Stellaris 3.99.6 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Red Death]

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.

I agree, we already see in this thread people asking for building slots to scale to planet size again. I think that's entirely because they re-added these spammable flat jobs buildings.

This whole new system is fundamentally based on buildings modifying the zone instead of adding flat jobs. That's why they reduced the building slots in the first place.

 

[Lorenerd11]

(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)

I would just make it 33.34 jobs.

That way it becomes 50 jobs with say, Void Dweller job multiplayer, neatly adding up to 150 like other zones.

 

[Red Death]

By the way, I think AI has gone back from mostly non-functional to completely inactive. My neighbour built some Urban zones, but that's all.

 

[GnoSIS]

My biggest complaint is how buildings are handled. I'm thankful to get some more building slots for the government zone. But I still think a lot of buildings and their upgrades should be put back together. A lot of their effects should be put back to how they were as well.

Totally agree,
You can use my mod, Buildings Liberated, that I also plan to update this weekend for the final beta version, and add gestalts and machine empires.

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.

But now you pushed yourself into a tighter spot: those special zones must be super good for the player to dedicate 50% of the city capacity, compared to just 33% in the previous beta version. And the combinations are fewer and kinda worse. I can think switching a zone in the old system for a 33% offspec production on something that I have an emergency, but 50% - no way.

Effectively you removed one max zone from the design, and added it's building slots as a goverment zone. And that iteration took the team one week? (yes you were doing other stuff as well)

 

[NorseGod]

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.

Yes, exactly. Building a City Zone has become a situation where you end up with a bunch of jobs being added, some of which you wanted, and some of which fight against what you wanted to do. Example: I want more Consumer Goods so I build a City District, but then a bunch of the Jobs created also use up City Districts, and then Pops from my Mining Districts move up a Stratum, leaving me short of Minerals, leading to even less CGs. Maybe this adds to Realism, but it also makes managing the economy harder to do. I'm spending a lot more of the game fiddling with my economy and trades to keep things working, instead of exploring, dealing with anomalies, and Raiding Pops from my Neighbours.

The Leader of my Barbaric Despoilers Empire trying to keep the economy from collapsing, because I built a new City District without having rampant unemployment first.

And I might as well plug my idea that Zones should be what allows Districts to be built, and you can either keep Buildings inside Zones (as in my mockup below) or have buildings in a seperate area. Building songle-job Districts was a good way to give players control over which jobs get created, mixed City Zones are causing a decent amount of issues, espcially in small and large scaled empires. Maybe not exactly this, but something like this.

Custom Zones then create custom districts, instead of modifying the very mixed city-districts. Then we can make buildings be mostly Job Output * 1.x, or Upkeep * (1-x) again. Right now buildings that just add +X jobs are a temporary measure until Pops build, and then they get replaced. I don't find constantly building and replacing buildings more fun than the old system where I just built more buildings.

 

[jedavis]

"Archive" is such a great name for the Research/Unity district. 10/10!

I disagree; archives are where you store knowledge, not where you generate new data. I also think it has very little to do with the propagation of opinions which corresponds to unity production. It feels to me more like "Grand Archive" was still a phrase close to hand so they pulled from there rather than picking something really suitable to purpose.

 

[GnoSIS]

The design of those special zones must be of the form:

"Counts as an Extra Research(or whatever themed) Zone, and also adds X Y Z stuff per district."

 

[Miesha]

I can tell gestalts still need some time in the cooker. Never in my time playing gestalts have I experienced planetary revolts by my own species, because I'm always on top of (and producing far too much of) amenities. But I'm currently in the negatives on amenities AND trade value, and there's exactly zero buildings that give me more maintenance drones. I have to pump hive districts, which gives a minimal amount of maintenance drones, not enough to outpace my growing needs. Offsetting the trade value deficit by trading on the marketplace so that's not a problem.

I'm going to hopefully assume the intent is not for gestalts to need to build half a dozen hive warrens on every world we own just to cover maintenance upkeep, and that eventually we'll get some sort of building that gives us more maintenance drone jobs.

 

[NorseGod]

I disagree; archives are where you store knowledge, not where you generate new data. I also think it has very little to do with the propagation of opinions which corresponds to unity production. It feels to me more like "Grand Archive" was still a phrase close to hand so they pulled from there rather than picking something really suitable to purpose.

I don't know that it's the best name, myself. But I was scratching my head the last day or so trying to come up with something better, and I can't really think of one.

Quaternary Zone from the fact that Unity and Research are what we would call "Quaternary Industries" is accurate, but about as poetic as a hammer to the face. Academic Zone leans too far towards Research and Science. Capitol Zone leans too far into the Unity/Govt side.

Maybe Development Zone? I get the criticism, but what's a better substitute?

 

[NorseGod]

I can tell gestalts still need some time in the cooker. Never in my time playing gestalts have I experienced planetary revolts by my own species, because I'm always on top of (and producing far too much of) amenities. But I'm currently in the negatives on amenities AND trade value, and there's exactly zero buildings that give me more maintenance drones. I have to pump hive districts, which gives a minimal amount of maintenance drones, not enough to outpace my growing needs. Offsetting the trade value deficit by trading on the marketplace so that's not a problem.

I'm going to hopefully assume the intent is not for gestalts to need to build half a dozen hive warrens on every world we own just to cover maintenance upkeep, and that eventually we'll get some sort of building that gives us more maintenance drone jobs.

Yeah, I tried a Machine Consciousness Empire this morning, and the UI is a mess, and they don't function at all.

 

[Foxosaur]

Just another UI qualm from me. With the number of districts being available on the Surface(initial) tab, this should also include, somewhere, the size of the planet. It's not just what I am use to but gives me important information at a glance. I understand why its been moved to the Management tab and under Planetary features in terms of "context" but it has no relevance to managing planetary features itself. In my opinion anyway. So please bring it back to the initial screen.

 

[Ternega]

Maybe Development Zone? I get the criticism, but what's a better substitute?

Forum comes to mind. Scholar Zone works too.

 

[NorseGod]

Also, why is this still a problem with the UI? Literally putting "1..." takes up more space than "17" would, and then it's followed up by a bunch of blank space. This is part of why I don't like the move to x100 Population numbers, UI issues seem to be a really common problem regardless of which Beta version we get.

My Pops squished into he UI:

----------

Plus, the unemployment Icons are rapidly becoming a semi-useless feature, as they're now almost permanently on. Because if you're not running with at least some unemployed Pops, then you overbuilt your Districts and are likely running into shortages of base resources from Strata movement. Having 19 Pops unemployed now is the equivalent of 0.19 Pops unemployed in 3.14. The Unemployment Icons should be adjusted to match, so that they don't appear until you have 100 Unemployed Pops (the equivalent of 1 unemployed Pops in the old system). This also fits with the idea that Civilians should exist by default, and having <100 unemployed Pops is normal.

 

[NorseGod]

Forum comes to mind. Scholar Zone works too.

Yeah, maybe. Forum Zone and Scholar Zone don't seem like World-Spanning areas the way an Industrial Zone, Urban Zone, or Factory Zone do.

What about: Knowledge Zone, Innovation Zone, or Information Zone?

 

[Ternega]

Yeah, maybe. Forum Zone and Scholar Zone don't seem like World-Spanning areas the way an Industrial Zone, Urban Zone, or Factory Zone do.

What about: Knowledge Zone, Innovation Zone, or Information Zone?

I think that you don't have to add Zone it can be one word, that's the case with Archives, right?

Knowledge zone lacks flavour and might be a miss with spiritualists who might prefer it to be Wisdom Zone, but works well enough. Innovation/Information run into the need to cover wide range of potential inhabitants/civics/ethics.

Personally I still like "Forum" the best, as it's nebulous, not sure about your point on scale honestly. I can see it, but i can also see a galactic civilisation keeping an entire planet as a Forum for discussion between its brightest minds.

 

[NorseGod]

I think that you don't have to add Zone it can be one word, that's the case with Archives, right?

Knowledge zone lacks flavour and might be a miss with spiritualists who might prefer it to be Wisdom Zone, but works well enough. Innovation/Information run into the need to cover wide range of potential inhabitants/civics/ethics.

Personally I still like "Forum" the best, as it's nebulous, not sure about your point on scale honestly. I can see it, but i can also see a galactic civilisation keeping an entire planet as a Forum for discussion between its brightest minds.

Oh, you meant just "Forum". Yeah, I think that works. At least, it works as well as "Archive" as a Zone, and describes it better. Also gives it a feeling of techno-feudalism, which I like.

Maybe make "Archive" a type of building, increases output or decreases upkeep of Bureaucrats?

 

[Deshiba]

Please, I beg.
Please let my limit be a limit.

I don't want to decrease my job max by 2 pips. I want to set my limit so that I can still make food districts and not get increased specialists and consumer goods.

 

[Kataclyszm]

Dropping down to two customizations for the Urban district helps a lot with this.

In the new setup, your homeworld begins with their City Districts being split across all jobs, with each one giving:

• 20 Physicists [Archive]
• 20 Biologists [Archive]
• 20 Engineers [Archive]
• 40 Bureaucrats [Archive]
• 50 Metallurgists [Industrial]
• 50 Artisans [Industrial]

But if you replace the Archives with a second Industrial Zone, then you end up at 100 Metallurgists and 100 Artisans per district - it matches the old Industrial District exactly.

Except it doesn't, because we also lost the Archive-benefit.

I'm still unclear why you guys actually decided to make these changes. What does it possibly enable that the current system did not?

 

[NorseGod]

Not sure if the map settings were tweaked, or I just got insanely lucky today, but I'm seeing way more Metal deposits on systems, which definitely helps with the early game.

 

[Foxosaur]

I saw somewhere, maybe on Reddit, I'm not sure, that people thought there was too much to fix in time for release of the DLC and patch.

It's not that I don't believe in the team but there is a lot to fix just in a useability perspective and accessibility and that's important to me. You know, EU IV had this ugly problem where the menus were just too cluttered and literally filled to the brim with information but I guess if you was there from the early existence of the game, you grew with the game. I purchased the base game, and simply never progressed beyond that, it was just way too alienating to get to grips with, I have no doubt its a good game though.

This is up there in doing that, I think. A summary screen, should just be that and easy on the eyes. I think this might need more time.