untitled overhaul project

The idea of this mod is to rework the way planets, resources, buildings and pops function in stellaris.

Planet Rework Concept In my view stellaris planets are quite boring. They are not distinctive enough and the player doesn't have meaningful choices.

(a) planet scaling: the idea here is to add a leveling/grading system for planets. The player might start the game on a pc_continental planet, but the planet will be of a specific grade, in this instance a range between 1-10, with 1-3, 7-10 being tied to specific civics. Assuming that the higher the number the better the planet is, 9-10 would be a gaia world or its equivalent and 1-2 a tomb world of some sort. The levels will be distinguished by three elements - a unique tile set (recolors are fine for the most part, but we have access to some assets); a changing planet modifier showing the planet level and including some bonuses that distinguish between the levels; irreplaceable tile blockers. The levels will change through terraforming - but terraforming will be reworked: terraforming link will be created to terraforming to the same class of planet. So the player will be able to choose, for example, to terraform pc_continental into pc_continental. Doing this will fire an event that will open a terraforming custom menu (following Iyur's example and using his guide as a base). In this menu the player will be able to choose between different "terraforming" options. For example, the player may choose an option called "soil enrichment", which will clear some irreplaceable tile blockers and add food resources to the planet. S/he might instead choose "planetary fracking", which will degrade the planet, add some irreplaceable tile blockers, but also drastically increase the minerals on a few tiles. This is illustrates the general idea - the concept needs a lot of work before it can be implemented.

(b) resource/building rework. The mod will use an event based engine, which will load at game start. This engine will drastically reduce the amount of resource deposit tiles on planets. At the same time, it will make the differences between deposits more drastic, so very rarely players might come across a naturally occuring +10 mineral tiles. Of course, some stuff can combine with planet terraforming to reach really high levels, i.e. +16-18 minerals on a tile. So the idea here is you might find a size 10 crappy planet, but this planet has very little irreplaceable blockers (mountain ranges for example - that require terraforming), and it has 5 strong deposits. This building is suddenly viable. Or you might have a large planet with little deposits but a planet modifier like "rich core" - this will enable a special terraforming option, like deep core mining. This will cause the planet to change planet class or only(!) the planet's entity, but it will also give a shitload of minerals on the planet itself (not any specific tile - the planet directly).

(c) These changes go hand in hand with a change to the base vanilla resources/buildings that I began to implement in the ai mod - as a toggleable option that the player may turn on/off using a mod menu or on game start (event menu). The aim is to change resource buildings to always have at least two alternative- one version that works on a tile with the resource, and another that can be built anywhere. I'll explain this in respect to food: So food will be much more scarce - it will be reconceptualized as "high organics" or something such like - that is, something that doesn't preclude its usefulness to machine/robotic empires. The player may build hydrophonic farms on it, and it will function like vanilla - the building will not supress the resource, and it will have a decent output. But hydrophonic farms are going to be expensive - these are buildings designed to be used on barren/toxic/asteroid enviornments (which will be added in the mod), as sealed artifical ecosystems. Instead the player will get access to special buildings that can be built only on organics. The unique thing about these resource buildings is that they will not use the standard produced_resource = { food = x } but instead triggered resource production that is directly tied to the tile resource. For example, if the tile has 1 food, the building will make 2 food + 1 from tile, if it has 2 food it will make 4 + 2. These buildings will be buildable only on tiles with the specific resource. Mines, for example, could only be built on minerals - and on other tiles or empty tiles, the player may build industrial complexes.And again for energy - power plants will be renamed isotope/fuel refineries for energy tiles, and instead there will be commercial distincts and datasphere hubs. Research building will function the same - there will be 1-2 levels of lab structures that can be built anywhere + special resource labs (exo already adds 16 planetary special resources), but phsyics/society/engineering labs will only be buildable on that unique resource. these buildings will only produce 1 type of research each but they will amplify it as illustrated above. The vanilla building tier system needs to be reworked a bit. One way to do it is to instead of scale resource production up, adj. bonuses are added to buildings that are tile restricted, or they may have triggered planet modifiers - very low values (0.005%-0.01% bonus, but accumualting).

Pop Rework Concept