In general, the post is simply outcry for developer attention.
The last Edict "rework" just shows that developers have no idea what is actually wrong/bad with the game in current state and needs work.
As general community agrees - we don't need new features, or reworks of already working features.
We need attention to game's core mechanics, UI/UX, excessive micromanagement, QoL annoyances, AI and stability improvements and so on.
Right now I am yet to finish a SINGLE game of Stellaris in the past 3 YEARS.
Some reasons are due to constant game changes/reworks invalidating my savegames (and no, this is not League of Legends where match is 20 minutes, common 600-1000 star galaxy Stellaris game takes weeks and months), some due to outright gamebreaking bugs in new content, and some due to complete and utter abysmal user experience of actually managing your Star Empire.
OP is pretty spot on. With regard to the outliner and notifications, I've been saying the same thing for a
while. In addition to what has already been said, I would add:
Outliner
The control groups icons in the bottom left of the screen are kinda broken and very under-utilised. I would suggest all construction ships, science ships and fleets are automatically shown here and get relevant status icons or flash when they're idle etc. Science ships performing 'assist research' missions can be stacked into a single icon that when clicked expands out so you can select a particular one. This would drastically reduce the need to use the outliner throughout the game
and reduce the burden on the notifications system.
Notifications
I'm a bit against having settings for notifications for a number of reasons.
First, it becomes yet another crutch for UI. The problems we currently have with both the outliner and the notifications system are that those two systems are the only way the current UI can really tell us stuff. That means every new feature piggy backs on those two systems
blindly. If we get
settings for notifications, all future features & DLC will continue to blindly piggy back on notifications regardless of whether it's appropriate or not.
Second, not every player is going to be smart enough, patient enough, or experienced enough with the game to set up good notification settings. That harms potential growth of the game, turns off new players.
Third, I think there are only two reasons for requesting settings - either it's because we think each player will want different settings, or because we don't trust Paradox to come up with appropriate global settings. I'm fairly sceptical about the former, and the latter is... problematic.
I think the best way forward is to look for ways to reduce the reliance on the notification system, as exampled it the idea above. Further, I would suggest some UI study by observing a few different players play the game, at early, mid and (importantly) late game stages to identify (list) the most common events that require a player reaction. Then, take a look at other 4x space games and see how those equivalent events are managed and try to figure out what UI element is missing. I expect it will be something like a global production queue/log.
There is so much that can be done with Outliner. Not even being an UI/UX designer we can see the flaws. I wonder what would happen if an actual specialist took it to hand?
Regarding notifications - I kinda disagree that they are not needed, since the notification system works perfectly fine in CK2, and other games.
Usually I enable everything by default, then start disabling messages that I deem useless or not worth attention.
Very quickly the notification spam turns into a compact stream of useful messages.
I have almost 800 hours and almost 700 is pre 2.0. The game is waay better now then back when it 1st launched. However ya man the micro gets me down too. I have recently gotten back into it and playing on .25 habitable worlds helps but man the planet micro gets me down. The way it works sucks.
It's an amazing game otherwise.
It would be soo cool if they looked at that for the next update but it's possible it may not be till stellaris 2 that micro hell goes away lol. I guess well see.
Haha, well you see, the game's default setting is 1 Habitable worlds. I see that people play on 0.25 habitable for quite a while, but the core reason is very simple - it is too much worlds to take over, and since AI spams habitats like no tomorrow, it is even worse.
I wish we had a simple option to just disable Habitats completely, same as CK2 game rules - because let's agree, the ability to infinitely spam additional settleable worlds gets very out of hand very quickly.
Eventually the player just gives up on the idea of taking over that much stuff with boring and repetitive army spamclicking, and you go to the game settings and put 0.25 worlds.
That is just highlight of the core issue - too many worlds spawned, too many habitats spammed, too boring/annoying to invade them all. Even using Colossus on each is a chore since it has a cooldown.
With the last part. I agree 100%. Early game you wouldnt want to build too many buildings anyway since your economy cant afford the cost of specialists. But if I could build all the buildings I wanted on the planet and they didnt cost upkeep while not in use I could que up entire planets in the mid/late game and then just forget them instead of entering micro hell. They could put in a few population caps on activating(not building it but for using it) certain buildings if they dont want you to use robot assembly plants + clone vats with 1 pop on the planet. And perhaps make it so the rare late game resource boost buildings that need the 40 pop capital upgrade wont be active unless you have 40+ pops on the actual planet.
But at least let us build all of it even if most of it will just sitting there empty and not cost anything for a few decades. I have still spent lots of minerals and resources decades before being used in a non optimal way so it would still be worse than optimal micro managing. This is why I late game only use ecumenopolises, ringworlds and size 22+ normal worlds with lots of mineral/energy districts. I can just que up all the districts on those planets day 1 and come back in a few decades and que up a lot of buildings or even more districts and then come back another 20 years later for a last pass. Habitats and smaller planets that need more micro management gets to taste the colossus.
That is the core issue of planet building now.
See, before 2.0 in 1.9.1 the micro management was actually getting in line, when Wiz broke the game.
Say I conquered a bunch of planets - next thing I destroy most of trash buildings, queue up constructions that I want in all planet slots, and immediately pass the planet to my sector AI. This way, AI only upgrades the buildings and doesn't build useless stuff because everything is set up. And it worked perfectly fine, just a quick chore to process your newly acquired planets and forget about them, move on with your life, war, and so on!
Now, in this new model since 2.0 you cannot queue up anything because pops, so you repetitively have to come back to each shitty Rural world and queue more buildings as they become available. There is not even ability to create an automated building pattern order, like, geez a 2016 Master of Orion remake had it, and the game was developed by a much less experienced studio.