When Stellaris moved away from the tile system with 2.2 the studio was pretty hasty about how they translated deposits and tile blockers into the new "Planetary Features" side-panel. Sadly the developers don't seem to have had much time to make many varieties of the new deposits. They provided such a small collection that, despite the fact they are weighted in a variety of ways, all planets end up feeling very similar. You'll find hot springs (which look icy) in tropical ocean environments, mote deserts (which look hot) on arctic planets and so on. To demonstrate, see if you can guess the planet classes from these vanilla deposits below:





The answers in order are Arid, Desert, Tomb and Tropical. Pretty rubbish, right?

After making another mod earlier this year and learning about stable diffusion, I realised that I could just make my own with the help of the AI art craze.


In Planetary Features Expanded you'll find 407 new deposits to discover, each with it's own custom art and descriptions. 11 of the planet classes (the 9 standard + tomb + gaia) have gained their own totally unique list of 37 deposits they might roll. This will hopefully mean all the planets feel truly distinct from one another, as well as making colony game-play feel fresh again.

As far as balance is concerned, things shouldn't be too different. My deposits provide roughly the same benefits as vanilla, such as +1/2/4 agriculture districts or +1/+2 rare crystals. They are weighted according to vanilla also, so for example wet worlds have the exact same bias towards food while cold worlds have the bias towards minerals. They key difference is that every feature has it's own name, art, and description to make sense on the planet it's on.

No longer is all dangerous wildlife a boar-alien on an arid landscape, there can be arctic yeti, leviathans in ocean depths, pesky natives on gaia planets...
No longer are all crystal deposits in caves, but they can be found on cacti and trees and webbing....
No longer do hot springs appear everywhere, you'll be able to generate power from a great many other solar/kinetic mechanisms.
You get the idea.





Notably, the mod contains a collection of new on-theme blockers. This means new techs to clear them! In general, you'll mostly interact with just 2: A tech for simple planetary "obstacles" which are common and easily cleared, and a tech for planetary "challenges" which are rarer and more difficult.

There are also 3 techs for removing other rarer blockers you may find.

Just as in vanilla, these techs only show up if you have a colony that needs them. And just like in Vanilla, the AI will research and clear their own blockers - so the reality is you won't see most techs unless you do other play-through's with new starting habitable planets.


Planets may sometimes have one (or several) "unexplored" territories on their surface that have resisted orbital scanning. You'll be able to send a ground team to survey on foot and report back what they've found, whereupon they'll reveal a new planetary feature to you.

These are basically normal blockers, but with the twist that you don't know what's underneath them until after clearing. They are cheap, have no associated techs, and have a slightly higher chance to roll a rare deposit for your colony. I've implemented this for 2 reasons:
1. It allows me to find a meaningful home for all the lost tile art from pre-2.2, which is included in the mod.
2. It keeps just a touch of magic and mystery about your colonies until after you've settled them, rather than discovering everything instantly before even building a star base in the system.

• All deposits display their associated resource with an icon in their name, to improve readability of what's doing what at a glance.
  
• Rare planetary deposits are written in purple text, to make them easier to identify.
  
• Especially rare (and therefore troublesome) planetary blockers are marked in red text.
  
• All vanilla features/deposits still exist - they are filtered into their "correct" categories now (and nowhere else.) I.e teeming reef on ocean worlds, arid landscape on arid worlds, searing deserts on desert worlds. It's basically what I think should have been done back at 2.2.
  

Just as with my other mods, I'm hosting a public google sheet with complete information on art/name/descriptions and balance. If you right-click any cell you can drop a comment which I'll see if you want to provide feedback on any part of this.



I'm open to changing almost anything about the art/name/descriptions of these tiles! If you have a better idea please do tell me. Thinking up over 400 features was really difficult, and I'll take any inspired ideas you may have. Even better, if you actually provide/generate your own art for the feature and I'll implement it in a heartbeat.

Check the dedicated thread below for my further thoughts on this mod. I consider it basically 100% done for now but obviously all things can be improved and I do want to list my ideas while they are fresh.


Ultimately this is a very simple mod with little overhead, it's compatible with nearly everything.

• I've used scripted triggers when calling planet classes so other people can build compatibility with me if they like.
  
• The current version of this mod (for 3.9) leaves no errors in the error log.
  
• I run two events to handle the distribution of all the deposits, both at game start, and they only trigger the once, so there is essentially 0 performance hit.
  
• There is sadly one overwrite - the alien zoo building.
  
• This is 100% compatible with Planetary Diversity. All the new planets will be filtered with my deposits too! Magic.
  
• Same situation for All These Worlds.
  
• GPM is now 100% compatible, and I run an event to ensure content from both mods shows up. Let me know if you have feedback on this please!
  

UI Overhaul Dynamic improves visibility for deposits in the expansion viewer as well as planet view, it's great.


I just want to take a second to give a massive thank you to PancakeLord whose EasyDiffusion guide for making Stellaris-like artwork on the Stellaris forums was the genesis for this entire thing. Then - earlier in the year he collaborated directly on this mod! He brainstormed several deposit concepts, wrote flavour text, and generated the art for several of them (...which I think is best art in the pack). The guy is fantastic and if you like this mod you should check out his workshop as he has great stuff when it comes to making the planet UI flavourful.