Zones; what is good, what needs to be fixed before 4.0

[NorseGod]

I noticed its a specialized upgraded planet--habitats--verses a vanilla planet. Not the best comparison. I wonder what the difference would be if that argi-planet was turned into a Gai world or something similar. I do wish habitability was harder to max out.

4x seems like a lot. but I do think it makes more sense to have the artificially made purpose-built structure better at food production.

Sure, here's that same world Terrofrmed to a Gaia planet, and built up to 22 Districts. As Planets are limited in Districts, I can only build 10 Agriculture Districts, and the rest I put into Generators and Mining. Out of 36 Planets in my Empire, the only one with more than 10 Agriculture Districts available in one with 15 Districts, but it has a Planetary Feature that gives a 15% Bonus to Mining Output, so I became a Mining-World.

As you can see, when filling it out this way it nets you even less food. Upgrading to Gaia doesn't add to food production, I was already at 100% Habitability at this point, and then you lose food feeding those other Pops. That's why I compared this world at 10 Agriculture Districts, and did the same for the Orbital as 10 City Districts, to compare apples to apples in a way.

And yeah, you could say it's not a fair comparison because you're getting 22 full Hydroponic Districts on a Habitat, where you only get 15 of such Districts on a plent if you're lucky - but that's also kind of the point. Because City Districts aren't limited at all, you can always fill a Planet or Habitat with all City Districts, they're gonna be much more efficient at production.

Orbitals with Tech Districts by default will create less Research than a random planet with Cities and Research Zones. And an Agriculture-heavy world will nver be able to make as much food as a standard Habitat with City Districts and Hydroponics Zones. That's the result of this system. If it's intended behaviour, ok. But to me those results seem kind of flipped from what I'd expect. An orbitial around a science deposit should be able to create more research points when specialized than a regular planet to me, that's not what plays out with the economy rework.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. Half of the game is expanding and fighting wars, in order to get more land, as it's a scarce resource. The end game is foten about trying to make more land, so you're no inundated by tons of unemployed Pops.

And it's not just about being efficient from a land perspective, it's also being efficient from an upkeep perspective. Zones and Buildings each take maintenance, and it's the same value regardless of how many Jobs it serves. The jobs have the exact same upkeep, assuming buildings are the same.

So if hyper-specialization is more efficient from land, and from upkeep/resources - what exactly is there for efficiencies in the game to consider? Early on Pops are a limiting factor, yes. But isn't that an argument to very quickly getting your Pops into situations where they are producing the most output, for the least input? I could be missing something.

You expand to get more land and more pops, and to deny both to other people. Once you have habitats unlocked you have as much land as you have systems and the patience (and alloys) to build them with. And as of 4.0 building habitats just got a heck of a lot less irritating. If you don't have habitats unlocked, well, it's all a moot point isn't it?

But yeah play a voideborne start sometime and just laugh at the concept of land competition.

 

[Imp0815]

Yeah, this was something I suggested a week ago. People seem to really not like the idea of leaving building slots open like that. So that's why my suggestion was a mix of this, with the "building in zones " situation. But yeah, I agree with the premise that Zones being tied to City Districts is kinda weird and causing a bunch of issues.

You know what the worst thing about making this was?
I was constantly thinking, "Why the heck do I paint planet views? This worked—why do we have to waste energy on discussion a system that worked already?!"

 

[NorseGod]

You expand to get more land and more pops. and to deny both to other people. Once you have habitats unlocked you have as much land as you have systems and the patience (and alloys) to build them with. And as of 4.0 building habitats just got a heck of a lot less irritating. If you don't have habitats unlocked, well, it's all a moot point isn't it?

But yeah play a voideborne start sometime and just laugh at the concept of land competition.

Yeah, I was going to try Void Dwellers, but right now they don't have Orbital Habitats unlocked from the start. I was really excited to give it a try, especially with Catalytic Processing. Then I could make a Hydroponic Habitat making 1100+ Food per month, which is enough to provide for a full Factory Habitat (-450 Food, +1150 GCs) and then another full Forge Habitat (-450 Food, 1150 Alloys). Add in a Full-Generator Habitat, and your Capital for Unity and 1 decent planet to make into a Tech-World, and you'll be getting and once that Pops fill in you'll be getting mid-game resource output from 5 Systems.

 

[Imp0815]

are you suggesting we should remove the district-building limits? Because that's some of the best stuff we need. after all, that prevents you from pasting buildings literally everywhere. 1 per planet. still end up with thirty of them! one on every planet! That's a bad part of the 3.14 game design. I'm glade its gone.

If you are keeping similar building-district limits, this seems even less understandable, as people will struggle to know why they can't build a building on that one planet.

No? Yes?

District limit per planet stays. If a planet can have 21 districts, that’s it—but you can again choose which ones you want.

Limit for RGO districts is still based on planet type and features.

District type limit should be a natural thing, as you can upgrade a type. The question is: how many types of districts should we be able to build? Hard limits? Soft limits? No limits? Limit by traits? Currently the new system suggest three.

I don’t see the difference between building the same zones on every planet and then proceeding to build the same buff building in the zone slots. In my book, it sounds even worse than before and has the same issue of “I don’t want to build one thing more than X times” - I don’t really understand this problem anyway, but hey.

Ultimately, it would be balanced by how many building slots we gain and what the per-building limits are. Should we be able to build more of the same buildings?
I think the critique of “I don’t want the same building everywhere!” can be easily countered by: “WHY can’t I build more than one of X building? Makes no sense!”

I would suggest to alleviate your issue, shift all buildings that we want to build many times into a district—just like they did with zones, but keep that artificial layer of zones out of the equation.

 

[Tisifoni12]

'Jobs' or 'economic activity'. And indeed might tge 'civilians' be better labelled as the 'economically inactive'.

BTW the economically inactive include those too young to work, or too old, or in full time education, etc,
The 'active workforce' are not the entire population and the productivity of those engaged in 'work' in a Stellaris society might be amplified by AI and automated / robotic systems (not anthropomorphic robots, but for example automated farm or mining equipment.

Yes you can mine using muscle, perhaps convicts in a 'gulag' (Rura Penthe in Star Trek), but choice may be to use technology with a minimal workforce.

How much economic inactivity is a problem depends on the nature of your species' culture and economic model.

In Stellaris population growth is a baked in problem to solve.

I am tempted to suggest that less spreadsheet detail and more abstraction might make for less lag and a more satisfying game ?

 

[Newbee53]

No? Yes?

District limit per planet stays. If a planet can have 21 districts, that’s it—but you can again choose which ones you want.

Limit for RGO districts is still based on planet type and features.

District type limit should be a natural thing, as you can upgrade a type. The question is: how many types of districts should we be able to build? Hard limits? Soft limits? No limits? Limit by traits? Currently the new system suggest three.

I don’t see the difference between building the same zones on every planet and then proceeding to build the same buff building in the zone slots. In my book, it sounds even worse than before and has the same issue of “I don’t want to build one thing more than X times” - I don’t really understand this problem anyway, but hey.

Ultimately, it would be balanced by how many building slots we gain and what the per-building limits are. Should we be able to build more of the same buildings?
I think the critique of “I don’t want the same building everywhere!” can be easily countered by: “WHY can’t I build more than one of X building? Makes no sense!”

I would suggest to alleviate your issue, shift all buildings that we want to build many times into a district—just like they did with zones, but keep that artificial layer of zones out of the equation.

I was more talking about the tying of buildings to which zones--or districts in your case--so that every planet will have buildings you can't build. I think this is important, because the 'high level choices' about districts and zones have continuing effects on your planets. So if you build this thing, that other thing is avaible to you.

Also, it makes your planets different. You are not going to plop down an astral studies lab on a planet without any research infrastructure.

 

[Imp0815]

I was more talking about the tying of buildings to which zones--or districts in your case--so that every planet will have buildings you can't build. I think this is important, because the 'high level choices' about districts and zones have continuing effects on your planets. So if you build this thing, that other thing is avaible to you.

Also, it makes your planets different. You are not going to plop down an astral studies lab on a planet without any research infrastructure.

I don’t know if this is needed, but you could do that with the system. Either you grey out buildings like “needs a Research District”, or you tie it to the tooltip of the Research District: “unlocks buildings XYZ”

I think it depends on the building, its power, and interaction. If a building manipulates jobs, sure—you might want a district that provides those jobs.
If a building can function on its own, there’s no need for a district.

Maybe that was the thought process behind zones. And to make it easier to convey, we limited the buildings by zones.
But then they went too far and attached the zones to cities—and that killed it.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Yeah, I was going to try Void Dwellers, but right now they don't have Orbital Habitats unlocked from the start. I was really excited to give it a try, especially with Catalytic Processing. Then I could make a Hydroponic Habitat making 1100+ Food per month, which is enough to provide for a full Factory Habitat (-450 Food, +1150 GCs) and then another full Forge Habitat (-450 Food, 1150 Alloys). Add in a Full-Generator Habitat, and your Capital for Unity and 1 decent planet to make into a Tech-World, and you'll be getting and once that Pops fill in you'll be getting mid-game resource output from 5 Systems.

As in the base ability to build new habitats? Yes they do, I was building some this morning. If you mean something else let me know. There's a couple of neat tweaks, like the ability to unlock the zone for the science districts is gated behind the first science building tech, same as the energy zone is gated behind the first energy tech.

 

[Thiend]

This is what I mean. Out of 36 Colonies in my Empire, the top 4 by Agriculture Districts are 15, 13, 10, 10. So a 10-Agriculture planet is likely gonna be your average Farm planet. It creates about 250 Food.

View attachment 1272629

Meanwhile an Orbital with 10 City Districts and Hydroponics Zones almost doubles that:
View attachment 1272631

And then with techs and voidborne, you can get that single Habitat to make more than 4x the food of a decent Farm planet:
View attachment 1272632

I dunno, I just think that an entire planet focussed on food production shouldn't be outproduced 4x over by a space station doing the same thing.

4x production with 3x the pops on a space station you spent one of your 8 ascension perks improving doesn't seem unreasonable to me. If anything, I like that habitats aren't being completely left in the dust on per-pop efficiency, but even with the AP this isn't actually that far ahead.

If anything, it may STILL be behind, and if not the gap is even less, because your farm world lacks an Orbital Ring that isn't an option at all on a habitat.

 

[-Marauder-]

With the new season pass announced, 4.0 closing in, and how many issues we still have. Am I the only one worried about the planned timelines?

Because there are so many sweeping and complete gameplay changes and less and less time. I'm worried they might begin to rush stuff and ship things as "are". Rather than give them time to cook, to either crystalize things or scrap some of it.

 

[Exasperation]

Habitats can also produce more food than a similarly sized planet in 3.x. As void dwellers (or voidborne), switching to the hydroponics designation gives you 3 farmers per hab district, with buildings on top of it - it's not as extreme, but you get 3-farmer uncapped districts compared to the 2-farmer capped districts most empires get on natural worlds (and don't have to use districts to unlock building slots that could be providing more farmers, since the same district does both things). If they cut back the jobs on the hydroponics zones to be half the amount Agri districts give per zone, then a 3 hydroponics zone habitat would have about the same balance compared to a normal farm world as they do in 3.x (after they fix the 3rd zone job bug, that is).

 

[tappi]

These two keep the issue that linked buildings dissolve into paint-by-numbers gameplay, where we just always place the same buildings in the same zones/districts because we seem limited by district type on what building goes into which slot.
And we would still have to explain, "No, you can’t build a lab here — build the lab district first to gain access to the labs!"
And that, I find intransparent and rather railroaded.

How about this:

View attachment 1272640

Otherwise I like this, but I do also enjoy the extra level of district customization zones would allow, and I do think the limited building slots, at least for base districts (minerals/EC/food) should still be there. I like 'em

 

[Thiend]

With the new season pass announced, 4.0 closing in, and how many issues we still have. Am I the only one worried about the planned timelines?

Because there are so many sweeping and complete gameplay changes and less and less time. I'm worried they might begin to rush stuff and ship things as "are". Rather than give them time to cook, to either crystalize things or scrap some of it.

I would describe myself as "somewhat worried."

Their rate of updates in this beta far exceeds previous patch cycles or betas. This is a very encouraging rate of work for the future.

On the other hand, they saddled themselves with a release date only around 5 weeks out when they didn't have to, and when the beta is - bugs aside - NOT in a good playable state. There are problems for which an estimated time to fix is currently, days after that announcement, impossible to say, because they are problems of design and not solely implementation. This is a bit counter to the statements that the rush job patches after DLC of last year weren't going to be repeated, although to be completely fair that depends on how much time they put in AFTER the release of 4.0 as much as how well 4.0 actually releases.

If they've been working on this since the last Grand Archive patch, and IF they've been working at a rapid pace since then rather than the more lackadaisical one common to patch cycles last year, it could very well be that much of the stuff not in the beta is already done. They may just be waiting to see what shape the stuff in the beta takes so they can shove it into the fully completed rest of 4.0 and be done... or they could be trying to shove what looks a lot like 8+ weeks of work even at a higher pace into roughly a month. Both seem quite possible.

So, again, to summarize, I'm somewhat worried. Not extremely worried, but not unworried. I could accurately be described as "cautiously optimistic" where "cautiously" is in the magnitudinal context of my being a genuinely paranoid person in the first place.

 

[ShaTiK]

These two keep the issue that linked buildings dissolve into paint-by-numbers gameplay, where we just always place the same buildings in the same zones/districts because we seem limited by district type on what building goes into which slot.
And we would still have to explain, "No, you can’t build a lab here — build the lab district first to gain access to the labs!"
And that, I find intransparent and rather railroaded.

How about this:

View attachment 1272640

This is essentially the old system. And any feasible proposal must include zones, I'm 100% certain devs won't budge on that.

This comes down to personal preference but as far as I see - zones is a better system compared to old building slots, if applied to different districts, not a singular one.

As for the paint-by-number - any system is a number system and this is a 4x game with clearly defined metrics for success and goals for player. Meaning players would find an optimal strategy and would follow it. It doesn't matter much which system we are using for planetary management in this regard. The game design goal is to make the numbers more varied, give player more options for getting what they want.

Old building slot system wasn't quite there, apart from alloy/CGs you needed buildings, and slots were tied to housing district level - so came the housing spam and plastering the planet with identical buildings, and this was the only option when you needed more unity/research/nav cap.
Zones within singular district are basically the same, when you think about it that. And devs themselves, in this very thread, said that players eventually make mono output planets, so zones are an easy way of doing just that. The issue is that this is a late-game consideration, and it comes at a cost of making fine-tuning fiddly. And early to midgame are all about fine-tuning. Not to mention mess with pop upkeep - crimes, amenities, stability, all of these are secondary to pops. So you either make city district provide these things as jobs (and thus making this a non-system basically) or make such a 'pop maintenance' zone mandatory. Neither is good. Also interesting and unique zones would end up being mostly unused due to very limited number of zone slots per planet, and increasing number of zone slots would only make balancing worse, both for player and AI as well.
Zones on top of different districts, at least from where I stand, seems like a decent middle ground. Yes, players would still plaster planet with 15 science districts to make space MIT, but this is inevitable in any system. But they also can mix and match districts and zones and balance them early on. If we want to discourage player from paving planets with same thing - we can introduce some zone synergies that would interact with each other. Or maybe some diminishing returns if +50% of planetary districts are of same type. Or some other system, that's what game design is all about after all. Also it allows us to preserve much of old district system (art, some code, UI etc) so we don't waste a ton of already completed work. And lastly, this system seems to be already in the game - current base districts are doing just that, they have zone slot and this zone can modify the district (for now they don't, but code-wise these zones and city zones are the same). All that is left is to make a UI layout for them and populate the zones list (afaik the latter is already being done since zones are here to stay). So work-wise this doesn't seems too much. As for AI and rebalancing - it has to be done with both new systems anyway.

 

[Lorenerd11]

The problem right now is that with Ecumenopolis and Ringworlds, you basically want to pack all your district slots into your main urban district, since every point invested into those nets you 3 times as many jobs as any of the other districts.

And as already pointed out, research districts being limited and having to compete with habitation districts, while on planets you can put down multiple research zones puts them at a great disadvantage.

 

[Imp0815]

This is essentially the old system. And any feasible proposal must include zones, I'm 100% certain devs won't budge on that.

This comes down to personal preference but as far as I see - zones is a better system compared to old building slots, if applied to different districts, not a singular one.

As for the paint-by-number - any system is a number system and this is a 4x game with clearly defined metrics for success and goals for player. Meaning players would find an optimal strategy and would follow it. It doesn't matter much which system we are using for planetary management in this regard. The game design goal is to make the numbers more varied, give player more options for getting what they want.

Old building slot system wasn't quite there, apart from alloy/CGs you needed buildings, and slots were tied to housing district level - so came the housing spam and plastering the planet with identical buildings, and this was the only option when you needed more unity/research/nav cap.
Zones within singular district are basically the same, when you think about it that. And devs themselves, in this very thread, said that players eventually make mono output planets, so zones are an easy way of doing just that. The issue is that this is a late-game consideration, and it comes at a cost of making fine-tuning fiddly. And early to midgame are all about fine-tuning. Not to mention mess with pop upkeep - crimes, amenities, stability, all of these are secondary to pops. So you either make city district provide these things as jobs (and thus making this a non-system basically) or make such a 'pop maintenance' zone mandatory. Neither is good. Also interesting and unique zones would end up being mostly unused due to very limited number of zone slots per planet, and increasing number of zone slots would only make balancing worse, both for player and AI as well.
Zones on top of different districts, at least from where I stand, seems like a decent middle ground. Yes, players would still plaster planet with 15 science districts to make space MIT, but this is inevitable in any system. But they also can mix and match districts and zones and balance them early on. If we want to discourage player from paving planets with same thing - we can introduce some zone synergies that would interact with each other. Or maybe some diminishing returns if +50% of planetary districts are of same type. Or some other system, that's what game design is all about after all. Also it allows us to preserve much of old district system (art, some code, UI etc) so we don't waste a ton of already completed work. And lastly, this system seems to be already in the game - current base districts are doing just that, they have zone slot and this zone can modify the district (for now they don't, but code-wise these zones and city zones are the same). All that is left is to make a UI layout for them and populate the zones list (afaik the latter is already being done since zones are here to stay). So work-wise this doesn't seems too much. As for AI and rebalancing - it has to be done with both new systems anyway.

No, zones must not be included to create a feasible system.
They are an unnecessary layer of hierarchy that limits planet management and player interaction, and they result in bad scenarios that weren’t there before.

In addition, we’re trying to solve an issue that was never brought up until we started criticizing the flaws of the new beta system. So I see this argument as a red herring to have something positive to say about the new zones: “We build too many of the same stuff on planets currently, aka spam buildings.”
Well, we don’t need the zone system that destroys planet fine-tuning and forces us into the job sliders to mitigate the impact of having three zones attached to the city districts.
The attached zones to the RGO seem like an afterthought following the streamlining of the city district.
Zones should be gone. If you want to innovate on the new system and mitigate building repetition, make a system of district slots for “urban-type districts” and move repetitive building jobs into there.
It’s the obvious, easy solution for the issue that came up as we started talking about how badly zones are perceived.

To clarify something:
In Germany, we have children's “games” called Malen nach Zahlen (Eng: paint by number).
It’s basically a canvas where an image is outlined in black, and each section has a number in it. Sometimes you get paint buckets with numbers, sometimes just a legend explaining which number is which color.
Then children—and sometimes adults—start painting the picture based on the numbers to end up with a colored image.
It’s basically a coloring book with instructions. It often become shorthand for repetitive tasks or overly simplistic instructions/tasks:

It’s comparable to this, but for "older" kids.

Really polemic of me, I know, but this is how I see the zone system.

 

[Imp0815]

Otherwise I like this, but I do also enjoy the extra level of district customization zones would allow, and I do think the limited building slots, at least for base districts (minerals/EC/food) should still be there. I like 'em

I think there might be a middle ground where we could have slots directly attached to districts to modify only these districts, while keeping general slots for district-overlapping or global buildings.

But two things need to be fundamental to keep some resemblance of current planet management in the game:

1. Free slots for customizing planets and providing flexibility and choice—either districts and buildings, or district or buildings.
2. Fine-grained planet growth—no extra strings attached when upgrading a district.

Still, the slots attached to districts dictate some sort of player choice and railroad us into building the same buff buildings in each district everywhere—because where is the drawback to having a purification plant on each planet with at least one mining district when the slot is free?

 

[ShaTiK]

No, zones must not be included to create a feasible system.

I meant it as - devs seems adamant to keep it, so if you want your idea to be taken into account, you can't say stuff like 'zones are bad, remove the immediately'. Well, you can say whatever doesn't break the rules, but outright dismissing the new system is a good way of getting outright dismissed in return.

As for system as a whole - again, properly implemented zones can both reduce spam and give choices, as far as I can say. At this point though we both have said our piece, you have your version of a good system, I have mine. Now it is up to devs to read it (or not) and take these ideas into consideration (or ignore them)

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I meant it as - devs seems adamant to keep it, so if you want your idea to be taken into account, you can't say stuff like 'zones are bad, remove the immediately'. Well, you can say whatever doesn't break the rules, but outright dismissing the new system is a good way of getting outright dismissed in return.

As for system as a whole - again, properly implemented zones can both reduce spam and give choices, as far as I can say. At this point though we both have said our piece, you have your version of a good system, I have mine. Now it is up to devs to read it (or not) and take these ideas into consideration (or ignore them)

They removed the research breakthrough techs from the last beta they tried. I don't think it's ever bad to say something isn't working and needs changes to be fun, or is worse than what we already have.

Feedback is feedback, you don't need to police it.