Stellaris Dev Diary #375 - Notes on the Open Beta

[Thiend]

Since people have been complaining about how building city districts increases the number of jobs provided by every zone, which isn't always ideal, I'd like to suggest making each of the four city zones have it's own district. That way, you can increase the number of jobs from a specific zone as needed without creating a ton of extra, unneeded jobs from other zones.

This seems to address my complaints with the core of the current system by allowing you to only expand what you actually want, without creating a micro-intensive hellscape when your pops move around all the new jobs you didn't want and/or need.

Obviously more work to do to make it perfect, but this fixes the parts of it that I find outright unacceptable to deal with. Unless you count the amenities issues, but I don't because there are definitely ways to fix that which might be coming as early as tomorrow.

 

[TrueWolves]

maybe it could be represented at blockers, we already have sprawling slums and industrial wastelands, what if they instead gave "jobs" (not productive ones, mind you) that while do produce some resources, they reduce the workforce of the more modern equivalent

when you remove them, the pops would absorbed into the "modern" district and remove the workforce penalty is gave

Slums could make less efficient civilians that cant migrate
Industrial wastelands could be what give the primitive labourer jobs, maybe electricians too
Substance farms could give a farmer job (serf? substance farmer? peasant?) that produces enough to only pay for the upkeep of 1.5 pops

This is a neat way to do it too. You get all or most of the jobs, and a limitation to overcome before you take off. One possible problem is that a blocked might be less clear to a new player than an obvious "upgrade" button next to each starting building.


A mix of both might work too, if to give the capital some early game stability from citizens, while freeing those citizens up for migration later when you have proper capital infrastructure.

 

[The Founder]

I really think holo-theatres should give entertainer jobs instead of just boosting the amenities zone.

They are going to, in tomorrows update.

 

[Newbee53]

They are going to, in tomorrows update.

where did you see this? I'm worried I missed something important...

 

[Zaacplot300]

maybe it could be represented at blockers, we already have sprawling slums and industrial wastelands, what if they instead gave "jobs" (not productive ones, mind you) that while do produce some resources, they reduce the workforce of the more modern equivalent

when you remove them, the pops would absorbed into the "modern" district and remove the workforce penalty is gave

Slums could make less efficient civilians that cant migrate
Industrial wastelands could be what give the primitive labourer jobs, maybe electricians too
Substance farms could give a farmer job (serf? substance farmer? peasant?) that produces enough to only pay for the upkeep of 1.5 pops

There’s still the question of why is this necessary in the first place, specifically why does every starting planet need infrastructure that is actively detrimental to your starting situation, compared to a stock but workable starting situation like in 3.14. It makes sense for certain “primitive” origins or civics who rushed to the stars on a suboptimal tech base but the idea doesn’t seem to hold water for baseline empires.

 

[Calvax]

I really think holo-theatres should give entertainer jobs instead of just boosting the amenities zone.

I think the logic of having buildings as job modifiers should stay to properly distinguish them from zones. But I also think that the amenities zone should be removed and that function incorporated into the basic city district. Zones are simply vastly too competitive to dedicate one solely to amenities production, and if not it just becomes a mandatory pick which is restrictive.

 

[Thiend]

There’s still the question of why is this necessary in the first place, specifically why does every starting planet need infrastructure that is actively detrimental to your starting situation, compared to a stock but workable starting situation like in 3.14. It makes sense for certain “primitive” origins or civics who rushed to the stars on a suboptimal tech base but the idea doesn’t seem to hold water for baseline empires.

There's also a secondary problem - if pre-FTLs start with this then they won't be able to handle it.

If they DON'T start with this, why do we?

Even if it is consistent though, there's still the "why is this a thing" angle.

 

[Ajacoba]

I'm really concerned about what will happen with the new planet building system.

I don’t think it is recoverable, and I don’t see a fix for the flaws it introduced.

Well, it fixed all the previous system's flaws at least

 

[TrueWolves]

As others have stated: if the system's numbers don't work, that is not the same as if the concept doesn't work. What "pre ftl" infrastructure looks like balance wise can be easily changed.

Meanwhile the amenities problem isn't fixed with a simple balance change. As mentioned, its too competitive/necessary (at least early to mid game) for a limited resource (zones). If its a necessity for planet stability regardless of its resources, it should be provided without direct competition towards whatever resources you want your planet to produce. Changing the amount doesn't fix that it still takes up your limited zones.

 

[-Marauder-]

Yes, but the beta is still relatively unoptimized
Also fleets are still an unchanged issue, so as long as there's war and strong empires your computer will die :3

This might sound odd, but I never found fleets to have that much of an impact. At least "bigger" numbers for them. Issues tend to arise when the Ai has 50+ tiny fleets rather than a few big ones. Even then, the impact compared to pops and co seems much smaller.


On the game. The pop rework itself seems fine, at least from a functional stand point. Albeit I'm curious if 1000 pops will eventually be depicted as 1k pops the way fleets are swapped, solely for visual simplicity.


I'm personally absolutely not sold on the zones. They don't feel like they're needed for the pop rework, at all. And so far they're now a "better" system by any means. Just a different one. One with less control, more nestled menus, and a bunch of other problems. Maybe they'll make them work, maybe not. So far I prefer the old district and building system and am curious if it wouldn't work just as well with the new pops, if not better.

 

[-Marauder-]

Well, it fixed all the previous system's flaws at least

I'm curious, which ones exactly? Looking at the new zone system I don't really see what it "fixes" or "improves". It's just, different, and not necessarily different for the better so far. I might've missed which things it fixed/improved.

 

[Eladrin]

Peek from tomorrow's patch notes, which I showed off during the livestream:

• Replaced the Early Industry Zone with the Urban Zone. The Urban Zone currently accepts all buildings, limitations will be added in a future update
• Default starting planets now have Basic Offices and Basic Research Labs buildings in addition to the Basic Factories
  • Basic Factories provide Laborer jobs and can be upgraded into either Alloy Foundries or Civilian Industries
  • The Primitive Factory no longer decreases the Job Efficiency of Bureaucrats, Physicists, Biologists and Engineers
  • Basic Offices provide Administrator jobs and can be upgraded into Administrative Offices or Temples
  • Basic Research Labs provide Researcher jobs and be upgraded into Research Labs. These Researchers are worse than Researchers from 3.14.

Our intention is for basic buildings for each resource to be able to be built in the government and urban zones and for those buildings to provide a flat number of jobs to cover incidental needs, while more specialized buildings will continue to require the specialized zones.

After the livestream today, I found that a couple of them (unfortunately the Holotheater is one of them) is not quite correct, but we'll fix them in the update early next week. (It's too late for tomorrow's build.)

 

[Critical Ethics]

As others have stated: if the system's numbers don't work, that is not the same as if the concept doesn't work. What "pre ftl" infrastructure looks like balance wise can be easily changed.

Meanwhile the amenities problem isn't fixed with a simple balance change. As mentioned, its too competitive/necessary (at least early to mid game) for a limited resource (zones). If its a necessity for planet stability regardless of its resources, it should be provided without direct competition towards whatever resources you want your planet to produce. Changing the amount doesn't fix that it still takes up your limited zones.

I had just posted this in the other thread, might as well cross post it here:

I think amenity zones don't quite work for me. It seems odd to devote one of your three limited slots to just maintaining the planet itself.

I think what I'd like is for amenity buildings to work as kind of mini-zones. Add three more building slots to the capital zone (maybe make them tech locked behind the capital upgrade techs), then add a static amount of amenity jobs to the amenity buildings (+ maybe like 1/10th of a zonesworth of per-city scaling). So on a smaller or underdeveloped planet you can get away with just dropping a few amenity buildings and calling it a day, but on a large well developed planet one zone is pretty much going to have to be a dedicated amenity zone - but you get a few extra government zone building slots as a consolation prize.

e: lol, gazumped by @Eladrin of all people

 

[The Founder]

where did you see this? I'm worried I missed something important...

The livestream that was running when I saw your post.

They often have one on the DD days.

 

[Darlf]

The Flesh is weak... said that some random dude send his feet aginst new born dragon and die...

they just dotn know how make flesh STRONG... it not problem of flesh... is lack of creativity and intelligence

 

[Troyen]

This is going to be a hot take since some people are against the "post-primitive" start, but I think it be neat if we started with all 3 city zones on our capital pesudo-developed. Primitive industry, research, and administration that only offer 80% of the jobs that they could (instead of a scary looking penalty) and upgradable into their "modern" counterparts once you have the resources. It also add some early game decision making over what to priortize updating (or replacing) first, since we don't have the building decisions we used to have. Different origins/civics could then change this starting layout as appropriate.

Not as a default experience, but as one of the already-existing primitive start options maybe. Stuff like Broken Shackles and Eager Explorers already give you primitive buildings because you don't start with the standard tech that everyone else does (like corvettes or research labs).

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I noticed in the stream that the Planet Summary tab is being renamed "Surface".

Any chance it could be called "Subsurface" instead for subterranean empires?

 

[Sighfer]

We’ll have two dev diaries next week that will be a bit meatier than this one, to flesh out some of the other things coming in the next Quarter.

Can you push the new galaxy gen options to main, though, please?

 

[Falrinn]

The new job priority system that was shown in the live stream is very much needed.

Tbh it was needed before 4.0, it's just that the changes made to the early game in 4.0 made it even more important. Hopefully no more economy instantly imploding because I built something.

I also like the shift from "your starting buildings are aggressively terrible and should be upgraded ASAP" to "your starting buildings are okay and can be upgraded at your convience". Leave the obviously terrible starting buildings for "primitive" origins.

A few random suggestions. Instead of always having to dig through the UI, might I suggest being prompted to set a new template as default and begin transitioning to the new template? Subspecies integration is probably something I'll be doing a lot of if I play a Xenophile Empire so reducing unnecessary clicks would be great.

I also think the UI should hide small numbers of unemployed pops outside of the actual job page. Since most planets will end up with a small number of unemployed elites pretty much constantly, there's no need to actively alert the player as to their presence. Alternatively, perhaps demotion could be instant for unemployment created by pop growth (provided there are jobs available in a lower strata).

 

[Tisifoni12]

Will you either resolve the crash in food production if you dare to replace the early industry zone, or:

• build in something that makes it safe to do so provided you replace with factory or industry
• set some pre-condition for doing so, like only possible once a certain tech has been researched or a development milestone achieved
• auto re-designate the zone as industry if / when the early industry building is demolished