Stellaris Dev Diary #21 - Administrative Sectors

[Tim_Ward]

That's what they said about the opening game. Then it becomes EU in space.

 

[Yenzen]

They certainly have 4X elements that are not pushed in their other games. You start knowing nothing about the outside world except where you are (eXplore), you start with one system (eXpand), resource management matters, much as it does in Victoria, and it seem there isn't a simple world market (eXploit), though the latter (eXterminate) is a bit more ambigious.

It seems more like they are doing 4X, but adding their own internal management, expanded external politics along with random events to the mixture. It's 4X with a Paradox Grans Strategy flavor.

 

[Zyrious]

They certainly have 4X elements that are not pushed in their other games. You start knowing nothing about the outside world except where you are (eXplore), you start with one system (eXpand), resource management matters, much as it does in Victoria, and it seem there isn't a simple world market (eXploit), though the latter (eXterminate) is a bit more ambigious.

It seems more like they are doing 4X, but adding their own internal management, expanded external politics along with random events to the mixture. It's 4X with a Paradox Grans Strategy flavor.

They've repeatedly stated that only the initial stage of the game is like a 4x, and then it becomes EU in space after that phase of the game. But then expanded on that, they've even said there's more to the initial stage of the game than you'd find in your typical 4x. If you over simplify and are ambiguous about the 4x genre you can say any strategy game on earth is a 4x because it has research, an alliance menu, currency, based building and expansion, and fighting, but in reality based on all the DD's and interviews this game is very much a GSG.

 

[ImperiusArch]

Hence why it's their "SPIN" on the 4x genre, and not a classic 4x game.

 

[Zyrious]

Hence why it's their "SPIN" on the 4x genre, and not a classic 4x game.

Yeah, it's a Grand Strategy Game. As i said.

 

[ImperiusArch]

Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a 4x XD

 

[Tim_Ward]

I think the point is to be a 4x, but without the crappy bits.

 

[Zyrious]

I think the point is to be a 4x, but without the crappy bits.

That would imply a fine tuned 4x, whereas a GSG game is a game with an entirely different set of focuses and in-depth systems, which stellaris is already stated as having. It is a game that has 4x elements and using the 4x standard for the starting phase of it's game, but it has been stated repeatedly by the devs to be a full-on GSG from the mid-game on.

 

[RickInVA]

A couple of further thoughts:

1) I would imagine and hope that by the time beings are advanced enough to have interstellar travel and the ability to colonize other worlds that communication and the ability to administer things would be equally advanced.

2) We are also not talking about managing every aspect of these planets. There are no traffic laws to write nor school budgets to consider. It seems to me from DD #9 - Planets and Resources that the only decisions to be made are where to deploy Pops and building to be built. Hardly intensive micro management. Additionally it appears that the maximum number of tiles is 25, again not thousands of decisions to be made per planet. If you had 100 planets and each one needed a decision once every 10 turns/minutes/periods, that is only 10 decisions per period. IMHO that is hardly intensive micro management.

2a) Related to 2, what is the point of the depth of planet information/design/variety if I will only interact directly with 4 or 5 of them? What do I do with the rest? I look at it once, assign it to a Province, and done? never to look at it again? If I was the developer of the planet model I'd be seriously bummed by that. Players are never going to get to work with 90%+ of the planets in the game. To me that is sad, and a great missed opportunity. I'm sure you can pause the game to go look at them, but if you have no problem with that, then why not have the opportunity/option to manage them as well?

3) Everything that the player has to make a decision on can be considered micro management. Why build your ships yourself, that's evil micro management! What? I have to survey these anomalies manually? What a bummer of micro management! Why do I have to assign these province governors, such micro management!

4) Stellaris is not a 4X game? Hmm, imagine my surprise to read this from DD #1. "... Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game..." Yes, the writer goes on to say that they don't want it to be something "new and different". But not a 4X game, no, Stellaris is a 4X game by admission of the developers.

5) Comparison to CK2. I think CK2 is a great game. I own all the DLC (except some unit packs). I was an early adopter of the game. I don't feel the need for Stellaris to be "CK2 in space". A game design aspect that is well suited to CK2 would be, IMHO, almost certainly not applicable to a high technology game like Stellaris.

6) I understand that I am in the minority. What I do find frustrating is that while I understand that many others don't like "micro management", few will acknowledge any understanding that I do like it. I don't want other players to loose the game they want, I just don't want to loose the game I want. For expressing my view I, and the few others that agree with me, are told that we want to "penalize other players", are "crazy", that we "can't seriously believe". I always fail to understand how the idea of having the option to do things differently so agitates some people. When did having options as the player become a bad thing? Why do people feel the need to essentially tell me I'm a fool for liking what I like when I am respectful, if bewildered, of what they like? Has respect for differing opinions permanently left the building?

7) I'll set the over/under on "Respectfully Disagrees" at 17.

 

[RickInVA]

That would imply a fine tuned 4x, whereas a GSG game is a game with an entirely different set of focuses and in-depth systems, which stellaris is already stated as having. It is a game that has 4x elements and using the 4x standard for the starting phase of it's game, but it has been stated repeatedly by the devs to be a full-on GSG from the mid-game on.

Grand Strategy Game is not synonymous with "Lack of detail". GSG seems to often by waved around like a magic want to suggest that any and every level detail can/should be ignored.

IMHO the Grand Strategy Game you seem to be espousing seems synonymous with "boring" to me. But each to their own!

 

[Zyrious]

A couple of further thoughts:

1) I would imagine and hope that by the time beings are advanced enough to have interstellar travel and the ability to colonize other worlds that communication and the ability to administer things would be equally advanced.

And just as advanced as setting up local bureaucracy's and communicating with them.

2) We are also not talking about managing every aspect of these planets. There are no traffic laws to write nor school budgets to consider. It seems to me from DD #9 - Planets and Resources that the only decisions to be made are where to deploy Pops and building to be built. Hardly intensive micro management. Additionally it appears that the maximum number of tiles is 25, again not thousands of decisions to be made per planet. If you had 100 planets and each one needed a decision once every 10 turns/minutes/periods, that is only 10 decisions per period. IMHO that is hardly intensive micro management.

2a) Related to 2, what is the point of the depth of planet information/design/variety if I will only interact directly with 4 or 5 of them? What do I do with the rest? I look at it once, assign it to a Province, and done? never to look at it again? If I was the developer of the planet model I'd be seriously bummed by that. Players are never going to get to work with 90%+ of the planets in the game. To me that is sad, and a great missed opportunity. I'm sure you can pause the game to go look at them, but if you have no problem with that, then why not have the opportunity/option to manage them as well?

You still interact with them, even if not directly. Those planets affect the sector they are in and the empire as a whole and it's performance and risk of revolt, keeping track of all of that will be important to noting if you need to order a change from the governor, send in military forces, or enact a change of laws. Not to mention dealing with factions that may arise from those planets.

3) Everything that the player has to make a decision on can be considered micro management. Why build your ships yourself, that's evil micro management! What? I have to survey these anomalies manually? What a bummer of micro management! Why do I have to assign these province governors, such micro management!

Oversimplification. This game will obviously have a lot more to do on the higher end so a focus on the lower end isn't necessary as "busy work" like in most 4x. It also adds a level of realism since you wouldn't do it all manually and since you mention it the central government does, in fact, control its military composition and personally order the construction of each naval vessel and even the creation/dissolution of fleets. Same with a science vessel, which is the equivalent to a NASA operation which is controlled by the Federal government.

4) Stellaris is not a 4X game? Hmm, imagine my surprise to read this from DD #1. "... Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game..." Yes, the writer goes on to say that they don't want it to be something "new and different". But not a 4X game, no, Stellaris is a 4X game by admission of the developers.

As i recall in the very same or next dev diary they state that it is still a GSG with all that you expect from a PDX game, but that since it isnt based in history they've been able to utilize aspects from the 4x genre especially in the early stages of the game, but once it is mid-game on it is a GSG with all you'd expect from one. I find it hard to imagine someone that is a PDX fan would have a problem with that

5) Comparison to CK2. I think CK2 is a great game. I own all the DLC (except some unit packs). I was an early adopter of the game. I don't feel the need for Stellaris to be "CK2 in space". A game design aspect that is well suited to CK2 would be, IMHO, almost certainly not applicable to a high technology game like Stellaris.

No one is asking for CK 2 in space, especially since this game has been more described as EU in space after the colonize phase, but there are plenty of features from CK 2 that could/will work in stellaris, an that has even been acknowledge by the devs.

6) I understand that I am in the minority. What I do find frustrating is that while I understand that many others don't like "micro management", few will acknowledge any understanding that I do like it. I don't want other players to loose the game they want, I just don't want to loose the game I want. For expressing my view I, and the few others that agree with me, are told that we want to "penalize other players", are "crazy", that we "can't seriously believe". I always fail to understand how the idea of having the option to do things differently so agitates some people. When did having options as the player become a bad thing? Why do people feel the need to essentially tell me I'm a fool for liking what I like when I am respectful, if bewildered, of what they like? Has respect for differing opinions permanently left the building?

I haven't seen anyone being disrespectful, just trying to point out either that this game has a different focus than what you'd typically find in a 4x or that no everyone wants to focus on the tedium of colony management on top of everything else there will be to do.

 

[Person012345]

This was invented because you thought some people would have issues with the micromanagement of a large empire? So what purpose did making it mandatory serve?

 

[Darustet]

So none of those things is "tedious micro management" but choosing what to build on your planets is?

Designing ships isn't micromanagement that players do because they feel that they can do better than the AI?

You don't mind moving hundreds of ships around manually, that is fine, but having to make a decision every so often about a planet is evil micro management?

You are free to like what you like, but at least be honest that all of those things you mention are micro management. You just like those. I like all of it.

Which is why I never said that I dislike micromanagement as a feature but that it shouldn't be given a role bigger than it needs to be.

I do like to micromanage, that's why I included it on the list. In this whole conversation however, it has been very clear that the sort of micromanaging that people dislike is managing the same little thing all over again XX-XXX times every five minutes. Designing a ship is not tedious if you only need to do it once and then press save. Moving thousands of ships is fine if I don't need to move them individually. Having to make a decicion about a planet every so often is fine, making a decicion for every planet individually for the 1008th mundane matter is not. I like micromanaging my few local planets and sectors but there is obvious difference between a few sectors and 50-250 planets.

Any micro in or out of that list can get tedious if designed wrong, what I and many others hope is that for once planet management wouldn't suffer from that.

 

[Person012345]

Which is why I never said that I dislike micromanagement as a feature but that it shouldn't be given a role bigger than it needs to be.

I do like to micromanage, that's why I included it on the list. In this whole conversation however, it has been very clear that the sort of micromanaging that people dislike is managing the same little thing all over again XX-XXX times every five minutes. Designing a ship is not tedious if you only need to do it once and then press save. Moving thousands of ships is fine if I don't need to move them individually. Having to make a decicion about a planet every so often is fine, making a decicion for every planet individually for the 1008th mundane matter is not. I like micromanaging my few local planets and sectors but there is obvious difference between a few sectors and 50-250 planets.

Any micro in or out of that list can get tedious if designed wrong, what I and many others hope is that for once planet management wouldn't suffer from that.

Add administrative sectors. Make these an optional thing where you can let the AI run things. Do not slap in a mechanic that makes it mandatory by imposing crippling penalties on someone who wants to personally manage 500 planets.

 

[brifbates]

2) We are also not talking about managing every aspect of these planets. There are no traffic laws to write nor school budgets to consider. It seems to me from DD #9 - Planets and Resources that the only decisions to be made are where to deploy Pops and building to be built. Hardly intensive micro management. Additionally it appears that the maximum number of tiles is 25, again not thousands of decisions to be made per planet. If you had 100 planets and each one needed a decision once every 10 turns/minutes/periods, that is only 10 decisions per period. IMHO that is hardly intensive micro management.

So, let's work from your example given...

You say there are 10 planet decisions per minute of gameplay. This means you have ~6 seconds to get to the planet, decide what decision is due, analyze the planet's current situation, decide the best course of action, then click to implement said action. In a single player, peacetime, environment that is probably not prohibitive in most instances, especially when you can pause the game if further consideration is warranted. However. that can change pretty dramatically in a multi-player, wartime, situation where taking your eyes off the warfront for even a few seconds at the wrong time could result in a catastrophic loss.

 

[Darustet]

Add administrative sectors. Make these an optional thing where you can let the AI run things. Do not slap in a mechanic that makes it mandatory by imposing crippling penalties on someone who wants to personally manage 500 planets.

My personal guess, based on the premise what the DD hinted about future expansions, is that the sector mechanic will play an important role in the game and is such designed to be what it is. Maybe they want to get creative with sectors and players microing everything themselves would not fit the design.

I wouldn't exclude the notion of what someone said earlier, that people tend to micro themselves to boredom even if they don't want to, if it gives a significant boost in the long run compared to AI. Might be okay to those who absolutely love it but a dread to everybody else. The devs might not what to take any risks on that, especially when vassals and such have worked pretty well on earlier titles.

 

[Tim_Ward]

1) I would imagine and hope that by the time beings are advanced enough to have interstellar travel and the ability to colonize other worlds that communication and the ability to administer things would be equally advanced.

It's not really about communication so much as the sheer size of the territories represented and the subsequent need for some serious delegation.

We are also not talking about managing every aspect of these planets. There are no traffic laws to write nor school budgets to consider. It seems to me from DD #9 - Planets and Resources that the only decisions to be made are where to deploy Pops and building to be built. Hardly intensive micro management. Additionally it appears that the maximum number of tiles is 25, again not thousands of decisions to be made per planet. If you had 100 planets and each one needed a decision once every 10 turns/minutes/periods, that is only 10 decisions per period. IMHO that is hardly intensive micro management.

It wouldn't be if planetary management was the mainstay of the gameplay, as it is in something like Endless Space. But it's not. When you consider it with everything else you have to do, it would become too much.

More significantly, they are not important or meaningful decisions. At the start, they're important because a couple of extra minerals can mean getting the colony ship out just ahead of a rival and getting that really nice planet before they do. But not when you have 30 or 40 planets and are pulling in 100s of every resource a month.

Related to 2, what is the point of the depth of planet information/design/variety if I will only interact directly with 4 or 5 of them? What do I do with the rest? I look at it once, assign it to a Province, and done? never to look at it again? If I was the developer of the planet model I'd be seriously bummed by that. Players are never going to get to work with 90%+ of the planets in the game. To me that is sad, and a great missed opportunity. I'm sure you can pause the game to go look at them, but if you have no problem with that, then why not have the opportunity/option to manage them as well?

Ground combat, orbital space combat, ship construction, factions, unrest, anomalies, etc.

Everything that the player has to make a decision on can be considered micro management. Why build your ships yourself, that's evil micro management! What? I have to survey these anomalies manually? What a bummer of micro management! Why do I have to assign these province governors, such micro management!

I am uncertain at this point that you actually know what the 'micro magement' means.

Stellaris is not a 4X game? Hmm, imagine my surprise to read this from DD #1. "... Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game..." Yes, the writer goes on to say that they don't want it to be something "new and different". But not a 4X game, no, Stellaris is a 4X game by admission of the developers.

The point, as I said, is to exclude the bad parts of the traditional 4x formula and replace them with the most successful parts of the Grand Strategy genre. I realize you have your own personal preference for endlessly tweaking minutiae, which is fine, but you have to understand that you're in a minority with that, and for many players it micromanagement *is* a bad part. When they released the planetary development DD everyone was moaning they thought it would be too micro intensive.

The fact is that for most people DD, in his DD, is absolutely right: micromanagement is fun in the early game when squeezing an extra unit of production out of a city can make a genuine difference and the numbers of provinces are manageable, but by the late or even mid game such tinkering is far less significant and the effort/reward ratio for optimising cities is just woeful. By the late game, something like SMAC is downright infuriating, you spend like 90% of the turn selecting new buildings for cities which I pretty much end up picking at random since the decision is meaningless by this point.

5) Comparison to CK2. I think CK2 is a great game. I own all the DLC (except some unit packs). I was an early adopter of the game. I don't feel the need for Stellaris to be "CK2 in space". A game design aspect that is well suited to CK2 would be, IMHO, almost certainly not applicable to a high technology game like Stellaris.

I think you have it exactly backwards if you think the CK2 period means less direct control over day to day management by the ruler; the societies depicted in Stellaris are vaster by far than the dark ages, leadership has even more layers and even less direct control.

6) I understand that I am in the minority. What I do find frustrating is that while I understand that many others don't like "micro management", few will acknowledge any understanding that I do like it. I don't want other players to loose the game they want, I just don't want to loose the game I want. For expressing my view I, and the few others that agree with me, are told that we want to "penalize other players", are "crazy", that we "can't seriously believe". I always fail to understand how the idea of having the option to do things differently so agitates some people. When did having options as the player become a bad thing? Why do people feel the need to essentially tell me I'm a fool for liking what I like when I am respectful, if bewildered, of what they like? Has respect for differing opinions permanently left the building?

You can't expect them to "make it an option" every time someone, somewhere disagrees with one of their design decisions. It's ridiculous.

I don't like the tile management at all, I want settlements instead. Make that an option. Some people don't like the EU4 style diplomacy and war goals. Make it an option! We had a thread on how some people don't like caps on numbers in fleets. Better make that an option. What about the card system for techs, maybe someone would like a traditional tech tree instead? That's an option right there. I'd kinda like to see some tactical combat - Paradox better design, implement and balance one, then make it an option. It's ridiculous, you'd end up with no game, just a 'make your own game kit' but none of the games you could make would be any good because none of them would have been properly designed or balanced, nor would they have AI that works with them.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

A couple of further thoughts:

1) I would imagine and hope that by the time beings are advanced enough to have interstellar travel and the ability to colonize other worlds that communication and the ability to administer things would be equally advanced.

2) We are also not talking about managing every aspect of these planets. There are no traffic laws to write nor school budgets to consider. It seems to me from DD #9 - Planets and Resources that the only decisions to be made are where to deploy Pops and building to be built. Hardly intensive micro management. Additionally it appears that the maximum number of tiles is 25, again not thousands of decisions to be made per planet. If you had 100 planets and each one needed a decision once every 10 turns/minutes/periods, that is only 10 decisions per period. IMHO that is hardly intensive micro management.

2a) Related to 2, what is the point of the depth of planet information/design/variety if I will only interact directly with 4 or 5 of them? What do I do with the rest? I look at it once, assign it to a Province, and done? never to look at it again? If I was the developer of the planet model I'd be seriously bummed by that. Players are never going to get to work with 90%+ of the planets in the game. To me that is sad, and a great missed opportunity. I'm sure you can pause the game to go look at them, but if you have no problem with that, then why not have the opportunity/option to manage them as well?

3) Everything that the player has to make a decision on can be considered micro management. Why build your ships yourself, that's evil micro management! What? I have to survey these anomalies manually? What a bummer of micro management! Why do I have to assign these province governors, such micro management!

4) Stellaris is not a 4X game? Hmm, imagine my surprise to read this from DD #1. "... Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game..." Yes, the writer goes on to say that they don't want it to be something "new and different". But not a 4X game, no, Stellaris is a 4X game by admission of the developers.

5) Comparison to CK2. I think CK2 is a great game. I own all the DLC (except some unit packs). I was an early adopter of the game. I don't feel the need for Stellaris to be "CK2 in space". A game design aspect that is well suited to CK2 would be, IMHO, almost certainly not applicable to a high technology game like Stellaris.

6) I understand that I am in the minority. What I do find frustrating is that while I understand that many others don't like "micro management", few will acknowledge any understanding that I do like it. I don't want other players to loose the game they want, I just don't want to loose the game I want. For expressing my view I, and the few others that agree with me, are told that we want to "penalize other players", are "crazy", that we "can't seriously believe". I always fail to understand how the idea of having the option to do things differently so agitates some people. When did having options as the player become a bad thing? Why do people feel the need to essentially tell me I'm a fool for liking what I like when I am respectful, if bewildered, of what they like? Has respect for differing opinions permanently left the building?

7) I'll set the over/under on "Respectfully Disagrees" at 17.

Ah give it a rest.
You just keep banging the same tired old drum about how we should be able to micromanage every planet if we want to and ignoring the huge range of arguments people have made in support of the sector system.
Such as this,

And just as advanced as setting up local bureaucracy's and communicating with them.



You still interact with them, even if not directly. Those planets affect the sector they are in and the empire as a whole and it's performance and risk of revolt, keeping track of all of that will be important to noting if you need to order a change from the governor, send in military forces, or enact a change of laws. Not to mention dealing with factions that may arise from those planets.


Oversimplification. This game will obviously have a lot more to do on the higher end so a focus on the lower end isn't necessary as "busy work" like in most 4x. It also adds a level of realism since you wouldn't do it all manually and since you mention it the central government does, in fact, control its military composition and personally order the construction of each naval vessel and even the creation/dissolution of fleets. Same with a science vessel, which is the equivalent to a NASA operation which is controlled by the Federal government.


As i recall in the very same or next dev diary they state that it is still a GSG with all that you expect from a PDX game, but that since it isnt based in history they've been able to utilize aspects from the 4x genre especially in the early stages of the game, but once it is mid-game on it is a GSG with all you'd expect from one. I find it hard to imagine someone that is a PDX fan would have a problem with that



No one is asking for CK 2 in space, especially since this game has been more described as EU in space after the colonize phase, but there are plenty of features from CK 2 that could/will work in stellaris, an that has even been acknowledge by the devs.



I haven't seen anyone being disrespectful, just trying to point out either that this game has a different focus than what you'd typically find in a 4x or that no everyone wants to focus on the tedium of colony management on top of everything else there will be to do.

And this

Which is why I never said that I dislike micromanagement as a feature but that it shouldn't be given a role bigger than it needs to be.

I do like to micromanage, that's why I included it on the list. In this whole conversation however, it has been very clear that the sort of micromanaging that people dislike is managing the same little thing all over again XX-XXX times every five minutes. Designing a ship is not tedious if you only need to do it once and then press save. Moving thousands of ships is fine if I don't need to move them individually. Having to make a decicion about a planet every so often is fine, making a decicion for every planet individually for the 1008th mundane matter is not. I like micromanaging my few local planets and sectors but there is obvious difference between a few sectors and 50-250 planets.

Any micro in or out of that list can get tedious if designed wrong, what I and many others hope is that for once planet management wouldn't suffer from that.

Just to point out the most recent ones.

And you shouldn't get so upset about receiving a few "respectfully disagree" checks on your post. You are on the thread of a developer diary where you are raising objections to how you perceive a particular mechanic of the game will or should work. Although you are certainly not alone in your opinion, you "I wanna micromanage every single planet" guys do seem to be a vocal minority, so people respectfully disagreeing with you is simply an efficient way to let the devs know that people respectfully disagree with your opinion, without everyone having to post saying,


"I do say, I respectfully disagree with you sah!".

 

[SnowHawkKiller]

I love everything I read in every dev diary for Stellaris, keep up the fantastic work guys!

 

[Plasma Master]

I really, really wished that there wouldn't be a hard limit to the amount of planets you could control yourself. I assume we'll be able to redraw the borders as we please, correct?