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The core problem with this last bit is that it relies on you actually having enough planets to specialize, which is by definition not true at the start of the game. On some settings, it won't be true for a long time - and for some starts, regardless of settings.
This is only not a big problem if your settings and empire align to make it fine. The empires that actually work have so far excluded the worst cases, but they still exist - they're just not playable in the beta yet.
It's an intolerable problem to have, and it's not at all by design - the design is not that your economy will explode because you got jobs you didn't want. The design is that mixed output is far better than it used to be. The REALITY is that your economy will explode - you can even get around it by closing unwanted jobs. But a design that relies on going to a planet after it finishes a district so you can close all the jobs you didn't actually want and wait for pops to demote back to the jobs they previously had is really, really bad.
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I agree that it's currently difficult with the homeworld start in the beta. I'm not sold that this is fundamentally, always a problem that your economy will explode. The design intent of things like the urban zone is that you can have a mix of things on your homeworld and yeah maybe it will be suboptimal but I don't believe that it will be impossible for this to be balanced in a way all empires can get by until they start colonising. At which point you can begin to specialise.
With the civilian system I don't expect it will be that clear you'll build a lot on your homeworld early in the game. Maybe a bit but you'll want a healthy population of civilians to spread to your early colonies.
I certainly agree that if it's not balanced well and we have to constantly turn jobs off manually that isn't great.
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Think what advantage the empires that don't use consumer goods have over the rest,
and no matter what, if the player feels deadlocked, imagine how bad the AI will be in borking their economy with 1-2 planets.
and no matter what, if the player feels deadlocked, imagine how bad the AI will be in borking their economy with 1-2 planets.
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The real problem is that at its core, it's just not fun. It's not intuitive, it's not pleasant.
They aren't going to 180 and undo it. That's just the reality of economics, especially since a lot of the upcoming DLC are likely built around it. But they really, really should. Not every idea is a good one.
They aren't going to 180 and undo it. That's just the reality of economics, especially since a lot of the upcoming DLC are likely built around it. But they really, really should. Not every idea is a good one.
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I was playing around with an ocean paradise empire--ignored a lucky ocean world for experiment reasons--and don't think it will be two hard to sustain a single planet empire long enough to start colonizing. Assuming everything is properly balanced. This is the reason I stayed away from Gai world--or whatever the origin is called--because I didn't think the balance is up for that origin yet.
Of course, I had pearl divers to help, but +30ish cg just means a regular empire should be able to stay 'mostly' positive. an industrial district can help, and combined with a monument and unity building I could handle the usual 2 science ships and level ups. I'd probably have to dump high level leaders, but that's not the worst concession early game.
That's not to say it's good. But with a good balance pass, and probably some new ways to pull the right levers a single planet start will be something possible with just 'i know kind of what is needed' levels of knowledge. If you know that you can get an early start on robots with the materialist agenda and sacrifice your third district for research, you should be fine to get robots fairly early.
Even basic bots can make an early small colony profitable as long as you keep your badly adapted gai Wolders to a small number. Assuming the balance goes the way I expect it to. which is less time to the 1k pops needed to upgrade the ship shelter.
While a 1 planet challenge is kind of a meme, its mostly because it goes against the primary principles of the game. which is exploration and colonization.
Of course, I had pearl divers to help, but +30ish cg just means a regular empire should be able to stay 'mostly' positive. an industrial district can help, and combined with a monument and unity building I could handle the usual 2 science ships and level ups. I'd probably have to dump high level leaders, but that's not the worst concession early game.
That's not to say it's good. But with a good balance pass, and probably some new ways to pull the right levers a single planet start will be something possible with just 'i know kind of what is needed' levels of knowledge. If you know that you can get an early start on robots with the materialist agenda and sacrifice your third district for research, you should be fine to get robots fairly early.
Even basic bots can make an early small colony profitable as long as you keep your badly adapted gai Wolders to a small number. Assuming the balance goes the way I expect it to. which is less time to the 1k pops needed to upgrade the ship shelter.
While a 1 planet challenge is kind of a meme, its mostly because it goes against the primary principles of the game. which is exploration and colonization.
I feel the opposite. I think once the frustrations are removed, and we have maybe one more diel for dealing with mixed urban districts it will be quite fun. In fact, unless I mix my districts in a rather bad way, I'd say it's pretty good actually.
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I don't think zones are as integral to 4.0 as people keep saying.
You could add buildings duplicating the effects of stuff like betharian zones. Keep the buildings as a whole the same as in the beta, just not zonelocked. Make district types for each resource. That's uh... that's it, that's zones replaced. That's not code-heavy. It's not even design-heavy, and the UI isn't polished yet anyway so it doesn't require doing that any more than is already necessary.
I also don't think they're unsalvageable. But they need to do some overhauling to fix the problems, and if any actual adjustment of mechanics is off the table two weeks into the beta they have made colossal mistakes (to be clear, I am saying I doubt it's off the table).
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I've made this thread on the basis that if they weren't willing to make feedback adjustments, they wouldn't bother with a beta.
I could be wrong and they could not adjust for this problem. But it's honestly not that hard to fix, so it would be really quite aggravating if they didn't in the ~6 weeks they have before the full release... and kind of an odd choice. There's quite a bit of time left in the beta for them to fix this one critical problem, I just want to make sure they have enough time to do that rather than wait until the 4.0 release notes come out and say "you never fixed this."
You've a higher opinion of them - or more specifically not the developers but the people in charge of the timescales - than I do. In my experience, whenever I see something like "Design is incomplete" or "Unoffical numbers", I just automatically assume that the design is in fact complete and the numbers are finalized - because they always end up being just that.
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I still don't like the way that Zones interact with unique buildings from civics and origins, and I think there's basically no way for them to fix this without just removing the buildings and replacing the benefit some other way. Spending an entire building slot on a necromancer encampment or a chamber of ascension feels like a brutal cost to pay and those are actually good buildings. Idyllic Bloom is going to be in complete shambles, who is going to spend one of their precious generic building slots on a gaia seeder? In this economy? I'll be impressed if they can figure out a good fix for this but right now it feels pretty crummy to play one of those empires.
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Yeah, I agree - they're not. They very obviously lift out.
There are comments in this thread that acting as though coding Stellaris is magic and everything they've done was an insurmountable effort.
No. It's hot code. You know what that means? It came together quick. Look at the kind of bugs that were in these beta tests! This stuff is hotter than a lot of mods that release and some of it is basically an experiment.
As for "They can't just press delete and have something new ready to go!" The live game already has a coherent planetary management design and UI layout. It has nearly a decade of maturity and refinement.
It can absolutely be U-turned and that should be the point of hosting a beta.
Cut zones. Let the custodians tinker with more interesting areas of the game in the next 24 months, not spin their wheels in the mud on this.
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To me the zone-building-interactions are the good part about the new system. What's annoying is the shared job allocation.
Just based on what we have now and not what could theoretically be, I feel like if they "removed zones", and instead made it so each unique district came with 3 building slots, with the same general idea of what you can build in them as in zones right now, that'd solve most, if not all, of the issues, while still maintaining the interesting parts.
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A solution to that would be to just add a toggle for auto-fill or not. That way if u dont like the system, u just dont use it or use it on some worlds but not on others
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Zones need many, many deep reworks and balance passes, but I don't think that they are a fundamentally flawed concept, after seeing Eladrin's post about their intent.
As long as devs are willing to listen to feedback and prioritize their balance and functionality (which I hope it is their top priority since most of the game consists of planet management, at least for me), I think it will end up alright.
As to how it could be done, I can think of multiple possible solutions:
Option a) Zones for buildings only, like Ryika said:
That would be a very simple way of conveying, "Hey, this or that building affects those districts, and the jobs created by these districts as well". Zones themselves would not modify district job generation per se, but it would be perhaps more intuitive to group buildings by theme while de-coupling building slots from urban districts, keeping the whole "3 building slot per zone" idea.
Option b) Try to find out another different taxonomy of zones that would gel better with the economic model. Perhaps this one might work?:
RURAL ZONES (modifies one single basic resource district type, with some unique exceptions) -> Agricultural, mining & generator zones would allow you to specialize the planet on one basic resource of your choice if you wish, turbocharging their particular districts
INDUSTRIAL ZONES (modifies industrial districts) -> Forge (metallurgist focus) / Factory (artisan focus) / Spaceport (turns industrial zones into trade hubs, thus giving interesting choicesfor those empires that don't need consumer goods)
URBAN ZONES (modifies urban districts) -> Administrative (unity focus) / Research (science focus) / Residential (civilian, housing focus. Perhaps it could give an extra building slot?) / Capitol (exclusive zone for home worlds so its urban districts can produce a little bit of everything and thus, be more versatile and self-sustaining)
SPECIAL ZONES -> For all your planetary features, civic uniqueness, and who knows, ascensions, even!
Option c) Add Zones as a higher ceiling of district-based planet development:
Simply put, keep the old district system in place, but add zones as a means to further develop and specialize planets if you decide to invest more resources in them. More of a mid-late game thing, in the same way that planetary rings would allow you to greatly increase your planet output, zones would allow you to do exactly that, but integrated into the base game game. Civics, techs, and traditions would progressively unlock more "zone slots", allowing you to greatly increase the output of your planets while building their identity, in contrast with empires that chose to put their focus elsewhere.
As long as devs are willing to listen to feedback and prioritize their balance and functionality (which I hope it is their top priority since most of the game consists of planet management, at least for me), I think it will end up alright.
As to how it could be done, I can think of multiple possible solutions:
Option a) Zones for buildings only, like Ryika said:
That would be a very simple way of conveying, "Hey, this or that building affects those districts, and the jobs created by these districts as well". Zones themselves would not modify district job generation per se, but it would be perhaps more intuitive to group buildings by theme while de-coupling building slots from urban districts, keeping the whole "3 building slot per zone" idea.
Option b) Try to find out another different taxonomy of zones that would gel better with the economic model. Perhaps this one might work?:
RURAL ZONES (modifies one single basic resource district type, with some unique exceptions) -> Agricultural, mining & generator zones would allow you to specialize the planet on one basic resource of your choice if you wish, turbocharging their particular districts
INDUSTRIAL ZONES (modifies industrial districts) -> Forge (metallurgist focus) / Factory (artisan focus) / Spaceport (turns industrial zones into trade hubs, thus giving interesting choicesfor those empires that don't need consumer goods)
URBAN ZONES (modifies urban districts) -> Administrative (unity focus) / Research (science focus) / Residential (civilian, housing focus. Perhaps it could give an extra building slot?) / Capitol (exclusive zone for home worlds so its urban districts can produce a little bit of everything and thus, be more versatile and self-sustaining)
SPECIAL ZONES -> For all your planetary features, civic uniqueness, and who knows, ascensions, even!
Option c) Add Zones as a higher ceiling of district-based planet development:
Simply put, keep the old district system in place, but add zones as a means to further develop and specialize planets if you decide to invest more resources in them. More of a mid-late game thing, in the same way that planetary rings would allow you to greatly increase your planet output, zones would allow you to do exactly that, but integrated into the base game game. Civics, techs, and traditions would progressively unlock more "zone slots", allowing you to greatly increase the output of your planets while building their identity, in contrast with empires that chose to put their focus elsewhere.
Update: Eladrin has just said they don't consider zones an 'experiment' so... yeah no they're here to stay. And while they do have existing planetary management and such, just look at the 2025 DLC announcement. Look at how far out they plan these things. Just for the DLC they're locked in, what do you think Zones are like?
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They may not consider them one, but they ARE one.
That's still fine if they fix the problems.
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Well, no. In the context it was a reply to someone asking if they're willing to consider rolling back the 'zones experiment'.
In a way yes, but also no.
They're an experiment in the sense it's a new feature that will need testing, reworking, and at some point in the future might even be replaced. But they're not an experiment in the sense they're locked in as a mechanic and have been for a while. It's not like the breakthrough systems in the tech beta that the devs explicitly might keep or might remove.
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Right, but that's how I'm saying it's an experiment.
It's on the same level as breakthrough techs, solely except that the devs aren't willing to remove it if it is bad. It's the same untested massive change that needs refinement or removal, and refusing to remove it doesn't change what it is.
I don't think they need to remove it, but the first time I mentioned this problem they replied to my post and ignored the part that mentioned this so we'll see. If they don't fix it, it's going to be a miserable experience to micro every planet after every construction and then hope your pops demote back into the appropriate jobs before economic collapse.
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