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

[FleetingRain]

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.

God, yes. This would be very intuitive and would probably help the weighting system.

Please change the Jobs number from "Jobs on this planet" to "Available Jobs", so if I have 110 jobs and 100 Pops, instead of saying 110 Jobs, it would say 10 Available Jobs.

This too. I don't care how many jobs I have, I care about how many I need.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Can we imagine a checkbox or a dropdown list on dock yards (when there are multiples in a station ) to allow or not its usage for upgrades? This way we could eventually imagine a scenario where I have one keep building new stuff while the other is performing the upgrades

I'm pretty sure the way that's supposed to work is that each ship getting upgraded goes into the shipyard queue individually, along with new construction. The top N items on the queue progress (where N is the number of shipyards), as it is today. When any item completes, everything below it moves up. You can also manually move stuff up or down the queue. Want the new construction to progress earlier? Scroll down the queue to it, hold Shift, and click on the ^ button to move it to the top of the queue. Want to halt work on that titan while your fleet of corvettes upgrades? Hold Shift and click v to move it to the bottom of the queue (or just move it down some number of slots manually). This is all already in the game. The only difference is not needing to manually split your fleet it tiny packets for it to upgrade either piecemeal or in parallel.

 

[Bradd]

While you are looking at pop- and UI-related things, could you please check out this xeno-compatibility bug?
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ty-ungrouped-half-breed-species-spam.1142789/

I’m not sure how half-species get their base species assigned, but there’s a bug where the game mistakenly records a subspecies as the base. This breaks the species UI in a couple of ways – the half-species don’t get organized under the right base species, and some subspecies templates become undeletable.

 

[Zergash]

Please add better mod selection in the Launcher. I play with lots of different mod lists and it is a hassle to switch them around. With roughly 80+ mods active, it would be great if we could define andaswitch between modlists. Like Singleplayer mods, mods for Multiplayer, Mods to test, etc.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Regarding machine empire, I really think that having the hability to create a "robot factory planet" which build only robots and send them everywhere in the empire, could be a good choice. Something like an oecumenopolis alternative, or a special district in oecumenopolis replacing the one for amenities.

"Machine World" planets already exist, but they don't allow any more assembly plants than a normal planet so their pop growth is still really restricted. It is utterly bizarre how having three size 8 planets will give you *far* greater robo-population growth than a size 50 ringworld segment or size 25 machine world, even if it is fully developed.

 

[FleetingRain]

Pop Growth
We’ve heard your concerns about how pop growth currently functions, and how it in some cases can create situations that feel wrong. We will be adjusting how pops are chosen for growth, and try to avoid having pops move to, or being chosen for growth, on planets where they have a very low habitability. I feel like moving pops to those planets should be based more on player choice.

You guys absolutely have to fix how 1) 4 10-pop worlds generate more new pops than 1 40-pop world, and 2) how species X's immigration contributes to the growth of species Y. The pop growth system is very unintuitive.

 

[Jorlem]

The Pops tab is also being cleaned up a little, and you’ll now be able to prioritize one job per strata, which should make it easier to make your workers prioritize farming without having to juggle the priorities of other jobs in the same strata. The ability to “star” a job was actually the original design, but it was changed into an on/off prioritization.

Any chance that, in addition to a general "star", we could have species-specific "stars"? Something to ensure that my robots with the mining trait go to miner jobs and those with farming traits go to farming jobs would be most appreciated.

 

[Kuronan]

Please change the Jobs number from "Jobs on this planet" to "Available Jobs", so if I have 110 jobs and 100 Pops, instead of saying 110 Jobs, it would say 10 Available Jobs.

You could remove the total jobs and rework unemployment to show available jobs instead

 

[King Travis]

Can we discuss how you are going about making the AI better?

 

[Covovker]

I must say I really love the overall feeling of new economy system, it really is better than the tiles before. But... my BS-meter is going off-scale for the following regarding the things mentioned in upcoming changes

1. All pop production modifiers are additive, and that makes no sense.
2. Why can’t I have multiple robot assemblies?
3. Please, fix the priorities and allow to lock a specific pop at a specific job. Ok, to the hell the fix, a lock would work just fine
4. Pop growth is BS, because I have to colonise all tomb worlds
5. Misc anomalies rant
X. Build orders.

1. All pop production modifiers are additive, and it is stupid. I have the best farmers in the game with servile, agriculture, very strong and robust, and in the mid game if i compare it to my weakest pops that are not meant to be workers at all, in the total production I see something like 15 VS 13. Don't hold me on exact figures, you got the point. WTF? The best farmers are supposed to be 35% stronger, not 12%. Same goes for me spending a ton of influence expecting to get +20%, and I get like +8%. Same goes for those planetary modifiers and specialty buildings that do not worth it until the very late game, cuz 1 resource+1 energy cost is far more expensive than getting like 8 energy (and thats from 20 technicians, quite heavy energy focused planet) in total. By the way, the advanced resource consuming specialty buildings suck, they need to be at least 1.5 times stronger.
The fix is not too complicated: make it (Pops) x (Planet) x (Empire): where pops = species + pop policies, planet = planetary features + specialty buildings + stability, empire = techs + empire bonuses + edicts. Then getting those upgraded specialty buildings, genetically modifying species or running expensive edicts is not a waste. And yes, that scales things, but stellaris economy has always been snowbally, and the game has become like 3 times slower than it was back in the beginning, so i don't think it is a problem.

2. Why can’t we have multiple robot assemblies? It kinda makes sense why you can’t have two ministries of culture or two cloning centres. But why robot assemblies? The assembly cost in the early game is 5 energy + 10 minerals and a specialist which consumes a lot. Again, can't remember the exact figures, but it is something like that. A maxed out robotic assembly planet will produce 3 pops a year, and thats a lot, but it will take 60 energy and about 150 minerals along with pop consumption and a planet doing nothing useful besides raw resources that also has to grow to pop 75. Comparing it to 1.2 pop a year in hive mind worlds that costs almost nothing and taking into consideration that robots production outcome sucks in almost every way... seems fair. Again, the exact figures are a matter of balance, its the nonsensical restriction that annoys.

3. Why the hell the main species always hijacks resource gathering or alloys from odd factory? I have my serviles that produce about 25% more, and yet every time the main species grows, I have to do that ritual dance again and again. Same for industries, where droids with +5% to all are the best factory workers in the game (well, could be if specialists +5% DID work for them, but it does not), but regular pops keep pressing them out. By the way, I really loved it when I found out that droids are the best for industries (robust trait ties, but it is 4th ascension), it is awesome and it justifies robots existence besides additional pop growth. But the pop priorities and broken +5% specialists in prosperity kill it.

4. Pop growth is BS because it is the same for tomb world and gaia, the same for pop 10 and pop 100 planet. And if you’re a hardcore minmaxer, you just can’t bypass the fact you get a ton of growth from zero habitability planets. Feels like I'm asking to nerf the thing I am using, but otherwise... it just makes no sense and annihilates the very reason to terraform. That also is amplified by the robot assemblies being 1 per planet: how can you give up 2.3 points of growth? It is 2.5 times better then the 1000 food decision, which gives 0.9. Yeah, pop growth amount also needs pop x planet x empire treatment, as described in the first point. Every crappy planet becomes something along the lines of 7 points of total pop growth per month, which is huge and can not be dismissed.

5. Anomalies
5.1. are brains slugs and paradise planet removed from the game? I haven’t met em since 2.2.2, and I always go hardcore survey with 5+ science ships almost from the start.
5.2. Screw the predefined precursors spawn areas. Yes, it’s kinda “save me from myself”, but it just feels wrong that starting not in the First League area is deliberately increasing difficulty for your game, an if I am in a blind spot, then I’ll just never have precursors at all. Btw, cybrex is the worst =) By the moment you can afford to restore a ring world, the game is already won or lost, and until that time you don't get even a minor bonus of 10 of every basic resource that lesser precursors have.
5.3. Resource values were scaled, mostly down, but anomalies outcomes are the same as in pre 2.2

X. Build orders. I'm not sure how exactly to implement that, thats a real game design challenge, but I keep finding myself in a micromanagement hell of constantly doing over and over again for the same kinds of planets. Like, in my last grand admiral wide hive game, I basically had 3 types of worlds, that are high populated science, hive worlds specialized in certain type of resource, and generic rest, the whole purpose of which is to get to a certain size where the pop growth is at best and then resettle pops to more useful worlds. And the build order of the buildings, the order of jobs being manually assigned was almost exactly the same. And yet I have to do it manually. Its basically the same in non hive playthroughs, just the archetypes of planets differ. Again, not sure how should that thing work, but there's got to be something. New economy they said, less micro than tiles system they said. In pre-2.2 the mass colonization was never a pain: settle, move 5 pops in, wait for planetary administration, put all buildings and all robots into queue, put planet under sector control that is forbidden to replace buildings. Done. The planet WILL work the way you wanted it to. The first time I was done with a planet in 2.2+ was around year 90.


Thanks. I played the game quite a bit since the release, was really happy to come back with utopia and distant stars (which are my top 2 extensions ever), and I really want to enjoy it with its new economic system, which is awesome in its core, but flawed in details.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Please add better mod selection in the Launcher. I play with lots of different mod lists and it is a hassle to switch them around. With roughly 80+ mods active, it would be great if we could define andaswitch between modlists. Like Singleplayer mods, mods for Multiplayer, Mods to test, etc.

I think the ability to make and name multiple profiles would be good. You could then choose which profile you want active rather than having to redo your active mod list every time you want to change things up.

You guys absolutely have to fix how 1) 4 10-pop worlds generate more new pops than 1 40-pop world, and 2) how species X's immigration contributes to the growth of species Y. The pop growth system is very unintuitive.

I think this is a problem as well. What do you suggest as the solution? A scaling bonus to pop growth based off the number of population of the growing species on the planet would be more realistic, at least for organic pops, but could get tricky. Perhaps an easier and cleaner solution would be a +X% bonus to growth where X is the planet size? That last bonus may be too strong, so maybe X is equal to 1/2 the planet size?

 

[YeshuaAgapao]

Progress is being made on the patch progression from 2.2.2 to 2.2.4 but more progress is needed. Performance particularly lags after terraforming and colonizing planets in the L-cluster.

There is no bug report thread. Screenshots highlighting things in diplomacy screen that need fixing. Integer flip on relative power for non-agression pacts. Relative power overall interpretation being affected by a rounding error or something. With debug tooltips, the 'your number' in parenthesis is the same as the highlighted country's number for tech power.

 

[sterrius]

I just hope the team stays on bug fixing a little more before jumping to the next DLC. +1 or 2 full patchs with focus on that.

Changes on planets, pops, FTL, etc where great but i feel stellaris really need a little more care to fix not only the most urgent bugs but also the really old ones before to prepare the game for the next DLC instead of jumping from one to another piling up bugs as you go.

A smaller/faster version of what the EU team is doing right now. (As Stellaris is not that old and don´t need that much time to go for it).

I know this will delay some of the plans for some weeks but it would make wonders to the game and future development of the game.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

@grekulf Any news on the bug that prevents synthetically ascended empires from building their main species if they have modified their main species? Since this breaks one of the ascension paths I assume it is a fairly serious bug (although I'm biased since synth ascension is by far my favorite path ).

 

[Duuk]

Definitely need techs that increase the efficiency of the secondary production buildings (rather than just increase the number of jobs they create) so that 1 alloy producing job uses the same X minerals to produce 150% of normal X alloys/rare crystals/motes/consumer goods (especially).

This is absolutely vital to getting the economy balanced in the late game. Otherwise the economy death spirals.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

New planet UI looks you are still following the terrible UI philosophy of using only minimal screen real estate for important information & decision making panels, requiring scrolling and/or flipping through tabs for even routine operations.

Why do you do this to us? As a company, PDS used to be better at UI design.

 

[Snoipah]

PLEASE MAKE THE AI NOT BRAINDEAD STUPID

This is on GRAND ADMIRAL difficulty and I'm not feeling much of a challenge.

Also, I hope the "upgrade each ship individually" doesn't make the game chug.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I like the UI and upgrade changes.

 

[MarKr]

Can we get a building for Starbases which would allow upgrading ships even without a Shipyard installed? It could upgrade the ships slower than bases with Shipyards or eventually increase the upgrade speed if Shipyards are also present.

 

[Uskayaw]

Can we discuss how you are going about making the AI better?

Current UI is so cluttered, uninformative and ugly, that whoever develops AI will lose most of their time just clicking and scrolling to see what's going on.