Does any one know if not being able to stack atumodding traits is WAI or a bug>

[Abdulijubjub]

This is the game where building one district of each bottom-row type allows me to fill up the nine unlocked building slots with 3x 200 / 400 / 600 job buildings, right?

The version of the game where heavily mixed "Urban minus 3" colonies means I never need a basic resource colony?

It feels liked mixed colonies are the most basic default optimization.

If you have the space (wide), it is the most basic default way to shoot yourself in the foot. Though the incentive is very strong for the tallest empires.

Rural districts only have 200 job buildings (unless you're going Agrarian Idyll or Subterranean).


This is the game with designations that reward only one job, finite orbital ring slots, research/resource support districts that scale (weakly) quadratically (but only for one job at a time), and (relatively) expensive support buildings that become more efficient the more jobs they support (though this last is a very weak incentive toward specialization except in extreme cases like building only one district, as strategics are now cheap).

For that first rural district:

• Building 1 booster and 2 job buildings costs 8.33x as many minerals (2500 vs. 300), with 7x as much upkeep (1+3*2 vs. 1) and gives 2.33x as many jobs as just adding a new district on another planet. This is a strong incentive if you are going tall, but a strong anti-incentive if you are going wide.
  • That is: 3.5x as many minerals per job, and 3x as much upkeep per job.
• Once the second tier of booster is unlocked, it costs ~14x as much, with ~11x as much upkeep, for the same jobs, counting a strategic as roughly 2 energy.

For tall, this is a strong incentive (2.33x job density = better, don't care about construction cost or upkeep).
For wide (or even just not-tall), this is a strong disincentive.

With automation, the disincentive is weaker, though, as you pay 1+2+10+2=14 energy for 250 automated jobs, instead of 10 energy for 150 by building another district elsewhere. With the upgraded booster, it becomes 1+~6+10+2=19 energy for 250, instead of 10 for 150. And then orbital rings come along and make it shooting yourself in the foot again.

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There also are incentives the other way: planetary ascension reducing sprawl (encouraging density at any cost), logistic upkeep incentivizing local production more strongly than losing the designation hurts it, and a bunch of other smaller mechanics (like Egg Laying, amenities from side jobs, etc.) that may be situational.

But they more encourage "mixed colonies" as in e.g. a combo mining/forge world, or (for machines) a combo generator/research or generator/unity world). They do less to encourage making exactly one district of every type.

Stellaris has lots of competing systems with opposite incentives, so that you can choose which ones you lean into, and so that different empires interact with them in different ways.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

No, I meant you COULD NOT DO meticulous auto-modding BECAUSE you were limited to whole-planet granularity.

Auth could solve this with slaves at different strata, or by manually resettling single pops to push them into position.

Egal could not ever solve this (and some other empires would also have difficulty, and many players would find the micro too tedious).

That was my point.

But... you could do it. I did do it. Even as an egalitarian.

And the micro was tedious, which is why they added automodding traits. Those traits still solve the problem (roughly as imperfectly as they did before. at least in my opinion).

It's a different argument.

In 4.0 it seems like we only have one Elite job type per colony, so optimizing for that job type is indeed a benefit of the new system -- specifically because the new system handles mixed-jobs poorly, and a single job per stratum shows it in its best light.

But that's a very small minority of jobs, as most of the strongest auto-mod traits apply to Workers, and Workers seem to be mixed.

Elites are a small minority of jobs (10%, ish, as they go 2-3-4 at 10-25-50 pops).

But managers, priests, and traders and (for some empires) anglers, artisans, rangers, pearl divers, etc. aren't a small minority. At least, no more than any other job.

I know I'm answering these out of order (sorry), but with the point I made in the last post... I don't think mixed workers is actually very good except for tall empires. So just... don't mix your workers if you've got lots of automodding traits, and you'll be fine.

The every-color Researcher buff you get from a 3-point auto-mod is worse than the 1-point single-color research traits now, and in 4.0 it's pretty easy to make three single-color research colonies.

I don't disagree with the main thrust of the argument, but I feel like "I spend 10x as many minerals to squeeze in 2.33x as many jobs per rural district" and "I forgo thousands of jobs per planet by not building research labs so that I can sort my research colonies by color" cannot exist in the same empire. The latter does get better pop efficiency (support districts), but it gets much worse job density (which the former prioritizes).

Different empires may do those things, but not the same empire.

I would say "automodding could give the specialized traits" but then it would torpedo output in the more typical mixed research planets (assuming no other changes to automodding traits).

Honestly I'm not sure auto-modding should exist at all in 4.0 -- they made some sense in 3.x due to the one-pop-per-job structure, but in 4.0 pop groups negate that structure.

How would you feel if Targeted Gene Expressions and Fungible Circuitry had "automodding traits are always 100% efficient" as one of their effects?

That is: you get 100% of the trait value on all jobs, regardless of distribution. Basically, what we had in version 3.x, but now gated between a mid/late game technology.

 

[Red Death]

And the micro was tedious, which is why they added automodding traits. Those traits still solve the problem (roughly as imperfectly as they did before. at least in my opinion).

They solved the problem perfectly (as in, replaced the micromanagement completely), unless by imperfectly you are referring to the extra 1 point cost.

Right now they "solve" the problem much more imperfectly, only tempered by the fact that job prioritisation is also much more imperfect (something that might very well be improved eventually).

Elites are a small minority of jobs (10%, ish, as they go 2-3-4 at 10-25-50 pops).

But managers, priests, and traders and (for some empires) anglers, artisans, rangers, pearl divers, etc. aren't a small minority. At least, no more than any other job.

I know I'm answering these out of order (sorry), but with the point I made in the last post... I don't think mixed workers is actually very good except for tall empires. So just... don't mix your workers if you've got lots of automodding traits, and you'll be fine.

And in the cases where you do mix outputs, which is what the developers have said they wanted people to do more, you suddenly cannot make use of this micromanagement reduction option because it is so sub-optimal? For no thematic reason? I'm sorry, the idea that the developers intended that does not seem credible still.

How would you feel if Targeted Gene Expressions and Fungible Circuitry had "automodding traits are always 100% efficient" as one of their effects?

That is: you get 100% of the trait value on all jobs, regardless of distribution. Basically, what we had in version 3.x, but now gated between a mid/late game technology.

To be honest, that is much closer to what 3.12 did, if you add the same adjustment time/delay to it. But I would argue that there is not much point in having these traits without that function. The current version is non-intuitive (borderline noob-trap), so just gate the whole thing behind those techs.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

They solved the problem perfectly (as in, replaced the micromanagement completely), unless by imperfectly you are referring to the extra 1 point cost.

Right now they "solve" the problem much more imperfectly, only tempered by the fact that job prioritisation is also much more imperfect (something that might very well be improved eventually).

And it's always been slightly inferior to manually optimizing:

In 3.14:

• 3 points instead of 2 (or 1)
• Doesn't fully cover multi-output jobs

In 4.0:

• 3 points instead of 2 (or 1)
• Fully covers multi-output jobs
• ~2-3% lower on specialized worlds, ~7% lower on unspecialized

Ex. In 3.14, my Prosperity Preacher spamming megacorp was incentivized to make a Traditional+Thrifty template to work the unity ecu. The incentives for manually optimizing were quite large (if you had these mixed output jobs). In 4.0, Traditional covers all outputs, and the incentive to microoptimize is just "get +10% instead of +9%".

1% unity+trade << 25% trade, thus I don't care to do it manually.

And in the cases where you do mix outputs, which is what the developers have said they wanted people to do more, you suddenly cannot make use of this micromanagement reduction option because it is so sub-optimal? For no thematic reason? I'm sorry, the idea that the developers intended that does not seem credible still.

You can use it. It's just not perfect all the time.

It's still perfect on the sorts of mixed output that this update strongly incentivized: mixing workers and specialists. But it's not perfect for mixing multiple types of specialists, which I don't think is encouraged (except for artisans, which, again, for the.... 8th? time in this thread, I think should be excluded from these efficiency calculations).

And, most importantly... not all empire have to use these traits. Efficient Processors and traits like it exist for a reason.

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Did the developers say they want you to mix farmers/miners/technicians on the same planet? Where?

To be honest, that is much closer to what 3.12 did, if you add the same adjustment time/delay to it. But I would argue that there is not much point in having these traits without that function. The current version is non-intuitive (borderline noob-trap), so just gate the whole thing behind those techs.

It makes them stronger than what 3.12 did. 3.12 buffed a single resource per job; this would buff them all (doing the 3.12 equivalent of swapping in 2-3 traits, for some jobs).

I strongly disagree that there's no point in having it without that function. And it's definitely not a noob trap (at least, not once noobs have been told the general "specialize your planets" wisdom). Adaptive Frames, in my empire, is outperforming what Efficient Processors would have given me, and obviously it's massively outperforming what taking a single boosting trait (like starting with Superconductive, the meta trait for years) would have.

But also, completely gating them behind those techs is what I first proposed. "Tangent" on this post:

Does any one know if not being able to stack atumodding traits is WAI or a bug>

I noticed that pops cannot get bonesses from more than one automod trait. I am uncertain if this is working as intneded or a bug. I reported it as a bug but now I am unsure. I assumed one the beenfits of mutation was supposed to be stacking...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Red Death]

Ex. In 3.14, my Prosperity Preacher spamming megacorp was incentivized to make a Traditional+Thrifty template to work the unity ecu. The incentives for manually optimizing were quite large (if you had these mixed output jobs).

Fair point on the mixed output jobs, that's true and doesn't really have an equivalent now.

In 4.0, Traditional covers all outputs, and the incentive to microoptimize is just "get +10% instead of +9%".

Eh, that's on how you build your planets, you really should not take it as default, even if you believe it with good reason to be optimal.

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Did the developers say they want you to mix farmers/miners/technicians on the same planet? Where?

Planetary deficits.

It makes them stronger than what 3.12 did. 3.12 buffed a single resource per job; this would buff them all (doing the 3.12 equivalent of swapping in 2-3 traits, for some jobs).

Hmmmm, I guess that makes it slightly stronger, because in most cases there was one major resource with a smaller side-bonus.

I strongly disagree that there's no point in having it without that function. And it's definitely not a noob trap (at least, not once noobs have been told the general "specialize your planets" wisdom).

I do think that still fits my definition of noob trap. Degrees of noob I suppose.

Adaptive Frames, in my empire, is outperforming what Efficient Processors would have given me, and obviously it's massively outperforming what taking a single boosting trait (like starting with Superconductive, the meta trait for years) would have.

Ah, but how does it compare to an empire that has a constellation of (sub-)species with all the different single boosting traits, roughly matching your job distribution? That's the crux of the question I suppose.

As long as the auto-modding traits can match that, they're fulfilling their purpose.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Eh, that's on how you build your planets, you really should not take it as default, even if you believe it with good reason to be optimal.

Fair. But "specialized planets are better than a mishmash in lots of subtle ways" isn't exactly new (or unique to this mechanic).

Planetary deficits

cost 12.5% of imported goods value, as trade. Meaningful, but not crippling.

That means that e.g. it makes sense to co-locate mining and forging.

But it doesn't generally make sense to locally generate everyone's food, because then you're either paying more for one-off infrastructure that only gets used for a few jobs, or else you're missing that infrastructure and the jobs are less efficient.

Ex. It would be silly to pay an extra 15-ish energy to have an extra Food Processing Hub (and pay 1.25 trade to import the motes it needs as input) in order to save ~6.25 trade on importing 50 food for 5k pops. Especially if the alternative is growing food on a world with an additional +25% from designation.

But it does it make it cheaper if that's something you wanted to do anyway (Agrarian Idyll, Egg Laying, etc.).

Hmmmm, I guess that makes it slightly stronger, because in most cases there was one major resource with a smaller side-bonus.

I think the kinds of civics I enjoy may have biased me toward seeing this as a bigger issue than it is. I like the civics that do funny things with jobs.

I do think that still fits my definition of noob trap. Degrees of noob I suppose.

Fair.

Ah, but how does it compare to an empire that has a constellation of (sub-)species with all the different single boosting traits, roughly matching your job distribution? That's the crux of the question I suppose.

As long as the auto-modding traits can match that, they're fulfilling their purpose.

In my current empire: about 80% on average (eyeballing, didn't actually calculate everything). If they fix the silly "artisans/metallurgists tank automodding efficiency for no reason" thing, it would be very close to 100%. So I'm missing around 2-3% efficiency, across the empire, compared to a micro nightmare.

I think it would roughly match a population that roughly matches your job distribution (though, as HFY pointed out, it's already lost for researchers because it does Logic Engines instead of e.g. Engineering Core). And it's definitely beating Efficient Processors.

But I don't think it needs to match. It just needs to be close enough that the desire to optimize as a chore goes away. But if someone likes that sort of thing: more power to them. Though annoyingly I think it's harder to get exactly the right pops in the right jobs, now.