The new pop system is horrible.

[Anzaman]

Also, if you don't care about pops at all, then why comment on a thread about the problems?

I was simply trying to help by giving my view on the question you asked in the quote:

I'm not following what you mean by "beyond glance at it from time to time". That can cover a lot of ground.

 

[st360]

ok but as you said, in the real world, governments don't HAVE omniscience. so the game giving you that isn't really much of a benefit from an immersion perspective even if it would benefit a government.

but i still don't see WHY you NEED to be caring about a colony's pop numbers beyond a cursory glance at your popcount from time to time. i'm fine with the argument that the OTHER UI elements around pops need more detail or need to be clearer or whatever, I just don't see why "i find myself not caring so much about the number of pops anymore" is a negative?

The point is, you are essentially defending the devs to spending a DLC worth of time and resources into making this elaborate, overdesigned, granular pop system and then saying "have everyone just pretend planets have 1 button saying give pop and if you give them pop a random amount of resources comes out".

That kind of a system could had been done by an elementary school modder in 45 minutes. And is in every way worse than what we had.

 

[Critical Ethics]

i don't see the issue with not caring about the pop numbers. you probably should stop caring. in the real world, government don't REALLY do math with those numbers every day, they take a census from time to time. so just glance at it from time to time, and stop trying to math it out.

if it's discouraging you from constantly trying to hold all the numbers in your head, it's making you treat it LESS like a spreadsheet and more like an organic system, and that is in itself a benefit.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "not caring about the pop numbers" because I'm not even sure what part of the thread you're actually replying to.

 

[-Marauder-]

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.

None of which really worked out.

 

[Thiend]

None of which really worked out.

To be completely fair, the growth seems to work. The pop numbers are mainly a problem because the UI doesn't communicate necessary information for their new scale well, nor the growth.

The performance is also awful, but no longer appears to be influenced by number of pops at all. It remains unclear what exactly they broke so badly that has resulted in overall worse performance despite pops seemingly being negated as a factor and trade routes being expunged entirely.

 

[Drachasor]

To be completely fair, the growth seems to work. The pop numbers are mainly a problem because the UI doesn't communicate necessary information for their new scale well, nor the growth.

The performance is also awful, but no longer appears to be influenced by number of pops at all. It remains unclear what exactly they broke so badly that has resulted in overall worse performance despite pops seemingly being negated as a factor and trade routes being expunged entirely.

One player on Reddit thought it had something to do with construction ships with nothing to do continually checking for something. But I don't think anything has been verified much beyond large fleets are definitely a factor.

 

[Thiend]

One player on Reddit thought it had something to do with construction ships with nothing to do continually checking for something. But I don't think anything has been verified much beyond large fleets are definitely a factor.

I had a game in 3.14 where one AI built literally thousands of construction ships and it wasn't slowing down yet, so if that IS the problem it means either the continual checks or at least the performance loss from doing so is new, because it wasn't a problem in 3.14 regardless of the number of them.

That doesn't make it at all impossible, keeping in mind that it is in fact slowing down despite two major contributors to the slowdown having verifiably been removed as negative performance factors.

 

[grommile]

None of which really worked out.

Sixty thousand oldpops suddenly spawning would have put a hefty dent in the oldpop system's performance.

Six million newpops suddenly spawning... didn't.

So whatever else they did that hosed performance in 4.0, "let's not have one in-game object for every numeric increment of population" appears to have achieved its goals.

 

[Kingman]

I like the new pop system a lot more but they really need to fix the lag (which is no longer pop related) and the job system

So many slaves and pre sapients workings jobs they should not be working.

 

[Kingman]

Also there is several bugs reported in this reddit thread which affect pops right now that I hope to see fixed soon. Many of them are the UI not properly conveying to the player the correct information

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1kifurt/population_growth_in_40_how_it_works_and_how_it

 

[RingworldUtopia]

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "not caring about the pop numbers" because I'm not even sure what part of the thread you're actually replying to.

maybe i got lost, but i thought op was saying that multiplying pop numbers by 100 made them stop caring about the numbers. i'm not saying there should be no data. i'm saying if you stopped counting all the time, that's a good thing. it means the system is more organic, and less a spreadsheet. yes, you go and look deeper when something is wrong, and maybe the ui could be smoothed over there. i just don't see how "the number being bigger made me stop holding it in my head" is a bad thing.

 

[Voidian]

The new pop system is in every way superior to the old.

The only issues are balance and AI, I cannot force myself to play Stellaris while GA empires are fielding animic fleets under 1/20 of what they should have in the late game, it's pointless to start new games.

 

[ParanoiaMod]

"the number being bigger made me stop holding it in my head" is a bad thing.

The issue comes with that once I stop holding those numbers in my head is the moment when I stop caring about those numbers. And, considering those numbers are, like, one third of the entire game (Planet management), that is a pretty bad sign.
It used to be that the early game was held up by exploration, planet management, expansion, and economy.
Now Planet management is just a grey blob (the pop numbers are too large to effectively recall, and thus hard to care about), economy is trivial (and thus uninteresting), and expansion is glacial because new Colonies take decades to become even mildly interesting even with manual forced pop relocation.

That leaves the exploration as the only somewhat interesting thing remaining.


Sure, I could go into a War. But that is only a temporary distraction, because the AI basically just rams their biggest Fleet into mine with little regard of whether they can actually win or not. So it is not like the AI is making anything even mildly resembling smart moves. Hell, sometimes they do not even feel like repairing their Fleets.


So, yeah, maybe collapsing three of the four pillars that made the game interesting was not exactly a stellar decision. The Pop UI was one of them, and the Pop rework is related to all three of them.

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

I don't have an issue with the new Pop System. All they did was basically multiply Pops by 100(permitting fractional pops and consequently getting productivity from those pops as opposed to **nothing** in 3.14 terms until they suddenly pop/exist. What I don't like is the nerf to starting productivity(Industrial, Unity and Tech are all lower than what we had at game start in 3.14 from a default perspective. Not counting the "free buildings" we get via Ethics that heavily favors Pacifist, Xenophile, Egalitarian and Materialist by a large margin) and that the removal of Culture Workers has led to some pretty stupidly broken early game Meta builds using Civilians(aka Unemployed whom have no CAP compared to Culture Workers or actual "jobs" and get a 20% Job Efficiency boost from Utopian Abundnace... hence instead of 20 Civilians at game start, enjoy 24 with their upkeep next to nothing thanks to Seasonal Dormancy and is even lower if you're Xenophile via Monument perk).

Pop lag is largely squelched but the issue of Fleet lag still remains and the biggest culprit is the AI's reliance on using Corvettes and Frigates far too much. They need to prioritize using Cruisers and Battleships as the backbone of their fleets and sprinkle in a few 1-Slot Ships to draw enemy fire. Not to mention the AI is prone to Civil War(resulting in City States that have their own Fleets), numerous Mercenary Enclaves(all with their own small fleets) and the cumulative effect brings down even the most beastly PC systems.

There's also quite a few bugs that still exist and given it's been ~2 months with Psionic DLC about a month or so away means it's only going to get worse.

 

[Drachasor]

Pop lag is largely squelched but the issue of Fleet lag still remains and the biggest culprit is the AI's reliance on using Corvettes and Frigates far too much. They need to prioritize using Cruisers and Battleships as the backbone of their fleets and sprinkle in a few 1-Slot Ships to draw enemy fire. Not to mention the AI is prone to Civil War(resulting in City States that have their own Fleets), numerous Mercenary Enclaves(all with their own small fleets) and the cumulative effect brings down even the most beastly PC systems.

Ship design, components, hulls and space combat could really do with an examination and rework, imho. When was the last time it was done? I normally love ship design in 4x space games but it's very dull in Stellaris and it's full of balance issues. And you could stand to have some tools that would let you test out builds for ships and fleets. I think the Devs could use a tool like that for making sure various weapons are balanced. But ship AI and fleets with different ships need work.

Also, there's a like of non-conventional tech for ships (compare to MOO2 -- which did conventional weapons better to with it's mod system), but I'd be happy even if they didn't fix this but addressed the rest.

 

[passeris]

Sixty thousand oldpops suddenly spawning would have put a hefty dent in the oldpop system's performance.

Six million newpops suddenly spawning... didn't.

So whatever else they did that hosed performance in 4.0, "let's not have one in-game object for every numeric increment of population" appears to have achieved its goals.

Oh you always sound so sure when you say this.

I am gonna laugh so hard if we find out it's pop GROUP calculations causing the lag, and that's why it isn't triggered by 6 million of the same pop. The shitstorm would be cataclysmic.

 

[grommile]

I am gonna laugh so hard if we find out it's pop GROUP calculations causing the lag,

Oh, to be certain, I'm sure there are situations where pop group proliferation can cause performance issues. Removing the prohibitions on Integrating into or out of cybernetics, psionics, speed demon traits, and so forth would almost certainly mitigate against that.

But there are credible grounds for pointing the finger elsewhere. (I'll be interested to see whether the recent bump to fleet capacity helps at all...)

 

[-Marauder-]

Sixty thousand oldpops suddenly spawning would have put a hefty dent in the oldpop system's performance.

Six million newpops suddenly spawning... didn't.

So whatever else they did that hosed performance in 4.0, "let's not have one in-game object for every numeric increment of population" appears to have achieved its goals.

Sorry, but unless I see an actual improvement in performance this doesn't matter one iota. "We made huge sacrifices in terms of population, things you could do with it, usability, etc to improve performance. So they could then make the performance worse anyway and quite noticeably in other ways." isn't a positive nor a defense.

Because if we can roll back to 3.1.4 and get better performance, with a vastly superior, more diverse, and interesting pop system. Because any performance we won by sacrificing those things was squandered and then some. That isn't a point in their favour.

 

[-Marauder-]

The new pop system is in every way superior to the old.

The only issues are balance and AI, I cannot force myself to play Stellaris while GA empires are fielding animic fleets under 1/20 of what they should have in the late game, it's pointless to start new games.

"The new system is more like Victoria and other games I prefer, therefore superior!".

Meanwhile we lost tons of functionality, traits affecting more than one job, etc.

 

[Thiend]

"The new system is more like Victoria and other games I prefer, therefore superior!".

Meanwhile we lost tons of functionality, traits affecting more than one job, etc.

That part isn't even the design, it's that they decided job efficiency scaled better (actually true) and changed them all to efficiency per job, not output per resource.

That isn't inherent to anything about the new design, but it is a massive oversight. The obvious solution is to either add output bonuses to appropriate resources for jobs that the efficiency bonus doesn't apply to ("10% unity from jobs for non-bureaucrat jobs") or make them apply to the resources, but weighted ("half of this job is society and half is physics, so physics traits apply 50% of their efficiency buff to the entire job").

Either of those would be a huge improvement and/or total functionality restoration, at least for this problem.