Stellaris 3.99.5 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Foxosaur]

An initial feeling of the new UI for planetary management is, it feels a little overwhelming and doubly cluttered in places, lots of missing padding. I think the Management tab screen - Planetary Features looks squashed in without any explanation that I can or might be able to do something with them in the future. It needs a couple more borders I think to give it some padding.


A second one is - I don't think an 'Up Arrow' graphic is appropriate for expanding Districts. it should actually be a + symbol to suggest 'expansion' rather than 'Upgrade' which an Up Arrow normally is indicative of.

I know these are visual things that are strictly a second but I just wanted to pass it onto you either way and contribute.

 

[Alexaneek]

Caravanners still sell CaravanCoinz for energy credits, not for trade value. It shouldn't be like that anymore, should it?

 

[Lifeas]

Hi, @Eladrin. I wanted to ask when we can see pop growth number for each species, ability to select which pops to assembly as robot or hive. Is there any plans for it to be visable?

 

[Chaosboy]

I have played one round with COM and one with UNE this weekend. I liked the 3.99.5 build better than the previous ones, but I have some remarks:

• Halving the number of jobs from districts and building + new the trade upkeep made a crippling blow to the game's economy. It was really challenging to keep the economy alive in the first 100 years - and later it is still not that easy either. At my game with COM, I have captured 3 planets from another empire and the trade and other upkeeps almost fully broke my economy.
• Civilians like to resettle to a new planet where specialist jobs are available, but they do not like worker strata jobs and I had a bunch of planets with thousands of worker jobs, while thousands of civilians did nothing on other planets.
• Pops are migrating to new colonies now - so new colonies at last are working without manual resettling pops.
• I was not able to unluck one ore more of the basic energy/mining/food tech which unlocks their planetary zones for aruond 70 years... Please give us the possibility to get these key techs earlier or change when can we build these zones.
• There are some unity building (for example the one which is given by the Artisan enclave) which are not buildable inside a unity zone. And I think I have seen problems with other zones too.
• The Species Uplift is a bit broken - a few pops were not uplifted and they stayed presapient - and starting a new uplift project does not help. Also I was not able to apply a species template for one or two planet for some reason, but the auto conversion worked at least.
• The leaders are still broken: They get only 2 normal, 2 advanced and 1 legendary skill - but they can get a bunch of negative skills. Usually there is no admiral with council skill available to hire.
• I hope that a pop growth meter will be added to the UI again - it is a really bad feeling that I don't see any info about it.
• I am begging you, let me pin the build tab on the planetary UI! I really hate that it always closing automatically

 

[Critical Ethics]

I can't agree with this, a series of different band-aids for different flavours of the same problem seems a worse solution than just fixing it correctly once.

Are you going to make yet another one for rebelling planets?

That's why I was saying to tie it to origins. Every empire has an origin, if you dig through the files IIRC some of the weird event empires have dummy origins to prevent the game from breaking. I can't remember what rebels get or inherit and I won't be able to check my PC for a while. Fake edit: rebels get the Separatists origin according to the wiki but I've been burned trusting the wiki before. If they do then there's a bunch of interesting thematic things you can do for that.

Sometimes it's much harder and less satisfying to come up with a universal solution. You say band aid, I say bespoke craftsmanship.

Real edit: my ideal solution would be bespoke per-origin options, and an empire unique building (or capital planet zone or effect or whatever) that's tech locked behind Planetary Unification as a fallback.

 

[Zaacplot300]

Civilians like to resettle to a new planet where specialist jobs are available, but they do not like worker strata jobs and I had a bunch of planets with thousands of worker jobs, while thousands of civilians did nothing on other planets.

Seconding this. I’m guessing that’s why migration seems to stop after the first couple planets. Or at least for me, since my first two planets are usually a science world and an industrial world.

 

[Red Death]

That's why I was saying to tie it to origins. Every empire has an origin, if you dig through the files IIRC some of the weird event empires have dummy origins to prevent the game from breaking. I can't remember what rebels get or inherit and I won't be able to check my PC for a while. Fake edit: rebels get the Separatists origin according to the wiki but I've been burned trusting the wiki before. If they do then there's a bunch of interesting thematic things you can do for that.

Sometimes it's much harder and less satisfying to come up with a universal solution. You say band aid, I say bespoke craftsmanship.

Real edit: my ideal solution would be bespoke per-origin options, and an empire unique building (or capital planet zone or effect or whatever) that's tech locked behind Planetary Unification as a fallback.

Literally all we need to have everything available on one planet from the start is the guaranteed ability to have a Unity/Research Zone in addition to the Industrial zone. This would make viable: The single colony origins, rebelling planets, enlightened pre-FTLs, as well as the opening years of almost every empire. It would work as an integral part of the system, not an exception. Why are you so opposed to this? I simply cannot understand.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Literally all we need to have everything available on one planet from the start is the guaranteed ability to have a Unity/Research Zone in addition to the Industrial zone. This would make viable: The single colony origins, rebelling planets, enlightened pre-FTLs, as well as the opening years of almost every empire. It would work as an integral part of the system, not an exception. Why are you so opposed to this? I simply cannot understand.

Because nothing consumes unity or research locally.

An industrial zone is potentially useful on any planet where you have a mix of cg and alloy consumption, so basically any planet with a robot plant and people with reasonable living standards, or most habitats. A mixed unity/research zone that does nothing else has the sole use case of allowing a single planet empire to function and is otherwise just interface clutter and a newbie trap. I prefer fixes that add to the game over ones that just patch over holes.

Since it's only needed when you only have one planet I think it would be neat to make it a very cool thing that's limited by being capital locked or homeworld locked or empire unique. That solves the one planet empire problem without having to manufacture a use case for an entire new zone, and gives other empires a reason to build it without being able to spam it.

And if we're making a very cool thing that's capital locked or homeworld locked or empire unique that needs to be available from the start of the game... well, tying it to your origin to add additional flavour and uniqueness to your empire seems kinda obvious, and would allow them to get real weird with it sometimes like the gaia world thing I posted or PU empires having civilians generate unity.

On the other hand @Tannhäuser Cake's university theme does sound very cool, and I would in no way object to a university building or education zone that hired researchers and administrators, assuming it was empire unique (which feels weird thematically) or it had an additional cool function that made it worth building on at least 10% of planets. If the university thing can be made good with a much lower investment then yeah obviously they should do that, but adding a globally available zone that is purely a 50/50 split between unity and research would be the very definition of a band aid fix, and I'd prefer a bunch of little band aids with cool pictures on applied with methodical care to one oversized and itchy band aid with a half-hearted smiley face scrawled on in pen.

 

[PLSKICKME]

I get it that there will be an infernals species pack, but early game economy should really be this hell?

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

So I got to the year 2317 with genesis guides catalyst process + masterful crafter (added)

- I've got 31.188 organic pops and they are eating 299.78 food. Is that a lot? I can't tell, it seems like a lot but I'm catalytic processing so I consume 392.54 on jobs and 10.80 on buildings.

- I did not know catalytic would ALSO use food for consumer goods. I must not have read the notes on that, would have saved me a lot of time to eliminate the mine jobs earlier, there's no use in getting minerals, you can just get them from asteroid mining or buy them.

-Early on you get more and more jobs to get out of the red but the result seems to be you stay in the red until your tech finally levels up. It took me like 60ish years to get all of the 3 techs that unlock planetary zones. I would get rid of those requirements, they are entirely annoying. If you need to have requirments, I would lock some building slots of the resource zones behind them, so maybe idk, you get to unlock the zones but you only get 1 building slot until you get the tech, 2 when you get it then 3 when you get the second tech and then you're done.

-The resource shortages at the beggining of the game are too prologued. You're just struggling to get enough basic resources to get by so much that alloys and consumer goods become harder to come by. Wait, slash that, it's not that it's hard to get those resouces, it's hard to think about building the industrial and research worlds that would spend those resources because so much of your investment is into getting the primary ones to get out of the red in the first place.

- It is very easy and convenient to get advanced resources by building the corresponding extractor on a primary resouce world. Extractors are some of the most efficient buildings to have, it just makes your primary resource jobs into secondary resource producers without loosing any output.

-Bio-reactor is in a strange place now. Why would you make energy from food in two agri-worlds with reduced food production on both of them when you can just have one agri world with an extractor tha'ts also making tons and tons gas and an energy reactor world with an extractor that is also making epic amounts of motes? I haven't done the math but it looks like an absolute net loss to me to have two mediocre food, energy and gas worlds when you can get specialized worlds that do tons of energy, tons of food, tons of motes and tons of gas. Four resources in abundance vs 3 mediocre productions isn't very good.

- By the time your economy finally kicks off, the mid-game crisis have been raging around for a while. The endgame crisis will surely kill everyone.

- AI can't hack it, not at all. They remain pathetic and impoverished.

- Since the AI can't produce any significant fleets, Voidworms go unchallenged in their space. THey do seem unable to kill pops tho. Pops keep growing under bombardment unless i'm reading it wrong.

- On trade:
Stockpiled trade is less powerful than trade value because it has to be spend in the market causing raising prices on anything it buys, making it less valuable to have in the bank.
Stockpiled trade is less powerful than trade value because it has to be used for paying upkeep costs.
Currently producing 510.01 trade (Starbases produce 80, jobs produce 355.19, pops produce 74. 82) and paying 317.54 (310.39 on planetary deficits and 7.15 ships. )
As a result the stockpiled trade system generates a lot of costs and a lot less profit than before, with trade value.
I would like to see what happens when trade policies are brought back into it, see if they cna counteract this effect. Perhaps the economy would rebound a bit with those. Even just the basic policy that allowed getting energy would greatly reduce the trade upkeep costs hammering player empires right now. I did build some trade buildings but It felt like I was just getting those jobs so that they woudl pay my empire's taxes and not go in the red, not like I would expect getting much from them.
- Masterful crafters is VERY powerful. Having your consumergood production generate trade makes upkeep payments a lot lighter.

- Space stations can now produce good amounts of Stockpiled trade to pay some of your upkeep costs.
- Pirates seem to be entirely gone. I don't miss them.

 

[ShadowNinja909]

I quite miss being able to see a pie chart with the species breakdown of the population on each planet and ethos makeup at a glance. Perhaps this can be in the Management tab instead of that list of pops? We already see pops in economy.

 

[Cry_Havok]

Thinking about it, the following buildings should be able to placed in ANY district: Basic city districts are too needed and make specialization feel impossible.

Robot Factories: Or at least add them to industrial zones. Functionally a robot is an advanced manufactured good, so making them in the same districts as your other manufactured goods makes sense. Making them in rural districts makes sense, manufacture robots where they will be used

Amenities jobs: If my world is a rural world, put the entertainment/medicine in the rural parts

Hydroponics farms: The entire point of hydroponics is to build food where it can't grow unassisted. If I want my city world to have enough food (because again, the desire is to have planets close to self sufficient and jsut addidn excess to stockpiles) I should be able to dedicate urban building slots to being stuffed full of hydroponics farms. Mining woulds, stuff the hypoponics in empty mine shafts. Build hydroponics under your solar farms. Revert the hydroponics and food processing facility switch

 

[Red Death]

Because nothing consumes unity or research locally.

An industrial zone is potentially useful on any planet where you have a mix of cg and alloy consumption, so basically any planet with a robot plant and people with reasonable living standards, or most habitats. A mixed unity/research zone that does nothing else has the sole use case of allowing a single planet empire to function and is otherwise just interface clutter and a newbie trap. I prefer fixes that add to the game over ones that just patch over holes.

Since it's only needed when you only have one planet I think it would be neat to make it a very cool thing that's limited by being capital locked or homeworld locked or empire unique. That solves the one planet empire problem without having to manufacture a use case for an entire new zone, and gives other empires a reason to build it without being able to spam it.

And if we're making a very cool thing that's capital locked or homeworld locked or empire unique that needs to be available from the start of the game... well, tying it to your origin to add additional flavour and uniqueness to your empire seems kinda obvious, and would allow them to get real weird with it sometimes like the gaia world thing I posted or PU empires having civilians generate unity.

On the other hand @Tannhäuser Cake's university theme does sound very cool, and I would in no way object to a university building or education zone that hired researchers and administrators, assuming it was empire unique (which feels weird thematically) or it had an additional cool function that made it worth building on at least 10% of planets. If the university thing can be made good with a much lower investment then yeah obviously they should do that, but adding a globally available zone that is purely a 50/50 split between unity and research would be the very definition of a band aid fix, and I'd prefer a bunch of little band aids with cool pictures on applied with methodical care to one oversized and itchy band aid with a half-hearted smiley face scrawled on in pen.

Hmmm, I guess if the concern is choice clutter, then it's acceptable to have it be capital-unique, since that's the main use case. But still, it would have to be a zone. The whole point is that districts+zones are the main source of scaling production. Assigning zones and then building the districts when needed is how you produce any significant amount of resources. This also naturally lets you replace the zone with something more dedicated if yo want to do that in a large empire. Having the resource production instead be on a building is weird and inflexible.

Remember, the idea was: Districts provide jobs and housing, Zones switch the job distribution, Buildings modify jobs.

Having all sorts of variations for different origins is fun for later, but I am focused on first getting a generally functional solution that will make sure the starting empire situation in 4.0 is not incredibly frustrating. Because right now, it is.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Hmmm, I guess if the concern is choice clutter, then it's acceptable to have it be capital-unique, since that's the main use case. But still, it would have to be a zone. The whole point is that districts+zones are the main source of scaling production. Assigning zones and then building the districts when needed is how you produce any significant amount of resources. This also naturally lets you replace the zone with something more dedicated if yo want to do that in a large empire. Having the resource production instead be on a building is weird and inflexible.

Remember, the idea was: Districts provide jobs and housing, Zones switch the job distribution, Buildings modify jobs.

Having all sorts of variations for different origins is fun for later, but I am focused on first getting a generally functional solution that will make sure the starting empire situation in 4.0 is not incredibly frustrating. Because right now, it is.

A building that added unity to researchers or research to administrators would also fall into the paradigm. Or a building (or planet modifier) that added unity to Civilians since one planet empires feel like they'd have a lot of Civilians hanging around. Significantly boosting the unity generation of factions when they contain a lot of Civilians could work too, though hive minds would need an alternative.

 

[PLSKICKME]

Consumer good deficits turn your researchers into flatearthers, also the building by itself grants more researchers than the "normal" version of the building after the .5 update

 

[fourteenfour]

Okay, about that Urban Zone.

Make it work with the buildings the player can actually build. How you do it now is just too confusing. Meaning, the "Basic X" type building provides the player no understanding of what to expect when they build the regular version. Meaning, use only buildings accessible to the player and balance the starting economics on that.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Consumer good deficits turn your researchers into flatearthers, also the building by itself grants more researchers than the "normal" version of the building after the .5 update

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Uplifting presapient species doesn't seem to work properly. They correctly gain the Uplifted trait and start being able to grow, but they're still stuck in the Pre-sapient stratum, won't work any jobs (including the pre-sapient ones), and vanish from the Economy tab. Checking the is_sapient = yes and is_pop_category = pre_sapients triggers reveals they're counting as both sapient and pre-sapient simultaneously.

 

[Ch4rybde]

So previously I reported that on the economy and management screens that a faction tag was being applied when no factions had yet formed and not available to interact with on F2 government. I guess I should give you kudos for removing the erroneous faction tags but seriously what exactly did you do? Apparently that is all you did because even though all my pops should have no faction their attributes are clearly different as if they had one.

See the two screen shots attached. There is no logical reason why I should have more than one grouping of population unless they were of different factions as I only have one specie here. Yet they have different levels of happiness and that could only come from being in different factions at this point in the game.


View attachment 1273398View attachment 1273399

If you look closely you will see those two pop group are of different strata, it has nothing to do with factions, it has to do with living standard.

 

[FPSCanarussia]

All of the combinations that we added in this pass are either one or two zones. However, one of the changes that I've been considering based on feedback is actually removing one City Zone slot from planets, increasing the free Government Zone to have six building slots, and framing them more explicitly as City Specialization. While this is similar mechanically to "forcing" an Urban Zone, it may make the intent of "zones are intended to be your way of picking what special district you want here" more of a real thing.

This seems like a good idea. If we had a combined research/unity zone, I think this would make things feel better.