Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Ilab]

• Habitats are now semi-functional in the Open Beta.
  • Habitats now derive their maximum mining, generator, and science district development based on the resources in the system. Orbital deposits grant 1 + (half their base value, rounded down) maximum district development.
  • Habitat orbitals now collect the resources from the deposit that they are built over
  • Void Dweller empires now get +50% jobs from habitat districts. This does not currently include scaling jobs from zones, but should in the future.
  • Voidborne AP and Void Dweller origins now give Habitat District cost reduction

Well, I can't play much this weekend sadly. This build seems very interesting. A few questions I have though.

Points 1 and 3, if I understood correctly, make it so that on a 6EC deposit, you would get +4 development on Generators, while also mining 6EC, is that right? I as, because it seems nice, but also seems to make Habitats much much better for resource productions than planets. For instance, you often can't really increase the Max level on Generator/Mining (even though a planet is likely several times bigger overall than an habitat) but then an habitat on any decent system could easily reach considerable amounts of +X to Generator/Mining. If we combine this with +50% to Void Dwellers, I believe this is extremely OP for Void Dweller empires. I think this might be worth some thought, space deposits of 3 are not rare at all, and having several on a systems is not strange either.

I believe that Voidborne AP will become much less useful if it only give cost reductions (again, I can't play it right now, so maybe they do more, can someone in this beta clarify it for me?). But if the AP only does this, then it will become much worse. Perhaps it should give at least some % increase, perhaps not 50% like Void Dwellers, but 20% or something?

All in all, damn, this all seems great! I really need to find a couple hours to at least try it a bit.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Points 1 and 3, if I understood correctly, make it so that on a 6EC deposit, you would get +4 development on Generators, while also mining 6EC, is that right? I as, because it seems nice, but also seems to make Habitats much much better for resource productions than planets. For instance, you often can't really increase the Max level on Generator/Mining (even though a planet is likely several times bigger overall than an habitat) but then an habitat on any decent system could easily reach considerable amounts of +X to Generator/Mining. If we combine this with +50% to Void Dwellers, I believe this is extremely OP for Void Dweller empires. I think this might be worth some thought, space deposits of 3 are not rare at all, and having several on a systems is not strange either.

I believe that Voidborne AP will become much less useful if it only give cost reductions (again, I can't play it right now, so maybe they do more, can someone in this beta clarify it for me?). But if the AP only does this, then it will become much worse. Perhaps it should give at least some % increase, perhaps not 50% like Void Dwellers, but 20% or something?

All in all, damn, this all seems great! I really need to find a couple hours to at least try it a bit.

If you build a habitat over a 6 energy deposit you will get 6 energy for free, and also some districts which you can use to employ people to mine energy at the standard energy miner amount. Your energy miners won't get +6 energy each.

 

[Sighfer]

The devs have already stated that the Amenities zone was a mistake, and they are going to change it.

Amenities are just the most egregious one. I am completely cool with reverting to universal slots, but increasing their number to 20 + planet capital, unlocked in 3's by tech.

 

[Newbee53]

Points 1 and 3, if I understood correctly, make it so that on a 6EC deposit, you would get +4 development on Generators, while also mining 6EC, is that right? I as, because it seems nice, but also seems to make Habitats much much better for resource productions than planets. For instance, you often can't really increase the Max level on Generator/Mining (even though a planet is likely several times bigger overall than an habitat) but then an habitat on any decent system could easily reach considerable amounts of +X to Generator/Mining. If we combine this with +50% to Void Dwellers, I believe this is extremely OP for Void Dweller empires. I think this might be worth some thought, space deposits of 3 are not rare at all, and having several on a systems is not strange either.

Currently habitat districts don't give as many jobs as planet side ones, which kind of reduces this advantage some. Given that even void dwellers struggle a bit with habitability I don't think it's as bad as you think it is. At least the early years of void dwellers doesn't feel overpowered or anything.

Amenities are just the most egregious one. I am completely cool with reverting to universal slots, but increasing their number to 20 + planet capital, unlocked in 3's by tech.

someone is misunderstanding something, and it might be me. But if you are suggesting that all buildings slots will be universal, then no. It appears they are simply going to allow amenities to be built outside a specific zone, with some changes to production or the buildings that will allow some form of scaling pop jobs. I'm quite sure they aren't going to universal slots.

 

[The Founder]

Somehow, I'm getting the occasional specialist or four on this colony, despite no such jobs.

I think its unemployed specialist migration. But the interesting part is that I'm getting effective demotion here. Without jobs, the numbers are decreasing as expected.

It seems like stratums above Civilians can migrate, even if there are no jobs. Just the Civilians thenmselves can't.
And it seems like demotion is blocked because the system keeps shuffling the pops into and out of jobs.

I really think demotion should just be a percentage of total specialists.

If you build a habitat over a 6 energy deposit you will get 6 energy for free,

Not free, but the same upkeep as a mining station.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I like that you're improving them each patch, but what problem are you trying to solve with zones?

It seems like every good effect of zones can be replicated by just giving buildings a type, adding a maximum per type (IE max 3 mining buildings), and adding district types so jobs can all scale off districts while modified by buildings.

The negative effects include being entire extra steps with seemingly no purpose, being confusing and arbitrary, and making it impossible to fine-tune your economy when you need more of X but not more of Y from a planet producing both. This patch simultaneously incentivizes you to specialize planets less with the new trade system and makes it impossible to fully generalize, while extremely difficult to generalize at all without having wild fluctuations in your economy whenever you are forced to add jobs you don't want filled to get the ones you do want.

If there is a problem they solve that I don't see, great, carry on and we can give feedback with that in mind as to whether it solves the problem, while hopefully pruning out the above issues.

If there is not, I suggest cutting your losses and just removing zones. The building changes can be implemented nearly exactly the same without them, and the pop/job changes can be implemented entirely without them. Just add a per-type building limit and district types for each job you were having scale out of zones. If it is not solving a problem that necessitates their existence, it's not worth trying to implement just for the sake of it when it introduces so many huge problems.

Zones look like they're going to solve a couple of the biggest problems I have with planet building in live Stellaris.

One problem I have always had with live is trying to at-a-glance what buildings a planet was missing. Splitting all the buildings out into discrete, well, zones, makes this much easier. This may sound minor but wow am I going to find playing certain civics much easier now.

The much bigger one is how many steps are currently involved in live in implementing what should be very straightforward decisions. This is very obvious with starbases - if I decide I want a starbase to be a anchorage base I can't do that all at once. I need to queue up the anchorages, the NLO, and the starbase upgrade, wait literally years, queue up the next anchorages and starbase upgrade, wait another couple of years, and then go back and queue up the last few anchorages. I can't just decide what a starbase is, I have to keep returning to "remind" the game of a decision I made years before.

Planets in live are in the same boat. If I want to make a science planet (and not use the automation) I need to queue up the cities to unlock the slots to build the science buildings that I actually want to build, and that's after queuing up the cities to build the buildings that come with my civics that I want to build first. So I either set a bunch of cities building and dissapear for a few years and come back and finally build my stuff, or I need to keep dropping back in after each city to queue up the building and the next city. I need to decide between efficiency vs having to go tend my planet like a needy child (or using the automation).

And if I decide I want to expand the sciencing on a planet I have to do the whole dance again.

Zones streamline these decisions for me. If I want a planet to be a science planet I just assign science zoning and that decision is implemented. I then have a number of sub-decisions to make based on what of my available science building modifiers I want to attach to my science zones, and I can make and implement those decisions (almost) immediately. If I want to scale up the science later I just build a city district and everything scales up. I like it.

It's also why I feel that amenity zones don't quite fit. You don't "choose" to make a planet an "amenities planet" (well, excluding resort worlds). You need to keep your amenities up, the choice is in how you do so, and if the only way to keep them up is to build an amenities zone then the act of building an amenities zone isn't really a choice, is it? But that the amenities issues were zeroed in on so quickly by so many people kind of shows how well the core zone idea hangs together. Otherwise the odd man out wouldn't have stood out so much.

 

[vulcan7200]

I got some time to play for a few hours today. I will reiterate that some of the issues I'm bringing up are ones I have mentioned in the previous Beta threads. I think it's important to keep providing feedback on every version, even if I'm repeating some of the issues I believe still exist. All of my testing is still done using the UNE as I mostly care about the core mechanics to the new system more than anything else, and the UNE helps test the game in a very "vanilla" way.

For this test, I did not utilize the new Urban Zone (Other than in the beginning since it's already built). My reason for this is, I feel the Urban Zone is a reaction from the Devs as they realize the new system has quite a few core problems, and it's implemented in a way that I would describe as a half-measure. One of my original complaints was that Amenities should not be a Zone, as Amenities is something that all planets need, and making it be a Zone means we really only get 2 Zones as one will always be needed for Amenities. This criticism has not gone away, and has simply shifted to Urban Zones. As it stands now, Urban Zones will be required for many planets so that players can utilize the Building Slots that it gives, as this Zone has less restrictions. Ever Ascension Path has required Buildings that will be eating up Building Slots as the game goes on. Telepaths, Robot Factories, and Cloning Vats will always have at least one per Planet. Other planetary Buildings like Gene Clinics, while not required like the others, are going to be utilized by players eating up another Building Slot. Without an Urban Zone, you only have 2 "Open" slots available as the rest of the Zones are under heavy restrictions on what they can build and 2 Building Slots will simply never be enough, making the Urban Zone required to use. While the Urban Zone helps make the game more playable than it was in the other Beta versions, the fact that the Zone is necessary to even play the game shows that there are still massive flaws in this new system.

In my test, I got to year 2230 before Earth started to collapse due to an Amenities shortage and increasing Crime. This was with the Tribune of Rights lowering the Amenities usage for my Population. As stated above, I was not using the Urban Zone for this test, and I had a Holo-Theater built in my Capital Zone along with the Robotics Factory. I had no room for the Luxury Housing or a Precinct. The Holo-Theater helped for awhile, but could not provide enough Amenities and my planet was not even full yet. This is a massive problem, and while you could argue that the Urban Zone would have started to fix this I point to my argument above as to why that is bad game design. The real issue here, that I have brought up before, is the Dev Team keeps trying to fit in a static number of jobs via buildings, on a system that is made to scale Per District. Each Zone is currently providing 180 Jobs Per District, which means 540 Jobs Per City District. If you have a Size 13 Planet (Something most would consider on the small end), and use three Districts for Basic Resources (So you can make use of their Zones), and the other ten Districts for Cities you're looking at 5,940 Jobs from Districts, not including any other Buildings. This issue, due to how Districts now scale, gets worse and worse the larger planet you get. If we do the same on a Size 18 Planet, you now have 8,640 Jobs from Districts that your measly 180 Entertainer Jobs need to attempt to provide Amenities for. Since Holo-Theaters are Planet Limit 1 you can't even slap a second one down in an emergency like you could previously, and you simply may not have the Building Slots available to build Luxury Housing or Precints to help with the problems your planet is facing. The flat number of jobs Buildings get, plus being largely restricted on where they can build AND most being Planet Limit 1, does not really work with the new way planets develop.

I personally think the heavy restrictions hurt the game. Most Buildings became Planet Limit 1, and then were blocked off from being able to be built in most Zones. If I build a Research Zone, I can build the Research Labs and....that's it. Maybe I'll unlock more Buildings later, but even when I do those will be the only Buildings available to build, so of course I'll put them in there as there's no other choice to be had. There might be small choices like the Automation Factory being Planet Limit 1, so I'll have to choose which Zone gets that, but that's easy because it will most likely go into the Zone that matches the Planet Designation. If I want to heavy specialize a Planet, the second and third Zones provide no Building Slots, stripping away nearly ALL choice in a way that I would describe as punishing, as you now have only two "Real" Building Slots for that entire planet. That is a massive restriction that could completely cripple a planet, and makes it feel almost mandatory to build at least one other type of Zone (probably Urban currently) to make the planet function. To me it very much feels like the Developers dictating how the game plays down to a very micro level. If it's not that, then it feels like the Developers are afraid that the players might "break" the new system and so are pre-emptively creating a variety of fairly big restrictions to rein things in.

I think the best solution is less restrictions, not more. I think if Buildings changed 25% of that Zone's jobs to what that Building Provides, and allowed you to build them more freely (With a Zone Limit 1) you would feel like you have more options to fix any problem arising in your Empire. In the Holo-Theater example above, if I wanted to build a Holo-Theater in my Unity Zone, the Zone would become 135 Bureaucrats and 45 Entertainers. Now when I build those ten Districts from the above example, the Entertainers are scaling with the rest of the District providing me 450 Entertainers vs the flat 180. And if that wasn't enough (Maybe I have the Repulsive Trait or some other negative modifier effecting my Amenities production/usage), why shouldn't I be able to put a second Holo-Theater down in my Factory Zone to shuffle a few more jobs to those Entertainers to keep me afloat? Maybe I feel like I've been falling behind on my Research and I'm willing to sacrifice some Alloy producer to change 25% of the Zone to Research Jobs, or vice versa. The old version of Stellaris allowed something like this. If I felt something was lacking I could start building Buildings to start lifting me out of whatever hole I found myself sliding into. I could change a few of those Industrial Districts to City Districts and fill those new Building Slots with Research Labs, or Administrators, or whatever else I needed at the moment. This doesn't really work in a new system where you only have three Zones that need to do nearly everything, but also don't let you do anything.

 

[Thiend]

Zones look like they're going to solve a couple of the biggest problems I have with planet building in live Stellaris.

One problem I have always had with live is trying to at-a-glance what buildings a planet was missing. Splitting all the buildings out into discrete, well, zones, makes this much easier. This may sound minor but wow am I going to find playing certain civics much easier now.

The much bigger one is how many steps are currently involved in live in implementing what should be very straightforward decisions. This is very obvious with starbases - if I decide I want a starbase to be a anchorage base I can't do that all at once. I need to queue up the anchorages, the NLO, and the starbase upgrade, wait literally years, queue up the next anchorages and starbase upgrade, wait another couple of years, and then go back and queue up the last few anchorages. I can't just decide what a starbase is, I have to keep returning to "remind" the game of a decision I made years before.

Planets in live are in the same boat. If I want to make a science planet (and not use the automation) I need to queue up the cities to unlock the slots to build the science buildings that I actually want to build, and that's after queuing up the cities to build the buildings that come with my civics that I want to build first. So I either set a bunch of cities building and dissapear for a few years and come back and finally build my stuff, or I need to keep dropping back in after each city to queue up the building and the next city. I need to decide between efficiency vs having to go tend my planet like a needy child (or using the automation).

And if I decide I want to expand the sciencing on a planet I have to do the whole dance again.

Zones streamline these decisions for me. If I want a planet to be a science planet I just assign science zoning and that decision is implemented. I then have a number of sub-decisions to make based on what of my available science building modifiers I want to attach to my science zones, and I can make and implement those decisions (almost) immediately. If I want to scale up the science later I just build a city district and everything scales up. I like it.

It's also why I feel that amenity zones don't quite fit. You don't "choose" to make a planet an "amenities planet" (well, excluding resort worlds). You need to keep your amenities up, the choice is in how you do so, and if the only way to keep them up is to build an amenities zone then the act of building an amenities zone isn't really a choice, is it? But that the amenities issues were zeroed in on so quickly by so many people kind of shows how well the core zone idea hangs together. Otherwise the odd man out wouldn't have stood out so much.

That sounds reasonable. I'm not opposed to that.

My only hard line here is if the "can't add X job without adding Y and Z jobs" problem remains for mixed output planets, which you NEED to have early, I'd rather ditch the entire idea. That HAS to be resolved in some way first, managing all the unwanted jobs every time something finishes building is a line I'm not willing to cross. Assuming they fix that, being able to designate planets quickly is actually a pretty major bonus to me as well.

 

[Critical Ethics]

That sounds reasonable. I'm not opposed to that.

My only hard line here is if the "can't add X job without adding Y and Z jobs" problem remains for mixed output planets, which you NEED to have early, I'd rather ditch the entire idea. That HAS to be resolved in some way first, managing all the unwanted jobs every time something finishes building is a line I'm not willing to cross. Assuming they fix that, being able to designate planets quickly is actually a pretty major bonus to me as well.

See, for me that's a selling point. I want to add some science jobs, I also get the housing (from the city) and the cg (from the cg zone I put on the same planet) at the same time. Heck, on a very large planet that I felt was worth putting an amenities zone on I'll also get the amenities.

 

[Thiend]

See, for me that's a selling point. I want to add some science jobs, I also get the housing (from the city) and the cg (from the cg zone I put on the same planet) at the same time. Heck, on a very large planet that I felt was worth putting an amenities zone on I'll also get the amenities.

Having it as an OPTION is actually a selling point for me too, mixed output planets not being strictly suboptimal is an improvement.

But not being capable of only expanding one output on a mixed output planet is a huge problem for me. If I want to add unity jobs on a planet producing unity and research, I don't necessarily want to add research jobs... and I don't want to manage having to close those jobs and wait for pops to demote back into workers. Or even really to close them at all, that's a specifically terrible level of micro to need in 3.14, where I would consider any job that you should close by default an aberration. The current design will have that constantly, on a larger scale.

If they can find a way to make expanding only one output possible when desired, my opposition to zones comes down to presentation (which is currently in a very early design, so that's not a dealbreaker). But that is an option I MUST still have. We essentially lack control over the ratio of outputs entirely except by closing jobs, which is clunky to do at best. I'd like more control over the ratio, and the specific ability to add only one output when I want that. Perhaps, at least in a basic framework, this could be:
1. Build district to expand all outputs by the amount that district has, as in the beta
2. Expand zone to build a new district, but apply ALL new jobs to that zones output
3. Separate control to adjust the ratio without adding a district, including a button to return to default

I think that addresses all my fundamental problems with the zone system. If it doesn't, my other issues must be minor because I can't think of anything else that isn't just a refinement of the existing idea. Those three additions would make me fine with zones, or any equivalent fixes that come to the same solution.

 

[Newbee53]

In my test, I got to year 2230 before Earth started to collapse due to an Amenities shortage and increasing Crime.

a big FYI:

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

So the next balance on the amenity zone is to remove it and make amenities something that is more available without a zone restriction. Don't know how they will solve the scaling problem, but its something to see. And I think we need to see that before criticizing it.

For this test, I did not utilize the new Urban Zone (Other than in the beginning since it's already built). My reason for this is, I feel the Urban Zone is a reaction from the Devs as they realize the new system has quite a few core problems, and it's implemented in a way that I would describe as a half-measure. One of my original complaints was that Amenities should not be a Zone, as Amenities is something that all planets need, and making it be a Zone means we really only get 2 Zones as one will always be needed for Amenities. This criticism has not gone away, and has simply shifted to Urban Zones. As it stands now, Urban Zones will be required for many planets so that players can utilize the Building Slots that it gives, as this Zone has less restrictions.

Its possible an Urban zone is needed for certain builds, but unless its required for most planets most of the time its probably not a huge thing.

I think an argument could be made for adding a single building slot to the government district or removing the capital building. But I don't know that we want that many more building slots. not being able to build every building isn't a bad thing as far as I can see. In fact, its one of the positives I have with the game. I also expect some civics will change, like the Industries one getting zones instead of a building.

I personally think the heavy restrictions hurt the game.

I disagree, especially when I remember that 1 per zone limits are already stated to be on the list of things they want to implement. Not certain how many buildings will get it however. plus, Not being able to build everything on every planet isn't buy itself a bad thing, as long as its possible to maintain an empire on one planet in case of the gai habitability civic and the like. after that, players have to choose the best ways to go about different choices, what to sacrifice and what to maintain. so long as a specific choice isn't forced.

Also:

Replaced the Early Industry Zone with the Urban Zone. The Urban Zone currently accepts all buildings, limitations will be added in a future update

so we can assume the goal is to limit the urban zone down some so that every building can't go in there. so we also know more work on the entire system is being looked at.

My personal though is that the capital building should be moved away from the other three building slots in the government zone--possibly the line above them--and we should have 3 free slots in that zone like everywhere else. But that's not necessarily the only choice or method one should use to build it.

 

[tappi]

Its possible an Urban zone is needed for certain builds, but unless its required for most planets most of the time its probably not a huge thing.

I think an argument could be made for adding a single building slot to the government district or removing the capital building. But I don't know that we want that many more building slots. not being able to build every building isn't a bad thing as far as I can see. In fact, its one of the positives I have with the game. I also expect some civics will change, like the Industries one getting zones instead of a building.

To add to this, amenities are likely to be reworked sooner or later as Eladrin had mentioned earlier in the thread. I also feel that the amenity issue currently isn't really that big for your average non-slavery build in the game currently. I felt you could pretty easily handle amenities by plonking down a holo theater in the government zone and that takes care of the issue for a long bit. This does mean that you'd essentially have to sacrifice one of the building slots in the gov zone on each planet, which I do not like personally and honestly think the gov zone could use a couple more building slots as there exist many buildings that are half mandatory for a planet (i.e. robotics factory, gene clinic, current build holo theater, etc.)

 

[Vielmann]

I think amenities could be split into local amenities and empire wide amenities, with the amenities zone producing them empire wide. You'd need a certain amount of local amenities (provided by maybe one building, from a governor, ...) and the rest would be an empire wide pool that is split around. If you have more amenites in the pool than required this would raise happiness, if you don't have enough your pops get upset. Different living standards could need different amounts of required amenities and they could need different amounts of local vs empire wide amenities.

 

[NorseGod]

I think amenities could be split into local amenities and empire wide amenities, with the amenities zone producing them empire wide. You'd need a certain amount of local amenities (provided by maybe one building, from a governor, ...) and the rest would be an empire wide pool that is split around. If you have more amenites in the pool than required this would raise happiness, if you don't have enough your pops get upset. Different living standards could need different amounts of required amenities and they could need different amounts of local vs empire wide amenities.

"Empire-wide Amenities" are just Consumer Goods. That's sort of the function they provide in game. The whole point of amenities is that they're a non-transportable resource.

One of the tech's actually grants "Networked Amenities" which is just a -10% to amenities need.

 

[shrgamer]

Why are my pops refusing to work... this is kind of important.

 

[Cry_Havok]

View attachment 1270122
Why are my pops refusing to work... this is kind of important.

Gotta second this. Also, my soldiers are not providing any naval cap

 

[Critical Ethics]

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

Given the fun part of amenities is the what rather than the if, you could make an "amenities zone" under the capital zone that just makes clerks per city or something, and building holotheatres and gene labs and such in its slots converts the jobs into entertainers and medics. E: could put enforcers in there too.

This keeps districts = jobs, Zones change which jobs, buildings modify jobs somewhat intact and since the amenities zone is just a standard planet section you get rid of the feelbad of a forced choice.

 

[Anry de Kornelle]

I reread everything that is written, in most cases the problems are the same as everyone else, I understand that they can be cured one way or another, either quickly or slowly.

purely from my own feelings I can say that the planets have become uninteresting and too monotonous. Well, and also not very clear, but this will be corrected in the process of work

the most interesting thing in this game is to study something and do something strange. once again decided to play through the fauna, because it is a very interesting experience, but compared to the usual fleet I get a lot of problems with the duration of fauna research and in the end it is not at all like a fleet ... The usual fleet is easier to pump up, faster, cheaper and it is much more effective than fauna. Well, okay fleet, but I still can not understand why, being a space farmer, slaughtering a cow the size of half a planet, which needs a veeeery long time to grow, I get so little food? Which will be enough at best for several months, but at the same time, if I slaughter the same cow not on a ranch but in outer space, then I can get rich from this, and with the proceeds of the day I can buy food for ten years for the entire planet?

 

[Newbee53]

Why are my pops refusing to work... this is kind of important.

its a known bug that showed up in the dev stream as well. Don't know what is causing it personally, but several people have mentioned it so far.

 

[Troyen]

Okay, finally got a chance to put a little bit of time in the beta.

First impressions: I have no idea what to do with my planet at the start anymore. On live I can generally figure out an idea of what district or building to build by the time I finish building mining stations in my home system, but here it's hard to tell what the effect of everything is. Some of this is bugs, some of it is missing tooltip information, and some of it is the new zone style.

1. At the start of the game, my empire shows a major empire deficit. This corrects itself on the next monthly tick, but every Paradox game teaches you (including in some of the tutorials) to set up initial actions before you unpause. I think the initial resources shown are not properly factoring in pop output.

2. While trying to figure out #1, I noticed my pop production tooltips didn't list any info. Several years into the game and they still show no output. So I'm trying to evaluate how necessary it is to replace the starting Researchers with a Research Lab and I don't actually know what their output is or how it will change. This isn't specific to researchers, even my workers don't tell me what they're doing. I think the only place that's accurate is the Planet Production Summary.

3. Speaking of Planetary UI, like I mentioned on the mockup DD, the green text on the status bar (e.g. available housing) is really hard to read with that transparent element. There's another thread about this, but the Resettle button is almost invisible as well.

4. The game on Normal speed appears to run slower than on live. On my 5800 3XD it's about 12 seconds to go a month at normal speed, whereas normal zips by on 3.14. I'll try and get comparison numbers but I have to wait until I'm done with the beta to revert.

5. First time actually playing with the Empire Focuses and Timeline. Wasn't expecting to find them in the Situation Log, but I guess there's not a great fit for them elsewhere. A skim of the rewards and I think the guaranteed tech options are mostly fine picks. Some of them are weirdly late like Effective Bureaucracy as Tier 6? I'd more expect to see Colonial Centralization on that upper tier set.

I am mildly concerned that Mega Engineering (a tech everybody wants) is the Tier 10 reward as that's likely to encourage gaming the system to get the unlock earlier. At the same time, I don't see Ascension Theory (the one tech that really needs some kind of guaranteed fallback because it gates lategame Unity spenders) anywhere on the reward list.

I was also expecting the tasks to be more relevant to my Empire Focus. Before touching anything, my empire is focused on Exploration and yet two tasks are Conquest. The Conquest tasks are also not something I'm going to do in the first several years of the game:

I don't need a second commander until I have a second fleet, and I don't really need to dump alloys and upkeep on defensive platforms before I encounter anybody.

The Mining Station and 1000 Alloy tasks are fine. The "Enact a Planetary Decision" is not. These are my options at the start of the game:

I guess the "Distribute Luxury Goods" is technically beneficial, but it's not normal for me to use Planetary Decisions so early into a run. The cheapest one is Discourage Planetary Growth and I don't think you want new players dumping 250 unity on a decision you'd normally never use just for 10 empire progress.

Also, despite being Exploration Focus, when I built my mining station, it was replaced by a Combat card ("Win a fleet battle"). If you're going to make us pay unity to pick a focus, we should have overwhelming category weight that matches our focus. 3/5 of my tasks now only award Combat progress, and I don't even see any foreign targets in my galaxy yet.

6. The impact of adjusting zones in the early game is quite large. I built an Industrial Zone after a couple years as my second zone without any real idea how much output/upkeep it'd require since all the tooltips are bugged and suddenly I swung from a +47 mineral surplus to a +2 one in exchange for +30 CGs and +21 Alloys. That's a way bigger swing than you'd get from your first building on Live and I'd have waited if I understood the zone impact better. As a consequence, I have less to do at the start of a game in 3.99.3 than I do in 3.14.

7. Why are Planet Size and Habitability buried on the Management tab? Those are kind of important to know, especially when looking at colonization targets. I'm not managing an uncolonized planet yet, I'm trying to evaluate it. If there's no room on the cramped Surface tab, well, you moved Colony Designation to the title bar so why not planet size/habitability?

8. I don't understand the need to show eight different boxes of human pops. What makes them district from one another? I assume either ethics or workforce, but they all have the same name ("Human Specialists" or "Human Civilians" [which btw seem to include Farmers, Technicians, Clerks, ...and Civilians]). There's so much space devoted to these pop boxes that I rarely look at even on live (I care more about employment/unemployment breakdown and overall pop numbers/growth).

9. Why isn't the Build Queue open almost all the time? If I try to clear a blocker, I pay the energy cost and nothing seems to happen as the blocker vanishes from the list. I know from game experience the blocker takes time to clear, but since it doesn't open the build queue window, you don't see any indicator blocker clearing is in progress.

10. Research is split up into separate jobs now, but they're combined on the top bar. Clicking to expand my technology breakdown all the time is one of my top UI annoyances. I probably click that breakdown more than I give fleet orders.