HELP, ALL my planets have low stability.

[Nitrate]

and i have no clue what to do

[Isokon]

First step would be to figure out why they have low stability. It should tell you when you hover over it on the planet screen.

[Army Pea]

Drop down screen with inform you about why you have poor stability.

Unemployment is a major factor.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

It's most likely happiness, either unemployment or species slavery, or low amenities.

If you're a xenophobe it's okay to put them on residence, but if you really want them to be slaves start them off as servants. That'll at least solve any amenities issues. Bring in a non-enslaved species to put as the ruler.

[Nitrate]

sorry I raged quit I was gonna win then I lost to rebellions.
I do believe had something to do with either my factions hating me. My amenities were good on all planets and I had no unemployment. All i know that all planets had 0% stability
But it doens't matter anymore. Sorry I have no patience.

[NixBoxDone]

There is a lot that can have caused that. You could've been beset by a criminal megacorp (if you own that DLC), their branch office buildings usually hit your stability and criminal rates hard.

If your factions hated you, that's usually solved by checking what each faction likes and dislikes. Many of those things are small concessions that don't really hurt you much to grant (like giving alien immigrants residency, disabling various more gory types of interactions with primitive species you're observing and the like) which you can make to make them happier.
Mind that some things you can do to make one faction happy might not be seen in a good light by its opposite, so make sure that the faction you are planning to butter up actually has enough members for it to mean something.

Then there's the planetary habitability score and modifiers - some planets carry negative happiness modifiers that you have to look out for and bad habitability can also make your pops harder to control.

There are some event decisions that can cause your pops to be unhappy for a while. Being humiliated by a Fallen Empire and sacrificing one of your scientists or pops to an FE for example.

Last but not least are the various pop types you can have that might have traits interfering with your ability to keep em content such as decadent. Overcrowding also lowers stability, afaik.

When in doubt, enable nutritional plenitude in your decisions (which makes pops pig out in food, but also gives a pop growth bonus and a slight happiness boost afaik), check if you have access to an edict that might improve happiness, set their living standards to a higher level (under species settings, makes em happier but also makes em use more consumer goods, but that's usually partly negated by the improved production from said happiness) or spend for an empire wide party at the Artist Enclave.
A high level governor could help stabilize your colonies as well.
You could also check if you can reform your gooberment and switch civics to something that pups more pep into the step of your pops if you're in desperate straits.
For a more long-term planning one, you might want to look into the domination tradition, that might also have some useful perks to keep your pops popping or at least help you afford edicts that'll tide ya over.

[Laigon ♥]

It's normally worth checking for all the reasons. Do they have enough jobs, housing, crime level, amenities. Does your empire have a shortage of consumer goods? Energy? There's decisions like martial law that increase stability too.

[NixBoxDone]

Yeah, shortages or being recently conquered can also contribute, I just didn't think to mention that. D:

[Squashbuckler]

Check your citizen laws.... See if you are "stratified" or some other setup for your species that is lowering stability (Happiness)

[NovalDeathAngel]

For future games remember this, if your energy minerals and food is good then make sectors of all the planets. Then in the "planets and sectors" tab you set them all to balanced and put in as much energy and minerals and let the ai do its thing for you. In my games i have 20-100 planets and its hard to micro manage them all. But the ai can do it for you and fix the problems with them that cause instability. Go back into the game and try this and after 1 year it should be thriving. They all dont need to be set to balanced, i set some to balanced and some for alloys and some for research but they all work just let the ai do the work to fix it

[Sovietkotek]

I dunno I usually set all living standards to social welfare and food policy to nutritional plentitude, that tends to keep happiness at an ignorable level most of the time..

[Nitrate]

Actually thank you guys! I am fairly new and all this information is very useful. I will use this all in effect next time I play.

[MissedHurry]

Also:

Empire Capital +5
Noble Jobs +5
Police State civic +5
Shared Burdens civic +5
Deep Space Black Site starbase building +5
Finishing the Harmony or Synchronicity tradition tree +5

And: Stability is increased up to +20 by increasing the Amenities up to double the population.

If you're really desperate, you can declare martial law for awhile. It costs 50 influence on the planet's decision menu "... giving the following effects:"
+2 Soldier Jobs
+5 Stability from Soldier Jobs
−33% Job Resource Output
−50% Pop Growth
Can be ended at any time.

Just make sure to have some soldier jobs populated on the planet for that one.

[Sovietkotek]

Originally posted by MissedHurry:

Stability is increased up to +20 by increasing the Amenities up to double the population.

Oh ♥♥♥♥, I didn't know that. This is great!