(indeed I am fellow aquatic, my favorite race is aquatic slavers, so first contact is often delicious)

Regardless, I trust Frogboy to make any new mechanics both fun and strategic.  If it were not Frog and Stardock, I'd maybe be worried.  I'm prepared to wait for several patches until it is balanced correctly.

I still say the more important point is that food 'magically' appears on different planets. I feel you should be able to blockade a planet and prevent food from getting there. You don't have to have "food ships" as someone suggested, just something like "if there isn't a route from the main supply grid to a planet, it gets no food." Of course, that requires a supply grid, but if you want to have the "private sector" model for moving stuff about, you kind of need that anyway.

My apologies if this has already been covered. I've spent several months in a cranial-rectal inversion.

cranial-rectal inversion.

Will this be a new invasion technique, frogboy?

The "food ship" thing was my idea but, of course, there's simpler ways of achieving the same thing. Be interesting to see if any if our blockade/starve the enemy ideas end up being used.

Been playing v3.0 beta. I really like the mechanic for food in this version.

There is something that bugs me with it though. I am guessing the devs are using the same system they use to spawn other resources on a planet which makes Arable Land completely random, this is where it bugs me. Traits are not taken into account for the Arable Land. I have seen Desert Worlds (Food Penalty) with a 1/5 to 1/4 of thier tiles taken up by Arable Land, this in its self says the planet is not a Desert planet. Then you get Bread Basket (Food Bonus) worlds where there is no Arable Land whatsoever. The same goes for Precursor Worlds, alot of these are large planets and therefore usualy have Arable Land on them yet suffer a Food penalty.

Its a nice system, just needs tweaking so it does not clash with the other mechanic, Planet Traits.

I was actually surprised to find the Version 3.0 Beta actually fairly enjoyable to play (of course I did "Mod" out a few things on the fly that I wanted changed) but the game has come a long ways since Crusade !!!  I have already gone ahead and pre-ordered the Intrigue DLC.

Revisiting my version 3.0 Beta play through today (while some Mods get updated for the Stellaris version 2.02 Beta Update 2), I still have concerns for morale on high population planets with cities but I don't see as much for the 25% population bonus per neighing adjacent Population Bonus Point from adjacent building  (Hospitals or Farms).  I still concerned for ability to get to high morale levels with needing multiple Morale Buildings and techs (supportive population +1 and Easy to Please +4) plus other factors (Celebrities and Race Traits).  Personally I might "MOD" back in recreation starbase modules although there never enough Citizens to have starbases associated with many planets on large and above galaxies.

Since Arable land is just randomly placed farms on the useable tiles on a planet and without regard to planet type, as Horemvore mentions, I like to see the current assignment of arable land tweaked (I still like to place my farms manually but maybe others don't - it could be a galaxy generation option).  Maybe limiting how many, if any farms, you can have based on planet type.  Or designate certain tiles as suitable for farming but don't force you to build farms on them if you don't want.  But I found in my play through with all the tech bonuses I had far more food available than I need if I built Cities on almost every planet, which I hadn't gotten to yet.  Every planet doesn't need enough food to have a City.  It might be interesting to split cities into Settlement/Town/City/Metroplex progression series to limit food useage and hence population (also addresses morale problem with high population planets)

Yeah Bread Basket planet should be guaranteed to come with Arable land tiles imo.

It may need some modifying but https://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/113 should do the job.

Yeh I was around a lot more when Crusade was first out and knew about the various mods that added increased planetary population buildings.  I was hoping Stardock might officially include these buildings in version 3.0 game release.  This City progression series also limit population till you have the various morale techs and buildings to properly support very large populations on planets.  I am sure Gauntlet will include this feature when he updates his mod for Intrigue DLC.