Stellaris 3.99.4 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[SarahGabriella]

This thread is so devs can see problems which we find in play.

You seem to be trying to prevent the discussion of problems.

Why are you trying to hinder the devs by shutting down the discussions that they need to see in order to fix the problems?

How so? Im not saying dont leave feedback, im saying that it doesnt need to be expanded on much further. Obviously, feedback is wanted and needed.

 

[SarahGabriella]

I've been playing Stellaris since its release in 2016. Over the years, through every major expansion, rework, and overhaul, I've never once felt confused or lost. One of Stellaris’ greatest strengths—especially compared to other Paradox titles—has always been how accessible and intuitive it is to pick up and play. It struck the perfect balance between complexity and clarity, and that’s something I’ve deeply appreciated as a long-term player.


That changed when I tried the 4.0 Beta.


For the first time in almost a decade of playing Stellaris, I genuinely hated the experience. The new UI, in its current state, is—without exaggeration—the worst I’ve encountered in any game I’ve played. I understand it’s unfinished and still in beta, but with a full release slated for next month, I find that extremely concerning.


The new Planetary UI in particular is a massive step backward. It feels inefficient, cluttered, and unintuitive—actively obscuring information that used to be easily accessible. I play on a 4K resolution monitor, and like many others, I rely heavily on UI Overhaul Dynamic just to make the interface usable. Unfortunately, even that can’t salvage the new planetary interface. It’s not just a matter of needing polish—it feels fundamentally flawed in terms of UX design.


This is the first time since 2016 that I’m seriously considering not updating the game. If 4.0 releases in anything close to its current state, I’ll be sticking with an older patch indefinitely. The UI overhaul doesn’t feel like a modernization—it feels like a regression that needs another year (or two) of iteration and testing.


I say this not out of malice, but because I care about the game. I want Stellaris to succeed and continue evolving. But this particular direction feels like it’s abandoning what made the game so enjoyable in the first place.


Please, take more time. Reconsider the direction of the UI changes. Listen to player feedback—especially from veterans who have been with the game since the beginning.

Let them cook.

 

[GnoSIS]

Something should also be said about a bit of low effort quick modding. You know, the 10-20 mins of coding just to attack the low hanging fruit of what a person would consider wrong with the current beta.

Right now the feeling when going to the colony screen is one of anger and furstration, that you can't do what you want.

One of the first things I will quickly mod with this zone/building system, if it stays like this, would be to remove all zone restrictions for buildings, and add more jobs to buildings as well - especially for fortresses which have none.

I really liked orbital rings, as they can provide districts that provide jobs - I may also mod them to be better and have more upgrades.

 

[Thiend]

How so? Im not saying dont leave feedback, im saying that it doesnt need to be expanded on much further. Obviously, feedback is wanted and needed.

Let them cook.

You are, in fact, constantly telling people their feedback is unneeded.

Literally back to back you said you aren't doing that, and then you did it again. You jump into conversations to try to shut them down. I thought people saying people complained for anything but positive feedback were overreacting, but that IS actually what you're doing.

 

[HFY]

I got one built in 3.99.3, but I've not yet got a relevant planet in 3.99.4 to test. I think on 3.99.3 it was under the "do everything" Urban Zone? Split off a save game, try building an Urban Zone and see if it's available there. I assume you've tried your Generator Zone? That would be a logical location, except that in many cases you don't get that active until weirdly late.

Yeah I don't see it in Generator or Government.

I'll add an Urban and see if that allows me to find the building, thanks.

EDIT: Yep, that's where it can be built. Thanks again! Also seems like a bug that I can't put it in a Generator District.

 

[NorseGod]

Problem: Zones modifying Jobs based on how many City Districts is causing wild swings in job allocation, unwanted behaviour, and economic issues. As well, players feel cut off from having finer control over their planets economy, where building more city districts adds Clerk and all Zones jobs. The only way to limit this is by limiting jobs using sliders, which is fiddly, and lowers overall production on the planet.

Potential Solution: Change the Districts > Zones > Buidlings nested Hierarchy to something easier to manage. Instead of making Zones rely on City Districts, each Zone makes it's own districts. So in this system, Zones are the top tier element. Then within each Zone, you can build Districts that supply Jobs, and also Develop the Zone by adding Buildings in the Slots provided.

Benefits: This allows the Customization of planets that Devs want, and allows players to retain finer control over their planets. And the AI will still be choosing buildings from a limited list after choosing a Zone, hopefully making the AI Empires work better.

Here's a crude mock-up of what I mean:

Props to ShaTiK for having the same idea in another thread, which influenced this design.

Zones; what is good, what needs to be fixed before 4.0

This won't be half as long as posts I've made in the past about stuff like this, I just wanted to say something about it and I don't want to put it in the S09 announcement (although it's obviously related). We've been told the purpose of zones...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Thiend]

Nice try twisting what i say. Go play the game and test it some more and provide feedback.

That's technically a response.

 

[SarahGabriella]

Something should also be said about a bit of low effort quick modding. You know, the 10-20 mins of coding just to attack the low hanging fruit of what a person would consider wrong with the current beta.

Right now the feeling when going to the colony screen is one of anger and furstration, that you can't do what you want.

One of the first things I will quickly mod with this zone/building system, if it stays like this, would be to remove all zone restrictions for buildings, and add more jobs to buildings as well - especially for fortresses which have none.

I really liked orbital rings, as they can provide districts that provide jobs - I may also mod them to be better and have more upgrades.

How is something wrong in a beta? Its a testing stage, plenty of stuff isnt how it will be on release.

 

[Thiend]

How is something wrong in a beta? Its a testing stage, plenty of stuff isnt how it will be on release.

You're STILL DOING IT.

If you're NOT just trying to tell people to stop saying anything negative, what is the purpose of your comments?

 

[Ilab]

How is something wrong in a beta? Its a testing stage, plenty of stuff isnt how it will be on release.

You are answering yourself though. Lots of things can be wrong in a beta, it is actually expected. If betas didnt had things 'wrong' then they would be essentially identical to the end product, which is often not the case.

And this beta has lots of things wrong, hopefully with the feedback they won't reach to the end version just like you say. But your logic (there can't be wrong things because it is a beta) is wrong and self contradicting.

 

[NorseGod]

Something should also be said about a bit of low effort quick modding. You know, the 10-20 mins of coding just to attack the low hanging fruit of what a person would consider wrong with the current beta.

Right now the feeling when going to the colony screen is one of anger and furstration, that you can't do what you want.

One of the first things I will quickly mod with this zone/building system, if it stays like this, would be to remove all zone restrictions for buildings, and add more jobs to buildings as well - especially for fortresses which have none.

I really liked orbital rings, as they can provide districts that provide jobs - I may also mod them to be better and have more upgrades.

So why not just change it so that Zones are the top-level element on Colonies, each with their own Districts and custom list of Buildings?

 

[GnoSIS]

So why not just change it so that Zones are the top-level element on Colonies, each with their own Districts and custom list of Buildings?

It's doable, for sure...

 

[SarahGabriella]

You are answering yourself though. Lots of things can be wrong in a beta, it is actually expected. If betas didnt had things 'wrong' then they would be essentially identical to the end product, which is often not the case.

And this beta has lots of things wrong, hopefully with the feedback they won't reach to the end version just like you say. But your logic (there can't be wrong things because it is a beta) is wrong and self contradicting.

You misunderstood. Its not about whats wrong, its about whats good. The devs find that out through the testing phase. The stuff thats no good gets changed and what needs fixing gets fixed.

 

[Newbee53]

Something should also be said about a bit of low effort quick modding. You know, the 10-20 mins of coding just to attack the low hanging fruit of what a person would consider wrong with the current beta.

Right now the feeling when going to the colony screen is one of anger and furstration, that you can't do what you want.

One of the first things I will quickly mod with this zone/building system, if it stays like this, would be to remove all zone restrictions for buildings, and add more jobs to buildings as well - especially for fortresses which have none.

I really liked orbital rings, as they can provide districts that provide jobs - I may also mod them to be better and have more upgrades.

From what I can see, part of the re-work is to prevent the ability to build everything everywhere. Largely this can be seen as a problem if your used to always building everything. But as far as I can tell, this is really the best part of the colony/planet rework. Your zones now make each planet a little different.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

A beta is for testing. Any constructive feedback is very much welcome.

 

[Ilab]

You misunderstood. Its not about whats wrong, its about whats good. The devs find that out through the testing phase. The stuff thats no good gets changed and what needs fixing gets fixed.

I honestly think it is about both, the good and the bad. The devs need to know what is wanted and what is not so that they can take informed decisions.

 

[tappi]

I'll add an Urban and see if that allows me to find the building, thanks.

EDIT: Yep, that's where it can be built. Thanks again! Also seems like a bug that I can't put it in a Generator District.

I knew I saw it somewhere

 

[GnoSIS]

From what I can see, part of the re-work is to prevent the ability to build everything everywhere. Largely this can be seen as a problem if your used to always building everything. But as far as I can tell, this is really the best part of the colony/planet rework. Your zones now make each planet a little different.

If I can't have a few soldiers on a planet, if I can't build an entertainment center for my miners and we are always locked on a 33% of all cities as a minimum on a planet doing a single function then the system is broken and prevents me having fun.

 

[Ilab]

From what I can see, part of the re-work is to prevent the ability to build everything everywhere. Largely this can be seen as a problem if your used to always building everything. But as far as I can tell, this is really the best part of the colony/planet rework. Your zones now make each planet a little different.

I agree. But I think that some things are a bit problematic. To mention an example of something that makes sense to be spammable (not saying it is an issue, just that it makes sense) Research Labs, Trade Buildings and Hydroponic. None of those is logically restricted by anything else besides usable space. In particular, with the coming changes, for very high usage of food with organic shipsets (which could right now be easily fixed just spamming Hydroponics) or the research changes some buildings need to be spammy.

Now, I am still not sure on the entire zones thing. I am not liking it, but I also think that it is because it is not final and there are still plenty of stuff that is not working as intended, missing info etc. So not entirely sure on that yet. But what I can say for sure is that the previous systems was less restrictive and much simpler, so at least it had that.

It was much simpler to obtain the building spots you needed and there where less restrictions around. For some builds, playstyles or needs, that was important. A good example of that, again, is the food producing buildings. If you where for a space fauna build. you could go to enormous heights even if you had bad luck with your planets and none had decent amounts of food districts.

All in all, I think that there is a lot of things that still are hard to properly utilize because of the state of the beta. For instance, with the current tooltips we have on jobs it is hard to estimate whether or not a certain % is worth it or not (a good example being the reduction in upkeep of medical workers).

TLDR: I would still prefer if some things could be spammed everywhere, some builds need it and it helps with bad planet RNG.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

I am wondering what generates civilian "Jobs" (where do they come from?) and wether if they should count as empolyed or unemployed.

Also
I hear they are currently uncapped. Should they be capped? And if so, by what? Should unemployed civilians exist?

Perhaps housing should be the thing that generates civilian jobs? As long as there is enough housing peoole should be able to get some of these jobs, no? Like 5 houses = 1 job. Or maybe housing goes 1 house = 1 job?

Pls someone enlighten me!