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Stellaris Dev Diary #9 - Planets & Resources

Greetings Earthlings!

We have spoken earlier about how the galaxy is generated, and today I aim to expand on that somewhat by telling you about the planets and how they differ from each other.

Planet Tiles
Each habitable planet has a number of tiles on its surface, representing the planet’s size. Some tiles might be blocked by natural barriers, such as mountains, and can be cleared to open up new space. When the galaxy is generated, each tile generates a random number and checks if a deposit will be spawned there. A tile can be worked by having a Pop placed in it.

Buildings can also be constructed in tiles, and they often have adjacency bonuses for the resource they are producing. Therefore it will be advantageous to construct your power plants in proximity to each other, to achieve optimal efficiency.

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Planet Modifiers
Celestial objects come in many different sizes and shapes, and planet modifiers are a part of what can set two planets apart. In the example above, Omaggus III has particularly large lifeforms on it, which could prove fruitful to study.

Deposits
Resources are generated as deposits and they spawn on planets depending on the type of planet, and which modifiers can be found on the planet. Certain resources are also more likely to be found in systems that lie in specific parts in the galaxy, like inside a nebula. All resources cannot appear on all planets, and some planets have a higher chance of hosting certain resources. Asteroids are very likely to have minerals on them, for example.

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Orbital Resources
Planets that cannot be colonized do not use surface tiles, but they can still generate deposits. Each planet has an orbital resource slot that can be worked if a Mining Station or Research Station is built in orbit around that planet. Sometimes you encounter planets that you could potentially colonize, but that is not habitable enough for you to want to colonize it. In those cases you may also want to construct an orbital station.

The Basic Resources
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Food is a requirement for Pops to grow. If there is plenty of Food, Pops will grow faster. If there is a lack of Food, Pops will be unhappy.

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Minerals are used to produce most things in the game. If Minerals represent matter, Energy Credits represent work.

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Energy Credits represent all liquid assets and energy produced by our Empire. Actions, such as clearing tiles, cost Energy Credits to perform. This resource is mainly used for upkeep, and although it can be hoarded, that might not be the best way of handling it.

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society_research.png
engineering_research.png
Physics Research, Society Research and Engineering Research are used to advance technologies in different fields of science.

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Here, have a bonus screenshot! As an interstellar rogue I'm used to breaking the rules.

Join us again next week when we will be telling you about Rare Resources and the Spaceport.
 
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Important question about resources. Are they gathered on per-day, per-week or per-month basis?

(assuming time scale is measured in days, weeks and months instead of more abstracted galactic units)

(I still hope time scale won't go down to hours, it would be way to detailed for an Interstellar Civilisation Game, this is not WW2...)

The answer is there, if you look closely enough ;)
 
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The answer is there, if you look closely enough ;)

Going by the numbers on the top bar and the numbers of days between the first two screenshots: monthly resource dumps?

EDIT: I apparently can't read.
 
I hope adjacency bonuses are handled well. In Gal Civ you basically only end up wanting to produce one type of resource on each plannet. I kinda like the idea of there being more choices vs always all in.
I wonder if it's too late to rethink the approach. I think it's only there because other games do it that way, but to me it's counter-intuitive. Several factories that use the same resources should not have synergy, quite the opposite as they would compete for their input. I'd think an approach more intuitive (and possibly more fun) is if each plant requires one or two resources, and the synergy would be to have plants that produce those resources next to them, or at the very least if they don't use the same resources.
 
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That's great, really.
But what about food? It's said that in case of lack people won't be happy, but could it be imported somehow from agricultural planets to more industial ones?
 
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I wonder if it's too late to rethink the approach. I think it's only there because other games do it that way, but to me it's counter-intuitive. Several factories that use the same resources should not have synergy, quite the opposite as they would compete for their input. I'd think an approach more intuitive (and possibly more fun) is if each plant requires one or two resources, and the synergy would be to have plants that produce those resources next to them, or at the very least if they don't use the same resources.

Yeah, would make more sense with "mining" tiles where specific resources are extracted and adjacency bonus for factories near these.
 
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Stelaris have POPs, so maybe we also get some policys that allow/disallow Pops/goverment to build things, just like in VIctoria 2

That would be interesting. I'd be happier attributing mistakes to "the POPs are making suboptimal choices" than to "the AI governor is not doing what I tell him to do".
 
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Interesting! Thank you for the dev diary grekulf!
 
Really impressive stuff.

Will the "Surface" tab always be known as Surface? What if my race live in some underwater Space-Atlantis? They won't be on the surface.

If you look at a planet as a whole, the difference between "on land" and "under water" is fairly trivial in relation to the planet's diameter. Another way of looking at it: the bottom of the sea is the surface of the planet, considered as a solid.
 
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Food seems to be a local resource, but to which extent will we be able to redistribute food in our empire? I'm thinking that planets with surplus could supply other planets in the same star system, but that interstellar transport might be too cumbersome.
 
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Mmh. This is the first one I find thoroughly underwhelming. It looks as if planets were boring, tiny marbles and the economic system an unengaging afterthought.
 
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Ok well I don't mind those kind of building tiles. I thought you were going to do it the same way GalCiv3 did, which I didn't like.
And now I know what all those icons are at the top left corner.
Looking great!
 
Loved the look of planet interface, it's unique and Paradox. So glad your not doing the Gal Civ way of displaying things. Also money is no object apparently.
 
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