn't want to tip their hat too early.
 
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I think these changes are not really getting at the FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE with population. The goal of these changes seems to be to reduce population by simply reducing the rate at which they grow. But this approach fundamentally fails to address the real issue at play. POPs = Power.

Wow.. a text wall , to forget that pops are power. you can't do nothing about it, pops are a form of power. the idea that someone can be powerfull with a state of 10 pops against someone with 100 pops is pathetic.

you can still use tech to overshadown pops numbers ( even now) and with those new tech it will be even more significant.

pops are one of the powers. and you can't do nothing about it .

pops , tech , fleet power . all are chained to each other , but separate .

edit: and tall is just about rushing habitats and megastructure , to have more space for pops .
the concept of "tall" is to use space efficently . and i realy don't want to start a war of " tall vs wide" , in stellaris you want to have both .
the balance of stellaris is that someone with a small space , is faster to use it efficently , someone with a big space is slower at using it efficently. if you are more small , you want tech, if you are more wide you want pops . in both cases, pops \ tech will increase your fleet power .
 
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