Stellaris 3.99.6 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Enero]

The intent of the two customization Zones are to let you turn your City District into the type of District that you want for that planet, whether it's an Industrial District (Industry + Industry, or Factory + Foundry), Research, Unity, Trade, or some weird combination of them.

They also let us restrict buildings to those slots if we want, or allow special Zones based on planetary features, civics, or other player choices.

It is better achieved with multiple Districts (research, alloy, unity, mining, refinary and so on Districts). You can have buildings for special effects.

I think that the development of the District concept will intoduce more flexible and intuitive system. The Zone concept is clumsy, unflexible and makes things worse.

 

[fourteenfour]

Right now the mishmash of zones and districts terms is really confusing. Just drop the zone term completely. Then leave off the text (district/zone/etc) from newly added districts. So industrial is just that, the district term is implied. Oddly you felt you needed to say Industrial Zone but not Archive Zone? See, how redundant it all is?

City district really should just have buildings unique to it and not shared with other "zonestricts" or whatnot. This would be a great place for the colony and empire unique buildings.

I would also suggest for the three resource districts to show their three building slots with revealed so that crystal mines, gas extraction wells, and mote harvesting traps, are able to be built in those districts. I would not allow those three special resource buildings to consume city building slots as that is not intuitive.

 

[fourteenfour]

Empire focus icon appearing at start implies you can choose but it requires unity to do so. I would make the initial choice free with a suggestion in mouse over which is best for new players or empire types.

The TOP bar MUST update if colonies update. Start of game it is completely wrong as is the colony dialog box but the colony updates on day 3 and if values change there they should be applied to the top bar immediately. Given that they do not a new player may be under the impression they are operating at a deficit or worse not know they truly are in deficit.

 

[secretagentguy]

Anything for MegaCorps yet?

 

[MarkDey]

As a reference, here are some comments Eladrin made earlier about Zones.

We do not consider zones an experiment.

We do believe that there are some changes that need to be made, but that the additional level allows us to provide more customization to planets and open up some interesting design space in the future.

The original idea for zones actually came up because we felt that we were planning on putting too many districts onto the planet (since we wanted to separate Foundry and Forge, and add Research) and thought that you'd prefer being able to customize/specialize the Urban Zones to provide the jobs you wanted.

Since past the early game, Stellaris players tend to usually super-specialize your planets, we figured you would generally end up applying three identical zones to a planet to get the maximum number of jobs, but still would have reasons to split-specialize at times or have Urban Zones for additional buildings. (Our original design included duplicate zones NOT providing extra building slots.)

Then we also thought about how we could use them to provide unique zones for special planetary features to make planets more unique, and we liked the idea. Yes, they could be buildings, but we were also fairly tied to our "buildings should modify jobs" plan to differentiate buildings and districts more than they are in 3.x.

Currently the rural districts have a different set of zones available to them. For now, they'll be fairly limited - the Mining District has a Mineral Purification zone, but I see a lot of potential for the future with the system, where there might be different zones available based on rare planetary features. I'd like to see planets have more uniqueness, but we won't have the time to delve deeply into the possibilities for the initial 4.0 release.

In general the new systems are a little easier for the AI to understand. Developing districts is something it already understands pretty well, so it comes down to picking the correct zones for the district and with better filtering and planet uniqueness among buildings they're less able to make poor choices.

Personally, I don't expect that zones will be discarded at this point, but I'm sure that continued feedback will be helpful as the concept is refined.

 

[Calvax]

The intent of the two customization Zones are to let you turn your City District into the type of District that you want for that planet, whether it's an Industrial District (Industry + Industry, or Factory + Foundry), Research, Unity, Trade, or some weird combination of them.

They also let us restrict buildings to those slots if we want, or allow special Zones based on planetary features, civics, or other player choices.

I feel something’s been lost with most buildings now giving jobs and being spam able. Zones do feel more superfluous when they do the same thing as buildings. I think it would be better to have buildings add scaling jobs when attached to a zone and have more buildings that buff those jobs.

 

[SurrealGoblin]

However, removing one zone will dramatically reduce the customization itself.
Maybe a bit of a crazy thought but what if planets could have more than 1 Urban district with its own set of zones.

The next Urban distric twould probably be hidden behind technologies.

The additional district could be under more player control. They provide less housing but increase the ability to plan zones on the planet.

View attachment 1274979

Planets should just get four districts. A Subterranean empire might make 4 mining districts: one they build betharian buildings in for energy, one they use for minerals, one to build urban zones to make consumer goods, and one with urban zones for research for a mostly self sufficient planet.

 

[fourteenfour]

Why do the population groups have ethics assigned if no factions are formed?

UI note - when opening a colony that was on any tab other than Surface the build queue will not be displayed until tabbed to Surface and manually choosing to open the queue.

 

[Danse96]

The live system of districts and building slots works very well, the zones are an experimental side-grade and definitely need more tweaking, how will the system of zones provide more value to certain civics, origins and ascendancies that remove the need for city districts to provide building slots in the current version of the game?

For example, ecumenopolis, hive and machine worlds, subterranean, masterful crafters and agrarian idyll all provide you with alternate development methods for existing planets by allowing you to scale building specific job output while also maintaining district based job output.

subterranean providing an urbanization slot is a strange choice, why not allow their city districts to also provide mining jobs, and do similar with agrarian idyll and masterful crafters?

 

[Newbee53]

I just saw that we have the UI and interactions to replace districts.
Can we have that feature, please?

I was doing that yesterday--99.5--with mining districts to city districts. I believe you can't close a zone with a building in it, so you might have to demolish said building for the last district.

some of the buildings do seemingly nothing when you apply the scale of the number of districts to them, the removal of an entire city zone means you will rely on the buildings a little bit more, but the buildings don't scale at all.

This is kind of what I assumed, and its pretty cool. I normally don't need to build mining districts at all after about year 30, so having that as an available choice will probably add a few more such districts into subterranean empires.

Why do the population groups have ethics assigned if no factions are formed?

UI note - when opening a colony that was on any tab other than Surface the build queue will not be displayed until tabbed to Surface and manually choosing to open the queue.

In 3.14 the number of pops with a specific ethic was required for that faction to form. I don't know if that is working for the new system yet. But I'm guessing the intention is to have a similar minimum limit.

@Eladrin are criminal mega-corp changes in? I really would like to test them with a pirate corp, but if I don't get the chance.

I guess I will be trying my rogue servitor empire when I get the chance later today. Hopefully it works enough for that.

 

[Miesha]

Gestalt hive reporting in;

I got to say, what I miss the most so far from pre-beta is my mining drones. Aside from that the zones seem interesting as a concept, if a bit confusing to get into at first. I also hope that civics and traditions that used to reduce upkeep cost of brain drones get changed to also include the engineering and biology brain drones, rather than just the physics ones. Or I assume they just function on physics so far, given they're the only ones with matching question marks in the tooltips.

Jokes aside, these numbers have me rolling my eyes. 1200 agri-drones are barely producing 100 food, while my 8750 pops eat 90 food total. These numbers are pretty insanely lopsided, but at least the silly values on pops now make the resources produced by space mining seem relevant due to scope. If a thousand pops struggle to produce 100 minerals, but a single mining outpost can produce 8 minerals with 1 energy upkeep, they're suddenly very efficient. It's a way to make space mining seem more valuable without actually touching the system at all.

I'll bumble through this playthrough with nerfed mining. At least mineral purification plants and mining outposts produce minerals still, and I picked Catalytic processing so I should manage.

 

[Thiend]

Let me briefly summarize before I get to my point.

I started out thinking Zones are pointless. This is still usually true, and in fact in your very defense of the concept is that you can exactly copy things like 3.14 Industrial districts with Zones. What this means in practical terms is that they really aren't doing anything for Industrial jobs that 3.14 districts don't already.

I no longer think the entire idea should be scrapped. I have come around on some upsides, such as in the case of Betharian.

They are, however, currently adding to the game... almost never, really, and detracting from it almost always. Any time I'm trying to manage my economy in detail, they are making my gameplay experience worse.

The core idea is definitely usable, but Friday patch or no Friday patch I simply don't think this is a good idea for 4.0. What should be a Renaissance moment for Stellaris with hugely improved performance and growth mechanics, plus one of the two ascensions left behind being updated and the other impending, plus empire focuses reducing RNG pain, PLUS Bioships as not only a shipset, but one with functional differences will instead be completely overshadowed by the fact that Zones just don't feel polished. I think the idea can work, and I think it can be an improvement, but it isn't ready for 4.0.

This update has feature-creep issues. Even without Zones, this is a MASSIVE update. More importantly, without Zones you'll have more time to make sure the rest of the game works well. Too much of the game doesn't work at all right now. I would prefer, and I think you would too, to NOT repeat some of the worse releases of the past that made the game worse until fixes were brought. I remember how unstable the Megacorp release was.

Take Zones off the 4.0 branch. Make buildings unique with a per-type limit, add district types, and we're good to go without them. Put out a Zones beta right after 4.0, so we can keep playing around with it together with you updating it until it's a good, solid addition.

 

[HFY]

By player request, the Build Queue side panel now automatically starts open when looking at your planets

This still conflicts with the build selection list, doesn't open if the current view isn't the default anymore, and is not really sufficient.

Please make the build queue a permanent element on the window, not a transient side-car.

 

[Newbee53]

This still conflicts with the build selection list, doesn't open if the current view isn't the default anymore, and is not really sufficient.

Please make the build queue a permanent element on the window, not a transient side-car.

or at minimum I'd go for just 'the current project' in the que being visible honestly.

 

[BrokenSky]

• Planets now have six building slots by default and two zones that can be used to specialize their urban districts.

Based on last patch, I feel like 3 districts was the correct number but 6 buildings on the government district would be better.

Perhaps having 3 on the government district, with 3 more unlockable would be the best option? (So those "+1 building slot" tech, tradition and civic options become "+1 Government District Building slot").

(N.B.: haven't actually tried this version out yet)

 

[Newbee53]

incase you had the same missunderstanding as me. Machine Gasualts aren't a part of this update. Oh well.

 

[Ternega]

A few thoughts and ideas on zones and buildings in beta.

1. Building slots - having fewer building slots is interesting, as it makes one really consider what you want to do with them, but 3 was crippling. Changing it to 6 will probably be decent enough, but i feel it reduces the need to prioritise. I think it would be better if we started with 3 on a new colony and got 1 for every capital building upgrade. It could be decent option if you ever bring back 3rd zone.

2. Zones - a good way to steer planets to specialisation, but they should not be obstacle to developing a planet. They are too restrictive with what you can build in them in 3.99.5. Especially unity zone. It would be good if unusual buildings would fit into more than one zone where it fits thematically, not just government/urban or bust.

3. Urban zone - i can't see this as anything but rural planet fodder. Clerks are as bad as ever, I doubt it makes sense to ever employ them, maybe in a hyper optimised tall trade build, maybe. And in turn you are losing a specialist per city district. Currently the one thing you absolutely should not put on your megalopolis planets is an urban zone. As I do not understand the intent, i can only offer a solution that gets rid of clerks. As a possible alternative it could increase number of jobs per district on a planet by some fraction.

4. Zone UI - when I click on zone it brings up city district menu. If i click replace in that menu i am offered to replace a district. Instead clicking zone should offer to replace the zone. Small buttons for districts and zones are a bad idea, you have space in the UI, there's no benefit to replacing a large [upgrade/expand/replace] button with a small icon unless you need space.

5 Buildings - I think a lot need to be done to make buildings make sense with new system, but a lot of the old per planet/empire buildings were already kind of bad on your key planets. Powerful as a science director is, it's not worth losing 6 researchers over. Sure, upkeep is a consideration, but it's not important enough. It would be good if unique buildings were a better option than just stock standard upgraded basic ones.

 

[NorseGod]

Do i really need a unity zone just to build a monument?

Yeah, not sure if this is a bug or an oversight, but the Archive Zone appears to only allow Research Buildings, but no Unity Buildings, at least from the pool of starting buildings. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a mixed zone, when you can only buff half the zone.

Looks like this is a problem with Machine Gestalts not being ready. My Friendly Neighbourhood Dedicated Assimilators will have to wait...

I am starting the game with a pretty big Amenities Defecit, even after the first month recalculations. Not sure if that's intended behaviour, playing as a Mechanist Origin.

 

[Lorenerd11]

The amount of jobs added by secondary urban districts of Ring Worlds, Ecumenopolis, and now Hive Worlds and Machine Worlds remains inferior to the amount of jobs added by the primary urban district.

Jobs from zones should either be doubled on the secondary district, or halved on the primary district.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

The intent of the two customization Zones are to let you turn your City District into the type of District that you want for that planet, whether it's an Industrial District (Industry + Industry, or Factory + Foundry), Research, Unity, Trade, or some weird combination of them.

They also let us restrict buildings to those slots if we want, or allow special Zones based on planetary features, civics, or other player choices.

For me, Zones make the game worse when I have <8 planets, and slightly worse when I have 8+ planets and can mostly ignore zones.

Zones could be used to make the generic districts feel special*
Zones instead merge districts to make City Districts more generic**

*Special: better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.
**Generic: Not Specific.

If I want more minerals I build a mining district,
If I want more food I build an agriculture district,
If I want more energy I build a generator district,
If I want more housing I build a City District,
If I want more research I build a research district,
If I want more trade I build a trade district,
If I want more unity I build a unity district,
If I want more CG I build a factory or industry district,
If I want more Alloys I build a forge or industry district,
If I want more of: (Research+Unity)+(CG+Alloys)/Soldiers/Trade+Housing... I build a City District,
with a job ratio of (20:20:20:40) : (50:50)
(amusingly it's 90 jobs total and not 100 for research zones, probably as 100 doesn't divide neatly by 3 so 10% of jobs are just missing)

That's far, far too much to try to squeeze into a single general-purpose district.