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[Telgin]

Good point.  It's more an issue with the fleet path finder than anything, although I do wonder how much the AI micromanages paths.  I know it'll try to dodge choke point stations, which had the humorous effect of sending a marauder fleeting halfway around the galaxy on a two year quest to bypass my stations once.  To their credit, they did bypass my stations... and required an inordinate amount of time and jump drives to deal with as a consequence.

One of the wonkier AI quirks I've found is that the crises do not work unless they can path to a player if there is a player in game

Interesting, and I'm curious how it could even be arranged that they couldn't path to a player.  I wonder if that's related to the "crisis not expanding" bug that's supposed to be fixed in the next minor version.

[Dunamisdeos]

Can every crisis go through an L-gate? If not you could hide in there.

[Draignean]

Good point.  It's more an issue with the fleet path finder than anything, although I do wonder how much the AI micromanages paths.  I know it'll try to dodge choke point stations, which had the humorous effect of sending a marauder fleeting halfway around the galaxy on a two year quest to bypass my stations once.  To their credit, they did bypass my stations... and required an inordinate amount of time and jump drives to deal with as a consequence.

One of the wonkier AI quirks I've found is that the crises do not work unless they can path to a player if there is a player in game

Interesting, and I'm curious how it could even be arranged that they couldn't path to a player.  I wonder if that's related to the "crisis not expanding" bug that's supposed to be fixed in the next minor version.

FTL-anchors. They stop Pathfinding past themselves. If there is no path that isn't blocked at some point by a fortress or a station with an FTL inhibitor, the Crisis just throws up its hands. I generally play 0.75 hyperlane density, and that makes it occur nearly every time if you build tall.

[ZeroGravitas]

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/1029809808105504768?s=19

ton of info in this thread regarding housing, pop caps, slaves/robots, etc and a few screenshots

basically robots/slaves will fill whatever jobs you have available like mining/farming/etc, then take the "servant" job, which produces amenities etc. they won't use much "housing", which is a soft cap on planet's population. you can exceed it but it causes "overcrowding."

[Telgin]

I believe there's going to be another dev diary tomorrow too, and I'm excited to see some more detailed explanations on the new planetary management.

The changes to robots teased so far look really cool though.

[forsaken1111]

I'm extremely curious how these changes will impact machine empires and hives.

[ZeroGravitas]

I believe there's going to be another dev diary tomorrow too, and I'm excited to see some more detailed explanations on the new planetary management.

yep, it's up:

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to start talking about the Planetary Rework coming in the 2.2 'Le Guin' update - the complete redesign of the planetary management system and replacement of planetary tiles. This is going to be a really big topic, so we're spreading it out across four dev diaries, with today's dev diary being about Deposits, Buildings and Districts. Please bear in mind that everything shown is in an early stage of development, and there will be rough-looking interfaces, placeholder art, non final numbers and all those things that people assume are final and complain about anyway no matter how many of these disclaimers I write. :p

Planetary Rework
Before I start going into details on the actual rework, I just wanted to briefly talk about the reasons and goals that are behind this massive rework, and why we're removing tiles and building a new system instead of iterating on the existing systems. For me, getting away from the constraints of tiles has been my single most desired long-term goal for the game. It's not that I think the tile system is inherently a bad system - it works well to visualize your pops and buildings and for the early game it works well enough in giving the player some interesting economic management decisions. However, the tile system is also very constrictive, in a way I feel is detrimental to the very core concepts of Stellaris. The hard limitation of one pop and one building per tile, as well as the hard limitation of 25 tiles/pops/buildings to a planet, it severely limits the kind of societies and planets that we can present in the game.

Do we want to make city-planets, with enormous numbers of pops concentrated onto a single world? Not possible. Do we want to have a fully automated post-scarcity empire where robots do all the actual work? Can't be done without losing out on valuable building space. Sure, we could fundamentally alter the tile system in a such a way to allow these, by for example making it so each tile could support several sub-tiles with additional pops and buildings, but by doing this we will inevitably lose the easy visual presentation that makes the system attractive to begin with, and even then we would continue to be held back by the limit of one pop per building. In other words, we'd end up with something that superficially might resemble the old tile system but offers none of its main advantages and continues to be held back by most of its drawbacks.

When designing the new planetary management system we set out a number of design goals:
- The new system should be able to simulate a wide variety of different societies, to build on the roleplaying and diversity in play-throughs that is such a fundamental part of the Stellaris experience
- The new system needed to offer more interesting choices about how to develop your planets, while simultaneously reducing the amount of uninteresting micromanagement such as mass-upgrading buildings
- The new system should make your planets feel like places where Pops actually live their lives, as opposed to just being resource gathering hubs
- The new system had to be extremely moddable, to make it easier both for us and modders to create new types of empires and playstyles

We believe that this new system that we have created will not only vastly improve many of the features in the game that we couldn't get working properly with the tile system, but together with the resource rework discussed in the last dev diary will also make it possible for us to create truly weird and alien societies that play entirely differently from anything the game currently has to offer, or would ever have to offer if we had remained constrained by the tile system.

Deposits
Under the old tile system, deposits were simply clumps of resources placed on a tile, which would be gathered by a pop and determined what kind of buildings were most efficient to place there. Under the new system, deposits are more akin to planetary terrain and features. Every habitable planet will have a (semi-randomized) number of deposits, with larger planets usually having more deposits. Deposits represent areas on the planet that can be economically exploited, and most commonly increase the number of a particular District (more on this below) that can be build on the planet. For example, a Fertile Lands deposit represents various regions of fertile farmland, and increases the number of Agriculture Districts that can be built on the planet, and thus its potential Food output.

(Note: All deposit pictures shown here are placeholders, there will be new art for them that isn't done yet)

Not all Deposits affect Districts however - some (such as Crystalline Caverns or Betharian Fields) are rare deposits that allow for the construction of special Buildings (more on this below) on the planet, while others yet may simply provide a passive benefit to the planet, such as a spectacularly beautiful wilderness area that increases happiness for Pops living on the planet. Deposits can have Deposit Blockers that work in a similar way to the Tile Blockers of old, cancelling out the benefits of the Deposit until the Blocker is removed through the expenditure of time and resources. A planet can have multiples of the same Deposit, and there is no hard limit to the number of Deposits that a planet can hold (though there is a cap to how many will be generated under normal circumstances). The types of Deposits that can show up on a planet is affected by the planet class, so where an Ocean World might get its Agriculture from Kelp Forests, an Arctic World would have Fungal Caverns instead.

Districts
Districts are at at the core of how planets are developed in the Le Guin update. Districts represent large areas of development on the planet dedicated towards housing or resource gathering. For most empires, there are four basic types of Districts: City Districts, Mining Districts, Generator Districts and Agriculture Districts. There are exceptions to this (such as Hive Minds having Hive Districts) but more on this in a later DD. The total number of districts you can build on a planet is equal to its size, so a size 16 planet can support 16 districts in any combination of the types available to you. Additionally, the resource-producing districts (Mining, Generator and Agriculture) are further constrained by the Deposits on the planet, so a planet might only be able to support a maximum of 8 Mining Districts due to there simply not being any further opportunities for mining on the planet. City Districts are never limited by the deposits on the planet, so you can choose to forego a planet's natural resources and blanket it entirely in urban development if you so choose.

The effects of each District is as follows:

• City District: Provides a large amount of Housing for Pops, Infrastructure for Buildings and Clerk Jobs that produce Trade Value and Luxury Goods
  
• Mining District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Mining Jobs that produce Minerals
  
• Agriculture District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Farming Jobs that produce Food
  
• Generator District: Provides a small amount of Housing/Infrastructure and Technician Jobs that produce Energy Credits
  

There will be more details on most of the concepts mentioned above coming in the other dev diaries. For now, suffice to say that the way you develop your planets with Districts will shape that planet's role in your empire - a heavily urbanized planet will be densely populated, supporting numerous Buildings and specialist Pop Jobs such as Researchers and providing Trade Value for your empire's trade routes (more on this in a future DD), but at the expense of not being able to produce much of the raw resources that are needed to fuel your empire's growth and manufacturing capacity.

A planet's Deposits and Planetary Modifiers may influence this decision - a large planet with High Quality Minerals and numerous Mining Deposits will certainly make for a lucrative mining world, but what if it also sits in a perfect spot to make a heavily urbanized trade hub? No longer are choices regarding planets simply limited to 'Where do I place the capital for the best adjacency bonuses?' and 'Should I follow the tile resource or not?' but will be fundamental choices that create diverse and distinct planets that each have their own role to fill in your empire.

Buildings
In the Le Guin update, Buildings are specialized Facilities that provide a variety of Jobs and Resources that are not suitable to large-scale resource gathering. For example, instead of having your scientists working in a Physics Lab on a Physics Deposit (whatever that is supposed to be...) you now instead construct a Research Labs building (representing not a single laboratory but rather an allocation of resources towards the sciences across the planet) which provides a number of Pop Researcher Jobs that conduct research for your empire. Buildings are limited by the planet's Infrastructure, with one building 'slot' being unlocked for each 10 Infrastructure on the planet. Some Buildings are also limited in the number you can build on a planet, while others can be built in multiples (for example, a planet can only support a single Autotchton Monument, while you can have as many Alloy Foundries as the slots allow). Buildings can still be upgraded to more advanced versions, but generally there will be far fewer upgrades to do and those upgrades will often require an investment of rare and expensive resources, so it's more of an active choice than something you simply have to click your way through after unlocking a tech.

Infrastructure comes primarily from constructing Districts, with City Districts giving much more Infrastructure than resource gathering districts do (6 as opposed to 2 in the current internal build, though non final numbers and all that). In addition to unlocking additional Building slots, a higher Infrastructure level also makes some Buildings more efficient, as the number of jobs they provide is fully or partially determined by the planet's Infrastructure level. For example, in the current internal build, Research Labs and Alloy Foundries both have the number of jobs they provide determined by the infrastructure level, meaning that concentrating your research and manufacturing to your heavily urbanized planets is generally more efficient than trying to turn your agri-worlds into science hubs. In addition to Buildings that provide resource-producing Jobs, there is also a wide variety of buildings that provide for the material and social needs of your Pops, such as Luxury Housing for your upper class Pops, Entertainment Buildings to make your populace happy and Law Enforcement to quell unrest and crime. Densely populated planets tend to require more such buildings, as the need for Housing and Amenities scales upwards with Pops and Infrastructure.

Whew, that was a lot of words. Still, we're only just getting started on the Planetary Rework and next week we'll continue talking about it, on the topic of Stratas, Pop Jobs, Housing and Migration.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-121-planetary-rework-part-1-of-4.1115043/

[Telgin]

Exciting stuff.  I'm already looking forward to some of the RP decisions I'll have to make, such as whether or not to turn my homeworlds into sprawling planet cities or try to preserve their beauty to some extent.  I saw someone suggest having fallow districts that produce unity, and I like that idea.

Looks like trade hubs and routes are confirmed too, which should be a very welcome addition to the game.

I'm only disappointed so far that they only covered a quarter of the planetary management changes in this dev diary.

[Descan]

It looks like it might open some more economic playstyles than the "Everything is geared toward military" style that Stellaris basically is now. Being able to achieve hegemony over the galaxy via economy rather than pewpewlazors would be nice. It would need a lot more to it than this, but it's a step in that direction.

[Telgin]

Yeah, exactly.  Even playing as a militarist empire, I don't like declaring war on neighbors without a good reason and had to talk myself into considering an insult to be a good reason.  Playing as pacifists means I'm pretty much never at war.

I've managed to keep myself entertained thus far by just managing expansion and development of planets through the tile system clickfest, but having meaningful goals to build toward other than just increasing naval capacity and filling said capacity with ships will be most welcome.

[Trekkin]

It looks like it might open some more economic playstyles than the "Everything is geared toward military" style that Stellaris basically is now. Being able to achieve hegemony over the galaxy via economy rather than pewpewlazors would be nice. It would need a lot more to it than this, but it's a step in that direction.

At the very least, a more complex economy will allow for more random events and things, which would be nice; I don't mind an overwhelming navy being necessary to survive and even the only way to win, but it'd be nice if the economic and developmental parts of the game were not so blatantly a spreadsheet intended to reliably fuel the war machine. Even megastructures are largely without any interesting uncertainty, especially the vanilla ones.

Stellaris is soft enough science fiction for the weird emergent properties of 4X-style cultural hegemony to be technobabbled over, and it would be nice to see either that or some form of espionage-driven subversion like we can currently do to primitive empires.

[Grek]

I'm personally just glad to get rid of the yellow upgrade button.

[Telgin]

It sounds like there will still be upgrades, but they'll be much fewer and farther between.  Hopefully no more of the going back to a planet at 5 pops to upgrade the shelter to a planetary administration so you can build advanced buildings busywork, at least.

Wiz mentioned that most of the upgrades that are in the game now will be strategic choices that may take advanced resources.  Pure speculation but, for example, upgrading science labs to physics labs may take dark matter in addition to minerals.

I'm actually really curious just how rare these rare materials will be.  If they come at a relatively constant rate (say, every black hole can be mined for a small amount of dark matter per month) then it may just be a waiting game instead of a real strategic choice.  But we'll have to wait and see what is revealed over the next few weeks.

[Cruxador]

It sounds like there will still be upgrades, but they'll be much fewer and farther between.  Hopefully no more of the going back to a planet at 5 pops to upgrade the shelter to a planetary administration so you can build advanced buildings busywork, at least.

Avoiding the busy work was one of the major stated goals of the rework. I think it's safe to expect that things like that are taken care of.

I'm actually really curious just how rare these rare materials will be.  If they come at a relatively constant rate (say, every black hole can be mined for a small amount of dark matter per month) then it may just be a waiting game instead of a real strategic choice.  But we'll have to wait and see what is revealed over the next few weeks.

All evidence so far points to them being exactly what you hope they're not. Still, constantly generated resources do make for adequate gating mechanics in idle games like kittensgame and realm grinder. And Paradox games are fundamentally about waiting anyway, which is sort of fine as long as things are going on in the world that make your time a limited resource too - there's still tradeoff.

[Sartain]

With PDX games, it's less that time's a limited resource as pausing is prevalent and encouraged. What you want, really, is enough stuff going on that you don't have large "fallow" moments.

Stellaris seems to have a lot more focus on "balance" and multiplayer than other PDX titles, so less pausing