Stellaris 3.99.7 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Bl0wf1sh]

I know it is a bit late, and as I see from some responses, the feedback is not being taken too seriously. Nevertheless, my 5 cents:

• The start of the game feels... odd. There are a ton of unemployed pops that only get jobs after I build half the possible districts or more.
• Planet specialization has become meaningless. There is no point making an energy or agri planet anymore, just build whatever.
• It is really hard to figure out pop growth and what pops are working on, outside of the bugs where pop jobs oscillate even.
• The new rare resource mechanism is quite strange.
• The scaling of research and alloy/consumer goods production seems weird, because one can only build so few buildings in this category. Instead, so many jobs now go to basic resources...

Some ideas on my end (that are probably going to be ignored I suppose):

• Way fewer unemployed pops in the beginning. The previous system where there's only a few was better IMO.
• Have all basic & advanced goods in zones / districts, BUT limit these based on planet size: 2 districts for planets <10, 3 for planets < 15, 4 for < 20, and 5 otherwise. Maybe even have -1 / -2 districts for non-home world planets before the capital building is upgraded. And have a trade-off between building more jobs in a district and making those jobs more efficient (expand vs. upgrade). Having an actual choice between building food, producing alloys, consumer goods or research or unity would make the game more interesting. Additionally, have a fixed urban district with buildings that are, well, urban, such as police, entertainment complex, alien zoo, etc.
• A better UX for viewing pops, their growth, and job assignments is sorely needed.

 

[Hiksday]

So i tried the beta for the first time today.

The good :
-Zone for basic resource are nice.
-I like the new pop system , it feel more natural and fun to see the number slowly go up rather than having magical pop appear after x months.
-Some good QoL unrelated to the new economic system

The bad :
-Crazy flickering job when in deficit
-Obvious balance problem
-UI need some love
-City zone sucks.

So now let's talk about city zone in detail: What are you trying to do here? What's the purpose of zone ? Because i really can't wrap my head around the objective here:
- Really restrictive , you can't do shit with two zone. The variety of zone feel really limited
- Micromanagement hell , the opposite of what you wanted to achieve
- No point in having building linked to zone , 90% of them are planet limit 1 so ...
- Really can't do much on small planet.

So to alleviate these problem here are some suggestion:
-4 zone and more variety in zone. It could be useful to have a "generalist" zone that produce a bit of everything to help new players and the AI.
-Production building should give way more jobs to help making small planet relevant. Or we could have a combination of base job + district job and link production building to specific zone (for exemple a research lab could give 100 of each scientist (300 total) and also give a bonus of 20 of each per city district but it could be only build in research zone and not in the main area)

As for micromanagement i feel like it's the same as before:
-District and building still have upkeep and district still impact empire size so building them early will drain your economy , even worse now that resource deficit impact trade. So you still upgrade your planet little by little even if you have plenty of resources.
Here's a crazy idea: How about you remove district upkeep and empire size and add a small energy upkeep to the jobs and a small increase to pop empire size?Same result but now we can actually build 30 district at once without being penalized

 

[grommile]

Same result but now we can actually build 30 district at once without being penalized

You're still penalized: you've tied up all those minerals at once.

 

[Ilab]

You're still penalized: you've tied up all those minerals at once.

That is not a penalization, it is a cost. They are not the same. A cost is paid upfront in this case, but there is no penalization as in his example the upkeep will come from jobs and pops, not districts.