Stellaris Dev Diary #139 - 2.2.x post-launch patch

[KyuuET]

I'll add my voice to the choir about sectors first and foremost. I do get the point of the change, but since only some things can automated, I have to go through every planet when they want building upgrades and when you're playing wide, there's a wee pile of them. The right hand menu is totally useless as it's cluttered with 15 sectors. The AI seems to dislike repairing broken buildings, or doing anything about low amenities. So again, manual work needed even on managed sectors.

And when the planets get full - as they all sometimes do - you start to have problems, which means every game year you get your dozen or more popups about the risk of crime rising unless I go all fully automated luxury gay space communism on them. And hey, I will, of course, who doesn't love that? Problem is, I'd prefer not to have to click those popups all the time. I mean guys, there's more planets, there's room, why just keep filling up the places that simply do not have any more jobs or housing? There's a lovely ring world with your name on it, just fly!

I love managing a few planets fully, 5-10 maybe, but if I'm playing wide, I really don't want to spend all my time micromanaging the painting on every shed on every planet in every sector in every corner of the galaxy. That's why the gods gave us bureaucracy. And then you wonderful people put all that godly love into an AI. And we have a chance to be happy and focus on the really sweet things in life and cosmos, such as deadly wars.

And one more thing, why does the game always create several planets with the same name? As sectors get their names from them too, I managed to get a bit puzzled when I realized I had three sectors with the same name, all with just one planet, with the same name. Yes, I can rename but seriously...

I look forward to trying out more betas as you climb through the pile of tweaks in the post-2.2 world.

 

[a5ehren]

I'll add my voice to the choir about sectors first and foremost. I do get the point of the change, but since only some things can automated, I have to go through every planet when they want building upgrades and when you're playing wide, there's a wee pile of them. The right hand menu is totally useless as it's cluttered with 15 sectors. The AI seems to dislike repairing broken buildings, or doing anything about low amenities. So again, manual work needed even on managed sectors.

And when the planets get full - as they all sometimes do - you start to have problems, which means every game year you get your dozen or more popups about the risk of crime rising unless I go all fully automated luxury gay space communism on them. And hey, I will, of course, who doesn't love that? Problem is, I'd prefer not to have to click those popups all the time. I mean guys, there's more planets, there's room, why just keep filling up the places that simply do not have any more jobs or housing? There's a lovely ring world with your name on it, just fly!

I love managing a few planets fully, 5-10 maybe, but if I'm playing wide, I really don't want to spend all my time micromanaging the painting on every shed on every planet in every sector in every corner of the galaxy. That's why the gods gave us bureaucracy. And then you wonderful people put all that godly love into an AI. And we have a chance to be happy and focus on the really sweet things in life and cosmos, such as deadly wars.

And one more thing, why does the game always create several planets with the same name? As sectors get their names from them too, I managed to get a bit puzzled when I realized I had three sectors with the same name, all with just one planet, with the same name. Yes, I can rename but seriously...

I look forward to trying out more betas as you climb through the pile of tweaks in the post-2.2 world.

I was just coming here to say this, but you said it better than I was going to. Better/smarter automation for wide empires would be nice. Or at least let me clump off multiple contiguous sectors into a viable Vassal state.

 

[Defiler99]

I hope a future revision of the Resettlement screen shows the pop's ethics, as well.

 

[Riftwalker]

I think giving primary species a bonus to growth selection for your empire's planet (on which they exist) may be a good solution for some of the issues.

but that also makes the primary species being supplanted impossible then? why would a xenophile empire prioritize their own species. the changes need to be more nuanced.

 

[Cannes]

Can we get the jobs within a caste redraggable to set allocation priorities? Like so:

View attachment 444586

So the leftmost (or rightmost) would be filled first, then the adjacent one to that and so on till all job slots are filled. User could drag&reshuffle the job boxes left and right.

This is an inspired idea!

 

[FiddleSticks96]

So no patch this week I take it? I would have loved to at least see synthetic ascension and world shaper be unbroken.

 

[DesruX]

Great with additional UX/UI resources in the dev team - An area that has quite a number of quicks is the Fleet Manager. Here is some current pains and some input for how to improve.

Pains in current fleet manager:

Rough mock-up as input for how to improve the fleet manager:

Easiest to implement is perhaps to not allow fleet composition changes in case of selecting multiple fleets.

BR DesruX.

 

[BlackholePD]

I just defeated an awakened empire during the War in Heaven, and their subordinate states have remained in the war, with the war UI claiming that they are in a nameless federation. Despite this, they are displayed as independent on the map. Is this the intended behavior, and, more importantly, will I still get the Last, Best Hope achievement if I end the war with the remaining vassals status quo after the actual Awakened Empires have been defeated?

Edit: Yeah, the fleet UI is a nightmare. Also, any update which prevents me from accidentally creating a zillion one ship fleets whenever a reinforcement order is interrupted would be fantastic.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

Yes, I want these habitability-trait bugs fixed. Post-Apocalyptic should not change your original habitability trait, but rather supplement it.

What about cybernetic ascension? Currently your habitability changes when it really shouldn’t.

 

[Kapitan Chrum]

Great update! But rather short ;(

Nonetheless here are few ideas to work with.

UI

On star map there is option to “toggle” hyperlanes view on and off. What I think is missing is a similar additional button that toggles “wormholes” view. It should be different color - as when you are plotting curse for ships and the fastest way is through wormhole then there is this blueish line - representing wormhole. Of course only explored wormholes would show up. I think that would be fairly simple to implement but it can be quite helpful in my opinion.


Regarding pop growth selection problem…
I think whatever algorithm will be implemented I can’t see a way to make all the folks happy - and some people will be unhappy no matter what is the result.

In my opinion, the best solution would be to make separate growth progress bars with portraits for every present (or immigrating) pop on the planet. This way you will be able to see which pops are growing, which are declining, and they can do it independently. In order to make it UI friendly make it into collapsible list, so that you see only one pop on top (for example the one that grows most rapidly) and if you want to see how other species are growing you can expand it and see as many portraits as there are different species on planet (possibly including same species variants). This solution has plethora of benefits! You could implement for example separate migration for each species (like species X hates this planet, and are emigrating - due to low habitability/xenophobia/population controls/other modification and reasons, while species Y love the place and are moving in).

Also next to (or above or instead of really) "migration value symbol" (the one with the stick and a sack) there should be also an icon with the value of pop growth rate (how much units/per month - Similar to robot assembly value bellow robot window), so that It can be clearly visible at a glance instead of mouse hovering over the bar to get a tool tip. In fact it is in my opinion more important than migration value with is a better candidate to be hidden in the tool tip if screen is starving for space.


While we are on the topic of growing pops there are two things that were bugging me a lot.

First, species growth rate should be modified by the number of the pops of this species on the planet, and it should be progressive (the more pops there are - the faster they grow. That makes sense right?).

My proposition = flat +1% growth rate per pop on the planet. (24 pops = +24% pop growth rate)

Or better even make it 2% as a normal modifier, and depending on species traits make it up or down a notch!

Rapid breeders - instead of +2%(or 1%) pop growth rate/per pop on planet this species has +3% (or 1,5%) pop growth rate/per pop on planet.

Slow breeders - instead of +2%(or 1%) pop growth rate/per pop on planet this species has +1%(or 0,5%) pop growth rate/per pop on planet.


expanding the subject - on newly founded colonies you have right now hard -50% growth rate penalty (that is tied I think to the “assembled colony ship” capitol building- since it vanishes after capitol is upgraded to planetary administration 10 pops req.). What if instead it had more fluid and organic/natural approach using the same idea as above? So sure you get, at start some flat growth penalty but with each pop it is less severe up to the point that pop growth modifier is 0 and then it starts to grow.

EXAMPLE: -50% growth penalty, first 10 pops on the planet increase pop growth rate by +5%, after 10th pop each additional pop growth rate increase is reduced to +1/2% per pop.
So when you start colony you have 1 pop and -45% pop growth rate on this planet.
6 pops = -20% pop growth rate on this planet.
10 pops = no modifiers to growth rate on this planet.
17 Pops = +7%/14% (+1%/2% per pop over 10 - due to large population) growth rate on this planet.
63 Pops = +63%/126% pop growth rate on this planet.
Well exact numbers should be tested and balanced but still I think that would be interesting and could allow for simulation of exponential growth/effect of scale.


Also this pop growth modifiers should be negatively affected by planet’s overall condition. So when there is crime/unemployment/lack of housing/low amenities/low overall happiness or even better - simply low stability - then this growth modifier should be severely decreased - that would symbolize that pops are concerned with the situation on the planet and are less eager to have offspring in dangerous/uncertain times when it is hard to support and raise them.


Secondly, There is this set of species traits regarding longevity of the species “Venerable”, “Enduring”, “Fleetling”. In my opinion, on top of (alongside) modifiers to leader lifespan, they should be tied to pop growth as well.

My understanding is as follows - species that are longer alive are longer in reproductive age and can have offspring for longer periods of time. Moreover due to longer life they stay in productive age (work their jobs) for longer (which is already acknowledged by leader lifespan modifier), so before they will retire and eventually die they should be working alongside their offspring. As a result this is an indirect pop growth modifier - think about it.


It doesn’t have to be significant. I recommend going with the same values as strength traits go (“very strong” - Army damage +40%, worker output +5%; “strong” - Army damage +10%, worker output +2%; “weak” - Army damage -10%, worker output -2%%), since the cost and other values are roughly the same.

“Venerable” - Leader lifespan +40 years, +5% pop growth rate.

“Enduring” - Leader lifespan +10 years, +2% pop growth rate.

“Fleetling” - Leader lifespan -10 years, -2% pop growth rate.


grekulf said:
“Ship Upgrade
I think the experience of upgrading ships could be better, as it feels a bit awkward that cancelling your upgrade at 99% doesn’t actually leave any ships upgraded. I want to address that by making each ship upgrade individually, one at a time, and that this process should make use of multiple shipyards in the same starbase. This should mean that if you cancel a fleet upgrade at 50%, roughly half of the ships will still be upgraded. We’ll also take a look at tweaking the upgrade costs and time.”


YES! However I wouldn’t stop there! Imagine the same thing going for modifying species traits!

I very much would like to see this as ongoing process, similar to the one you are describing regarding the upgrade process of ships.

So it could be implemented this way - When You have “Flesh is weak” ascension perk and you change your species into cyborgs, after process is completed you unlock new citizenship option - “assimilation”. The effect of that is basically - the species does not work (it has unemployed status) and it has lowered happiness quite severely, however each year (or was it month?) few pops of that species gets upgraded and becomes new one and start working normally. Use this already existing mechanic and change it slightly. Because If your entire empire suddenly had stopped working it would have catastrophic consequences! Instead make it that every "time unit" (year/month/semiannual/whatever "time unit" you deem appropriate), 1-3 pops of modified species (depending on the size of planet/level of planetary administration building on the planet), “go for modifications”. That means they get unemployed status + “undergoing modifications” tag (similar to other tags like“happy”/”Enslaved”/”Servitude” and so on). After next "time unit" passes (year/month/etc.) process is finished for pops “undergoing modifications” and they become new improved (according to the template) members of society and they return to work, while next batch of pops is going for “modifications”. Simple. Elegant. Realistic.

In related matter people were complaining about uselessness of medical building that provide “medical jobs”. You could buff them by adding simple additional feature for them - Each pop working medical job makes species modifications quicker, by simply allowing one additional pop to be modified at the same time! So let’s say that newly founded colonies (reassembled colony ship - capital level 0) can’t modify pops (unless you have clinic), while after first upgrade (when 10 pops are on the planet) into the “planetary administration” (capital level 1), can modify 1 pop at a time, each further upgrade of said building allows +1 additional pop to be modified simultaneously. This simple solution should make modification take roughly similar amount of time on all planets, regardless of size (except those truly massive and overpopulated 80+ pops). So when you have “planetary administration” (lev.1) and Medical building level 1 (providing 2 medical jobs) You could modify 3 pops at the same time.

To make it slightly more complex, or to allow a player an additional degree of control over process (but slightly more labor extensive on the dev team part), there could be a special temporary job available on a planet, that can be prioritized as any other job, but instead of producing anything it changes/upgrades pops as mentioned above.


On another note, instead of making it a special project - it could be a planetary decision. So you could modify species selectively, and starting the process, could require some influence and possibly some upfront resources cost “to set up infrastructure for modification”, depending on the type of modification. Installing implants could cost both minerals and consumer goods, while genetic modifications, some research points? Food+consumer goods?


This makes another opportunity for some events related to changing society due to applying modifications. There can be 4 stages roughly one quarter of the progress of the process. maybe some minority against the modifications will show up? Those can be xenophobes against uplifting and/or wasting resources for modifications of “lesser species”. Spiritualist minority against “cybernetic implants” and “technological ascendancy” actively avoiding the process, increasing crime and violent desperate actions. What if there are fraction of society that does not want to undergo modifications? What if they start to protest? Crime goes up, and either they are forced or convinced with some steep influence costs?


possible effects:

00-25% species modified - Society looks at first brave, volunteers undergoing modifications with scepticism/joy/eagerness/curiosity - depending on ethics, and/or empire ethos. Modified pops gets happiness penalties due to being minority and feeling alienated. Some ethical/moral discussion starts within empire, maybe player has option to influence it in one way or another through series of events dialog options?

25-50% species modified - growing numbers of modified members of society grow rapidly, and instead of novelty finger pointed at streets they become a reality and a common sight. Issue can no longer be swept under the rug or avoided. Discussion starts to get heated, occasional violence occurs.

50-75% species modified - society firmly divided on those that are “original/pure race” and “the mutant/aberrations” - for the first time majority becomes a minority. Maybe some regular rioting and fights between two groups start? Causing devastations, and rise in crime.

75-100% species modified - Number of modified pops is now firmly superior to those without it. Non modified pops suffer happiness penalty. Last remnants of the old inferior race, that up to this point managed to avoid or actively opposed modifications are hunted down and forced to undergo now mandatory modifications.


this is one of the possible scenarios how this can go depending on ethos, civics, government type this can be drastically different in tone and severity.


Mandates - Different topic to work on

Most of those mandates are simply silly in later game - build 2 generator districts… yeah not a challenge usually. and max cap on unity gained (max. 1000) is laughable in later stages.


Simple solution - tie both mandate fulfillment requirement and the reward to empire size. Simple as that.
The larger the empire, the more work needs to be done, but the benefit will be bigger as well. That seems fair and to keep them challenging. Also please increase the diversity of mandates. Right now they seem dull. Few mandate example ideas based of faction/leader ethic :


Egalitarian - change policy to one favored by egalitarians (non-purge); change particullar, or default species rights to no migration controls, no birth controls etc. Enact edict X Set utopian living standards etc.

Authoritarian - enslave pops ratio at least X%. humiliation wor with empire X.

Xenophile - make migration treaty with X different empires, Acquire X new species into empire. Improve relations with empire X. Enact refugees welcome policy. etc.

Xenophobe - Purge species X within empire. Enslave Xeno species X. Decrease living standard of xenos within empire.

etc.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

@grekulf Quick question. Given that the long time overflow bug has finally spilled over into diplomacy as well, can we expect to see some better error handling in general? I get that stellaris will forever be tied to a signed 32-bit integer limit, but the fact that the code doesn't cap all values to the max value and instead overflows into the negative has caused problems for a long time (causing things like resource storage becoming 0 and technologies becoming free). Can't you just add some code that caps the max value so it doesn't overflow across the board?

 

[Tsudico]

UI

On star map there is option to “toggle” hyperlanes view on and off. What I think is missing is a similar additional button that toggles “wormholes” view. It should be different color - as when you are plotting curse for ships and the fastest way is through wormhole then there is this blueish line - representing wormhole. Of course only explored wormholes would show up. I think that would be fairly simple to implement but it can be quite helpful in my opinion.

I really like this idea.

My understanding is as follows - species that are longer alive are longer in reproductive age and can have offspring for longer periods of time. Moreover due to longer life they stay in productive age (work their jobs) for longer (which is already acknowledged by leader lifespan modifier), so before they will retire and eventually die they should be working alongside their offspring. As a result this is an indirect pop growth modifier - think about it.

I see a couple issues with your thoughts on population growth rate.

First, it would adjust the growth rate to be more exponential instead of a stepped linear rate like it currently is. This could be a problem for balancing because it is easier to understand linear progress as opposed to exponential (no matter how slight). It may require more micromanaging because of the exponential effects.

Second, it may not work thematically with gestalt consciousnesses, specifically machine empires.

Finally, in regards to your thoughts on traits that affect the lifespan and how it could also affect pop growth I think the longer living a species is the less it's growth rate should be. Species that live longer do not have as large a drive to create the next generation quickly. Instead it should be the opposite of what you suggest:

• “Venerable” - Leader lifespan +40 years, -5% pop growth rate.
• “Enduring” - Leader lifespan +10 years, -2% pop growth rate.
• “Fleeting” - Leader lifespan -10 years, +2% pop growth rate.

But there are already traits that modify pop growth so it may be best to keep them separate otherwise it again adds additional variables that need to be balanced against. The point cost of the traits would have to be modified based on which direction they chose to go and it may make the growth traits more or less desirable.

 

[Ingros]

I hope you will let every pop grow in parallel on each planet... maybe as a popup display when you hover your mouse over the pic (could be the pop finishing next)

Ship upgrades...one after another sounds great... always missed that point and had to split the fleet manually
Maybe possible to get the ships for upgrade splitted, travellubg to different shipyards in range and later join the fleet again automatically? Would help a lot for patrol fleets
i would add loss of ship xp based on the changes you made combined with more impact of better crews

 

[Kapitan Chrum]

I see a couple issues with your thoughts on population growth rate.

First, it would adjust the growth rate to be more exponential instead of a stepped linear rate like it currently is.

It is the idea to make it exponential instead of linear - that was kinda the point of this proposal

This could be a problem for balancing because it is easier to understand linear progress as opposed to exponential (no matter how slight).

Since when we play Parodox GSG because "they are easy to understand"?

It may require more micromanaging because of the exponential effects.

Unfortunately I don't understand how this exponential growth would affect micromanagement, could you please explain what do you mean?

Only things I can think of would be that pops would generally grow faster over time. So buildings would unlock faster and faster so you would need to keep up with housing and planetary buildings, food production and jobs.
Due to this I have pointed out that this exponential growth rate should be affected by stability - witch already represent and is affected by overall happiness and economic condition of the planet - the lower it is - the lower the growth
EXAMPLE:
63 - pops on the planet = +63% (1%per pop) pop growth rate modifier - then this value modified by 73% stability rating = 63 x 0,73 = 45,99% - overall pop growth rate bonus on this planet.

When stability is bellow say some value like 50%/40%/30% this could be more severe reduction

63 - pops on the planet = +63% (1%per pop) pop growth rate modifier - then this value modified by 29% stability rating (witch in turn is additionally divided by either some arbitrary flat number or something more linear as well) = 63 x (29 x 0.5) = 63 x 0,145 = +9,135 % pop growth rate bonus on this planet.

The vale of reduction rather than linear can be organised into tiers:
Less than 40 % stability - stability rating multiplied by 0.4 before modifying pop growth rate - 78 pops x (36 stability x 0.4) = 78 x 0.144 = +11.232% growth bonus
Less than 30 % stability - stability rating multiplied by 0.3 before modifying pop growth rate - 78 pops x (26 stability x 0.3) = 78 x 0,073 = + 5.325% growth bonus
Less than 20 % stability - stability rating multiplied by 0.2 before modifying pop growth rate - 78 pops x (16 stability x 0.2) = 78 x 0,032 = + 2.469% growth bonus
Less than 10 % stability - stability rating multiplied by 0.1 before modifying pop growth rate - By this time planet should be all in flames though due to other factors


Above example could modify also all other growth modifiers from policy "nutritional plenitude", planetary decision "encourage growth" and techs like "cloning" witch all right now give flat boring +10% rate.

SCENARIO 1 - NO ADDITIONAL MODIFIERS
73 pops. Stability 67%. No modifiers.

73 pops = 73% rate then reduced by stability 67% = 73 x 0.67 = 48,91% planetary pop growth bonus.

SCENARIO 2 - WITH MODIFIERS
73 pops. Stability 67%. "nutritional plenitude"+"encourage growth" +"Healthcare campaign" +"cloning" all are active +40% flat growth bonus.

73 pops +40% = 102 rate then reduced by stability 67% = 102 x 0.67 = 68,48%

Second, it may not work thematically with gestalt consciousnesses, specifically machine empires.

I agree.
Due to this in my opinion Hive minds should have linear growth as it is now - either queen(s) lying eggs/hatchery/spawning pool working on full capacity or simply hive maind dividing only some amout of thinking process to growth.

So no changes here. Hive minds are either way kind of "easy mode" of Stellaris when many other more complicated features are turned off - happiness, factions etc.

Machine empires should build their pops as they are now, bottle neck being their production capacity.

Finally, in regards to your thoughts on traits that affect the lifespan and how it could also affect pop growth I think the longer living a species is the less it's growth rate should be. Species that live longer do not have as large a drive to create the next generation quickly. Instead it should be the opposite of what you suggest:

• “Venerable” - Leader lifespan +40 years, -5% pop growth rate.
• “Enduring” - Leader lifespan +10 years, -2% pop growth rate.
• “Fleeting” - Leader lifespan -10 years, +2% pop growth rate.

But there are already traits that modify pop growth so it may be best to keep them separate otherwise it again adds additional variables that need to be balanced against. The point cost of the traits would have to be modified based on which direction they chose to go and it may make the growth traits more or less desirable.

I can agree with that.

 

[Borgratz]

The right hand menu is totally useless as it's cluttered with 15 sectors. The AI seems to dislike repairing broken buildings, or doing anything about low amenities. So again, manual work needed even on managed sectors.

Sidenote, not to be confused with "therefore sectors are fine!":
If you click the options wheel on top of the right hand menu, you can set the planet list to not include sectors. Which, for me, doubled the amounts of planets I thought were fun to manage to like 20 or so

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I see. With more mechanics and a bit less abstractions and omissions I meant the game as a whole not just naval combat. Space combat doesn't need to be based on anything we know, but because space battles are such a huge part of stellaris it needs some form of strategic and tactic basis for it to serve a purpose in a strategy game. EU4 might not have that much depth for naval battles, ship construction,etc. but with land battles you need to take a lot more factors into the equation (army composition, leader skills, supply limits, forts, terrain bonusses, marching speed, discipline, morale, etc.). Stellaris lacks a lot of this depth, by far the most important factor is who has the biggest fleet.

I'd like to see combat in Stellaris that offers different strategic and tactical opportunities for different situations that the ai and the human player can use. So wars do not revolve arround massive forts and getting all your ships in the one decisive battle. Despite all the tweaks over multiple versions this is still more or less what wars come down to.

I wholeheartly agree. More strategy besides having the stronger fleet would be welcome.

Unfortunately, i have little ideas about how. Space has no terrain features and logistic is hard to implement.

 

[Dan_Daniel2000]

Great to see, hope the team continues to focus on QoL, AI & performance for awhile yet.

Probably too late to get this answered but are these art assets going to be implemented? They're in the game files

They are:

 

[Coconut_Cookie]

I wholeheartly agree. More strategy besides having the stronger fleet would be welcome.

Unfortunately, i have little ideas about how. Space has no terrain features and logistic is hard to implement.

Well the most important thing is that it could work in some way with the mechanics of the game but also and this is crucial that the ai can be taught how to use them. But it could be anything really, I really like to see the devs trying to implement some more interesting 'geography'. Just use your imagination for ideas, for example:

• Have different sizes for stars, let red giants or even bigger stars be truely massive. Moving your fleets to close and your armour will slowely start to get damaged because of the radiation. Maybe there could be a specialization for shields that could counter this.
• Make some black holes a lot bigger and have it slow down all ships in the system maybe even reduce accuracy.
• Perhaps fleets could 'dig in' in asteroid fields giving them a higher defence or give smaller vessels bigger bonusses when there is lots of asteroids or debris.
• Instead of tech debris could just give resources that you can recycle. Maybe the debris of enough battles in a single system could even form moons (maybe late game).
• Perhaps fleets could hide in the upper layers of gas giants to surprise attack other fleets.
• Systems in the map that aren't linked with the hyperlane network, so you'll only get acces to them once you have jump drives.
• Maybe different levels of anomalies. Once you have a new type of sensor you can detect things you previously couldn't. This would make exploring a part of the whole game, not just the early game.

I really would like to see the devs go crazy on map generation, exploring has always been stellaris' strongest aspect and adding more variety and gameplay mechanics that come with it would only improve on that.

 

[Bearjuden]

I wholeheartly agree. More strategy besides having the stronger fleet would be welcome.

Unfortunately, i have little ideas about how. Space has no terrain features and logistic is hard to implement.

• Making admiral experience a thing again (I know it technically is, but...come on, it's negligible) and admiral levels consequential, so a smaller fleet with a better admiral stands a better chance.
• Adding positioning penalties for having lots of ships in one battle (even if they are in multiple fleets) so that while each additional ship helps, you get diminishing returns.
• Making powerful admirals with lots of ships big political problems, especially if disloyal and/or friendly with the enemy (this would obviously require two big overhauls, one each for politics and characterization).

All would help, I think. I'm sure there's other stuff but this is what occurs to me.

 

[George_L]

Dont know if already has been mentioned but would be nice the planet production to be more visible.Something like the attached image