What is the point of sectors?

[jje64]

So I've got a moderate-ish empire going. Built a decent Federation, I'm in the Galactic Council, have 3 fleets of about 50k and a dozen maxed out starbases. I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 colonies. I don't get the point of sectors? Is it just for people who get bored and enjoy replacing an endless stream of dying governors along with admirals, generals, and scientists? I get there are automation aspects with sectors, but to be honest I don't see where they add anything to the game other than creating an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and something else I have to keep track of. The sector automation is a hot mess, and every time I give it systems to manage, it promptly runs them off the rails. It takes less work to periodically cycle through all of my planets and adjust them than it does fixing the messes the governors make. I don't see where the stockpile mechanics add anything to the game, except that where I just had to worry about empire-wide supply and demand, now I also have to watch out for local shortages and re-direct resources to deal with them. Also hate the haphazard way the game creates the sectors, I mean it would be one thing if I could use them to organize my empire, but after creating three or four sectors, my initial impression was that someone at Paradox felt like the game could really use a gerrymandering simulation...

Am I just doing this wrong? Anyone actually using sectors in a meaningful way?

[galadon3]

pretty much sums it up, they put sectors in the game when they made it and since then have still not really figured out any meaningfull way have them be usefull.
As it is now sectors serve two purposes: make sure you need more then one governor and to automate them
Even IF automation might one day reach a level where it is at least workable (ppl expecting it to perform as well as human player are tbh kinda delusional thats not gonna happen but working not optimal but ok-ish might be a thing it could one day do..eventually... maybe even before Stellaris 2 comes out), there is ultimately no point to sectors because automation can as well work on a planet-base.

Basically they are a remnant from back at the release when you couldnt control more then a handfull of systems yourself (as in the game didnt allow it) and the rest went into sectors to be run by the AI (not good but well back then the tile-system was a lot less complex then the post 2.2 economy so at some point, after a lot of patches and adding at least a bit more player-control, you could work with it, without the permanent urge to throttle whoever programmed it).

[wolkenwand]

You must have sector to appoint governor, and governor gives bonus to sector they lead, the higher the governor's level the bigger bonus you'll get.

[Chap]

sectors used to be extremely useful back when ships were made out of minerals because individual sectors had their own resource storage, this meant that in endgame you could que up massive fleets by collecting the minerals in all of your sectors.
in the current version of the game the ship cost is less due to costing alloys, so you can stockpile all the alloys that you would need for a massive fleet without any sectors when you hit lategame, especially with the mega engineering tech which gives you extra resource storage.

[Azunai]

in the original release version of the game you were only allowed to directly control a handful of planets (later changed to a number of directly controlled systems). everything else had to be run by an AI controlled sector.

as the game evolved, devs went back and forth with this sector system multiple times changing the rules for if/how you were allowed to interact with the sectors.

the system we have in the current iteration is basically just a leftover of a former game mechanic that doesn't really have much of a purpose. basically they just make you jump through some hoops (re-hire dead governors for sectors etc.) for no real reason

[Tuxu -=JeepC=-]

Sadly, nowdays they have no point at all.

They used to be a very convenient way to segment the management of your empire and partition areas that you would want to make vassals or even free states to add to a federation - Now days they are just a silly risk that would automatically add your newly built penrose sphere to the territory of a sector that you'd previously thought of giving freedom to or vassalize.

They are a useless joke.

[pipo.p]

Originally posted by jje64:

I don't get the point of sectors? Is it just for people who get bored and enjoy replacing an endless stream of dying governors along with admirals, generals, and scientists? I get there are automation aspects with sectors, but to be honest I don't see where they add anything to the game other than creating an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and something else I have to keep track of.

If you can see why you hire admirals, etc, then you can see why you have to hire governors.

As for the automated management of sectors, and the political and administrative role of a sector in an empire, the others have answered: it's poor, at max.

[♍VoidTraveler]

The point of sectors, at the moment, is to let you apply a single specific governor to a bunch of planets.

[CrUsHeR]

Initially, you could manually create sectors and assign any star systems to them.
The main purpose was that you could automate the building of everything, not just planetary buildings but also build mining stations. Almost like a vassal.

In the current state, there are two functions:
1) automated planetary building, except that you cannot directly choose the layout of sectors
2) some representation of administrative limits, so one governor can only manage a relatively small area

Since the way how planets and pops work has been massively changed, the AI is generally unable to build anything in an even remotely efficient way. Their planets always have like 10-20 unemployed pops, one building of every type, population controls enabled on planets with half capacity and such.

So if it wasn't for the passive governor bonuses, people probably would ignore sectors altogether.

[♍VoidTraveler]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

So if it wasn't for the passive governor bonuses, people probably would ignore sectors altogether.

It's fairly beneficial so long as you manual everything as you should in this game.
Don't add any funds to the sector, do not enable any automatic building both sector and planetary, and you're golden.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Urthemiel:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

So if it wasn't for the passive governor bonuses, people probably would ignore sectors altogether.

It's fairly beneficial so long as you manual everything as you should in this game.
Don't add any funds to the sector, do not enable any automatic building both sector and planetary, and you're golden.

Just saying, without individual sector automation, there would be zero reason to assign more than 1 sector, if you still could manage the sector layout manually.
Then you would just have 1 governor manage your whole empire.

But the sector size limit is forced, and the governor effects on colonies are so vital, that you have no choice but having like 20+ sectors after a while.

One positive side effect is that all leaders (who are not in charge of a science division) obtain 1 random trait sooner or later, so with more governors, there is a higher chance to get an extremely good one. Like research + ship building in one person.

[frowningmirror]

Sectors is the only way I know how to Balkanize your space empire

[Gauntlet]

No one has mentioned that you can name sectors and the name appears on the map. It does allow for a tiny bit of fun that way.

[bri]

Once upon a time there were plans for the sector system to add a level of internal strife/management/pressure to your empire to make non-war times less boring. That got scrapped along with a whole lot of other initial designs and plans when Wiz took over...

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by Urthemiel:

It's fairly beneficial so long as you manual everything as you should in this game.
Don't add any funds to the sector, do not enable any automatic building both sector and planetary, and you're golden.

Just saying, without individual sector automation, there would be zero reason to assign more than 1 sector, if you still could manage the sector layout manually.
Then you would just have 1 governor manage your whole empire.

But the sector size limit is forced, and the governor effects on colonies are so vital, that you have no choice but having like 20+ sectors after a while.

One positive side effect is that all leaders (who are not in charge of a science division) obtain 1 random trait sooner or later, so with more governors, there is a higher chance to get an extremely good one. Like research + ship building in one person.

Which was what happened at one point. Manually managed core sector with a dozen systems, and an automation-disabled sector with every other system (hundreds).