Stellaris Dev Diary #211: 3.0.3 Beta Updates

[Alfray Stryke]

Please consider clerks producing +1 administrative capacity

It's already far too easy to deal with Empire Sprawl.

 

[Eladrin]

Can you quickly describe what "Logistic Growth Ceiling" is?

The a planet's pop growth for being in the middle of the curve is. If it's set to 1.5, they get a 50% bonus.

Is there any way to remove Logistic growth entirely?

Setting the Logistic Growth Ceiling will remove the bonus, but it does still leave the downward curve when the planet is almost full. You could disable it entirely by setting the ceiling to 1, and using a mod that changes LOGISTIC_POP_GROWTH_FLOOR in defines to 1.

Hm, did not expect those pop growth sliders - I wonder how far they go?

Ceiling goes from x1 (no bonuses) to x2 (double growth).

Empire Pop Growth Scale goes from +0 to +1.

 

[Saberon]

Seems these changes are on the right track. I'd still strongly reccomend getting rid of the logistic planetary growth curve and letting the empire-wide growth malus take care of slowing down pop growth; that'd simplify things and remove the incentive to micromanage the growth curve.

If anything, I'd like to see planetary and empire-wide curves being separate settings on the game start. Being able to turn off completely illogical empire-wide malus and tune up planetary one will be perfect and very desirable solution for a lot of people.

 

[Weyird]

I'm a huge fan of the way you're handling this beta branch thing. I think balance changes like these are really useful to get the community's input on, and the way you're doing frequent updates with dev diaries associated with them feels, to us, like things are moving and grooving over there.

I wish you could have beta branches like this of upcoming patches that'll accompany a dlc, BEFORE the dlc comes, to iron out balance and bugs before a dlc gets crap reviews mostly because of an accompanying patch.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Except that this makes clear that the artificial pop limitation is here to stay. If they wanted to get rid of it, they'd have done it.

Introducing a slider is likely the death knell for any meaningful revision of the concept, since now all criticism can simply be waived by pointing out that the system is optional.

From where I stand, this dev diary is strictly bad news for anyone hoping for a different approach to economic balance.

No. This is acknowledging the fact that infinite pops kills performance, but that some players will ignore this reality and instead nag about performance improvements that cannot be made.

Now you have control, and those players can finally shut up.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

To answer a handful of questions that have been asked:

• Patch notes for the bug fixes the latest beta will include should come out alongside when the beta updates.
• The update to the beta will come Soon™, but I can't say when!
• Logistic Growth Ceiling = How much extra growth you gain from the population of the planet. (Currently capped at +3 in the open beta.)
• Growth Required Scaling = How much the growth (or assembly) increases by per Pop you have in your empire. (Currently 0.25x in the open beta.)

 

[Eladrin]

Should the “in the meantime” be taken mean that the sliders are a temporary feature until the other “longer term initiatives” are done?

Or is the intention that the pop growth sliders are a permanent addition to the game? Or is that TBC?

They may be obsoleted by future changes, so I can't really say for sure.

 

[Calvax]

Given the increase in upkeep and production could we have the upgrade UI show the change at the planet level? For example; on a planet with 6 metallurgists the UI would look something like this:

This would be a small time saver that would let you see, at a glance, how upgrading a building will change your overall mineral/alloy income, without having to swap to the jobs tab to check the number of metallurgists and times them by two.

 

[Saberon]

Aww, rest in pepperoni good old "build me to solve your unemployment problems" trade center.

 

[Cronos988]

This is finally the changes I like to see. Instead of artificial pops limitations, you reduce the number of jobs. You are going in the right direction!

Except that this makes clear that the artificial pop limitation is here to stay. If they wanted to get rid of it, they'd have done it.

Introducing a slider is likely the death knell for any meaningful revision of the concept, since now all criticism can simply be waived by pointing out that the system is optional.

From where I stand, this dev diary is strictly bad news for anyone hoping for a different approach to economic balance.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Why was it made so easy? Why was empire cohesion removed?

It was made easy long ago and was ignored.


Sector AI was made long ago and ignored.


Planetary building AI was made long ago and is ignored.


Factions were added long ago and are basically nothing now.


All these features keep getting put into game as a quick fix, and then promptly get ignored.




All you needed to do was fix the AI, but with everything Paradox add or change they break the AI even more. Late game issues aren't from population, their from a horrible AI that cant manage them.

All of these are far before my time on the project, roughly a year ago I was just another fan.

 

[Panzerslothen]

• [Balance] Buildings that increased basic resource production and added jobs to basic resource producing buildings or districts (Energy Grids, Mineral Purification Plants, etc.) now increase the base production of the relevant jobs by 1 or 2 based on tier instead of their previous modifiers. Machine empires still gain the extra resource district slots as before.
• [Balance] Manufacturing focus buildings (factories and foundries) no longer prevent the other from being built on non-Ecumenopolis planets, and no longer add jobs to Industrial Districts. They instead increase the base production of alloy or consumer goods producing jobs by 1 or 2, with a corresponding increase in upkeep.
• Balancing the number of jobs and their output will be an ongoing task, expect future updates to have additional changes.

These all seem like positive incremental changes. Sounds good!

• [Balance] Reduced the number of Clerk jobs provided by buildings and districts by 40%.
• [Balance] Clerk trade value has been increased to 4.

These changes seem OK, but I'm not sure if they'll go far enough to really save Clerks in the court of public opinion/meta. I don't know what would, of course - and I think working on them is certainly better than not working on them - but I guess it remains to be seen.

On the subject of "logistic growth", I surely can't be the only person who don't really understands what that means and how it works. Pop growth I think we all get, but what's logistic growth when it's at home?
At any rate I'm a fan of sliders!

 

[Enfield_PDX]

Small updates like this *should* be save compatible, but no promises. It's not really something we consider, too many variables.

 

[Olterin]

Except that this makes clear that the artificial pop limitation is here to stay. If they wanted to get rid of it, they'd have done it.

Introducing a slider is likely the death knell for any meaningful revision of the concept, since now all criticism can simply be waived by pointing out that the system is optional.

From where I stand, this dev diary is strictly bad news for anyone hoping for a different approach to economic balance.

From the dev diary: "We're continuing to make adjustments to the current population growth systems in the game, and are exploring additional changes. Some of these are longer term initiatives, however, so in the meantime we're currently adding a quality of life feature that many people have been asking for."

If I'm not mistaken, this means that more radical solutions than tweaking numbers are being explored, but nowhere near testable. This is good news, not bad! Saves a bit of tedium of tweaking those values via modding ... provided those sliders go far enough, of course.

 

[Annihilat0r]

Great work as always devs! Looking forward to try out the new tweaks once they are live on the beta branch.

In another thread, I made the suggestion to make it easier for players to understand the growth system by getting rid of planetary carrying capacity and use housing instead (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...capacity-why-not-use-housing-directly.1471713). It was well received by the community.

May I ask what your thoughts are on this? I think a lot of frustration with 3.0 comes from the fact that carrying capacity is obscure and hidden from the players, making the system appear illogical. Furthermore, it does not account for housing modifiers on pops, leading to many scenarios where planets stop growing even though they have plenty of free housing and jobs. Applying the currently implemented growth curve on housing instead, which is something that is prominently displayed in the UI and the players are familiar with, could be a solution to this problem.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Will the current version of the Beta remain available (I ask mainly because I want to finish a game, I look forward to the new changes)

The updated beta build will be on the same Steam branch as the current beta, unfortunately.

 

[Critical Ethics]

You still get pirate whack a mole with the trade routes, but people like that i guess lol.

That's what I mean, they got rid of cohesion but kept the pirate whack a mole, what was, as far as I could tell, people's biggest objection to cohesion.

Why doesn't crime increase piracy?

Why doesn't piracy increase crime?

Why do pirates blow up my mines so I have to go kill them straight away instead of just making a pirate base and hanging around beside my mines eating some of the resources and producing crime on nearby planets so I keep putting off dealing with them because I'm busy and next thing I know they've split off into a little sub-empire of raiders and I've no-one to blame but myself?

 

[Ch4rybde]

If we have less jobs, will the number of housing will stay the same or will it will be change too ?

 

[grommile]

Empire Pop Growth Scale should never be zero, it's dangerous and the product is broken at/past the endgame.

So don't put it there in your playthroughs!

You can put all kinds of broken setups into galaxy gen. 25x crisis + 5x tech cost + .25x habitables + minimum midgame+endgame dates is infinitely more broken than 0x empire-wide penalty, but the game is quite happy to let you do it.