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Stellaris Dev Diary #374 - Announcing the 3.99.0 "Phoenix" Open Beta

Surprise! An early Stellaris Dev Diary!

Last week I mentioned that on Friday we’d evaluate the current build, and I’d see if I could provide a timeline for the Open Beta. Things have been progressing well, so we’ve decided to put a very early version of some of the 4.0 changes to test a few aspects of the new systems.

The Stellaris 4.0 update changes a lot of things - you can find a lot of the details in the dev diaries of the last two months. This first build of the 3.99 Open Beta only contains a focused subset of the changes, and many are still in a work-in-progress prototype state. It is not polished, or even done yet.

The 3.11 Technology Open Beta very quickly found some performance issues with the Breakthrough Technologies that we were experimenting with, and as the pop systems have advanced far enough to be mostly functional, I want to get some broader gameplay done on that system in particular, even if the rest of the systems have not yet reached a fully playable state. A week of Open Beta gets more testing done than we can do internally over months, even if this isn’t at a level that I would historically have been comfortable releasing to the public. (Just so you know what you’re opting into!)

We also have a feedback survey available that focuses primarily on the Empire Timeline and Focus systems. (Later weeks will have new surveys on different topics.)

So What’s in the Build?​

Last week’s dev diary provides a fairly accurate update about the current state of the build.

Precursor Selection, the Databank, and Species Modification are all functional.

The Databank


Species Modification

The general game pacing adjustments, changes to galaxy generation, and notification changes are all in. The leader pacing changes are in, but we’re reviewing how leaders interact with the new economy before evaluating what changes to make to the traits themselves.

Empire Timeline and Focuses are in a functional, borderline releasable, state. We have added a number of Milestones that will appear on the Timeline, though there’s some polish we’re planning to do before release. Most of the basic Focus Tasks that we want are in, along with some of the Progression rewards for completing them.

Timeline and Empire Focus

The Trade and Logistic described in Dev Diary #369 are largely in, but some of the branch office changes and functionality are still on the to-do list.

Logistic Ship Upkeep in Friendly Space


Buying Energy in the Market


Basic implementation of Pop Groups and the new Job system are in. This includes simultaneous Pop Growth and Auto-Migration, a partial colonization UI, and a partial update to the Planet UI itself. The major economic changes relating to Districts, Zones, and Buildings are only partially in, but I wanted to get the pop changes under some pressure as soon as possible.

Current State of the Planet UI

We also renamed “Bonus Workforce” to “Job Efficiency”.

Any Known Issues or Things You Want to Tell Us?​

The Ship Designer, Hard Reset origin, and Mammalian portraits are all in separate development branches, and will not be appearing during the Open Beta.

This build of the Open Beta build will not support Gestalts, unusual planets like Habitats or Ringworlds, or especially unusual civics, origins, or playstyles. Many Ascensions may be in a strange or dysfunctional state. Since many of the more interesting civics and origins aren’t supported yet, we strongly recommend playing the United Nations of Earth or the Commonwealth of Man, or custom empires similar in complexity. Expect things like Virtuality or Clone Army to be fairly broken right now.

You will likely start with an Amenities shortage at the start of the game. We haven’t decided whether this models an overpopulated homeworld nicely or if we consider it a bug. (It will be less dire once more of the buildings are available.)

Significant parts of the planet UI are still in development, including most “flavor” elements.​


If you manually build a colony ship, it will not appear in the colonization UI. (They can still be used to colonize a planet by pressing the Colonize fleet order.)

How to Colonize if you manually built a Colony Ship

Since the Zones UI is still in progress, you cannot get access to the menu to replace them right now. You’re stuck with your Earth Space Age Industry for this build.

Earth

The Early Space Age zone doesn’t currently have any other buildings you can put into it, so being stuck with it is kind of unfun.

We have not yet updated the Diplomacy traditions to reflect that Form Federation is now a technology.

Clerks haven’t been annihilated yet, and many non-”core” jobs have not been fully converted into the new system. Traditions and other things that modify Clerks have not yet been updated.

Civilians are currently an uncapped job rather than being associated with City District development. Living standards have not yet been updated to provide bonuses to Civilians rather than Unemployed Pops.

Planetary Logistic Upkeep currently pays you Trade if you have surpluses. While it takes money to make money, that’s not exactly what we were going for.

The UI element on the Management tab that is intended to show the size change of each pop group since last month is always “- 0”

Defensive Armies don’t spawn, so every planet will immediately surrender when bombarded. (Ground combat fixed?)

Some strings may not be present, and some icons are placeholder purple. Many.

The Unemployment entry in the planet UI is a little overenthusiastic. Yes, pops grow into their parents’ strata and get upset if they can’t get a job worthy of their upbringing right away, but it shouldn’t be a pressing matter until their numbers get over 100.

The AI isn’t great at picking zones yet. It nods sagely at the first thing it finds that it can afford and decides it’s an offer it can’t refuse.

The base “colony” designation has not yet been removed. Our intention is for the Colonist jobs provided by the Reassembled Ship Shelter to provide the benefits of the old colony designation. (And will thus expire when you upgrade your planetary capital rather than when you reach a certain number of Pops.)

We can’t guarantee multiplayer stability on this build, but we have identified an immediate economic Out of Sync issue that occurs when Windows and non-Windows users are playing together.

Here are the release notes for this build:

Stellaris 3.99.0 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta Release Notes​

Features​

  • Pops and Pop Groups
    • One of the biggest changes in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, and one of the primary focuses of this Open Beta, is the new Pop system. Rather than being individuals, Pops are now grouped based on Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction, mostly for calculation purposes. As part of this change, Pop numbers have been increased by a factor of 100, allowing more granular manipulation of Pops by various systems.
    • All Pop Groups on a planet have simultaneous growth every month following the existing Logistic Growth formulas.
      • Underrepresented pops are no longer given population growth bonuses.
      • Fractional growth is not retained from month to month - if a Pop Group would have fractional growth, it has a chance to gain 1 pop that month based on that fraction.
      • All migration is now handled through the auto-migration system rather than push and pull that previously affected pop growth.
      • As more granular and simultaneous pop growth is now possible, the minimum growth for small colonies has been removed. Early colonization will be extremely reliant on migration from the empire capital.
      • Open Beta Note: Xenocompatibility no longer produces hybrid pops, but has not yet been updated to pool all planetary species into a single group for logistic growth purposes. When this is complete, we are likely to remove the Xenocompatibility galaxy setup toggle.
    • A Civilian stratum has been added to represent the masses that do not generally contribute to the empire’s military economy.
      • Open Beta Note: Civilians are intended to replace Clerks, which will be removed in a future Open Beta update.
    • Empires now begin with 2000 more pops, most of whom will be Civilians.
    • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #370.
  • Planet UI, Zones, Workforce, and Jobs
    • The other major economic change in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update is a revamp to how jobs work.
    • Rather than Districts and Buildings being especially similar, we are shifting to a model where:
      • Planets produce and consume resources through Jobs.
      • Districts provide Jobs based on their development. (Mining District: Add 200 Housing and 200 Miner jobs per development level.)
      • Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by Districts. (Foundry Zone: Replace 200 Civilian jobs and 200 Housing with 100 Metallurgists per development level.)
        • Open Beta Note: Currently the Zones are simpler, and will just provide the jobs. It is our intention for most Zones to convert rather than add.
      • Buildings are planet-unique and change what the Jobs produce. (Mote Harvesters: Technicians now also produce Volatile Motes.)
      • Pops produce Workforce that fills up Jobs.
    • Open Beta Note: The Planet UI is still very much a work in progress.
    • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #371.
  • Empire Focuses and Timeline
    • The Situation Log now contains a tab for the Empire Timeline, which keeps track of important milestones of your playthrough.
    • The Timeline tab also contains a set of Empire Focus Tasks, which are intended to assist players with forming short and medium terms that align with their empire’s nature, while reducing the randomness of the tech tree.
      • Empires can choose between Conquest, Exploration, and Development as their primary Empire Focuses. You will still gain Tasks from other categories, but they will generally be weighted towards your choice. Some Tasks are basic “Core” Tasks, and will provide progress along all three tracks.
      • Completing Tasks provides progress towards Guaranteed Technology unlocks that are considered critical for that playstyle. You still need to research the technologies, they only provide the research option when you reach progress milestones. If you already have the technology unlocked or as a permanent research option, there is no alternate reward.
      • Because Task completion is retroactive and there are no alternate rewards, there should be no benefit in waiting to complete any that you have.
      • Should you end up with a Task that you find uncompletable or that you do not wish to complete, you can discard it and gain a new Task for a small cost in Unity.
      • It is our intention that empires that behave consistent with their Empire Focus should naturally complete the Tasks of that category.
    • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #368.
  • Trade has been revamped into a standard resource.
    • Trade is now used as the Market currency.
    • The Trade Routes system has been removed.
    • Ships now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on whether they are docked (free), friendly space (reduced), neutral space (normal), or hostile space (expensive).
      • Larger ships tend to have higher upkeep.
      • The multipliers based on location are set in defines.
      • Juggernauts do not have logistical upkeep, and reduce the logistical upkeep costs for ships in their system by 75%.
      • Resources blocks can now include a "logistics" block, which is currently only used by ships.
    • Planets now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on their local resource deficits. This represents the additional costs of diverting freighters to transport materials between planets.
      • Local deficit costs vary based largely on the base market value of the resources in question.
    • Trade Policies can set how much of your Net trade after logistics upkeep is converted into other resources.
    • Added galaxy setup sliders for Fleet Upkeep Logistics Costs and Planetary Deficit Logistics Costs.
    • More details can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #369.
  • The main help button now displays the Databank window where you can explore brief articles on many in-game concepts, reducing the need to navigate to external information sources.

Improvement​

  • Adjective leader trait names reverted, for example Inquisitor to Inquisitive
  • Colonization flow has been improved.
    • You can now pre-select a colony designation and turn on planet automation before colonizing a planet, which will apply when the planet has finished colonizing.
    • Colonization now completes when 100 colonists have grown or migrated to the new planet.
  • Significant improvements have been made to the Species UI.
    • One template per species can be set as the default template for that species, and other subspecies can be set to integrate over time into that default template.
      • Open Beta Note: Current rate of pop integration is likely to change to be slower as well as monthly.
    • The trait selection UI when creating a new template has been improved.
    • The special project window pops up and can be started immediately after creating a new template if desired. It is no longer absolutely necessary as you can use integration to slowly convert your existing pops.
  • The Habitable Worlds slider in game setup now has a 'Rare' setting. There will still be a handful of habitable worlds in the galaxy, mostly from special events and guaranteed habitable worlds. Normalized initializer spawn odds to use a handful of scripted variables.
  • Added galaxy precursor selection to game setup.
  • Leader Adjustments:
    • As part of our game pacing and interruption reduction pass, leaders now gain trait selection moments on even levels rather than every level.
    • Leader positions now have a significantly greater effect on what traits will appear when they level up and gain a new skill.
    • Increased the base number of leader traits to pick from on level up by 1. This is intended to reduce the chance of getting exclusively poor trait options without devaluing other sources of leader trait picks too much.
    • Added an "Auto Select Leader Traits by Default" option to game settings, which defaults to Off. On game start or if you switch to an empire, it will toggle the setting on the Leaders tab to your selection. In Coop empires, this override only applies when the primary player of the country joins it. Changing the setting mid-game will not have any effect unless you switch countries.
  • Significant improvements have been made to Message and Notification settings, providing you much more control over how you receive them.
    • Updated the default message settings
      • Revised strategic resource messages and added toast notifications
      • Changed trader events into notifications with unique icons. Added sound effect.
      • Anomaly discoveries now appear in a toast rather than popping up in the center of the screen.
      • Patron Newsletter event was changed into a notification
      • The Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
      • Order Restored event is now a notification
      • Governing Ethic Shift event has been turned into a toast
      • Faction Formed Events now appear as toasts following the first event
      • Added additional event options to Corrupt Administration event and turned it into a notification
      • The Toxic Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
      • Changed Inter-Dimensional trade increases event into a notification
  • Added concept tooltips to the left Navigation Bar
  • Added the Celestial Orrery system
  • Transport ships can now use cloaking
  • The Ruler Stratum has been renamed the Elite Stratum, to better differentiate them from the actual Empire Ruler
  • The system fleet icon tooltip now shows the total of the fleets' military power listed by that icon, at the top.
  • Added unique event options and localization for new life discovered events
  • Reduced spammy First Contact events
  • First Colony event - Added unique event options and rewards for Ethics
  • Adjusted mass extinction event chain localization and picture
  • The Betrayal event has been revamped to include multiple options
  • Renamed government tab to overview in outliner
  • Reduced the frequency of the Rise of the Manifesti event chain
  • Added missing reward to fanatic materialist for Comet Sighted event
  • Improved readability for event Covenant Formed
  • Changed Storm Spotted alert sound to something less intrusive
  • The low habitability popup now clearly highlights the negative effects
  • Added the two new Society technologies Federation Code and Existential Campaigns
  • Ironman mode is no longer required to earn most Stellaris achievements. An unmodified game checksum remains a requirement, and the use of any debug commands blocks them.
    • The "Victorious" achievement has been changed to "Win the game through any victory condition in Ironman mode."
    • Open Beta Note: Pop related achievements have not yet been updated.
  • Several changes to the starbase UI to improve game flow and overall interaction
  • Reworked Starbase window to harmonize naming and tooltips
  • You are 4x as attractive as you were before.

Balance​

  • FE and Cosmogenesis Escort ships now have the same evasion value of 50
  • Changed Curator Insight cost to empire size
  • The Eternal Vigilance Ascension Perk can now be acquired early if you complete the Unyielding Tradition Tree.
  • Adjusted Anomaly spawn rates to improve the pacing of the early game.
  • Added more variance to whether or not prescripted systems will or will not appear in a given game. (They won't all appear in every single game anymore.)

Bugfix​

  • Fixed the issue of fleets failing to retreat from lost combat if the last ship failed to disengage.
  • Human Pre-FTL societies now obey the Pre-FTL Civilizations game settings slider.
  • Fixed a script error that was causing far more habitable planets to spawn in the galaxy than expected. Feel free to increase the Habitable Worlds slider if you prefer the old behavior.
  • Fixed inconsistent capitalisation causing issues with pre-ftl pop generation
  • Cleaned up the end-game crisis triggers. The Unbidden will no longer be the only ones to show up early to the party.
  • Fix triggers to properly give Fissile Cores, the unique mutation for crystalline entities
  • Treasure Hunters AIs now correctly go through the dialog events
  • Fix Black Needle country spawning starbases
  • Fixed too many AI empires being generated in coop games.
  • Fixed the tooltip for obtaining the Mirror of Knowledge from the Infinity Machine not mentioning the 200 influence it also gives you
  • Amenities icon fixed for Drone Storage and Hive Warren
  • checks if planet owner is primitive before applying sector or system bonuses
  • Set the nanotech ascension path interdictors to use different ship models from the swarmers
  • Spitter Gun mutations have armor penetration
  • Missiles mutations have numerals corresponding to tier in icons
  • Nanite Infused Barb mutation requires nanites to build
  • Ancient Driller Beasts mutations uses 88 as its M size cost
  • Neutron Throwers mutation damage buff
  • Blocked anomalies from spawning on the neutron star for Slingshot to the Stars' quantum catapult
  • Handled dyson sphere flags on dismantling swarm while upgrading
  • Fixed a broken tooltip inside of the "Extended Shifts" edict.
  • Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
  • Completing Inhibit Self-Deterministic AIs removes it from the situation log
  • Fix the possibility to build multiple Grand Archives at the same time
  • Only display relevant modifiers for Space Fauna ships in tooltips
  • Reanimated space fauna ships cannot upgrade no matter what
  • Black Needle fleet now correctly spawns to defend their base from bombardment
  • Destroy Gravity Snare when there's no valid target anymore
  • Broken Shackles check added for relevant Galcom events
  • Strip Mine Decision is no longer available on artificial planets
  • Inspired Rhetoric will no longer display a placeholder icon
  • Fixed situations start value being added multiple times.
  • Special system initializers now respect the habitable worlds slider in game setup (to a degree).
  • Planetary part of ringworlds no longer take on empire color
  • First Contact was changed into a toast and once again shows the correct localization
  • Added missing pre sapient loc string
  • The dismantle button has regained its missing loc string
  • Resolved scope error caused by toast target scope being set to root
  • Advanced start empires can no longer have mining stations over resources they do not have tech for

AI​

  • Fixed Prethoryn Scourge incorrectly calculating target priority for non-edible pops.

UI/UX​

  • Added an Assign Leader button to the leaders screen that lists available positions.
  • Fixed it not being possible to build starbases in systems with non-central stars from the galaxy view (when a construction ship is selected).
  • Added a message setting button in event popup windows.
  • Hid details that aren't relevant for all species in the galaxy when the Galaxy tab is selected in the Species view.
  • Updated the message settings screen to give more space for the message list.
  • Changed auto-unpause on the message settings screen from a spinner to a checkbox.
  • Adjusted centering of text and icons in toast windows. If a toast with custom description has no icon associated with the custom description, the description will now fill the entire lower section of the toast.

Localization​

  • Add tooltip to Cutholoid Hunter modifier
  • Add tooltip to Voidworm Hunter modifier
  • Turn reanimated cutholoids and voidworms ship size name consistent with other reanimated Space Fauna

Modding​

  • Open Beta Note: We’re still working on Zones and Buildings, and will likely change how we do some of this to be a bit friendlier. Don’t update your mods based on what you see in this build.
  • Add `resettle_pop_group` effect that allows to resettle a specified portion of a pop group to a target planet
  • Add first iteration of `create_pop_group` effect
  • Add kill_pop_group effect that takes a pop group and an amount or percentage and instantly kills them
  • Add `transfer_pop_amount` effect that transfers pops from a pop group to another
  • Removed unused can_resettle_planet game rule and renamed can_resettle_planet_no_owner_check to can_resettle_planet.
  • Removed can_colonize_with_pop game rule and moved its checks to can_colonize_with_species.
  • Added the script effect "copy_traditions_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { tradition1 tradition 2 } }" that copies tradition from a target country into the scoped country
  • Added "add_ascension_perk" and "remove_ascension_perk" effects, scope must be a country, adds or removed the specified perk syntax: add/remove_ascension_perk = perk_key
  • Added "copy_ascension_perks_from" effect: Copies the Ascension Perks of the target country into the scoped country. They are added to the existing perks, and the potential/possible triggers are respected. The perks listed in the exceptions list are not copied. copy_ascension_perks_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { perk1 perk2 } }
  • Added "remove_tradition" effect. Remove the target tradition from the scoped Country. remove_tradition = tradition_key
  • Added effect "remove_tradition_tree" Remove the target tradition tree from the scoped Country. remove_tradition_tree = tradition_category_key
  • Added spawn_design to static galaxy system data, which forces a specific design to spawn in the system.
  • Added gamesetup_settings script for configuring the settings list in game setup.
  • There is now an event_message_type in events that lets you override the default message type EVENT_MESSAGE_TYPE. This can e.g. provide separate message settings.
  • Scripted loc can now be used in concept tooltips and the top bar tooltips.
  • New on_action on_favor_gained that gets triggered when a country receives a favor.
  • Added the used_defense_platform_capacity_percent trigger, letting you check how much of a starbases defensive platform capacity is used.
  • Message notification background is now separated from the message type icon.
  • New on_action on_research_option_added that gets triggered every time a new permanent research option is acquired.
  • The actual script file and line are now printed when there are errors logged in scripted triggers and scripted effects, in addition to the previously available information.
  • kill_pop has been replaced with kill_pop_group. For ease of use kill_single_pop and kill_all_pop scripted effects have been made.
  • Replaced resettle_pop with resettle_pop_group.
  • Added "playme" console command as shorthand for human_ai and ai_ignore_was_human.

Okay, How Do I Opt Into the Beta?​

If you’re ready for a confusing, possibly frustrating, and unfinished experience, and you’re on Steam, you can opt into the Open Beta.

  1. Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.
  2. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.0 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.

Game Properties in Steam


Steps to Test

What’s Next?​

We expect that the next Open Beta update, 3.99.1, will have Civilians in a more complete state, and more of the UI and AI should be in place. Buildings, Zones, and Jobs should also have more progress too.

Our next Dev Diary will be on Thursday, March 20th, but I hope to have an update to the Open Beta before the weekend.


 
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The focus system is terrible in a game like this, forcing you into doing nonsensical chores for rewards and restricting your playstyle. There's a reason Civ VII didn't keep the "Eureka" system from Civ VI.

The planet overhaul is another unnecessary huge system change that will likely take YEARS for the game to recover from, just like when tiles were changed to jobs. Once again moving the game further towards spreadsheet simulator, with bigger numbers that are harder to keep track of and work with.

And most importantly, the already terrible planet UI is getting even worse, with even more tabs and windows and scroll bars you have to switch between. If we don't protest hard, you KNOW this is roughly how it will end up releasing, just more polished. It needs to go back to the drawing board. All the important information needs to be on the screen at the same time in a digestible way, and while still maintaining the immersion of seeing the view of the planet and the pop portraits on it. This is not impossible. It will probably require a bigger planet window though, and that's been a very long time coming.

Hate to say I told you so, but I've been saying these changes will be a disaster since they were announced, and now you all get to see what I already knew.
 
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Stolen Rutters said:
Thanks. This experience actually got me to try an hour with the latest live (betas=“none” is 3.11?) build and it’s a more intuitive interface to play, the right clicks work just fine and the pop up pause to assign a scientist is helpful since anomalies would otherwise just disappear into the invisible back half of the meta game, like it did in the beta.
Click to expand...
Most recent version on live should be 3.14.1592. If "None" is giving you 3.11 for some weird reason, you can find the 3.14 Circinus versions right above the open beta option on the steam dropdown.

I remember seeing some of the multi-threaded performance improvements were disabled for the first stages of the open beta because it makes it easier to debug problems. Given the nature of changes, I'd also expect the differences to become more apparent later in the game (like 2300-2400), but since some things are not fully implemented yet and the AI is busted, I don't think anybody can make reasonable performance comparisons at the moment.
 
Harkinian's Dinner said:
The focus system is terrible in a game like this, forcing you into doing nonsensical chores for rewards and restricting your playstyle. There's a reason Civ VII didn't keep the "Eureka" system from Civ VI.

The planet overhaul is another unnecessary huge system change that will likely take YEARS for the game to recover from, just like when tiles were changed to jobs. Once again moving the game further towards spreadsheet simulator, with bigger numbers that are harder to keep track of and work with.

And most importantly, the already terrible planet UI is getting even worse, with even more tabs and windows and scroll bars you have to switch between. If we don't protest hard, you KNOW this is roughly how it will end up releasing, just more polished. It needs to go back to the drawing board. All the important information needs to be on the screen at the same time in a digestible way, and while still maintaining the immersion of seeing the view of the planet and the pop portraits on it. This is not impossible. It will probably require a bigger planet window though, and that's been a very long time coming.

Hate to say I told you so, but I've been saying these changes will be a disaster since they were announced, and now you all get to see what I already knew.
Click to expand...

I agree with some of what you wrote, but we are getting this system (with some tinkering here or there) no matter how hard "protests" there are. They've been working on this for a long time and they are not going to go to their bosses and announce the past 6 months of their paid work were for nothing. Not to mention all the DLCs for the coming year+ that are already being worked on with the base of the new system in mind.

For whatever reason this current dev group tends to err on the side of restriction toward the player with these sort of reworks, then tend to loosen things back up based on feedback. Same thing we saw with the leader rework which after some iteration is now in a good place. I agree planet management and specialization have been gutted, but it's only alpha/beta and I'm happy they are releasing it to us in this state so there is a lot of time for feedback and response before official release.

I think if some of the baffling restrictions for the sake of restrictions are removed and we end up with as much customization ability for our planets as we have now then the overall planetary changes (UI aside which they have stressed is a WIP) will still end up being for the best.
 
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Harkinian's Dinner said:
Hate to say I told you so, but I've been saying these changes will be a disaster since they were announced, and now you all get to see what I already knew.
Click to expand...
Yep, and it's shaping up to be a bit of a disaster. Lots of bad changes in this. While some ideas are good, the implementation isn't And the current dev team feels like they want player input to be minimalized and matter as little as possible.

The funniest part is seeing stuff folks STILL mass downvote if someone dislikes it while not even posting themselves being even worse than feared.
 
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Juboboman said:
I agree with some of what you wrote, but we are getting this system (with some tinkering here or there) no matter how hard "protests" there are. They've been working on this for a long time and they are not going to go to their bosses and announce the past 6 months of their paid work were for nothing. Not to mention all the DLCs for the coming year+ that are already being worked on with the base of the new system in mind.

For whatever reason this current dev group tends to err on the side of restriction toward the player with these sort of reworks, then tend to loosen things back up based on feedback. Same thing we saw with the leader rework which after some iteration is now in a good place. I agree planet management and specialization have been gutted, but it's only alpha/beta and I'm happy they are releasing it to us in this state so there is a lot of time for feedback and response before official release.

I think if some of the baffling restrictions for the sake of restrictions are removed and we end up with as much customization ability for our planets as we have now then the overall planetary changes (UI aside which they have stressed is a WIP) will still end up being for the best.
Click to expand...
If you impose restrictions, you can then sell DLCs to ease the restrictions. Playing post-leader-update without Paragons was miserable, a pure downgrade from pre-Paragons. Cosmogenesis is a way out of the tech nerfs.

I look forward to a DLC focused on planetary development.
 
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Red Death said:
From the dev diaries, it seemed intended that our "Civilian" pool be available to colonize other planets. From my initial experience, that's not how I did things. The Civilian pool is just there to fill up the initial districts you build, because why would you let all those potentially productive pops go to waste?


As I expected initially, the new district and zone system is very restrictive. Let me paint a quick picture:

  1. Your empire needs to produce 5 "processed" resources: Alloys, Consumer goods, Unity, Research (pooled for convenience), Amenities (each planet). That's 5 resources.
  2. Each of these is produced by its own zone, modifying the City District.
  3. Your City district can support a maximum of 3 Zones. At the start of the game only 2! (currently only 1, but we know that's temporary).
  4. There are empire types that are expected to focus on one planet, such as life-seeded and shattered Ring.
This combination immediately suggests to me that the current design is non-viable. And not in a way that would be fixed simply by following the design plan.

Even in a normal empire, it's odd. Because if you can initially only have 2 Zones, that means you have to pick 3 resources you cannot initially produce at scale. So, what, we're colonizing new planets not because of new land and opportunities, but because there's an arbitrary limit on how many different types of resources we can produce on our home planet?!

Trade seems like a superfluous duplication of what energy credits used to do now, and having military logistics depend on the practically-unemployed strata feels off.

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I am not having trouble with the pop numbers like some people, and I am happy with the growth changes in principle. Unfortunately the game is not in a state where I can properly experience those or the Timeline/Empire Focus.
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I think this is the single clearest, best-reasoned post in this thread so far. Well said!
 
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it's a shame to see the game in this state i don't like the removal of industrial areas the developers decided to jump above their heads and couldn't this is a complete failure please reconsider this system, you are killing stellaris
 
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Nectum said:
it's a shame to see the game in this state i don't like the removal of industrial areas the developers decided to jump above their heads and couldn't this is a complete failure please reconsider this system, you are killing stellaris
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I see it like this - the zones are basically a way to customize ur city districts. So depending on the zone u choose it will basically turn ur city districts into industry, science, fortress, amenity, factory, forge, unity, trade etc. districts.
Allowing ur planet to specialize on one advanced resource or divide it up into three.
So advantages of ringworlds or habitats with special districts can now be realized with normal planets (and more).

The pre-ftl zone ur homeplanet starts with is only there to divide up advancved resource production from a single zone. As u dont start with all 3 and would therefore have a big deficite issue.

The beta currently is just in such a early/rough stage that this system does not work properly yet. Giving a more limited feel, where its meant to provide the opposite.
 
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-Marauder- said:
Yep, and it's shaping up to be a bit of a disaster. Lots of bad changes in this. While some ideas are good, the implementation isn't And the current dev team feels like they want player input to be minimalized and matter as little as possible.

The funniest part is seeing stuff folks STILL mass downvote if someone dislikes it while not even posting themselves being even worse than feared.
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What do you think reduces the player's influence on the process of planetary management?
 
Some more reflection on things that don't seem inherently flawed to me, even if when paired with the crude state of the beta, might look impossible to solve:

-> Focus system can work if missions & rewards get extensively revised, so they are all logical and easy to fulfill, and if they change depending on your empire type
-> Leader Trait selection problem can work if traits get extensively revised, so they are all useful (dual-use traits would be my preferred way to achieve that)
-> Energy losing its role as the galactic market currency could be solved by giving it additional uses to compensate for that (Example: Energy for building maintenance)

I don't hate game systems "on principle". But in some cases, either you go all in, or you better leave it be. However, I understand that the focus right now is on getting a more workable beta, and that those other subsystems have a lower priority.
 
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How to unity in Beta? I run out so fast. Three science leaders and you're in negatives as soon as they start leveling. High level leaders need to not cost more unity as they level. Leaders should generate unity.
 
I feel that most of the problems with the new system being too restrictive would be solved with unlimited zones. We can handle a slider. Basically each zone has districts that produce jobs based on the zone and on up to 3 buildings. Allow us to make planets with 1 zone or 20. That way we wont hit an artificial limit on how many types of resources are produced and their quantities (including things like crime reduction, amenities and stability)
 
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Zergor said:
I feel that most of the problems with the new system being too restrictive would be solved with unlimited zones. We can handle a slider. Basically each zone has districts that produce jobs based on the zone and on up to 3 buildings. Allow us to make planets with 1 zone or 20. That way we wont hit an artificial limit on how many types of resources are produced and their quantities (including things like crime reduction, amenities and stability)
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Fair bit more complicated of an implementation but having each city district always provide 200 or 300 jobs that are split amongst all zones would help immensely with both less-specialized worlds like the capital and modding potential.

Ideally there could even be a slider on each zone to change the proportion, 20 entertainers and 60/60/60 researchers or 26 entertainers and 58/58/58, or 20 entertainers, 55/55/55 researchers and 15 enforcers if you have a crimecorp being annoying. Etc.
 
NotaSkaven5 said:
Fair bit more complicated of an implementation but having each city district always provide 200 or 300 jobs that are split amongst all zones would help immensely with both less-specialized worlds like the capital and modding potential.

Ideally there could even be a slider on each zone to change the proportion, 20 entertainers and 60/60/60 researchers or 26 entertainers and 58/58/58, or 20 entertainers, 55/55/55 researchers and 15 enforcers if you have a crimecorp being annoying. Etc.
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The thing is : That would probably reduce customization except with a very complex system to change the % that goes in each zone.

Infinite zone (not really infinite as zone all require 1 district at least ) would help a lot with specificity :

Right now the main zone does a lot of things. To balance that they had to do a few things : Add a lot of building slot (9 instead of 3), make buildings not work normally : Research lab directly add new jobs which is strange. Normally creating jobs is the role of districts and not buildings.

The big problem I have is that when you add a building, that will affect the whole zone. And adding a district will again add all of the jobs allowed by the zone + buildings and you would have to manually change the maximums if you want to balance that.

With a multiple zone system you could have for instance 3 city zones : one specialized in unity, one in research and one in consumer goods with the adapted buildings (those are just examples) and for those three zones you could add districts, and those districts would add different jobs that produce different things.

The way I see it :
Zones would be completely independent. Buildings in one zone would never directly affect other zones (except empire wide effects).
Districts would add more jobs in the zone.
Buildings would change what jobs the districts add of give bonus production to those.

Unique buildings : There is the question of unique buildings that don't have scaling effects (with the number of districts) like empire wide effects or for instance robot production. Those don't fit well but a solution would be to place them in their own zone of 1 city district for each 3 of those buildings. That district would be a bit vanilla but that would not really be a problem.

This would give some modularity for players that want it like having 2 farms zones, one with a bio-reactor building and one without allowing to fine tune the ratio of energy and food production by adding districts in one or the other.
 
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I think one thing that might help is give generic "manufacturing" and "intellectual" zones, add at least two more zone slots. The opening game is borderline untenable because you either die on unity once your leaders level up, or you have no alloys, or you die on CGs because you can't produce enough for upkeep, you don't have enough amenities, and your science is trash. If we had some general purpose zones for mixing science/unity and alloys/consumer goods it might be possible to get off the ground. I have had a bit a lot of alloys in my few attempts, and my first attempt crashed and burned from leaders leveling up and making unity go negative.
 
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Harkinian's Dinner said:
The focus system is terrible in a game like this, forcing you into doing nonsensical chores for rewards and restricting your playstyle. There's a reason Civ VII didn't keep the "Eureka" system from Civ VI.
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This is very subjective. One of the changes from civ VI I disliked was the loss of the eureka system, and might explain why i've lost a lot of intrest in the the tech and culture system there. As its just not as interesting.

The biggest problem with the focus system is two many 'basic' focus tasks, and not enough interesting and 'go out of your way' type tasks. Things that you might not do, but could be fun.
Harkinian's Dinner said:
And most importantly, the already terrible planet UI is getting even worse,
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True, but I'm hopeful this will be reduced by the open beta.

Biggest wins:
1) I like the focus system. Just needs some tuning and expansion of the available focus tasks. Plus, tasks should be limited a bit more.
2) Zones have great potential, and even the 'restrictions' don't bother me and if balanced a little better would be great. I'd especially like a CG/alloy mixed zone. And the specialized ones could be unlocked latter.
3) The new state of trade is great. Energy is no longer balanced around a thousand different uses and make the early game a lot easier than others. My game starting with the UNE is not badly affected by starting in a CG deficit. Especially as this is pretty much the default for my favorite empire types, so I've done it a lot. But not having to balancing buying things in the market with a thousand different energy upkeep metrics definitely makes things work out.
4) Here's hoping that with the final removing of clerks and a proper balance pass on civilian's trade will be sufficiently restrictive so that we can't just ignore them.

Biggest Losses:
1) The restrictions on some things is definitely broken right now. Automation being only one per planet is weird and counter intuitive. The lack of amenities jobs for planets without the zone is also rather problematic, basically reducing available zones by 1 at all times. And things like this. Its especially weird as I can build research labs in the city district, though I thought it wasn't supposed to create jobs.
2) While I still struggle a little with energy, minerals and food are no longer a concern at all. And I've got no idea why that is happening. Maybe the balance has always been off and I just didn't notice until energy was no longer quintuple booked. Who knows.
3) Unity and research production seems extremely restricted. the type of thing you probably shouldn't be working on until your first colony at first. While not a bad thing on its own, it might be a bit of a new player trap, especially if related focuses show up early.
4) Timeline is a nice idea, but I'm not certain when I'll use it outside of curiosity.

while understanding that buildings haven't been fully worked out, there is already some problems with the restrictions. Most notably, its weird that certain resources are split up by default--like CG and Alloys--while others are simply unusable to most planets. While many people are complaining that planets are less customizable, my complaint is that 'required' builds have gone up.

All Planets must have an amenities zone. All planets will have either unity or research. And the like. Also, every planet with a farm will have a zone, and the same for the other districts. Worse, this kind of makes it less attractive to have any level of specilization. While I was glad to have generic planets as viable, I'm not certain specialized ones will be useful.

The idea about having multiple closable districts for certain planet classes might be a good thing to suggest for all planet types. This way if you have two food districts they pull from the same 'food district' limit but can have different zones and different buildings. which in turn allows more varied building effects. The idea is good, but right now it feels like you are playing badly if you have an 'industrial world' and that shouldn't be the default setting.

Brand new wierdness. When trying to make a custom race why is government and ethics not in with empire stuff? Makes little sense to me.
2025_03_13_1.png
 
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Newbee53 said:
All Planets must have an amenities zone. All planets will have either unity or research. And the like. Also, every planet with a farm will have a zone, and the same for the other districts. Worse, this kind of makes it less attractive to have any level of specilization. While I was glad to have generic planets as viable, I'm not certain specialized ones will be useful.
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The district/zone/job system seems very far complete so it's hard to make an overall judgement, but my feeling with 4.0 is that planets sit somewhere between specialised and generalised now. While you can fully specialise a planet you can't fully generalise it since there's not enough zones. You can't have one planet that produces all resources which is a real shame not only for one planet challenges but also just immersion. I often like making a few self-sustaining planets with the thought they'd be able to bootstrap an empire again if needed, or to release as a one-system-vassal. But that doesn't seem possible anymore.
 
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I poked around a bit in the beta. It's quite an overhaul and an undertaking, I applaud the efforts behind the scenes to get it to this stage.

I am a fan of gestalt empires, specifically Machine empires, so I am very much looking forward to updates to the beta for them.

A few observations about resources and such:
  • I started with Anglers and Catalytic Processing with the Ocean homeworld and aquatic trait. Resource production was positive (above 0) across the board. However, with no (obvious) means to create Industrial districts, I ran into a deficit with alloys caused by ship upkeep. I did not find sufficient alloys deposits in nearby systems to make up the difference. I ran into -12 alloys per month with 20 corvettes built.

A few observations about the planet GUI:
  • It took me a while to find the build queue button. I would like for it to have a text label, or for the build queue icon to change noticeably while something is being built. If the team decides to keep the graphic icon, please add a Databank entry about the planet GUI with a static image explaining what things are (or something along those lines)
  • I am missing information about pop growth somewhere, how they are developing. Which species are growing and which are in decline. That did feel like a core part of the planet view experience. From multiple perspectives (min/maxer, roleplayer, new player) I think this information is important.
  • I eventually figured out in the jobs view that the progress meter underneath each job tile is how many pops are joining that employment group. I think that is very interesting. I think the progress bars could be expanded a bit to be taller, with some sort of visual indicator differentiating it so that I can know it is not a decorative UI element but something informational.
  • The job upkeep + production "downward flow chart" gui is interesting in the jobs view, but I still feel it needs text tooltips. I knew inherently as a Stellaris player that one portion is upkeep and the other is production, but from a fresh set of eyes it's not clear what that information is for. The "flow chart" is very good short-hand, but I'm afraid it will get quite busy on planets with a variety of specialists. I'd like to be able to see the numbers in text. I also feel the icons could be enlarged.
  • Pop groups need some explanation about what they are and how they function. Some text in the GUI with a concept and link to a databank would be great so the full explanation can be offloaded into those two very nice features.

A few observations about new content:
  • I didn't find myself using the Focus feature. I did very much appreciate the toasts telling me about advancements in the focus, which encouraged me to check out the focuses. I didn't find the messages disruptive. I felt a little anxiety about changing Focus as I was prompted before changing focus, which made me think I was going to lose progress in my active focus.
  • I feel the Databank is hard to find. I do see there is one text link in the Research resource icon in the topbar, after hovering and clicking on one of the research resoruces. I am very excited for the databank and I want it to be more front-and-center. Please make it more accessible. I like that the team has included links to the databank in the GUI, but I still feel having a dedicated place for it is important, perhaps as a new text button in the Research gui beside "Researched".
  • When going to colonize a new planet, I don't know what to do with the colony designation area. There is a collection of boxes with colony designations in them, does picking one set the designation when the colony is finished? I feel that information is missing from the UI. Am I locked in to having the planet as that designation? It created a little bit of decision anxiety for me.
The rest of the game still feels like Stellaris.. played about 50 years just going about the game as normal. Though alloys deficit put a damper on "playing without giving myself resources via console"

Found a CTD:
  • Attempting to change planet class, on a solid planetary body, using the in-game console, results in CTD if the planet class is not the same. I tried to change the class of a frozen world to an ocean world, and it caused CTD. But changing frozen to frozen does not trigger CTD.
Excitements as a modder:
  • I am very glad to see trade value as a proper source and that we can finally mod it
  • Databank is probably my favorite thing announced so far. In a small experiment I found I was able to add a new entry, but my custom category localisation does not seem to be loading. (I do not expect support at this time since it's beta)

Concerns as a modder:
  • Folks in the Stellaris Modding Den have voiced a variety of concerns already, I don't have any specific thing to add but just a very strong vote to please design things in a way that makes it painless for multiple mods to work together. Modding Stellaris is a big part of my personal life and important to me for a variety of reasons.

Overall it was interesting (in a positive way) to see changes and look at what is in progress. Looks like there is quite a lot of feedback and things are sure to change going forward. I feel positively about the team's ability to produce fun and compelling things, so I am looking forward to future things.

Thanks for giving me another reason to be distracted at work! :D
 
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