by Eladrin
Hi everyone!
This week we’re looking more at the economic changes of the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, and how we’re going to update the Planet UI to work with them.
As this is all still in development, things are still subject to change, and I’m going to be using a lot of the UX Design Mockups in this dev diary. The final versions will not match these work-in-progress designs precisely. The Open Beta will definitely not be at these polish levels. Also be aware that numbers on these mockups are all placeholders meant to help the rest of the team get the layout right, so things like the Pop Counts or Production numbers aren’t accurate.
Planets - Districts - Zones - Buildings - Jobs As mentioned last week, one of the fundamental changes we’re making to the economy behind the scenes is that planets are now the source of production rather than the pops themselves. This is a generally subtle change from your perspective as a player, but this opened up an opportunity to revamp exactly how planets are structured, and to formalize some of the job hierarchy. A few of you have already guessed some of the things I’m going to share with you.
We’re introducing a new planetary feature: Zones. By specializing Districts, Zones function similarly to how the Forge World, Factory World, and Industrial World designations previously modified the jobs provided by Industrial Districts – only now as a more structured, intuitive, and flexible mechanic.
The 4.0 Planet Hierarchy is:
  • Planets produce and consume resources.
  • Districts provide a base number of Jobs for each level of development.
  • Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by their District.
  • Buildings typically modify the production of Jobs themselves, though may also provide static numbers of Jobs.
  • Jobs are filled by Workforce, and make the planet produce a single resource by default (unless they have been modified).

Standard planets have a City District that contains your urban development, and remains capped by planet size as it is in 3.14. The City District has four Zones - one will always be locked to a Governmental Zone and contains your Capital Building, while the other three will be selectable. Normal planets also have Mining, Agricultural, and Energy Districts which each have one Zone, and - like 3.14 - are gated by planetary features. Industrial Districts have been removed, as their function has been replaced by Zones.
Upgrading Districts is now clearly shown as a button on the Planet UI - this should reduce the number of “it took me X months to realize you can build districts” posts. As part of the increase in differentiation between Districts and Buildings, we’ve changed some of the terminology slightly - instead of building a dozen Districts across a planet, you will upgrade their development level. Functionally this remains the same.
Zones are our new addition to the Planet Hierarchy. Zones let you change the nature of their District. By default, the City District will provide Housing and increase the maximum number of Civilians that your planet can support. (Based on design discussions over the past week, we’re leaning towards your Empire Capital having a bonus increasing this number significantly, which has the nice secondary effect of making the conquest of Homeworlds in the early game carry the societal challenge of suddenly creating many angry Dissidents that will be unable to promote back to Civilians as this bonus is lost.) If you build a Foundry Zone, the City District will replace some of their Civilian capacity and housing with Metallurgist jobs for each level of development. If you then build a Factory Zone, the City District will provide both Metallurgist and Artisan jobs, but with further reductions to their Citizen capacity.
While you can build multiple Zones of the same type (in your City District, for example), the first Zone of each type built on a planet gains three slots for Buildings. (Duplicate Zones do not grant additional Building slots.) Buildings typically modify the production of their associated Job, and most are now Planet Unique. The majority of Buildings are restricted to the specific relevant Zones that they can be built in, but some can still be built anywhere. The Government Zone and Urban Zone can, however, accept most Urban buildings. The build list will be filtered appropriately.
The majority of Jobs will now have a single output by default, so Researchers are being broken apart into Physicists, Biologists, and Engineers.
Origins and Civics that previously replaced Jobs will now typically instead have a Building that modifies the associated Job. A benefit of this is that it should now be able to stack better with other similar Civics - we hope to be able to reduce restrictions so perhaps you’ll be able to sacrifice willing Pops by flinging them into a black hole for money.
The Planetary Surface Your homeworld is a bit of a special case in Stellaris - it’s not a brand new colony, but it’s also not very specialized. It needs to provide a little bit of everything, but could really use some cleanup after all those years of development (becoming an Early Space Age civilization is a dirty job.)
Here’s the work-in-progress UX mockup of what Earth may look like at the start of the game:
The unspecialized mess of being an Early Space Age civilization gives us a relatively unspecialized zone that provides us with the basic resources necessary at the start of the game. We’ll eventually want to replace that Zone with a more specialized one.
As we head to the stars, we’ll naturally want to colonize our Guaranteed Habitable Worlds. The new Colonization UI will let us immediately set the desired planetary designation for our brand new colony.

Don’t worry, you’ll be able to select something other than Factory World...
Here’s what our new colony could look like once the colonization process finishes:

...But why did you choose Mining World for a planet with Poor Quality Minerals?
The Reassembled Ship Shelter provides Colonist jobs that will provide the Amenities and Stability previously granted by the Colony designation. As shown, the technologies required to expand on an alien world are not necessarily the same as those you need back on your home planet.
Our UX designer has created these explanations of the new UI:
And here’s what our two planets might look like after some time has passed.
Special Cases Ever since MegaCorp, paving the entire world has always been a grand ambition of Empires.
We’re currently thinking that an Ecumenopolis should act like the megacity it is. The Ecumenopolis will have multiple Urban Districts - one large main one and three more smaller Arcologies.

Wait, this means you can make a Fortress Ecumenopolis…
Although the gameplay of upgrading a Habitat Complex by building orbitals throughout a system made Habitats more interesting, having to hunt down that last moon to place the orbital proved incredibly annoying.
For 4.0, we’re removing this pain point. Upgrading Districts on a Habitat will spawn Orbitals throughout the system as their Development Level increases. Some of the district capacity will be available immediately upon colonizing the Habitat Central Complex, with the remainder gated by upgrading the Capital Building. We’re also considering having the district capacity for Habitats more closely linked to the deposits available in the system instead of the current behavior where each mineral deposit grants a static amount of capacity.
We expect to see some unique or former districts for habitats be reimagined or return as Zones, such as the Order’s Demesne for KotTG or Sanctuary Districts for Rogue Servitors.

Goodbye, hunting for where that last minor orbital is hiding!
Next Week Next week, Gruntsatwork will go into some of the scripting details of Jobs and Pop Groups. We should also have some more information about the upcoming 4.0 livestream.
See you then!