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

[Calvax]

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.

This about sums up my feelings too. I'm expecting the release to be a bit buggy and a bit unbalanced. Which isn't unique to 4.0 since every release that updates major systems usually gets properly sorted by it's X.1 or X.2 patch.

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.

To be fair breakthroughs were a rather minor mechanic that were explicitly an experiment whereas the devs have explicitly stated that zones are not an experiment, they have plans for the future, and don't plan on removing them.

People can obviously say what they like and "I don't like zones/remove zones/go back to the old system" are all valid opinion. But it's unlikely that feedback is going to be taken on board by the devs in the same way that feedback about breakthroughs were.

 

[Imp0815]

I see it two ways. We’ve been discussing this for about a week now, so the discussion will naturally dissolve into simpler terms the more often we rephrase the issues, the longer the issues persist, and the longer we don’t know explicit details about plans, fixes, or thoughts on them.

And if we start filtering feedback based on how well it’s phrased, we’ll end up with a whole other set of issues—not just core game design disagreements, if you know what I mean.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

To be fair breakthroughs were a rather minor mechanic that were explicitly an experiment whereas the devs have explicitly stated that zones are not an experiment, they have plans for the future, and don't plan on removing them.

People can obviously say what they like and "I don't like zones/remove zones/go back to the old system" are all valid opinion. But it's unlikely that feedback is going to be taken on board by the devs in the same way that feedback about breakthroughs were.

I think some people are trying to do public-relations damage-control. Downplaying feedback because they feel it's unlikely to make a difference so not worth posting.

This Beta is the perfect time for complaints. The only time opinions actually make a difference is when those systems are under active development and open to dramatic changes. Even a small chance is still a chance.

 

[-Marauder-]

I think some people are trying to do public-relations damage-control. Downplaying feedback because they feel it's unlikely to make a difference so not worth posting.

This Beta is the perfect time for complaints. The only time opinions actually make a difference is when those systems are under active development and open to dramatic changes. Even a small chance is still a chance.

Which, is fair. Zones feel, bad. They feel limiting, unbalanced, and unfun. And they do nothing we don't currently have. And they also appear to be a bit of a headache to balance and make work, especially with time slowly ticking down.

 

[Newbee53]

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

this is wild to me, because its the exact opisit of what zones feel like to me. Zones make your choices important, you choose not to put zone 1 on that planet, why are you surprised a building locked to that zone can't be built there? Its a choice that has lasting effects.

And zones can be changed, so if you change your mind you can deal with it. If we want to use the 'paint by numbers' alangy. The numbers have colors, but you choose where the numbers go. And one or more of the numbers have a mix of possible colors.

But even that is a bad choice, because you will not always want to build the same building in every place. Unless you only goal is to build the perfectly maximized economy. But if I'm low on minerals, reducing mineral costs might be better than increasing mineral mining. If I'm low on alloys, increasing throughput might be more important.

If I get something more efficient, I might replace it. or I might not. Depending on how I feel at the time. And zones make this a lot more meaningful way of playing. I decided that planet I colonized a decade ago was going to have a tone of trade, but now I think I'd rather it be unity! something to change, consiquinces to my decision. and a reason to think about using a different planet instead.

 

[Imp0815]

this is wild to me, because its the exact opisit of what zones feel like to me. Zones make your choices important, you choose not to put zone 1 on that planet, why are you surprised a building locked to that zone can't be built there? Its a choice that has lasting effects.

And zones can be changed, so if you change your mind you can deal with it. If we want to use the 'paint by numbers' alangy. The numbers have colors, but you choose where the numbers go. And one or more of the numbers have a mix of possible colors.

But even that is a bad choice, because you will not always want to build the same building in every place. Unless you only goal is to build the perfectly maximized economy. But if I'm low on minerals, reducing mineral costs might be better than increasing mineral mining. If I'm low on alloys, increasing throughput might be more important.

If I get something more efficient, I might replace it. or I might not. Depending on how I feel at the time. And zones make this a lot more meaningful way of playing. I decided that planet I colonized a decade ago was going to have a tone of trade, but now I think I'd rather it be unity! something to change, consiquinces to my decision. and a reason to think about using a different planet instead.

It just clicked with me what the zones are supposed to be and what the new system means overall.

But to come back to the ill-mannered comparison of mine: I get this feeling when I see a planet and say, "You are going research," and then build three research districts — and nothing else is going to happen there. Just three research districts, and then I fill out the slots with the three buildings available for those slots.

I can basically choose my painting, but I still have to fill out the slots with the colors I’m given. This could be fully automated by just plopping down the buildings I have available when building the zone to reach the same goal. I don’t have a choice there anymore. Buildings could basically be research upgrades for zones — costing resources and removing the step of manually applying them every time. I feel dumb when opening the building slot of a zone to select the same building over and over. I don’t have a choice then anymore.

And don’t argue with hypothetical new and more buildings in the future — I know this, but this is the state as is, and neither you nor I have any guarantee they’ll ever come.

But as I said, this is not the (main) purpose of zones. Zones are there to streamline planets into isolated end-product producers. Zones can be set up to completely fill out all basic and intermediate products — like CGs — to fulfill the end product like Research or Unity. You set up zones like Research and CG zones, press the upgrade button on the city district, and can leave the planet knowing it will create jobs for CG and Research that will balance themselves out to fulfill the end-product of Research as best as possible.

But I don’t have confirmation on this yet.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

this is wild to me, because its the exact opisit of what zones feel like to me. Zones make your choices important, you choose not to put zone 1 on that planet, why are you surprised a building locked to that zone can't be built there? Its a choice that has lasting effects.

And zones can be changed, so if you change your mind you can deal with it. If we want to use the 'paint by numbers' alangy. The numbers have colors, but you choose where the numbers go. And one or more of the numbers have a mix of possible colors.

But even that is a bad choice, because you will not always want to build the same building in every place. Unless you only goal is to build the perfectly maximized economy. But if I'm low on minerals, reducing mineral costs might be better than increasing mineral mining. If I'm low on alloys, increasing throughput might be more important.

If I get something more efficient, I might replace it. or I might not. Depending on how I feel at the time. And zones make this a lot more meaningful way of playing. I decided that planet I colonized a decade ago was going to have a tone of trade, but now I think I'd rather it be unity! something to change, consiquinces to my decision. and a reason to think about using a different planet instead.

Paint-by numbers has the numbers already written in for you... like how the ratio of jobs between the three city district zones is decided for you vs choosing the job ratio yourself.

The lack of control is frustrating to me. Imagine if the child's picture had the sky printed with the number 5 for Green, instead of 3 for Blue and you're forced to paint the sky the same colour as the ground. Or in Stellaris terms forced to increase a deficit after building a city district unless you go and turn-off unwanted jobs.

I also really hate how quickly zones can swap massive numbers of jobs compared to district or building construction times and numbers. Adding or Swapping a trade zone into a unity zone in 8 days feels like using console commands. I like to imagine that building a (trade) District would mean adding ports, steamlining supply chains, training of traders and negotiations, treaties and establishing supply routes etc. and that's why it takes years. The massive and instant shifts in job numbers, up to 25x as large as building a district or building and in 1/50 the time feels... like cheating with console commands.

 

[Newbee53]

But to come back to the ill-mannered comparison of mine: I get this feeling when I see a planet and say, "You are going research," and then build three research districts — and nothing else is going to happen there

personally I think zones are partially there to change it to. This planet is good for research, so build a research zone. you come back when it has enough civilians and are like 'I've got enough research right now, but could use more alloys.' so you build an alloy district. Or maybe you do that elsewhere, and add the research one here. But I think the intent is to encourage and make viable generalized planets that aren't doing just one thing.

I also really hate how quickly zones can swap massive numbers of jobs compared to district or building construction times and numbers. Adding or Swapping a trade zone into a unity zone in 8 days feels like using console commands.

I'm pretty sure I've heard the devs say multiple times that the build time for the zones is a beta thing, not intended for the final product.

The lack of control is frustrating to me. Imagine if the child's picture had the sky printed with the number 5 for Green, instead of 3 for Blue and you're forced to paint the sky the same colour as the ground. Or in Stellaris terms forced to increase a deficit after building a city district unless you go and turn-off unwanted jobs.

I don't see this as a problem. With civilians you don't have to be super quick on eliminating all unemployment and can let your pool of civilians grow to the point where adding a new zone or city is a minor issue at most. I don't mind the ratio of jobs being set, because i never really cared about the ratio of jobs before. just how close to the red my final numbers are. Don't care if that is a constant battle anyways. it makes empire building more interesting, you might never quite hit the point where you have nothing to do. Especially if we are considering future plans and growth in this equation.

I do think its been made clear that for a certain type of player, this new system is going to be extremely bad. I'm just not that player, and am firmly in the camp of 'its a direct upgrade.' I don't know what the solution is, if it is important enough for the devs to implement, or if any solution wouldn't be seen as a massive backtrack by every player who is in my camp. just changing who is angry about what.

 

[Imp0815]

personally I think zones are partially there to change it to. This planet is good for research, so build a research zone. you come back when it has enough civilians and are like 'I've got enough research right now, but could use more alloys.' so you build an alloy district. Or maybe you do that elsewhere, and add the research one here. But I think the intent is to encourage and make viable generalized planets that aren't doing just one thing.

You see, this isn’t working currently because you could build an industrial zone, but then add X number of districts with industrial workers on that planet and open up like 2,000 job slots. It’s not feasible, nor is it fine-tuning your economy.

If you have a planet with research, you either build the intermediate there to negate trade costs, or you just build more research districts to benefit from more lab buildings. If you need alloys, you go to your alloy planet — which is best built on a big mining world. And so on.

 

[Newbee53]

You see, this isn’t working currently because you could build an industrial zone, but then add X number of districts with industrial workers on that planet and open up like 2,000 job slots. It’s not feasible, nor is it fine-tuning your economy.

If you have a planet with research, you either build the intermediate there to negate trade costs, or you just build more research districts to benefit from more lab buildings. If you need alloys, you go to your alloy planet — which is best built on a big mining world. And so on.

On the one hand: Then the balance is off, but neither method should be necessarily better than the other, just with different benefits and problems.

On the other hand: I don't think stellaris--given the nature of the game and community--should be balanced around the people who min-max to their upmost. The dev--whose name I cannot remember longer than it takes to look away--replied and basically said the same as you.

he's worried it makes specialization to good. And is looking to reduce that as much as possible. That suggests the balance needs to be worked out, and possibly some kind of synergy bonus added. I remember seeing somewhere a suggestion that having different zones on a planet should provide a built-in amenities bonus. this could be one way to do it.

But maybe add buildings that boost other zones could be cool. Like a mixed industry building those boosts 'factories' a lot but provides a smaller boost to something else. A recycling center or something that boosts unity and something else. Don't know.

 

[ShaTiK]

I don't want to offend anyone but it is almost like a lot of people that defend current zone implementation haven't tried to play the game properly.

Again, don't want to sound arrogant, but I did. And the housing/amenities/output balancing is a cruel joke. You just don't balance things.

Housing cannot be balanced because it is linked to city district level, regardless how many zones you have.
Amenities can't be balanced period, you just know that +5k pop planet would have only 2 zones of your choosing, the third would either a urban zone filled with luxury housing or amenities zone that would overproduce then without manual control.
Outputs cannot be mixed, if you want your economy to reach the numbers you want - so every planet becomes mono output. And building-wise you plaster the planet with every unique zone buildings and fill the rest with Tier 1.

You can make this system work currently. Turn planets into mono producers, place amenities zone for big planets, bitterly laugh at abundance of empty housing estate while trying to forget how bad housing is IRL. But I cannot fathom how this is defendable. Parts of new system - for sure, I like some parts myself. But not this.

And the way system is currently built - it won't ever allow for proper balance. You just can't do it. You can throw stuff and it would somewhat work. Is this the design goal?...

 

[Newbee53]

Amenities can't be balanced period, you just know that +5k pop planet would have only 2 zones of your choosing, the third would either a urban zone filled with luxury housing or amenities zone that would overproduce then without manual control.

This is a known problem and one that the devs have said they are looking into. They don't want amenity districts to be a requirement. Having the amenities of housing buildings scale with cities makes a lot of sense to me, and fits pretty well. Alternatively, buffing the amenities jobs or changing the buildings to scale instead will work as well.

Outputs cannot be mixed, if you want your economy to reach the numbers you want - so every planet becomes mono output. And building-wise you plaster the planet with every unique zone buildings and fill the rest with Tier 1.

I've literally never had that problem. At no point have I struggled to get the output with mixed zones. I've had some problems with some mixes. But it seems some balancing has been done sense then.

I've never thought: 'the only way to get the alloys I want is a pure alloy planet.' I've considered building them, but never felt it necessary. I don't know where this is coming from as a result.

You can make this system work currently.

Yes you can. Mono planets work--and maybe to well--as do general planets. Want more cg? upgrade the planet with cg. don't want the research jobs, then do the one without research jobs. if you are going to have mixed planets, you are going to have planets with different mixes. So you choose the ones' with the mix you'd like, or at least don't hate.

Yes this makes single planets a bit of a challenge, but I'm quite sure they have more than enough time to not be trapped on a single planet. Maybe not, but I don't think that's more than a balance pass.

 

[ShaTiK]

I've literally never had that problem. At no point have I struggled to get the output with mixed zones. I've had some problems with some mixes. But it seems some balancing has been done sense then.

I've never thought: 'the only way to get the alloys I want is a pure alloy planet.' I've considered building them, but never felt it necessary. I don't know where this is coming from as a result.

Maybe there is some communication lapse here. If you have a planet with alloy zone and unity zone - you physically cannot increase alloy output without getting unity jobs as well. So if your goal to to reach 200 alloy per month, then you need a dedicated alloy planet. You go there and you level up its city district. And if the counterargument is 'you can disable unwanted jobs' - nope, not doing that. I'm wasting precious zone space on jobs I don't yet need or even capable of filling. This isn't a good system. And also pretty much like old system with housing district overbuilding, followed by clerk job reduction.

Yes you can

This wasn't the argument in favor of this system. You can force it to work and turn the game into very boring clicker type game. Pick a planet, choose what type of resource it would produce, fill it with same zones and buildings, repeat. No interesting choices, no fine control, just quickly throw something together and it kinda works.

This wouldn't have been so bad if game had tons of other stuff for player to engage with. But it doesn't

 

[Thiend]

I don't want to offend anyone but it is almost like a lot of people that defend current zone implementation haven't tried to play the game properly.

Again, don't want to sound arrogant, but I did. And the housing/amenities/output balancing is a cruel joke. You just don't balance things.

Housing cannot be balanced because it is linked to city district level, regardless how many zones you have.
Amenities can't be balanced period, you just know that +5k pop planet would have only 2 zones of your choosing, the third would either a urban zone filled with luxury housing or amenities zone that would overproduce then without manual control.
Outputs cannot be mixed, if you want your economy to reach the numbers you want - so every planet becomes mono output. And building-wise you plaster the planet with every unique zone buildings and fill the rest with Tier 1.

You can make this system work currently. Turn planets into mono producers, place amenities zone for big planets, bitterly laugh at abundance of empty housing estate while trying to forget how bad housing is IRL. But I cannot fathom how this is defendable. Parts of new system - for sure, I like some parts myself. But not this.

And the way system is currently built - it won't ever allow for proper balance. You just can't do it. You can throw stuff and it would somewhat work. Is this the design goal?...

I still think it's fixable into something good, but it will require major changes and a lot of work.

The majority of what zones do just isn't good. Having played around with it more, I basically see the state of zones as follows:

Benefits:

• Just the fact that you can separate bonuses for similar jobs with different outputs, IE your betharian miners can otherwise use miner bonuses but not be using the same buildings as your regular miners on the same planet. This also means you can then more easily communicate buildings only impacting one, you could have buildings that only impact regular miners or buildings normally for technicians that impact betharian miners. This is theoretically an improvement for mixed output planets as they are no longer competing for building slots.

Problems:

• Finetuning output is extremely tedious micro, and to a major extent literally impossible.
• Building zones is an unneeded layer of the game 95% of the time (likely unsolvable, but much less of a problem without the other issues).
• Zone caps mean you actually won't fully mix your output anyway, so it being theoretically better to the extent you do matters much less (people keep saying to just specialize, but putting aside other reasons to disagree with that, if the end goal is still to always specialize everything then the entire economic overhaul here other than workforce for performance improvements is completely pointless).
• Zone caps also mean anything you just need detracts from the system by lowering the effective cap. It also punishes you heavily for bad planet resource RNG, because if you need a little of raw resources off a planet because your good mining world is full it still requires a full zone no matter how little. Before, getting two districts of miners until I find a new good mining world to expand to cost two districts. It now costs one of my very few zone slots.

There are other benefits to the new system, however the one I just listed is the single instance of it actually requiring zones to do that. Every other benefit "of zones" is a benefit that could be implemented without them, usually much more easily.

On the topic of amenities, I've been thinking the last few days about their purpose in the game. What is it? It isn't just immersion, many things that would 'make sense' don't exist because they're tedious. We don't have a birth rate, death rate, education system or retirement age on our pops because it would be large calculations serving no purpose - it would get to the same point. So what purpose are amenities serving, that cannot be abstractly 'present'?

I don't think there actually is one in the Zone system. Their primary purpose, as near as I can tell, is to serve as a building slots tax. The larger your population on a planet grows, the more amenities you need to maintain it. This additionally means alternative districts that allow moving jobs to them from building slots allow you to have those jobs on a larger scale in part because the district slot for the job is no longer competing with the building slot for the amenities.

They act as a pop tax to work the job, but if everyone has it nothing really changes from removing it entirely. And now buildings don't work the same way... we don't need amenities at all, and in fact removing the entire mechanic as it is now would probably improve the 4.0 system quite a lot.

 

[Newbee53]

Maybe there is some communication lapse here. If you have a planet with alloy zone and unity zone - you physically cannot increase alloy output without getting unity jobs as well. So if your goal to to reach 200 alloy per month, then you need a dedicated alloy planet. You go there and you level up its city district. And if the counterargument is 'you can disable unwanted jobs' - nope, not doing that. I'm wasting precious zone space on jobs I don't yet need or even capable of filling. This isn't a good system. And also pretty much like old system with housing district overbuilding, followed by clerk job reduction.

Why is it a problem to get unity along with alloys? that doesn't seem like a bad thing, unless you want less unity for some reason I can't figure out. I don't see this as an inherent problem with the system. Just kind of odd. And if it matters to increase only one job, mono-plants still exist I guess. I just fail to understand why this is a problem, unless you have an extreme need for one kind of resource.

This wasn't the argument in favor of this system. You can force it to work and turn the game into very boring clicker type game. Pick a planet, choose what type of resource it would produce, fill it with same zones and buildings, repeat.

Its not like the decisions are one and done. Build a mining zone, come back later, continue with the same thing or do something different. same for factory, same for any zone or district.

I mean, I could make the same argument about 3.14. You just decide what resource you want the planet to build, and the only time you come back is to build a new building or district. One and done. Boring clicker.

In both cases it cuts out the actual choices. What you are actually choosing in this set up is which resources and planets--weather mixed or not--is getting increased with the increase. If you change your mind, you can change things as well.

I guess I'm struggling to see the problem. Why is it a problem, that you have to build a mono planet if you want to only upgrade one type of resource?

 

[ShaTiK]

On the topic of amenities, I've been thinking the last few days about their purpose in the game. What is it? It isn't just immersion, many things that would 'make sense' don't exist because they're tedious. We don't have a birth rate, death rate, education system or retirement age on our pops because it would be large calculations serving no purpose - it would get to the same point. So what purpose are amenities serving, that cannot be abstractly 'present'?

For me this always was a tax on bigger population. You need to sacrifice something to place really big numbers of pops on a single planet.

I don't think it should be removed to be honest. Getting housing district back and giving it amenity generation jobs, and having zone be modifier for both housing and amenities as well, would be enough. This isn't a super engaging system, that is true. But also it thematically makes sense, for me at least.

If we are talking about reworking pop-related systems, I would say crime is what needs reworking. Amenities is a tax that you occasionally need to take into accout, but crime is even worse, it is a non-existent system for 90% of players. Sidenote - I think having criminal jobs be derived from total pop size might be an idea worth exploring.

Also, I might be too much of a pussy, or a realist, but I'm 100% certain devs won't remove amenities system. So suggesting the complete removal of this one, while a valid personal opinion (as if there are non-valid ones), practically is a complete non-starter. So it more productive to offer solutions of making it interesting.

 

[-Marauder-]

I don't want to offend anyone but it is almost like a lot of people that defend current zone implementation haven't tried to play the game properly.

Again, don't want to sound arrogant, but I did. And the housing/amenities/output balancing is a cruel joke. You just don't balance things.

Housing cannot be balanced because it is linked to city district level, regardless how many zones you have.
Amenities can't be balanced period, you just know that +5k pop planet would have only 2 zones of your choosing, the third would either a urban zone filled with luxury housing or amenities zone that would overproduce then without manual control.
Outputs cannot be mixed, if you want your economy to reach the numbers you want - so every planet becomes mono output. And building-wise you plaster the planet with every unique zone buildings and fill the rest with Tier 1.

You can make this system work currently. Turn planets into mono producers, place amenities zone for big planets, bitterly laugh at abundance of empty housing estate while trying to forget how bad housing is IRL. But I cannot fathom how this is defendable. Parts of new system - for sure, I like some parts myself. But not this.

And the way system is currently built - it won't ever allow for proper balance. You just can't do it. You can throw stuff and it would somewhat work. Is this the design goal?...

I almost wonder if that isn't the intention. To force inefficiency, to force a level playing field, to force the lowest common denominator.

 

[Mike Louis]

The current Urban District in beta needs to be split into a separate Industrial District (to which Alloy Foundry and Consumer Goods zones can be added) and Trade District (to which a basic Trade zone can be added) which would then enable the Urban district to be used to place Research and Amenity zones in.

 

[ShaTiK]

Why is it a problem to get unity along with alloys?

I guess I'm struggling to see the problem. Why is it a problem, that you have to build a mono planet if you want to only upgrade one type of resource?

Choice. Current system doesn't give you fine control and choice, it actively takes it away. And I actively hate it.

Then again, it might personal and cultural thing. IRL I despise tech that decides things for me and locks me out of control. I once had a nasty surprise when I found out the TV media player I was renting from ISP was totally locked from any control on my part. And I needed to update it because it wasn't working properly, and it took a while to do that, including the long call with their tech support.

 

[Thiend]

Also, I might be too much of a pussy, or a realist, but I'm 100% certain devs won't remove amenities system. So suggesting the complete removal of this one, while a valid personal opinion (as if there are non-valid ones), practically is a complete non-starter. So it more productive to offer solutions of making it interesting.

Oh, it's almost certainly not happening I agree.

But understanding what purpose is or isn't served by their existence is still important for finding the proper place for them in the new system. I don't think there even is a purpose, which means they need a new one, or possibly to be vastly reduced in scope.

Crime is a separate issue, but probably one with a similar solution.