3.3 Unity Open Beta Discussion Thread

[grommile]

the only systems that actually mattered

The one thing I do like about the revised system is that the system ownership model is sensible even on low-habitables settings.

Frontier outposts were Pretty Important at least some of the time, and if the enemy popped it, boom, the borders were immediately redrawn mid-war with no grace period.

The AI really did not cope gracefully with that.

 

[Panzerslothen]

because they can't spam 6 science ships in the first years and reroll leaders for the perfect traits.

Yeah I don't like that people even did this to begin with, let alone that it's become something that has caused so much REEEing. I gotta admit it's suckered me into it a bit, as I think the use of Unity as the primary resource is good one, just that the numbers could be rejiggered, maybe with some other resources in their too, maybe scaling. Or give 100 starting Unity. But leaders shouldn't be free or effectively free.

Hiring & firing leaders constantly is so cheesy you could put it on a pizza. I was actually stunned to learn so many people do this, and so much. If a player doesn't like the leader deck they're given, well, tough - work with what you've got, and find a use for 'em.

 

[syneti]

Tried another empire type tonight. Playing a Driven Assimilator, Lithoid Cyborgs, Machine Nexus start; I'm about 40 years in and finding myself mostly influence starved. Unity generation feels significantly harder with a machine empire, though I haven't assimilated any additional species yet so maybe I need to do that. Uplink nodes feel weak compared to the increased sprawl penalty the Machine Empires have to take. My tech is still easily outpacing the penalty though.

Based on a few different empire set-ups, I think the impact sprawl has on tradition costs should be made the same as the impact on research costs.

Have you tried the unity driven civic for machine empires? Quite beneficial before unity rework.

 

[Verx90]

Now I know what it feels like to be someone from the 1.19 and prior era.... I have a really bad feeling that my stellaris days are going to be frozen at 3.2 now....

I don't know why they hate wide playstyles and tradition/ascension focused builds so much... I could take the small little changes since 1.19 that slowly picked away at it and made it more difficult but this just feels like a brazen and bold attack on wide players and those who love to rush the tradition and ascension trees to help push their empires forward through the ages...

I'd rather wish they'd use these resources on actually improving the game engine. At full tilt this game uses less then 30% of my system resources and will begin to chug late game with all the AI doing AI things in the background, especially on larger maps. They need to fix those issues and stop trying to make their game more like their other grindy games...

end rant... sorry I am just so frustrated with paradox right now...

i'm confuse , this is the old sprawl system , without the chance to increase the basic administration .


this is actualy going back to a previous system of sprawl .

they just reworked unity as an internal requirement , and left purple mana for anything external .

 

[Verx90]

Yeah I don't like that people even did this to begin with, let alone that it's become something that has caused so much REEEing. I gotta admit it's suckered me into it a bit, as I think the use of Unity as the primary resource is good one, just that the numbers could be rejiggered, maybe with some other resources in their too, maybe scaling. Or give 100 starting Unity. But leaders shouldn't be free or effectively free.

Hiring & firing leaders constantly is so cheesy you could put it on a pizza. I was actually stunned to learn so many people do this, and so much. If a player doesn't like the leader deck they're given, well, tough - work with what you've got, and find a use for 'em.

my suggestion on that was to make it cost unity firing leaders.

i added the option to give leaders a faction preference ( i know some leaders are faction boss already) that they should give \ take unity depending on theyr factions approval .

they should cost unity to take, energy as upkeep.

 

[Bezborg]

How would that work? Sounds like you're suggesting ships could be on the 'right' side of a system, with a hyperlane over on the 'left', but your ships would teleport across the rest of the space of the system to get to a hyperlane on the other side of the system? Surely that cannot be right. If that's wrong then please explain how you see that actually working.

I think hyperlane access points are entirely logical (again), myself. For one thing, they're visual and easy to understand. For another, they enable Hyperlane Ambushing.

Again you have an imagination deficiency my friend.

See, you're imagining hyperlanes as actual tubes between systems, with an entrance hole and an exit hole.

What I'm describing is not a tube. That's a wormhole and that's already distinct in the game, hyperlanes are clearly not short-range wormholes.

What I'm describing is "charted route that is clear of space debirs, so you can engage your FTL safely". A very clearly understood sci fi trope as well.

So, you get to the edge of the system to get away from all the gravity wells, asteroids, debris etc... and when on the edge, THEN you enage a safe short-range jump to the next system.

Ok?

 

[syneti]

7. For those who complain about sprawl - its not new feature it was in game since i can remember, but in previous versions it was hidden value it became visible when admin cap became a thing, i think in 2.2... So its return to roots which i love (im waiting for wormhole and warp ftls tho).

Yes I'm aware it used to be that way, which is why I held off buying until 2.2.
Being able to manage every aspect is pretty much key to the allure of these types of games. Removing the ability to manage key aspects , well there's plenty other games which allow the player this feature.

 

[Panzerslothen]

Again you have an imagination deficiency my friend.

See, you're imagining hyperlanes as actual tubes between systems, with an entrance hole and an exit hole.

What I'm describing is not a tube. That's a wormhole and that's already distinct in the game, hyperlanes are clearly not short-range wormholes.

What I'm describing is "charted route that is clear of space debirs, so you can engage your FTL safely". A very clearly understood sci fi trope as well.

So, you get to the edge of the system to get away from all the gravity wells, asteroids, debris etc... and when on the edge, THEN you enage a safe short-range jump to the next system.

Ok?

Don't be so patronising. "Imagination" doesn't come into my last comment - your previous post just didn't explain the detail of what you were talking about and couldn't be understood.

You have such a bad attitude that I almost don't want to agree with you, though in this case I pretty much do anyway, as what you're describing is similar to or even effectively the same as what I was thinking of independently,. So yes, I am on the same page now. For all your snide barbs about "Imagination", I'm just as capable of getting there as you.

 

[Bezborg]

Don't be so patronising. "Imagination" doesn't come into my last comment - your previous post just didn't explain the detail of what you were talking about and couldn't be understood.

You have such a bad attitude that I almost don't want to agree with you, though in this case I pretty much do anyway, as what you're describing is similar to or even effectively the same as what I was thinking of independently,. So yes, I am on the same page now. For all your snide barbs about "Imagination", I'm just as capable of getting there as you.

I apologize mate, I just find it amusing sometimes to “embelish” communication with sarcasm, it works as humour in my language and culture. It can come off as insulting, not my first time. Normally I have awareness on this and practice restraint, but I don’t bother on this forum anymore. Maybe I should. Anyway, sorry again and pleasure discussing with you

 

[Panzerslothen]

Alright that's cool - intonation not travelling well online and all. I appreciate the apology. Maybe I'm partly to blame by being highly strung. Anyway, no harm no foul, and yeah, good discussing. Cheers.

 

[John MacWhat]

They... clearly don't hate tradition/unity focused builds?

I mean, I haven't touched the beta yet, but it's fairly clear from this thread that Unity is a major bottleneck for many strategies, which very much goes against the suggestion that Paradox "hate" Unity focused builds.

My experience from playing a wide spiritualist game was that unity was tight in the very early game (first few years) and then traditions slowed to a crawl after the fourth one taken, to the point where my empire was generating almost as much unity as each research category but I still managed to research Ascension Thoery before completing the tradition tree.

Currently, tradition penalty is double the tech penalty. I think this should be reconsidered and brought to parity

Ascension perks also suffer a little bit from the fact that the most useful picks require technology to access, which means research is still much more important

 

[gamerk2]

My experience from playing a wide spiritualist game was that unity was tight in the very early game (first few years) and then traditions slowed to a crawl after the fourth one taken, to the point where my empire was generating almost as much unity as each research category but I still managed to research Ascension Thoery before completing the tradition tree.

Currently, tradition penalty is double the tech penalty. I think this should be reconsidered and brought to parity

Ascension perks also suffer a little bit from the fact that the most useful picks require technology to access, which means research is still much more important

I guess the question becomes "when should Empires finish their last Tradition"? I personally think getting all of them should be SUPER late-game, not early 2300's like we currently get. So if the Unity re-work forces you as an Empire to actually prioritize the Traditions you need at that time, then I view that as a good thing.

 

[gamerk2]

i'm confuse , this is the old sprawl system , without the chance to increase the basic administration .


this is actualy going back to a previous system of sprawl .

they just reworked unity as an internal requirement , and left purple mana for anything external .

Pretty much. Though I noted way back when they first introduced Admin Complexes that the likely end result would be a massive tech-rush meta as large empires no longer had to seriously worry about sprawl.

The "real" issue here is the devs keep playing whack-a-mole one game system at a time, without really sitting down to figure out the end goal. The Unity re-work solves (to an extent) the tech rush problem and makes Tall slightly more viable (though still not good), but there remain plenty of other systems where things don't quite interact very well.

One thing I proposed *way* back at the start of the 2.2 days was to essentially make Sprawl (really corruption in this case, but it affects more or less the same stuff) a sector/planet driven thing. Empire/Sector Capitals would have relatively minor penalties (as they have large in-house bureaucracies), but as you get farther from your Empire/Sector Capitals you would see planets start to lose x% of their output. This would make it harder to justify, for example, a low habitable world far from any sector capital, as the cumulative losses in output would likely be more then the planets upkeep. The upside to this type of system is it makes Sector Layouts and Sector Capital placement MATTER, and you could buff certain planets based on where the Capitals are located.

Basically, I argue if the concept of sprawl should be an Empire driven system, versus a planet/sector driven one. If you are going to have a concept of sectors, then DO SOMETHING with them.

 

[MrGuyPerson]

I guess the question becomes "when should Empires finish their last Tradition"? I personally think getting all of them should be SUPER late-game, not early 2300's like we currently get. So if the Unity re-work forces you as an Empire to actually prioritize the Traditions you need at that time, then I view that as a good thing.

The issue here as I see it is that the devs mentioned one of their goals with the Unity rework was that wide, tech-focused empires could still finish their tradition trees by the late game. Therefore, unity-focused empires should be able to do it much earlier, similar to how tech-focused empires can get into repeatable tech before the late game.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

also DON'T SCALE THE LEADERS LIKE PEOPLE SUGGESTING!
Large empires need even more leaders, small empire can have 1 governer and 2 scientist and be done with it but massive wide empire needs 12 governer and 20 scientist(so they can boost tech research of research planets... this is even more important with the fact that sprawl is a thing again so he is gonna need research more)

If you have 12 governors I assume you are having like >20 planets. At that point your unity income per month is so high, 200 unity per leader is free.

Which means we are exactly where we used to be - no decision making involved, just cycling leaders until you get the best one the only difference being you spend unity instead of Energy.

If leader cost was a scaling cost then atleast it would be a comparable cost fall all kinds of empires, or maybe some would pay less depending on civics/ethics. And big empires need more leaders so this is another way to slightly nerf expanding empires. More importantly, its a more interesting nerf than simply adding a negative % modifier like empire sprawl.

 

[Ikael]

Some preliminary observations:

- I love how the game has a less "rushy" feeling, despite performing faster on my potato PC (!). Sprawl works as intended for the most part, without outright killing wide empires. Still, I would perhaps add bigger sprawl penalties for tech, if only to slow the game a bit and promote the use of mid-tier techs
- Planetary ascensions cost too much and make too little difference. I love the concept of spending unity in order to specialize planets, but this needs a rework. Perhaps Planetary ascensions will need to be their own thing, and come with their own set of bonuses, rather than making it dependent on planetary designations, like a modifier that you pay with Unity, I dunno.
- Edict costs are out of whack, but I love how you don't pay their costs upfront. It is a great rework that just needs tweaking its numbers
- We do need an influence sink, especially for genocidal empires. More powerful espionage paid by influence, maybe?
- Initial cost of leaders needs to come down a bit, indeed, at least at the beginning of the game. But it is nice to think about administering a non-tradeable resource
- Citizen service feels kinda off, flavor-wise. And merchants need a boost

Generally talking, aside from those, this is an overall step in the right direction. Good work!

 

[Verx90]

DO SOMETHING with them.

amen to that .



some argue on the worth of ascended planets.

i'd say that the planets that are worth ascending atm are capital > trade bonus > (if you don't have minerals and are small) forge world> resources in general.


forge world can get realy heavy in use of minerals, not a problem for wide and tall with acces to blackholes, but tall empires without the black hole can get to use thousands of energy for month to keep the demand of minerals.

 

[Dinkelman]

I was wondering something, don't know if it has been talked about. What happens if you take Byzantine Bureaucracy as spiritualist. Spiritualists replace Bureaucrats with priests, right? Do priests get the +1 stability and +1 unity instead?

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Perhaps Planetary ascensions will need to be their own thing, and come with their own set of bonuses, rather than making it dependent on planetary designations, like a modifier that you pay with Unity, I dunno.

I thought about this aswell. With all these different kinds of specialisations, some are bound to be better than others. This will only lead to an increase in complexity and punish players who don't make their own research or who pay good attention. At what point is it better to choose a Refinery specialisation over urban specialisation?

Like I said in my earlier post, the unity cost for planet Ascensions seems to be the same as 1 Tradition perk and depending on your tradition progress this might not be worth it at all.

One good example was in my current game. I got enough unity to select a supremacy tradition to save 10% on all ship costs. So obviously I chose this over Ascending one of my planets. This doesnt make it feel like Ascending planets is a straight up buff to unity heavy empires. It just means unity heavy empires are going to speed through traditions like they used to and end up with empty Ascension perk slots which they have no tech for, compared to tech-focused empires.

Maybe planetary Ascensions should offer other bonuses, for example the ability to add another tier of capital building or something? Or maybe reduce Amenity usage on that planet and increase efficiency that way? I'm just speculating here. In case you didn't know, Hivemind doesn't even have a 3rd level capital building which makes their high pop planets a lot worse because their Enforcers are also the worst in the entire game. So being able to get another level of capital building for flat housing, amenities, enforcer jobs, Synapse Drone jobs would mean less building slots spend on those.

Also since one of the goals is to make Spiritualist worth playing, how about you take a look at the Ascension perk Consecrated worlds? No one is using this thing and its completely bugged aswell. In my one and only Spiritualist playthrough I ever did (because of how weak and boring it is) I chose this and I was able to consecrate like 5 planets even though the tooltip says you can only consecrate 3. Maybe Planetary Ascension should instead be an Ascension perk you can select and work a little different that way? Again I'm just speculating and trying to make all the old stuff in this game which no one uses somewhat useful. Same with Planetary Prospecting.

 

[Neal?]

In general I think the current 1 sprawl per pop is too much, at least when getting to endgame.

Maybe sprawl per pop should scale with the planet's population? Each upgrade to the planetary capital could help give a small sprawl offset per pop (like 5 or 10%). Administering a bunch of remote colonists is a lot more complex than a bunch of space accountants going to work in their space office buildings.

This would again reward making more developed and productive planets.

Kinda feels like planetary ascension should lessen pop sprawl. That way you are further incentivized to have a few small planets. The irony is that was actually the plan for capital worlds and changed last minute. Probably because people complained about pop sprawl being lessend before knowing how much it.would effect the game. At any rate I think the flavor of planetary ascension fits with lessening pop sprawl nicely.

On a mostly unrelated side note, really need a more impact full sound effect for clicking on ascending a planet. Maybe some kind of congratulations message for getting it to max. I just feel like it should have more oomph haha