Would love to use this if the below lag was fixed. Maybe limit to player-only somehow?

For anyone using this mod in the future, I can confirm what the previous comment says - the mod works great, but a little too well; the AI in the game will settle colonies on almost every possible planet or moon they can, causing them to have 20+ settled worlds with less than 5 population each. This effectively lags the game to death at around year 2270.
This happens even if you have mods to disable the AI from building habitats, as this mod technically just allows settling any world. TLDR: Great mod, but it would need an update to stop the AI from using it/using it way less.

is it just my build, or is the AI prioritizing terraforming over settling for everyone? Because I have almost every AI in the game with 20 or thirty planets they have terraformed into minor settlements, but they have not settled them.

@OverkillEngine

Thanks for flagging & sorry for the late answer. This is bad. It shouldn't work like that with Gaia either. I'll look into it, but haven't had the time yet.

Feedback, if intended, the lack of generating standard planetary features post terraforming hurts real bad:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2768353425

Granted, this was terraforming direct to Gaia class, going to try terraforming to on of the more basic types first to see how that affects it.

@Jack Jack Attack

Wow. :D

On touching the colonist jobs: I hear you on that. You are certainly right that this way they would fit more seamlessly into the vanilla system (bonus buildings, AI management, slaves/robots etc.), and other mods. My objection to this idea (raised by someone, maybe you, back in the mod's early days) was mostly philosophical (early colonies in near hard vacuum _do_ need college educated specialists, not workmen + yeah, they don't seamlessly fit into vanilla colony models, and that's fine).

But your points do make sense. I don't think I'll rewrite this part before a long and relaxing post-Xmas playthrough, but may think about it soon after.

When you finish Become the Crisis and start to take over the rest of the galaxy. Revenge of the terraforms:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678717994

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678718017

Main advantages of this type of rework,

* Robots & Slaves are actually useful on ZT Settlements
* Asteroids are no longer better than Dyson Spheres
* Encourages transplanting from larger worlds to "fill up" Asteroids instead of expecting the Asteroid population to grow, varying gameplay
* The AI will likely handle the use of vanilla Worker jobs better than modded Specialists
* Works with mods/vanilla effects that target the basic Worker jobs
* Makes the Dome districts more important, since you'll actually have cause to fill up all the housing
* Might actually build Resort Towns or Military Outposts instead of Technician Colonists & Researchers

GOOD KILL THE REDS hahah. So with the rework to how the bonus buildings work now being flat instead of a percent (+1 Energy per Technician, instead of +15% EC from jobs), I wonder if the Colonist jobs in this mod could get a touch.

Perhaps each Colonist building is unique, but gives a handful of the basic jobs so it works better with other mods/new vanilla? So the +2 Technician Colonists could be replaced with +3/4 normal Technicians, plus a decent base income (and perhaps +5% Habitability per Colonist building?) and maybe a specialist job or two.

P.S. to the previous one: I'm still thinking about cutting barrens even further back, like 3 (maybe 2?) instead of 5. And asteroids with them. That would mean 5 to 7.5 times fewer bloody red dots on the galaxy map.

If anyone has a strong opinion about it, let me know.

OK, a few quick fixes:

1. Jobs work now.

2. Terraforming costs are also back.

3. AI weight for terraforming has changed drastically.

Barren colonisation is down from 15 to 5 (same as the vanilla terraforming weight of barren candidates).

Asteroids are down from 5 to 3. Not ideal places to live on, but cheaper to colonize and mine than a heavier gravity well that also is scorching hot or toxic.

Frozen down from 5 to 2. (Same as terraforming between wet, dry, and cold planet class groups.)

Molten and toxic down from 5 to 1; gas giant remains at 1.

But the AI weight for terraforming uninhabitable hellholes to proper, livable planets remains the same as the terraforming of vanilla barren candidates (5). So AI is now unlikely to bother colonising a frozen or toxic planet, but if it already did, it will work on turning it more hospitable.

This doesn't fix the AI's handling of small settlements' economy in Startech/Starnet, but will limit the spamming. I'll look into the rest later.

@Jack Jack Attack: the colony pox isn't just in starnet, it also happened in my games w/o ai enhancer mods. Need to balance the ai_weight somehow, maybe add more triggers when the AI has enough money AND too many people maybe?

@anonymoustribble, greensniperhat, Jack Jack Attack

As usually, thank guys for the flagging and for finding where the problem is. Sorry but I haven't had the time yet to try out 3.2.

@Jack Jack Attack, I'll look into Starnet/Startech too. Wasn't familiar with them. I'm not thrilled about the idea of banning the AI from using the mod, but limiting it to a one-to-one basis may be a workable idea. Now I just have to figure out how that works. :D

(And no, playing without Starnet/Startech is not an option)

I see @greensniperhat has beat me to it, but just wanted to note the following bugs:

* Jobs aren't functioning right now, making Asteroids in particular not worth it.
* There's no cost to terraforming between planet types right now. This exacerbates the AI spam issue.
* The Starnet/Startech AI spams the fuck out of micro settlements, but can't figure out how to build the specialist buildings. This ends up working against their economy as well as spamming the map screen with little red "colonizable planet" tags. I would strongly suggest either removing the AI's ability to use this mod entirely, or limit their use to a one-to-one basis (one micro settlement per one normal world/habitat). The AI sucks at habitat management as well, even in Starnet.

also just noticed: terraforming now has some changes, namely in stating the needed resources.
instead of just stating energy = 500 for example, now you need a resources = { category = terraforming cost = { energy = 500 } }.

3.2 replaced some of the job checks with possible_precalc stuff, this is what's making the job bug.
Possible = { specialist_job_check_trigger = yes } gets replaced with possible_precalc = can_fill_specialist_job, same with workers, drones and rulers.

I seem to have found a bug, pops are refusing to work any job added by mod (Eg. miner colonist) and will stay unemployed. I am playing modded, so that could be the issue.

Just figured out what's causing the uninhabited colonizable barren pox with AI empires:
In terraform_links_small_settlements.txt, the AI weight for barren -> colonizable barren is set to 15, which is way, way high.

@greensniperhat

Changelog? That's alien technology for me. :D

And you're right. I haven't picked up that one letter difference. Many thanks.

just checked vanilla, all the colonizeable became colonizable. Says so in the changelogs.

@greensniperhat

Thanks for spotting these things.

I think "is_for_colonizeable" is still used for deposits. It's still in the vanilla common files. Am I missing something?

Buildings are fixed now, thanks again.

actually check for has_non_swapped_traditions and has_swapped_traditions, that should do it.

oh, and the has_non_swapped_traditions in the buildings needs to be replaced with has_active_tradition.

deposits still has is_for_colonizeable, making it non-3.1.2 compliant.

@Jack Jack Attack

As usually, thanks for the great points. I'll look into them as soon as I can. May take some time though (non-gaming related stuff).

Resettling may be problematic because it's heavily government dependent, but I'm not sure I will have a better idea.

Typo: how embarrassing. Thanks, it's fixed now!

@ZT: The incompatibility was on their end & it’s been fixed. Was an issue with their mod needing vanilla asteroids, which wouldn’t spawn with any mod that affected the terraformability of asteroids.

As for the AI, There really just needs to be a quick way for the AI to get to 6 colonists. 6 I find is the sweet spot when an Asteroid really starts putting out resources, since you can have 2-3 Specialists in the resource buildings and a couple of pops in support or as Roboticists. I have no idea about how to go about this, but some way to push the AI to resettle to get to 6 seems like a good option. Additionally I’ve noticed that the AI will build & use Asteroid speciliast buildings to great effect, but they won’t build as many as they can. The Technician Colonist for example really kicks off when you can get three or more on a single asteroid.

Also, the “Technician Colonist” is misspelled “Tecnician Colonist”.

Updated for 3.1.2.

Sorry for the late responses. Have been busy.

@Jack Jack Attack

Happy to see you still like the mod. :)

Yeah, I have seen those swarms of uncolonized habitable barren worlds... it's not mod dependent. I haven't yet figured out why. I could tone down how likely the AI is to terraform barren worlds, but then I'm afraid it would colonize even fewer of them... don't know. Will think about this.

Advanced Space Production: yes, I'm afraid it will be a compatibility issue. Unfortunately I may not have the time for a while to chase incompatibilities. :(

@GuardianForce

Yes, as soon as possible. Sorry, I haven't spent enough time on Stellaris since a recent move between countries.

Can you update for 3.1

@jack Why are all your links getting flagged as suspicious to me lmao

As far as I can tell, this mod is incompatible (https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2485347086) . Namely, I can't build it's megastructures. Don't know if that's a compatibility problem or not. I assumed so since Small Settlements alters asteroids.

Here's an example of what I mean with the AI spamming:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2612244640

I am playing with Starnet AI, which *may* have changed things slightly (such as by increasing the weight for terraforming decisions). However I suspect this behaviour would show up even with vanilla or other AI on low habitable-world galaxies.

I would highly, highly recommend playing with 0.5 or less habitable worlds and Research Districts (https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2459091293) when using Small Settlements. Fewer habitable worlds means more opportunity to use Asteroids or Barren worlds. Research Districts massively nerfs how much science is possible, since you only get the one Lab from building slots and research actively competes with other resources. It makes research Asteroids extremely viable and honestly one of the best options for tech rushing.

Came back to Stellaris for 3.1, and this mod is as great as ever! I'm loving the rework to use districts. Asteroids are expensive to set up, but totally worth it in the long run. The extremely limited supply of districts is also a great design since it stops OP nonsense when interacting with other mods (notably stuff like Sky Islands which can add +4 districts to a smaller planet).

I will note however that the AI loooves to create Asteroids & Barren worlds, and then not colonize them. I'm playing in a galaxy with very few habitable worlds, so I guess they just don't have tons of places to spend their EC.

I think the weirdest/amusing combination of colony events I've had are getting Walking Forests across a barren planet, followed by an avian species being a Subterranean Civilisation on an asteroid, followed by the Dancing Plague (aka it's an asteroid full of funky gas).

Might be easier to just try and disable all colony events from triggering on small settlements in general, but then just write custom event chains for each small settlement type. Easier said than done of course - but custom events for small settlements would be really awesome from a lore perspective.

Update pt. 2: new planetary features for planets in the Sol System are added soon _IF_ this mod is used together with Better Sol & Neighbourhood.

I think they are quite cool. Separate sets of terraformed and uninhabitable features have been created for all the rocky planets and moons.

Unfortunately the BSN mod is needed to find these planets when deposits are generated, because I won't have time to re-code some of its features into Small Settlements.

New updates online.

1. Sorry, but dome and para districts now require special surface deposits (craters, canyons etc.), and the number of max districts will be lower than the planet size (depends on planet class; easier to build on barren, harder on molten).

2. I did this rebalancing because I also added a way to terraform any uninhabitable planets, not only Terraforming Candidates. More precisely: Terraforming Candidate modifier can be added with a slow and expensive planetary decision (energy, minerals, food, 5k each; World Shaper and Climate Restoration required).

Let me know if anyone finds any issue.

@enigman

"loved seeing one of your domed cities on an empire when i swallowed them up just now."

That's great news!

@ZT, works perfectly with Planetary Diversity if above it in load order. No issues found with what I have tested and loved seeing one of your domed cities on an empire when i swallowed them up just now.

@enigman

Hi, thanks for letting me know.

I think my mod should be fine above PD, but I have not played properly with both on.

Hi ZT, looks like there is a conflict with Planetary Diversity, easily resolve by having your mod above PD in the load order. If it's below PD, it reduces the habitibility to near zero for some planets that should support the species.

I am only just doing a playthrough with the modified load order just now so I don't know if it being above PD will break features of your mod (I hope not - I really like it.)

@Touriste

Wow, never heard of it. Thanks a lot for the link!

@ZT

Sounds really good. I wish you all the best with it.
Also if you want to get more experience maybe think about joining the Stellaris Modding Den, People there are always happy to help new modders. Their discord: https://discord.gg/bHVez2C

Good Luck. :)

@Touriste

"These are probably bad sugestions"

No, they are quite good.

I myself am only modding since like December or January, so there may be things I tried and failed back then but now with more routine should probably try again. I will definitely revisit the issue of adding blockers when terraforming, because gas giants are indeed really OP.


A multi-staged process using planetary decisions would also be really cool, and one day I may go in that direction, e.g. allowing non-terraforming candidates to be terraformed if there is a huge surface infrastructure in place that can import and utilize the missing H2O, nitrogen etc. (all this for enormous cost of course; no flooding the galaxy with barren-to-continental worlds). But that will take more time for me to learn I'm afraid.

@ZT

Alternatively, I can't really think of anything other than to make it staged. Something like having it so after the planet is colonised you have a decision like with how to make an Ecumenopolis, that transforms to be more habitable, that way it's not tied to the colony_type.

These are probably bad sugestions, but I hope it's possible to find a work around as this mod is awesome and deserves more recognition.

@ZT

That sounds like a good idea and I see what you are saying regarding the blockers...

I don't really have any large modding experience but I'm sure blockers can be added as they can be blocked behind other blockers in the same way beneificial planetary features can be. not sure if it's any help and you probably know already, but use effect blocks with terraforming such as when the modifier for terraforming candidate is removed after completion. Not sure if a trigger for blockers can be used here though?


effect = {
from = { remove_modifier = terraforming_candidate }
}

@Mr_Tourist

:DD

Thanks for the point. Real Space is not causing this; it's a problem with my original concept.

I wanted to add blockers to gas giants (and possibly other types too), but for some reason I could not add them automatically with the colonisation.

What I may do (to have a quick fix) is somehow maximising the number of domes per planet based on planet type. I hope that is possible.

@ZT - Hey, I found a bug where you can build mining colony networks on Gas-Giants.

This would be a minor thing if it only this on its own, but because Gas Giants are huge (Size +40 for Jupiter in your Sol mod), they allow you to build large amounts of Dome networks. These increase building slots and allow you to spam mining networks to make any gas-giant more productive than most mid-game mining colonies.

Can't help but picture a group of miners arriving at Jupiter only to find out the truth: "Dave this is just like that Luna Cheese debarkle!"

Full disclosure though, I'm also using realspace so that might be effecting it?
Thanks :)

@ZT - Thanks, I really enjoy this mod.