Thanks for providing a different viewpoint on the matter!
As feedback, I would recommend not responding in that way—because when you cut out single sentences, you lose the context. For example, my point about the fundamentals is more in line with: you justify these changes by saying you wanted to make unique zones for planets, but I think that’s a non-argument, because we already had enough features to create uniqueness for planets already.
On the note of “free” building slots—I see your point. But if you continue down the path of my argument, I’d say we should keep the slots and instead maybe make changes to the overall game goals or evaluate why certain things are spammed.
It’s hard to not move the goalposts here, as I think a lot of Stellaris is mostly spamming—but then again, I want to come back to: what are the game goals? Why is spam needed? And if we remove the freedom of building with simplified planets and end up just spamming city districts, is this really an improvement? Or are we just treating symptoms instead of fixing the cause?
The first thing that must happen to remove the need for spamming is to put a lid on the reason why we endlessly rebuild the same buildings—and that’s the unlimited usefulness of fleet power in the game. If you start to shut that down, you create a starting point to remodel the gameplay loop toward a place where “enough” actually exists.
Then you can start thinking about what Stellaris is really about—because it’s not a military-industrial incremental game anymore, but maybe something different. Maybe even the story-driven exploration roleplay game we all fantasize about and read in the store page. I know this was polemic, but I will die on the hill that doomstacking is the biggest crutch in the game right now.
I see your points about the new system, and it’s neat to see someone who actually likes these changes—but there are also people who miss the puzzle gameplay of the old planet grids. So that’s that.
Lets see if I can make this work without it being confusing. But, here we go.
To focus in on an example, what changes would make research lab spam less powerful? Other than making late game techs an only minor advantage over early game techs that I can think off. Diminishing returns on labs would only make spam worse--and conquests stronger--and increasing the cost of late game techs does the same. Maybe requiring late game tech buildings could help, but the faster you research said buildings the faster you can spam them. So that doesn't help at all either.
The same problem seems to exist everywhere. And it really doesn't even fit that well. Want to cut down on unity building spam? same problems except its even harder to believe you'd need to tech up to late game unity buildings. want to cut down on advanced resource spam? also the same problem, except they are already--supposedly--mid game buildings so adding a tier 2 is a bit odd.
So after a certain fashion you can't really end spamming in stellaris--at least as long as the scale remains the same--so the thing you have to do is control it. Spam city districts both makes sense and is a lesser problem to spamming a half-dozen different things. plus, if you then allow zones to limit buildings you can also limit the spam of planet unique buildings like those astral threads science buildings that got slapped down on every single planet no matter if it made sense.
Limiting the power of conquest is a nice goal, but I'm not certain it can be done without extreme effort. Stellaris is a game about playing with fantastical science fiction stories. and one of those is the conquest of the galaxy. destroying that--by making it something you can't do--would be devastating to the game. It would also require several rather blatantly artificial limits that are hard to justify. What's worse, is that anything you could do to limit the power of conquest wouldn't actually do much to eliminate the spam problem.
With weaker fleets, you need more fleets and thus more alloys. With Less powerful conquest you need a more powerful economy and a way to grow stronger diplomatically, so related building projects get even more powerful. Thus you spam more research--get the tech you need faster--and more economy related buildings. Probably alloys and cg again.
If you make it easier for low tech fleets to match high tech ones--less research needed--so that resources are the limited factor. Now you spam minerals and alloys. Do you need officers--or crew--to man your ships? spam related buildings. Much like we currently do with navel capacity. At the end of the day, the actual problem here seems to be something different.
As far as I can see, the root cause behind spamming buildings and such is that Stellaris is opened ended. Unless you have an empire looking to destroy you in the next couple of decades you can afford to take your time. Do you really want to end building spam without restricting buildings? Make it so the game forcefully ends before you can do everything. Make it so that you can't afford to both build the biggest fleet in the galaxy and the most technologically advanced, because the game ends and you have to start over first.
Limit galaxy size and don't let you keep playing after victory. make the end game crisis the end of the game. And then ensure that players know this is how it works. Make it so everything you can do cannot be completed before victory, and their is no single win condition. A diplomacy win, that ends the game. A science win, that ends the game. a military win, that ends the game.
Even then you might need to limit buildings in some way, otherwise things might just end the same way, but at least you'd probably not need to do it to much. However, we now have a new problem. The game has lost a lot of what makes Stellaris unique.
Open ended fantasy in a science fiction universe. 4x with a heavy sandbox element. Those kinds of things. It might even be a fun game, but its not Stellaris.
I see your points about the new system, and it’s neat to see someone who actually likes these changes—but there are also people who miss the puzzle gameplay of the old planet grids. So that’s that.
See, I don't get this at all. The planet grids limited your building options far more than the current system. to the point where it was actually preferable to completely ignore the local deposits and just concreate right over everything. At one level, it was even more focused on only specialized planets. All because of that adjacency bonus stuff.
I'm still a little miffed about the loss of my wormhole generators. But not the planet grid thing. There was no puzzle there, just 'which planet would be best for plastering with mines.' if you didn't mind actively harming yourself, you could instead follow the local deposits. but that wasn't worth it unless you only had one or two planets.
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