Most annoying game mechanics?

[Technotopia]

There are things that are not adding real challenge but annoy players.

My list:

Negative traits

They are just appearing on a leader which was developed for a long time and sometimes ruining him/her completely. Think of "+5% empire size from pops" on a councilor. There is little you can do except stacking -1 max negative traits on your species and traditions, which means you eliminate them completely.

What can be done:

Cheap solution - let player pick one bad trait of X. Pick lesser evil.

More interesting solution - stress mechanics like in CK3. Leaders get stressed at work. If you don't let them recover and force them doing something that they dislike (depending on ethos) - stress bar overfills and they get a coping mechanism which is negative trait. Now negative traits are just assigned depending on level. If stress gain is tied to level or age it will be more organic. Older they get faster they get stressed.

High strata jobless

Randomly pops lose specialist and elite jobs, which are immediately filled by other pops being promoted. Now it makes sense. But for a player it means that planet will have an unemployment indicator. you can't do anything about it for a long while especially if elite unemployed. Information about unemployment is very important for players that manually resettle pops. Once you have unemployed on popfarm worlds - move them to the worlds you are currently growing. It gets completely messed when these useless elite pops are counted as unemployed

Solution:

Toggle visibility of unemployment by strata. Also please add a filter or quick button to go to a planet with unemployment (now you need to scroll the list, which is annoying)

Suicidal fleets

When your small fleet tries to evade much more dangerous enemy - you tell them to go to fly away towards nearest system. You get intercepted. It makes sense to continue flying away while charging emergency ftl. Right? Wrong! Fleet commander only does one word from that reasonable instruction. Charge. Not like that... CHARGE!!! We are going to die honorably!!!

Solution:

Add combat stance - evade enemy while preparing eftl and jump immediately when charged. Fleets try to get as far as possible from the enemy full speed away from enemy fleet.

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Would you add your own game mechanics that you want to be removed or reworked?

 

[stilgarpl]

Extremely Big Numbers (especially at Late Game).

In the early and mid game, there is some strategic and tactical depth. You can win a battle/war even if you are weaker by using the better strategy. You can see how the battles progress.
Late game is just... enormous fleets that wipe the other in seconds. And ususally the winning side doesn't even take that much losses, so it's not like the sacrifice of that destroyed fleet meant something.
So, depending on RNG and how your game went crisis can be "that's too easy and boring, I should have set crisis multiplier to higher value" or "rage quit, there is no way to defeat that!". If the crisis spawns on the other side of the galaxy, you will win easy while it wipes out your opponents. If it spawns right in the middle of your empire... rage quit. That's not fun.

Three original crisises are just "let's flood the galaxy with huge fleets of enemies".

 

[Technotopia]

Extremely Big Numbers (especially at Late Game).

In the early and mid game, there is some strategic and tactical depth. You can win a battle/war even if you are weaker by using the better strategy. You can see how the battles progress.
Late game is just... enormous fleets that wipe the other in seconds. And ususally the winning side doesn't even take that much losses, so it's not like the sacrifice of that destroyed fleet meant something.
So, depending on RNG and how your game went crisis can be "that's too easy and boring, I should have set crisis multiplier to higher value" or "rage quit, there is no way to defeat that!". If the crisis spawns on the other side of the galaxy, you will win easy while it wipes out your opponents. If it spawns right in the middle of your empire... rage quit. That's not fun.

Three original crisises are just "let's flood the galaxy with huge fleets of enemies".

Actually, I'd disagree.

In late game there are many tactical options besides "make even bigger doomstack".

Particularly because you can make kiting carriers with arc emitter slots - it allows owning numerically bigger AI fleets.

You can use cloaked frigates to kill very fat and buff enemies. Or said CV battleships.

You can do a crippling alpha strike, kite, that eFTL.

You can divide and conquer - let AI split fleets and pick them separately.

If they are in single doomstack, you usually can avoid it and take systems while they are bombing a maginot world.

Most of the crisis fleets have counters, unbidden by carriers/missiles or kinetics with full shield. Prethoryn with X lances and either carriers or plasma. et.c.

 

[cdub8d]

Actually, I'd disagree.

In late game there are many tactical options besides "make even bigger doomstack".

Particularly because you can make kiting carriers with arc emitter slots - it allows owning numerically bigger AI fleets.

You can use cloaked frigates to kill very fat and buff enemies. Or said CV battleships.

You can do a crippling alpha strike, kite, that eFTL.

You can divide and conquer - let AI split fleets and pick them separately.

If they are in single doomstack, you usually can avoid it and take systems while they are bombing a maginot world.

Most of the crisis fleets have counters, unbidden by carriers/missiles or kinetics with full shield. Prethoryn with X lances and either carriers or plasma. et.c.

This is most fun in mp with a group of friends. Trying to figure out what types of fleets your enemies are making adds another layer of strategy.

 

[Dr. B]

Micromanagement after early game.
I challenge anyone to name a greater annoyance.

 

[A2ch0n]

Micromanagement after early game.

I at least never care about micro anything. Except if you count settle on a new planet and build some districts/buildins as micro. But if you talk about moving pops or activate/deactivate jobs i'll never do so. In fact it is not neccessary. At a certain point you get more resources than you need. And i don't care if it is not optimal as long i can stop any rampaging grandadmiral AI or 5x crisis. A template manager would be increadible tho.

To the OP: The most annoying mechanic from my point of view are the somewhat "forced" rivalries that most AI-Empires have. It's increadible how often i find a neighbouring empire with similar or even identical ethics that has no rival yet und the first thing they do is rivaling me instead of becoming a a prosperous ally...

 

[Kataclyszm]

Micromanagement after early game.
I challenge anyone to name a greater annoyance.

Damn, if only the game gave us automation tools to not have to do that.

Oh, wait.

 

[Wagner Joy Division]

Designing a meta ships that will murder all AI ships and never touching it again. Rock-Paper-Scissors are the worst combat mechanics ever, Endless Space and Galactic Civilizations series proved that long ago and we are still dealing with this.

 

[Adaman5280]

Not a game mechanic but a bug that's existed for way too long at this point and thus might as well be considered a game mechanic. I imagine most of us have our army transport ships following our fleets right? if so you might have noticed that this can sometimes cause your fleet to just fly around in circles instead of actually engaging with the enemy while your transports just rush right towards the enemy. Its as if the fleet is trying to mimic the intended transport ship behavior (circling to evade attacks) why does this happen? whys it not been fixed? who knows! but the moment i see my fleets exhibit this behavior it makes me wanna instantly quit the playthrough.

 

[Technotopia]

Micromanagement after early game.
I challenge anyone to name a greater annoyance.

It is certainly annoying, but it is not a specific game mechanic.

I.e. what feature must go or slightly tuned to make micromanaging slightly less pain or less necessary.

Something actionable for devs