Stellaris Dev Diary #373 - 4.0 Development Progress Update

[Lavilledieu]

Now you just assign pop to jobs, where's the issue?
It runs automatic anyways

It's unintuitive and weird. The current system is much like the tile system, instead of having a very on the nose tile, you have job. The new system will not be like that. Now a person gets assigned a job, and suddenly, they divide themselves into a thousand different people.

 

[somerandofromreddit]

We wanted to keep the Market generally the same and continue to allow the existing trade based builds to function mostly how they do now. While we're not afraid to drastically change things in Stellaris, and were I starting from scratch I might have made it more strongly a logistics capacity (possibly even replacing Naval Capacity!), we do want to support most existing playstyles and keep things somewhat familiar in 4.0.

I feel like having Trade being non-storable (or limited to like 2x your monthly production, for example) would not affect Trade Builds more than other Play Styles, as long as you balance the prices correctly. Such Change would force people to spend the trade surplus they have (some automated selling options would be nice for that) and buy more trade when they go to war and need more logistics, as you cant save up trade/logistics beforehand. More trade focused build would still have way more logistical capacity to do what they want, while the non-trade builds will have to spend lots of their other Resources on the Market to buy the Trade for their Fleet supplies in War.

That can be balanced! Heck, such a change might actually benefit Trade focused builds more than non-trade builds, depending on the costs/mallis of buying trade/ suffering a trade deficit.

 

[Huskermax5]

Can I please beg for an expanded explanation of how if any a player can influence what percent of TV is collected like status quo instead of being stored

 

[Ajacoba]

It's unintuitive and weird. The current system is much like the tile system, instead of having a very on the nose tile, you have job. The new system will not be like that. Now a person gets assigned a job, and suddenly, they divide themselves into a thousand different people.

A group of people is assigned a job and they fill it out to differing degrees depending on their qualifications, like for example their genes

So the group of very strong orc slaves you just bought is gonna produce more than the weak Necrophages you bought last year

One pop has never and will never be a singular person

 

[Newbee53]

I recently got interested in Stellaries again and have caught up with the dev diaries.

While I understand the changes to the pop system, imo, keeping both "pops" and "workforce" will be very confusing. It's something very mechanical, something related to how the game does calculations, and I don't think you should show both. They only make sense if you look at it mechanically, in terms of flavor/logic/..., it's just weird. You could opt for a different name, like renaming pop to "city", but it will still seem forced. Which is why I believe you should hide one of the two under the hood. Stellaris started out as a rather intuitive game where you assign pops to tiles, and if the tile gets worked, you get the yield. Now, with workforce, you suddenly play with numbers in the thousands and those keep constantly changing as well. The loss of intuitive gameplay is imo a big issue. The dev diary also touched the concern of unintuitive interactions of multipliers. If you throw one aspect under the hood and don't allow modifiers on this, you make balancing the game easier and you make the game more intuitive too.

I don't know about that. The tiles system was only intuitive because it was so simple there was always a 'perfect' build that you could throw minerals at then ignore. With the move away from tiles you can now build many planets in any way you want. More than anything else this is a perfect reason to complicate things. But even then, it's not that bad.

Look at it this way. If you don't care about perfect min-maxing everything you do, you can still build whatever you need where you have free pops. If you want to do better, plants can be favored in one way or another. And if you want to go even further you can start calculating workforce modifiers.

You don't need to really know more than 'positive number good' if you don't want to, because pops will automatically be slotted into the best job for them. If you want that extra few precent, you can micro your planets just a little better. But new players don't need that, they don't have to guess weather building over that 1 energy resource is better than building a power plant on there or leaving it blank for now. everything you need to know to make 'good enough' choices is available right on screen. No need to calculate the anciency bonus of a mine verse the energy bonus for building a power plant right there.

"I have pops to work here. And my power plant planet still has room to grow. Might as well build another powerplant here. Just in case."

I feel like having Trade being non-storable (or limited to like 2x your monthly production, for example) would not affect Trade Builds more than other Play Styles, as long as you balance the prices correctly. Such Change would force people to spend the trade surplus they have (some automated selling options would be nice for that) and buy more trade when they go to war and need more logistics, as you cant save up trade/logistics beforehand. More trade focused build would still have way more logistical capacity to do what they want, while the non-trade builds will have to spend lots of their other Resources on the Market to buy the Trade for their Fleet supplies in War.

That can be balanced! Heck, such a change might actually benefit Trade focused builds more than non-trade builds, depending on the costs/mallis of buying trade/ suffering a trade deficit.

While that can be balanced, I'm not certain it can be balanced with any ease. Moreover, it sounds like even one small change in the system would through it wildly out of balance. Like a single change to a civic to make trade focused empires better, making that civic a necessity for military conquest empires because it gets you that extra precent of trade you need. Or increasing the maintenance cost of a corvette by 0.01 trade (from 0.05 to 0.06 in screen shot) causing wars to be forced to end years faster because it becomes unsustainable to maintain your fleets long term.

Given how much change Stellaris experiences, we should favor systems that when a little out of balance don't punish people for playing 'sub optimal' by too much. So not just systems that can be balanced and are cool or more fun. but systems that don't need weeks of effort to balance with every little change.

Also, they will want a system that they think they can adapt to future changes easily. After all, their goal is to not have to rework the same system three times a year if they can get away with it.

 

[Varren]

Can I please beg for an expanded explanation of how if any a player can influence what percent of TV is collected like status quo instead of being stored

At the very least, you can get yourself to maximum trade storage capacity, thus converting all your trade surplus into resources per your trade policy.

 

[The Founder]

Simultaneous pop growth!​

Your homeworld starts with an extra 2000 pops, most of whom start as Civilians. This number is subject to change based on our internal playtesting and the Open Beta.

It is kinda wierd it still speaks of "48 pops", when there are more like 4800.
Maybe you could renanme that to "48 mega pops" or "48 mPops"?
If differentiating the Pop and mPop instanes isn't too much work.

 

[Newbee53]

It is kinda wierd it still speaks of "48 pops", when there are more like 4800.
Maybe you could renanme that to "48 mega pops" or "48 mPops"?
If differentiating the Pop and mPop instanes isn't too much work.

4.8k would be a lot better. sense its four thousand eight hundred pops. But I'm guessing that's a result of converting old code to new code and not the intended end product. 48m sounds like 48 million which is a lot worse.

 

[fourteenfour]

How would you differentiate a fair mod from a mod that makes some achievements trivial? What if someone made a "grants you all achievements" mod?

I am not sure why it matters, achievements do not earn you anything outside of the game. Plus for many you can just load up some other players save game and then not pause the game. I guess I am in the camp that I care not for what achievements anyone has and any I have were purely coincidental

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

DD #371: Planet UI & Zones, Surface UI, Ecumenopoli, and Habitats​

This is the other big part we’re still working on. The backend for the new mechanics is mostly complete, but we’re still doing the design side implementation of the new jobs, zones, and buildings.

The actual surface UI is still very much a work in progress - it’s getting to a functional state, but isn’t near the polish level of the designs you saw in the dev diary. It’s likely to be part of the way there (but not complete) at the start of the Open Beta.

Please consider adding a Planetary Ascension affordability notifier. It is already hard enough for me to remember and know when it is possible to ascend a world, and if the button gets hidden away on a secondary tab it will only make things worse.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

It's unintuitive and weird. The current system is much like the tile system, instead of having a very on the nose tile, you have job. The new system will not be like that. Now a person gets assigned a job, and suddenly, they divide themselves into a thousand different people.

No, because a pop is already *hundreds of thousands" of people to possibly tens of millions depending on where you look at them. In the new system, a pop will be a hundredth the size, making them a more sensible unit to work with.
**Hopefully** no more "we lost some people from a search team investigating that weird building - lose the population of a major city" problems.

We get more granularity with the new system, but no person is "dividing themselves into a thousand different people".

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

4.8k would be a lot better.

The memes would write themselves if Stellaris used k-pops.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Focus tasks are still an absolutely abhorrent addition that goes against everything Stellaris represents.

Unfortunately, the lowest common denominator always wins in the end with long-running video games, which is why such games become more and more dumbed down and streamlined over time. All we can do is shout into the flood of inevitability and hope that enough sensible voices are heard to somewhat slow the tide. Still sad to see.

 

[Zaacplot300]

The hate behind the optional focus system that no one is obligated to interact with (because none of its rewards are exclusive to there ) is borderline incomprehensible. Especially since all the tasks are all things you will do anyways via them being basic game mechanics, so its not like its forcing you to do niche/weird stuff purely to check off a box.

 

[Critical Ethics]

It's unintuitive and weird. The current system is much like the tile system, instead of having a very on the nose tile, you have job. The new system will not be like that. Now a person gets assigned a job, and suddenly, they divide themselves into a thousand different people.

That's not happening at all.

 

[The Founder]

The memes would write themselves if Stellaris used k-pops.

Ah right, 1000 would be k - not m.
And yes, kPop would be too funny.

I can only claim my brain knew instinctively.

The hate behind the optional focus system that no one is obligated to interact with (because none of its rewards are exclusive to there ) is borderline incomprehensible. Especially since all the tasks all you will do anyways via them being basic game mechanics, so its not like its forcing you to do niche/weird stuff purely to check off a box.

It is like they couldn't find anything relevant to complain about.
So instead they picked that "hill to die on".

 

[Xsans]

wouldnt it make more sence to rename trade to something else if it will be used for ship upkeep

 

[Critical Ethics]

The hate behind the optional focus system that no one is obligated to interact with (because none of its rewards are exclusive to there ) is borderline incomprehensible. Especially since all the tasks are all things you will do anyways via them being basic game mechanics, so its not like its forcing you to do niche/weird stuff purely to check off a box.

I think form federation is going to be only available via the focus tree, but federations doesn't really work as a tech and never really worked as a perk so very much the exception that proves the rule.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Ah right, 1000 would be k - not m.
And yes, kPop would be too funny.

I can only claim my brain knew instinctively.


It is like they couldn't find anything relevant to complain about.
So instead they picked that "hill to die on".

It's just a pit stop on the way to the most important part of 4.0 dev diaries: terminology chat

So... how wedded are we to the term dev diary? Websters dictionary defines "diary" as

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

And yes, kPop would be too funny.

@Eladrin - any chance that the new pop scale could be 1,000 rather than 100 times the old number?

It should work just as well from a code perspective,
it could work better design-wise in some cases (pop growth rounding, event pop deaths, etc.), and
it would be plain superior from a meme, joke and fun perspective.

(The term "kPop" might even help Stellaris reach new markets via search engine hits.)