Stellaris 3.99.1 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[The Founder]

I was not able to track the pop growth and migration at all, so I was not able to tell what went wrong

It seems like Demotion and Migration are Broken. Civilians cannot migrate or resettle at all, while Elites move to where there are no jobs.

• My economy was a mess, because the pops (or the workforce) changed jobs too many times. For example there was a month when I had -200 energy income, next month it was +100 energy income and the 3rd month was -100 energy
• Pops did not care when I selected for example mining as an important job for years.

Priority is known broken. And the solution is to not have more jobs then population.
And the "shortage" weight kicks in < 10, so staying above it fixes that.
Having empty jobs in general is not beneficial. Just wasted resources.

 

[Darlf]

oh, on top of all errros, if i have no workers i cant even see my jobs for workers, so i have litle to no idea how many i have if i build to much and turn evryone into specualist... or have new colony turning into normla world and to much ruler jobs them same problem...

 

[Darlf]

new system have to much pops... rly for what we need turn 1 into 100 ? it still way to low numbers to make for bilions there are in planets... and becuse one pop is 100 now we get some crazy numbers and entire ul look like trash... and i see litle we can do abaut that... becuse it just to much text. let turn 1 to 10 or 50 at worst... but for what we need so many pops ? it kinda make you care abaut them even less, and it harder to calculating world management in your head... both roleplay and gameplay suffer from it.

 

[Chaosboy]

Priority is known broken. And the solution is to not have more jobs then population.
And the "shortage" weight kicks in < 10, so staying above it fixes that.
Having empty jobs in general is not beneficial. Just wasted resources.

Ah, I did not know about the priority issue
My major problem wa that my pop count did not grew fast enough and I have tried everything to change that - without success.

 

[Darlf]

I just cannot for the life of me understand why the developer spends years getting the game balance right in Stellaris and basically making everyone happy, only to toss it all in the trash and ruin the game for absolutely no reason. No one asked for these changes. And yet instead of making things people have asked for (such as internal politics), the devs are wasting a year of development time on just breaking things. AGAIN. It took several years for the game to recover from the previous time the devs decided to break everything for no reason (2.2), and it looks like it may take just as long this time, if you look at how poorly thought out all the new systems are and how incapable the poor AI is at playing now. We've been through this song and dance enough times to know it's not worth it, even if the game eventually ends up as good as it was before again. The right move is to cut their losses and cancel most of these changes, but game devs never do that no matter how obvious the upcoming disaster is.

At least the empire timeline is cool, even if it's marred by sharing the screen with that horrible focus system.

people ask for game not working in 0.00001% speed at end game... and pop changes where an option but why after changes they make eche pop int 100 ? it would be much more easy if they make it into 10 and on top of that make ship slower... like first add that, than that, im sure zoens could be add to game in old pop system and than yet another change until only pops left... now they have not even in balance hell yet... becuse they still in bug hell... i play all open beta and non of thme where that buged... you cant even see what zones give you XD.

 

[Darlf]

I am sure everything will be changed and all issues will be fixed but I would like to share my remarks after playing around 4 hours with this version of the beta (I have played mostly with CoM):

• I had 3 colonies besides of my capital planet, but it took around 50 years for each colony to reach 1000 pops (~10 pops at 3.14). This is waaay too much time.
• I was not able to track the pop growth and migration at all, so I was not able to tell what went wrong
• It is kinda funny, but I was not able to find out how to switch the zones, by myself (even after 6800+ hours of playing Stellaris)
• My economy was a mess, because the pops (or the workforce) changed jobs too many times. For example there was a month when I had -200 energy income, next month it was +100 energy income and the 3rd month was -100 energy
• Pops did not care when I selected for example mining as an important job for years.
• Sometimes not all job types are shown at the Population screen
• There is constant unemployment on all planets, and I cannot see anywhere why - because there are a bunch of opens jobs everywhere
• I do not like the Early Industrial Zone and the building - it must go ASAP, so my first thing to do in my every run would be to destroy it and buy consumer goods from the market. So in early games, there is no choice to make, how you want to start your game.
• Changing the Energy Credits to Trade Value at the market made the economy more complex - this annoyed me a bit, but I guess I will get used to it. However I think it is not new user friendly.
• There are sometimes unresolveable Empire Focus quests - for example I got the First Contact quest after I have met with everyone
• The Artisan Troupe and Curator order subscription prices are not consistent with each other - I do not know if it is intentional or not.
• Clicking on a pop group on the Population tab does not shows the thing they are producing - it always shows trade value for some reason

you think you play open beta ? WRONG it open PER ALPHA!

 

[Panzerslothen]

They haven't even talked about a release date yet.

How can there be "limited development time" already?

Yes they have. Don't call me a liar!

Back in Dev Diary #366 when we first announced 4.0, we mentioned that "The Q2 Stellaris release, currently expected sometime around our Anniversary in May, will be the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update."

 

[The Founder]

new system have to much pops... rly for what we need turn 1 into 100 ?

Because now they don't need a decicated spot account for growth or decay. They can just keep adding Pops, until they reached a full 100.
Meaning everyone can grow at once.
They also no longer need to check each pop for Ethics change. they can check a handfull of pop groups.

They have laid all that out very clearly.

Ah, I did not know about the priority issue
My major problem wa that my pop count did not grew fast enough and I have tried everything to change that - without success.

There is supposed to be a pop group change tracker, but it is aways displaying "-0" for now.
I have no idea if any of the pop growth bonuses work currently. I do know that robots work and specialists do seem to migirate to will Robotocist jobs. So that is something at least.

I give modfying the demotion time a spin. There is a chance the code is still using that scriptable value, but I am not sure.

 

[KNakamura]

Yes they have. Don't call me a liar!

"currently expected". I note Q2 is anywhere from May to July.

 

[Falrinn]

I will somewhat echo the sentiment that the beta was released too early. I understand a desire to get things in front of people asap, but I feel like at minimum the very early game (like first 50 years) should of been feature complete for the most common origins/civics. As it stands I can't make it more than 10 minutes or so into a save before really obvious beta problems have such a big impact on my game that any feedback for later stages of the game is tainted. I just don't think the pretty minimal amount of useful feedback is worth the tradeoff of some people's first experience with 4.0 being very clearly broken even by beta standards and, fair assessment or not, feeling like there's no possible way it will be ready in time for the announced release goal of May.

That being said, here's the feedback I can offer on the first 10 minutes of gameplay and some ideas on how to fix it. I was playing United Nations of Earth on Cadet difficulty.

One big problem is that it's incredibly easy to end up with a massive labor shortage very early in the game. Right now the bugs in the job priority system make it worse since it also triggers a bunch of production deficits, but right now simply building a second zone, which feels like an obvious early step, immediately wipes out all of your civilians and then some. And that's kind of weird, since that means you'll might have no civilians whatsoever by the time you are ready to your first colonies. In addition there seems to be no alloy production from jobs and no obvious way to get more...unless you build a foundry zone which causes the problem I outlined above.

My solutions would be this:

Both available zone slots will be filled on day 1. One with the existing Early Industrial Zone, and the other with an "Early Urban Zone". Early Industrial Zone will have a primitive factory providing Consumer Good jobs, and Primitive Foundry providing alloy jobs. Existing pollution debuffs from the factory is split between them. The Early Urban zone will have a Simple Science Lab providing Scientist jobs, and Outdated Offices providing unity jobs. The zones themselves will provide civilian capacity but no jobs whatsoever.

These outdated buildings can be upgraded right from day 1 into their starting equivalent. Primitive Factory becomes Civilian Industries, Simple Science Lab becomes Research Labs, etc. If their starting equivalent currently doesn't provide a baseline of jobs in 4.0, it will be changed to do so. This will be part of the early game "clean up", like removing the starting blockers.

Finally, when it comes time to upgrade these starting zones, you will not have to demolish any buildings. Instead any buildings incompatible with the new zone type would become abandoned and only be reactivated if you change zones again to a compatible type.

I'm okay with not having an advanced generic Industrial Zone, but I would suggest that Civilian Industries, which would have a baseline of jobs, should be buildable in Foundry zones and vise verse. This would allow some needed flexibility in the early game before you have enough planets to specialize properly.

 

[Newbee53]

new system have to much pops... rly for what we need turn 1 into 100 ? it still way to low numbers to make for bilions there are in planets... and becuse one pop is 100 now we get some crazy numbers and entire ul look like trash... and i see litle we can do abaut that... becuse it just to much text. let turn 1 to 10 or 50 at worst... but for what we need so many pops ? it kinda make you care abaut them even less, and it harder to calculating world management in your head... both roleplay and gameplay suffer from it.

I feel almost exactly opposite. Pops aren't showing up in spits and sputters. a star step graph of population moving up. No pop gropes for months or years, then suddenly a new one showed up, and then nothing for a long time. Its not only unrealistic, it breaks emersion. But by increasing the number of pops, we have growth every month. it feels more realistc, and you don't need to wonder why your population isn't growing at all for twenty months. The numbers don't bother me at all. I do wish they were shortened at something like 2 or 3 thousand to 2.2k or 3.3k or whatever, but its hardly a problem at this point.

Why would you care about that individual pop at any time? Seems kind of weird.

One big problem is that it's incredibly easy to end up with a massive labor shortage very early in the game.

I think part of the problem here is that they increased the number of jobs on the planet day 1, but didn't increase the number of pops. Resulting in open jobs and no civilians. Not 100% sure though. Makes me think that with the right starting numbers it wouldn't be so hard.

 

[Zloy_Stellaris]

To be honest, I really didn't like this update and I don't take into account the functionality of this version. The development of districts has become strange, simplified and uninteresting. Population management has become more boring. My personal opinion is that for optimization it would be enough to simplify or completely remove factions, and remove social layers from settlements. I really hope the developers leave everything as is.

 

[Darlf]

I feel almost exactly opposite. Pops aren't showing up in spits and sputters. a star step graph of population moving up. No pop gropes for months or years, then suddenly a new one showed up, and then nothing for a long time. Its not only unrealistic, it breaks emersion. But by increasing the number of pops, we have growth every month. it feels more realistc, and you don't need to wonder why your population isn't growing at all for twenty months. The numbers don't bother me at all. I do wish they were shortened at something like 2 or 3 thousand to 2.2k or 3.3k or whatever, but its hardly a problem at this point.

Why would you care about that individual pop at any time? Seems kind of weird.

I think part of the problem here is that they increased the number of jobs on the planet day 1, but didn't increase the number of pops. Resulting in open jobs and no civilians. Not 100% sure though. Makes me think that with the right starting numbers it wouldn't be so hard.

i think more abaut numbers whne coem to jobs, work force ect... but yes it do feel empty whne you dotn see them in jobs ect, but what it not change is numbers are kinda crazy

 

[Darlf]

Because now they don't need a decicated spot account for growth or decay. They can just keep adding Pops, until they reached a full 100.
Meaning everyone can grow at once.
They also no longer need to check each pop for Ethics change. they can check a handfull of pop groups.

They have laid all that out very clearly.


There is supposed to be a pop group change tracker, but it is aways displaying "-0" for now.
I have no idea if any of the pop growth bonuses work currently. I do know that robots work and specialists do seem to migirate to will Robotocist jobs. So that is something at least.

I give modfying the demotion time a spin. There is a chance the code is still using that scriptable value, but I am not sure.

ok but for what reason 100 ? like numbers whne coem to job, pops, evrything in ul are big, and hard to read, like i can oftne cut one 0 and it would still look fine, it just i dont see how they want make ul that look good on that thing. and you feel even more that planets are empty than befor kinda...

 

[Falrinn]

ok but for what reason 100 ? like numbers whne coem to job, pops, evrything in ul are big, and hard to read, like i can oftne cut one 0 and it would still look fine, it just i dont see how they want make ul that look good on that thing. and you feel even more that planets are empty than befor kinda...

I think it's just because 100 is a good number to allow for a handful of new pops to be generated every month.

Right now I think there is just an element of getting used to the new scaling. While this will be my first big Stellaris update, I've played games before that chose to rescale the numbers they used and there were always a lot of people expressing discomfort with the change....right up until a few days after the final release when everyone actually got a chance to experience it properly (not currently possible in the open beta) just got used to the new numbers and almost never mentioned it again.

Beyond that, I fully agree that the UI needs work, but I don't think anyone involved (Devs included) really denies that point.

 

[The Founder]

ok but for what reason 100 ? like numbers whne coem to job, pops, evrything in ul are big, and hard to read, like i can oftne cut one 0 and it would still look fine, it just i dont see how they want make ul that look good on that thing. and you feel even more that planets are empty than befor kinda...

Because figuring out what 20% of 100 is, is very, very easy.

 

[GnoSIS]

Ok, I'm calling it a week-end for the beta, so many thing to say about it, here are the major points:

1. Who ordered the planetary district/zone/building rework? This design is not going to fly for many reasons. First of all, PDX was supposed to just change the pop system but now they decided for this as well? It's already proven that they can't handle one major change at a time, but now they want to change multiple parts of the design at once? This is madness.....

2. We had control of amenities/police/fortresses scaling before but now that's just gone. There's no way to get that efficiency back and players and AI will always undershoot/overshoot by a lot! Having something of a "programmable" district is cool, but it needs finer control than this to work. The system has way too many zones. Perhaps make those services buildings more of a wildcard on where to be built, allow multiples - with upgrades or add a building count number as a subscript.

3. It's impossible to imagine how a 12 district city would change if I change a zone in it. The experience and result is always traumatic, both for the planet and for the player.

4. Theoretically you gave us more building slots, only to take away flexibility, and expand the primary economic buildings x3 because now they are not upgrades, but require multiple instances. I'm mad as hell.... Whoever thought of this must be promptly fired.

5. If this is considered internaly at your offices as a dumbed down system for AI, because AI was unable to do proper minimaxing with the previous version, then let me tell you that whatever AI you have working for 4.0 is even more useless, and won't be able to manage it.

6. If I somehow manage this mess of a planetary development, once an event or some other factor kicks in and I need more police/amenities/fortresses etc. I'm Borked(TM) because there is nothing that I can do to protect/prepare/or fix the colony - planetary decisions are irrelevant. If this is how we're going to start with an internal politics rework later, then prepare for massive unrest in these forums here...

7. It is not clear from the design if it is expected from us to use the resettlement screen in 4.0. Not only is it fully bugged, but immigration is totally bugged as well. Had to stop at around 2300. Regardless, we need immigration to be x10 whatever the current amount is if you plan to take out the resettlement functionality - and that only if you provide a way to specify a colonial focus for it - otherwise just no....

8. It's obvious that the new zone design was made to attack early research scaling by removing the creation of on demand research jobs and adding a cap. But as a true minimaxer, I undid all that by making ALL plantes research colonies with research zones. So thank you, because tech rush is even faster now. Again, this is bad design.

 

[Sighfer]

Are Temples not supposed to provide jobs, anymore? I noticed I started with a Temple in my Government Zone, with a bonus to Spiritualist Ethics attraction and priest output... but no priests.

 

[The Founder]

I figured out a modding solution for the broken demotion speed:

Fixing 3.99.01's broken Demotion speed

Something broke with the Pop Demotion in the 3.99.01 beta. I was so annoyed, I started looking into fixing it via modding. I figured out that Stellaris\common\pop_categories\03_unemployment.txt is what is currently used for demotion time. After...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[The Founder]

One suspicion I have is that since the pops are changing jobs so frequently, they're not demoting correctly because they're not personally spending enough time unemployed.

I did some tests fixing that via modding, and I think I can confirm that theory.

After my Initial test

Fixing 3.99.01's broken Demotion speed

Something broke with the Pop Demotion in the 3.99.01 beta. I was so annoyed, I started looking into fixing it via modding. I figured out that Stellaris\common\pop_categories\03_unemployment.txt is what is currently used for demotion time. After...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I set the decay to 60/30/15.

This gives instant demotion for rulers on every planet that had them (only 1 Job).
This gave instant demotion for workers on every planet that had them (less then 1 month).
This worked for Specialists on most Planets (Only Robotcist and 1 other job).
It did not work for the Specialist on my capitol world (8 Specialist jobs to work through). Like it was churning them around so often, the timer kept being reset and never hit 30.

While the churning is something to look at, a timer based approach might not work out so well anyway. Doesn't that imply you are still touching each pop update?
Maybe a percentage calculated from total specialists (employed and unemployed) should demote?
Like "Unemployed Specialists equal to 1% of all Specialists" every month?