Stellaris 3.99.1 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[hedgehoginmist]

Some notes on the new planet UI:
1) I think the build queue should be open by default so it is easier to track the progress with less clicks.
2) I would get rid of the management tab - less tabs we have the better and the management tab carries the least information load.
2.1) Planetary features are mostly flavour + blockers + "oh, Betharian fields here, cool" - this should take less space than it occupies is right now.
2.2) Population breakdown by species, strata and ideology similarly does not deserve tab space. Normally, I would be interested in ideology breakdown on first contact which the pop breakdown used to do it better - "70% militarist, 30% xenophone, ok I prep for war" - simple info to decision making process. The current list at least should state something like "Human egalitarian specialist" instead of "human specialist" to even start to display similar info without extra clicks. Also, do I really care that it is 5436 priki-specialist-militarists and 3 spiritualists? Higher information resolution does not impact my decision making but it unnecessarily bloats the UI. And I would still have to do the math to figure out the fanatic ethics.
2.3) Also why is it called "management"? I'd expect some buttons I could press to "manage" the planet but all I have is terraform and blockers and automation. Do they really need a separate tab?
3) I don't like how the population tab feels.
3.1) I would like to see some expected pop growth values to plan the expansion speed accordingly.
3.2) The bars for increasing/decreasing jobs are too thick. I have to scroll down to find a specific job - I might overshoot and have to compensate losing time to find the correct job.
3.3) Getting the red warning about unemployed pops is triggering me - I keep thinking I need to take action only to realize that it is like 0.03 pops unemployed.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Ok, I need a reality check:

In the scenario where I have only my capital and two new colonies, and I need more Consumer Goods (CG):

• I have a factory zone and an early industrial zone on my capital.
• Now I want 100 more Artisans.
• I upgrade my city district to create these new jobs.
• BUT now I also create 300 Researchers, 200 Laborers, 100 Bureaucrats, and 100 Enforcers.

The district is built, I get my Artisans, but also all the other jobs.

• My worker class notices that new Specialist jobs are available.
• They all promote to fill those jobs.
• I now have no Miners, Technicians, or Farmers anymore.
• The jobs flip-flop around, and I disable Specialists hectically, trying to manage the sliders in a frantic, terrible way.
• None of the unemployed Specialists demote.
• I have constant resource shortages.

Is this intended?

• Creating TONS of unwanted jobs just by upgrading districts?
• Heavy micro to manage unwanted jobs BEFORE they get filled?
• Demotions not working properly?

Or did I fundamentally misunderstand something?

The industrial jobs may not be particularly well suited for being included in the urban job bundles, since consumer goods are used not only by other jobs, but also for pop upkeep - which is a function of living standards, traits, civics, habitability and other factors. The huge variability of overall demand for consumer goods means that it needs to be possible to adjust that output independently of the other jobs that use consumer goods, similar to how the three basic resources need to have separate resource districts rather than a single "rural" district.

Basically, I think there still needs to be industrial districts in the new economic model, covering consumer goods, alloys, and perhaps also synthetic strategic resources; the composition could be influenced by the zone and buildings. Re-adding industrial districts could also reduce the job pressure issue with urban districts.

 

[Imp0815]

The industrial jobs may not be particularly well suited for being included in the urban job bundles, since consumer goods are used not only by other jobs, but also for pop upkeep - which is a function of living standards, traits, civics, habitability and other factors. The huge variability of overall demand for consumer goods means that it needs to be possible to adjust that output independently of the other jobs that use consumer goods, similar to how the three basic resources need to have separate resource districts rather than a single "rural" district.

Basically, I think there still needs to be industrial districts in the new economic model, covering consumer goods, alloys, and perhaps also synthetic strategic resources; the composition could be influenced by the zone and buildings. Re-adding industrial districts could also reduce the job pressure issue with urban districts.

Overall, I don't understand why we have this system now. I thought about it and realized how flawed it is.

We have less control over our planets and their buildup. We are severely limited by zones and their buildings. When we expand an industry, we only build another district. This is highly unintuitive, simplistic, and detrimental to planetary growth.

The scenario I described will be the norm and extremely difficult to manage. If it stays this way, we need a well-balanced and sophisticated automation system, and even that won't really help if you want to expand one job from your city district while maintaining the rest.

In addition to this mechanical flaw, we have a logical flaw in terms of believability. The system dictates that we have city districts containing zones that contain buildings. When we build another district, the new district seems to copy the same zones and buildings as the one before, providing the same jobs as if we were copy-pasting the same city repeatedly across the planet with identical buildings.

This is not a better depiction of planet buildup but rather illogical and strange—it's as if expanding a city district means we also have to rebuild the same buildings and zones over and over. It's like having one town with a sled factory, and when we build another town, we copy the exact same sled factory. How many sled factories do we need on one planet?

I highly recommend scrapping the new district/zones/buildings system and returning to something similar to the old system, where we had more direct control over what we build and which jobs are created. It allowed for more meaningful and longer interactions with planets instead of just setting up zones, placing a few buildings, and pressing upgrade on districts. Right now, this dumbs down planet management to just district building.

If we keep the new district system, we could remove zones and allow free control over buildings, with buildings alone providing jobs. If we want more artisans, we just build another factory in the city district’s building slots. To unlock more building slots, we build more districts of that type.

Alternatively, zones could stay but only for optimization. For example, dedicating one district zone to a factory zone could boost factory output while still allowing other buildings for flexibility. Logically, nobody would prevent us from building a research lab inside a factory zone anyway.

 

[The Founder]

Criminal jobs don't seem to show up at all. Don't know if they're enabled yet or not, though.

Stratums don't appear unless someone is working in them. Which is definitely a bug.
Let's see what 3.99.02 fixed.

 

[Darlf]

welp... it erly pre apha becuse i will not call it beta... i just hope they fix ui problems and make trash worth more becuse for now you make so much bonus trade not even trying, so i dont see world whne you have so much - on planets that you gona need trade world, but that may be may play style and playign no more than 100 yers becuse it kinda mess

 

[-Marauder-]

For the Beta.

I personally don't mind the pop rework, especially if it genuinely helps late game lag. I'm not sold on increasing pops by a factor of 100 solely because of it being less easy and quick to discern on a glance how many pops are on a planet. Makes me wonder if they'll end up depicting them as 1k/10k pops the way they do with fleets ultimately.

I do agree with Imp though. The new zones feel, bad. They feel like a massive downgrade to what we currently have, with less control, being more cumbersome, more limited, and they don't feel like they are genuinely needed for the pop rework or other changes.

 

[Red Earth]

Anyone seeing the AI build starbases without fully surveying the system? I thought it was odd that I was losing those races despite having a head start so I watched more closely. The AI was indeed building a starbase while they had a ship still surveying the system

 

[The Founder]

Anyone seeing the AI build starbases without fully surveying the system? I thought it was odd that I was losing those races despite having a head start so I watched more closely. The AI was indeed building a starbase while they had a ship still surveying the system

Make a savegame and put it into a bug report.

Also, make sure that science ship isn't from a different empire.

 

[passeris]

City Districts need to be producing Entertainer jobs. From an RP perspective it's weird that they don't as generally people go into the Cities either for work or entertainment. From a mechanical perspective this feels absolutely necessary with the way the game now works. Amenities does not work as a Zone. Zones are an incredibly limited "Resource" that you need to use to benefit your Empire as a whole. Amenities are strictly a planetside resource that doesn't transfer over from planet to planet. As it stands, you may as well lock one Zone away simply as an "Amenities" Zone because every planet needs Amenities, but the only way to get Amenities currently is use of a Zone ON that planet. Now if Amenities were an Empire wide resource, it could work as a Zone, but as it stands it is silly to have an entire Zone that only helps that one specific planet with a resource it NEEDS to have. However, this would ALSO be fixed with the above suggestion if you could build Holo Theaters as a building in multiple Zones to give those Districts a few Entertainment jobs.

Citizen, you appear distressed.

Proceed immediately to the Amenities Zone for mandatory recreation, as required by directive 3.99.1b.

 

[Sould]

Currently trying the Beta. When I try to land armies on a planet with no defensive armies, it says that they are landing but but nothing happens. it is a Gestalt world, so bombarding it does not make them surrender. You probably already have had this one reported, but I figured it couldn't hurt to voice it.

 

[Newbee53]

Currently trying the Beta. When I try to land armies on a planet with no defensive armies, it says that they are landing but but nothing happens. it is a Gestalt world, so bombarding it does not make them surrender. You probably already have had this one reported, but I figured it couldn't hurt to voice it.

sense the first beta release ground invasion has been broken. this was mentioned in the first beta release

 

[Sould]

sense the first beta release ground invasion has been broken. this was mentioned in the first beta release

Ty ty, only just getting back into the forums so lots to pore through.