Stellaris 3.99.7 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[ShaTiK]

Here's a bit of a reference point. I did quick test run, machinist humans. Nothing crazy, slightly modified.

Spoiler: 25 years

This is my capital after 25 years (I deleted screens for the other planets, but one few city levels with research zone and the second had just mining

Spoiler: 50 years

This is 50 years into the game. Only have 4 planets and no ability to place second zone.
Moved mining from capital, added trade zone to fix trade deficit.

Pure tech world (not even that big of a planet)

Future CG world, for now industrial zone since I lack planets to separate them

Pure mining world

Spoiler: 75 years

Now have 6 planets and also got ability to place second zone.
Can remove industrial zone from the capital

Tech world

Pure factory world. Note the amount of job slots - I added the second factory zone since I needed to expand CG production and now I have 1k additional jobs that I currently don't need

Mining world is the same, not being developed

Rural world - food and energy combined, not yet finished (would have 2 urban zones filled with food and energy prod buildings). For now don't have dedicated food and energy world yet - would have after some more habitability tech/traditions

Separate forge world, colony stage for now

Can you work with zones even in their current form? Yes, you can. Is it fun? Not really, early game you are being tossed from one deficit to another - just because you don't have precise control. 75 years in and I have 6 planets - to have 'comfortable' eco you need dedicated planets for energy, food (minerals from stations mean you don't really need a dedicated mineral planet later on) and every advanced resource - alloy, CGs, unity, research, trade. Trade can be bundled up with energy and food planets, you get less efficiency per pop by missing on designation bonus but can be done if you really are strapped for planets, same with armies to a degree. In total 7 planets, ideally around 9. No real need for more until late-game, but really uncomfortable with <5.

BTW clerks might be back since they give trade and amenities - you need some trade anyway and you need amenities. Maybe running 2 trade buildings per planet instead of amenity-producing ones might be more efficient. Currently there are practically no upgradable buildings with few exceptions, so you can't have upgraded holo-theater for improved amenity generation and I have no idea whether we would get upgrades back or no. But that's minutia, search for more efficient strategies is a thing, but only after the system is in place.

Again, is this system working? For the most part, when you zoom out enough and have ability to do so. (Sidenote - housing is now made completely redundant, see how much free housing I have per planet in relation to free job slots). Is this system fun and engaging? Pretty much the same as it was in previous system minus the ability to fine-tune it early on. Now you pretty much have to rely on auto-resettling, meaning you would be in for a very 'fun' time trying to balance the economy with different species across different planets. Say you need to have more CGs to fix the deficit, you level up your main factory world but then you find out you have 2k civilians sitting on their asses because they don't want to move to this planet due to low habitability. I don't even know you would be balancing thins in this scenario.

Dunno how representative my way of playing is. Maybe I'm a weirdo and everybody else plays in a vastly different manner, but them again there isn't that much variety in the first 100 years.

 

[PLSKICKME]

3.99.8 when? (ik its not happening but still)

All my colonisable planets looks like this.

 

[Ajacoba]

Here's a bit of a reference point. I did quick test run, machinist humans. Nothing crazy, slightly modified.

Spoiler: 25 years

This is my capital after 25 years (I deleted screens for the other planets, but one few city levels with research zone and the second had just mining

View attachment 1276523

Spoiler: 50 years

This is 50 years into the game. Only have 4 planets and no ability to place second zone.
Moved mining from capital, added trade zone to fix trade deficit.

View attachment 1276535

Pure tech world (not even that bit of planet)

View attachment 1276537

Future CG world, for now industrial zone since I lack planets to separate them

View attachment 1276540
Pure mining world

View attachment 1276533

Spoiler: 75 years

Now have 6 planets and also got ability to place second zone.
Can remove industrial zone from the capital

View attachment 1276545

Tech world

View attachment 1276547


Pure factory world. Note the amount of job slots - I added the second factory zone since I needed to expand CG production and now I have 1k additional jobs that I currently don't need

View attachment 1276549

Mining world is the same, not being developed

View attachment 1276550

Rural world - food and energy combined, not yet finished (would have 2 urban zones filled with food and energy prod buildings). For now don't have dedicated food and energy world yet - would have after some more habitability tech/traditions

View attachment 1276551

Separate forge world, colony stage for now

View attachment 1276553

Can you work with zones even in their current form? Yes, you can. Is it fun? Not really, you are pretty uncomfortably being tossed from one deficit to another - just because you don't have precise control. 75 years in and I have 6 planets - to have 'comfortable' eco you need dedicated planets for energy, food (minerals from stations mean you don't really need a dedicated mineral planet later ingame) and every advanced resource - alloy, CGs, unity, research, trade. Trade can be bundled up with energy and food planets, you get less efficiency per pop by missing on designation bonus but can be done if you really are strapped for planets, same with armies to a degree. In total 7 planets, ideally around 9. No real need for more until late-game, but really uncomfortable with <5.

Clerks might be back if they give trade and amenities, since you need some trade anyway and you need amenities. So maybe running 2 trade buildings per planet instead of amenity-producing ones might be more efficient. Also currently there are practically no upgradable buildings with few exceptions, so can't have upgraded holo-theater for improved amenity generation and I have no idea whether we would get upgrades back or no. But that's details.

Again, is this system working? For the most part, when you zoom out enough and have ability to do so. (Sidenote - housing is now made redundant). Is this system fun and engaging? Pretty much the same as it was in previous system. Now you pretty much have to rely on auto-resettling, meaning you would be a very 'fun' time trying to balance the economy with different species across different planets. Say you need to have more CGs to fix the deficit, you level up your main factory world but then you find out you have 2k civilians sitting on their asses because they don't want to move to this planet due to low habitability. I don't even know you would be balancing thins in this scenario

Do you actually need fully dedicated unity worlds? I usually just build those little culture worker buildings and call it a day - also politicians and the like produce a lot, no?

Isn't unity kinda a resource that grows automatically with your expansion through the stars?

Also xenos not moving to worlds they don't like isn't exactly a new thing, that has also been a major issue in slave or other multi-species empires, how did you handle it before the beta?

 

[wisecat]

Please make Habitats destructible and add a possibility to switch them off in Game Setup.

 

[Kataclyszm]

... I'm just so tired of being negative, but I can't see any reason not to be.

 

[ShaTiK]

Do you actually need fully dedicated unity worlds? I usually just build those little culture worker buildings and call it a day - also politicians and the like produce a lot, no?

Isn't unity kinda a resource that grows automatically with your expansion through the stars?

A lot of unity later on is generated by top tier capital building, but early to mid game you don't have them yet. And depending on how many leads you are running (and how high-level they are) you actually need major source of unity. Also it is good to have a dedicated world so I can place Ministry of culture there and run 'planetary exhibition' decision

Also xenos not moving to worlds they don't like isn't exactly a new thing, that has also been a major issue in slave or other multi-species empires, how did you handle it before the beta?

That's true. But current system is more of 'broad strokes' ones, so it very much encourages you to just have job slots and wait, compared to old one. This is due to increase in size, more that anything and changed to migration. Old system was very binary, you had your pop, it took a really long time for it to resettle and a migration was simulated with growth modifiers. Now we actually have migration in form of small scale movements, so it is totally impractical to try to manage economy using old tools. I have trouble remembering how exactly I was running multi-species games in 3.14 or earlier versions, I'm gonna be honest. But I don't remember it being that much of a hassle. Maybe by the time I actually had lots of species I had my main planets as ecus/rings/gaias so habitability became a non-issue

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Those are more options, but do those options actually improve gameplay? How often do you think "I need to increase Trade, CGs, Research, and Unity right now" and then have a planet tailored to that need, that also has City Districts still to be built? It kinda becomes options for options sake.

So the irony is they wanted to not have everyone making mono-planets, but the only way to have fine control over your economy is to do exactly that, including a giant Trade world to account for defecits.

I don't like zones (for many reasons, including as you say, never normally wanting to increase 4+ jobs at the same time). They are an experiment that I don't think works and is certainly not close to being ready for 4.0.
No good ideas require zones. Most ideas are actually made slightly worse when touched by zones.

I posted half a dozen mock-ups in a thread before about of how I'd rather the planet summary screen functioned.
Mostly I wish the UI showed more information about species, jobs and features on the main planet summary screen. I don't think it needed this sort of complete re-work and I'm sad that planets are going to be an uninformative mess, worse than ever before in the history of Stellaris (for me personally).

Still, I'm trying to think how zones could (eventually) be used in interesting ways. Some hypothetical examples:

Spoiler: Future zones?

1. "Cosmogenesis" zone changes jobs like Researchers into Archivists + Hedonists to be more like fallen empire planets, unlocking more fancy buildings.
(you could do the same by having Fallen Empire buildings swap jobs in the associated district - but this way you only have hedonists if you have the ability to build the zone and not just if you get a free copy of the building)

2. "Primitive" zone changes jobs into Noble and Peasant-versions (for Pre-FTL, it could cost a lot of time and resources to swap the zone out)
(you could do the same with Primitive buildings swapping jobs, but it's normally free to demolish buildings. A blocker that swapped jobs to primitive versions would be more appropriate as it would also limit planet development until cleared.)

3. "Synergy" zone changes jobs into a weaker form that gets stronger with every other synergy-type job on the planet
(we have this with clerks boosting traders so it's already possible)

4. "Gas" zone changes jobs to be worked by contained gas-based lifeforms, with engineering jobs providing life-support (housing and amenities) for their high-pressure research environments.
(we have this with Organic Sanctuary buildings and Bio-Trophies)

5. "Portal" zone adds mirror-jobs and mirror-workforce based on how well the portal species is doing, if doing badly also adds mirror-criminals.
(we have the portal zone feature already providing scaling jobs it could also provide some scaling bonus workforce)

I keep trying but no idea I can think of actually requires zones. You could have thematic job-swaps using Civics, Ethics, Districts, Buildings, Decisions, Designations, Modifiers, Blockers or Features without breaking anything.

I don't think zone changes are the end of the world, but they do annoy me.

 

[NorseGod]

I don't like zones (for many reasons, including as you say, never normally wanting to increase 4+ jobs at the same time). They are an experiment that I don't think works and is certainly not close to being ready for 4.0.
No good ideas require zones. Most ideas are actually made slightly worse when touched by zones.

I posted half a dozen mock-ups in a thread before about of how I'd rather the planet summary screen functioned.
Mostly I wish the UI showed more information about species, jobs and features on the main planet summary screen. I don't think it needed this sort of complete re-work and I'm sad that planets are going to be an uninformative mess, worse than ever before in the history of Stellaris (for me personally).

Still, I'm trying to think how zones could (eventually) be used in interesting ways. Some hypothetical examples:

Spoiler: Future zones?

1. "Cosmogenesis" zone changes jobs like Researchers into Archivists + Hedonists to be more like fallen empire planets, unlocking more fancy buildings.
(you could do the same by having Fallen Empire buildings swap jobs in the associated district - but this way you only have hedonists if you have the ability to build the zone and not just if you get a free copy of the building)

2. "Primitive" zone changes jobs into Noble and Peasant-versions (for Pre-FTL, it could cost a lot of time and resources to swap the zone out)
(you could do the same with Primitive buildings swapping jobs, but it's normally free to demolish buildings. A blocker that swapped jobs to primitive versions would be more appropriate as it would also limit planet development until cleared.)

3. "Synergy" zone changes jobs into a weaker form that gets stronger with every other synergy-type job on the planet
(we have this with clerks boosting traders so it's already possible)

4. "Gas" zone changes jobs to be worked by contained gas-based lifeforms, with engineering jobs providing life-support (housing and amenities) for their high-pressure research environments.
(we have this with Organic Sanctuary buildings and Bio-Trophies)

5. "Portal" zone adds mirror-jobs and mirror-workforce based on how well the portal species is doing, if doing badly also adds mirror-criminals.
(we have the portal zone feature already providing scaling jobs it could also provide some scaling bonus workforce)

I keep trying but no idea I can think of actually requires zones. You could have thematic job-swaps using Civics, Ethics, Districts, Buildings, Decisions, Designations, Modifiers, Blockers or Features without breaking anything.

I don't think zone changes are the end of the world, but they do annoy me.

Those are all really cool ideas. But they can exist without Zones taking over half the City Districts. I don't see how having the option to build a limited selection of several types of Districts on a planet is a problem. Calling each group of these a "Zone" and having exactly the options you outlined maintains what worked from 3.14, and gives them more options for the future.

It's not like Paradox has never dramatically reworked the economy in a game before, and had to walk out back later.

 

[A Cat]

Woo! Working invasions!

 

[Mercedes Romero]

Why are you nerfing storms? I love storms! I understand that it should be easier to mitigate devastation, but to remove it entirely?!

 

[Thiend]

I'm torn here.

On the one hand, I really don't know if this will be a good 4.0 release. I'm hoping to be wrong, and I know how I'd fix it, I just also would have preferred those fixes before the beta was over and now I'm hoping they'll happen before 4.0 still.

Specifically, I'd make two distinct city districts, not each costing their own Zone slots (IE if you have one Zone for one city district, putting a different Zone on the other city district doesn't cost a Zone slot, or same for two - only costs as many as whichever has the most). This would restore control over what jobs are created. I would also add a deprioritize/prioritize button, so that any remaining control loss doesn't require closing and reopening jobs to fix or waiting for demotion time. Together, these would make it an improvement over 3.14 instead of a massive downgrade. Hopefully this will happen.

On the other hand, much of my pessimism has been alleviated by casually one-line fixing Cosmic Storms to no longer be a broken DLC. 95% of my problems with that DLC are instantly resolved by removing devastation from Storm effects. Should you ever care to fix the rest, it's that the precursors are a little buggy (possibly also underwhelming, but maybe not now storms are going to be good? They were before, unsure now) and that Shroud storms can't be created by players (probably solved in Shadows of the Shroud?).

 

[Weyird]

I eaterly await to see what the final product looks like. It will also interest me to see how much can be changed from a Beta to final release.

I hope this has been useful and that devs arent demoralized by the negativity. I think everyone is excited for some changes, but i think the original goals were more interesting and backpeddling to a more 3.14 approach, while being familiar, also makes people disappointed.

Basically, go all the way or don't go at all.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

Last I played was 3.99.4, here's my quick tour notes for 3.99.7:

Planetary UI, UNE start, Economy tab: most job inputs/outputs are displayed as "..." until hovered over (where it shows floats to 2 decimal places). This is not useful, I want to see the numbers at a glance when managing.

Planetary UI, Management tab: ok, I see this long list of pop groups now displays the occasional +1 or -1 in the earlygame. I have to observe it to tell if that's "in the last month" or what. This could be useful if the list wasn't a 1 dimensional vector that distinguishes strata and ethics. There are 3 dimensions that are interesting to filter on: strata, species, ethics. The ideal UI would be a 2D table where the axes are customisable plus a filter on the 3rd dimension. So: "I want to only look at Blorg, show me strata as rows and ethics as columns" or "I want to only look at the civilian strata, show me species as columns, ethics as rows (because the player chose that orientation)".

I still don't know if those pops are changing because of births or migration or flipping ethics.

I click the "New Faction" notification up top and it sends me to the planetary view on my homeworld. I expect to be taken to the factions menu.

Selecting a colony ship, right clicking on a habitable planet, clicking "Colonize Planet" opens the "Colonize <planet name>" menu, which you normally reach from the Expansion Planner. That's not helpful, it's the menu for building a brand new colony ship to send to that planet. When I have a ship ready to colonise, that's not what I want. As before, selecting the "Colonize" ability from the ship itself then clicking the planet (not its name label) does what I want.

Why does the generic Research Labs produce 90 total jobs while a specialised physics/biology/engineering lab produce 200? I can understand 150 total but not 90. Oh, it's because it's a planetary unique that chooses what all research on the planet specialises in. Mmm, calling it "<branch> lab" is a bit misleading then, it's a science HQ of sorts, not a regular lab. Maybe "<branch> research institute" or some such would clarify?

Oh I wondered why my new scientist disappeared - UNE voted him the new president. Hmm, I guess there must have been a banner I missed while looking elsewhere, that matters in the earlygame and notifications aren't always looked at in a timely manner (especially if there's a lot of clutter).

A regular foreign empire is asking for a commercial pact. I can't see any numbers showing what the benefits or costs would be.

 

[Troyen]

I find it kinda irritating that people think that because there will be no longer any updates to this beta it means this is exactly what we are going to get on may.

The development will continue, and more centered and focus than what any of us can imagine. Reading some of the comments it makes me wonder if they will ever allow the players to catch a glimpse of future updates in open betas because it feels like everybody (I know not everybody but they are talking a lot about doom and gloom) thinks that this is the final product and no significant or any change will take place in the month they have to work on it.

I mean, historically, the quality of the last open beta build is a pretty good indicator for Paradox of what the final product would be like. Yes, there will be additional bugs fixed, but I bet you half the issues reported during the late stages of the beta don't get fixed until after 4.0 releases. Because that's how it's been for every open beta they (and other Paradox teams) have run over the past five years.

The big issue this time is this beta has a way bigger list of issues than any of the unity rework, fleet rework, habitat rework, or tech rework betas did. It's much closer to the state of the Victoria 3 1.5 beta where they overhauled the military and the naval aspect was running so far behind schedule it wasn't even part of the open beta until the very last release. They weren't able to polish it before launch and now it's acknowledged by both the devs and players to be "not great" but a year later they don't have time to fix it.

Yes, I'm sure the Stellaris team will eventually fix the major issues coming with 4.0's launch. But they have a pretty jam-packed schedule for this year, so when are they going to have time to do it? The annoyances with building orbitals in the 3.9 habitat rework (brought up during the beta!) took all the way until 4.0 to fix - almost two years later!

So yes, there's doom and gloom, because this is not our first Stellaris open beta.

 

[Foxosaur]

Just wanted to comment that I really like the toast icons for forming of factions. I think an improvement would be that the first initial factions should remain a popup for a new player or even any new playthrough - so not defaulting to a toast icon. Of course a regular player will be happy with a toast icon though.

 

[Ilab]

• Cosmic storms no longer cause devastation.

Wait, this is temporary right? Or is it removed because some have put 0 effort to learn the mechanics and now it is gone for good, removing the ONLY THING that you can do aggressively to others that is not war?

In case it is not obvious, I DO NOT LIKE this if it is permanent. It was a neat thing that existed for flavor, RP and was actually helpful, specially in MP where you could mess with people around. Please tell me this is not permanent...

EDIT: Well, I knew some people would love for storms to lose devastation, it ruins Spreadsheetstellaris for them. But perhaps a toggle somewhere? As usual, things that divide the community should be in the players control. I and others love them, some don't, then make it a toggle somewhere.

 

[herculeanus]

Wait, this is temporary right? Or is it removed because some have put 0 effort to learn the mechanics and now it is gone for good, removing the ONLY THING that you can do aggressively to others that is not war?

In case it is not obvious, I DO NOT LIKE this if it is permanent. It was a neat thing that existed for flavor, RP and was actually helpful, specially in MP where you could mess with people around. Please tell me this is not permanent...

I also hope it's only temporary.
Otherwise, they should just make it optional.

 

[Isharon]

Bio trophies when?

 

[user192823]

I wanted to try and see what would it look if basic resource districts were replaceable with secondary urban ones, so I did a little experiment, just for fun:

Steam Workshop::modular districts

steamcommunity.com

This allows to replace basic resource districts with secondary urban ones via replace button in district menu. Demolishing them reverts to the basic resource district. Each has only 1 zone, game does not support multiple zones for secondary districts. These districts refund half of their slot cost via a deposit as a workaround because they'd be useless otherwise (half jobs of main urban district, same district slot need). Planet ui sometimes requires closing and opening if the district replacement was completed while it's open. Only works for normal planets, individualist empires and normal basic resource districts (not uncapped types).
Overall, much less useful now that extra building slots have been handed out and amenities are no longer sourced from a zone. Still a cool idea.
Example screenshot:

 

[Thiend]

Wait, this is temporary right? Or is it removed because some have put 0 effort to learn the mechanics and now it is gone for good, removing the ONLY THING that you can do aggressively to others that is not war?

In case it is not obvious, I DO NOT LIKE this if it is permanent. It was a neat thing that existed for flavor, RP and was actually helpful, specially in MP where you could mess with people around. Please tell me this is not permanent...

Don't be so insulting just because YOU liked it.

In 3.14, we have no way to use them within your own empire but multiple civics, techs, traits, or origins that depend on doing that to have any benefit. That's not good at all.

The theoretical way to play around them is devastation mitigation that doesn't actually stop it from building, which makes all of the buildings to attract and keep storms around a new player trap. It's just killing your own economy. You COULD repel them, but just repelling storms isn't interesting gameplay - it's an entire mechanic whose purpose is to avoid the mechanic, much like 3.14 trade collection, which makes removal the optimal choice.

I do somewhat regret not having ANY way to use them as a kind of subtle sabotage, but it's too strong and too easy with no counterplay. Lock a Stardust Storm to gradually annihilate their economy with no way to counter the storm or detect the ship. What... "fun." Just having it for Nexus Storms MIGHT be doable, but it's probably too strong still. Devastation is just too strong a mechanic for it, as it was when CS released (which I said at the time, but here we are).