The new pop system is horrible.

[st360]

I have no idea how much is what worth. The entire planet, economy and pop systems now require me to concentrate to understand the most basic things. And the simply STUPID granularity of having thousands of pops is just... Stupid.

The old system used pops instead of individual citizens to "leave room for RP vagueness" and not to have absurdly high numbers in the UI. And now we "upgraded" to a system where we both have absurd numbers AND its still not actually representing the real number of individuals. How is that a good idea?

Instead of seeing 1 pop and reading "1 unit of citizens makes 7 minerals", we now have janky math where 1688 pops make 126.77 minerals. Amazing. So we just had a huge, resource consuming overhaul where I can no longer meaningfully care about or manage pops. Because "pops" is now just a loading bar under the planets resource production that the game slowly fills out over time.

"Just play, you will get used to it". People get used to prison, too.

And no, you dont "get used" to doing five digit divisions in your head on the fly. You just get used to not caring. "Oh, I have 7694038 pops and just got 3749 from the caravaneers event? Guess that's more minerals per month so its good. How much more per month? I have no clue."

And for what? Why was this change implemented? I read the dev diary talking about it (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ris-dev-diary-370-4-0-changes-part-4.1728047/) and the explanation was my old schools math homework.

How am I supposed to recommend this game anymore to new players when it takes you half an hour of watching youtube tutorials just to figure out how to grow food? How?

The developers focused on "solving" some fourth order game mechanic problem and "building a solid base". And forgot that Stellaris is a GAME, and that there is NO POINT in having some elaborate Harvard School of Business economy in it if it will just be automated in a spreadsheet and not PLAYED with.

 

[Seridor]

Yes, unfortunately this bothers me as well.. I hope we will see some improvements and this is not the final form. There are some good innovations in 4.0, but pop goups look very messy. For now I stick to 3.14, and I guess it will be for quite long.

 

[Zergor]

I personally am on the side of people that think everything that was multiplied by 100 should be divided by 100.

First, as you point out, the multiplication is done on some numbers but not others without meaningful reason.
Why does a pop require 1 habitation and 1 amenitie but generates 0.01 crime ?
And as you point out, the numbers are hard to read. In particular amenities are a very bloated number that is hard to evaluate at a glance. Granted in the end you only care about "is that number big enough for +20% happiness" but still.

The slider for job is clunky to use as, as you point out you choose a fraction of 2000 pops that generate 600 minerals. The relation between those is not evident due to multiple layers of multiplications and divisions ( divided by 100 multiplied by bonus workforce, then multiplied by other bonus). Of course the rule of 3 helps but I agree that the relation between the numbers should be more clear.

In general small numbers are just better. 100 pops on a planet shows at a glance that 100 jobs are filled. No need to multiply those by 100. It's hard to differentiate 121114 from 89456. Depending of font, both can seem to have the same "length" while one has an extra number. (and those kind of numbers are seen in the game right now. Amenities and Housing are the main culprits)

 

[Ikael]

From what I understand, the point of that extreme granularity was to allow for constant pop growth, that is, a more intuitive growth than resorting to "pop fractions" or pops that only grow once every three months and the like.

That being said, the game became much more unreadable with the pop rework, but I don't know if the UI is to blame here or the increased pop & resource numbers (or more probably, a combination of both).

 

[Zergor]

From what I understand, the point of that extreme granularity was to allow for constant pop growth, that is, a more intuitive growth than resorting to "pop fractions" or pops that only grow once every three months and the like.

That being said, the game became much more unreadable with the pop rework, but I don't know if the UI is to blame here or the increased pop & resource numbers (or more probably, a combination of both).

I always found this point moot. You can allow a fraction of a pop to grow. We can collect 0.5 metal without problem. We can have pops produce 0.01 of a rare resource so I don't see why is there a problem of having 0.2 pop.
The UI should probably show the truncated number most of the time (like for any other resource) but show you the exact number if you put the cursor on it.
There is no reason the lowest granularity allowed should be the base unit when it is not the case for every single other resource.

 

[HFY]

From what I understand, the point of that extreme granularity was to allow for constant pop growth, that is, a more intuitive growth than resorting to "pop fractions" or pops that only grow once every three months and the like.

That being said, the game became much more unreadable with the pop rework, but I don't know if the UI is to blame here or the increased pop & resource numbers (or more probably, a combination of both).

I watched pop growth for a few months on a single-species homeworld with 3 governing ethics (so a lot of pop groups but only one species).

The pops all had Rooted and thus should not auto-migrate.

"Expected growth" was 11.66 but what I saw watching the monthly growth numbers were 11, 7, 33, 12, 24, 6, etc.

Pop growth is unintuitive, undocumented, and very poorly displayed.

 

[Metallichydra]

Pop growth would probably be more consistent if each ethic and strata didn't form its own group

 

[HFY]

Pop growth would probably be more consistent if each ethic and strata didn't form its own group

They could just sum up the groups into species numbers before rolling dice to calculate growth.

Fewer calculations, and more consistent numbers.

 

[Anzaman]

How am I supposed to recommend this game anymore to new players when it takes you half an hour of watching youtube tutorials just to figure out how to grow food? How?

Is that really any different compared to previous system, tho? "Oh, I need more food. Lets build some more Agriculture Districts and allow pops to work there."

New players most likely have plenty less problems adapting to the new system than veteran players, given how they don't need to unlearn the old system first.

Personally I don't even look at the sliders all that much, other than giggle at absurd efficiency numbers. Other than that, they just function in the background and I increase the amount of jobs when needed. Could be 1, 100, 1000, 1000000 for all I care. If whatever number they deemed works best for the performance, then so be it.

 

[grommile]

If whatever number they deemed works best for the performance, then so be it.

The performance decision was "we shouldn't have an in-engine object for every numerical increment of population".

The factor of 100 rescale was because they wanted a smoother curve (a little growth every month, instead of stepwise growth every couple of years) and didn't want to have fractional pops.

 

[WoodenP]

Yes it was stated by the Studio that they did the x100 instead of fractional pops because it would somehow be confusing to wonder what a fraction of a job/pop is. Even though it makes total sense.

It is absolutely terrible decision making, some of the worst design work we've seen from the Phoenix team. And that's just considering the final product. Thinking about all the messing about (time wasted dev hours) to get there is a whole other level of cringe.

You're not alone, OP. It's terrible.

 

[Drachasor]

The performance decision was "we shouldn't have an in-engine object for every numerical increment of population".

The factor of 100 rescale was because they wanted a smoother curve (a little growth every month, instead of stepwise growth every couple of years) and didn't want to have fractional pops.

I think the problem is these numbers aren't ones that a lot of people can just intuitively graps nearly as easily. And the UI does a poor job of explaining how anything works.

Consider a new player who just bought the game. Without going online to research for explanations, how are they supposed to understand the mechanics? Doesn't help that right now some things didn't get properly converted.

Heck, in one of my first games in 4.0 (I don't think I played 3.x at all), my first colony was getting a 10% penalty to pop assembly, apparently due to total number of pops in my empire. This was extremely early game. I hardly had any pops at all. I still don't understand why, but I turned the non-logistic slider for pop growth down to zero and didn't get that issue in my next game. Is it intended for penalties to growth to get that big that early? I don't know. Nothing in the game explains any of it. It's only barely shown that it exists at all.

 

[Anzaman]

Yes it was stated by the Studio that they did the x100 instead of fractional pops because it would somehow be confusing to wonder what a fraction of a job/pop is. Even though it makes total sense.

How, tho? How would fraction of pop work in practice, especially since half of Bob could then even be working on completely different planet.

"Here's Bob. He's currently doing 3 separate jobs to fund his lifestyle, 10% (0.1) Bob's day goes into Miner, 30% (0.3) Bob works as Artisan, and rest 60% (0.6) he works as Farmer at local fields."

 

[Trigaea]

Instead of seeing 1 pop and reading "1 unit of citizens makes 7 minerals", we now have janky math where 1688 pops make 126.77 minerals. Amazing. So we just had a huge, resource consuming overhaul where I can no longer meaningfully care about or manage pops. Because "pops" is now just a loading bar under the planets resource production that the game slowly fills out over time.

"Just play, you will get used to it". People get used to prison, too.

And no, you dont "get used" to doing five digit divisions in your head on the fly. You just get used to not caring. "Oh, I have 7694038 pops and just got 3749 from the caravaneers event? Guess that's more minerals per month so it’s good. How much more per month? I have no clue."

The old system was bad at this too.

Someone could do the mental math if they really wanted, but I promise you >90% of pre-4.0 players were not doing anything more than “more pop = more resource number go up”.

It’s true that the new system is less readable and less intuitive than the old one, but we shouldn’t pretend the old system was especially great either.

 

[Drachasor]

I think it is important to remember that 4.x was rushed out in an alpha/beta state. No proper QA or refinement of anything. So the ui mess and other issues are to be expected. I don't really blame the developers for management's decision here. I'm not saying that's necessarily the only thing wrong, but it's worth keeping in mind.

 

[grommile]

Oh, I have 7694038 pops and just got 3749 from the caravaneers event?

I guarantee that if you had seventy-six thousand, nine hundred and forty oldpops, you wouldn't care about gaining 37 oldpops.

 

[WoodenP]

How, tho? How would fraction of pop work in practice, especially since half of Bob could then even be working on completely different planet.

"Here's Bob. He's currently doing 3 separate jobs to fund his lifestyle, 10% (0.1) Bob's day goes into Miner, 30% (0.3) Bob works as Artisan, and rest 60% (0.6) he works as Farmer at local fields."

It's not "Bob". It's a collection of "Bob-like" people. Pops and jobs are groups.... not individual lifeforms. Surely you understood this? Surely?

Is it me that is missing something?

Edit:
I think it's interesting to note that this exchange I just had is exactly what PDX was talking about. Some people don't understand at first glance. It definitely happens. And my observation from here is: So what?

This is not a big deal. The player can still play the game. Later, they might figure it out for themselves, or be informed on the internet. But they don't ever have to. That's it.

On what level was this "misunderstanding" worth such an epic refitting of the games numbers in Phoenix?
Was this worth the broken UI? (Which desperately needs separators now, by the way)
Was this worth sabotaging the simple parsability of the game?
Was this worth the time to implement it?
Is this worth having planetary resource production, lifetime, to undergo another layer of maths where it's arbitrarily divided by 100 at the end of the chain? In a performance update?

I'm really sorry but I just don't see it.

 

[Anzaman]

It's not "Bob". It's a collection of "Bob-like" people. Pops and jobs are groups.... not individual lifeforms. Surely you understood this? Surely?

Is it me that is missing something?

The current system just feels more personal-level. Whenever you build eg. Agriculture district, you get 200 farmer jobs.

And then you have 200 farmers, each with their own ethics, happiness and all. At least for me, it's easier to imagine that single farmer in the current 4.X system is closer to actual pop than the old system where you got +2 farmers with each district, for example.

I know we're still talking about pop-groups, but it's just easier for me to imagine that single unit of workforce in the Agriculture district as single entity. And then with slider I can adjust however farmers I want working at given time.

They could adjust the +200 farmers to +2 million farmers to make it more realistic, but I'm sure we both could imagine that being a bit excessive. Could just imagine trying to adjust the workforce slider to specific point then, haha.

"Oh cool, 5 million pops just left with trade rats."

 

[ParanoiaMod]

Planet UI and fun juggling numbers

I have made topics glancing this topic before. I have referred to this (what I find is an) issue before. I, however, find it prudent to make this topic separately to highlight my issue with the new Planet UI and population systems. In short...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I made this feedback a while ago. Did not receive much attention.

YES. The numbers are so excessive that none of them mean anything anymore. It just all becomes a vague blob where I no longer recall details of any planet, even in the early game.

Like, sure, the GAME can count the individual Pops. But that can be just fractions hidden from the Player.
For example: Player is presented with 1 Pop. The GAME can then work on the Pops on level of 0.001 Pops in order to give more granularity. BUT the Player does not need to see that.

 

[snowy801]

I have no idea how much is what worth. The entire planet, economy and pop systems now require me to concentrate to understand the most basic things. And the simply STUPID granularity of having thousands of pops is just... Stupid.

The old system used pops instead of individual citizen to "leave room for RP vagueness" and not to have absurdly high numbers in the UI. And now we "upgraded" to a system where we both have absurd numbers AND its still not actually representing the real number of individuals. How is that a good idea?

Instead of seeing 1 pop and reading "1 unit of citizens makes 7 minerals", we now have janky math where 1688 pops make 126.77 minerals. Amazing. So we just had a huge, resource consuming overhaul where I can no longer meaningfully care about or manage pops. Because "pops" is now just a loading bar under the planets resource production that the game slowly fills out over time.

"Just play, you will get used to it". People get used to prison, too.

And no, you dont "get used" to doing five digit divisions in your head on the fly. You just get used to not caring. "Oh, I have 7694038 pops and just got 3749 from the caravaneers event? Guess that's more minerals per month so its good. How much more per month? I have no clue."

And for what? Why was this change implemented? I read the dev diary talking about it (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ris-dev-diary-370-4-0-changes-part-4.1728047/) and the explanation was my old schools math homework.

How am I supposed to recommend this game anymore to new players when it takes you half an hour of watching youtube tutorials just to figure out how to grow food? How?

The developers focused on "solving" some fourth order game mechanic problem and "building a solid base". And forgot that Stellaris is a GAME, and that there is NO POINT in having some elaborate Harvard School of Business economy in it if it will just be automated in a spreadsheet and not PLAYED with.

Your complaint looks more like a UI issue than a pop system issue. The game is still well capable of telling you how much 100 pops make instead of 1688, the devs just chose otherwise.

I'm not really seeing any part of your post that screams "pop system sucks", only that "I can't tell what's going on anymore because of the stupid UI"