Most annoying game mechanics?

[Obblera]

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.

You actually still can micro. For example you can use the system map to order ships around to certain places. So you can get the other fleet to waste their opening alpha strike salvo on some random corvette squadron or your starbase, allowing your fleet to fire big guns first and win.

Fleet losses not mattering in the short term is I think OK. You went to war for the pops, planets, and star systems. You don't actually care about fleet losses except where they prevent or allow you to fight over actual objectives. If a fleet vanishes, you move on the planet and call it a success.

 

[Riukus]

1. Crime syndicates.
2. Galactic community.
3. Cosmic storms.

 

[Xaelyn]

As someone who enjoys playing on the taller side of things it's actually empire size.
I like the effect higher empire size instills, but I don't like the way it's calculated.

1) I feel that empire size should come from Colonies, Systems and branch offices. Pops is a weird choice as playing tall is not about having less pops per se. You want to maximize the pops per colony so you will have less because you have less colonies. As such I see pop and districts as a derivative of colonies. Looking at the current system, even doing a 1 system/planet challenge will make you go over 100 empire size which is idiotic. and beyond the point of ES.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think that vassels should give an empire size increase as well based on the terms / type of vassel to portray the administrive burdon of keeping the vassel/agreements.
2) There should be no reductions to empire size / empire size effects. If you want low ES you need to play tall period. It currently limits the way you can effectively build tall as you basically need to stack these bonusses and soft forces you to always go for soverign guardianship / fanatic pacifist. For wide I feel you already will always outpace the empire size effect so I see really no point in reductions.

I think if they would redo the calculations it would have a number of benefits, first of all the devs have to decide where the line of optimal tall is, e.g. how many colonies/systems can you have before breaking the 100 empire size limit as you can no longer rely on reductions. Next to that it provides more build variety for tall play as stacking ES reductions is no longer needed opening up other civis / ethics.

I don't mind empire size from pops because a pop is always more productive than the penalty that comes with it, even with no size reductions. Unless your actively and deliberately sabotaging yourself by keeping said pops unemployed or working as clerks, but that doesn't really count.

Colonies are similarly always good (excluding of course virtuality ascension), simply because of pop growth, but that is apparently changing come 4.0 though to what extent it is not yet clear.

Districts can be overbuilt such that the penalty outweighs the benefit, but much like with pops this requires you to be actively sabotaging yourself just so you can complain about it. As long as you are actually working the jobs you get from districts they are a net benefit.

Systems are where I hate empire size, because many systems produce next to nothing and aren't worth the size they cost, incentivizing the player to commit that most heinous of crimes against sapient life, bordergore. It's also the category with the least ability to stack reduction modifiers, with just two -25% modifiers available from expansion traditons and the megacorp exclusive private prospectors civic.

 

[Critical Ethics]

As someone who enjoys playing on the taller side of things it's actually empire size.
I like the effect higher empire size instills, but I don't like the way it's calculated.

1) I feel that empire size should come from Colonies, Systems and branch offices. Pops is a weird choice as playing tall is not about having less pops per se. You want to maximize the pops per colony so you will have less because you have less colonies. As such I see pop and districts as a derivative of colonies. Looking at the current system, even doing a 1 system/planet challenge will make you go over 100 empire size which is idiotic. and beyond the point of ES.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think that vassels should give an empire size increase as well based on the terms / type of vassel to portray the administrive burdon of keeping the vassel/agreements.
2) There should be no reductions to empire size / empire size effects. If you want low ES you need to play tall period. It currently limits the way you can effectively build tall as you basically need to stack these bonusses and soft forces you to always go for soverign guardianship / fanatic pacifist. For wide I feel you already will always outpace the empire size effect so I see really no point in reductions.

I think if they would redo the calculations it would have a number of benefits, first of all the devs have to decide where the line of optimal tall is, e.g. how many colonies/systems can you have before breaking the 100 empire size limit as you can no longer rely on reductions. Next to that it provides more build variety for tall play as stacking ES reductions is no longer needed opening up other civis / ethics.

Empire size isn't (directly) about boosting tall empires, It's just a form of upkeep and the point of upkeep is to slow down (but not remove) positive feedback loops from expansion either sideways or upwards, which indirectly boosts tall empires.

Empire size is a metric, not a goal, and it can be fun to try to stay under it for a personal challenge but it's not why the level 100 grace period it there. It's there so you don't shoot yourself in the foot with early expansion and because a baseline of 100 makes it easier to to do percentile math. Not building an extra science lab to avoid the 0.4% science increase from hitting 102 empire size is like not building a new energy district because that would bring your total energy upkeep to 51 instead of 50.

Empire size reducers are just the unity and research equivalents of the pop and district upkeep reducers.

Spoiler: Empire Size is Upkeep explainer for anyone who cares

If you grow a pop and build a district or building to employ that pop then your net empire income is reduced because you now need to pay:

• Food to feed the pop, and to feed all the pops paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Energy to pay for the district/building upkeep, and the upkeep of all the district/buildings paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Strategic Resources to pay for the SR costs of advanced job upgrades, and the upkeep of all the advanced job upgrades paying for all the upkeeps on this list
• Consumer Goods to pay for the extra amenities the pop consumes, and for the pop's living standards, and possibly for the job itself, and all the CG upkeep of all the pops paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Minerals to pay for the Consumer Goods, and possibly for the job itself, and for all the CG and job upkeep of all the pops and jobs paying for all the upkeeps on this list.

Civics and origins and Lithoids and Robots and Hive Minds shuffle things around a bit, but overall if you build more mineral production you lose a bit of that to just keeping up with the increased mineral costs of your mineral production, and you reduce your net income of all the other resources at the same time. Every expansion, vertically or horizontally, kicks in a bit of red queen's race just to keep all your plates spinning at the same speed.

But rapidly expanding out to grab more systems doesn't innately reduce your unity or research like it does your energy. Filling out a new research job doesn't lose a little research the way a new food job loses a little food. Unity and Research exist outside this loop. We could solve this by adding unity and research upkeep items throughout the supply chain, but instead we have Empire Size. If you build a new research building and fill it with new pops your empire size goes up, increasing the cost of all your research a bit, which is effectively the same as reducing your research output a bit. If you increase the horizontal or vertical size of your empire you need to dedicate some of that increase to research and unity just to keep up with your existing effective output - same as everything else.

Alloys are kind of half and half - they have some direct upkeep increases (habitat districts), but the main upkeep reduction is in increased ship costs from needing more ships to defend your territory and to keep your influence coming in. Personally I think they should tack alloy upkeep onto a few things, like outposts and starbases, but that's a conversation for another time.

I expect a rebalance of the costs for job fillers vs job producers given the increased flexibility of jobs per district and pops per job in the new system (and at least in the beta the cost per 100 is much lower than the old cost per 1) but as long as empire size is how we do unity and research upkeep then fully employed pops are going to have to be part of it. If they got rid of empire size they'd need to replace it with something else or it would make it so much harder to have stuff like utopian abundance or the dimensional portal.

I'd be very interested in hearing the specific bits of empire size applying to pops you find annoying though! I used to get very annoyed about how being over/under 100 was flagged with negative/positive colour coding. I'm much happier now it stays the same colour always and all the modifiers are a uniform yellow.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Systems are where I hate empire size, because many systems produce next to nothing and aren't worth the size they cost, incentivizing the player to commit that most heinous of crimes against sapient life, bordergore. It's also the category with the least ability to stack reduction modifiers, with just two -25% modifiers available from expansion traditons and the megacorp exclusive private prospectors civic.

Systems are easier to explain - they're entirely gated by availability and resources, with no pop growth limitations or food upkeep or CG upkeep behind them. Grab a system with energy, minerals, and research in it and the research is completely out of the feedback loop. The system entirely pays for itself with no opportunity cost other than not having spent your influence to grab a different system first. More is just better. So removing empire size from systems isn't an option, at least not without replacing it with something else.

That there exist bad systems that end up being a net drain on your economy absolutely needs to be addressed. I dislike how space based resources are kind of an afterthought in a space game if you don't go hard into kilo and megastructures. Personally I'd love if they bumped every deposit up to at least +3 and have galaxy creation run a final pass to drop an extra deposit into any system that's just straight garbage.

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

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.

---

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

Negative traits randomly appearing is annoying but then that yields value to certain Traditions and Traits. Aptitude and Harmony yield -1 respectively. Talented and Elevated Synapses(Overtuned only) yield -1 and if you Genetically or Cybernetically ascend, you can get another -1 via Erudite or Enhanced Memory/Learning Algorithms respectively. All you need is roughly -4 Maximum Negative Traits to effectively put the risk at zero. Personally would love a way to "remove" them and if Aptitude Agenda was reworked to do that... I would honestly take Aptitude to do that every time.

As for Demotion, that I agree with 100% but that's where Harmony and/or Shared Burdens Civic(which needs to be buffed to match Harmony) comes in. -75% Demotion time does a lot. Finally, the fix for Suicidal fleets is to implement what they have for Science Ships: Fleet stance: Evasive(where the fleet runs), Passive(do w/e) or Aggressive(engage!!). Evasive increases disengagement/ftl opportunities while Passive yields nothing and Aggressive yields a bonus like No Retreat.

 

[geert711]

Empire size isn't (directly) about boosting tall empires, It's just a form of upkeep and the point of upkeep is to slow down (but not remove) positive feedback loops from expansion either sideways or upwards, which indirectly boosts tall empires.

Empire size is a metric, not a goal, and it can be fun to try to stay under it for a personal challenge but it's not why the level 100 grace period it there. It's there so you don't shoot yourself in the foot with early expansion and because a baseline of 100 makes it easier to to do percentile math. Not building an extra science lab to avoid the 0.4% science increase from hitting 102 empire size is like not building a new energy district because that would bring your total energy upkeep to 51 instead of 50.

Empire size reducers are just the unity and research equivalents of the pop and district upkeep reducers.

Spoiler: Empire Size is Upkeep explainer for anyone who cares

If you grow a pop and build a district or building to employ that pop then your net empire income is reduced because you now need to pay:

• Food to feed the pop, and to feed all the pops paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Energy to pay for the district/building upkeep, and the upkeep of all the district/buildings paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Strategic Resources to pay for the SR costs of advanced job upgrades, and the upkeep of all the advanced job upgrades paying for all the upkeeps on this list
• Consumer Goods to pay for the extra amenities the pop consumes, and for the pop's living standards, and possibly for the job itself, and all the CG upkeep of all the pops paying for all the upkeeps on this list.
• Minerals to pay for the Consumer Goods, and possibly for the job itself, and for all the CG and job upkeep of all the pops and jobs paying for all the upkeeps on this list.

Civics and origins and Lithoids and Robots and Hive Minds shuffle things around a bit, but overall if you build more mineral production you lose a bit of that to just keeping up with the increased mineral costs of your mineral production, and you reduce your net income of all the other resources at the same time. Every expansion, vertically or horizontally, kicks in a bit of red queen's race just to keep all your plates spinning at the same speed.

But rapidly expanding out to grab more systems doesn't innately reduce your unity or research like it does your energy. Filling out a new research job doesn't lose a little research the way a new food job loses a little food. Unity and Research exist outside this loop. We could solve this by adding unity and research upkeep items throughout the supply chain, but instead we have Empire Size. If you build a new research building and fill it with new pops your empire size goes up, increasing the cost of all your research a bit, which is effectively the same as reducing your research output a bit. If you increase the horizontal or vertical size of your empire you need to dedicate some of that increase to research and unity just to keep up with your existing effective output - same as everything else.

Alloys are kind of half and half - they have some direct upkeep increases (habitat districts), but the main upkeep reduction is in increased ship costs from needing more ships to defend your territory and to keep your influence coming in. Personally I think they should tack alloy upkeep onto a few things, like outposts and starbases, but that's a conversation for another time.

I expect a rebalance of the costs for job fillers vs job producers given the increased flexibility of jobs per district and pops per job in the new system (and at least in the beta the cost per 100 is much lower than the old cost per 1) but as long as empire size is how we do unity and research upkeep then fully employed pops are going to have to be part of it. If they got rid of empire size they'd need to replace it with something else or it would make it so much harder to have stuff like utopian abundance or the dimensional portal.

I'd be very interested in hearing the specific bits of empire size applying to pops you find annoying though! I used to get very annoyed about how being over/under 100 was flagged with negative/positive colour coding. I'm much happier now it stays the same colour always and all the modifiers are a uniform yellow.

What I don’t like about ES on pops is that it’s not really manageable. I can choose not to settle a colony or grab a couple of systems to get that black hole, but pop growth is happening regardless. Sure I could disable pop growth but that’s not a viable strategy in itself. I guess I like that my direct decisions affect things instead of having reducers help managing things. I feel that grabbing the colony in itself is what should drive the ES increase As this is the active decision. That’s also why I don’t like the reducers. ES could work nicely without, making the decision of tall vs wide the driving factor. I get your point that it’s not 100% intended for this distinction but it could work so good imo, making tall builds more diverse without creating the mental gymnastics civics like sovereign guardianship

 

[Critical Ethics]

What I don’t like about ES on pops is that it’s not really manageable. I can choose not to settle a colony or grab a couple of systems to get that black hole, but pop growth is happening regardless. Sure I could disable pop growth but that’s not a viable strategy in itself. I guess I like that my direct decisions affect things instead of having reducers help managing things. I feel that grabbing the colony in itself is what should drive the ES increase As this is the active decision. That’s also why I don’t like the reducers. ES could work nicely without, making the decision of tall vs wide the driving factor. I get your point that it’s not 100% intended for this distinction but it could work so good imo, making tall builds more diverse without creating the mental gymnastics civics like sovereign guardianship

I get what you're saying, but pop growth also increases your "empire size" when it comes to energy, food, amenities, living standards CG, and minerals (for the CG).

I guess my beef with Empire Size is that it's very opaque. Food increases are linear and easy to see; +1 pop = -1 food (before modifiers), you know how much food you have, so you know how much more food you need to make. It's very visible and therefore isn't a concern. But ES is weird and confusing and even when you know how little impact it has it's really hard to describe how little impact it has. Determining how much research and unity you're "losing" to each pop is a weird ratio based on the function:

(current research or unity)*(1+new empire size modifier))/(1+existing empire size modifier)

but can be summarised as going from 100 to 200 empire size aka doubling the entire size of your empire only requires you to increase them by 20% each. The other effects are similarly nothingburgers compared to the benefits. Mechanically it works fine, but I see so many people stressing out about going over 100 even though if you look at the numbers it's always beneficial - but looking at the numbers is very hard to do! So you have a whole bunch of people thinking that to play tall they need to pay attention to their empire size, when really all that does is trick them into playing skinny and short.

 

[Fnhatic]

The part I don't understand with Empire Size is... Vassals. That basically eliminates the whole spirit of the law with it, and vassals feel stupid to have. I mean no offense to the system but it's just me turning "auto manage colony" on and letting the AI deal with problems while I just suck up resources.

At the end of the day, what's the difference?

A civilization that chooses not to take vassals is literally just losing out on enormous advantages. There's no reason not to do it but I feel that's a problem. It's like megastructures, they're so crucial to late game economy you cannot afford to not take the ascension perk for Dyson spheres.

I think Empire Size should be manageable by the player with investment.

1) Sectorization and local government should be the primary way to control it. A planetary governor should do his part to manage it, and a sector governor over those planets should be even better, making a bureaucratic system.

2) Starbase modules or buildings that expert political control over a local region of space within a number of jumps (basically think trade system but for empire size amelioration). Why not allow a Starbase to host a sector with a governor just for that purpose?

3) Planetary structures (ie: bureaucrats) that also do their part. In fact that is literally the description of the bureaucratic job, "holding the empire together". Not saying it needs to stack with their +unity job but am I crazy or wasn't that a really really old feature of Stellaris? Every planet should have an option to develop local government with a unique building to manage ES growth.

As for the problem with "dead" systems, isn't it just as sensible to tie empire size to orbitals and stations in play?

In this way you have to expand your bureaucracy with your empire. We'd need a way to get more officials though. And honestly a way to eliminate micromanaging their perks. Just give me boring bureaucrats that do boring paperwork.

I kind of want a way to have "sub leaders" now that can't do anything special but get no perks... basically allow players to hire them and they use their skill level only at HALF efficiency, but don't count against your limit,and aren't at risk of randomly becoming the fucking president lmao. A "basic" admiral for a fleet. A "basic" scientist who just manages his labs.

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

I wasn't around early on but if memory serves, Bureaucrats would effectively reduce Empire Sprawl instead of generating Unity(because, afaik, it didn't exist). This made it really easy to keep that value small and otherwise made going Tall kind of moot because Wide could simply offset it with 1-2 Bureaucrat worlds. The point made regarding Vassals is a glaring loophole when it comes to Empire Size. MegaCorps get charged Empire Sprawl for each Branch Office they have. Why Vassals are not included in this is beyond me because you basically get "resources" without having to invest the time or effort to administrate them. Even releasing small "Satellite" Empires for the sole purpose of using them as "vassals" without their territory counting towards you is borderline "cheating".

To me, I feel the total Empire Size of your vassal(s) should be charged to you and any Empire modifiers towards Empire Size cannot be applied to them. The only way to reduce Empire Sprawl from vassals is to either limit how many you have or take certain Civics/Ascension Perks(like Shared Destiny) to reduce it. It'll never be 0 however like it is now.

 

[Xaelyn]

I much preferred the old administrative capacity system, I think they should have tweaked the numbers to make it more expensive and less of a no brainer to always build administrative capacity rather than exceed it, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and giving us the current much less interactive but equally no brainer empire size system.

Turning my capital into a cursed bureaucratic ecumenopolis just doesn't hit the same now that bureaucrats just produce unity.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I much preferred the old administrative capacity system, I think they should have tweaked the numbers to make it more expensive and less of a no brainer to always build administrative capacity rather than exceed it, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and giving us the current much less interactive but equally no brainer empire size system.

Turning my capital into a cursed bureaucratic ecumenopolis just doesn't hit the same now that bureaucrats just produce unity.

I'd like if bureaucrats give edict funds and maybe logistics funds instead of unity, and maybe a token amount of a few other cap increasers like bonus fleet cap and starbase cap. Then adjust the unity mechanic so you don't need a unity spammer job at all.

 

[HFY]

I wasn't around early on but if memory serves, Bureaucrats would effectively reduce Empire Sprawl instead of generating Unity(because, afaik, it didn't exist). This made it really easy to keep that value small and otherwise made going Tall kind of moot because Wide could simply offset it with 1-2 Bureaucrat worlds. The point made regarding Vassals is a glaring loophole when it comes to Empire Size. MegaCorps get charged Empire Sprawl for each Branch Office they have. Why Vassals are not included in this is beyond me because you basically get "resources" without having to invest the time or effort to administrate them. Even releasing small "Satellite" Empires for the sole purpose of using them as "vassals" without their territory counting towards you is borderline "cheating".

To me, I feel the total Empire Size of your vassal(s) should be charged to you and any Empire modifiers towards Empire Size cannot be applied to them. The only way to reduce Empire Sprawl from vassals is to either limit how many you have or take certain Civics/Ascension Perks(like Shared Destiny) to reduce it. It'll never be 0 however like it is now.

We needed Unity even in Tiles -- my first building on a new colony was often a Monument.

Bureaucrats (which reduced empire sprawl) were introduced with the CPU-melting pop inflation of 2.2 which also massively increased empire sprawl. In 2.2, Unity came from ruler jobs, Priests, and Culture Workers.

I much preferred the old administrative capacity system, I think they should have tweaked the numbers to make it more expensive and less of a no brainer to always build administrative capacity rather than exceed it, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and giving us the current much less interactive but equally no brainer empire size system.

Turning my capital into a cursed bureaucratic ecumenopolis just doesn't hit the same now that bureaucrats just produce unity.

Yeah, and the flavor of Unity ("commission artists" / "build a monument" / "send artifacts to museums") doesn't really fit with Bureaucrats either.

Honestly the idea that there's only one job which must be spammed to generate Unity is a bit lacking.

I'd like it if different empires had different ways to generate Unity, with Culture Workers as the generic fallback option.

 

[Red Death]

The part I don't understand with Empire Size is... Vassals. That basically eliminates the whole spirit of the law with it, and vassals feel stupid to have. I mean no offense to the system but it's just me turning "auto manage colony" on and letting the AI deal with problems while I just suck up resources.

At the end of the day, what's the difference?

A civilization that chooses not to take vassals is literally just losing out on enormous advantages. There's no reason not to do it but I feel that's a problem. It's like megastructures, they're so crucial to late game economy you cannot afford to not take the ascension perk for Dyson spheres.

I think Empire Size should be manageable by the player with investment.

1) Sectorization and local government should be the primary way to control it. A planetary governor should do his part to manage it, and a sector governor over those planets should be even better, making a bureaucratic system.

2) Starbase modules or buildings that expert political control over a local region of space within a number of jumps (basically think trade system but for empire size amelioration). Why not allow a Starbase to host a sector with a governor just for that purpose?

3) Planetary structures (ie: bureaucrats) that also do their part. In fact that is literally the description of the bureaucratic job, "holding the empire together". Not saying it needs to stack with their +unity job but am I crazy or wasn't that a really really old feature of Stellaris? Every planet should have an option to develop local government with a unique building to manage ES growth.

As for the problem with "dead" systems, isn't it just as sensible to tie empire size to orbitals and stations in play?

In this way you have to expand your bureaucracy with your empire. We'd need a way to get more officials though. And honestly a way to eliminate micromanaging their perks. Just give me boring bureaucrats that do boring paperwork.

I kind of want a way to have "sub leaders" now that can't do anything special but get no perks... basically allow players to hire them and they use their skill level only at HALF efficiency, but don't count against your limit,and aren't at risk of randomly becoming the fucking president lmao. A "basic" admiral for a fleet. A "basic" scientist who just manages his labs.

I much preferred the old administrative capacity system, I think they should have tweaked the numbers to make it more expensive and less of a no brainer to always build administrative capacity rather than exceed it, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and giving us the current much less interactive but equally no brainer empire size system.

Turning my capital into a cursed bureaucratic ecumenopolis just doesn't hit the same now that bureaucrats just produce unity.

Any methods of reducing or eliminating Empire Size kills what the system is trying to accomplish: Not letting larger empires research (linearly) increasingly fast compared to normal empires, even if most other resources do follow that pattern. Without it, a federation has less than a snowball's chance in hell against a single empire of even a portion of the same total size. That's exactly what happened in the "bureaucrats increase administrative cap" system. It was really bad for inter-empire dynamics and research balance, and that's why it was removed.

And before you ask, yes I do believe the devs should severely cut down the various "decrease Empire Size" modifiers you can collect.

In my opinion the only alternative for Empire Size without killing the balance of the game is a complete overhaul of the research system.

As for Vassals: Yes that's another outlier. Originally it was balanced a bit by only being able to tax a relatively small percentage of their resources, but you can probably go too high on those now. I guess Subjects could also add to your Empire Size at some percentage of their own.

 

[Ikael]

Annoying mechanics? Nothing too serious, but they are quite a bunch:

-> Piracy in general (but fortunately that's getting reworked/expunged)
-> Vassals ****ing with Federations via unwanted wars, illogical admissions, and skewered voting weights
-> Living with empty ascension perk slots because you need tech rolls that simply won't appear. It is demoralizing to invest heavily in unity only to be met with... this
-> The GalCom taking forever to form, only to get into a slow process of advancing a resolution that has nothing to do with the actual state of the Galaxy
-> Some factions are almost impossible to please, while others are happy by default. The same imbalance remains when it comes to ethic attraction
-> Being unable to know at first glance wtf happened after a massive fleet engagement with a lopsided win / lose ratio. I mean, yes, you theoretically could, but it is needlessly opaque imho. And the bigger the fleet, the more unreadable engagements becomes
-> Not knowing whether I can ascend a planet or not, without actually checking out said planet in particular. Well, planetary ascension is yet another gratuitously opaque system, despite it being one of my favorite builds

 

[Andy_Dandy]

What's annoying me the most is the new Empire Focus. It's driving me mad. Really dislike such features holding the players hand. Makes me think at least twice if I really want to start a new game. It's so annoying when your favorite game treats you as a child.

It should really be possible to turn this feature off. It's not vital in any way, just annoying.

 

[Krozam]

Not sure if I'd describe it as "annoying" or just "incomprehensible" and "infuriating," but the "critical resource shortage" is something that very nearly made me rage quit my current game. I conquered a space station from an awakened fallen empire, but it has some components that require dark matter, a resource no one else than the fallen empires has even seen in this galaxy (otherwise, I reckon it would be available on the market). So, just because I couldn't support one space station's need for dark matter, my whole empire suffered crippling penalties (-30% resource production, -75% sublight speed). Absolutely ridiculous. I couldn't even downgrade or otherwise control that station, since there was an unconquered planet in the system and my ground troops were still too far away, I couldn't wait. So I had to release the station back to the enemy right away. What a waste of time and ships...

 

[DaReal-BurningDeath]

Not sure if I'd describe it as "annoying" or just "incomprehensible" and "infuriating," but the "critical resource shortage" is something that very nearly made me rage quit my current game. I conquered a space station from an awakened fallen empire, but it has some components that require dark matter, a resource no one else than the fallen empires has even seen in this galaxy (otherwise, I reckon it would be available on the market). So, just because I couldn't support one space station's need for dark matter, my whole empire suffered crippling penalties (-30% resource production, -75% sublight speed). Absolutely ridiculous. I couldn't even downgrade or otherwise control that station, since there was an unconquered planet in the system and my ground troops were still too far away, I couldn't wait. So I had to release the station back to the enemy right away. What a waste of time and ships...

Urghs, i feel you.

 

[Newbee53]

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

(Assuming 4.0 doesn't change this) The inevitable push to make mono-rural, industrial, science, and unity worlds. I honestly hate that, but its so necessary at higher difficulties that I've actually turned down the difficulty settings because how much I hate it. I'd much rather micromanage my planets than deal with 'and this is the planet with nothing but alloy jobs. and this one has nothing but science jobs.' and so on.