Perhaps replace "Observatory" with something like "Sensor Hub". Observatories are mainly constructed on stations, and it could be misleading in title. Other than semantics, I have another suggestion:

Provide a sort of "Metropolis" planet. It gives an increased growth rate and boosts the happiness of pops by ~5%. While the growth rate may be a temporary effect, happiness will be helpful for production.

While al these worlds are interesting, I feel that it makes each world a little too unique. There should be worlds that are just worlds. don't excel at anything but are just regular planets

Fair point. The idea right now is that not all of your worlds will get to be one of these types (Especially since there's a stacking penalty for each one you already own). So you should have some established worlds, and a decent amount of normal ones.

Paradise world: a specilised planet that gives +25% food and 100% Society research, 15% happiness but -50% to Physics and engineering research and -75% to minerals and Energy credits. Also gives a empire happiness of +1%.

These plannets are entierly dedicated towards the creation of art, relaxation and vaction resorts: it is the go to location for people to spend time and calm down. It is a centre of philosphy and artwork and due to people comming to it from across the empire to relax and recuperate giving a 1% happiness bonus.

Metropilise planet: a specilised planet possessing a -50% to food but a 100% increase in population growth, +33% increase in migration, +50% to energy and mineral production, +25% all research production, and +2 Influence. But sees a -5% empire reduction to both mineral and energy production (Yes these plannets are very costly).

Also maybe seeing a five to ten tile increse to the size of the planet

These are centres of your empire, massive city stylied planets covered in huge cities and having huge populations. They take a long time to make, with maybe one or two other evolved world types bettween the two making them very diffucult to get to. In addition while they can make a lot of resources the -5% to empire production to Minerals and energy can in the long run lead to major issues for your empire.

Heh.. Why do they all have to be (GOOD) why can't some of them have EVIL in them. (Pirates Infested Place.. making ethic Divergence going downhill. and maybe unhappiness JUST FOR SOME TIME.) This is a Idea btw DONT BE TRIGGERED PEOPLE LOOKING.
Or. (Maybe It could be known for FOOD not being available all the time. -5% Food Output heh.)
All Good No bad. I am sad. Lastly. (Maybe they could be known for being Dumb People hehe. Funny.)

"Breadbasket" world? Maybe it could boost food production of nearby colonies.

Mayhaps a world in decline? Say a conquered worlds population frequently sabotages buildings. This could result in the the steady decline of the world if you dont put resources into restoring it. Eventualy leading to a planet debuff to all production due to the corroding and badly damaged infrastructure

Originally posted by Captain Oblivious:

Heh.. Why do they all have to be (GOOD) why can't some of them have EVIL in them. (Pirates Infested Place.. making ethic Divergence going downhill. and maybe unhappiness JUST FOR SOME TIME.) This is a Idea btw DONT BE TRIGGERED PEOPLE LOOKING.
Or. (Maybe It could be known for FOOD not being available all the time. -5% Food Output heh.)
All Good No bad. I am sad. Lastly. (Maybe they could be known for being Dumb People hehe. Funny.)

Totally on my list now. I just had to do some back end stuff to make them balanced. Thanks for the suggestion!

Originally posted by Shark that walks like a man:

"Breadbasket" world? Maybe it could boost food production of nearby colonies.

Originally posted by PBG:

Metropilise planet: a specilised planet possessing a -50% to food but a 100% increase in population growth, +33% increase in migration, +50% to energy and mineral production, +25% all research production, and +2 Influence. But sees a -5% empire reduction to both mineral and energy production (Yes these plannets are very costly).

Also maybe seeing a five to ten tile increse to the size of the planet

These are centres of your empire, massive city stylied planets covered in huge cities and having huge populations. They take a long time to make, with maybe one or two other evolved world types bettween the two making them very diffucult to get to. In addition while they can make a lot of resources the -5% to empire production to Minerals and energy can in the long run lead to major issues for your empire.

City Planets and Breadbaskets are two I really do want to do. My current plan is to have them be "advanced worlds" that require an established world, and a special project/some resource expenditure. Either that or have high threshold multipliers. That way I can have them be a lot better and really hit the fantasy instead of balancing against other established world types, or making it so you can just get a better world via RNG.

Would an addon/patch that incorperates the Ethos Unique Techs and Buildings mod possible?

Still didn't try your latest patch to see if everything now works properly. Aside of that I would have a couple of suggestions/observations that maybe could be helpful.
1- Homeworld is a special colony right from the start even in vanilla so it should have an unique evolution. Doesn't need to be random or powerfull, just something that fits with the idea of an homeworld.
Power House sounds quite good for an homeworld to me, but you could design even a completly new one.
If you want to go with something important instead, I would suggest (+1 influence) as it was in Stellaris 1.0 when conquering an homeworld was really a big deal.
2- As it is now, your colonies reach "growing" status so fast to make "fledgling" status quite pointless. You could get rid of it completly.
Otherwise you could give it a really huge growing bonus (+100%, +200%) and a same huge negative modifiers in production. Let's say that during that first period the colony doesn't produce anything but shelters, to host the first wave of settlers who will arrive after the coly ship.

Update:
To help fixing the problem with established world really out of place (i.e. your energy colony with betharian stones evolving in a mineral focus colony) what about a set of edicts to steer your colonies evolution (mining focus, energy focus, research focus, etc.).
The player could choose to control the potential evolution of the colony paying or leaving it random.
You could design different level of evoultion for each catergory and leave the most powerful, with the more special (ie Observatory, Advanced Academy, Black Market, etc) to the random option. So the player have to choose: "I pay the influence cost and get a moderate but sure evolution, or I save my influence pts and hope for some great ... or terrible modifier?".

I know that you didn't work with the edicts yet but many mods used in such way so it shouldn't be so hard and you have many exemples to check.
After that it should be enought to flag such colony with the choosen edict and when your mod needs to decide how to establish the colony, checks if it flagged and in such case pick the proper evolution.

Originally posted by Shyntlara:

Still didn't try your latest patch to see if everything now works properly. Aside of that I would have a couple of suggestions/observations that maybe could be helpful.
1- Homeworld is a special colony right from the start even in vanilla so it should have an unique evolution. Doesn't need to be random or powerfull, just something that fits with the idea of an homeworld.
Power House sounds quite good for an homeworld to me, but you could design even a completly new one.
If you want to go with something important instead, I would suggest (+1 influence) as it was in Stellaris 1.0 when conquering an homeworld was really a big deal.
2- As it is now, your colonies reach "growing" status so fast to make "fledgling" status quite pointless. You could get rid of it completly.
Otherwise you could give it a really huge growing bonus (+100%, +200%) and a same huge negative modifiers in production. Let's say that during that first period the colony doesn't produce anything but shelters, to host the first wave of settlers who will arrive after the coly ship.

Update:
To help fixing the problem with established world really out of place (i.e. your energy colony with betharian stones evolving in a mineral focus colony) what about a set of edicts to steer your colonies evolution (mining focus, energy focus, research focus, etc.).
The player could choose to control the potential evolution of the colony paying or leaving it random.
You could design different level of evoultion for each catergory and leave the most powerful, with the more special (ie Observatory, Advanced Academy, Black Market, etc) to the random option. So the player have to choose: "I pay the influence cost and get a moderate but sure evolution, or I save my influence pts and hope for some great ... or terrible modifier?".

I know that you didn't work with the edicts yet but many mods used in such way so it shouldn't be so hard and you have many examples to check.
After that it should be enought to flag such colony with the chosen edict and when your mod needs to decide how to establish the colony, checks if it flagged and in such case pick the proper evolution.

I do plan to edit the colony stage a decent bit. So far as the edicts, that is actually a great idea. I will definitely try to add those in!

Been looking over your code, and am enjoying how easily readable it is. It's actually pleasant to look over! Very neat and well done. Unlike some other mods I've had to delve through to figure out, in the case of some events failing to fire [example being: More Events Mod; had the abductor precursor fail to fire the research project in one of the other systems... Took me forever to find one of the event triggers to let me proceed with the event chain].

A few questions for clarification: Where it says "research_buildings", that includes all laboratories--physics, engineering, bio, and the basic ones, correct? A suggestion here, in regards to the hubs: Make it so the Society, Physics, and Engineering hubs require the normal Research Hub worldtype to begin with. So, based off how these look otherwise... the subtypes would get a factor of 0; in turn, the focused-research hubs can be altered to an advanced world-type category, where they maybe give some bonus to research speed on empire for owning 'em?

So the primary Research Hub gives a modest bonus to all tile outputs; maybe a small empire bonus to all research speeds, +2% [equivalent to a single leader level].
The sub-hub types can give an extra +4% to that specific research category, with each one becoming a once-per-Empire generation event. [so they'd need to be redubbed to 'society_hub' and so on, and if the country has the flag for 'em, the modifier becomes 0. Since they'd be a separate category from the main hub under this idea, that should work. The main hub should also become an empire-unique, to compensate for these bonuses.]

From there, is it possible to run a check against if a planet is the homeworld of the species, or capital of the empire/sector? If so, the homeworld should get a weighting towards Cultural Landmark, while the empire/sector capitals get weighting towards Diplomatic Hub/Cultural Landmark. Additionally, the Capital of the Empire should get some negatives against becoming a lot of the types [Refinement, Exchange, Fauna, Observatory (maybe), Academy (maybe)]. My dispensation against it being an Observatory is because this caused me a large amount of grief in one game, where a neighbor had their homeworld become this while I was getting ready to colonize a good planet... And that system ended up in their borders before my colony ship finished setting up, and thus made me sad. Academy... Eh, that's unlikely to happen anyway, due to some of its other modifiers--and it'd make a touch of sense.

A suggestion to the Advanced Shipyards; tweak it so that instead of assembly yards, it looks for the engineering bay or the fleet academy--and add in the stipulation where it checks for the empire to have the technology that gives access to those modules, and if the empire doesn't, it gives a factor 0.1 or 0.

On to the newer world types, namely the Reserve Pharmaceuticals (which I'm glad you have the Quarantine Zone [which I've personally never seen the anomaly for], and the wandering forests [which I have seen] set as things it checks for, when looking for those certain tileblockers for that modifier), I think these two should also require a check against at least the main research hub. Additionally, Pharmaceuticals should be an Empire Unique--only get those extra +20 years once. Nature Reserves make sense to have more than one of ultimately.

The Voidfarer's Archives should also run a check against the Research Hub, and probably the Physics Hub as well. No Research Hub = 0; meanwhile, if there's a Physics Hub [which necessitates a Research Hub under my suggestions], a 1.5 modifier.

I think the Black Market needs more of a delay, and a check to see if either a Planetery Exchange or Expert Refinement have spawned. If neither, give it a .1 modifier. If one or the other, a 1. If both, a 1.5. This way they'll be drawn to empires that already have "established" economy worlds, making them more worthwhile to set up a base of operations within. Meanwhile, they can have weights against empires with planetary fortresses or advanced shipyards. A minor weighting against--say, .8. As to the delay, maybe bump it to 30 or 40 years?

The Building Fabrication one seems close to perfect, though could use a boost to the Engineering research bonus--to make it similar to the Nature Reserve's boost, but not quite the same. Maybe a 20% bonus.

As to new world types I'd think would be interesting:

Some form of nature-reserve equivalent for Physics [Engineering, in my mind, has the Building Fabrication world type]. This could be earmarked as the "Physicist's Paradise", where it checks for a few things--if the starport has an observatory, that'd be a bonus. If the planet has +happiness buildings [ie Virtual Combat Arena, Xeno Zoo], small boost. However, any strictly military buildings [Military Academy] would penalize the likelihood of this. The planet would give +20% physics generation, and probably give a modifier to empire in the form of "Adapted Construction Studies", reducing construction costs thanks to the ample studying of all the Physicists and Geologists.

Now then, next one's a bit of a doozy: Make the original Black Market capable of occuring more than once, 'easily', but at most 2-3 times... And then an additional Black Market worldtype that is dubbed the "Black Market HQ", which requires at least one other Black Market to exist in the Empire. Extra Black Markets increase its likelihood. If it isn't a rimworld, however, it gets a penalty to its likelihood. The Black Market worlds would have an extra modifier for the HQ existing, in that they will give extra resources, but worsen the penalties. The HQ would have a few unique events for it that can happen, in addition to the ones normal Black Markets have.

Lastly, a world with one thought in mind: Better Shipyard Construction Techniques; boosts armor, hull, and shields of ships on Empire, while decreased cost and build time for the planet [equivalent bonus to Advanced Shipyard]. This world would require an Advanced Shipyard to exist already, and would require both the Engineering Bay and the Fleet Academy in a level 6 starport. An Empire can only get one of 'em, so if they have one already, the factor should be 0.

Started thinking of a malus modifier that could pop up--a non-permanent one, that would exist in an empire with so many worlds. Exists between the establishment of a planetary administration, and finishing of the planetary capital on that planet. This would be like an extension of the "Growing" and "Fledgling", and simply be "Rim World" [blame the game for this]. If your empire has so many planets, any new ones that pop up on your empire's outer reaches, would get this effect.

It would provide an equal malus to energy and minerals that the Fledgling one did, but would additionally penalize sciences. No penalty to habitality, no bonus to growth. This could be set up to only start happening after an empire has 5 other established worlds, or a total of 15 colonized worlds, whichever comes first. Colonizing inward would not cause this malus to take root--as it should only take over directly from a Fledgling colony.

Another permanent modifier, also inspired by the above mentioned game, would be a "Glitterworld" or "Hiveworld"; bonus +20% to sciences, and +10% to energy and minerals, with a -10% happiness penalty, due tp the planet's overcrowded nature. This world would be an extremely developed planet, that has a large variety of all buildings [basically, a well-rounded world]. Could give a bonus to growth time of new pops, explained as the overpopulation of the world migrating out to find new pastures. [Rather than an entire pop needing to be resettled, or motivated into migrating, the planet just gives a -5% growth time on Empire]. These worlds would also require the planet be near-fully populated to occur, and on a decently-sized world to begin with. These planets would have a potential for a few small events, where a pop randomly ends up just leaving the planet for a rim world, seeking a new life. This would occur regardless of migration policy, effectively acting like a free resettlement for the player--though this could occur with a pop a player might otherwise wish had stayed on that planet. [Though this should not happen with an enslaved pop, of course.]

I'm a nit. Instead of some form of new world, the Observatory would probably be the physics-equivalent to the Nature Reserve and the Building Fabrication, if only because it would make the most sense based off the theme for the rest. But I'm unsure how I'd tweak its stats to just not make it gross--all that border range alone can already get so much extra stuff, if it happens early on in the game. Probably for the best to leave it as is and make some new world type...

Or make a new Planetary Observatory that gives +sensor range on empire, and +10% physics on planet, while changing the old one to be something more fitting its Planet Sensor Range boost and Border Range extravaganza. I can't think of a name at the moment, cause I am dumb.

Some additional thoughts into allowing more fluid control for players, in regards to 'specializing' planets to try and narrow down the choices. Let's go with the Planetary Exchange and Expert Refinement modifiers for this.

Currently, their last modifier check is at 5 of their "desired" building. Perhaps add another, stronger weight modifier at 10 of the desired building, to further boost those odds? And, to help mitigate the opposite desired effect from happening, if there are 10 of the contrary building type, the world won't become such. [ie If there are 10 Mining Networks, a world won't become a Planetary Exchange, and vice versa. This should maybe be a modifier of 0, since it's effectively saying "This planet is NOT that big for such"]

In regards to the research hubs, these could have their weight dragged down by 4-6 mining networks, and/or 4-6 power plants. This would be moreso to prevent a world getting leftover tiles turned to research from becoming a research hub.

To the nature reserve, maybe have it require the planet having research buildings on it? [To make use of the +society research bonus it gives, which is one of its bigger proponents] Society buildings would give an even larger boost.

Small thing I've come to notice. For most world types, if you have one of it already, it currently modifies future chances for that type down by .1... The Observatory does this by .01. I presume this is due to its insane border range bonus, where getting even 2 of these would be insane to handle? [Either for AIs getting aggressive due to border tensions, or the player's aggravation due to an AI managing to get two of 'em to swallow up a large chunk of space]

In regards to the Voidfarer's Archives, I think that could use a minor tweak, to check that the Physics research leader is higher than level 4. This is because quite a few people use mods that increase max leader level.