Stellaris 3.99.5 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Newbee53]

Thankfully, zones don't have to be totally dropped. They can be put to the side for 4.0's initial release because that specific deadline is very tight.

This would come with several problems. Most of which deal with the time and effort needed to do this:

1. Elements of 4.0 built with the assumption of zones will have to be reworked. This time will not be used to make the final product better, just some middle stage.
2. the 'old methods' will need to be reworked to handle the larger pop numbers. Including balance that is more than 'multiply all jobs by 100.'
3. The old planetary management UI does not support multiple growing species or large pop numbers. So, the Planetary UI will need to be upgraded, or we lose those improvements as well.
4. The wilderness origin already hinted at suggests a hive mind with multiple 'species' that make it up. Seems likely that origin at least needs to be removed from 4.0. It's probably not the only aspect of 4.0 that is dependent on zones or the UI rework.

The question the developers and the decision makers--who aren't necessarily different people--need to decide is it worth it? Do they think that putting aside the zones will allow them to make 4.0 better than zones+4.0 will be. And I'm not convinced that is true.

Am I the only one that has "trouble" producing base resources?

Maybe it's a balancing issue: one rural district always makes 180 jobs, but a city district makes way more jobs because of zones. Maybe making that rural zones also increase district jobs?

Maybe I just have bad rolls for planetary features, resulting in less mining districts. Or maybe I'm still used to old Stellaris and I'm being too greedy with alloys and research.

No. 99.5 reduced jobs per zone-district and this has caused some balance issues. basic resources--especially energy in my experience--are really hard to produce. and its causing problems moving forward. not impossible to deal with, but that is the issue I'm having right now.

 

[Thecarlocarlone]

What maximum number? The maximum of modded pops is the maximum of pops with that trait.

Or do you mean it now will actually modify them over time?


This mechanic is horrible for me. It turns all scientists on the entire planet to that specialisation. I need several planets with research districts before I can even consider using them.

You "just" need 2 planets. One for general research and one specializing in what you need. Rushing engineering tech can be really usefull for syntetic fertility or for roleplay reasons. Also you can just remove or replace the building after you are done rushing what you wanted.

It would be great if you can do that with a single planet tough. One zones for research (biologist) and one zone for research for example. Making so you still have one research planet but with customizable research production.

 

[Critical Ethics]

What maximum number? The maximum of modded pops is the maximum of pops with that trait.

Or do you mean it now will actually modify them over time?

There's a delay between a pop taking a job and the automod trait flipping to the automod trait that gains bonuses for that job (this is not new behaviour it's always worked that way). So I think maximum = "The number with the trait" and current = "The number who haven't switched to a bonusified version of the trait yet".

 

[Critical Ethics]

The most interesting part of the sunk coast arguments--they've put so much effort into zones...--is it usually works better the other way around.

From an outsiders prespective zones have only been around for a year at the longest. But the current building paradime is multiple years old and has been tweaked for all that time. For all we know the sunk coast problem may be the only reasons planetary management hasn't been changed before now.

As outsiders, we can't know why or how the change came around now and not later or earlier. We really should avoid these kinds of accusations.

Yep. You need to have a real good business case before you can convince the people who pay for your time to allow you to spend a bunch of time basically redoing a whole bunch of work but different.

Or you need to be an important person's nephew with a freshly printed MBA. One or the other.

 

[WoodenP]

This would come with several problems. Most of which deal with the time and effort needed to do this:

1. Elements of 4.0 built with the assumption of zones will have to be reworked. This time will not be used to make the final product better, just some middle stage.
2. the 'old methods' will need to be reworked to handle the larger pop numbers. Including balance that is more than 'multiply all jobs by 100.'
3. The old planetary management UI does not support multiple growing species or large pop numbers. So, the Planetary UI will need to be upgraded, or we lose those improvements as well.
4. The wilderness origin already hinted at suggests a hive mind with multiple 'species' that make it up. Seems likely that origin at least needs to be removed from 4.0. It's probably not the only aspect of 4.0 that is dependent on zones or the UI rework.

1. List the elements within 4.0 outside of zones that have the assumption of zones. (There are none.)
2. Correct!
3. Multiple growing species and large pop numbers are unrelated to zones. As for the GUI, much of the interface script isn't even on the same planet_view.gui tab, and the work for displaying population growth mechanics has already happened or is happening.
4. Again, multiple species and the wilderness origin has nothing to do with zones.

So no, this would not "come with several problems." It would come with basic implementation demands (as you noticed in point #2) that is on a clearly smaller scale than the scope of a planetary management rework.

 

[Newbee53]

4. Again, multiple species and the wilderness origin has nothing to do with zones.

but it does have to do with the UI rework and related code bases that allow for multiple growing populations. They will need to rework that aspect of the UI, and we don't know how much effort that will take.

1. List the elements within 4.0 outside of zones that have the assumption of zones. (There are none.)

There are none which we know off. But that does not mean there are none. the only elements we know enough about to say anything about this is bioships, and I hope we all took it on assumption they wouldn't be connected to zones. This remains a valid point because we cannot say 'we don't know if any part requirese zones. their for they dont' require zones.'

3. Multiple growing species and large pop numbers are unrelated to zones. As for the GUI, much of the interface script isn't even on the same planet_view.gui tab, and the work for displaying population growth mechanics has already happened or is happening.

I'd assume most of the code is broken into separate chunks for ease of use, clarity, and scope issues. None of that means that its easy and not time consuming to change every reference to 'manage multiple pop growth program' to 'manage multiple pop growth in old style planet UI program.' Nor does it mean that you can just blindly change program calls and expect it to work right. If they have the time, its possible. But I don't know that they have the time.

Also, something I remembered after writing that post. It was stated in one of the last two dev streams that they've been rolling the beta into the 4.0 branch. So, it's not like they have any of the 'adapt 4.0 to working without zones' done already. They'd basically have to do that work from scratch. At least for the code written for 4.0.

All things considered, I imagine getting zones balanced right will take less time than trying to go back to the old system and do all the rewriting needed to get the old system balanced right. it's about time management now, and whether or not they have the times to balance zones right, I think it would take even more time to undo the zones action.

Finally, I don't know that the benifits are worth it. Both Zones and the Pop numbers changes are going to cause a lot of upset in the player base who don't know its comming until it shows up in the store. That's going to cause a lot of outrage. Right now, it will happen all at once. With your suggestion it will be drawn across a much larger time.

Nothing they do will change that. Every major change stellaris has gone through has caused the same problem. And this won't change that.

Zones aren't that far off from complete either. The biggest change likely to come is the specialization suggestion from earlier in this thread. but that would be giving everyone 3 more building slots and one less zone. The big complaints people have with zones will not be eliminated by that.

 

[WoodenP]

We don't know how much effort that will take.

Actually, anyone who has modded the planet view has an extremely good idea. You are talking as though changes are magic and impossible. I'm guessing it's because you can't visualise how things work. It is very doable.

There are none which we know off. But that does not mean there are none.

I, too, believe in the flying spaghetti monster.

 

[Ilab]

Not a dev but I don't think that will be something we do anymore. It was a feature because we only had single pop growth.



I like them at least. One less notification spam and makes the choices feel a bit more impactful



The queue should definitely be more visible

Well, I know that it was a thing because of that, but it was very useful and allowed for some interesting things both RP and mechanics wise.

Well, I guess that leaders are a matter of preference, but with how slow and unoften they level, and how many things Stellaris has spamming you with notifications, I do not find them to be that much of an issue. Specially now that they are 'fixing' notifications. If anything I think that the issues with them are already solved by those two things: auto trait and notifications. And while yes, the choices feel more impactful (because there are less) it also means that levels feel less impactful, so it is a tradeof. Again, a preference thing, but I believe that with the changes to notifications and auto trait is more than enough to fix the stated issues without having to mess leaders for all.

And yeah, the queue thing has me mad all ver the UI. Same with features not having a presence in the main tab and the scrolling on Modification Templates UI.

 

[fourteenfour]

So previously I reported that on the economy and management screens that a faction tag was being applied when no factions had yet formed and not available to interact with on F2 government. I guess I should give you kudos for removing the erroneous faction tags but seriously what exactly did you do? Apparently that is all you did because even though all my pops should have no faction their attributes are clearly different as if they had one.

See the two screen shots attached. There is no logical reason why I should have more than one grouping of population unless they were of different factions as I only have one specie here. Yet they have different levels of happiness and that could only come from being in different factions at this point in the game.

 

[Newbee53]

Actually, anyone who has modded the planet view has an extremely good idea. You are talking as though changes are magic and impossible. I'm guessing it's because you can't visualise how things work. It is very doable.

I'm not treating it as impossible or magic. I'm treating it as time consuming. Which it is. Perhaps I'm overestimating the time required, but its not like I have anything to make those estimates on. other than the development time implied by the beta, things the programmers have said about the UI, and previous statements about difficulties of updating the UI.

I, too, believe in the flying spaghetti monster.

Right. Let me lay out what I thought was obvious reasoning then:

1. 4.0 and zones were planned to be released together.
2. Zones are likely to be even older than 4.0 thanks to hints about changes to planetary management going back to before the machine age. The likely spark for the bio-update that 4.0 is.
3. Thus, 4.0 was almost centrally conceived very early on with the ideas of zones.
4. Thus, it's very likely that the 4.0 updates were never coded with the old system in mind.
5. It's also very likely that the idea of making 4.0 updates compatible with old planetary management was never a part of the process.
6. thus at least a few of the 4.0 updates are likely to be either impossible without zones or needing enterally new implementation without zones. especially true if a zone is added by the feature, and they don't have art for a building it would have to be converted into. It's also true, if the fundamental idea of something is to change zone job production. a buster for a specific zone. or anything like that.

Is that clear enough reasoning for you?

Everything on this topic is speculation by definition anyways. I'm not assuming your views are pulled enterally from the shroud, and just assume the reasoning wasn't provide cause it wasn't important for the post. which I didn't think it was. Please give other people the same curtesy.

 

[WoodenP]

• hints about changes to planetary management going back to before the machine age.

List these hints. In plural. Without them the rest of your list has no meaning.

(But listen: even with them your argument holds little water. As was already demonstrated, zones don't interact with the paid DLC nor the rest of 4.0 in any tangible way. When asked for any examples you had none. Zones can generally lift out of 4.0. Supposing that they might not based on a vague notion of an old planetary rework comment [still waiting on these actual "hints" to be provided] isn't ever going to be much of an argument.)

I hope this hasn't been too rude.

Perhaps I'm overestimating the time required

You are.

 

[Deshiba]

On constructing districts the limits I set get ignored

Before it was also not adhering to limits as it would insert the new jobs BEFORE the limits and then subtract the -50.
Now it just seems to ignore it.


Please allow me to set the amount of jobs to like 800 at increments of 25 and any that get added just don't get used.
I really don't need that many consumer goods, and my minerals can't keep up. If everytime I get more food my mineral income tanks because the specialists also increase above limit, that's problematic.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Actually, anyone who has modded the planet view has an extremely good idea. You are talking as though changes are magic and impossible. I'm guessing it's because you can't visualise how things work. It is very doable.

I, too, believe in the flying spaghetti monster.

Oh thank god you got weirdly condescending I was trying so hard to find a way to sugar coat this.

You are making extremely confident statements and each one makes it more obvious that you have never been involved in any kind of development project more complex than modding an existing mod friendly game, or maybe coding a small and simple game as a personal project. You are not winning this argument you just lack the knowledge to understand how badly you are losing it.

I say this not to be mean but rather to prevent further embarrassment.

 

[HFY]

Before it was also not adhering to limits as it would insert the new jobs BEFORE the limits and then subtract the -50.
Now it just seems to ignore it.


Please allow me to set the amount of jobs to like 800 at increments of 25 and any that get added just don't get used.

Might be useful to have a per-district job limit AND a total job limit which we could set separately, so you could build more City Districts and get different numbers of jobs from two different Zones.

 

[WoodenP]

Oh thank god you got weirdly condescending I was trying so hard to find a way to sugar coat this.

You are making extremely confident statements and each one makes it more obvious that you have never been involved in any kind of development project more complex than modding an existing mod friendly game, or maybe coding a small and simple game as a personal project. You are not winning this argument you just lack the knowledge to understand how badly you are losing it.

I say this not to be mean but rather to prevent further embarrassment.

Ad hominem.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Ad hominem.

Actually if we're pulling out debate speak it's an appeal to authority.

 

[Newbee53]

List these hints.

Lots of statements by various team members in streams indicating they don't like this or that part of planetary management. Aren't happy with how this or that part works or whatever. given stellaris is an actively developed game, this should be taken as meaning 'we are working on finding a way to fix this.' much like we can assume the spy stuff is beig worked on right now, because its been said by many people on the team they don't like how it works.

But I don't care enough to watch hours of content to find time stamps for you.

(In fact, even with them your argument has no meaning. Planning time =/= to development/removal time.

They might not be the same--sometimes they are but whatever--but they are related. especially if a part of the planning time assumes you have enough time to implement everything.

As was already demonstrated: Zones don't interact with the paid DLC nor the rest of 4.0 in any way. When asked to demonstrate this had no evidence.)

Of course it interacts with the paid DLC and 4.0. They are on the same build. Because I am an idiot I took nearly an 40 minutes to chase down the time stamp. around the 1:01:30 mark of the stream from Thursday. the discussion of future builds of the beta turns to logistics. its explicitly stated that the beta build 'only has some of the updates without any of the biogenisis stuff' and that they've been rolling the beta build into the main branch every few days 'which is why the planet has some old stuff in it.'

So the beta build is the secondary build and all the beta stuff gets moved into the bio-build of the game. meaning all the biogenisis stuff is being balanced with the zone balance in mind. interactions are there, and its not like they can just roll back to a no zone build. they'd lose everything they've implemented sense then even if they did.

Does biogensis interact with zones? Maybe. Depends on how the various paths work for the ascension perks. no surprise. But we can't say they are unrelated because they are clearly being developed in the same build at the same time. how much would be required to untangle them

On a note from above. yes we know when biogenesis was thought up, earlier in the same stream. they knew the machine age was going to make players demand more upgrades to ascensions paths and started planning for it before the release of that dlc. The 'discarded at the time' infrastructure idea is very clearly a pre-curser to zones. Which in my mind is far clearer and more versatile than infrastructure ideas. and that was before machine age. So, zones were in development before machine age, even if was just eliminating options that wasn't zones.

Maybe I'm overestimating the time, and maybe you're underestimating the time. We Don't Know. and can only guess. that's all this conversation is.

But the question isn't even if its possible--it almost certainly is if they really want to--its if its worth it. Cost benefit in my opinion is too costly for not enough benefit.

 

[WoodenP]

But I don't care enough to watch hours of content to find time stamps for you.

So again you have nothing.

the beta build 'only has some of the updates without any of the biogenisis stuff'

This has no relation to zones.

 

[Newbee53]

So again you have nothing.

No. This discussion is not important enough to me to dig it up. I--in the end--don't care if I am wrong about this. So I don't care to find out with 'high certainty.' if you care enough to demand more proof, go back and look yourself. If not, stop demanding other people do it for you on trivial things. its a game, who cares.

Because I am an idiot I took nearly an 40 minutes to chase down the time stamp.

And clearly, I can look up some stuff if I'm feeling stupid.

 

[BlastFilms_]

Ad hominem.

Actually if we're pulling out debate speak it's an appeal to authority.

guys, go get a room already, jeez

As for the Rural Districts being underpowered, that isn't exactly a change from form? Currently you speed run getting as much non-pop production of these as possible (arc furnace, hydroponic farms on starbases, etc) and then use your vassals to shore up any deficits. I don't really see how this is much different.