Stellaris Dev Diary #211: 3.0.3 Beta Updates

[Mik_C]

I wish we'd keep jobs the same and try having the default pop growth penalty be 0.25.

Originally that was the plan.

With the jobs change this means we're going to have more building slots taken up by the alloy/consumer good buildings. The old "Building = more jobs per district" with halved pop growth penalty might have been adequate.

That was in the beta of the last week and the overall feedback was that the production levels were too high and that there were a ton of jobs.

But betas are for that: to test and to provide feedback by playing instead of providing feedback to a dev diary.

Also, like the last beta there will probably be changes after its feedback.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Hey folks! The beta has been updated to the latest version.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-released-checksum-bfcc.1470855/post-27509909

 

[Incompetent]

Some kind of Clerk buff is absolutely needed, but I'm not sure about the balance between trade and amenities. With only 2 amenities, they're still extremely weak on that side without various traits and discounts, seeing as the pop itself consumes 1 amenity. A spammable worker job that makes 4 trade is a big opportunity for "trade builds" (i.e. Megacorps and Merchant Guilds), but for the majority of empires that aren't trade builds, Clerks are still going to be inferior to Technicians (+ Artisans) + other amenity sources, and it takes Clerks away somewhat from what made the job concept unique.

A very trade-focused job encourages you to make "trade worlds" that are basically just spicy Generator Worlds. If you went the other way and made Clerks into maintenance drones, that would also be bad, because then the job becomes a game of getting exactly the minimum number to keep amenities positive, with any jobs above that being effectively wasted. The joint trade/amenities role is more interesting: to use them properly, you want to gather the trade income *and* have other kinds of pops benefit from the amenities, which breaks with the usual meta of hyper-specialized colonies. It also creates a tension between concentrating them around the capital (for easy trade collection) versus spreading them out to provide amenities for all your colonies. It means there is real synergy in the whole trade network aspect of the game. Changing them from 2 to 3 amenities (so each Clerk can look after at least two pops other than himself, amenity-wise) would make a huge difference in this context.

 

[tooYoungtooNaive]

[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

Are ring segments affected by this change as well? If so this may heavily impact gestalts' ability to mass peoduce alloys since they can't build Ecumenopolis

 

[AlphaAsh]

"Infinite pops/infinite growth" is such a strawman phrase that has only onw use: shut down real discussions, and I think you are wise enough to realize that. You need to acknowledge two facts:

1. PDX technically can accommodate "infinite pops" by overhauling the pop system, similar to how they abolished the tiles system and went to the job system.

I'm not acknowledging that as fact, because it most definitely is not fact. If they overhaul the pop system, they shed a bunch of players, including me. Such a rethink needs a Stellaris 2. Which I am in no rush to have.

1. Before 3.0, vast majority of players don't play to a quantifiable "infinite pops" stage in their game to notice performance hits.

There are ideas from mods that PDX can implement better without having players worry about sliders. For example, stop AI's obsession of creating sub-species (even with Xeno Compatibility turned off) and passively merge subspecies to reduce visual clutter and job calculation strain.

I have already stopped the AI's obssession of creating sub-species. This doesn't fix performance issues caused by infinite pops. It isn't a strawman phrase - it's a convenient title for summarising the relevant issue.

Providing sliders to the player gives them the control over their tolerance for pop impact on performance. The game cannot cope with infinite pops, so you get sliders. Which is better than arbitary hard-coded presets you cannot change. Or a gazillion defines tweaks flooding the workshop.

 

[Koopa]

out of scope of the betas and i guess you will not make a complete overhaul again but have you tested and thought about a complete overhaul of the system with a very low max pop count? i thought about planet size = max pop plus city districts add 1. (other districts add none)

something along those lines.

 

[Panzerslothen]

Hey since you guys are increasing trade value of the clerks, perhaps you should take a look at Managers. They are currently putting out 3 trade value, 2 society and 3 unity. Maybe bump that up to 4 trade value to match.

Just seems like kind of a weird to go from 4 trade value with Clerks, then down to 3 trade value with Managers and then back up to 6 trade value for Executives.

This implies that the typical Manager is equally as productive as the typical Employee. Anyone who has spent any serious length of time in the corporate world can tell you this is seldom the case

The term "failing upwards" exists for a reason, heheharhar.

 

[Shimohi]

Proper UI scaling please.

 

[tremor3258]

I'm not acknowledging that as fact, because it most definitely is not fact. If they overhaul the pop system, they shed a bunch of players, including me. Such a rethink needs a Stellaris 2. Which I am in no rush to have.

For the record, and in warning, there has already been a massive population overhaul in the game from the old planetary system, so it seems the business model has survived it before.

 

[mial42]

Please reconsider how you're adding the bonuses to jobs via buildings. Doing it in the job definition makes it a compatibility nightmare and makes applying that model to other jobs or other buildings a massive pain. Doing it via economic categories is much better and not difficult, but since you can't overwrite individual economic categories, it's something best done by PDX. Just adding technician_produces_add, metallurgists_produces_add, and equivalents for other jobs would be amazing.

 

[grommile]

Just adding technician_produces_add, metallurgists_produces_add, and equivalents for other jobs would be amazing.

better would be:

job_produces_add = { job = some_job effect = { some_product = 1} }

on the other hand, there is real value in being able to look at a job's definition and directly see what all its base output modifiers are.

 

[mial42]

better would be:

job_produces_add = { job = some_job effect = { some_product = 1} }

on the other hand, there is real value in being able to look at a job's definition and directly see what all its base output modifiers are.

That would be even better, but the economic categories are already in the game and really, really easy to change (like three lines in the text file). I wouldn't bother asking for this if it were possible to overwrite individual economic categories or even job definitions, but since you can't do either one anything including an "add" modifier is extremely difficult to handle in a compatible way via modding.

 

[Kruzenstern]

I really wish they would go even further towards making the decision about whether to create a new colony or not a hard one. Right now it is a no-brainer, more is always better and I don't like that. New colonies should be a resource drain and grow slowly for a significant time, putting your empire at a disadvantage for some time as opposed to not having created it. Maybe forcefully resettling pops should cost a lot more than it does and also cause significant and lasting unhappiness in both the pops sent away and those left behind. Would also make staying at the sweet spot of the logistic curve all the time (and thus really making it superfluous) a lot harder, which I would consider a good thing.

 

[Ketrai]

Okay, spreadsheet time. Click the link for a detailed break down of the image numbers.

Stellaris trade value comparison V1 (3.0 STELLARIS)

Main File Job Name,Trade Value %,Energy %,Consumer Goods %,Unity %,Amenities %,Clerk Energy,23,2 Base policy,Trade league,Trade value =>,5,credits with nexus (6 +2) =>,8,CG with civilian repli-complex,8,Unity =>,3,Amenities =>,10,Goods,11,6 Clerk,4 EC / 2 A,2 EC / 1 CG / 1 U / 2 A (4 TV),10%,mer...

docs.google.com

Here's the comparison results.

If you modify your entire empire, you can make clerks more efficient than having technicians, culture workers, artisans and entertainers. This however, doesn't make them very viable for non merchant guild empires, as they miss out on a large amount of potential bonuses. (mercantile, trade league being the most notable, and the merchants to further boost income)

I suggest adding either commercial subsidies, or making clerks unlock more merchant jobs as long as they're employed. (Ex, 10 clerks cause one extra merchant job to appear, but only if those clerks are all employed) This would make the job type more competitive if you're not stacking bonuses like crazy as I am here.

Naturally, the non trade jobs have been given easily feasible bonuses, but exclude a couple extras you can gain from specific builds. It doesn't benefit or hamper any other side that much.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

These sliders will allow you to adjust the variables related to the bonus a planet can provide through logistic growth and the amount that pop growth increases per empire pop using sliders in Galaxy Configuration instead of needing to edit defines or use a mod to do so. Please note that these sliders can have major impacts on both performance and balance. Existing saves will use the default values. (Which can themselves be overridden in defines.)

But we still have to use mod to remove "High Pops" debuff, I see.

 

[Cymsdale]

I really wish they would go even further towards making the decision about whether to create a new colony or not a hard one. Right now it is a no-brainer, more is always better and I don't like that. New colonies should be a resource drain and grow slowly for a significant time, putting your empire at a disadvantage for some time as opposed to not having created it. Maybe forcefully resettling pops should cost a lot more than it does and also cause significant and lasting unhappiness in both the pops sent away and those left behind. Would also make staying at the sweet spot of the logistic curve all the time (and thus really making it superfluous) a lot harder, which I would consider a good thing.

This has been an issue for a while because the tradeoff for a new colony is so small. They have an energy drain for a while, but the long term benefit always outweighed the short term loss so it was never a thing to think about.

I know Stellaris is not Civ, but I think it makes a good comparison in some ways. In Civ, why do you not just build a new city all the time? Well, building a settler ties up a city from building something else, so there is often a large opportunity cost in doing so. You're not growing the city that is building the settler, you're not building a military unit or some other improvement to that city itself.

In Stellaris, the only question you have is "can I afford a colony ship right now?", and the answer is almost always yes.

 

[Kahldris]

I think the building changes are very good in terms of balance, but I do have to ask as someone in the middle of a playthrough on the already released Beta... will the previous Beta remain available as something like 3.03.1? Even though I like the changes, I don't relish the idea of seeing them completely throw out the jobs balance my current empire has

Your playing on the beta branch man, all bets are off!

 

[Pornek]

Okay, spreadsheet time. Click the link for a detailed break down of the image numbers.

Stellaris trade value comparison V1 (3.0 STELLARIS)

Main File Job Name,Trade Value %,Energy %,Consumer Goods %,Unity %,Amenities %,Clerk Energy,23,2 Base policy,Trade league,Trade value =>,5,credits with nexus (6 +2) =>,8,CG with civilian repli-complex,8,Unity =>,3,Amenities =>,10,Goods,11,6 Clerk,4 EC / 2 A,2 EC / 1 CG / 1 U / 2 A (4 TV),10%,mer...

docs.google.com

Here's the comparison results.
View attachment 715783
If you modify your entire empire, you can make clerks more efficient than having technicians, culture workers, artisans and entertainers. This however, doesn't make them very viable for non merchant guild empires, as they miss out on a large amount of potential bonuses. (mercantile, trade league being the most notable, and the merchants to further boost income)

I suggest adding either commercial subsidies, or making clerks unlock more merchant jobs as long as they're employed. (Ex, 10 clerks cause one extra merchant job to appear, but only if those clerks are all employed) This would make the job type more competitive if you're not stacking bonuses like crazy as I am here.

You generally dont care about culture worker and entertainer jobs though.

 

[Ketrai]

You generally dont care about culture worker and entertainer jobs though.

Entertainer jobs are the best jobs for amenities. Culture workers are the only job type that's universally available to all empires for producing unity, which is relevant for specific builds. You could run this with priests or memorialists, clerks would STILL be superior at producing unity. There's additional benefits to be had here, like the complete lack of upkeep, and the ability to save building slots. As well as being able to build trade worlds on like, 10% habitability tomb worlds. Because guess what, trade is only influenced by habitability when it comes to stability.

 

[Gobla]

Okay, spreadsheet time. Click the link for a detailed break down of the image numbers.

Stellaris trade value comparison V1 (3.0 STELLARIS)

Main File Job Name,Trade Value %,Energy %,Consumer Goods %,Unity %,Amenities %,Clerk Energy,23,2 Base policy,Trade league,Trade value =>,5,credits with nexus (6 +2) =>,8,CG with civilian repli-complex,8,Unity =>,3,Amenities =>,10,Goods,11,6 Clerk,4 EC / 2 A,2 EC / 1 CG / 1 U / 2 A (4 TV),10%,mer...

docs.google.com

Here's the comparison results.
View attachment 715783
If you modify your entire empire, you can make clerks more efficient than having technicians, culture workers, artisans and entertainers. This however, doesn't make them very viable for non merchant guild empires, as they miss out on a large amount of potential bonuses. (mercantile, trade league being the most notable, and the merchants to further boost income)

I suggest adding either commercial subsidies, or making clerks unlock more merchant jobs as long as they're employed. (Ex, 10 clerks cause one extra merchant job to appear, but only if those clerks are all employed) This would make the job type more competitive if you're not stacking bonuses like crazy as I am here.

You're calculating Thrifty wrong.

Thrifty is not 25% increased trade. It's 25% increased trade from pop jobs. Except that in the game % increased trade from pop jobs doesn't actually exist and thrifty as a trait simply adds base trade to relevant trade jobs.

A thrifty clerk produces 5 trade base. As such thrifty is multiplicative with all those other modifiers instead of additive.

So your 4 optimized clerks are producing 22,2 energy and 11,1 consumer goods and unity. Of course as has been mentioned literally nobody uses culture workers and even then you're not counting their society research output. Nor are you taking any kind of upkeep into account.

3 optimized clerks vs 1 technician, 1 artisan and 1 entertainer is a much fairer comparison, as those every empire will almost certainly have.

Assuming stratified living standards our 3 clerks will produce 16,65 energy, 8,32 consumer goods, 8,32 unity and 6.9 amenities while costing 3 food and 0.3 consumer goods in upkeep.
Our other jobs will produce 17.36 energy, 14,56 consumer goods, 3,54 unity and 11,5 amenities while costing 3 food, 2.3 consumer goods and 6 minerals in upkeep.

So our optimized clerks are 6 minerals and 4,78 unity ahead but 0,71 energy, 4,42 consumer goods and 4,6 amenities behind.

So which of those is better? And if clerks are better are they good enough to warrant all the investment made into them.

Personally, I don't think they quite make it if you're looking for the optimal empire but you certainly wouldn't shooting yourself in the foot by focussing on trade.