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Better Planet Automation

Overwhelmed or bored by the number of things you have to do to keep a large empire developing its planets properly? Disappointed by the quality of the vanilla automation? Better Planet Automation is the solution!

Choose how much production of each resource you want, colonize a bunch of planets, feed the automation some resources, and focus your attention on the fleets, diplomacy, and megastructures that you want to be paying attention to, while the automation makes your economy work.

Current version: Mod version 2.4.0, for Stellaris 3.8.2 Gemini.

1. Install the mod.
   
2. Start or load a game.
   
3. Customize your resource goals and the mod's options.
   
4. Put some resources into the shared automation stockpile.
   
5. Make sure that the automation button in the planet window is OFF for every planet.
   
6. Play.

This mod balances production of all resources, according to configurable goals for net income of each resource, while specializing planets and optimizing which planet each resource is produced on. It also handles crime and amenities, makes good use of special resource deposits and planet modifiers, builds appropriate special buildings, and keeps population growth high.

To achieve these goals, Better Planet Automation has automatic handling for:

• Setting planet designation
  
• Building districts and buildings
  
• Disabling colonists, clerks, and enforcers jobs
  
• Changing planet designation when a better planet for a resource is acquired
  
• Scrapping districts and buildings that are no longer useful
  
• Re-enabling jobs when they are situationally needed

Each of these features can be customized or turned off if you want more manual control of certain things.

See the Limitations section further down for important notes.

Better Planet Automation pursues the following goals, in the listed order:

1. Prevent stability problems from unemployment.
   
2. Keep amenities above -2. If stability is 40 or below, increase amenities higher.
   
3. Fix any housing shortages.
   
4. Keep crime below 30. (Crime only causes problems when at 30 or above.)
   
5. Fix any resource deficit(s).
   
6. Keep every resource at or above its configured minimum net income goal.
   
7. Increase production of each resource towards its configured wanted net income goal.
   
8. Upgrade capital buildings, and productivity booster buildings.
   
9. Increase population growth rate.
   
10. Build special buildings, such as Psi Corp, Galactic Stock Exchange, and Gaia Seeders.
    
11. Keep free housing at 3 or higher, and free amenities at 0 or higher. If stability is 50 or below, increase amenities higher.
    
12. Keep planet capacity high enough for maximum logistic growth bonus. (The mod assumes the default game setting value of 1.5x for this.)
    
13. Unlock another building slot whenever a planet runs out.
    
14. Optimize the plan of which planets will produce each resource.
    
15. When enough planets are available, specialize each planet for one resource per planet, and scrap production of other resources on the planet.

Each resource has three configurable numbers for its net income:

• Minimum: This mod will not build things that cost upkeep of a resource below its minimum, and will not scrap production of a resource that would drop it below its minimum.
  
• Wanted: This mod will develop production of a resource until it reaches its wanted goal. If possible, it will increase production on planets specialized for the resource, and scrap production on other planets.
  
• Maximum: This mod will scrap resource production that exceeds its maximum. Maximum can be set to unlimited.

Better Planet Automation's main settings menu will open automatically the first time you load a game with it. You can open that menu again at any time through Dynamic Mod Menu, or if Dynamic Mod Menu is not installed, then through a free empire edict.

Planet-specific settings are opened via the Automation Planet Settings planetary decision.

The main settings menu has options for:

• Which resource(s) your capital should focus on. The default is to use your capital as a general backup option for when no appropriately specialized planet is available.
  
• Enable or disable automated scrapping of buildings and districts. Default is enabled, but will ask for confirmation each time.
  
• Enable or disable prioritizing low-level capital building upgrades, to the point of overriding specialization plans. Default disabled.
  
• Enable or disable automated construction of the buildings listed. Each building has a separate setting. Settings for buildings not available to your empire are not shown.
  
  • Clone Vats
    
  • Robot Assembly Plants
    
  • Gene Clinics
    
  • Noble Estates
    
  • Psi Corps
    
  • Slave Processing Facility
    
  • Posthumous Employment Center
    
  • Hydroponics Farms
• Enable or disable automatically using the Distribute Luxury Goods planet decision when your consumer goods stockpile is large. Default disabled.
  
• Enable or disable notifications for each of the actions automation may take.

The planet settings menu has options for:

• Enable or disable automation.
  
• Enable or disable automating the choice of designation.
  
• Enable or disable automatic handling of colonists, clerks, and enforcers jobs. Each job has a separate setting.

You still have to manually create sectors for any colonies out of range of existing sectors. Automation will not work for planets that are not in a sector.

Better Planet Automation makes heavy use of auto migration to focus population growth on the planets best suited for the resources you need most. For best results, build many transit hubs, and do not enable migration controls on any species. Note: Despite machine intelligence and robot pops being shown as always having migration controls enabled, they actually can migrate. Transit hubs even let them ignore the normal technology and rights requirements for auto migration.

Accounting for different species having different climate preferences is complex and not implemented. Terraforming will work better with this automation than modifying climate preference.

Accounting for restrictions on which jobs certain pops are able to work is complex and not implemented. If you use slaves, Indentured Servitude will work best with this automation.

This mod ignores species traits. Job weights still account for them as in vanilla.


Better Planet Automation changes only automation. It should not directly conflict with any non automation mods. Its decisions are designed for vanilla districts and buildings, however. The automation will not build or scrap districts and buildings added by other mods, will not manage resources added by mods, and might not account for their effects.

See Configurable options post

See Resource goals and decision logic post

See Resource suitability calculation and automatic scrapping post

I have a Patreon[patreon.com] for this mod. Patrons will get early access to new features when they are in development, and will get priority development work for features that they request. If I get many patrons, I will commit to more promptly updating the mod for each new update of Stellaris.

I have a Discord server[discord.gg] for this mod.