Suggestion: Streamline planetary management

[MeowBeep]

Good gameplay mechanics should present players with meaningful decisions. Currently the majority of planetary management is just a lot of micro legwork to actualize the few meaningful strategic decision the player has made. While the new system in 2.2 is promising, the execution is burdensome. With a few tweaks set out below, it could instead present players with significantly fewer though more interesting decisions for planetary management.

Reduce the number of districts to 2 (at size 10 planet) up to 5 (at size 25 planet). This would still allow players to give meaningful shape to a planet's economy, while avoiding a lot of tedium of just filling it out over time.

Reduce the number of building slots to 4 (plus 1 for capital building). This would present enough choices to meaningfully shape a planet's advanced economy, while again avoiding the tedium.

Add multiple upgrade paths to buildings. For instance, if the initial building added research, then choosing between buildings which focus on one of the research types makes for an interesting tier two upgrade, while the ability to boost the sub parts of research trees is interesting at tier three upgrades.

To compensate for the reduced uniqueness of planets from having less variation in potential districts from planetary features, I would more frequent use planetary modifiers drawn from a larger pool of possibilities. And/or, just use more of the planetary features that directly provide jobs.

It would be necessary to adjust the number of jobs made available by each district and building. But adding a system to automatically scale up the number of jobs to keep in step with the overall development level would be pretty straight forward.

Finally, all of the above would reduce the CPU burden, especially for the AI, which is an obvious priority for the devs at the moment.

I'd be really interested to hear if others players think this would work, or what variations and elaborations you think could make it work even better, or if you don't think it would work, why not? Or even if there are any modders who would be interested in collaborating to just build it ourselves?

 

[MeowBeep]

Oh, I would also adjust city districts to be a way of focusing on planetary growth. This would put it more directly into the decision pool of which resource to focus on (because pops are just another resource at the end of the day).

 

[buglepong]

Remove minimum building pop unlocks
Remove penalty events for too many unemployed. Being unemployed is penalty enough.
Actually, having to micro jobs is bad enough. get rid of jobs and turn employment into a single abstract number in each strata.

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

Now I'm a burnt child with cutting down building options going from Total War - Rome & Medieval II to the later games of this series. But I have to say that you should one-up your ideas getting rid of districts alltogether and instead choose your planet specialization directly.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Planetary_management
Right now districts provide just one more layer of job/housing management that you don't really need in a grand strategy game it's usefull early on if you have few planets and habitable planets are rare but once you have more than 10 planets it becomes a chore. Best decide to make a world an agri-world and get more than the 5% bonus we have now than checking back on dozens of planets (look if your slaves are just servants) and decide to build more districts as is the case now.

A better and more realistic version still would be planets changing depending on their attributes and position in the empire with the leader only guiding to some extent. Sure sector management could help with that but right I can't see myself doing that.

As for buildings it's more complicated and rather than cutting down they amount of choice i'd rather see it automated. I don't see the point of going from planet to planet building the same buildings over and over again as they unlock as their population grows. Going down to 4 building seems to harsh however and makes littles sense for a whole planet to suddenly stop at that. Even 16 is too little for important worlds. You'd want many of these things:

(01 the planetary administration)
02 shield generators
03 fortresses
04 culture buildings
05 gene clinics
06 luxury housing
07 processing for the planets primary production at least
08 trade
09 consumer good production if you haven't gotten an ecumenopolis yet
10 ditto for alloys
11 robot assemblies
12 labs
13 slave processing
14 cloning vats
15 psi corps
16 police
17 entertainment
18 ministry of production
19 ministry of culture
20 research institute

And then there are additinal buildings depending on natural ressources, for special ressource production and events and some I missed plus the choice of building several instances of certain buildings...

I'd even consider zooming out and look at things at a system wide scale which would help with late game situations of habitat spam and all the under utilized stellar bodies that we have right now.

 

[MeowBeep]

I see what you're saying Adolf, and I think many of the desired building functions could be tied into the branching upgrade structure. Five building slots, each with three tiers of say three branching choices at the second and third tiers, creates a very rich set of possibilities. Your list of 20 buildings, given 25 slots, highlights the lack of trade off costs in the current decisions, it is possible to just about building everything.

The buildings fit into a few general types, which can be used to combine them into upgrade trees. Resource gathering, secondary production, population creation, research, defense, culture. Off the top of my head here are two examples to show what sorts of things i have in mind.

Resource gathering
Initial: boost all resource gathering jobs.
Tier two: as above + boost to a focus on one of the four (trade, energy, minerals, food).
Tier three: as above + interesting set of more unique bonuses. For instance, a tier 3 upgrade from a tier 2 mining focus might let you pick between; n% more mining jobs with housing, collecting the rare resource crystals, a unique empire wide reduction to building upkeep costs.

Capital building
Initial: basic infrastructure.
Tier two: as above + armory, or culture, or pop growth, robotics.
Tier three: as above + interesting choices. For instance a tier three upgrade from a tier two pop growth focus might let you pick between; boost to gene modding projects, even more boost to growth rate, some bonus to leaders.

I see the building choices as being a set of options for what shaping what type of planet it is, very much like you lean towards with suggestion of just choosing the planet specialization directly. You wouldn't so much build a single research lab, but decide to invest a portion of the economy towards research. If you want to have a pure research world you could build one in every slot.

Essentially the point is to create a system which retains the ability to make all of the same interesting strategic decisions that we currently can, while shedding the need to then push a whole series of subsequent buttons to make them happen.

The average planet size is about 20, which gives you 4 districts to work with in my suggested sysyem. So if you want a balanced world, build one of each. If you want a mining world, just mining. But you don't want to import food? Add one farming to a bunch of mining. This to me seems like a big enough decision space to still exercise the level of management decisions I want to be able to make.

 

[permeakra]

With a few tweaks set out below, it could instead present players with significantly fewer though more interesting decisions for planetary management.

Reduce the number of districts to 2 (at size 10 planet) up to 5 (at size 25 planet). This would still allow players to give meaningful shape to a planet's economy, while avoiding a lot of tedium of just filling it out over time.

"I'm tired of thinking if those 4 energy deposits are worth building 4 districts and an energy grid. Let's make it simpler"

The current number of districts and deposits is fine, it asks for careful resource balancing. Furthermore, you can pre-build however much districts you want or batch-convert. Keep your hands off of it. It is actually the most well-though mechanic in 2.2.*, even if particular districts and their size could do with some adjustments.

Reduce the number of building slots to 4 (plus 1 for capital building). This would present enough choices to meaningfully shape a planet's advanced economy, while again avoiding the tedium.

"I'm tired of... " You got the idea.
The number of buildings is fine. If you think about buildings as infrastructure objects, the system makes sense (though the upper limit on their number not tied to the planet size does not). I would argue that it would make sense to move most if not all jobs to districts, potentially increasing number of their types, and keep buildings purely as district-modifiers, but apparently there are limitations. Meh.

The main problem with changes you desire is that they reduce the space of possible builds and starting conditions. Reduce enough to keep a few typical builds with minimal adjustments.

 

[MeowBeep]

"I'm tired of thinking if those 4 energy deposits are worth building 4 districts and an energy grid. Let's make it simpler"

Exactly! That is a single decision, which then requires a whole bunch of clicks to actually do. Sure the current numbers are fine on your first planet, but beyond a handful of planets it just becomes a chore. Is anyone seriously enjoying the level of micromanagement necessary to optimize 10+ planets?

The thing is, I'm not actually suggesting to make the meaningful decisions simplier. With the branching building tiers I've suggested, those decisions would likely become more complex.

 

[permeakra]

Exactly! Sure the current numbers are fine on your first planet, but beyond a handful of planets it just becomes a chore. Is anyone seriously enjoying the level of micromanagement necessary to optimize 10+ planets?

Yes. Quite a bit. And there is sector AI if you don't care for it.
I mean, srsly. There are several civics that imply focus on inner optimization.

I never had problems with ~20-40 planets. There is a lot of ways to reduce micro to bearable levels, and not all of them cause fall in efficiency.

 

[MeowBeep]

Do you feel like the choice between building '5 city, 5 energy, 10 mines, and 5 farms', or '5 cities, 5 energy, 11 mines, and 4 farms' is a meaningful one with interesting strategic impact?

 

[permeakra]

Do you feel like the choice between building '5 city, 5 energy, 10 mines, and 5 farms', or '5 cities, 5 energy, 11 mines, and 4 farms' is a meaningful one with interesting strategic impact?

Depends. Sometimes it is.

 

[MeowBeep]

Depends. Sometimes it is.

Care to flesh out an example of one of those times?

 

[buglepong]

I never had problems with ~20-40 planets

Its not "hard" just tedious.
Unless you are implying its balanced for multiplayer.

 

[permeakra]

Care to flesh out an example of one of those times?

When you prepare for conquest, you need to amass maximum amount of alloys possible. This means balancing you economy as good as possible, to have close to 0 excess in any resource (maybe even with slight deficiency in a few). This means carefully balancing your input in basic resources, ideally having income in basic resources after cutting expenses about +/-5

Its not "hard" just tedious.

It wasn't very tedious either, I returned to each planet/habitat about once per ten years or so or when an event was fired.
People who scream about micro usually create this problem for themselves taking an "optimal" build relying on micro. Just plan for eventual heavy overpopulation and rely on migration to boost filling planets.

 

[buglepong]

It wasn't very tedious either, I returned to each planet/habitat about once per ten years or so or when an event was fired.
People who scream about micro usually create this problem for themselves taking an "optimal" build relying on micro.

"Its not tedious, because the AI sucks THAT hard"
ok.
So does that mean you ARE implying its balanced for mp?

 

[permeakra]

So does that mean you ARE implying its balanced for mp?

It actually is, but even in SP you don't have to do much micro to stay fairly close to optimal. Migration exports pop growth from overpopulated planets for free and you actually get some happiness from egalitarian faction if you disable migration control.

 

[Frostyant]

This is way better than the previous tile system. Like you specialise your planet and only have to return whenever there is an actual problem/an unemployed pop/oh shit my econ is down the drain I need more xyz.
If you REALLY find it a pain you can use the sector AI, I believe that still exists.

Also the less "micro" (note the quotation marks) you have the less control you have, which I disagree with.
Take the 5/0/11/4 (why would you use energy districts ?) and 5/0/10/5 example.
Maybe I need just a little bit more minerals to keep a positive monthly income, but don't want to send my food into the red either ?
I actually had this problem once, with almost the scenario you described. Because I was the number 1 econ in the galaxy and was heavily skewed (because planet deposits) towards finished products, I had to very carefully balance food and minerals.

Lastly you talk about how you have 20 planets, keep in mind some people play tall and may have far less than that.
To them that "trivial" decision might actually be the difference between being fine and starvation.

 

[MeowBeep]

When you prepare for conquest, you need to amass maximum amount of alloys possible. This means balancing you economy as good as possible, to have close to 0 excess in any resource (maybe even with slight deficiency in a few). This means carefully balancing your input in basic resources, ideally having income in basic resources after cutting expenses about +/-5

Ok, so;
Interesting strategic decisions: max alloy production while keeping economy minimally in the positive.
Subsequent micro required: Carefully balance resource districts and jobs by tweaking a bunch of things, in this case replacing a farm with a mining district apparently.
The actual chore of doing the micromanagement to carefully balance everything doesn't add anything to those initial interesting strategic decisions. Furthermore, when preparing for war you really want to be focusing on making interesting military strategic decisions, not micromanaging districts.

 

[buglepong]

It actually is, but even in SP you don't have to do much micro to stay fairly close to optimal. Migration exports pop growth from overpopulated planets for free and you actually get some happiness from egalitarian faction if you disable migration control.

Migration is more affected by housing than unemployment

 

[MeowBeep]

Also the less "micro" (note the quotation marks) you have the less control you have, which I disagree with.

Sorry, but this just isn't true. The old tile system had a bunch of micro that did not result in more control.

If you need just a few more minerals, don't you just use the market?

I think a lot of people play tall as a way to avoid the micromanagement chore, and they would actually enjoy playing wider if that mirco wasn't an issue. This is certainly my own position.

 

[Kain2K]

Instead of forcing the micro, or forcing no micro, why not... I don't no... maybe make the micro optional?
You ask how you can do that?
Well, that is a really interesting question.
The way to achieve that, is quit long, and full of obstacles. Certainly nothing for the faint of heart, and you may, or may not, need to solve the question of all questions: Will there ever again, be an episode of Doctor Who, that is not utter crap? Luckyly enough for us, I was able to summarise the solution for our micromanagement problem, into two easy to understand steps:

1. Fix. The. Damn. AI!
2. Give us a full sector AI, that doesn't need to get constantly assigned new resources, manually!

With these two easy to understand steps, fans of overwhelming micromanagement can still focus their complete attention on micromanaging every planet, while conquering the whole galaxy and painfully neglecting their girlfriend, in parallel.
Everyone who has the attention span of a one year old child, can let the AI wreck havoc on their planets by just activating the sector AI, enjoying live, while laying waste to everyone and everything in the universe.

Sadly, my cristal ball wasn't able to solve the Doctor Who thing, certainly because of this wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, stuff, but who knows, I'm no Timelord.