A long list of QoL improvements

[spyker92]

I decided to make a curated list of QoL improvements that address alot of the short comings of the game in attempt to bring to light the various more minor problems with the game that don't get covered in things like "balance" or "bug fixing" threads. This is everything from ascension and civic perks that are rarely touched, to fundamental "unfun" mechanics of the game that need a band aid or two. I've also, of course, provided some short thought provoking notes on my own opinion of how to fix many things, citing my 1000+ hours of stellaris for the relevant experience and insight. Where applicable, I've attached links to various threads that have touched on the subject elsewhere in the forums.

Anyway, onto the meat.
Yellow = Band-Aid fix while bigger solutions to the problem are thought of
Green = Ideal add-on

------------------------------
1) Job Management
Issue: Job management is a little tedious, and can be a micro burden for heavily stratified and slavery focused empires.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-when-it-comes-to-slaves-and-clerks.1147886/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ow-is-the-micromanagement-in-2-2-3-4.1147031/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ning-planetary-management-try-harder.1147704/

Solution: Add a button/feature to prioritize certain jobs on the job management screen, allowing the player agency over what jobs get filled 1st, 2nd, etc. We can already disable certain types of job in their entirety in order to force the AI to recalculate with the remaining jobs. Why not just take this to the natural next step? It even cuts into some of the micro.
Update: Per the latest dev diary, this is in the next patch! woo!
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ev-diary-139-2-2-x-post-launch-patch.1147916/


2) Assembly Plants & Droid Production
Issue: Assembly plants production does not scale, machine empire and droid reliant empires have no way to catch up to the vast population gains of biologicals unless they "assimilate" conquered or raided bios. Bios have multiple pop growth techs, medical labs, clone vats, nutritional plentitude, encourage growth... etc. Machines have nothing even similar.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/robot-droid-and-synth.1139599/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...re-robot-assembly-plants-a-good-idea.1136869/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-some-jobs-useless.1134904/

Solution: Add lvl 2 and/or 3 Assembly building(s). Potentially locked behind techs bounded to the synthetic ascension perks, or ME civics granting additional replicator/assembler jobs.

3) Species Traits are not fully fleshed out
Issue: Some traits have two tiers (such as Very Strong & Very Adaptable), while others only have 1. This limits species tailoring and one of the more unique parts of the game that has underlining affects on how the species/nation will be played through out the game.
Solution: Add 2 positive and negative tiers for all current traits. Additional traits/values also makes biological ascensions more interesting as a gameplay mechanic. A small UI modernization may be needed to curate the additional number of icons, but nothing major. Several mods have already done this as a feature.
Solution2: A dedicated DLC for additional traits (maybe also civics) across the board, drawing potentially new unique mechanics into the game.

4) Habitats purpose unclear in 2.2.X
Issue: Habitats hit a big balance ??? with the economy changes in Le Guin, and are riding in an uncomfortable no niche spot. There is need to ease back the need to make these gimmicky lame duck planets and look at the various issues theyre facing under the hood.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fed-up-with-habitats.1145764/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/increasing-housing-on-habitats.1139232/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/habitats-are-nerfed-to-irrelevance.1134098/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/why-build-habitats.1111365/

Solution: Like Ecumonopolis, allow the various districts to provide housing as well as jobs. (though on a significantly smaller scale). a 3/3 ratio would be close to spot on as 3 habitats = 1 Ecumonopolis is a good ratio in terms of resource investment and empire sprawl.
Solution 2: Apply a unique building set with custom values, reflecting the normal building sets and districts. Jobs like "space miners/orbital solar farm" that take up a building slot but still provide mining/technicians jobs. Additionally, allow "master builders" to unlock techs to upgrade these to lvl 2 versions of themselves.
Solution 3: Re-design Habitats so that its an alternate pick to Ecumonopolis (and by extension, hive and machine worlds), and picking either one locks you out of the others. Up total districts to 14, allowing master builders to make them size 16 worlds, this would allow the current gimmick builds to push an average of 60-80 pop with a proper spam of them be comparable to the ascension it locks you out of.

5) Various ascension perks
Issue: Various ascension perks are either auto-pick or can be ignored 9/10 times. Reworks and modernizations are necessary.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ascension-perk-synergies.1141137/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...er-lvl-cap-and-transcendent-learning.1147375/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rial-prerogative-buff-ascension-perk.1137965/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nt-learning-ascension-perk-redundant.1134787/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/remove-galactic-wonders-as-perk.1147566/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nders-ascension-perk-offers-too-much.1125592/

This is a pretty wide topic, so I'ma zero in on what i feel are the worst offenders.
-- Transcendent Learning -- Issue: Level cap prevents relevance, too many other sources for leader levels. Solution: Removes leader cap (actually just makes it 99).
-- Galactic Wonders -- Issue: Auto-pick for late game. Wonders are necessary for a redundant economy and snowballing and assert galactic dominance. Solution: Remove from game. Move the various wonders into other ascension perks (science nexus->technological ascendency, strategic coordination center->force projection, etc).
--World Shaper -- Issue: Gaia's are significantly less worthwhile now due to inclusion of amneties and reworking of consumer goods. Additionally, bugs with terraforming havn't been all ironed out yet, meaning you can get wild district (or even deletion) changes when terraforming the planet. Solution: Ignoring the need for more bug fixing, Gaia's should be comparable to Ecumonopolis or habitat spam. I feel an ideal solution here would be to actually lock Ecumonopolis, habitats and gaia planets behind their own ascension paths. You get Habitats for population and raw building slots, Ecumonopolis for specialist jobs, and gaia's for ding-ding-ding, worker jobs. Particularly tech, miner and farm jobs. If grabbing this perk not only provided you the ability to terraform your planets into Gaia planets, but also allowed you to pass a decision that increased the output of your worker economy on those said Gaia planets, they would hold a verifiable argument against the current dominance of Ecumonopolis.
--Eternal Vigilance-- Issue: Defense platforms suck, its not so much what they do as the constant resource drain. Its a pain in the ass to constantly rebuild both fortifications and the fleet. Solution: (New Feature) Defense platforms are automatically rebuilt for free on owned starbases.
--Interstellar Dominion & Grasp the Void-- Issue: 2 mediocre perks that are crowded out by better options. Interstellar dominion has some use for wide empires and is occasionally picked up early for land grab reasons, synegizing well with both expansion and xenophobic. Grasp the Void has a marginal use for tall empires to help with fleet size (as the starbase pressure for a shipyard, bastion and trade post can be a bit punishing for smaller pop civilizations) or outlandishly wide empires in desperate need for additional bastions to protect trade lanes, but is generally overlooked for better perks. Solution: Merge the 2 perks, allowing it to scale from early into mid game.

6) Various Civics
Issue: Many civics are so fundamentally undertuned that their purpose is outright irrelevant. Others are actually just... boring? The deep economy changes provide a unique opportunity to change how many civics interact with the game and provide deeper reasoning to pick them up.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/boring-megacorp-civics.1131551/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hanges-and-equivalent-gestalt-civics.1136297/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/we-need-more-civics-for-megacorps.1125399/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...oring-civics-more-strong-interesting.1139418/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/large-and-tall-empire-civics.1138154/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nners-losers-for-regular-authorities.1134033/

Again, this can be a long talk, but I'll focus on key under performers, and make the caveat here that Gestalt and Megacorps need a severe quality pass as well. The goal is to make all civics comparable to the power of something like Slaver Guilds, or Byzantine Bureaucracy. Which fundamentally shift how your nation operates.

-- Warrior Culture -- Issue: Does anyone actually pay attention to the army in a space domination game? Solution: Complete rework, now replaces some "Administrator" jobs with "Juntas", leaders who are dedicated to the needs of state military. Junta's provide a small amount of amenities (2-3), defense armies (2-3) and fleet capacity (4-8), reflecting the entrenched state of the military in the culture of the state (they are essentially "super" soldier jobs). Additionally, armies are 20-50% cheaper to build, reducing their overall mineral drain.

-- Philosopher King -- Issue: Too narrow use, too many other bonuses provide leader level bonuses. Solution: Removes leader level cap on ruler (actually sets it to 99). Additionally, capital buildings provide an additional "Royal Court" job, who provide a small amount of research and planetary governing ethics attraction.
Solution2: Provides a noble-esque job instead.

--Feudal Society-- Issue: Very few benefits to have regular vassals over tributaries. Solution: New feature: Overlord now has control over all vassal fleets (much as if they were in a federation led by the Overlord). Tributaries provide an additional 10% in tribute. New diplomatic action/"dominion" screen to inform the AI to build fleets, colonize planets, etc.

-- Citizen Service -- Issue: Unity gain is too small to be comparable to unity focused empires. Motes are expensive for fortresses. Fleet size is irrelevant if the economy can't support it. Solution: Unity per soldier buffed to 2.

Efficient Bureaucracy -- Issue: Too weak to be comparable to job creation civics for tall empires. Relatively inconsequential to wide empires as 30 admin is about where 10% tech speed is at. Solution: Buff to +30, making it comparable to the ascension perk.

--Cutthroat Politics -- Issue: Edict cost is largely irrelevant as a modifier in the game. Solution: Fundamental rework, but I personally need suggestions on this one.

7) Origin Civics and Interchangables
Issue: An annoying UI issue of having to cycle through Origin civics that are unchangable after the game starts, and just clutter things up.
Solution: A toggle box that shows/hides origin civics when on the appropriate screen(s).

8) Shenanigans with Pop Growth / Locked Growth

Here's a QoL improvement, if you genetically modify all the pops of one type on a planet and you are using population controls to force the growth of that type of pop, it should remain locked to that pop (with gene mods) after the modification.

Solution: This should easily be codable with some sort of flag on who/how pop growth is calculated.

 

[MateuszS]

I decided to make a curated list of QoL improvements that address alot of the short comings of the game in attempt to bring to light the various more minor problems with the game that don't get covered in things like "balance" or "bug fixing" threads. This is everything from ascension and civic perks that are rarely touched, to fundamental "unfun" mechanics of the game that need a band aid or two. I've also, of course, provided some short thought provoking notes on my own opinion of how to fix many things, citing my 1000+ hours of stellaris for the relevant experience and insight. Where applicable, I've attached links to various threads that have touched on the subject elsewhere in the forums.

Anyway, onto the meat.
Yellow = Band-Aid fix while bigger solutions to the problem are thought of
Green = Ideal add-on

------------------------------
1) Job Management
Issue: Job management is a little tedious, and can be a micro burden for heavily stratified and slavery focused empires.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-when-it-comes-to-slaves-and-clerks.1147886/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ow-is-the-micromanagement-in-2-2-3-4.1147031/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ning-planetary-management-try-harder.1147704/

Solution: Add a button/feature to prioritize certain jobs on the job management screen, allowing the player agency over what jobs get filled 1st, 2nd, etc. We can already disable certain types of job in their entirety in order to force the AI to recalculate with the remaining jobs. Why not just take this to the natural next step? It even cuts into some of the micro.


2) Assembly Plants & Droid Production
Issue: Assembly plants production does not scale, machine empire and droid reliant empires have no way to catch up to the vast population gains of biologicals unless they "assimilate" conquered or raided bios. Bios have multiple pop growth techs, medical labs, clone vats, nutritional plentitude, encourage growth... etc. Machines have nothing even similar.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/robot-droid-and-synth.1139599/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...re-robot-assembly-plants-a-good-idea.1136869/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-some-jobs-useless.1134904/

Solution: Add lvl 2 and/or 3 Assembly building(s). Potentially locked behind techs bounded to the synthetic ascension perks, or ME civics granting additional replicator/assembler jobs.

3) Species Traits are not fully fleshed out
Issue: Some traits have two tiers (such as Very Strong & Very Adaptable), while others only have 1. This limits species tailoring and one of the more unique parts of the game that has underlining affects on how the species/nation will be played through out the game.
Solution: Add 2 positive and negative tiers for all current traits. Additional traits/values also makes biological ascensions more interesting as a gameplay mechanic. A small UI modernization may be needed to curate the additional number of icons, but nothing major. Several mods have already done this as a feature.
Solution2: A dedicated DLC for additional traits (maybe also civics) across the board, drawing potentially new unique mechanics into the game.

4) Habitats purpose unclear in 2.2.X
Issue: Habitats hit a big balance ??? with the economy changes in Le Guin, and are riding in an uncomfortable no niche spot. There is need to ease back the need to make these gimmicky lame duck planets and look at the various issues theyre facing under the hood.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fed-up-with-habitats.1145764/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/increasing-housing-on-habitats.1139232/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/habitats-are-nerfed-to-irrelevance.1134098/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/why-build-habitats.1111365/

Solution: Like Ecumonopolis, allow the various districts to provide housing as well as jobs. (though on a significantly smaller scale). a 3/3 ratio would be close to spot on as 3 habitats = 1 Ecumonopolis is a good ratio in terms of resource investment and empire sprawl.
Solution 2: Apply a unique building set with custom values, reflecting the normal building sets and districts. Jobs like "space miners/orbital solar farm" that take up a building slot but still provide mining/technicians jobs. Additionally, allow "master builders" to unlock techs to upgrade these to lvl 2 versions of themselves.
Solution 3: Re-design Habitats so that its an alternate pick to Ecumonopolis (and by extension, hive and machine worlds), and picking either one locks you out of the others. Up total districts to 14, allowing master builders to make them size 16 worlds, this would allow the current gimmick builds to push an average of 60-80 pop with a proper spam of them be comparable to the ascension it locks you out of.

5) Various ascension perks
Issue: Various ascension perks are either auto-pick or can be ignored 9/10 times. Reworks and modernizations are necessary.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ascension-perk-synergies.1141137/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...er-lvl-cap-and-transcendent-learning.1147375/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rial-prerogative-buff-ascension-perk.1137965/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nt-learning-ascension-perk-redundant.1134787/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/remove-galactic-wonders-as-perk.1147566/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nders-ascension-perk-offers-too-much.1125592/

This is a pretty wide topic, so I'ma zero in on what i feel are the worst offenders.
-- Transcendent Learning -- Issue: Level cap prevents relevance, too many other sources for leader levels. Solution: Removes leader cap (actually just makes it 99).
-- Galactic Wonders -- Issue: Auto-pick for late game. Wonders are necessary for a redundant economy and snowballing and assert galactic dominance. Solution: Remove from game. Move the various wonders into other ascension perks (science nexus->technological ascendency, strategic coordination center->force projection, etc).
--World Shaper -- Issue: Gaia's are significantly less worthwhile now due to inclusion of amneties and reworking of consumer goods. Additionally, bugs with terraforming havn't been all ironed out yet, meaning you can get wild district (or even deletion) changes when terraforming the planet. Solution: Ignoring the need for more bug fixing, Gaia's should be comparable to Ecumonopolis or habitat spam. I feel an ideal solution here would be to actually lock Ecumonopolis, habitats and gaia planets behind their own ascension paths. You get Habitats for population and raw building slots, Ecumonopolis for specialist jobs, and gaia's for ding-ding-ding, worker jobs. Particularly tech, miner and farm jobs. If grabbing this perk not only provided you the ability to terraform your planets into Gaia planets, but also allowed you to pass a decision that increased the output of your worker economy on those said Gaia planets, they would hold a verifiable argument against the current dominance of Ecumonopolis.
--Eternal Vigilance-- Issue: Defense platforms suck, its not so much what they do as the constant resource drain. Its a pain in the ass to constantly rebuild both fortifications and the fleet. Solution: (New Feature) Defense platforms are automatically rebuilt for free on owned starbases.
--Interstellar Dominion & Grasp the Void-- Issue: 2 mediocre perks that are crowded out by better options. Interstellar dominion has some use for wide empires and is occasionally picked up early for land grab reasons, synegizing well with both expansion and xenophobic. Grasp the Void has a marginal use for tall empires to help with fleet size (as the starbase pressure for a shipyard, bastion and trade post can be a bit punishing for smaller pop civilizations) or outlandishly wide empires in desperate need for additional bastions to protect trade lanes, but is generally overlooked for better perks. Solution: Merge the 2 perks, allowing it to scale from early into mid game.

6) Various Civics
Issue: Many civics are so fundamentally undertuned that their purpose is outright irrelevant. Others are actually just... boring? The deep economy changes provide a unique opportunity to change how many civics interact with the game and provide deeper reasoning to pick them up.

Spoiler: Links

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/boring-megacorp-civics.1131551/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hanges-and-equivalent-gestalt-civics.1136297/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/we-need-more-civics-for-megacorps.1125399/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...oring-civics-more-strong-interesting.1139418/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/large-and-tall-empire-civics.1138154/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...nners-losers-for-regular-authorities.1134033/

Again, this can be a long talk, but I'll focus on key under performers, and make the caveat here that Gestalt and Megacorps need a severe quality pass as well. The goal is to make all civics comparable to the power of something like Slaver Guilds, or Byzantine Bureaucracy. Which fundamentally shift how your nation operates.

-- Warrior Culture -- Issue: Does anyone actually pay attention to the army in a space domination game? Solution: Complete rework, now replaces some "Administrator" jobs with "Juntas", leaders who are dedicated to the needs of state military. Junta's provide a small amount of amenities (2-3), defense armies (2-3) and fleet capacity (4-8), reflecting the entrenched state of the military in the culture of the state (they are essentially "super" soldier jobs). Additionally, armies are 20-50% cheaper to build, reducing their overall mineral drain.

-- Philosopher King -- Issue: Too narrow use, too many other bonuses provide leader level bonuses. Solution: Removes leader level cap on ruler (actually sets it to 99). Additionally, capital buildings provide an additional "Royal Court" job, who provide a small amount of research and planetary governing ethics attraction.
Solution2: Provides a noble-esque job instead.

--Feudal Society-- Issue: Very few benefits to have regular vassals over tributaries. Solution: New feature: Overlord now has control over all vassal fleets (much as if they were in a federation led by the Overlord). Tributaries provide an additional 10% in tribute. New diplomatic action/"dominion" screen to inform the AI to build fleets, colonize planets, etc.

-- Citizen Service -- Issue: Unity gain is too small to be comparable to unity focused empires. Motes are expensive for fortresses. Fleet size is irrelevant if the economy can't support it. Solution: Unity per soldier buffed to 2.

Efficient Bureaucracy -- Issue: Too weak to be comparable to job creation civics for tall empires. Relatively inconsequential to wide empires as 30 admin is about where 10% tech speed is at. Solution: Buff to +30, making it comparable to the ascension perk.

--Cutthroat Politics -- Issue: Edict cost is largely irrelevant as a modifier in the game. Solution: Fundamental rework, but I personally need suggestions on this one.

7) Origin Civics and Interchangables
Issue: An annoying UI issue of having to cycle through Origin civics that are unchangable after the game starts, and just clutter things up.
Solution: A toggle box that shows/hides origin civics when on the appropriate screen(s).

Bots: in general make their production faster. And disconnect egalitarians with bots. Bots are utilities, what's the problem with halting production of them? Not to mention that you can't disassemble robots without banning them .
Habitats: remove them as ascension and give them in normal tech (mega-engineering?).
Galactic wonders: leave it as it is, I don't see a problem. You can't build them simultaneously and construction takes time. You get plans for all of them but to use the best of them you will have to spare 130-150 years of construction.
Civics - I'd change slave guilds and intendured assets. 40% slaves on each planet is annoyance - maybe enslave all workers instead (so pre-2.2 caste system)?

 

[Ciderglove]

Extremely good list. Sad that we'll probably never see anything like this done with the largely useless civics.

 

[KingAlamar]

Encourage Growth needs to be a permanent decision with a monthly food upkeep cost. If not then we at least need notification when that decision expires so we can re-up it without having to scan our planets to keep it going. Similar things apply to other decisions.

We need a way to set tie SPECIES and JOBS together so that if you have a Robo or Gene mod template specifically for "miners" then those types of workers get priority for that job. Same applies for Energy, Agriculture, Researchers, etc.

For Robots, Gene Mod specialists, etc. we should be able to "assimilate" workers / specialists / etc. based on the job they have. If you have a former "farmer" that just became a "miner" then they would undergo assimilation to give them traits to be a better miner. Associating "jobs" with species "templates" in some manner would be a good way to do this.

Local growth needs to be related to availability of jobs to be filled. This is esp. true with Robots that can custom build their robots to fill jobs as needed.

We should be able to assign a "piracy patrol" to a system / sector. Then we need the AI to automate piracy patrol routes within that sector or within a specific radius. We need alerts when the "piracy suppression" of the fleet is not enough to keep the "piracy effects" to manageable levels.

We need decision / edict (forced migration?) that will help with resettling pops. Perhaps when a pop that is unemployed starts migrating immediately. After the migration timer has expired the pop will look at the available jobs on the available worlds and pick the job with the best habitability / fit for job type / etc.

EDIT: Added some more ...

We need edicts, buildings, something to give a chance for our admirals / generals / ships / armies to improve in XP in between wars. My thoughts are having some type of Wargames building at a starbase. You can then issue "training" orders at the fleet level and once in the "Wargame System" any fleets / leaders there pay higher upkeep costs but slowly gain XP. Maybe the more "Wargames" buildings you have the more ships/armies/leaders could participate AND/OR have them gain XP more rapidly.

 

[bobucles]

Issue: Edict cost is largely irrelevant as a modifier in the game. Solution: Fundamental rework, but I personally need suggestions on this one.

That reduces the influence cost as well, right? -20% influence cost is a non trivial value when you spend 600 influence every dozen years on endless economy boosts. That's practically another +1 influence which is fantastic.

The cost reduction is absolutely broken on every other edict. The other edicts scale with empire size but that scaling can easily reach over +100% and far beyond. The 20% discount is additive, and it discounts a number that is already very small. Reducing a 2000 energy edict cost by 100 energy is pretty much trash.

and gaia's for ding-ding-ding, worker jobs.

Hive world says hello. They are also bugged because they destroy all planet features but also have no limits on their flavor of districts. If you want raw worker power it comes from a hive.

Gaias would be good as a jack of all trades super world. A happiness boost would increase all types of output and increase immigration, while favoring no particular strategy.

 

[KingAlamar]

<snip>

--Cutthroat Politics -- Issue: Edict cost is largely irrelevant as a modifier in the game. Solution: Fundamental rework, but I personally need suggestions on this one.

As someone that runs a TON of edicts, and sometimes takes cutthroat politics, a reduction in cost is something valuable to me so I wouldn't discount a discount so-to-speak.

Perhaps modifying the civic so it impacts Edicts, Ambitions, and Decisions would be more appropriate. Also have the 20% be a reduction in the final cost [after sprawl and other items calculated] so that it's a TRUE 20% and not just another misc. bonus that is diminished into uselessness because you have a "wide" empire with a lot of sprawl.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

Efficient Bureaucracy Solution 1: +25% Admin Cap
Solution 2: Some kind of bonus from surplus Admin Cap.
Cutthroat Politics Solution: +20% Influence, +500 influence cap

Farms > Generators
Issue: Selling food on the galactic market is infinitely easier than trying to prioritize energy production. Farmers produce more food than technicians produce energy, and food practically always stays above 1 energy per.
Solution: Farmers get their job production lowered to match miners and technicians.

Encourage Growth needs to be a permanent decision with a monthly food upkeep cost. If not then we at least need notification when that decision expires so we can re-up it without having to scan our planets to keep it going. Similar things apply to other decisions.

This is a problem with all supposedly monthly purchases. Solution: all edicts, enclave contracts, planet decisions etc become actual monthly purchases so that it reduces the micro.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

I think parcelling out the galactic wonders to other perks is not a great idea, since that will likely just even further mandate your perks if you want to do that.

I would be more inclined to leave them as it is, and roll Voidbourne and Master Builders together (or, at least split the wonders between those two) - or alternatively, remove them from perks altogether and make them technologies. (Or perhaps some combination of both - make them technologies triggered by having Master Builders or something.) Or, maybe better, have more than one unlock criterion (for either the wonder or the technology), so that you can get them from more than one ascention patch, so, say, I dunno, you might unlock the science one from either Technological Ascendancy or Transcedant Learning or something and then it doesn't matter so much if you parcel them out, since you have more than one option of getting the ones you want.

 

[Spaceception]

If feudal society were fixed (I've heard there were issues with it, so I haven't bothered to use it), and you could control the fleets of vassals, that would be huge I think. Another thing, maybe for the diplomacy/internal politics update (I think it makes sense just to merge those two aspects into a major patch/expansion), having a lot more internal politics options for feudal societies, syncretic evolution societies, and generally different flavor for each of these different empire types would be a very nice welcome to the game. And some of these improvements could have some groundwork laid in a QoL patch.

 

[Relwin]

Give possibility for genetically ascended empires to change portraits like robots can with robo modding. Also make it possible on full ascension, especially for hive, to merge assimilated populations into one race (would be fun to play some fungal specie like that lol).

Machine empires instead of having technician job spam, should have those jobs produce 6 energy instead of 4 with sole exception for driven assimilators that base rather on cyborgs. Give all gestalts equal district efficiency, give machine empire 3 jobs per district like hive minds have. Delete bio reactor, replace agricultural district with bio-reactor district that directly produces energy out of food for machine empires that are not driven assimilators or rogue servitors.

For empires with nihilistic acquisition or barbaric despoilers, give ability to choose which planet gets stolen pops. On trigger button. ON for specific destination, OFF for random like it is now.

Delete -20% pop growth penalty for primary specie. It hurts af. Reason why i'm not going to be xenophile.
Put habitability of planet into immigration condition, so arid worlds won't get continental preference pops (LOL)

Repair food slavery, it's useless. For hive on nutrimental plentitude i'd have to pay even up to 2.3 food per poo when they produce roughly 4 food. Delete pop upkeep at all. Also lower that amenities requirement per pop to 0.25 just like housing, otherwise those pops lands just in fortress worlds where nobody cares about amenities at all with insane stability soldier jobs. If food upkeep won't be taken down, raise then food production to 6 and purge to 8.

Give possibility to manually set up sectors and put hard limit on planets per sector (with planet hard limit on manual mode).

Defensive platforms should have chance for self-repair after fight. Chance should be included into war doctrine after maxing out supremacy traditions, like give 30% repair chance additivie to basic like 20%.

Cyborg assimilation from flesh is weak should make populations not only enhanced, but also adapt empire's ethics after finishing assimilation which opens attraction for that path of play. That way conquered empire not only is superior but also perfectly matches conqueror's thoughts like part of collective. Just like synthetic ascension forces 95%+ materialism.

Synth empires should be able to assimilate machine empire pops.

And finally, give some cookies for beta testers.

Cheers!

 

[Shirasik]

-- Galactic Wonders -- Issue: Auto-pick for late game. Wonders are necessary for a redundant economy and snowballing and assert galactic dominance. Solution: Remove from game. Move the various wonders into other ascension perks (science nexus->technological ascendency, strategic coordination center->force projection, etc).

ATM this perk prevents snowballing, compared to your suggestion.
Megas are very expensive and slow to be built, you can't just pick Galactic Wonders and unlock all effects related to megas. Meaning, Galactic Wonders opens options, while most of other perks immediately affects empire.
Your solution will enhance snowballing. In order to snowball, player has to choose the direction of snowballing. Science -> Tech Ascendancy, Military -> Force Projection, etc. So with your solution, player will pick perks for desired snowballing way AND get an option of megastructure, related to desired snowballing.
Current distinct megastructure-related perk at least forces player to choose to either run perk-related early-game snowballing, or to leave some space in perks for megas.

 

[KingAlamar]

-- Galactic Wonders -- Issue: Auto-pick for late game. Wonders are necessary for a redundant economy and snowballing and assert galactic dominance. Solution: Remove from game. Move the various wonders into other ascension perks (science nexus->technological ascendency, strategic coordination center->force projection, etc).

I disagree with your solution. Either GW should stay as is OR it should be removed as an AP and rolled into "MegaEngineering" or similar other tech(s). My reasoning is simple: Megastructures [in my SP anyway] are a core part of the game and that core shouldn't be locked behind many different APs.

 

[Mastikator]

Maybe gaia worlds could produce 3 jobs per district instead of 2 like they do for hiveminds? That would make them fantastic for raw resource production. (assuming they fix bugs with gaia worlds, if they don't then it's all irrelevant)

 

[spyker92]

Extremely good list. Sad that we'll probably never see anything like this done with the largely useless civics.

Thanks

As someone that runs a TON of edicts, and sometimes takes cutthroat politics, a reduction in cost is something valuable to me so I wouldn't discount a discount so-to-speak.

Perhaps modifying the civic so it impacts Edicts, Ambitions, and Decisions would be more appropriate. Also have the 20% be a reduction in the final cost [after sprawl and other items calculated] so that it's a TRUE 20% and not just another misc. bonus that is diminished into uselessness because you have a "wide" empire with a lot of sprawl.

I could definately get behind something like that, its a much more powerful perk and more interesting then a defacto +.5 or +1 influence

If feudal society were fixed (I've heard there were issues with it, so I haven't bothered to use it), and you could control the fleets of vassals, that would be huge I think. Another thing, maybe for the diplomacy/internal politics update (I think it makes sense just to merge those two aspects into a major patch/expansion), having a lot more internal politics options for feudal societies, syncretic evolution societies, and generally different flavor for each of these different empire types would be a very nice welcome to the game. And some of these improvements could have some groundwork laid in a QoL patch.

I'm not against a DLC for it, as the scope itself will likely require that level of investment. I'm not sure how easy it would be to just clone federations into a new type of screen code wise

 

[spyker92]

reflecting the latest dev diary, ive updated the original post

 

[GonDragon]

Hey OP, can I make a suggestion on the thread? (not for the game).

I don't want to bother you, but can you change the green to darker green like this? Or like this? I'm colorblind, and I'm having a pretty rough time trying to diferentiate between the yellow and green solutions.

Not very important tho, but I'd apreaciate it if you make the change.

 

[Derp]

most of these are not QoL changes, they're balance changes

 

[BoomWolf]

ATM this perk prevents snowballing, compared to your suggestion.
Megas are very expensive and slow to be built, you can't just pick Galactic Wonders and unlock all effects related to megas. Meaning, Galactic Wonders opens options, while most of other perks immediately affects empire.
Your solution will enhance snowballing. In order to snowball, player has to choose the direction of snowballing. Science -> Tech Ascendancy, Military -> Force Projection, etc. So with your solution, player will pick perks for desired snowballing way AND get an option of megastructure, related to desired snowballing.
Current distinct megastructure-related perk at least forces player to choose to either run perk-related early-game snowballing, or to leave some space in perks for megas.

Well, if megas are rolled into other perks, but still requires the mega engineering tech to build-it would mean you sorta get the best of both worlds.

You only get the mega options relevant to the perks you picked up along the way, once you hit the lategame point of mega engineering.
So in effect, everyone is "rushing" equally, therefor nobody is RELATIVELY rushing.
And once the option to start building mega rolls along, everyone is in the mega arms race.

You get the extra flavor of having different empires rocking out different megas lategame, and not the silly "well, I know I never gave a crap about unity before now, but mega art installation! now I have so much unity I can't even spend it all!" and the likes.
You only get what you worked on.

 

[KingAlamar]

Well, if megas are rolled into other perks, but still requires the mega engineering tech to build-it would mean you sorta get the best of both worlds.

You only get the mega options relevant to the perks you picked up along the way, once you hit the lategame point of mega engineering.
So in effect, everyone is "rushing" equally, therefor nobody is RELATIVELY rushing.
And once the option to start building mega rolls along, everyone is in the mega arms race.

You get the extra flavor of having different empires rocking out different megas lategame, and not the silly "well, I know I never gave a crap about unity before now, but mega art installation! now I have so much unity I can't even spend it all!" and the likes.
You only get what you worked on.

Or, depending on viewpoint, you wind up exactly where you don't want to be. If I recall correctly many patches ago Ringworlds [and maybe habitats] had a separate perk to enable them. Players didn't like spending yet another perk to be able to build the megastructures they'd like.

I believe that the best option would be:

• Allow Master Builders to be its own perk. It makes ANYTHING you build [including mega structures] better in some way. Whether better means faster, cheaper, tougher, more pop space, whatever it still serves more than one purpose and MIGHT be useful even without mega structures.
• Maybe, once you have Master Builders, Mega Engineering becomes researchable once you have all of its prerequisites. I.E. no ME research lottery.
• Allow Mega Engineering to remain a tech. Once you get Mega Engineering then that unlocks the mega structures.
• If [for gameplay or flavor] you need more pre-reqs for certain types of mega structures then force us to max out a specific TRADITION TREE [as opposed to a perk] to build the megastructures.

The driving ideas behind my proposal are:

• Megastructures border on a core gameplay experience [for me at least]
• Ascension Perks are limited. I don't want to have to take 3 or 5 or all 8 perks just to build whatever I want
• I'd prefer to see more variation in APs taken. Taking the same 3 or 5 or 8 every game lessens the impact

 

[BoomWolf]

Eeer. what?

How is it spending an extra perk to consolidate the megas into other perks and then shifting the requirements to the megas themselves into the mega engineering TECH?

Everyone gets the tech eventually. and if the megas are locked each behind another perk that means you got to choose what megas you want, rather than getting them all for 1 perk (and thus turning that perk mandatory every single time you play)

Forcing a spesific tree wont work for the simple reasons that there are already more megas than trees (and from experience with mods, adding more trees really overpowers unity pumps) and that you can't really match a mega to each tree, or a tree to each mega.