Stellaris 3.99.7 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Psykhes]

1st of all, it is true, Cosmic Storms (the DLC) had not been out for 2 hours and there where ppl complaining about them, it is OBJECTIVELY impossible for anyone to learn much from storms in less than 2 hours, so this by itself is enough evidence that some people didn't take the time to learn them.

Except the DLC had at the start some serious storm-related issues.
2 hours is plenty to experience a year 10 Nexus Storm or the broken fleet movement. Those aren't things "you can learn" how to deal with them. Those were plain out broken. And is the storm fleet movement even fixed?

So, no, that is not "enough evidence".

 

[Ajacoba]

Except the DLC had at the start some serious storm-related issues.
2 hours is plenty to experience a year 10 Nexus Storm or the broken fleet movement. Those aren't things "you can learn" how to deal with them. Those were plain out broken. And is the storm fleet movement even fixed?

So, no, that is not "enough evidence".

It is
They shortened the time the path finding adds extra when calculating if going through a storm is faster than going around it
It shouldn't be any worse now than the usual pathfinding shenanigans

 

[Ikael]

I'm absolutely with you on the base (assuming you mean the +X static job) buildings needing to be pushed to the general slots. But one of the reasons the extra build slots are attached to zones is because in the 3.1 system the more you generalise a planet the more resource boosters you need, and the more resource boosters you need the fewer spare building slots you have left over. This heavily incentivises specialising planets and a bunch of the economy changes are based around boosting generalised planets to be on about on par with (not better than) specialised ones. So unless giving single resource planets bonus build slots is the reason you want this combination of changes, just pushing the base buildings to general gets you what you want - building a zone unlocks the ability to build cool resources boosters, and you even get free slots to put them in instead of having to sacrifice a general slot.

Yep, that was the gist of my suggestion, I think. To be more detailed:

> The capitol area contains 6 building slots, although that might change due to policies, planet blockers, civics, and the like
---> It's pretty much like the latest beta build
> Planets might increase their building slots for each capital level/population level
---> Adding a more gradual planet development progression for all of us who like to play planet bonsai
> All "additive" & regular buildings that add a lump sum of jobs can be placed on all planets by default. Say, you don't need to unlock a specific zone in order to place a research lab or holotheater
---> No need for specific research or factory districts; you can, however, fine-tune your planets if you need just a little extra sum of, say, consumer goods or amenities
> Each zone adds +1 regular building slot each and unlocks their advanced building/building upgrade. That is, if you would want to unlock a mineral purification planet or dimensional lab, you would need to unlock their zones first
---> I'm still unsure about whether building upgrades or building chains are the best option, but I am leaning more towards building upgrades in order to de-couple building slots from zones and avoid punishing mixed-output planets

This way, Zones get a stronger identity as tools for specializing both your planet and buildings, you retain a more granular control of jobs via regular building slots, all while avoiding the "non-choices" presented by the "you can only put 3 possible buildings here", and the confusion created by buildings that you might place at any zone, thus breaking its own rules of the system.

Alternatively, another possible option for ending would be:

> Planets unlock regular building slots by ye olde good way (capital level, urban districts, etc, etc)
---> Because why change what ain't broke?
> All buildings could be placed on pretty much every planet
---> No "must have" zone
> However, zones, in addition to adding jobs to their district, would come each with a "zone building slot" (!)
> Only "zone buildings" might go into a "zone building slot"
> Rather than reusing old buildings and giving you limited options to place them, zone buildings would be brand new, non-tech-dependent buildings that add extra bonuses to the districts and jobs affected by their zones. For example, a "garden" might be placed in your agricultural district, so all your agricultural districts now generate a small amount of entertainers in addition to farmers

While that would demand the creation of a lot of extra content that would need to be balanced (at the very least, say, 3 different zone building choices per zone), that system would add a new development layer to your planets, allow for a more granular control of jobs, make mixed output planets far more viable, and play with many civics / unique planet stuff

TLDR: The non-choice of "you can only build 3 planet-unique buildings on their specific 3 building slots" must be removed in one way or another for zones to flourish, and that might possible entail the total or partial de-coupling of building slots from zones

 

[Critical Ethics]

> Planets unlock regular building slots by ye olde good way (capital level, urban districts, etc, etc)
---> Because why change what ain't broke?

 I think the current system is very much broke and this is for me the worst and most broken part.

Zones look like they're going to solve a couple of the biggest problems I have with planet building in live Stellaris.

One problem I have always had with live is trying to at-a-glance what buildings a planet was missing. Splitting all the buildings out into discrete, well, zones, makes this much easier. This may sound minor but wow am I going to find playing certain civics much easier now.

The much bigger one is how many steps are currently involved in live in implementing what should be very straightforward decisions. This is very obvious with starbases - if I decide I want a starbase to be a anchorage base I can't do that all at once. I need to queue up the anchorages, the NLO, and the starbase upgrade, wait literally years, queue up the next anchorages and starbase upgrade, wait another couple of years, and then go back and queue up the last few anchorages. I can't just decide what a starbase is, I have to keep returning to "remind" the game of a decision I made years before.

Planets in live are in the same boat. If I want to make a science planet (and not use the automation) I need to queue up the cities to unlock the slots to build the science buildings that I actually want to build, and that's after queuing up the cities to build the buildings that come with my civics that I want to build first. So I either set a bunch of cities building and dissapear for a few years and come back and finally build my stuff, or I need to keep dropping back in after each city to queue up the building and the next city. I need to decide between efficiency vs having to go tend my planet like a needy child (or using the automation).

And if I decide I want to expand the sciencing on a planet I have to do the whole dance again.

Zones streamline these decisions for me. If I want a planet to be a science planet I just assign science zoning and that decision is implemented. I then have a number of sub-decisions to make based on what of my available science building modifiers I want to attach to my science zones, and I can make and implement those decisions (almost) immediately. If I want to scale up the science later I just build a city district and everything scales up. I like it.

It's also why I feel that amenity zones don't quite fit. You don't "choose" to make a planet an "amenities planet" (well, excluding resort worlds). You need to keep your amenities up, the choice is in how you do so, and if the only way to keep them up is to build an amenities zone then the act of building an amenities zone isn't really a choice, is it? But that the amenities issues were zeroed in on so quickly by so many people kind of shows how well the core zone idea hangs together. Otherwise the odd man out wouldn't have stood out so much.

And I think that's our core disconnect. The stuff you're working hardest to keep in the game is the stuff I'm most excited to have zones yeet off a cliff, and the stuff you see as problems I see as vital components of a, to me, much more engaging economy model. I'd be fine with a job producing planet unique capital zone building per resource (so I can build a single CG factory and/or science building in my capital if I want, at the cost of precious amenity building space), but those being my primary source of science or default location of my main CG booster or having to wait to build a city to unlock a space to build the lab I built the city to unlock... that's what I'm sick of.

Yep, that was the gist of my suggestion, I think. To be more detailed:

> The capitol area contains 6 building slots, although that might change due to policies, planet blockers, civics, and the like
---> It's pretty much like the latest beta build
> Planets might increase their building slots for each capital level/population level
---> Adding a more gradual planet development progression for all of us who like to play planet bonsai
> All "additive" & regular buildings that add a lump sum of jobs can be placed on all planets by default. Say, you don't need to unlock a specific zone in order to place a research lab or holotheater
---> No need for specific research or factory districts; you can, however, fine-tune your planets if you need just a little extra sum of, say, consumer goods or amenities
> Each zone adds +1 regular building slot each and unlocks their advanced building/building upgrade. That is, if you would want to unlock a mineral purification planet or dimensional lab, you would need to unlock their zones first
---> I'm still unsure about whether building upgrades or building chains are the best option, but I am leaning more towards building upgrades in order to de-couple building slots from zones and avoid punishing mixed-output planets

This way, Zones get a stronger identity as tools for specializing both your planet and buildings, you retain a more granular control of jobs via regular building slots, all while avoiding the "non-choices" presented by the "you can only put 3 possible buildings here", and the confusion created by buildings that you might place at any zone, thus breaking its own rules of the system.

Alternatively, another possible option for ending would be:

> Planets unlock regular building slots by ye olde good way (capital level, urban districts, etc, etc)
---> Because why change what ain't broke?
> All buildings could be placed on pretty much every planet
---> No "must have" zone
> However, zones, in addition to adding jobs to their district, would come each with a "zone building slot" (!)
> Only "zone buildings" might go into a "zone building slot"
> Rather than reusing old buildings and giving you limited options to place them, zone buildings would be brand new, non-tech-dependent buildings that add extra bonuses to the districts and jobs affected by their zones. For example, a "garden" might be placed in your agricultural district, so all your agricultural districts now generate a small amount of entertainers in addition to farmers

While that would demand the creation of a lot of extra content that would need to be balanced (at the very least, say, 3 different zone building choices per zone), that system would add a new development layer to your planets, allow for a more granular control of jobs, make mixed output planets far more viable, and play with many civics / unique planet stuff

TLDR: The non-choice of "you can only build 3 planet-unique buildings on their specific 3 building slots" must be removed in one way or another for zones to flourish, and that might possible entail the total or partial de-coupling of building slots from zones

What's funny here is we're like 75% in agreement. Everyone, devs included, agrees that amenities as a zone didn't work. I've also posted many words saying that there needs to be more zone buildings so that there's actual choices with actual opportunity costs and that spammable +X job buildings in zones are bad. But that last 25% is that you want to keep the one big bucket of interchangeable building slots that slowly grows over time aspect of planets, and I hate that it's one big bucket, I hate that the slots are all identical, and I hate that I have to assemble the bucket and its contents one by one on a planet by planet basis. For me a 5 slot, fixed, immediately available planet and pop management bucket + a variable amount of siloed 3 slot empire resource adjusting buckets per big decision is laser targeted at fixing one of the most broke part of Stellaris. For you it's the exact opposite. I do not understand why you feel this way but it's interesting to see such fundamentally different priorities.

E: we're also both very much against non-choices but the things you consider non-choices I consider interesting tradeoffs and what I consider non-choices you consider vital freedoms and restrictions.

I wouldn't object to the last building slot in each zone being locked behind tech and the capital slot having its last two building slots locked behind a tech but once I have the techs I absolutely do not want mid game planet building to include having to upgrade my capital building, wait, queue a building and the next capital building upgrade, wait, queue a last building that I've wanted to queue since the colony made landfall. That's my personal hell.

 

[ArcTan]

I mean, as long have battleships and titans by the time the crisis invades the science output works as intended

I wouldn't worry too much about the first few decades, in the old system your growth starts strong and then slows down the more you progress, in the new system your growth starts slow but speeds up the more worlds you develop and fill to the brim

Also stuff like automatization is yet to be implemented

I feel the need to disagree, pop count is a problem, but the more pressing issue for me is having a fully developed capital (no more districts nor any open jobs) and having the same output I could achieve in the first five years of game in the old system.

Likewise, in the old system you could make dedicated buildings that added +1 to the basic output of the job or upgrading the basic ones to offer extra jobs, allowing for further development releasing pressure on pop growth and colonization.

Thing is, I played 30 in game years of this empire in the beta I barely achieve anything: a fully urbanized capital outputing little, empty colonies and long stares to deficits I could do nothing about. It wasn't fun on engaging for me.

Cheers!

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I feel the need to disagree, pop count is a problem, but the more pressing issue for me is having a fully developed capital (no more districts nor any open jobs) and having the same output I could achieve in the first five years of game in the old system.

A slower start is not necessarily a problem, since population growth seems to be getting significantly higher than before in the later part of the game. A slower start is then a necessary consequence of moving from a linear to a proportional (economic/population) growth model, if the later part of the game is to be kept reasonably in line.

 

[Ajacoba]

Also having "empty colonies"? How many?

I kinda understand claiming your guaranteed habitables, but any further expansion should probably wait until those three worlds are fully developed with a really fun Frankenstein assortment of various different jobs and districts

 

[Critical Ethics]

Also having "empty colonies"? How many?

I kinda understand claiming your guaranteed habitables, but any further expansion should probably wait until those three worlds are fully developed with a really fun Frankenstein assortment of various different jobs and districts

That's I think going to be a big piece of confusion. Building a colony isn't an instant 3 growth out of nowhere anymore and 5 colonies + your capital won't make you grow 6 times as fast.

 

[Shadeseraph]

I've mentioned this before, but pop growth is interesting in the beta. It is slow early on, but it explodes the more population you have. This actually has some consequences:
- Early on it's hard to get population for the jobs you actually need. It takes time for pops to be generated to cover deficits, and seeing all the red can get disheartening.
- Early game planet cap is relatively low - as in, with prosperous unification or mechanist your capital is already close to filling in the amount of jobs you can provide filling in each zone, district and building slot. A 20 distrits capital can roughly get 4000 jobs from districts, and around 2500 from buildings (best case) with base technologies, and it starts with, IIRC, 5200 pops if playing prosperous unification. This is discounting buildings that don't generate jobs. It's actually fairly easy to max out the capital and get guaranteed planets full around 2260 or so if you don't get the right technologies. Tech worlds are even worse off as science zones only grant 90 jobs and science buildings generate a paltry 90 jobs as opposite to 200 from most other buildings.
- Job capacity increases with technology - energy and food zones add 100 jobs per district, plus up to 600 from buildings, and some late game buildings offer 600 jobs. In most cases that will account for around 2000-3000 jobs or so. You can push this count higher, but for that you'll need to go full on cosmogenesis with 600 jobs buildings or arcologies which offer a lot more jobs per section. Even then, my own experience is that it caps around 20-25K jobs.
- Later on it can actually cause some issues with pop consumption, I had some big swings especially on energy (I went for synthetic ascension) and consumer goods. Balancing those isn't too difficult at that point, but it is a bit of a drag.

This all means planets have a low-ish job cap compared to growth, and that playing wide is actually quite encouraged. Obviously this is strongly helped by pop count impacting very minimally on empire size right now, in the game I played to the end I would probably have had an order of magnitude more empire size.

Side point, but CG production is fairly inefficient, job wise, until you get most upgrades. It's not too expensive in terms of minerals, but it requires a pretty potent workforce until you get all the +efficiency buildings and technologies

EDIT: Well, I guess citizen jobs, being uncapped, could pave the way for a trade build, but all the trade in the world isn't going to get you tech or unity, and that's the actual bottleneck. Especially with how big the impact of later techs is. But with fixed trade policies this actually sounds kind of fun - civics and living standards that get you some benefits from citizens, your production buildings dedicated to generating advanced resources, and all the other stuff from trade. It would probably be good if you can exchange trade with other empires for other resources. Megacorp office buildings converting trade into resources would be another cool option for this.

 

[ArcTan]

Oh, just guarantees. About year 30 on beta there were 400ish pops on them? By that time on 3.X one usually has more than 10 pops which should translate to 10k IIRC.

Then again, main problem is getting a third of the output you could get before (as shown in the pictures I uploaded), and sitting on your hands waiting for something to happen. I think it's the first time since I started playing the game where I had to spend several in-game years without something to do.

Cheers!
​

 

[Red Death]

Probably already somewhat the case with 3.14, but:

Lithoid Void Dwellers are far easier to manage than organic void dwellers.

Since you don't need food, you don't need to sacrifice a zone for Hydroponics. (An alternative would probably be sacrificing some Capital Building Slots for hydroponics buildings, but that is not implemented for now)

So, quite quickly you can end up with something like:

You can balance things on one planet fairly well.

One "problem" is that you are inevitably increasing your unity jobs when you want to make more cg/alloys, but at least there is no such thing as "Too much unity".

On the other hand, you've got normal Void Dwellers:

Two problems:

1. By increasing your alloy/CG production, you will end up producing much more food than you will ever need. So you will want to manually disable those jobs (and I think that's the type of micromanagement that should be avoided).
2. You can't use any districts for unity. So you can only use your 5 capital building slot for a limited unity production. (and Civilians, once they actually implement that)

These can be somewhat fixed by transferring food production to starbases.
Eventually as with any other origin you can also fix the situation eventually by having more colonies, but that is neither quick, nor easy.

This feels very limiting in an unnatural way.

 

[Shadeseraph]

Oh, just guarantees. About year 30 on beta there were 400ish pops on them? By that time on 3.X one usually has more than 10 pops which should translate to 10k IIRC.

Then again, main problem is getting a third of the output you could get before (as shown in the pictures I uploaded), and sitting on your hands waiting for something to happen. I think it's the first time since I started playing the game where I had to spend several in-game years without something to do.

Cheers!
​

Earlier betas didn't do migration well, which meant most of the growth just stayed on the capital. I just started a 3.99.7, and I'm currently on 2213, and situation is:
- Capital: 5451 pops
- First guaranteed: 615 pops
- Second guaranteed: 326 pops

10 old pops would be roughly equivalent to 1k pops. I'm well on my way to the range you've mentioned.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Probably already somewhat the case with 3.14, but:

Lithoid Void Dwellers are far easier to manage than organic void dwellers.

Since you don't need food, you don't need to sacrifice a zone for Hydroponics. (An alternative would probably be sacrificing some Capital Building Slots for hydroponics buildings, but that is not implemented for now)

So, quite quickly you can end up with something like:

View attachment 1278456
You can balance things on one planet fairly well.

One "problem" is that you are inevitably increasing your unity jobs when you want to make more cg/alloys, but at least there is no such thing as "Too much unity".

On the other hand, you've got normal Void Dwellers:

View attachment 1278475
Two problems:

1. By increasing your alloy/CG production, you will end up producing much more food than you will ever need. So you will want to manually disable those jobs (and I think that's the type of micromanagement that should be avoided).
2. You can't use any districts for unity. So you can only use your 5 capital building slot for a limited unity production. (and Civilians, once they actually implement that)

These can be somewhat fixed by transferring food production to starbases.
Eventually as with any other origin you can also fix the situation eventually by having more colonies, but that is neither quick, nor easy.

This feels very limiting in an unnatural way.

In the current beta build void dwellers can get their first colony up and running insanely quick. It's hilarious how fast you can slap one down. Overproducing food on your capital isn't a problem to be solved by building colony habitats, it's the solution to the problem of your first colony habitats not producing their own food.

It's neat that Lithoids play so different. I can't wait to try a machine void dweller empire.

 

[ArcTan]

Overproducing food on your capital isn't a problem to be solved by building colony habitats, it's the solution to the problem of your first colony habitats not producing their own food.
​

I beg to strongly differ: In the old system you could tailor your capital to you liking, usually poised to take advantage on the +10% all jobs directed at science or alloys.
At any rate, our fellow gamer is complaining of feeling constrained by the rigidity of the system, and I feel it's always a bad tool the one that robs one of options.

Cheers!​

 

[Red Death]

In the current beta build void dwellers can get their first colony up and running insanely quick. It's hilarious how fast you can slap one down. Overproducing food on your capital isn't a problem to be solved by building colony habitats, it's the solution to the problem of your first colony habitats not producing their own food.

It's neat that Lithoids play so different. I can't wait to try a machine void dweller empire.

I would still prefer if the impulse to build more habitats was "I am running out of room" and not "I need another colony so I can build different zone types".

We have at least achieved that point for normal planet colonies.

 

[Ajacoba]

I beg to strongly differ:In the old system you could tailor your capital to you liking, usually poised to take advantage on the +10% all jobs directed at science or alloys.
At any rate. our fellow gamer is complaining of feeling constrained by the rigidity of the system and I feel it's always a bad tool the one that robs one of options.

Cheers!​

In the old system I just fill my capital with whatever I need in the specific moment I build something

Food's low? Time to build more farms - low consumer goods? Let me build that building since the district would only give one job instead of 2 - man, those things sure are expensive, lets build mines so I can easier afford to build other stuff

 

[Ikael]

 I think the current system is very much broke and this is for me the worst and most broken part.

And I think that's our core disconnect. The stuff you're working hardest to keep in the game is the stuff I'm most excited to have zones yeet off a cliff, and the stuff you see as problems I see as vital components of a, to me, much more engaging economy model. I'd be fine with a job producing planet unique capital zone building per resource (so I can build a single CG factory and/or science building in my capital if I want, at the cost of precious amenity building space), but those being my primary source of science or default location of my main CG booster or having to wait to build a city to unlock a space to build the lab I built the city to unlock... that's what I'm sick of.

First, thanks for the detailed reply! It is great to know which points you agree or disagree. I mean, the good ole "reaction" lacks nuance for that.

As for the method of unlocking building slots, the current system is not perfect, but I like how gradual it is and how logical it feels (your colony grows, so does its infrastructure). I don't know if the zone system is better on that regard, for I have not tried the beta myself due to too many life-related things. I am open to it, really. My main point of contention regarding zones are, by far, the whole "you get to open building slots but you actually don't choose what to put over there". Non-decisions are the Achilles heel of this game, I swear.

Well, that, and you can't fine-tune certain outputs unless you build a zone and add a ton of excess resources (see also the defunct amenities zone).

What's funny here is we're like 75% in agreement. Everyone, devs included, agrees that amenities as a zone didn't work. I've also posted many words saying that there needs to be more zone buildings so that there's actual choices with actual opportunity costs and that spammable +X job buildings in zones are bad. But that last 25% is that you want to keep the one big bucket of interchangeable building slots that slowly grows over time aspect of planets, and I hate that it's one big bucket, I hate that the slots are all identical, and I hate that I have to assemble the bucket and its contents one by one on a planet by planet basis. For me a 5 slot, fixed, immediately available planet and pop management bucket + a variable amount of siloed 3 slot empire resource adjusting buckets per big decision is laser targeted at fixing one of the most broke part of Stellaris. For you it's the exact opposite. I do not understand why you feel this way but it's interesting to see such fundamentally different priorities.

E: we're also both very much against non-choices but the things you consider non-choices I consider interesting tradeoffs and what I consider non-choices you consider vital freedoms and restrictions.

I wouldn't object to the last building slot in each zone being locked behind tech and the capital slot having its last two building slots locked behind a tech but once I have the techs I absolutely do not want mid game planet building to include having to upgrade my capital building, wait, queue a building and the next capital building upgrade, wait, queue a last building that I've wanted to queue since the colony made landfall. That's my personal hell.

In my personal case, it is a question of never having "solved" a planet (probably the best part of the post-tile rework) and an ever-increasing planet development ceiling. Progression! Taller and taller planets! And it's a familiar game loop too; that's also a factor I have to admit.

But I don't object to hard trade-offs at all. The harder the choice, the better. That's to me, the most interesting part of the zone system and one of the reasons I want to try it myself. Hard choices are interesting choices.

 

[Critical Ethics]

First, thanks for the detailed reply! It is great to know which points you agree or disagree. I mean, the good ole "reaction" lacks nuance for that.

As for the method of unlocking building slots, the current system is not perfect, but I like how gradual it is and how logical it feels (your colony grows, so does its infrastructure).

That's how zones and buildings interact. You make a science zone, which (even before you build anything in it) means you get a certain amount of scientists per city district. Each new city district also adds scientists. As your colony grows, so does your infrastructure, its just that instead of going city -> unlock slot -> build a science building the "science building" is built into the city itself. That's what I mean by false choices - if I've decided a planet is for scienceing on then I've already decided a planet is for sciencing on, so there's no need for the game to keep asking me "but are you sure you want to add more scientists to this science planet?"

Click button -> get more city, with scientist in. Much smoother, much nicer, for me anyway.

I don't know if the zone system is better on that regard, for I have not tried the beta myself due to too many life-related things. I am open to it, really. My main point of contention regarding zones are, by far, the whole "you get to open building slots but you actually don't choose what to put over there". Non-decisions are the Achilles heel of this game, I swear.

The beta's missing a bunch of them but the intent is that you have 6+ different possible job modifying buildings and you choose the 3 best for your current building setup. The beta starts you off with nothing but a repeatable building that just adds 200 scientist jobs, which is stupid, but if we ignore that building then what happens is you build your science zone, then put in whatever 3 building combo of the following best suits your planet:

-20% upkeep
+16% to bonus workforce (which for the manufactured resources come with increased CG upkeep through the base game mechanics), SR upkeep on building
+2 to each research type/+1 CG upkeep, SR upkeep on building
+XX% to regular workforce (automation building, decreases pops needed to fill a job, it's in the beta but just as a dummy building that does nothing)
+X jobs of one researcher type, -20% upkeep to that researcher type
A bunch of weird buildings you unlock from weird stuff

It's basically a build your own resource booster system.

Well, that, and you can't fine-tune certain outputs unless you build a zone and add a ton of excess resources (see also the defunct amenities zone).

Amenities are entirely a planet level resource. There's no empire level stockpile. It didn't make sense to keep it as a zone because it was a non-choice - every planet needs locally produced amenities, so the choice is in the what, not the if. Not every planet needs locally produced cg or alloys or unity or research or trade and the excess goes to the empire stockpile, so under or over producing on a particular planet is not the imminent game death that it seems to be being made out to be, and picking the best zones to pair with each other and the best buildings to compliment each other's zones is how you fine tune it. "I'm low on CG so I built another CG producer" isn't a puzzle, it's just busywork.

In my personal case, it is a question of never having "solved" a planet (probably the best part of the post-tile rework) and an ever-increasing planet development ceiling. Progression! Taller and taller planets! And it's a familiar game loop too; that's also a factor I have to admit.

Planets absolutely solve themselves in 3.1? There's a point where you run out of space to build and space for pops and the planet just becomes a place for pops to emigrate from to other planets. If you've never "solved" a single planet in 3.1 you've never seen the endgame.

E: that last bit was rhetorical flourish, not an accusation.

But I don't object to hard trade-offs at all. The harder the choice, the better. That's to me, the most interesting part of the zone system and one of the reasons I want to try it myself. Hard choices are interesting choices.

Which is why I don't like the big bucket system. I don't find them hard choices, just a tedious reinforcement of choices I made some time ago spitting out resources mostly divorced from the context of the planet they're built on. With zones you make two big choices (what are this planet's t2 exports?) each with 3 sub-choices (and how much do I value input efficiency vs per-job output vs per-pop output vs weirder manipulation?). Then you have to work with those choices (or make the big choice to completely restructure a planet), and they're reinforced every time time you grow your infrastructure. Hard choices that stick with no followup false choices - that's zones.

With a little cleanup of the actual building selection that is. Zones will live or die based on building setup and the beta got real dire when the repeatable statics came in.

 

[cryptkeeper]

I am sure they know this but the pop system has broken the origin Synthetic Fertility completely, It is broken in many ways, from you can't complete it fast enough and all your pops die much quicker then before due to them dying in larger groups, you do not get the pops registered into the identity repository, which means you do not get the research bonus. Even when all your pops die, it does not trigger the virtual leader's event. I am sure there are other origins and civics that are broken, Here is to hoping they fix them, before rolling out the update.

 

[Ilab]

Don't be hard on yourself. Vast majority of "negative" feedback about the beta is honest, constructive, well-researched, good faith, impersonal and tested criticism. It is not hate for the sake of hate, it is people pointing out problems before those problems could affect something they enjoy.

It is more concerning to read from people who approve of everything, don't question anything, complain about complaining and prioritize feelings of the design team over making sure the game would be in better shape (not talking about people who make genuine "positive" feedback).

Sadly, some people seem to feel the need to 'protect' the devs, as if those that complain about things where their mortal enemies or something, needless to say they are not, they just want the game to be better. Or at least I can't think of anything else right now. A couple weeks ago someone was having an argument over some of the leader changes with me and I recall that he kept saying DUMB things, like the balance was needed because leaders produced lots of resources and leader builds where broken. After some come and forth I asked him (because he was obviously playing something different) when was the last time he played a leader build of sorts. His answer? Right after paragon released. Since then he just ignores them he said.

So, yeah, he just jumped on the post to defend something even with data more outdated than my grandmas panties :v

And since I am here, did I say I hate the leaders changes already? No? Well, I do. Also hate the new Species Templates window (too much scrolling when you have lots of traits).