Orbitals should also act as mining stations

[Frenky]

I find that I don't build mining stations in my void dweller playthrough as I am not sure if they will be worth it considering that my orbitals will just delete them
It very annoyng that you lose all of the resources from a body once you build an orbital over it, especially if there is a mining station there as that will just delete the mining station
It would be nice if you could have both the station and the obital at the same time or just have orbitals collect what mining stations would collect otherwise

[Darklordnj]

No, there is no need to design the game so that you can have your cake and eat it with habitats, purely out of your rather odd belief that it isn’t worth it to build mining stations.

Even assuming you lose out on luck and only have the base mineral rate of 1, it only means that it’s 100 months to earn back the equivalent expenditure, reduced further depending on techs and other modifiers. It takes far longer to even build the habitat, not even going into the time it would take to gather the alloys for both the habitat and orbital.

[Ryika]

On the one hand, it seems perfectly fair to me that you lose them as a source for space mining, the potential to harvest the ores becomes available on the habitat after all.

On the other hand, It's a bit weird, because you gain more bonuses from building those orbitals than just being able to build the appropriate districts, and if you just want the other effects and don't need the mining districts, it's kind of a bummer to lose the resource income.

Not that it makes a big difference either way, but I can see how it might "feel" bad.

But at the end of the day, does it really matter all that much?

[Frenky]

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

No, there is no need to design the game so that you can have your cake and eat it with habitats, purely out of your rather odd belief that it isn’t worth it to build mining stations.

Even assuming you lose out on luck and only have the base mineral rate of 1, it only means that it’s 100 months to earn back the equivalent expenditure, reduced further depending on techs and other modifiers. It takes far longer to even build the habitat, not even going into the time it would take to gather the alloys for both the habitat and orbital.

Depends on what you mean by "need"
If you want the game to be more balanced and clear with its effects than there is a need to change something

Void dwellers are so weak right now that you should at least not have to put up with losing out on so many resources early on because you have to build orbitals
You could decide to build stations now and orbitals later but that just takes away so much of your attention for no reason and makes void dwellers even more annoying to play

Not to even mention that, again, it takes away income that you would otherwise have as well as deleting your investment, which every other empire doesn't even have to think about

[Darklordnj]

Originally posted by Frenky:

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

No, there is no need to design the game so that you can have your cake and eat it with habitats, purely out of your rather odd belief that it isn’t worth it to build mining stations.

Even assuming you lose out on luck and only have the base mineral rate of 1, it only means that it’s 100 months to earn back the equivalent expenditure, reduced further depending on techs and other modifiers. It takes far longer to even build the habitat, not even going into the time it would take to gather the alloys for both the habitat and orbital.

Void dwellers are so weak right now that you should at least not have to put up with losing out on so many resources early on because you have to build orbitals
You could decide to build stations now and orbitals later but that just takes away so much of your attention for no reason and makes void dwellers even more annoying to play

Not to even mention that, again, it takes away income that you would otherwise have as well as deleting your investment, which every other empire doesn't even have to think about

Counterpoint to this is that you’re very clearly boosting the overall output of any given resource in a system through the ability to have pops working on it, as the amount of resources provided by any pop trumps most space resources. And I fail to see where VD are losing out on resources if they don’t build orbitals, the situation does not change significantly, you’re only losing out because you aren’t building the mining outposts.

Saying other empires don’t have this issue, neglects the fact that they too can build worse habitats (at least until you get the AP), just as VD can still colonies planets. If you’re limiting yourself to habitat only run. That’s fine, but you’re delving into RP ingame or trying to challenge yourself, in which case, there will inevitably be drawbacks compared to a more min-maxed game that you must accept.

[Frenky]

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

Originally posted by Frenky:

Void dwellers are so weak right now that you should at least not have to put up with losing out on so many resources early on because you have to build orbitals
You could decide to build stations now and orbitals later but that just takes away so much of your attention for no reason and makes void dwellers even more annoying to play

Not to even mention that, again, it takes away income that you would otherwise have as well as deleting your investment, which every other empire doesn't even have to think about

Counterpoint to this is that you’re very clearly boosting the overall output of any given resource in a system through the ability to have pops working on it, as the amount of resources provided by any pop trumps most space resources. And I fail to see where VD are losing out on resources if they don’t build orbitals, the situation does not change significantly, you’re only losing out because you aren’t building the mining outposts.

Saying other empires don’t have this issue, neglects the fact that they too can build worse habitats (at least until you get the AP), just as VD can still colonies planets. If you’re limiting yourself to habitat only run. That’s fine, but you’re delving into RP ingame or trying to challenge yourself, in which case, there will inevitably be drawbacks compared to a more min-maxed game that you must accept.

The issue is in that that you don't have an ininite amount of pops. Mining stations work constantly while for orbitals you have to build the districts on a habitat and then put pops to work on those jobs

Other empires don't have to build orbitals and can just build stations to get their income for the rest of the campaign while also being able to build districts on their planets and get jobs for pops anyway

And no, not getting colonies as a VD isn't limiting yourself, first off you don't get guarantted habitable worlds, and second off even if you find some random planets they are still terrible for colonization because your species has habitat prefference habitability and less output on planets

[Darklordnj]

Originally posted by Frenky:

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

Counterpoint to this is that you’re very clearly boosting the overall output of any given resource in a system through the ability to have pops working on it, as the amount of resources provided by any pop trumps most space resources. And I fail to see where VD are losing out on resources if they don’t build orbitals, the situation does not change significantly, you’re only losing out because you aren’t building the mining outposts.

Saying other empires don’t have this issue, neglects the fact that they too can build worse habitats (at least until you get the AP), just as VD can still colonies planets. If you’re limiting yourself to habitat only run. That’s fine, but you’re delving into RP ingame or trying to challenge yourself, in which case, there will inevitably be drawbacks compared to a more min-maxed game that you must accept.

The issue is in that that you don't have an ininite amount of pops. Mining stations work constantly while for orbitals you have to build the districts on a habitat and then put pops to work on those jobs

Other empires don't have to build orbitals and can just build stations to get their income for the rest of the campaign while also being able to build districts on their planets and get jobs for pops anyway

And no, not getting colonies as a VD isn't limiting yourself, first off you don't get guarantted habitable worlds, and second off even if you find some random planets they are still terrible for colonization because your species has habitat prefference habitability and less output on planets

Then don’t build orbitals until you need them? I’d say the VD meta leans more towards building the habitat first and then waiting to build orbitals later once you hit mid to late game, you still need to build mining stations. Aside from that you can always build or purchase pops, so that’s arguably a smaller issue than what you think (unless you’re restricting yourself to your own pops). Regardless, things aren’t super different for VD compared, the bigger constriction is that you have to build your planets first, which means the alloy and influence cost as well as the build time has a larger impact on your empires development.

No habitable worlds still isn’t a big deal, new setting for VD gives a system that has alloys and a system that has research deposits.

Additionally, unless you’re authoritarian, you can easily get migration treaties or buy pops to colonize planets.

[Frenky]

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

Originally posted by Frenky:

The issue is in that that you don't have an ininite amount of pops. Mining stations work constantly while for orbitals you have to build the districts on a habitat and then put pops to work on those jobs

Other empires don't have to build orbitals and can just build stations to get their income for the rest of the campaign while also being able to build districts on their planets and get jobs for pops anyway

And no, not getting colonies as a VD isn't limiting yourself, first off you don't get guarantted habitable worlds, and second off even if you find some random planets they are still terrible for colonization because your species has habitat prefference habitability and less output on planets

Then don’t build orbitals until you need them? I’d say the VD meta leans more towards building the habitat first and then waiting to build orbitals later once you hit mid to late game, you still need to build mining stations. Aside from that you can always build or purchase pops, so that’s arguably a smaller issue than what you think (unless you’re restricting yourself to your own pops). Regardless, things aren’t super different for VD compared, the bigger constriction is that you have to build your planets first, which means the alloy and influence cost as well as the build time has a larger impact on your empires development.

No habitable worlds still isn’t a big deal, new setting for VD gives a system that has alloys and a system that has research deposits.

Additionally, unless you’re authoritarian, you can easily get migration treaties or buy pops to colonize planets.

When trying to discern the strength of an empire it's best to compare them to other empires

Void dwellers get one habitat and have to spend alloys, influence and time to build them
Most other empires can just colonize the worlds next to them

Void dwellers have to build orbitals for their habitats in order for them to be as good as a normal world
Most other empires can instead just build mining stations to get the resources of the system while being able to build normally on their world

Void dwellers can choose to build mining stations now and later replace them with orbitals, but don't you see an obvious problem here?
A mining station depending on its deposit might take a 2-5 years to pay off, and even than that is just to break even and not actually get any resources
You will probably want to build an orbital before it even pays off, but even if not, you will build it at some point, and while other empires have that mining income for the rest of the game, void dwellers at best can double their investment
Not to mention that that is another thing the player has to keep track of, who will honestly know or care how long the mining station has been mining away, so that you know if you should replace it with an orbital or not

I thought, before I tested it, that the orbitals would collect the income that the mining station had
I think there will be a lot of players that don't even realize that building orbitals in early game hurts them
Void dwellers feel extreamely weak right now and I think that the least that can be done is not having the player do all these calculations to see if they can justify building orbitals when the whole point of playing void dwellers is expanding in space

[Ryika]

I'm kind of baffled by where this thread is heading to. "Void Dwellers are weak." is not a strong argument for "therefor, Orbitals need to collect orbital resources." If they devs want to improve Void Dwellers, they can buff them in a variety of ways.

And pointing out some downsides that void dwellers have is not "comparing empires". They're not the same, that's the point, so they'll have disadvantages and advantages. That's what makes them different.

If you actually want to make a sensible argument for your position, you have to point out how Orbitals collecting orbital resources would actually lead to improved gameplay in any significant way. But then again, how would you? It's such a small and insignificant part of the game that you've just decided to spend a lot of effort on for whatever reason.

[Frenky]

Originally posted by Ryika:

I'm kind of baffled by where this thread is heading to. "Void Dwellers are weak." is not a strong argument for "therefor, Orbitals need to collect orbital resources." If they devs want to improve Void Dwellers, they can buff them in a variety of ways.

And pointing out some downsides that void dwellers have is not "comparing empires". They're not the same, that's the point, so they'll have disadvantages and advantages. That's what makes them different.

If you actually want to make a sensible argument for your position, you have to point out how Orbitals collecting orbital resources would actually lead to improved gameplay in any significant way. But then again, how would you? It's such a small and insignificant part of the game that you've just decided to spend a lot of effort on for whatever reason.

Sure it devolved into "void dwellers are weak" but that is because they have the best habitats and are therefore the best example of how strong the habitats themselves are

How is it not comparing empires when I literally just comapred them to an average empire? I understand and love that not all empires are the same and that they have advantages and disadvantages, obviously
But I want to hightlight that void dwellers are all disadvatages with no advantages, when they previously weren't, and that ties nicely into the issue we are discussing

If you want a sensible arguement, than maybe you should actually read what I wrote
The arguements (since you can't be bothered to read) :
-it isn't obvious that building an orbital will stop giving the resources that mining stations gave, therefore confusing and screwing over anyone who doesn't bother to test it
-the fact that building orbitals, something that should be a passive action with no downsides, can actually hurt your economy
-the fact you now not only have to bother building the orbitals, but also be mindfull of where and when you build them if you want to get the maximum amount of resources you can, which just simply takes away too much of player attention for no reason

This is why it's helpfull to actually play the game, something can seem fine on paper, but feel terrible when you try it out

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Frenky:

If you want a sensible arguement, than maybe you should actually read what I wrote
The arguements (since you can't be bothered to read) :

First of all, let me apologize for the tone in my last post. It wasn't meant to come across as aggressive or dismissive, but reading it again now, it does come across like that to me.

But I don't think those arguments are particularly strong, especially since the change that you're supposing isn't actually the most obvious solution that would "fix" the issue. Because of this, each of them seems kind of like a backwards argument to me, "I want this to be changed, what arguments can I bring in support of it?".

Originally posted by Frenky:

-it isn't obvious that building an orbital will stop giving the resources that mining stations gave, therefore confusing and screwing over anyone who doesn't bother to test it

But that's true for habitats and any other megastructure as well. I think for Orbitals, it's even somewhat intuitive, you add districts to exploit the resource to the Habitat, so of course you're replacing the mining station - it's essentially a different way to do the same job, can't have both do it at the same time. Seems pretty natural to me.

If it's not, then a simple addition to the tooltip would fix this confusion, I do not see why a change in gameplay would be the obvious solution.

Originally posted by Frenky:

-the fact that building orbitals, something that should be a passive action with no downsides, can actually hurt your economy

This one I don't understand at all. A passive action? Why? The way I see it, when and where to build orbitals should ideally be a strategic choice that comes with upsides and potential downsides that you have to weigh against each other.

Originally posted by Frenky:

-the fact you now not only have to bother building the orbitals, but also be mindfull of where and when you build them if you want to get the maximum amount of resources you can, which just simply takes away too much of player attention for no reason

I would argue that orbitals in general require too much micromanagement to really be enjoyable, but if you're the kind of player who does not want to micromanage things like that, then I would argue that you're also the kind of player for whom it makes no actual difference whether a few deposits are exploited or not.

Originally posted by Frenky:

This is why it's helpfull to actually play the game, something can seem fine on paper, but feel terrible when you try it out

I tried Voiddweller and didn't feel like that at all. It's a lot of management, but stations and deposits didn't cause me a headache. But like I said in my first post in this thread, I can see why it would feel like that to others, but at the end of the day that "problem" can be solved by just... not locking in on that particular issue as much.

Like, you're probably not weaving between techs even though you're wasting thousands of research each game as overflow that is lost into the ether, but you almost certainly don't ever spend a serious amount of time thinking about how bad that is for you. You can just treat the deposits the same as you treat tech overflow.

[Frenky]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Frenky:

If you want a sensible arguement, than maybe you should actually read what I wrote
The arguements (since you can't be bothered to read) :

First of all, let me apologize for the tone in my last post. It wasn't meant to come across as aggressive or dismissive, but reading it again now, it does come across like that to me.

But I don't think those arguments are particularly strong, especially since the change that you're supposing isn't actually the most obvious solution that would "fix" the issue. Because of this, each of them seems kind of like a backwards argument to me, "I want this to be changed, what arguments can I bring in support of it?".

Originally posted by Frenky:

-it isn't obvious that building an orbital will stop giving the resources that mining stations gave, therefore confusing and screwing over anyone who doesn't bother to test it

But that's true for habitats and any other megastructure as well. I think for Orbitals, it's even somewhat intuitive, you add districts to exploit the resource to the Habitat, so of course you're replacing the mining station - it's essentially a different way to do the same job, can't have both do it at the same time. Seems pretty natural to me.

If it's not, then a simple addition to the tooltip would fix this confusion, I do not see why a change in gameplay would be the obvious solution.

Originally posted by Frenky:

-the fact that building orbitals, something that should be a passive action with no downsides, can actually hurt your economy

This one I don't understand at all. A passive action? Why? The way I see it, when and where to build orbitals should ideally be a strategic choice that comes with upsides and potential downsides that you have to weigh against each other.

Originally posted by Frenky:

-the fact you now not only have to bother building the orbitals, but also be mindfull of where and when you build them if you want to get the maximum amount of resources you can, which just simply takes away too much of player attention for no reason

I would argue that orbitals in general require too much micromanagement to really be enjoyable, but if you're the kind of player who does not want to micromanage things like that, then I would argue that you're also the kind of player for whom it makes no actual difference whether a few deposits are exploited or not.

Originally posted by Frenky:

This is why it's helpfull to actually play the game, something can seem fine on paper, but feel terrible when you try it out

I tried Voiddweller and didn't feel like that at all. It's a lot of management, but stations and deposits didn't cause me a headache. But like I said in my first post in this thread, I can see why it would feel like that to others, but at the end of the day that "problem" can be solved by just... not locking in on that particular issue as much.

Like, you're probably not weaving between techs even though you're wasting thousands of research each game as overflow that is lost into the ether, but you almost certainly don't ever spend a serious amount of time thinking about how bad that is for you. You can just treat the deposits the same as you treat tech overflow.

I accept your apology and would like to apologize as well for my own tone

I am open to suggestions, but I honestly think that my suggestion fixes the problem rather well
The problem I see is that you don't get mining income because of orbitals and making orbitals give that income seems like the most simple and effective solution to me

To answer your responses tho:
1. I have about 550 hours in Stellaris and it wasn't intuitive for me.
Altho it makes a lot of sense that it replaces the mining station I don't see why an orbital, logically speaking, wouldn't be able to provide both the mining station resources and give extra districts. After all, mining stations just go for the easily acessible resources on the surface while extra disctricts dig deeper into the celestial body
Either way the reason it wasn't intuitive is that it essentially deletes your investment (mining station) and the income it would give you, which is not something anyone expects from building something that should help you (and that you are kind of forced to build)

2. I consider building orbitals a passive action because you will have to build a lot of them so it should be kept simple with only giving you upsides without downsides.
Think of it like building mining stations, it's a repetative action that is always good and has no downsides because if it did it would be too overwhelming for the player
Micromanaging should be reserved for things that have a big impact like jobs, planets, leaders, policies, diplomacy and not for something so small and numerous as building an orbital

3. To me they are just annoying to have to build because you have to build them individualy one by one. Otherwise they are just something you build and can forget about, which is exactly why I am against having to weight the option of building it or not building it instead of a mining station. It adds micro for no reason at all
I also like micromanaging things, just not small things like this

I also wish I could solve this problem by ignoring it but I can't
If I want to be as efficient as possible I have to calculate whether to build an orbital or a mining station and when
It's a very small thing, but it's usually the small things that are the most annoying

Also the analogy with tech doesn't quite work for me as that is something that loses you a month worth of research at most which is utterly insignificant in pretty much any game (Altho it would be nice if Stellaris stored that research, like you already have that as a feature in the game because of the event rewards, why not??), as opposed to thousands of resources you lose in early game with this issue