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I really wish I could! But I currently have zero gaming time due to life circumstances. That's why I am glued to those treads (patience... patience...). That being said, I tend to trust people's impressions, whether good or bad.
I dunno, It wouldn't be the first time that some Stellaris game system decried as irredeemable got much improved since its first implementation. Not sure if this is another leader rework case or a "just improve it by removing it" thing like the breaktrought techs.
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More specifically zones do nothing that buildings and districts can't do.
Everything listed in that post is doable with buildings and districts. Anyone suggesting otherwise is doing it on the basis of "trust me, bro".
In exchange we lose the next year at least of developer focus and efforts on this! Already elements of 4.0 are suffering because this planetary management change is cannibalizing a lot of time and conversation - big topics like the total war endgame technology are being snowed under. Not to mention the whole point of this was for performance gains and they haven't even started with that.
But hey on the flip side a PDX staffer said on reddit they liked the word "zone" in a novel they read. So that's nice.
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Correct. They are currently pointless and bad. I wouldn't have made the change at all, but it is allegedly for future gains that I have no reason to believe or disbelieve.
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I'll just drop this here rather than retype it out:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/goto/post?id=30250405
E: stop unfurling you danged url
Short of the rampant speculation, that is all things zones are capable of but not necessary for.
I mean, the bioreactor-betharian zone comparison kind of puts that to bed. My early suggestion before I had a better idea was to just add a type limit to buildings (IE max 3 miner buildings), which combined with adding districts for each job type would be a 1:1 functional match for zones without any of the negative consequences we currently have.
If they have something that works better with zones coming in the future I have no specific reason to disbelieve them. This is, however, exactly why zones need to be brought up to at least "doesn't make the game worse" levels; absolutely nothing disclosed so far requires zones. All of it could be done much easier with buildings and districts.
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I understand your points but disagree that it is the only way to achieve the desired benefits.
Zones will eventually be able to do most of the things that we have now but it's only a small amount of work to replicate most zone benefits.
Simply having buildings with multiple different upgrade paths (like we used to have for science buildings) would give you limited choices from a sub-set of options.
Benefit: fewer buildings to choose from, more interesting choices each upgrade instead of just pushing a button (or not having any upgrades now they're individual buildings).
When you say a portal research zone is good because you can see it I think:
Why can't we easily see features? Why is it worse now? I want to see those features!
... and also what's wrong with looking at a building?
When you say
"2) The ability to decide which zone(s) a building can go into adds a lot of design space. Bioreactors as energy zone buildings would be different to bioreactors as agricultural zone buildings would be different to bioreactors as planet limit 1 but able to go into either slot."
I think:
Bioreactors having either their old functions or the 3.14 functions would be great. But If each building does something different depending on which of the 20 zones it goes in... that's going to be confusing. And probably better served by having different buildings... or one building with multiple upgrade paths.
As for balance matters and building slot competition:
If a building is made too often because it is too powerful it needs a nerf, or a limit
If a building is made too often because it perfectly suits your playstyle it probably shouldn't even take up a slot
If a building is made too often because it is always optimal to do so, it should be made planet unique or empire unique.
If a building is never made, it should be more fun or have a new niche
(none of that involves zones)
Also small planets getting better planet features... that could be done by only spawning some fancy new features on size <12 planets. It doesn't need a massive zone rework to add some fun features.
I don't like throwing away years of development on a whim because of a vague hope that it may do something that would be fiddly to do otherwise. And I dislike the massive job swaps that zones make routine.
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Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
Another update today for the weekend! Lots of important changes in this one. How Do I Opt Into the Beta? Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties ->...
- I think this is what i ment by wasting energy. But now we are going in circles!
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I think a much easier and more workable fix would be to have Zones almost as a form of Building, that goes in a seperate slot, instead of something the provides building slots. You let Zones either create new jobs on a planet, or turn some of the City Clerk Jobs into different jobs. Then, most of the buildings that currently "Add +X Jobs" you can turn into "Add (BaseJobs) * 1.X" instead, aside from maybe some empire-unique or planet-unique options. Districts and Zones create the jobs, buildings modify the jobs, either by multiplying or modifying them.
This is already how the base resource buildings work, you add the Mineral Processing buidling which makes jobs produce more, you add the Crystal Building to add a new output, or the Silo that adds capacity. But none of them add more jobs. Just have a Mineral District with 3 Building Slots for Mineral Buildings, and an upgradable "Zone Slot" to add more jobs of that type, or some other planet-specific upgrade.
So make all buldings buildable once per planet. Move those building slots from zones to a generic City spot, and unlock them as you build City Districts. And then Zones function as a sort of building that provides +X jobs. And you can even make certain buildings become buildable only after a zone has been built. But putting the slots in the zones as they have it now is just causing a lot of problems.
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Ugh, god no. I hated how awkward that made upgrading and untrustworthy it made automation. It's gone and never coming back and that's good. This is an excellent argument against using just buildings.
We couldn't see them before. They were buried off in their own tab. This gets you what you want.
A building isn't a feature, and not all features need to have buildings. Making something a zone gets building level visibility without taking up a build slot.
That one was ambiguously phrased. I didn't mean bioreactors would change function, I meant that which zone can take a bioreactor is itself a mechanical and flavourful difference. Bioreactors are currently an energy district building, which means they don't consume a farm building slot. This means they come with different tradeoffs than if they were an ag zone building. You can't get that kind of interplay if all your buildings go into one bucket.
A limit such as... what zone it can go in?
These are overly simplistic answers to complex questions. I can't say much more on that without writing a novel, which I may do later, but you're cutting out vast swathes of design space here. The short story version: In an 11 building bucket all that's needed for something to be an always build is for it to be better than the 12th best option. If it's limited to one of 3 slots in a bucket that's not even on every planet then you can make it much more powerful and still have other options be competitive. The most effective way to balance a food building and a magic space thread building is to not try to do such a silly thing in the first place.
You also left out the use case of when you want something to be too good to be a building, or just not comparable to what buildings or districts do.
I guess I just don't find "make everything boring" a compelling design goal.
This is what's called a "ribbon benefit" and was under a section titled "rampant speculation" so I'm not going to overly get into it, but again, you're saying "why not do it in a more limited and less structured manner" which again, not a design ethos I ascribe to.
Agreed, the issue of slapping down a zone when there's already a bunch of cities needs to be looked at.
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Yeah, but your response wasn't "no those are all dumb". You agreed that they were things that would work better with districts and zones and buildings over just buildings and districts, your argument was just that you didn't think they'd actually do any of those things*Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
Another update today for the weekend! Lots of important changes in this one. How Do I Opt Into the Beta? Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties ->...forum.paradoxplaza.com
- I think this is what i ment by wasting energy. But now we are going in circles!
So it's still a perfectly valid response to someone asking "what can zones do better than buildings".
*and I replied with why I think they will. With references!
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Its a bit late, but just rememberd, so high:
Don't know if that helps.
According to the dev dairy announcing the release of the beta #374:
The bonus trade seems to happen with you have a surplus on a planet. Basically a negative logistics penalty. It might have changed, but this was the only official information I could find on it.
Don't know if that helps.
This example is quite telling because logic dictates that this particular zone would be slotted into Generator District. A specifically single-output district. And this works, for sure (not so sure about this bizarre desire to use betharian at least somewhere, it is almost a legacy feature for the sake of legacy at this point, but that's a different story). This kind of choice is neat.
But the exact same effect is achieved by having a building, much like the industry zone did. You can literally do the same thing in the current system. If idea is so every zone would have at a minimum 3 different buildings, then I guess it sorta works, but then these buildings become mandatory and not really a choice. For them to become a choice you need to do a lot of additional work of creating interesting choices plus balancing. Not the bad idea, but one that you cannot deploy piecemeal and one that requires a lot of work, it's 'hey this is a completely new system' so we can actually see the whole system at once.
And still I see no reason to completely throw away every district. Adding zone to resource generation districts (most boring ones) - neat idea to add complexity. Adding zones to existing and new districts to cut back on building spam, give more control while having some restrictions to make things interesting - still a nice idea, still onboard. Jamming every resource generation beside the base into a singular city district that governs everything, including housing and amenities? Not sold at all.
If the general idea is to automate a bunch of things on planetary side and free up player to engage with other game systems, then I'm sorry, but they are few years too early for that. This is like 65% of gameplay loop right there. Futureproofing is a cool thing, but if they gut current planetary management now and add stuff for player to actually do years later, then there would be nobody playing the game by this time.
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You asked for comment, and you have my opinion. We disagree and that's fine. Although it can cause friction when pulling in two different directions.Ugh, god no. I hated how awkward that made upgrading and untrustworthy it made automation. It's gone and never coming back and that's good. This is an excellent argument against using just buildings.
We couldn't see them before. They were buried off in their own tab. This gets you what you want.
A building isn't a feature, and not all features need to have buildings. Making something a zone gets building level visibility without taking up a build slot.
That one was ambiguously phrased. I didn't mean bioreactors would change function, I meant that which zone can take a bioreactor is itself a mechanical and flavourful difference. Bioreactors are currently an energy district building, which means they don't consume a farm building slot. This means they come with different tradeoffs than if they were an ag zone building. You can't get that kind of interplay if all your buildings go into one bucket.
A limit such as... what zone it can go in?
These are overly simplistic answers to complex questions. I can't say much more on that without writing a novel, which I may do later, but you're cutting out vast swathes of design space here. The short story version: In an 11 building bucket all that's needed for something to be an always build is for it to be better than the 12th best option. If it's limited to one of 3 slots in a bucket that's not even on every planet then you can make it much more powerful and still have other options be competitive. The most effective way to balance a food building and a magic space thread building is to not try to do such a silly thing in the first place.
You also left out the use case of when you want something to be too good to be a building, or just not comparable to what buildings or districts do.
I guess I just don't find "make everything boring" a compelling design goal.
This is what's called a "ribbon benefit" and was under a section titled "rampant speculation" so I'm not going to overly get into it, but again, you're saying "why not do it in a more limited and less structured manner" which again, not a design ethos I ascribe to.
I prefer building upgrades, maybe because I like my RPG features and skill trees.
The UI to pick the building upgrade is the exact same as the UI to pick the building to put in the zone. You have to wait to queue up in both cases.
...at least until they improve the UI to let you plan ahead more, like the change that let you queue starbase buildings before modules are completed.
Also, be it a building in a zone or a building as an upgrade, in both cases you have to hope automation doesn't try to build the wrong thing for you. That's just an argument for improving automation, or not using automation for important choices.
There is one other thing I wanted to add:
Zones are only on after the district is built, techs researched, zone picked from available options.
Features are always on.
That's very important to me.
Turning features into zones I actually dislike (thinking about it while cutting the grass outside just now) as it turns features into situational side-grades vs upgrades.
Using your words here, Phoenix Point was a game that seemed to have "make everything boring" as a design goal. Situationally useful side-grades being the only equipment unlocks was a major part of the failure of v1.0 for me (haven't tried since). I don't want that boring design ethos ported over to Stellaris.
If I find a Doorway but the "Doorway zone" has to compete with a research zone I may never use it.
If I find Betharian stone and it has to compete with mining zones and doesn't buff generator output then I may never even use it even if I want energy (unless I have mining guilds or similar, don't need minerals, and "Betharian Zone" has higher energy output than a generic generator zone).
If you want something to be fun, always used and not competing for building slots/zones/districts, then it should be a feature.
If you want the player to feel progression and become more powerful, changes should be upgrades and not a side-grades.
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I don't understand. I broadly agree that the Betharian zone is an example of why this is NOT necessary, pending future things for which it actually is or interactions with buildings that make that one necessary, but wouldn't the Betharian zone in fact have 3 building slots?
As a matter of fact, given how it works now, you could probably build both a mining and a Betharian mining zone on the same planet. That may be exactly why it will do something somewhat better than buildings do now, in providing jobs for both scaling off the same district, traits and planet designation but as two separate jobs instead of one doing both, and with two separate sets of 3 buildings amplifying those jobs differently.
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You are right, I'm tired after the gardening and mixing things up (I was thinking about bioreactor buildings being placed in different zones again).
Edited to correct the mistake.
I do hope it allows for things that cannot be done (at least easily). Although my point was more that side-grades feel less rewarding than upgrades as you have to do math to know if they're actually an improvement... with thousands of pops modified by at least 3 buildings it's going to be messy math.
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Yes, Phoeniz Point is kind of the perfect example of how to be so focussed on making everything "perfectly balanced", you end up making a game that's flat and boring. I tried so hard to like it, but it never caught me near as much as XCOM 1&2 did. Similar thing with Helldivers 2 last year, players found a fun synergy, so the Devs nerfed it until it wasn't good anymore. Like these are games, people want to have fun, allow them to have things that work synergistically. If I want to engage in a world where I'm trapped with a bunch of mediocre choices and whatever I pick will be disappointing, I'll go outside and experience Earth under Late Stage Capitalism and Climate Collapse
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To be clear, I don't think the current trade numbers are balanced in the slightly, but as I played some longer games, I kept the inverted trade specifically in mind to see whether it'd be an issue were it not inverted and for the entire game my trade would've been fine. At the moment my biggest criticism of trade is the fact that it doesn't really do much and you don't need to pay mind to it really. Fleet upkeeps are still majorly energy and alloys, planetary defecits hardly affect total trade and trade has so many passive sources that you don't need to make jobs for it either.
Plus, it's kinda weird that the Market is unlocked right at the beginning of the game, especially for Hive Mind and Machine Intelligence Gestalts. I get it when it represents the private sector on your worlds, while the player resources are "the Governments". But if you're a giant Hive Mind creature and you haven't met any other empires, who or what are you "trading" with?
Also. I wonder if there's been any mention of why Advanved Resources are unlocked from the beginning of the game? I that just a temporary thing for the beta? Being able to make Motes, Crystals, and Gasses from game start is kinda weird. Defeats the purpose of the techs to some degree.
Just a heads up: If you triple zone a production, you only get the bonus jobs per district only for the first two zones, for the third zone, you only get the extra 3 building slots!
This only seems to be relevant for research, as in the end you also unlock the 3 bonus efficiency buildings for each of the 3 sciences. I have found zero usage of this for everything else - so it seems that for any other zone type, you just waste the third zone, by triple zoning it.
This only seems to be relevant for research, as in the end you also unlock the 3 bonus efficiency buildings for each of the 3 sciences. I have found zero usage of this for everything else - so it seems that for any other zone type, you just waste the third zone, by triple zoning it.
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