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[Mephansteras]

You can also get some interesting clustering effects. I had one game where almost all of the empires in my area were similar to my own and we had basically 1/4 of the galaxy as a happy united federation. The rest of the galaxy was...less well disposed to us, but because I had no major wars to worry about early on (I was in the center of the happy blob) I was able to help catapult us to victory pretty easily.

I have also had the opposite, where pretty much all of my neighbors were skewed against me and things got rough really quickly.

[Descan]

That's why you play Fanatical Devouring Exterminators. Everyone is diametrically opposed to you, so any ethos are fair game to be generated. ;P

[Egan_BW]

Kinda odd, in my opinion. Militaristic playstyles are most fun when there's people to fight, and pacifist playstyles are most fun when there's people to negotiate with. You certainly don't want to flood the universe in either direction, but I'd think you might want slightly more empires with your own ethics, at least on that scale.

[Telgin]

It had the interesting effect of making me feel like a jerk for ever declaring war.  When playing as pacifists I didn't want to declare war for RP reasons, and when playing as militarists I didn't want to declare war because everyone was a pacifist and didn't bother me.

Except the gestalt consciousness slug people down south, who kept sending me insults despite being inferior to me.  I finally gave them what they asked for, and then groaned when they kept sending me insults despite me beating the snot out of them.

Oh, and the driven assimilators next to them.  They were perfectly fine neighbors for about 200 years, at which point I finally accepted a war invitation to get rid of them because I got tired of empires asking me to help get rid of them.  That turned into a real pain because I wasn't the primary aggressor and thus couldn't force a status quo, and I'd gotten all the war exhaustion out of them I could without capturing all of their planets.  Capturing their planets was looking to be a major pain in the butt and half of them were filled with things other than robots which I didn't want to deal with once I took the planets.

When I did finally capture two of their worlds, I couldn't even figure out how to displace the weird aliens left behind.  Does there have to be space open in an empire accepting refugees for them to actually be displaced?  I ended up figuring out how to release them as vassals, so that solved the problem at least.

Anyway, the war in heaven triggered and alliances changed enough to force the war to end.  Lesson learned: just like I'll never join another federation, I'll never accept another war invitation.

Then after the Contingency nearly wiped the driven assimilators out, they started sending insults to me...

[Trekkin]

I wish there were a way to either un-colonize planets or use the World Cracker on one's own colonies.

I had some Holy Guardians declare war on me for undergoing synthetic ascension, so I went and kicked their teeth in, assimilated them into robots, and resettled those robots onto habitats so I could shatter their holy worlds while they watched. Apparently the World Cracker can't do that.

A Nicoll-Dyson beam apparently can, and moving them into a Penrose ringworld (both from the Gigastructures mod) so they could watch their worlds evaporate from a system over and keep brooding on it in their immortal robot shells long after the stars burned out was a barely acceptable substitute, but I had intended that to be the finale. it just felt rushed this way.

[Dunamisdeos]

You can migrate all the pops off the planet. That'll do it.

[Broseph Stalin]

So apparently everyone was fine with me defeating the devouring swarm but somehow if I enslave and eat them I've "gone too far." It's called irony guys, lighten up.

[Baffler]

Kinda odd, in my opinion. Militaristic playstyles are most fun when there's people to fight, and pacifist playstyles are most fun when there's people to negotiate with. You certainly don't want to flood the universe in either direction, but I'd think you might want slightly more empires with your own ethics, at least on that scale.

Playing a militaristic xenophile or a pacifist xenophobe tends to give you a fairly good spread from what I've seen. My current authoritarian/militarist/xenophile gave me a galaxy where the north side was filled with egalitarian xenophiles and the south around me was filled with materialists and other empires with similar but not identical ethics, plus a hivemind and some democratic crusaders who both got rekt early game. The pacifist one gave a nice mix of angry xenophobes and democracies of various kinds.

From what I've seen though, it seems that pretty much every AI empire that doesn't completely seal itself off to Inward Perfection levels and isn't restricted from diplomacy in some way will eventually become fanatic xenophile + some local flavor, which is usually egalitarian. Xenophile just has too many attractors compared to the others outside of special circumstances.

[pisskop]

Xenophobic is good for early game expansions.  Plus my experience has been that slaves and slave optimizations are quite good; slaves rebellions dont take real root until midgame.

But I do take issue with xenophobic and being able to select what Im xenophobic about.  Study the crystals, breed the squid.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

You know something I would wish for?  An ability to actually be able to train your admirals and generals (little as the latter are used) outside of war.  Doesn't have to go all the way to max, just give me at least some ability to get them better than baseline.  Maybe factor in training the actual ships and armies as well, given they can have ranks as well.  Hell, could even make it +1/day (with a buff to how quickly ships gain it.  Seriously, +1 per day of *combat*), and it would still take about ~27.8 years straight to reach the max level.  Make it .5 or .25 if that seems a little fast (~55.6 or ~111.1 years), just so long as there is something I'd be happy.

[Trekkin]

Xenophobic is good for early game expansions.  Plus my experience has been that slaves and slave optimizations are quite good; slaves rebellions dont take real root until midgame.

But I do take issue with xenophobic and being able to select what Im xenophobic about.  Study the crystals, breed the squid.

I'd like more of a lack of control; it would give a slight feeling of running an empire rather than a hive mind, excusing for a moment how limited hive minds are, and having options limited by what the populace will accept. You might want to study the crystals, but your populace regularly vivisects potatoes because anything with that many eyes has to be an alien spy, so someone pointed out that a research project on real live aliens is just a lab accident waiting to happen and you'll probably be hauled away as an alien collaborator for asking too many questions about it so no option for you. Militarists might not want to hunt them, but the people have got an awful lot of guns and they wouldn't want to look weak and coupable, and Pacifists might really want to do something violent but the people would just frown irenically at them so that's a no go.

[Telgin]

You know something I would wish for?  An ability to actually be able to train your admirals and generals (little as the latter are used) outside of war.  Doesn't have to go all the way to max, just give me at least some ability to get them better than baseline.  Maybe factor in training the actual ships and armies as well, given they can have ranks as well.  Hell, could even make it +1/day (with a buff to how quickly ships gain it.  Seriously, +1 per day of *combat*), and it would still take about ~27.8 years straight to reach the max level.  Make it .5 or .25 if that seems a little fast (~55.6 or ~111.1 years), just so long as there is something I'd be happy.

Yes please.  The only time I've seen a ship beyond Experienced was two of my titans that made it Veteran after several wars, including a War in Heaven.  Of course they went poof after the first couple of fights with the Contingency, and I'll never see another Veteran or better ship in this game, that's for sure.

[Trekkin]

Maybe some way to set up war games would work? It'd be a nice way to test ship designs, too.

[Baffler]

You know something I would wish for?  An ability to actually be able to train your admirals and generals (little as the latter are used) outside of war.  Doesn't have to go all the way to max, just give me at least some ability to get them better than baseline.  Maybe factor in training the actual ships and armies as well, given they can have ranks as well.  Hell, could even make it +1/day (with a buff to how quickly ships gain it.  Seriously, +1 per day of *combat*), and it would still take about ~27.8 years straight to reach the max level.  Make it .5 or .25 if that seems a little fast (~55.6 or ~111.1 years), just so long as there is something I'd be happy.

Yes please.  The only time I've seen a ship beyond Experienced was two of my titans that made it Veteran after several wars, including a War in Heaven.  Of course they went poof after the first couple of fights with the Contingency, and I'll never see another Veteran or better ship in this game, that's for sure.

I usually manage to get at least the capital ships get up to high levels of skill (Veteran but never elite) over the course of one or two wars, though for smaller ships it seems to be more difficult since they aren't as survivable. I don't know if it's just my design strategy is off or what but I always seem to lose almost my entire corvette fleet and most of the destroyers unless the balance of power is completely lopsided, while the big guys come out practically undamaged. This snowballs, and the capital ships get even tougher and more survivable while the escorts are coming out as experienced as they can be with a Fleet Academy. So I try to redesign them to make them tougher and better at dodging, and sometimes it helps a little, but it seems like massive escort losses is just the price of admission.

But either way from what I've seen ship XP seems to depend solely on time spent in combat, with actions during that combat being irrelevant, so if things are being resolved quickly in either direction that might be causing the problems.

[ZeroGravitas]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we're going to continue on the topic that we started on in last week's dev diary: The Planetary Rework coming in the 2.2 'Le Guin' update. As this is a massive topic that affects many areas of the game, we've split it into four parts. Today's part is going to be talking about Pop Jobs, Strata, Housing, Growth and Migration. As before, any screenshots are likely to feature placeholder art, unpolished interfaces and non-final numbers.

Pop Jobs
In the Le Guin update, Jobs is the main way through which resources are produced on planets. Jobs come in two main types, Capped and Uncapped. Capped Jobs are Jobs that are limited by what the planet can offer, for example, you can only have as many Pops working in mining as you have Mining Jobs from Mining Districts. Uncapped Jobs, on the other hand, can always be worked by a Pop that fulfills the requirements, but generally require a specific trait or species right setting. For example, a species that is set as Livestock will work in a special Livestock Job that requires no upkeep, produces food each month and makes the Pop working it require very little Housing (more on that below). Pops will automatically fill empty Jobs that they are capable of holding, and each Job has weights that make them more or less suitable for a specific Pop - an Industrious Pop will be preferred over a non-Industrious one for a job that produces Minerals, for example. Pops that are more suitable for a Job than the current Pop holding the Job may take it from it them, so constructing a bunch of Robot Pops with mining equipment will likely see your organic Miners losing their jobs in short order. The player can set the priority of specific Jobs, ensuring some Jobs are always filled before others, but there is no manual assignment of specific Pops to specific Jobs, as that is one of the more micromanage-y aspects of the old tile system that we wanted to get away from.

In addition to resource production, there is also a wide variety of Jobs related to administration and tending to the needs of other Pops. For example, Clerks are service industry workers, 'Space Baristas' that produce a small number of luxury goods and increase the Trade Value of the planet as a result of domestic economic activity in your cities, while Enforcers are your police, working to suppress dissent and reduce Crime on the planet (more on that next dev diary). Some Jobs are rarer than others - Crystal Miner Jobs are only possible on planets that have Rare Crystal deposits, and some anomalies add unique planetary features that create Jobs which might only exist on that particular planet. Some Empires, such as Hive Minds and Machine Empires, also have their own special Jobs that are not available to others. Jobs are fully moddable and come with auto-generated modifiers and functions that make them very easy for modders to add to planets.

Strata and Unemployment
Whether or not a Pop holds a Job, the vast majority of Pops will belong to a Stratum, representing social classes and other broad segments of the population. The exact Strata that exist in an empire depend on the type of Empire you're playing, but for regular (non-Gestalt) empires, the population will usually be divided into the following three categories:

• Rulers: This stratum represents the government and wealthy elite. Ruler Pops have a much greater impact on Stability (more on this in next dev diary) than the other two classes and require a great deal of Luxury Goods to stay happy.
  
• Specialists: This stratum represents the educated population working in more prestigious and highly paid jobs. Specialist Pops typically work with refining resources or performing intellectual tasks, and require more Luxury Goods than workers in order to stay happy.
  
• Workers: This stratum represents the vast majority of the working population. They generally work with raw resource production and require fewer Luxury Goods than Rulers and Specialists.
  

In addition to these three, there are certain special Strata for Pops that fulfill specific conditions, such as the Slave stratum for enslaved Pops. Slave Pops usually require no o
r almost no luxuries, but are generally only able to hold Worker-class jobs. Each Job is associated with a specific Stratum (such as Ruler Stratum for Administrators and Nobles), and a Pop that takes that Job will usually be instantly promoted to said Stratum. However, while promotion of Pops to a higher Stratum may be quick and painless, demotion is not. A Pop that becomes unemployed will keep the Stratum of the Job that it used to occupy, and will refuse to take a Job from a lower Stratum, even if there are open Jobs available. Over time, these Pops will demote down to a lower Stratum, but as Unemployment can cause quite a bit of unhappiness, having unemployed upper class Pops can be a serious source of instability for a planet while those Pops are demoting. This effect is more pronounced in a stratified empire, as the lack of social safety nets increases the Happiness penalties for unemployment.
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Housing
One of the major reasons we decided to rework the tile system was the limitations it placed on planetary populations - not just limiting us to an absolute maximum of 25 pops, but also ensuring that planets could never be over- or underpopulated, as the ideal number of Pops on a planet would always be equal to the number of tiles. In the Le Guin update, the hard restriction of one Pop per tile has been replaced with a soft cap known as Housing. Housing is a value on the planet that is primarily provided by Districts, with City Districts giving far more Housing than their resource-focused alternatives. Each Pop requires 1 unit of Housing by default, though the Housing demands of individual Pops can change due to a wide variety of factors such as Traits, Stratum, Job and so on.

For example, a Robot Pop that is not sapient or has not been given Citizen Rights requires far less housing than an ordinary Pop, as the storage and support infrastructure they require occupies significantly less space on the planet than the dedicated housing occupied by your citizens. Housing is not a hard limit, and the housing requirements of Pops can exceed the available Housing if the planet population continues to grow without additional Housing being constructed. This is called Overcrowding, and will result in a variety of negative effects such as reduced growth speed and lowered Happiness/stability, but also increases the Migration Push on the planet (more on that below), so a small amount of Overcrowding may actually be desirable on your heavily populated planets in order to grow your new colonies.

Growth and Migration
Migration is a concept that's never quite worked out to be as interesting as it should be in Stellaris. While there were a lot of mechanics related to how Pops moved and why, these mechanics were quite opaque, and the wholesale movements of Pops that simply packed up and moved to another world resulted in a mechanic that often felt more like a nuisance to the player than anything, as Pops would leave critical buildings on your core worlds untended to in order to settle down on some newly colonized ball of ice on the other side of your empire. For this reason, when reworking the migration mechanics, we decided that the new system would tie more directly into Pop Growth and make it more clear what benefits you were receiving from migration on a planet.

Under the new Growth and Migration system, each Planet has five different main variables that determine its demographical direction: Pop Growth, Pop Decline, Immigration Pull, Emigration Push and Pop Assembly. I will go over each of these in turn:

• Pop Growth: This is the base level of Pop Growth on the planet from natural reproduction and immigration. A Planet will only have a single growing Species at any given time, but is not limited to the Species alreadyliving on the planet - any Species with theoretical access to the planet through migration will be able to start growing on a planet, and when choosing a Species to grow, planets will generally prioritize Species that are under-represented on the planet, meaning for example that an empire with Syncretic Evolution will generally have both its Species growing in turn on any new colonies, instead of being limited to only the Species that they used to colonize the planet. The rights you have assigned to Species will factor into this, so a Species with Full Citizenship will get far higher weight when deciding which Pop to grow next than one that merely has Residence. Habitability is also a major factor.
  
• Pop Decline: Pop Decline represents the decline of certain Species on the planet, and usually is a result of shifting demographics or Purging. Overcrowded Planets that have over-represented Species will have those Species begin to decline in numbers and be replaced by newly growing, under-represented Species. This means that planet demographics will change over time, for example having your homeworlds turn more cosmopolitan and multi-species over time as a result of signing Migration Treaties as a Xenophile, or your privileged main species with Full Citizen moving onto conquered planets and replacing the less privileged population already living there as a Xenophobe. Purging a particular species will essentially guarantee that Species' rapid decline, creating massive amounts of Emigration in the form of Refugees if Displacement is used.
  
• Immigration and Emigration: Each Planet has an Immigration Pull and Emigration Push value generated by factors such as Housing, Stability, Unemployment and so on. By subtracting Emigration from Immigration, the overall Migration state of the planet is calculated. A planet with more Emigration than Immigration will have faster Pop Decline, but will also 'export' its Emigration value to a general Migration Pool that is distributed among potential immigration targets. Planets with higher Immigration Pull will receive a greater share of this migration, which is converted directly into Pop Growth. Normally, Planets can only send their Emigration to planets in the same empire, but signing Migration Treaties or accepting Refugees will allow you to receive migration from planets outside your borders.
  
• Pop Assembly: Pop Assembly represents a planet's capacity for constructing artificial (generally Robotic) Pops and comes from certain Jobs provided by special buildings. Each unit of Pop Assembly provided by Jobs will automatically contribute 1 growth towards the next artificial Pop being built on the planet. A Planet can have both Growing and Assembling Pops, and there is no link between Pop Assembly and Emigration/Immigration asides from the potential for assembled Pops to create overcrowding and unemployment.
  

That's all for today! Next week we'll continue with part 3 of the Planetary Rework dev diaries, on the topic of Happiness, Stability and Crime.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-122-planetary-rework-part-2-of-4.1115992/

about half a dozen pics in that thread i didn't link in