Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[nobodez]

Playing as the UNE, I have an issue where, after a bit of redevelopment to get things working well (switching urban for research zone, adding an industry zone and a trade zone), my pops are constantly shifting jobs, strata, and between employees and unemployed every DAY.

 

[Imp0815]

One of the primary intents of zones is to provide more long term flexibility to the development of planets. Not all of that potential will be reached in the initial implementations where we're trying to make the systems similar to the 3.x economy.

Benefits that we see include:

1. More ability to customize your Urban Districts. Where before you had City Districts and Industrial Districts, with a designation toggle to switch your Industrial Districts between Forge and Factory, we no longer need to create extremely specialized zones for other resources - you can make your picks yourself. Want Research and Unity? Go for it.
2. Use that to create unique Zones based on planetary features, to make different planets feel more interesting and unique. In one of next week's beta updates, the Betharian Fields planetary feature will let you shift miner output from Minerals to Energy as a prototype of this. I expect we'll have a lot more as we take advantage of the system more in 4.1/4.2.
3. Create a clearer distinction between Districts and Buildings. (Though admittedly we've backed off on this a bit.) Districts provide jobs, Zones change which jobs, Buildings modify jobs.

Amenities shouldn't be a Zone though. The beta's shown that clearly enough already - they need to be provided in a different manner

Thank you for clarifying this!

Overall, the goals seem well-intentioned, but I struggle to see where we were unable to customize planet outputs via buildings before.

Why wouldn’t it be possible to provide more unique buildings or swap districts to create unique planets in the old system? This seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The system has become much less clear. Previously, all buildable types provided defined jobs or benefits; now it’s opaque how a new city district scales jobs based on zones (even if less harsh than before).

I think the idea of streamlining interactions between districts, zones, and buildings is neat—each level should add meaning, with none existing without the others. However, these changes seem convoluted and implemented just for the sake of change. If we expanded the previous system with more district slots and additional ways to modify districts (and perhaps connected buildings to districts), it would be more engaging. The slot limitations of the new urban zones and the heavy-handed scaling of jobs via district levels remove customization and granular economic planning, ultimately reducing the meaningful decisions players used to make with free building slots.

Sid Meier famously said, "A game is a series of interesting decisions." The new system seems to take away elements of that, atleast for me.

 

[Noctealis]

Will we see any changes about pop growth/assembly speed anytime soon? Clinics seem useless now, and I don't know of any other way to get extra growth aside from civics, traits, and augmentors or bio ascension.

Meanwhile Machine Empires seem to get ridiculous assembly speeds. I tried a Machine Intelligence run to see how broken it currently is, and by 2230 I had to run unemployment subsidies on all planets I owned because drones were being assembled way faster than I could make jobs. (Shortly after getting soft locked from any newly built drones refusing to be employed).

 

[Thiend]

Will we see any changes about pop growth/assembly speed anytime soon? Clinics seem useless now, and I don't know of any other way to get extra growth aside from civics, traits, and augmentors or bio ascension.

Meanwhile Machine Empires seem to get ridiculous assembly speeds. I tried a Machine Intelligence run to see how broken it currently is, and by 2230 I had to run unemployment subsidies on all planets I owned because drones were being assembled way faster than I could make jobs. (Shortly after getting soft locked from any newly built drones refusing to be employed).

I don't think that's particularly an intended change. I didn't hear gestalts as a whole are currently within the "relatively functional for the beta" field yet, which might mean I didn't see it but...

 

[Noctealis]

I don't think that's particularly an intended change. I didn't hear gestalts as a whole are currently within the "relatively functional for the beta" field yet, which might mean I didn't see it but...

Oh I don't mean just gestalt Machines. My best playthroughs in these betas are individualistic machines, and even before ascending I am already out-growing the rest of the galaxy by far.
I just wanted to do a gestalt Machine run to see how AI hive minds were doing in comparison to individualistic empires. And the run was going really well; bar some buildings not working, and then getting drones refusing to get employed/crashes from replacing districts in my starting Machine World.

 

[Calvax]

Oh I don't mean just gestalt Machines. My best playthroughs in these betas are individualistic machines, and even before ascending I am already out-growing the rest of the galaxy by far.
I just wanted to do a gestalt Machine run to see how AI hive minds were doing in comparison to individualistic empires. And the run was going really well; bar some buildings not working, and then getting drones refusing to get employed/crashes from replacing districts in my starting Machine World.

Individualists are probably in a better state than gestalts but I wouldn't expect robots to be functioning properly atm.

The further you get from vanilla humans, the more likely it is that you'll find some weird behavior

 

[Newbee53]

Sid Meier famously said, "A game is a series of interesting decisions." The new system seems to take away elements of that, atleast for me.

and for me the most important part of that is 'interesting' which the old system really wasn't. Spam researchers, spam industry districts, spam whatever unity buildings.

This system seems--on paper anyway--like it will give you more interesting choices even if its less choices in total. Right now a lot isn't implemented, so its hard to say how it will end. But right now the potential is far better than what we had before.

As I pointed out in another thread, I don't think you could tie buildings to specific districts and successfully communicate that clearly. In my mind it simply wouldn't work well at all.

 

[The Founder]

I think we seriously need that stratum change information now. Both the general indicator on the pop group and the tooltip going into details.

There are several things seriously wrong with demotion, migration, pops switching jobs every gametick (I had that. Which happened until I reloaded).
But we can't properly tell what, because we don't have any information about how each pop group changed.

 

[tappi]

Played for approx 200 years in this patch with default settings, large galaxy and 12 AI, surprisingly smooth until hard crash when I touched the synaptic lathe. Collected some notes while playing and thought I'd post some of my thoughts and observations.

I was playing a custom fan-materialistic/egalitarian custom empire with prosperous union origin and masterful crafters and vaults of knowledge civics at the start. I did the synthetic ascension path and chose technocracy as my third civic in game.


Bugs:
- Gene clinics don't give any jobs or seem to be doing anything at all
- Primitives don't always show up on galaxy view (i.e. this system has primitives/megastructure/etc)
- Demotions to civilians are way too slow or don't work at all
- Demotions in general feel very slow without the harmony perks
- Migration is extremely slow
- Civilians also don't seem to promote very easily
- Sometimes pops refuse to work certain jobs for seemingly no reason (i.e. unemployed specialists even though 500 bureaucrat jobs exist)
- Synaptic lathe crashes the game if accessed


Needed improvements/feature requests:
- Pop growth should show planets total pop change in addition to the planned per group pop change
- I would love to have pop growth modifiers and math visible sooner rather than later, still can't wrap my head around how the math works
- Pop demotions should have a timer
- Civilians should have a counter showing their amount in the economy tab
- Artificial mote/gas/crystal production has in my opinion too big of an effect on the cost of the jobs. If you add them to an existing alloy/cg planet it will crash your minerals way too hard


Apart from these I didn't really have major issues with anything, of course some numbers still need to be tweaked but I do personally like the district/zone system as it feels more cohesive and flexible. (Though as has been said, amenity zone feels horrible).

I was also wondering what the plan with mote/gas/crystal production was going to be, are the non-artificial going to be limited to planetary modifiers as in 3.14 and before? I assume they will or the artificial/natural won't make sense otherwise.

I will also note that the performance felt the same as before the changes, but as I understood that was still to be expected. Hoping for great improvements on that.

 

[Calvax]

I think we seriously need that stratum change information now. Both the general indicator on the pop group and the tooltip going into details.

There are several things seriously wrong with demotion, migration, pops switching jobs every gametick (I had that. Which happened until I reloaded).
But we can't properly tell what, because we don't have any information about how each pop group changed.

Just to jump onto this: I hope the UI of the pop page gets a polish too. In my current game I got a couple of migration pacts early and I'm finding the pop group screen has similar problems to the current species menu. It just scrolls and scrolls, I can't imagine what it would be like with a dozen different species.

I'd prefer it if we could collapse groups or if there were some buttons to change what's being displayed. I don't need to know the exact change for every different variation of ethics and species when I just want to see how fast my workers, or my humans are growing. Something like:

• All - works as it does now
• Species - shows a list of species by growth rate
• Strata - shows a list of strata by growth rate
• Ethic - shows a list of ethics by growth rate

If it was automatically sorted from fastest growing to smallest that would be great too.

 

[Mole204]

I got the broken save game problem. I don't know how to fix it, and I find that all the things that the 9.3 beta is working on matter more the longer the game goes on. Is 9.3 supposed to break the save? Do the Paradox programmers know this happens? I should go back to 9-2...

Calvax
You should generally expect that save games will not survive patch updates. Especially for a beta where so much is changing.
The Founder
It makes more sense to start a new game, to make sure you actually test the current version.

Yes, I know. But the places that need the most testing aren't at the clean new beginning. And who wouldn't be reluctant after sinking so many hours into a game and not get to finish it? 2282 is still early, it had so far to go.

 

[Calvax]

I got the broken save game problem. I don't know how to fix it, and I find that all the things that the 9.3 beta is working on matter more the longer the game goes on. Is 9.3 supposed to break the save? Do the Paradox programmers know this happens? I should go back to 9-2...

You should generally expect that save games will not survive patch updates. Especially for a beta where so much is changing.

 

[Newbee53]

I got the broken save game problem. I don't know how to fix it, and I find that all the things that the 9.3 beta is working on matter more the longer the game goes on. Is 9.3 supposed to break the save? Do the Paradox programmers know this happens? I should go back to 9-2...

its a beta, they care even less if it breaks old saves than normal. And that is one of the reasons that roll backs are a thing they let happen.

 

[Nithralder]

I understand that these changes were made to improve performance, and I absolutely agree that late-game lag and slowdown have been major issues in Stellaris for a long time. It’s good that Paradox is finally trying to address this problem. However, the way they’re going about it feels like they are dumbing down the game or outright making it worse just to accommodate these changes.

A Worse Experience for the Sake of Performance​

• The new building and planetary system feels restrictive, unintuitive, and simply not fun. The old system, while not perfect, allowed for flexibility and creativity when managing planets. Now, it’s a rigid, frustrating mess that doesn’t improve anything.
• Planet size barely matters anymore. What’s the point of finding a large planet if I’m stuck with arbitrary limitations that make it feel the same as a smaller one?
• Information is hidden or missing. Why is it harder to see population growth? Where are my food requirements? Instead of improving the UI, this update makes it harder to understand what’s happening in my empire.

The Real Problem – The Clausewitz Engine​

Performance is an issue, but I wish Paradox had tackled the root cause: the Clausewitz Engine itself. It has been holding back Stellaris (and other Paradox games) for years due to poor optimization. Instead of redesigning entire game mechanics to work around the engine’s limitations, they should have focused on making the engine itself actually good. If they put effort into optimizing Clausewitz, it would not only benefit Stellaris but also Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, and Victoria—all of which suffer from the same performance issues.


Instead, we’re left with a worse version of Stellaris, and it will likely take another year or two just to iron out the issues they’ve introduced. The game didn’t need to be gutted like this—performance improvements should enhance gameplay, not destroy it.


I want Stellaris to improve, but right now, this update is just sacrificing fun and complexity for performance, and that’s a trade-off I’m not happy with.

 

[GSSArhi]

Please set "eternal vigilance" policy to "no spending" by defaullt
This policy work very bad in this time (

 

[Navar]

Amenities shouldn't be a Zone though. The beta's shown that clearly enough already - they need to be provided in a different manner

Perhaps some zone types could have its own amenities building? Like, a Mining zone could have a Jeweler building that adds amenities to miner jobs, a Trade Zone could have an Amusement Park to add more amenities to clerk jobs, a Factory zone could have a Toy factory, etc.

This way you could allow various jobs to produce amenities, but would need to allocate a building for it. Entertainers would need some other way to form, maybe from an Any Zone building that creates their jobs based on # of jobs that district is producing?

 

[Draelian]

With the changes to Habitats, knight habitability made them unplayable before Phoenix without strong habitability bonuses. How will consecrated habitats and knight jobs work now?

 

[GSSArhi]

my game get crash in specific date, but crash reporter don't work and app not answer
i create zip from crashe's folder, may be this was be important

 

[The Founder]

- Pop demotions should have a timer

It is a timer right now.
See Stellaris\common\pop_jobs\15_unemployment.txt
Doesn't matter if the game keeps shuffling around pops.

I got the broken save game problem. I don't know how to fix it, and I find that all the things that the 9.3 beta is working on matter more the longer the game goes on. Is 9.3 supposed to break the save? Do the Paradox programmers know this happens? I should go back to 9-2...

They changed the starting zone to something entirely different. I wasn't even going to try to load a old savegame.

It makes more sense to start a new game, to make sure you actually test the current version.

Perhaps some zone types could have its own amenities building? Like, a Mining zone could have a Jeweler building that adds amenities to miner jobs, a Trade Zone could have an Amusement Park to add more amenities to clerk jobs, a Factory zone could have a Toy factory, etc.

This way you could allow various jobs to produce amenities, but would need to allocate a building for it. Entertainers would need some other way to form, maybe from an Any Zone building that creates their jobs based on # of jobs that district is producing?

I made this suggestion for amenities:

Goal oriented Amenities Jobs

Amenities are a wierd resource: - their consumption is entirely based on the local population, not on city development - unlike food and CG, they cannot be imported. They must be produced locally One issues with Entertainer Jobs is how jumpy...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

A auto scaling worker job, that you really want to replace with something more efficient.

my game get crash in specific date, but crash reporter don't work and app not answer
i create zip from crashe's folder, may be this was be important

We have a forum for bug reports:

Stellaris: Bug Reports

Found a bug? Does something seem odd? Share it and it will be investigated!

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Make sure you also include a savegame before the date.

 

[darkcrusader117]

overall, this update has been a huge improvement in terms of actual game experience and UI. that said, I would like if clicking on a zone name opened up the window to let me replace/delete zones and if initial food income was increased a little to ensure empires aren't running a food deficit on game start. the food issue isn't really that serious since it can easily be resolved by trading, but I feel like it's just going to be an unnecessary learning curve for new players. as for major issues, pops are breeding too fast and it's difficult to keep up with unemployment. running a cybernetic creed empire with slow breeders, and I've already almost doubled my home world's starting pop in 20 years. I've also ran into an issue where worker unemployment is swinging wildly every day, going from around 60 to as high as 500 and back down again as they shift between being unemployed workers and civilians.