Stellaris 3.99.7 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Ilab]

First of, that was not the ORIGINAL question. So this starts bad. 2nd, he is right, you answered to something different. 3rd, you are plain wrong. Why? read ahead:
Jobs dont exist to be jobs. Technically yes, I am being nitpicky, but yeah rocks exist to be rocks, same with jobs. I do get your point though, you don't make them to have them, but to get and end result, which is output (again, just being nitpicky since you seem to like it that much).

Now, that logic is just wrong. Because while jobs exist for their output and not to 'just be jobs' output is obtained from them. Which means that when someone asks for something like: I want/need X Artisans, they dont actually want the artisans, they want their output. It is as IF they said isntead that they need + X*O (where O is artisans output). I find it weird, in fact to be honest I just think you are doing it on purpose, that you don't know this.

When someone says that they need 2 miners they dont mean that they need 2 miners, but rather 2 miners worth of output, it is known in this forums by everybody. So again, when I said that I wanted X and Y I meant their output. And this is valid for both systems. Period.

Overall your entire comment is nitpicking nonsense things that everybody knows. The point still stands: it is harder to ahve the right ratios of jobs (and thus resources, as those jobs produce them) in a planet. So your entire comment about how jobs ratios don't really matter that it is the output etc, is just nitpicking nonsense that is more hollow than the Storm Capsule once you open it.

And, to add, goals are very subjective, RP exists for example, as well as many other things. What if I want to be the biggest factory in the galaxy even if I dont need the produced CGs, what IF I am playing obsesional directive? So saying that X things isn't a goal by itself shows a lack of thinking out of the box from your part.

I could continue. But I think I left things clear now.

However, I am very curious about this part:

So what you're "really" saying is that it's impossible to set up a planet that has a research:cg output of 2:3 per city district built... and that's very easy.

Before you get any ideas, I am not curious of how it is easy, I know how to do it. For instance, just adjust the job sliders, see? Easy. What I am curious is about why, if you knew all along what he meant, then you essentially accused him and me of being dumb? I don't see a good answer coming from here except that you are not arguing in a constructive way with us but just being an 'undesired' fellow. And by the way, the current system has it better, with some jobs (researchers, bureaucrats etc as an example )I can just disable the building temporarily instead of having to go to the jobs tab and fiddle with it. This was also already said, perhaps you ignored a portion of the thread?

 

[Ilab]

I've come to realize I should say I have 0 issues with zones and the new building system. My only problems are:

1. Having multiple zones on one district. (And even this would not be a problem if not for: )
2. Specifically only having one city district with 2 zones to handle all the non-basic resources.

Everything else is completely fine. Sure there are a lot of unique buildings in the game from various sources now that assume you have a lot of possible building slots. Those will have to be adjusted/replace one by one, but that is doable.

But with these problems in place, I honestly don't care what they can do with these zones in the future, it will never be enough to make up for the annoyance.

Well we are about in the same spot too. My main issues come from civic and other 'special' buildings. I am still not sure on the entire zone thing either, not against, nor in favor. I like some things from each system. Both have their own issues. I also agree with 2.

 

[Ilab]

This is not responding to anything I said. You are not addressing my point OR the original point you're referencing, you're picking and choosing to make the weakest possible argument by hybridizing them and then taking a victory lap when the strawman collapses.

I do not need to provide you specific screenshots of why fixed ratios is a problem (something you've just insisted isn't real, then admitted is real) for you to understand what I'm saying, unless you've never played the beta and are incapable of recognizing the problem. I have described repeatedly why and how this is a problem, you either can't understand verbal examples or you choose not to hear them. I am not going to provide you fodder to try to nitpick the specific example again, as you did to someone at the start of this specific discussion.

You are once again flipping your own argument. You started this paragraph with "there are many ways" and then, presumably when you realized you couldn't come up with a single example of one that would address the described problem, insisted that control is actually "unnecessary" and "counterproductive."

"I know better what you want than you do!"

Evidently an incorrect assumption, as you're now arguing that when I say jobs (to get resources) are impossible to fine-tune, I actually mean resources. Correct. And it still doesn't matter, because it still isn't possible, because the source of resources is jobs. Jobs are not possible to fine-tune. This means that resources are not possible to fine-tune. I literally said you were doing this, and you did it again. I am not describing that my problem is being unable to fine-tune jobs, I am describing that my problem exists because we are unable to fine-tune jobs. Which we are, hence the problem.

Honestly? I think you (and I) are both wasting time with him. He is not arguing with us to discuss the topic and help us understand it or to explain other things we don't know etc. He is arguing and like you said (and I agree) nitpicking things for the sake of arguing. Do yourself a favor and don't waste more time with him, I wont after my last reply to him.

 

[Ilab]

I'm really not. Completely ignoring anything you said, the answer to @Ilab's scenario is what I posted earlier: build a cg zone that focuses on raw output and a science zone that focuses on pop and upkeep efficiency, along with a science zone special building if you've picked one up. Pick up the slack with trade and as the planet grows you'll gain on your CG deficit and also gain science to match the increased sprawl from the new pops and districts.

The rest of the big post I was going to follow up with was pointing out that the scenario contrived implied a significant structural issue with the empire, some likely scenarios, and how fixing them at the source instead of slapping down some random districts on your new planet was significantly easier in a five planet empire using zones, or in the worst case about the same.

If you have a different scenario then... no. I'm done bringing you to the water on this.

This is wrong. And this is my last reply to this as you seem not interested in having a proper discussion, jsut nitpicking things.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION: The example didn't display "scenario contrived implied a significant structural issue with the empire" IT WAS AN EXAMPLE, made out that way for simplicity. If something so SIMPLE escapes you, I doubt there is any point in continuing with this. I also provided you with several more other examples to illustrate how wrong you are about your assumption. Just to mention: vassalization taxes/aid, recently conquered or lost planets, planets getting destroyed/affected by events or anomalies, etc. There are a myriad of reasons why infrastructure can suddenly have issues not directly related to the player planetary management. You seem to not know any of those possible scenarios either.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

This constant attacking back-and-forth is getting tiresome to get notifications about...
Please consider continuing it in private messaging?

 

[MarkDey]

It does appear that this discussion is nearing the end of it's productive life. I am glad that it has not devolved into personal attacks - thank you for remaining in compliance with the Community Code of Conduct.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Sorry for chopping your post up so much but I was repeating myself a lot. If I've chopped out anything important by mistake let me know.

Of course it is still leaching a real resource! All of those pops producing trade could also be producing literally anything else!

Pops produce substantial trade passively from living standards. You're easily clearing 20+ per mature planet just from decent conditions and social welfare is a huge jump. You can lean into it for more if you're low on certain raw resources but it's not required (unless it's all being chewed up on logistics for single district type planets).

You are absolutely ignoring the part where I stated that these are big, sweeping shifts to the economy, and not small adjustments/fine-tuning.

Again, the zone buildings (assuming the bad flat job buildings are removed) are probably not going to be useful for fine-tuning. because you will have already built them as soon as a zone is available. And if you're saying you need to switch out buildings in that case, again that is a sweeping change that's just going to switch one imbalance with another imbalance. An that's all assuming the devs get this semi-balanced before release.

I now understand that by fine tuning you mean... OK "on the fly ala carte infrastructure" doesn't quite get across the deep visceral loathing I have for the economy structure you're referring to and I've suffered under in this game for nearly a decade.

Also, you can still do that just fine for minerals/energy/food (and research on habitats, and everything else on an ecumenopolis). It's only advanced resources on regular colonies that have this arbitrary restriction placed on them.

Again, is the existence of the rural districts working against the system?

Rural resources are limited by planetary features and are highly influenced by local demands. There's a hard cap at the planet's respective districts cap and reduced returns once you exceed local demand. Unity, research, alloys, and cg are hard gated only by planet size, the first two are purely empire level bucket fillers, the third virtually so. CG is its own odd duck. You can have a size 25 planet with only one food district or more energy than you strictly need but, with a seperate district model, no such restrictions exist on the t3 resources. Limitations are where strategy grows, and imposing varied limitations on different kinds of resource both makes them feel more distinct and makes for a more complex and engaging game.

Sameifying them by making them all just +mana districts for standard planets is to me a very boring design goal, and also reduces the specialness of planets that do get t2/t3 districts instead of rural. With a split setup as standard an ecu is just a regular industrial world but big.

For example, something I've found interesting in the beta is the interaction between Mining and Industry. If you have a planet that has almost as much possible mining districts as it has total size, you have a bunch of choices to make. Do you go for a mix of mining/city districts (specialised in alloys f.e.), or do you go for full mining, building industry elsewhere but having to pay the trade tax? Similarly, are you paying trade to import food and energy, or do you sacrifice a few district slots to produce those locally? In any case, you can build enough alloy foundries to use up close to the exact amount of minerals you are producing, regardless of your current technologies. Assuming we get more interesting zones and buildings, that adds another layer of interactions between all the districts on top of this.

This is interesting, and I think these are exactly the type of choices you were talking about, right? But do you know what splitting up the city district would degrade about this? Absolutely nothing, because I was treating the city district as just an alloys district anyway.

You can set up a pure alloy/mineral planet if you want. You're allowed to build dupe districts. I said this was a benefit of the system, you can still build 3.14 style single mana planets if you want.

Would having mining and alloys be two zones in one district make this situation more interesting?

Your mineral district is already constrained by the cap on the mineral districts but no such restriction would exist for splitting the non-mineral districts between alloys vs cg. That being the case would be very boring to me.

Now, another possibility for this planet would have been Minerals-->CG-->Research (maybe it also has a research modifier, cool planet!). The interaction between city and rural districts remains mostly the same as the other scenario. Assuming we don't need more unity, that's a Research zone plus Factory or Industry. Depending on final balance numbers, either of this options might exceed the CG concumption of the research by a lot or a little (or in the Industry case, baybe fall short). This will also depend a lot on your currently researched technologies. If you don't need the extra CG's, you can hope that you can use buildings to bring consumption and production closer together (because that's more efficient, right?), and not accidentally tip over in the other direction. Meanwhile, the mineral balance is easier, just build as many mineral districts as you need to support this, or more if you want the minerals.

All splitting the city district up would do to this is let you also balance things out by letting you manage Factory and Research districts independently.

Yes. That would be awful. Especially that last paragraph. I hate it.

You could then have for example have 2-3 times more research than Factory districts, because your empire really doesn't need more CGs, and you are concentrating your Alloy production elsewhere. This would also open the option of swapping one or two of the research districts with a unity district, because you are a spiritualist and would like some priests there, or you have Byzantine Bureaucracy, etc. Do you really think this is less deep and interesting than having the consolidated city district?

Yes. I would find this infinitely more boring and yet requiring far more day to day attention. You are describing everything I hate about the current setup but worse. Also you can do the Byzantine thing and this:

Are you telling me that on an Earth specialised in administration and trade, I can't find a spot to place a university-city somewhere?

with a planet unique capital zone locked +X static job building which I've already said I'd be fine with because eating a precious capital zone slot is a bigger decision than swapping one of 10 to 25 interchangeably identical districts.

Yeah, jobs are just a means to an end, as are all those other things. Doesn't change the fact that in 3.14 I can just build a single district or building anywhere I want when I want more of that one resource. In 3.99 that becomes impossible in a non-intuitive way, and I despise that.

You can keep any interesting modifications to the district via zones the same if you split off more districts, just look at how rural districts work. If you're talking about interesting interactions between the two zones within the city district specifically... Yeah that's of no value to me. Interactions within the planets, between districts are far more interesting to me.

You can keep any interesting modifications to the district via zones the same if you split off more districts, just look at how rural districts work. If you're talking about interesting interactions between the two zones within the city district specifically... Yeah that's of no value to me. Interactions within the planets, between districts are far more interesting to me.

Or in other words: All the current city district is doing is making you select two districts out of a list and only allowing you to build the same amount of both of these, instead of letting you build any number of the districts in that list. And I don't think that makes planet building more interesting, because the interactions between the district is what's interesting to me.

I despise that in 3.14 economy management is just building the right mana when the empire level colour runs low, and I hate that I have to build each mana generator as a discrete action. "How do you solve this problem?" "Depends on the context" isn't a cop-out to avoid answering, it's the metric of whether the question is worth investing attention in.

Needing more CG and a little science so I build sole CG and science districts and all my problems go away - to me this is just busywork. There's no point. It's just tedious bookkeeping to keep the game running. If everything has an easy answer I don't want to be asked the question.

I want an economy model I engage with. Locking each planet to a user-customised ratio of t2/t3 outputs means my initial configurations have long term impacts on my later decisions on other planets, and any later revisions to those planets are big decisions with big knock on effects that aren't mitigateable by just queuing up a couple of district swaps afterwards. I want an economy puzzle made of planet sized pieces I built myself out of the components I scavenged from half the galaxy.

What you call fine control I call a waste of time and it's been boring me for ten years. All the stuff you hate about the new model is the stuff I'm most excited for and all the things that in your opinion need fixing in it are in my opinion the things they need to lean into harder. We're basically at an impasse of personal differences in preference and opinion.

But you've been genuinely enjoyable to talk to about this so thanks for being a cool person on the Internet.

E: oh god there's a mod notice I didn't see load. I was on a train!

E2:

I've come to realize I should say I have 0 issues with zones and the new building system. My only problems are:

1. Having multiple zones on one district. (And even this would not be a problem if not for: )
2. Specifically only having one city district with 2 zones to handle all the non-basic resources.

Everything else is completely fine. Sure there are a lot of unique buildings in the game from various sources now that assume you have a lot of possible building slots. Those will have to be adjusted/replace one by one, but that is doable.

But with these problems in place, I honestly don't care what they can do with these zones in the future, it will never be enough to make up for the annoyance.

And yet getting rid of these points would remove almost everything I like and reinstate a bunch of stuff I really, really don't. So there we are.

 

[Red Death]

Alright, out of respect with the moderator's statement, I guess this will my last comment in this specific back-and-forth!

Sorry for chopping your post up so much but I was repeating myself a lot. If I've chopped out anything important by mistake let me know.

Pops produce substantial trade passively from living standards. You're easily clearing 20+ per mature planet just from decent conditions and social welfare is a huge jump. You can lean into it for more if you're low on certain raw resources but it's not required (unless it's all being chewed up on logistics for single district type planets).


I now understand that by fine tuning you mean... OK "on the fly ala carte infrastructure" doesn't quite get across the deep visceral loathing I have for the economy structure you're referring to and I've suffered under in this game for nearly a decade.


Rural resources are limited by planetary features and are highly influenced by local demands. There's a hard cap at the planet's respective districts cap and reduced returns once you exceed local demand. Unity, research, alloys, and cg are hard gated only by planet size, the first two are purely empire level bucket fillers, the third virtually so. CG is its own odd duck. You can have a size 25 planet with only one food district or more energy than you strictly need but, with a seperate district model, no such restrictions exist on the t3 resources. Limitations are where strategy grows, and imposing varied limitations on different kinds of resource both makes them feel more distinct and makes for a more complex and engaging game.

Sameifying them by making them all just +mana districts for standard planets is to me a very boring design goal, and also reduces the specialness of planets that do get t2/t3 districts instead of rural. With a split setup as standard an ecu is just a regular industrial world but big.

You can set up a pure alloy/mineral planet if you want. You're allowed to build dupe districts. I said this was a benefit of the system, you can still build 3.14 style single mana planets if you want.

Your mineral district is already constrained by the cap on the mineral districts but no such restriction would exist for splitting the non-mineral districts between alloys vs cg. That being the case would be very boring to me.

Yes. That would be awful. Especially that last paragraph. I hate it.

Yes. I would find this infinitely more boring and yet requiring far more day to day attention. You are describing everything I hate about the current setup but worse. Also you can do the Byzantine thing and this:

with a planet unique capital zone locked +X static job building which I've already said I'd be fine with because eating a precious capital zone slot is a bigger decision than swapping one of 10 to 25 interchangeably identical districts.





I despise that in 3.14 economy management is just building the right mana when the empire level colour runs low, and I hate that I have to build each mana generator as a discrete action. "How do you solve this problem?" "Depends on the context" isn't a cop-out to avoid answering, it's the metric of whether the question is worth investing attention in.

Needing more CG and a little science so I build sole CG and science districts and all my problems go away - to me this is just busywork. There's no point. It's just tedious bookkeeping to keep the game running. If everything has an easy answer I don't want to be asked the question.

I want an economy model I engage with. Locking each planet to a user-customised ratio of t2/t3 outputs means my initial configurations have long term impacts on my later decisions on other planets, and any later revisions to those planets are big decisions with big knock on effects that aren't mitigateable by just queuing up a couple of district swaps afterwards. I want an economy puzzle made of planet sized pieces I built myself out of the components I scavenged from half the galaxy.

What you call fine control I call a waste of time and it's been boring me for ten years. All the stuff you hate about the new model is the stuff I'm most excited for and all the things you think you need fixing in it are the things I want it built around harder. We're basically at an impasse of personal differences in preference and opinion.

But you've been genuinely enjoyable to talk to about this so thanks for being a cool person on the Internet.

E: oh god there's a mod notice I didn't see load. I was on a train!

E2:

And yet getting rid of these points would remove almost everything I like and reinstate a bunch of stuff I really, really don't. So there we are.

But yeah, wow I disagree with almost every single thing you said there!

Maybe it's more surprising then that we agreed on several points within the new system!

 

[BrokenSky]

So I've played for about a week now and have compiled the following list of bugs, UI issues and opinions relating to balance:

UI and Localisation

• Pop growth is still broadly opaque - I can't tell how fast pops are growing, nor what is contributing to the growth speed of various pops.
• Migration is likewise opaque - I can't tell where pops are coming from or going or why. With no visibility over the system I have no control, so I'm also loathe to start migration pacts with other empires.
• I can't see how efficiently my pops are contributing to various jobs
• I can't see the modifiers for job output ideally for each job I'd like to see workforce, base production per workforce and modifiers
• I can't see how much any given planet's modifiers are contributing to empire level trade costs.
• The upgrade tooltip for capitals needs fixing
• Various origins mention starting with pops but their numbers haven't been updated; Mechanist mentions 8 robot pops rather than 800; Syncretic Evolution and Necrophage say 12 rather than 1200 and Synthetic Fertility mentions 9 rather than 900.
• The Ascension Effects listed on the planet management screen do not correctly factor in bonuses such as those from the Ascensionist Civics
• Ideally I'd like to be able to see planet size and type on the surface view as you can in 3.14
• Stars have a purple TODO UPDATE tooltip

Bugs, Missing Features and Balance issues/opinions

• Temples cannot be built in Unity Zones or Archives
• As has been already mentioned, planets currently have no defence armies
• The AI seems incompetant, not sure if it knows how to use the new systems?
• Commercial Pacts don't seem to do anything
• Cybernetic Creed Origin does not start with its unique temples
• Remnants Origin does not start with the Archaeostudies Technology, nor with a Facualty of Archaeostudies built.
• Civics which change some administrators for other ruler jobs don't seem to provide those new jobs; only fewer administrators
• Noble Estates building doesn't seem to add Noble jobs either
• The Empire Focus still has a mission which refers to building an industrial district
• Ethics Attraction seems broken, possibly due to pops taking multiple jobs?
• Diplomatic weight massively over-values population compared with other metrics
• Adaptive Ecology Tradition, Functional Architecture (and equivalents) and Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure and Durasteel Infrastructure all add +1 building slot, which does nothing.
• Having played with the system for a week, I feel that it worked better when cities could unlock up to 3 zones; ideally with the third zone locked behind techs, as this allowed for a better pace of progression, rather than being able to maximise development on your homeworld relatively early and then never come back to it. Having 6 buildings on the government district works better than 3 though. It may be an idea to have the government district start with 3 building slots and have techs, civics, traditions and/or capital upgrades increase the maximum number up to 6.
• In the same vein, it feels like development maxes out early; it might be good to have 1-per-planet upgrade buildings (e.g. Research Complexes, Administrative Park, Holotemple) increase the number of jobs from districts by +50%/+100%, so lategame buildings can employ more?
• Death Cults without Acolytes feels sad
• The Leader rework feels bad:
  • Leaders reaching level 3 and getting nothing feels bad; either getting a trait every level needs to be reverted or a lot more traits need to give bonuses which scale with leader level
  • Dead draws feel even worse than currently and the +1 trait pick across the board is not enough to fix this.
  • The reduction in leader pool size for Authoritarian Authorities feels even worse than currently because bad traits are even more costly. If having different Authorities interacting with leaders is important, give every Authority a different buff instead; e.g. Democratic: +1 Leader Pool Size / Oligarchic and Megacorp: +15% Leader Experience Gain / Dictatorship: -10% Leader upkeep / Imperial: -1 Leader Pool Size BUT 20% Chance for leaders to start with an additional positive and negative trait (stacks with Aristocratic Elite additively for 40%) - I have tried this specific configuration with personal mods in 3.14 and it feels good.
  • Overall the changes feel like they are tearing away flagship features from the Paragons DLC (features I specifically bought the DLC for) for no discernable benefit. It also exacerbates existing weak spots with the system in 3.14.
• Empire Progression techs feel lackluster and many come rather late (which weakens their ability to work as a 'make sure you get the critical techs without waiting the whole game for them' system). In particular, they don't unlock temple upgrades for Spiritualist (spiritualist should probably get a swap?) and it feels weird that the development unlocks don't include Habitats and Orbital Rings
• I have not yet managed to finish the KotTG line on the beta, but it's unclear how Demesne Outputs work with the new system; if this hasn't already been considered, it might be worth replacing the specific orbital type with the Maw of the Toxic Entity giving the Order's Keep "+50 Knight Jobs per (Habitation) District Level" and the Order's Castle "+25 Knight Jobs per (Habitation) District Level"?

Obviously this is for the Beta version from a week ago and some of this might already have been fixed (and other parts are probably on people's radars already), but I have listed basically every problem I noticed because I figured it was better to knowingly include known problems than omit by mistake ones which had been missed.

EDIT 12th APRIL:
A couple of other things I've noticed:

• Knights no longer contribute to the Quest for the Toxic God situation, and neither do Overlord Knights / Order's Commandery.
• Holo-Museums (i.e. Geology, History and Wonders) cannot be built in Archive zones, nor in either Unity or Research Zones. These really feel like Archive Zone buildings.

 

[Ilab]

So I've played for about a week now and have compiled the following list of bugs, UI issues and opinions relating to balance:

UI and Localisation

• Pop growth is still broadly opaque - I can't tell how fast pops are growing, nor what is contributing to the growth speed of various pops.
• Migration is likewise opaque - I can't tell where pops are coming from or going or why. With no visibility over the system I have no control, so I'm also loathe to start migration pacts with other empires.
• I can't see how efficiently my pops are contributing to various jobs
• I can't see the modifiers for job output ideally for each job I'd like to see workforce, base production per workforce and modifiers
• I can't see how much any given planet's modifiers are contributing to empire level trade costs.
• The upgrade tooltip for capitals needs fixing
• Various origins mention starting with pops but their numbers haven't been updated; Mechanist mentions 8 robot pops rather than 800; Syncretic Evolution and Necrophage say 12 rather than 1200 and Synthetic Fertility mentions 9 rather than 900.
• The Ascension Effects listed on the planet management screen do not correctly factor in bonuses such as those from the Ascensionist Civics
• Ideally I'd like to be able to see planet size and type on the surface view as you can in 3.14
• Stars have a purple TODO UPDATE tooltip

Bugs, Missing Features and Balance issues/opinions

• Temples cannot be built in Unity Zones or Archives
• As has been already mentioned, planets currently have no defence armies
• The AI seems incompetant, not sure if it knows how to use the new systems?
• Commercial Pacts don't seem to do anything
• Cybernetic Creed Origin does not start with its unique temples
• Remnants Origin does not start with the Archaeostudies Technology, nor with a Facualty of Archaeostudies built.
• Civics which change some administrators for other ruler jobs don't seem to provide those new jobs; only fewer administrators
• Noble Estates building doesn't seem to add Noble jobs either
• The Empire Focus still has a mission which refers to building an industrial district
• Ethics Attraction seems broken, possibly due to pops taking multiple jobs?
• Diplomatic weight massively over-values population compared with other metrics
• Adaptive Ecology Tradition, Functional Architecture (and equivalents) and Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure and Durasteel Infrastructure all add +1 building slot, which does nothing.
• Having played with the system for a week, I feel that it worked better when cities could unlock up to 3 zones; ideally with the third zone locked behind techs, as this allowed for a better pace of progression, rather than being able to maximise development on your homeworld relatively early and then never come back to it. Having 6 buildings on the government district works better than 3 though. It may be an idea to have the government district start with 3 building slots and have techs, civics, traditions and/or capital upgrades increase the maximum number up to 6.
• In the same vein, it feels like development maxes out early; it might be good to have 1-per-planet upgrade buildings (e.g. Research Complexes, Administrative Park, Holotemple) increase the number of jobs from districts by +50%/+100%, so lategame buildings can employ more?
• Death Cults without Acolytes feels sad
• The Leader rework feels bad:
  • Leaders reaching level 3 and getting nothing feels bad; either getting a trait every level needs to be reverted or a lot more traits need to give bonuses which scale with leader level
  • Dead draws feel even worse than currently and the +1 trait pick across the board is not enough to fix this.
  • The reduction in leader pool size for Authoritarian Authorities feels even worse than currently because bad traits are even more costly. If having different Authorities interacting with leaders is important, give every Authority a different buff instead; e.g. Democratic: +1 Leader Pool Size / Oligarchic and Megacorp: +15% Leader Experience Gain / Dictatorship: -10% Leader upkeep / Imperial: -1 Leader Pool Size BUT 20% Chance for leaders to start with an additional positive and negative trait (stacks with Aristocratic Elite additively for 40%) - I have tried this specific configuration with personal mods in 3.14 and it feels good.
  • Overall the changes feel like they are tearing away flagship features from the Paragons DLC (features I specifically bought the DLC for) for no discernable benefit. It also exacerbates existing weak spots with the system in 3.14.
• Empire Progression techs feel lackluster and many come rather late (which weakens their ability to work as a 'make sure you get the critical techs without waiting the whole game for them' system). In particular, they don't unlock temple upgrades for Spiritualist (spiritualist should probably get a swap?) and it feels weird that the development unlocks don't include Habitats and Orbital Rings
• I have not yet managed to finish the KotTG line on the beta, but it's unclear how Demesne Outputs work with the new system; if this hasn't already been considered, it might be worth replacing the specific orbital type with the Maw of the Toxic Entity giving the Order's Keep "+50 Knight Jobs per (Habitation) District Level" and the Order's Castle "+25 Knight Jobs per (Habitation) District Level"?

Obviously this is for the Beta version from a week ago and some of this might already have been fixed (and other parts are probably on people's radars already), but I have listed basically every problem I noticed because I figured it was better to knowingly include known problems than omit by mistake ones which had been missed.

A good compilation! I just want to say two things. Some of these are already know (such as the armies problem for example) it is going to be worked on. They also said that they need to rework several civics etc. I know what you said in the last paragraph, just saying it so you have some peace of mind and know some of this stuff has been mentioned by devs somewhere (either streams, DDs or other posts that you might not be aware).

Another thing that I want to mention (again) is how much I agree with you on the leaders part. So, another 'bump up' from me regarding this too. The main problems that where going to be solved with this change was to reduce notification spam and the feeling for leaders being needy. This can be done with auto trait (needy part) and the notification changes. No need to gut leaders anymore.

I also agree with the planet UI parts, in particular want to add that the features summary should be also on the first tab, just like it is in 3.14.

 

[Miridan]

I despise that in 3.14 economy management is just building the right mana when the empire level colour runs low, and I hate that I have to build each mana generator as a discrete action.

Needing more CG and a little science so I build sole CG and science districts and all my problems go away - to me this is just busywork.

In 4.0 economy managment is just building the right mana when the empire level colour runs low. You build City district with the CG zone or City district with Science zone, you're just doing it on different planets. In 3.14 we were incentivized to specialize planets by colony designation, but now we are forced to specialize via zones.

I despise that in 4.0 my Intelligent Functional Architectors somehow got critical brain damage and lost their skill of dividing a size 30 planet into more than 2 zones.

 

[Critical Ethics]

In 4.0 economy managment is just building the right mana when the empire level colour runs low. You build City district with the CG zone or City district with Science zone, you're just doing it on different planets. In 3.14 we were incentivized to specialize planets by colony designation, but now we are forced to specialize via zones.

I despise that in 4.0 my Intelligent Functional Architectors somehow got critical brain damage and lost their skill of dividing a size 30 planet into more than 2 zones.

You can play that way, at the cost of eating more logistics from having to ship your cg around. Or you can put your cg on your science planet, tweak the ratios with upkeep reducers and output boosters, and have more trade to grease the wheels with.

 

[Thiend]

You can play that way, at the cost of eating more logistics from having to ship your cg around. Or you can put your cg on your science planet, tweak the ratios with upkeep reducers and output boosters, and have more trade to grease the wheels with.

Or they can fix the underlying problem and re-enable only adding jobs you actually want.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Or they can fix the underlying problem and re-enable only adding jobs you actually want.

You say problem, I say feature. The intent of combining them is clear, as are the gameplay aspects that cannot be replicated without combining them. You find the restrictions restricting, I find they make an economy I actually enjoy interacting with. I misread your previous statements of opinion and preference to be you thinking you were making statements of objective truth, which is why I was getting so exasperated at you for "not understanding" how you're supposed to use zones.

I'm not going to argue about whether you were phrasing your objections poorly or if I was being overly literal in my reading (and I expect it was a combination of both). In the future if I'm unsure I will ask if you are expressing a dislike/preference for one way of doing things vs saying the alternative literally does not function, and I promise such questions or clarifications will be asked in good faith and not as some kind of weird jab or rhetorical argument winning tactic.

E: and I promise this post is also neither of the latter.

 

[BrokenSky]

I didn't really notice the situation with Housing, but if people are concerned that it's become a non-system, one fairly straight-forward option might be to reduce Housing from City Districts down to 500, and add +100 Housing per level to Archive and Industrial Districts (and any other hybrid districts later added) and +200 housing per level to Urban districts?

 

[SpardaSon21]

- they didn't want to clutter the UI - you know, this tiny window that inefficiently uses 1/4 of 1080p display

They absolutely need to rework the UI. There's a reason the "UI Overhaul Dynamic" mod is in 1st place in terms of subs on the Workshop with about a million subscribers, with the Gigastructures mod in a very distant second place at just over half the subs of UI Overhaul Dynamic.

 

[HighPriest]

They absolutely need to rework the UI. There's a reason the "UI Overhaul Dynamic" mod is in 1st place in terms of subs on the Workshop with about a million subscribers, with the Gigastructures mod in a very distant second place at just over half the subs of UI Overhaul Dynamic.

Yeah, until they stop supporting the 0.01% of users playing Stellaris on a 640x480 CRT from 1998 OR learn how to do dynamic UI, default UI is just going to be bad. At this point, we have to assume the actual UI design team, ie Orrie, will figure out a better way for most of this to look.

 

[Ilab]

Yeah, until they stop supporting the 0.01% of users playing Stellaris on a 640x480 CRT from 1998 OR learn how to do dynamic UI, default UI is just going to be bad. At this point, we have to assume the actual UI design team, ie Orrie, will figure out a better way for most of this to look.

To add on this, the new UIs for planets and Species Template have several issues. Thankfully the planet one has received more work and is better, only having some missing bits on the first tab. but oh boy, the Species Template one is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. The amount of scrolling itself is hell, the previous one presented the information on a much better way.

 

[HighPriest]

To add on this, the new UIs for planets and Species Template have several issues. Thankfully the planet one has received more work and is better, only having some missing bits on the first tab. but oh boy, the Species Template one is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. The amount of scrolling itself is hell, the previous one presented the information on a much better way.

I totally agree, but I think that the base problem comes back to the fact that they're trying to put too much information onto windows about the size of a postcard. Making it bigger would be great, giving an option to make it full screen would be ideal. Then they could implement all sorts of bad ideas about how they're going to split up each species into individual ethos when displaying growth or whatever and I'll still have a chance of figuring out what's going on.

 

[Ilab]

I totally agree, but I think that the base problem comes back to the fact that they're trying to put too much information onto windows about the size of a postcard. Making it bigger would be great, giving an option to make it full screen would be ideal. Then they could implement all sorts of bad ideas about how they're going to split up each species into individual ethos when displaying growth or whatever and I'll still have a chance of figuring out what's going on.

It is true, but at the same time the current window is a bit wider, and shows the information in a grid like way instead of list like. Which is much better. I also dislike how the management tab shows pop growth in the planet UI. I think that providing the data by species instead of pop groups (even if they grow by pop groups) is much better. Currently you have a very long list of portraits that are pretty much the same with different growths. The more species you have, the worst it becomes. It ends up making the entire thing useless as there is no realistic way to interact with so much duplicated info in a sensible manner.