Why Players build Hyper-Focused Planets: design goals & incentives mismatch, and ideas to fix it

[-Marauder-]

Its not superrior. it might be better at some things, but the 3.14 isn't superrior. Problems with the 3.14 system that the beta one does better in my opinion is.

1. Choices in what you build on a 3.14 planet do not impact future choices. making each one done in isolation and thus much less interesting.
2. 3.14 planet building is dominated by buildings, so it feels like you are making a single city not a planet. zones and districts--for all their problems--sound and feel more like regions being developed.
3. building slot do not compete with each other in 3.14, so they are kind of boring. you are never deciding what you don't want on this planet, only what you don't want. this is also boring.
4. 3.14 planet building was very static. any change to the system was always going to break things and any attempt to change the problems here would effectively change over to another system anyways. regardless of the paint job given it. This is possible due to the years of tweaking in the system.
5. 3.14 provided no incentive to build mixed planets. I did it all the time, but only because I preferred it, knowing I was effectively shooting myself in the foot. Which I never liked and always felt like I was being punished just by playing the game. This last one is not perfect in the beta, but at least its much improved. Mixed planets are still weak, but at least they aren't punished.

I don't see how this system limits player decision in the way you are suggesting. As far as I can tell, mono-planets are still insanely powerful. The impact of the logistics isn't crippling and you can cover it easily by building a trade planet. If you want mixed planets, you are not punished for it because planet designations are no longer as powerful as they used to be, and you aren't losing as much. Plus, the overhead for increasing your mixed planet economy is now on par with that of a mono-planet economy.

Decisions are a lot more important, with what has been removed being poor decisions for games anyways. If you build a zone, you have less zones you can build on that planet. if you want all of the buildings for a certain planet, go mono. if you don't think its worth it--like i don't--than you can use whatever building you think is best for whatever planet you are looking at.

You can decide which buildings you want, and that decision limits future building choices, and can be reversed so you aren't locked into bad ideas. These are good decisions. Good decisions have impact on future related decisions.

1. This assumes the devs felt they had good ideas that could be expanded on in the future to fix the other systems. or even wanted to work on it, ground combat has been dismissed sense the first military rework as of minimal importance.
2. This also assumes the dev teams had the resources to fix the other systems. Perhaps the best ideas they have for internal politics requires some skill set the team doesn't believe they have enough of. so can't currently fix to their own satisfaction.
3. This assumes the devs were equality excited about the other fixes to this change. I'd much rather have a developer team that enjoys the work they are doing, than a developer team that is 'fixing my pet problem' but isn't enjoying it. the final product is better in my experience.

I'm sorry, but I don't think we can possibly know enough as to make the question about weather or not any system that hasn't been reworked could have been reworked in stead of this one.

A finite number of people can only have a finite number of ideas after all.

You really went out of your way to blow this up way beyond what's needed.

- The 3.14 system is superior in virtually every way.
1. Completely untrue. And the new system doesn't change anything in that regard to begin with.
2. That's an opinion.
3. Once again, an opinion. And they absolutely do compete. Building slots are limited in number to begin with.
4. What problem? You still haven't formulated any actual problem. Also the building system is no more or less static than the new one.
5. This is not a problem. This is a good thing. You've just admitted you are in favor of a system that forces the lowest common denominator, because there's where you put yourself to begin with. Now everyone will be forced into this and you see this as a good thing. This point alone makes me want to reflexively ignore anything and everything you've said at any point.

I'm curious about something if I may ask. To what year do you tend to play your campaigns, which galaxy size and difficulty? This isn't trying to take potshots at your skill. I'm curious if your experience is completely different from mine and this might impact your perception of the game.


As for your other points. I know those weren't in response to me but you seem to have a bit off an odd take. The Devs aren't here to do things that "excite and interest them", they're here to create a game that's fun for the players and fix issues. This isn't some hobby project they work on in their spare time. But an exceedingly expensive product.

Doing another planetary rework, especially once that was entirely unnecessary to force some suboptimal playstyle and reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator should've been very low on the priority list. Yet here we are.

Thebproblem is that the game gives heavy incentives to build hyper-focussed planets, without the costs associated with that. This is a behavior the Devs want changed, they think the game would be better if both focused planets and generalist planets had ways to make them efficient. I think likely this may be tied into the AI Empires and problems coding them as well.

Resources produced on a planet move to another like magic, there should be an infrastructure or logistics cost to this. In the same way that Amenities was a way to add realism and limit the "all laboratories" type builds.

My post is about various ways the Devs can add new options to make multiple-industry worlds also viable in the game. Both for players, and so AI Empires work better.

They could've done that by "Buffing" generalist planets. Which isn't a way they picked. And the devs "wanting things changed", especially Eladrin is something I've come to dread. Because Eladrin has been "changing" things since he took over, and aside from a possible pop rework and lower lag, almost all of his changes have been universally negative.

And no, stuff doesn't "move like magic". We're paying upkeep costs through the wazoo for stuff. In Energy CREDITS alone, which had been envisioned by prior lead devs as the universal currency. As for "the Ai could do better this way", the Ai isn't a player. What the Ai does well with or not should NOT be the focus or of any importance. The Ai cheats it's ass off anyway.

I have the same question for you I have for the other guy. I'm genuinely curious. What galaxy size do you play on, what difficulty, etc. I genuinely wonder if these have such a huge impact on perception of the game and balancing.

 

[NorseGod]

They could've done that by "Buffing" generalist planets. Which isn't a way they picked. And the devs "wanting things changed", especially Eladrin is something I've come to dread. Because Eladrin has been "changing" things since he took over, and aside from a possible pop rework and lower lag, almost all of his changes have been universally negative.

And if you'll notice, one of my two big suggestions to them is "buffing" versions of Generalist planets using additional Planetary Designations. And the other suggestion was to either reduce the additional jobs from repeating the same zone or increasing the maintenance when you fill the planet with the exact same job. Which makes sense both in real life, and the game. Trying to make even a single area of a city spam the same job (like Silicon Valley) is either gonna raise the cost for those jobs, or make it harder to specialize. And if you want to turn a world into a single industry alone, it makes sense that you have to pay a bit more in some way. Doing it by upkeep increases just sort of negate Planetary Designations, so I'd prefer seeing less Jobs per Zone; or they increase Jobs per Zone when you use mixed Zones; either works.

And no, stuff doesn't "move like magic". We're paying upkeep costs through the wazoo for stuff. In Energy CREDITS alone, which had been envisioned by prior lead devs as the universal currency. As for "the Ai could do better this way", the Ai isn't a player. What the Ai does well with or not should NOT be the focus or of any importance. The Ai cheats it's ass off anyway.

For buildings, sure. But in 3.14 what was the cost to "move" Metals from a Mining World to a Factory world?

I have the same question for you I have for the other guy. I'm genuinely curious. What galaxy size do you play on, what difficulty, etc. I genuinely wonder if these have such a huge impact on perception of the game and balancing.

For much of my time with Stellaris, I was on a fairly old PC from 2010 and stuck to Tiny and Small Galaxies as anything bigger would make the late game drag like crazy, but I got a new one about 2 years ago and have played on Medium to Huge Galaxies since then, with occasional runs on Small Galaxies, depending on the Empire and my mood. I played a lot on Cadet-Captain, and mostly play on Commodore or Admiral now.

 

[GnoSIS]

Thebproblem is that the game gives heavy incentives to build hyper-focussed planets, without the costs associated with that. This is a behavior the Devs want changed, they think the game would be better if both focused planets and generalist planets had ways to make them efficient. I think likely this may be tied into the AI Empires and problems coding them as well.

Resources produced on a planet move to another like magic, there should be an infrastructure or logistics cost to this. In the same way that Amenities was a way to add realism and limit the "all laboratories" type builds.

My post is about various ways the Devs can add new options to make multiple-industry worlds also viable in the game. Both for players, and so AI Empires work better.

But that's the thing, we don't need heavy incentives to build hyper focused planets. We would do it, regardless. If I need 1000 alloys per month, there's no other way to do it by building dedicated planets - Building mixed planets, won't take me there as I wouldn't know what to do with the mixed in resources.

And it's not that gamers just like to minimax, all biological forms of life do it.

 

[workbot]

But that's the thing, we don't need heavy incentives to build hyper focused planets. We would do it, regardless. If I need 1000 alloys per month, there's no other way to do it by building dedicated planets - Building mixed planets, won't take me there as I wouldn't know what to do with the mixed in resources.

And it's not that gamers just like to minimax, all biological forms of life do it.

"Minmaxing" in an economic sense is a very capitalist thing to do, and thinking that it's always the most optimal thing has its own pitfalls.

Look at the price of eggs in the USA.

Why is there a problem with eggs right now? Because in that country, companies have hyper-specialized into a few big players with giant factory farms.

However, that has created a problem when there's a shock to production (bird flu + lowered regulations).

In my country, eggs are produced in smaller, more spread out farms (you could think of this as generalization in stellaris terms), so while it may be less "efficient" in the eyes of a businessman, it's created resistance to shocks, and egg prices have remained low.

Having a system in stellaris to show this aspect of reality is a win to me.

 

[Ispear]

Hot take: I don't think mono planets should be viable. Just from a pure gameplay quality perspective there is nothing more boring than slamming 3 research zones and hitting upgrade on your city districts whenever you have a CG surplus. Even in pre-4.0 it's just district/building spam, taking the same research world example: spam research labs, if ring world or habitat spam research districts. It is completely autopilot and there are no interesting puzzles to solve in how to maximize the planet's potential. In fact, if you are playing even remotely decently not even necessarily only optimally, you often go to great lengths to sacrifice a planet's potential as good resource slots or modifiers get wasted if a planet has high potential in multiple resources.

With the fixing of the performance issues from pops the greatest shift this game could have thematically is by moving the scarcity from pops to planets. People are renewable and plentiful, habitable planets are rare and finite; I should care way more about squeezing a planet for all it's worth rather than under developing planets for the sake of increasing per-pop efficiency.

 

[Ispear]

Coming back having thought on it more I really like the idea of a local supply line bonus(as was suggested earlier in the thread) replacing planetary designations and the new planetary deficit penalty. Just quickly, the planetary deficit penalty currently makes minerals mined on a planet outright worth more than minerals mined in space from a mining station. Utilizing space-mined minerals guarantees a planetary deficit which costs trade to maintain, whereas planet-mined minerals can be utilized on that same planet, bypassing the upkeep. A hilarious side effect of this is that arc furnaces just got a huge indirect nerf, though at the same time they got a buff because habitat orbitals count as collectors now. I would need to check, but I have a feeling those minerals will not count towards the planetary balance of an orbital habitat placed in an arc furnace system. That whole situation is kind of a mess, and it is entirely because of the planetary deficit penalty. I do not like the planetary deficit penalty, because it creates unintuitive problems like these. A better representation would be a bonus to other industry's production for related industries being present. Miners increase factory and forge output, generators increase research and hydroponics, farmers(food surplus) increases growth and trade, etc. This would incentivize logical supply chains within planets that create interesting questions as to what the best arrangement is given varying rural district slots and output modifiers from things like extreme weather and high quality minerals.

 

[NorseGod]

But that's the thing, we don't need heavy incentives to build hyper focused planets. We would do it, regardless. If I need 1000 alloys per month, there's no other way to do it by building dedicated planets - Building mixed planets, won't take me there as I wouldn't know what to do with the mixed in resources.

And it's not that gamers just like to minimax, all biological forms of life do it.

What is the big difference between building 3 planets that are only mines shipping all of their metals to a planet that's filled with forges, versus 4 planets with both mining districts and forges that just trade the bit of surpluses around?

Right now, the difference is planetary designations and building output magnifications make the mono-planet plan much more viable. As they bring in trade deficits and add more planetary designations to give mixed worlds some efficiencies, the mixed worlds become viable.

If you really think that 3x Mining World and 1x Forge World is the only option, because 4x Heavy Industry Worlds are too much to comprehend,;it kinda sounds like a skill issue. It's literally "Build 4 more Alloy Forges on my world with 3 Foundry Zones" vs "Build 1 more Alloy Forge on my 4 planets with 1 Foundry Zone".

And again, what I'm saying and suggestion still allows you to create mono-worlds if you want to, especially if the planet features reward that. This just adds options so that other builds are also viable.

A few of you seem so mad that the game might have more options.

 

[NorseGod]

Hot take: I don't think mono planets should be viable. Just from a pure gameplay quality perspective there is nothing more boring than slamming 3 research zones and hitting upgrade on your city districts whenever you have a CG surplus. Even in pre-4.0 it's just district/building spam, taking the same research world example: spam research labs, if ring world or habitat spam research districts. It is completely autopilot and there are no interesting puzzles to solve in how to maximize the planet's potential. In fact, if you are playing even remotely decently not even necessarily only optimally, you often go to great lengths to sacrifice a planet's potential as good resource slots or modifiers get wasted if a planet has high potential in multiple resources.

With the fixing of the performance issues from pops the greatest shift this game could have thematically is by moving the scarcity from pops to planets. People are renewable and plentiful, habitable planets are rare and finite; I should care way more about squeezing a planet for all it's worth rather than under developing planets for the sake of increasing per-pop efficiency.

I think they should be viable, I just think that them being viable should rely more on things like planetary features and have a little bit more of a cost to do.

Example, there's a mineral plenitude type planet feature that gives +1 or 2 minerals per miner, and adds 6 or 8 more slots for mining districts. I think designating that as a Mining Planet and filling it with Mining Districts is a great idea and should be viable.

But I agree with the sentiment that most planets should be a mix of things. Otherwise Stellaris starts to feel less like a space game, and more like a game about a bunch of islands in the Pacific pretending to be about space.

And yes, apparently I'm a heretic because I think the game systems should also be designed so that the AI Empire also act like mostly-functional empires, so when I take over several planets in not staring at a giant mess I have to fix. Crazy, I know.

 

[WoodenP]

1. 3.14 planet building is dominated by buildings, so it feels like you are making a single city not a planet. zones and districts--for all their problems--sound and feel more like regions being developed.

Lots in your post that I disagree with or think is argued in bad faith, but I just wanted to hone in on this one!

To me it's always been clear that when you add "buildings" you're doing it in the plural. It's an infrastructure decision. We don't add literally one gene clinic. It's a planet for petes sake! Yes it requires a modicum of effort on the players part, just as the abstraction of exactly what a "pop" is requires a little effort, too.

Even in the tile system, where we might consider each tile to be a single region of territory with less possible development, I never had the impression it was a single building. Just as I never felt that the single pop working there was literally one guy. It was a representation of something greater. The bias of development on that area of the surface. We're playing a grand strategy game!

The existing game isn't perfect - but currently there is only a very small suspension of disbelief required on the players part.

4.0, however, takes things to an entirely broken and disfigured place.

Districts/Zones/Buildings are now so abstract I can't make heads of tails of what I'm doing to a planet beyond the vague notion of "upgrading" it. The terms themselves are of indistinct scale/scope (sidenote: feels to me like a "district" would be in a "zone" rather than the other way around) and are completely bodiless. How big are they? Where are they? What do they actually look like? Nothing is tangible. This is obviously a "mechanics first" sort of change (like paying "unity" for leaders...) and even the recent flavour text additions haven't helped move the needle (I really hoped they would!).

Back on the very first "zones" diary I noted this example:

So... I have a planetary feature (like a waterfall) which... allows me to "upgrade" the single, globe spanning "district" that is for energy on the planet? Does this satisfactorily represent colonising an alien landscape?

This is a microcosmic demonstration of the sort of incoherent storytelling happening across the board with zones. It's far too abstract. It's waffle. Born from the fact that they're crowbarring old mechanics into new ideas. Let's ask ourselves this: If anyone was releasing a new game would they ever opt for this mess? It's jenga.

I agree with you in that I don't think 3.14 is perfect - and yet from a ludo narrative perspective 4.0 is an obvious step back.

Remove zones or put them to the side for later.

 

[NorseGod]

Coming back having thought on it more I really like the idea of a local supply line bonus(as was suggested earlier in the thread) replacing planetary designations and the new planetary deficit penalty. Just quickly, the planetary deficit penalty currently makes minerals mined on a planet outright worth more than minerals mined in space from a mining station. Utilizing space-mined minerals guarantees a planetary deficit which costs trade to maintain, whereas planet-mined minerals can be utilized on that same planet, bypassing the upkeep. A hilarious side effect of this is that arc furnaces just got a huge indirect nerf, though at the same time they got a buff because habitat orbitals count as collectors now. I would need to check, but I have a feeling those minerals will not count towards the planetary balance of an orbital habitat placed in an arc furnace system. That whole situation is kind of a mess, and it is entirely because of the planetary deficit penalty. I do not like the planetary deficit penalty, because it creates unintuitive problems like these. A better representation would be a bonus to other industry's production for related industries being present. Miners increase factory and forge output, generators increase research and hydroponics, farmers(food surplus) increases growth and trade, etc. This would incentivize logical supply chains within planets that create interesting questions as to what the best arrangement is given varying rural district slots and output modifiers from things like extreme weather and high quality minerals.

It depends on how the jobs are coded. It might be much easier to setup some streams of production via planetary designations, rather than yet another economic rework. I don't know, I know game systems not coding myself. If it was fairly quick to implement, I agree it could be a good answer. Resource defecits costing trade is a simpler, cruder way of doing it, but is likely much easier on code and calculations, especially ones made every day.

 

[MordridBlack]

Mixed worlds are also likely much easier for the AI Empires to handle, long term. And in wars, it's likely a lot easier to take over mixed worlds without them affecting the economy too much. I imagine that the AI taking over or losing specific planets can cause Empire death spirals, which makes all sorts of headaches for the Dev team on the AI Empire side.

have you seen an AI world and attempted to fix it?

trust me, even if you have a world that is mixed, the ai can and will change it to suit whatever it wants

 

[NorseGod]

Lots in your post that I disagree with or think is argued in bad faith, but I just wanted to hone in on this one!

To me it's always been clear that when you add "buildings" you're doing it in the plural. It's an infrastructure decision. We don't add literally one gene clinic. It's a planet for petes sake! Yes it requires a modicum of effort on the players part, just as the abstraction of exactly what a "pop" is requires a little effort, too.

Even in the tile system, where we might consider each tile to be a single region of territory with less possible development, I never had the impression it was a single building. Just as I never felt that the single pop working there was literally one guy. It was a representation of something greater. The bias of development on that area of the surface. We're playing a grand strategy game!

The existing game isn't perfect - but currently there is only a very small suspension of disbelief required on the players part.

4.0, however, takes things to an entirely broken and disfigured place.

Districts/Zones/Buildings are now so abstract I can't make heads of tails of what I'm doing to a planet beyond the vague notion of "upgrading" it. The terms themselves are of indistinct scale/scope (sidenote: feels to me like a "district" would be in a "zone" rather than the other way around) and are completely bodiless. How big are they? Where are they? What do they actually look like? Nothing is tangible. This is obviously a "mechanics first" sort of change (like paying "unity" for leaders...) and even the recent flavour text additions haven't helped move the needle (I really hoped they would!).

Back on the very first "zones" diary (before we could even play this mess) I noted this example:

This is a microcosmic demonstration of the sort of thing happening across the board in 4.0. It's far too abstract.

I agree with you in that I don't think 3.14 is perfect - and yet from a ludo narrative perspective 4.0 is an obvious step back.

Yeah, back in the early days of the game, the buildings on tiles basically represented a city district with a certain net input and export, with the rest of it being relatively self-sustaining. So a mining building on a tile was a district that needed food and energy imports, and exported minerals. Everything else was self-contained.

Then when we broke from the tiles system, districts were added directly. In that way, building became a stand-in for Developing Districts more fully. You start off with a Mining District, and later on "Upgrade" your Districts by Building Mineral Purification. The issue is that it both is and is not a single building. It isn't a single building in that the head cannon is it's each district being upgraded with buildings. But it is a single building, in that it's the exact same upkeep cost for that upgrade, regardless of how many districts we have. Operating a Mineral Purification building on a planet with 1 mining District is the same upkeep cost as on a planet with 20 mining Districts. That's sort of a mismatch, and it feeds into creating Mono-Planets as the only viable build option.

If it was really "building multiple upgrades across all the districts" then the building should add an extra maintenance cost per related-district, instead of a flat cost to operate the one building. Some of them do this as added upkeep to go with added output, but I mean the energy cost of the building and the metals cost to build it. It's sort of a Ludo-Narrative Dissonance (he said it!)

This is why one of the options in my suggested fixes is that buildings in a Zone only applies to the jobs created in that Zone. Want all your Metallurgists to have Nano-Alloy Plant access? You gotta build one for each Zone.

 

[NorseGod]

have you seen an AI world and attempted to fix it?

trust me, even if you have a world that is mixed, the ai can and will change it to suit whatever it wants

Yeah, my point is that right now the AI is pretty bad at making worlds. Hilariously bad, even.

If enabling mixed-worlds as a viable option improved this, even just partially, while still allowing people their coveted Forge Worlds, I think that's a win for everyone.

 

[Newbee53]

You really went out of your way to blow this up way beyond what's needed.

- The 3.14 system is superior in virtually every way.
1. Completely untrue. And the new system doesn't change anything in that regard to begin with.
2. That's an opinion.
3. Once again, an opinion. And they absolutely do compete. Building slots are limited in number to begin with.
4. What problem? You still haven't formulated any actual problem. Also the building system is no more or less static than the new one.
5. This is not a problem. This is a good thing. You've just admitted you are in favor of a system that forces the lowest common denominator, because there's where you put yourself to begin with. Now everyone will be forced into this and you see this as a good thing. This point alone makes me want to reflexively ignore anything and everything you've said at any point.

I find it weird that when I explicitly state that this is an opinion people feel the need to come back and say, this is an opinion like I didn't know it at the start.

On point 1. What could I build on a planet in 3.14 that would impact my decision to build something else on that planet latter? Really, please tell me because if such a thing existed, I've never encountered it. The only thing I can think of that might qualify is buildings that buffed a category of jobs. But said bonuses rarely resulted in more than a slight favoring of one type of job. 'build an extra bureaucrat' or whatever. and none of that changed my tendency to build buildings wherever I feel like it.

On point 3. I've never found myself in 3.14 thinking 'do I want build A or Building B.' I've thought 'do I want building A first or second.' but never have building slots caused me to not have room on a planet. Actually, it has once. I was playing with ranger lodge; it was a tiny planet with a lot of blockers. not certain if it should count.

Point 4. I poorly explained my point. so let me try again. I feel the planetary build system was going to need an upgrade, if just to make it more flexible for future content. as a result, I feel that any change or update would have resulted in a fairly radical change. I could be wrong, but I've seen no proposals for the management system upgrade that wasn't practically a new system.

Point 5. Also, not as clear of a point, but it seems I did get it across rightly here. So, in what way is it a bad thing that I enjoy playing games that don't punish me for playing them? I don't understand why you have a problem. I think I've been clear across most of my posts that I don't want to punish the other way to play, I just don't want to feel like the game hates me for playing it. And this system seems capable--if not fully successful yet--of doing just that.

I'm curious about something if I may ask. To what year do you tend to play your campaigns, which galaxy size and difficulty? This isn't trying to take potshots at your skill. I'm curious if your experience is completely different from mine and this might impact your perception of the game.

Other than 1000 star galaxies, I don't have as much of a typical came settings as all that. I have never been tempted to go up to admiral or grand admiral at all. I'm a casual player, and while I don't mind losing, I don't like losing because I've played a fun RP empire or have no idea why I lost. As a result, I tend to bounce between Ensign and captain based on how I'm feeling, how often I'm playing and whatever.

I also tend to play until the run feels over. I have a weird habit of having the Prethoryn horde spawning in my boards and I rarely play aggressive conquest or anything like that, so that will end a run right quick. I probably average a game right around the crisis spawning because I don't generally fighting them. So unless the galaxy is pretty likely to defeat them it's just not a fun game.

I also have a rather bad habit of disliking any strategy that feels too 'min-maxed' on shear principle. If everything is chosen for how well it works alone, I'm either not playing it or play another game.

As for your other points. I know those weren't in response to me but you seem to have a bit off an odd take. The Devs aren't here to do things that "excite and interest them", they're here to create a game that's fun for the players and fix issues. This isn't some hobby project they work on in their spare time. But an exceedingly expensive product.

In my experience, any kind of creative field if you don't enjoy what you are working on, you won't make a good product. Game development is a creative field, if the dev team don't like the product they are making--as a whole of course--they aren't going to put as much thought and effort into the game. nearly every 'soulless EA release' can be categorized here. The people making the decisions just weren't that interesting in the game, just the money or sales numbers or whatever.

You are right about this not being a small release or a passion project. But if Stellaris wasn't being developed by people who love science fiction and playing the game themselves, it wouldn't be as good as it is. It wouldn't be as fun as it is.

 

[3ishop]

Thebproblem is that the game gives heavy incentives to build hyper-focussed planets, without the costs associated with that. This is a behavior the Devs want changed, they think the game would be better if both focused planets and generalist planets had ways to make them efficient. I think likely this may be tied into the AI Empires and problems coding them as well.

Well this does finally add a cost to planets having a deficit and it would be a system that could/should get expanded upon.

But it also runs the issue that the current planet system they built up and advertised about going full specialization...so they came in with the idea of going with the sci-fi trope of hyper specialized worlds. So it's a bit contradictory to then go "no that was the wrong thing". That doesn't seem to be what they are aiming at addressing here.

I think the real reason for the change and why it can feel a bit bare bones is that it's intended for expansion. This is building the groundwork for the aim of adding a bigger impact from the different civics, giving a bigger change in how worlds work between empires which can help make them feel more distinct which I do think is a current issue of the game. So far it tends to be maybe a special building is unlocked, the switch between admin buildings and religion or the output of culture workers.

I also have a view on how AI builds bad bases across strategy games - it's not cuz the Devs can't get them to build well but don't want to speed up the players snowballing! At least now we have to respec the planet in Stellaris case lol. *adjusts tinfoil hat*

1. If the Developers don't have good ideas on how to fix core components of the game like invading and taking over planets or Factions and how they operate I would argue they're failing as Developers anyways.

No it's more a case of it's not broken and does what they want & need it to do and also not something that is overly wanted as a rework. So it ends up not being worth the investment which makes sense. So far not seen a single improvement that would make it either more interesting or fun. Been a lot that break systems, become a nightmare to manage and a resource hog though.

Factions have been changed slightly over time, but as part of this change is measuring population and their performance while linking them to a faction it also makes sense they wouldn't have done any large scale rework of that system - it'd be pointless with them knowing this change was coming as they tend to plan content over a year in advance. So makes sense to do such a rework first and then do any expansion of systems of that rework after. It does also run an issue of how to make it a fun and engaging system and how to link it with a lot of other systems.

 

[Newbee53]

I overlooked you when I was replying, sorry. Already replied to someone else, so hopefully you can get some of the information there. But a general point for all of this. I was not arguing that the old system should be overhauled. I was arguing that the old system was not superior to this system. The choice to overhaul a system is significantly more complicated than 'which system is absolutely better in all ways.'

1. I don't even understand this point fully. Yes the choices of what you build in 3.14 impact future choices, and it's disingenuous to say otherwise unless you're misspeaking here. Every building you build, effects your future in Stellaris as they all contribute to your Empire in some ways, and in some cases directly effect and enhance your planet.

It didn't impact what you will build in the future on that planet. in 3.14 building an industrial district didn't impact the decision to build a research lab on the same planet. Nothing impacted the decision to build something on that planet. it didn't matter what districts a planet had, or what filled building slot 1-10. Building 11 could and often was considered completely independent of the other buildings. A boring way to build a planet management system.

2. This point is just a "I feel this way", which is not an argument for or against a system. I personally never felt like I was building a single city, so this is obviously not a universal experience. It's also more of a "roleplay" argument and not a mechanics argument. While I do think there is some merit for arguments about how something feels "in universe" it's not nearly enough of a reason to justify a completely overhaul of mechanics.

Of course it's 'I feel that way' I called all my points an opinion. What more do you want. technically speaking the first point is 'I feel that way' because one could argue which is better.

3. Building slots absolutely competed with each other in 3.14. Again, this is disingenuous. You only had 11 free Building Slots in 3.14 as max. While that's a healthy amount, that is not nearly an "infinite amount" that has no competition with each other. Considering Eladrin has already said they may bump the Zones down to 2 and just give you 6 Building Slots (5 free ones if you could the Capital Building), then this argument further deflates as the new system will have nearly half the Building slots as the old system now anyways.

I never felt like I had to choose between two buildings on a planet. IF I wanted a building on a planet there was always a slot for it. in the beta, this is clearly not the case. And I much prefer that I have some kind of choice between options 1 or option 2.

4. Planet building was not static compared to the 4.0 system, and I'm curious if you're using the wrong word here. 4.0 is MUCH more static than 3.14. 3.14 had Districts which you could build between 5 Choices up to your District Limit, and then 11 Building Slots, meaning a lot of options towards building your Planet. While specializing planets was the best way to run a planet, it was not the only option it was just the most efficient. 4.0 you build 2-3 Zones (Depending on the potential change mentioned by Eladrin) and then you just click "Upgrade District" for it to give more of those set and unchanging jobs. 4.0 is objectively more static than 3.14.

A poorly worded point on my part. Buy static I meant the system was static. Anything you did to improve, update, or change the system from 3.14 was always going to be an in practice rework. especially if the goal was to make the system more interesting rather just than 'fill in every building I want.'

5. Most strategy games tend to fall into specialization being the best way to build, and 4.0 reinforces this either the same or more than 3.14 due to how Zones work. Because Districts now give you Zone Jobs per District, a planet specialized in 4.0 is going to have a significantly higher output than before depending on the final numbers. If you want a Research World, you plop down as many Research Zones as you can, which gets multiplied by the number of Districts, which gets further buffed by the Planet Designation and specialized Buildings to give you the highest output for the cheapest cost. 4.0 doesn't do that much to help mixed worlds over what you could do in 3.14.

I fully disagree that 4.0 has made specialized planets more necessary than in 3.14. While specialized planets are clearly stronger--something I wish was changed by boosting mixed planets to closer--they aren't has heavily demaned by this system.

The main reason is that mixed planets have more verity and with three zone slots, you can mix and match zones with far more interesting results than you'd ever get in the old system. even two zones would be 'ok' but I'd be disappointed.

The main thing that this system does to encourage mixed planets is just that you have to choose each zone each time. And you know that the choice is limited at a low number. So when I decide 'I'd like this new thing' or at least need more of something i can go to one of my worlds with an open zone and plop it down. I'm not as incentives to keep stacking the same things on top of each other all the time. I can, but I am not incentivized as heavily because when it comes to expanding cities, I'll get a trickle of all kinds of resources all over the place. I'm thus much less likely to be desperate for something.

Part of my feelings on this might be that I don't really aim for large numbers in income. One post somewhere was someone saying that the only one to get to 200 per month alloys was a specialized forge world, and my first thought was that I can't imagine what you'd need that obscene number of alloys fore. Unless you are completely replacing you fleets every 3-5 years, I can't imagine what you'd need that for other than the crisis. So, as I play the game, that view of build goals seems utterly unnecessary. a goal that I'd find alien, basically.

Same for some of the absurd tech rush--or the rarer unity rush--builds you see floating about. I find those kinds of large numbers so quickly to be boring to play. I've tried the tech rush ones, and while it's fun for the first few insanely fast tech unlocks, it becomes boring quickly. I am a role play player in this game, so I'd much rather see to building interesting and flavorful empires than large numbers.

And this system is a lot better for that. Mixed planets are clear right on the face of the UI. you can't shove every building you want into every planet, so you pick the ones best for that planet. You can use the basic resources to support development of the more advanced ones to make your planets more interesting and you can of course specialize a planet where needed or makes sense. Or if you are feeling like a despotic empire or want to build a planet of the hats empire, you can specialize every planet if you want.

 

[herculeanus]

Why? Especially when we had a superior system already.

The current system is the culmination of 10~ years of refinement and progress. 10 years of filing of edges and smoothing out issues. And it works. You can build generalist planets right now, you just chose not to. Because they're not efficient. They do work, they do produce, they just aren't optimized.

If that's the reason why the people who proclaim to love them and want them aren't using them, it's also basically an admission that the new approach isn't an improvement it's a punishment seeking to force an outcome preferred by some people. An outcome which will have less player decision, less ability to impact things, less ability to do "well and stand out" as it forces the lowest common denominator.

Who really benefits from this? The Ai? The Ai isn't whom the game should be made for. The Ai exists to fill in slots and give players to play someone with. New players? Tooling the game around new players while simultaneously taking away their ability for growth and adaption via forcing their kind of play style as the baseline isn't really something that should be seen as desirable. The folks who hide their profiles, never contribute to any discussion, never bring up anything tangible, as they mass downvote stuff?

That's the problem. You're now forced to play this terrible and ill-considered system.

In this one thread alone, there have been some good ideas from a few players. For example, the one with the "throughput bonuses." That's a good suggestion. Then there's increased trade value or energy credits for planets that have a deficit. (These planets can't sustain themselves and therefore have to import goods. And that costs logistics, etc., and can therefore be very expensive.)
Simple. (It's just an example.)

Instead, major changes are being made that ultimately improve nothing. And there's nothing we can do except accept it. And that's annoying.

 

[NorseGod]

That's the problem. You're now forced to play this terrible and ill-considered system.

In this one thread alone, there have been some good ideas from a few players. For example, the one with the "throughput bonuses." That's a good suggestion. Then there's increased trade value or energy credits for planets that have a deficit. (These planets can't sustain themselves and therefore have to import goods. And that costs logistics, etc., and can therefore be very expensive.)
Simple. (It's just an example.)

Instead, major changes are being made that ultimately improve nothing. And there's nothing we can do except accept it. And that's annoying.

I wonder how easy/hard it would be to code and calculate something like throughput bonuses on the scale of Stellaris. It's a really interesting idea. Maybe expanded Planeet Designations and the Trade Defecit system is the simpler and easier to calculate, although less direct, version of this.

 

[HowlingKestrel]

I wonder how easy/hard it would be to code and calculate something like throughput bonuses on the scale of Stellaris. It's a really interesting idea. Maybe expanded Planeet Designations and the Trade Defecit system is the simpler and easier to calculate, although less direct, version of this.

For what it’s worth, there is already some implementation of throughput in Stellaris, with techs and other bonuses that give +resources from jobs and +upkeep from jobs. Creating a new named modifier called job throughput that includes both effects would just simplify the UX side of things.

So just having each miner produce +0.1% resources from metallurgists and +0.1% upkeep from jobs for metallurgists would be all that would need to happen to make the system work, mirrored for other jobs that take minerals as an input.

Miners/metallurgists/artisans/researchers are the easiest chain to implement with this system.

I’ve been thinking about maybe other bonuses for food and energy. Maybe energy could give all jobs throughout and food could give a minor local pop growth bonus?