Stellaris 3.99.6 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Red Death]

I've had the good fortune of obtaining Fen Habbanis and thus trying out ecumenopolis gameplay!

And I gotta tell you guys, this is pretty great!

I've got :

• one button to click to increase my research output (don't mind the extra zone)
• one button to click to increase my research output
• one button to click to increase my cg production when I need more to feed the previous two
• one button to click to increase my trade production to compensate for the deficits

If only I could do this with all my planets! Oh wait, that's mostly just an evolution of the current 3.14 district system!

In all seriousness, this does still keep the zone system obviously, but it doesn't get in the way like this.

Meanwhile, I am this still functions with:

• The new job system
• specialised zone buildings
• The resource deficit trade cost system

The fun of the ecumenopolis just proves to me that it would be best to have a separate district for each major district on each colony.

 

[Archael90]

I have finally tried beta, and i have to tell that i feel overwhelmed - dont know what is what, which pop is what, which pop is growing, how can i choose which pops should not grow at all.
I have unemployement icon, but no unemployement.
I believe its because civilians... i dont think civilians are good.
And i dont know what jobs zones and districts provides.
How are civilians to uneployed pops? How this is tied to living standards?

If i may give some suggestion, tho since season 9 is already a thing i think all features are already thought out.
but i feel like zones should provide max number of jobs, and nothing should provide additional jobs, tho most of them should be civilians. Zones should shift existing jobs, including civilians. And if all jobs (including civilians) are taken, then unemployement should happen.
Also, Civilans should not trigger red unemployement icon. this icon should shows up if total number of really unemployed pops exceeds 100.
Also also. Why sometimes pops are cound as 1 and sometimes as 100? and why they contribut so small to empire size?

 

[NoXeno]

Early research is quite a pain to grind. You still need a balanced archive zone and industry on home world, so mostly from building labs and city districts. Also get a 1k+ fleet is more annoying with low tech output and balanced eco, space fauna and mining bots just gonna eat scientists.

Mid game colonization somehow is buffed? Early colony will be filled with some civilian with full building development at this point, and transit hub can make multiple worlds' pop go to new colony faster. In old pop system, there's not much different about colonization after the 4th planet.
Also grab pops with different climate preference from migration treaty is nerfed. Low population really tanks the pop growing and no more sexy toaster robot pops exploit build up the pop count.

Trade is always in deficit. It just a red problem. Throw something like "too much strategic resource production" from time to time to solve it. Somehow it is a bad resource for maintenance you always want to burn it?

 

[Troyen]

okay gave the new patch a whirl and my most noted issue is that everything, but especially the research feels so slow. Scientist used to create 4 of each research per job, aka 12 in total, but the new jobs only create 4 of one research. combined with the reduced number of jobs it's just so slow it's not fun anymore. You're throwing resources but nothing seems to be improving. it does for the basic resources, so that feels responsive. but research, i built up an entire planet for research and it felt like it had less impact than normal research building in the 3.x build. So I stopped playing for now.

Scientists only give 3 of each research as of last year's tech overhaul in 3.11. I don't remember exactly what their output is on the beta, but I think you have fewer pops working as researchers so it feels slower. E.g. if a research district gives you 40 of each at 3 output, that's equivalent to .4 of a pop on live, so you'd need five districts to match a single 3.14 research lab building.

The last beta I played had broken tooltips so it was hard to figure out exactly how valuable the different research building options were and what your pops were actually producing.

I'd like to be able to buy Mega engineering from the Curator guild. Just getting 5% or something so as to gain the option in research.
This time it took until the mid 24somethings out of a 2500 time game.

Mega Engineering is a guaranteed research option reward from the Tier 10 Empire Development Focus. When I played on 3.99.3 it was difficult to make much progress down the focus tree, but if you made it almost a full game I'm curious how far you got, even if you weren't explicitly focusing on it.

(I do suspect empire development speed is slower than on live, but I haven't tried the most recent beta.)

 

[Newbee53]

While I love the slower start, it's to slow, I think. Allowing slightly faster research--maybe like 20% more from jobs--will go a long way to make the start a better game. Other things I've noticed is that its a lot more important to know the size and type of your planet. Which makes the movement of the planet type off the surface tab a bit odd. Though its nice that I can--in theory--see the number of remaining blockers and districts available.

On the other side, I don't like build que defaulting open. I'd much prefer the currently building item being visible next to the button. I play in a window, and on the smaller size it gets in the way all the time. Alternatively, an option to cut off the auto-open behavior seems in order.

The two zones still feel limiting compared to the 3 we used to have. But having put more time into it, I don't think it will be particularly bad in the long run. I've yet to encounter a position where filling up the government zones' six building slots was necessary. The most i've done is build 2 amenities buildings. Which seems to suggest I should be getting that from somewhere else. So far I've had little reason to build anything else.

I should point out I tend to avoid robots because I just don't care enough to manage them, and I don't really want to spend the alloys on them. Interesting bio-ships might actually change that. So there is an interesting outcome of an unexpected choice. I would love to see the automation working so I can start using that instead. Personally, i find it significantly worth the large number of buildings to get everything up on automation. I do use robots when I feel it makes sense for my species. But if its 'well, they could or they could not.' Then I tend to avoid it. In a large part because it does make various species set ups different. The result of all this, is that it feels like we are missing a major feature without the automation that was advertised.

As a player that loves mixed planets, I really want a rural designation. We've got urban for general city stuff. But we could really use a designation for general non-city stuff.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Scientists only give 3 of each research as of last year's tech overhaul in 3.11. I don't remember exactly what their output is on the beta, but I think you have fewer pops working as researchers so it feels slower. E.g. if a research district gives you 40 of each at 3 output, that's equivalent to .4 of a pop on live, so you'd need five districts to match a single 3.14 research lab building.

Scientists went from giving 3 of each (so 9 total) per pop, to 4 of one kind per 100 pops. So effectively there's been a 55.[5]% decrease in research from jobs. Plus you only get 90 researcher jobs from sources that give 100 (zones) or 200 (buildings) of other jobs.

 

[Jekson20level]

In the current version of the game, where there are industrial districts, in fact, these industrial districts already have 1 zone. Only it is called specialization and has three versions: alloys, consumer goods, and mixed. But you can also get this by having 2 zones and 2 versions to choose from: alloys and consumer goods. However, the second option is to clutter the interface for 2 resources.

If we add a third one to these 2 resources, then we will need either 10 versions of this zone to choose from to reflect all the combinations, or 3 zones and 3 versions to choose from. If there are 4 resources per district, then you will need either 35 versions of this zone to choose from to reflect all the combinations, or 4 zones and 4 versions to choose from.

However, you can try to do as the developers, there are 6 resources and three zones, then in order to display all the combinations, you will need a bunch of mixed options (I didn't count).
This will lead to inevitable repetitions. Two mixed zones alloys/consumer goods = alloys zone + consumer goods zone and so on.

Сonclusion: either we bring unity and exploration back to the buildings, or we need more zones.

 

[Exasperation]

Scientists only give 3 of each research as of last year's tech overhaul in 3.11. I don't remember exactly what their output is on the beta, but I think you have fewer pops working as researchers so it feels slower.

It also feels slower because stored research is broken in the beta. In my current game I have tens of thousands of each research stored up by 2250 that would have already been turned into techs if it were working properly. In addition, for me the way it messes with the ETAs it makes it feel even slower than it actually is - if the research says it will be done in 9 months, and then I check back 8 months later and it says it will be done in 5 months, it feels slower than if it just said "finishes in 18 months" from the start.

 

[cryptkeeper]

It seems to me after playing more of the beta and the new system, I really do think every civic, especially older civics are going to need a mixture of a redesigns and balance passes to be useful in the new zone and pop system.

Technocracy for example, is almost comically bad and not working correctly. I think it would be interesting if this civic gave a unique building to research zones that gave science director jobs. In fact I think a lot of the civics could use unique buildings or zones based on their bonuses.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Zones having repeatable buildings that add a flat X jobs to a planet and do nothing else are a half and half return to the old system that combines the worst pitfalls of both.

 

[Critical Ethics]

It's OK for zones to have empty slots early game. You can fill them eventually. Filling them all up with repeatables while knowing you will replace them later works against the Less Clicks selling point of zones.

Building buildings to add fixed amounts of jobs of type A in zone B and having to compensate by building buildings to add fixed numbers of jobs of type C in zone D is just 3.x buildings but with more steps, killing the "just scale up" selling point of zones.

Building a single power district and then spamming multiple districtsworth of technician jobs into the zone is a problem unique to the combo that defeats the entire purpose of rural districts.

Amenities, housing, and arguably crime management are exceptions. Event buildings or empire uniques providing static amounts of jobs, absolutely fine. A token amount of static jobs alongside the main, district or job affecting bonus? Maybe in City districts and capital slots but absolutely not in the basic rural districts. Very very late game unlocks? Dangerous but maybe.

A player's first option for an unlocked zone being to spam buildings that just add extra empire resource jobs? And no other options? The past couple of patches have been trying to balance around a change that entirely defeats the purpose of the system you were looking for feedback on. If you were trying to address the "what's the point of zones?" posts maybe the answer was to demonstrate the point of zones by adding more buildings that add more choices, or maybe it was do nothing until you had the time to address it possibly, or maybe it was something else. Who knows. Definitely not me, I'm just some idiot who thinks zones are neat.

But whatever the answer was, it wasn't to actually make them pointless.

 

[ubitqu8o]

Can't invade pre ftl planet, is this bug?

 

[ShaTiK]

View attachment 1275842

Can't invade pre ftl planet, is this bug?

You can't invade anything with armies. For some reason you can take a planet if you are waging war under CBs that destroys stuff (extermination ones, containment etc), but you don't do it with armies, you move fleet to bombard and the next second you get the planet. Also you get lovely 'invasion in progress' indicator stuck forever if you ever try to invade anything with armies. So just don't invade stuff. Good advice IRL...

 

[Foxosaur]

I've had the good fortune of obtaining Fen Habbanis and thus trying out ecumenopolis gameplay!

And I gotta tell you guys, this is pretty great!

View attachment 1275649

I've got :

• one button to click to increase my research output (don't mind the extra zone)
• one button to click to increase my research output
• one button to click to increase my cg production when I need more to feed the previous two
• one button to click to increase my trade production to compensate for the deficits

If only I could do this with all my planets! Oh wait, that's mostly just an evolution of the current 3.14 district system!

In all seriousness, this does still keep the zone system obviously, but it doesn't get in the way like this.

Meanwhile, I am this still functions with:

• The new job system
• specialised zone buildings
• The resource deficit trade cost system

The fun of the ecumenopolis just proves to me that it would be best to have a separate district for each major district on each colony.

I have to say, that looks horrible. The current UI relies on color to differentiate the zones and has exposed how bad it looks once you get to the exquisite Arcology tier once they look the same, glad I got to see this, thanks Red Death.

 

[Red Death]

So, Void Dwellers Origin. Currently you still start like this:

Spoiler: Image

But trying to match the changes to normal starting planets it might end up looking like this: (?)

Spoiler: Image

It's a bit awkward. Research districts are swapped in instead of food districts, so you can't use the Archives zone to do double duty. You're short one district/zone so you are forced to rely on buildings for either food or unity. Food would perhaps be the more logical option, but hydroponics farms are not available right now, so I used Administrative Offices here.

So you can't properly scale on one colony as a non-lithoid/mechanical void-dweller right now. To fix this there would have to be a Unity+Food (Garden?) Zone for habitats. Or a building that adds food production to another job, or adds farmer jobs to a district. In any case, I just put myself in the awkard situation where increasing my Alloys/CG production also gives me way more farmers than I need.

On the other hand, I was able to build and colonize a second habitat by year 2211, so at that point I could try to actually start using districts for all my resources like you're supposed to.

 

[Red Death]

I have to say, that looks horrible. The current UI relies on color to differentiate the zones and has exposed how bad it looks once you get to the exquisite Arcology tier once they look the same, glad I got to see this, thanks Red Death.

You're right on that! Even in this case I would prefer each of those to just be a different type of District, not the same District customized by different zones. It looks bad, even if it is functionally equivalent to being different District types.

 

[Shadeseraph]

Job numbers are probably out of wack right now, at least for scientists. Early game research is painfully slow, and the only way to kind of speed it up is by either using the triple specialized research buildings exploit (which is a bug) or by spamming research buildings to hell and back - and it's still too slow. Then once you get to the advanced research complexes and research institutes it shoots up because, first, the advanced research complex generates the equivalent to 10 districts worth of scientist jobs (600 of each), second, the research institute increases the science production by 1.5, and third, this is also multiplied by the advanced research complex efficiency gain. I went from around 400 research per month total to 2000 in the spam of a couple months, and suddenly I was speeding through techs like crazy while earlier on it was a slog of like 40 months a tech.

Incidentally, this makes the Astral Nexus upgrade really powerful - it comes in far earlier, and grants a huge research boost to physics - nearly doubling the physics production at max level. Which is where both the advanced research complex and the research institute come from.

EDIT: you also want the auto-curating vault ASAP. +2 of each science type to bureaucrats? that's more than a base scientist of any kind gives...
Another one: the storm buildings give 200/400 scientists of each type and it's obtained fairly quick.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Venting out of the way, suggestions for .7 or later.

Static +X jobs are limited to capital zone building slots. Zones are for scaling resources, Capital Zone building slots are for static planet management. Maybe rename Zone Buildings to Facilities to reduce confusion and leave Capital Zone Buildings named Buildings. That way the capital zone is literally the capital with literal buildings in it while zone customisation via facilities are more fluid and abstract.

If the static +job empire level resource generators (energy, minerals, food, CG, alloys, unity, research) are staying they are similarly locked to the capital. You're building a single literal factory in a single literal city, with factory zones representing a planet level interest in factorying in every city. E: I should specify I don't think this is needed but I don't think it will break anything, unlike the repeatable in-zone ones.

If speciality research buildings can't be made per-district then they're capital locked. Or remove the static jobs, keep the cost reduction and efficiency boost, and make the facility reduce researcher output by 1 but add +1 (speciality research type) to each researcher type. This sticks with the "modify jobs" ethos.

Increase the number of jobs generated by districts to compensate for the removed statics. Rural districts should generate more jobs than a single zone city district but less than a dual zone city district.

Grant all zones at least two starting facilities to build, with 3 or 4 likely based on other techs. Rural zones already have the SR generators, push the efficiency booster to base instead of a t2 tech unlock. For the urban zones give them back the upkeep reducer as well as pushing the efficiency booster.

Additional basic facility suggestions:

Add an "on site amenities" building facility that adds a small number of medical workers and entertainers (and enforcers?) per district. Not enough to cover all the requirements but enough to take pressure off the capital. Or maybe just applies additional amenities and housing per district or reduces amenity and housing consumption for the zone's base job capacity, or reduces pop upkeep, or one or more of the above.

Add a "Protective Domes" facility that increases habitability or reduces the negative effects of low negative effects for the zone workers. One built in any urban zone applies the effects to every non-rural job.

Replace the moved efficiency booster with an upkeep reducer/efficiency booster that's not as good as the individual buildings at either but about as good when combined. For the rural jobs add an efficiency booster/base resource increaser.

 

[NorseGod]

Venting out of the way, suggestions for .7 or later.

Static +X jobs are limited to capital zone building slots. Zones are for scaling resources, Capital Zone building slots are for static planet management. Maybe rename Zone Buildings to Facilities to reduce confusion and leave Capital Zone Buildings named Buildings. That way the capital zone is literally the capital with literal buildings in it while zone customisation via facilities are more fluid and abstract.

If the static +job empire level resource generators (energy, minerals, food, CG, alloys, unity, research) are staying they are similarly locked to the capital. You're building a single literal factory in a single literal city, with factory zones representing a planet level interest in factorying in every city.

If speciality research buildings can't be made per-district then they're capital locked. Or remove the static jobs, keep the cost reduction and efficiency boost, and make the facility reduce researcher output by 1 but add +1 (speciality research type) to each researcher type. This sticks with the "modify jobs" ethos.

Increase the number of jobs generated by districts to compensate for the removed statics. Rural districts should generate more jobs than a single zone city district but less than a dual zone city district.

Grant all zones at least two starting facilities to build, with 3 or 4 likely based on other techs. Rural zones already have the SR generators, push the efficiency booster to base instead of a t2 tech unlock. For the urban zones give them back the upkeep reducer as well as pushing the efficiency booster.

Additional basic facility suggestions:

Add an "on site amenities" building that adds a small number of medical workers and entertainers (and enforcers?) per district. Not enough to cover all the requirements but enough to take pressure off the capital. Or maybe just applies additional amenities and housing per district or reduces amenity and housing consumption for the zone's base job capacity, or reduces pop upkeep, or one or more of the above.

Add a "Protective Domes" facility that increases habitability or reduces the negative effects of low negative effects for the zone workers. One built in any urban zone applies the effects to every non-rural job.

Replace the moved efficiency booster with an upkeep reducer/efficiency booster that's not as good as the individual buildings at either but about as good when combined. For the rural jobs add an efficiency booster/base resource increaser.

This is the stage of grief known as Bargaining. You've realized that this switch to the Zones system isn't working, and it's breaking parts of the game that weren't intended, but you're trying to find a way to make it work.

But a lot of you solutions are "remove choices from the game, push things together" or nullifies a lot of Origins and Civics. Push Entertainers, Medical Workers, and Enforcers to a single "On Site Amenities Building"? There goes a bunch of Civics that modify Amenity Buildings. Remove the +X jobs Buildings they just changed? There goes the fine tuning of the economy that the Zones system nullified.

You'll get to acceptance soon. This system rework isn't working.

 

[Critical Ethics]

This is the stage of grief known as Bargaining. You've realized that this switch to the Zones system isn't working, and it's breaking parts of the game that weren't intended, but you're trying to find a way to make it work.

But a lot of you solutions are "remove choices from the game, push things together" or nullifies a lot of Origins and Civics. Push Entertainers, Medical Workers, and Enforcers to a single "On Site Amenities Building"? There goes a bunch of Civics that modify Amenity Buildings. Remove the +X jobs Buildings they just changed? There goes the fine tuning of the economy that the Zones system nullified.

You'll get to acceptance soon. This system rework isn't working.

Yes and no on the bargaining. What I've written there is basically the original design description, while factoring in the amenity changes and the capital zone switch from 3 and 3 to 6 and 2 (e: both of which are good iterations on the original design)

Oh I get you now, you're saying that static generation buildings on non-city zones could make things pretty samey since you'd e.g. drop a nourishment complex on the farm zone for every world that's not building farms, but on the other hand if farm buildings only modify farm jobs then the whole farm district section will be dead space on a specialized world.

I'm leaning toward the latter being the better option. Its got its cons but as someone said (can't find the post) it being very visually obvious that a zone hasn't been touched will make your specialised worlds stand out a lot more as you're flipping through them.

Here's a discussion from February about the exact problem static jobs could cause, and there are a ton of early posts, many from myself, about the importance of building variety for this to work (Yes, I can provide receipts for those too).

Where I'm bargaining is that every time I included a qualifier of "assuming they don't fall into these obvious pitfalls" I firmly believed they would not.

But here we are. And my bargaining is "OK so now we can try the thing your originally described that I really liked right? Right?"