Class Promotion/Demotion feature is Annoying

[WhapXI]

How about an "instant demote" system? Leave the current demote timers as they are but add a button like "spend 1-5 influence, or like 50 energy to instantly demote this unemployed specialist or ruler". Would certainly give the player a greater degree of economic control.

 

[sillyrobot]

Without friction moving between strata though, theres no punishment for messing up the state of economy. It would be like the reenforce fleet button replacing them instantly with no build time or trouble traveling to the fleet location. A step back to the brainless non-game of the previous itteration.

So assimilation needs even more punishment now? Why? The primary reason my rulers become unemployed is that they weren't the first personnel to complete assimilation. So, the first people -- or any species not undergoing assimilation -- instantly steal their jobs and won't give them back. The same thing happens with specialists.

I can't even overbuild new ruler positions to use them!

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

So assimilation needs even more punishment now? Why? The primary reason my rulers become unemployed is that they weren't the first personnel to complete assimilation. So, the first people -- or any species not undergoing assimilation -- instantly steal their jobs and won't give them back. The same thing happens with specialists.

I can't even overbuild new ruler positions to use them!

Then ask to improve the assimilation process, not dumb down the really quite fun for me Economic modes? Say a special case where those being assimilated keep their jobs but produce no resorces till they are remade?

 

[nestorius]

I think having a time limit on promotion and demotion is good it allows unemployed pops to maybe emigrate somewhere else but it should not be 0 years for workers to promote and 5 and 10 years for specialists and rulers to demote. How much it should be is a bit debatable but I would suggest mas 1 - 2 years

 

[sillyrobot]

Then ask to improve the assimilation process, not dumb down the really quite fun for me Economic modes? Say a special case where those being assimilated keep their jobs but produce no resorces till they are remade?

I don't think the economic model can be dumbed down -- it is pretty freaking dumb already -- so much as altered. I also fail to see where it provides fun.

BTW, how else CAN rulers become unemployed short of forcibly resettling them to a new planet? I suppose you could destroy your capital building, but why would anyone even conceive of that?

So what is the point of the 10-year lockout?

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Oh another advantage to time yaken to move up strata: it will be much harder for the AI to simply spam precints and soak a world in enforcers ( Though the numbers will still be far off in terms of crime caused vs crime prevented and also effects of crime)

 

[sillyrobot]

Oh another advantage to time yaken to move up strata: it will be much harder for the AI to simply spam precints and soak a world in enforcers ( Though the numbers will still be far off in terms of crime caused vs crime prevented and also effects of crime)

Nah, they'd simply shift their other specialists into the role for a year or however long it takes for the shutdown even to fire then shift them back.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I don't think the economic model can be dumbed down -- it is pretty freaking dumb already -- so much as altered. I also fail to see where it provides fun.

BTW, how else CAN rulers become unemployed short of forcibly resettling them to a new planet? I suppose you could destroy your capital building, but why would anyone even conceive of that?

So what is the point of the 10-year lockout?

Ok, I thoughaly enjoy watching worlds evolve from a dingy frontearstation toa thriving hub. I like seeing planetary scoiety stratafy and the implicit differances between a ecumopolice where the only worker sare clerks in planet spanning agoras, where fundaries consume a moons worth of minerals ina day, and one paved in leasure zones to feed a spanning reserch hub.

I like that I can mess up now, cause death spirals and crashes because things are connected, that as a result wars are won by the metalurgist, that the pace is slower more deliberate.

I like that peacetime now has as much to do (thughId like still more) as wartime. Thats just a few starter points.

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

"It's natural to move up if there is a job. It's natural to not move down when there is no job"
That is what you said. When the topic of the discussion is "why don't they move down when there is a job".

The argument being made was that:
1. Promotion timers shouldn't exist, or should be really short, because when a new CEO is hired it's not a laborer suddenly becoming a CEO, but: VP becoming CEO, manager becoming VP, engineer becoming manager, technician becoming engineer, laborer becoming technician.
2. For the same reason, demotion timers shouldn't exist, or should be really short.

I think what at @DreadLindwyrm was saying isn't that the jobs don't exist, it's just that demotion doesn't work like that. If a CEO gets fired, and a laborer position is open, the technician doesn't become a laborer, and the engineer a technician etc. so that the CEO can become a VP. The CEO either remains unemployed until a new CEO position opens, or... Becomes a laborer? Not likely. There is no chain like in promotions, people don't all bump down a position, that job is gone and the person who had it doesn't want the only open job.

 

[SpectralShade]

Without friction moving between strata though, theres no punishment for messing up the state of economy. It would be like the reenforce fleet button replacing them instantly with no build time or trouble traveling to the fleet location. A step back to the brainless non-game of the previous itteration.

you seem obsessed with wanting to actively punish people.

Here's an idea: What if suboptimal playing just gave suboptimal results without actively punishing?

result: Suboptimal playing would put you behind somone that was optimal playing but people wouldn't feel discouraged by their whole economy imploding overnight and needing to abandon a game to start over.

edit: and maybe the AI would suck less then, as its economy wouldn't keep imploding.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

you seem obsessed with wanting to actively punish people.

Here's an idea: What if suboptimal playing just gave suboptimal results without actively punishing?

result: Suboptimal playing would put you behind somone that was optimal playing but people wouldn't feel discouraged by their whole economy imploding overnight and needing to abandon a game to start over.

edit: and maybe the AI would suck less then, as its economy wouldn't keep imploding.

Aan you explain how 'suboptimal playing just gave suboptimal results without actively punishing' will look differnt to punishing? Because you yourself, it kind of seems there is no differance. I have to keep saying this but one more time, sing it with me folks. The game not giving you everything you want without effort in economy is no more a sighn of a flawed system than instantly being able to win every conflict is in war.

And I will cheerfully say that any atempt to give poor play poor results will be read as a punishment.

 

[KingAlamar]

So assimilation needs even more punishment now? Why? The primary reason my rulers become unemployed is that they weren't the first personnel to complete assimilation. So, the first people -- or any species not undergoing assimilation -- instantly steal their jobs and won't give them back. The same thing happens with specialists.

I can't even overbuild new ruler positions to use them!

FYI: I may have found an incomplete workaround to PSI [not synthetic] assimilation. Find a species you want to assimilate. Odds are good they are spread over many planets. Create a gene-modding template, add a beneficial trait [communal?]. Gene mod just the species but ONLY on the one planet with minimal population [impact]. This will create a sub-species once complete. Now assimilate this newly created species. It will probably be fast and with minimal impact to your empire. After a year or so you should have some PSI-modded individuals in that sub-species. Apply that sub-species gene mod template [with PSI] to ALL members of that species everywhere.

No massive assimilation-related unemployment. Works fine for me.

I don't have any idea how to work around headaches if you want to fully Robo-assimilate pops though. Good luck with that one.

Edit: To me fixes should likely be with the Ascension system moreso than the jobs system.

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As for dealing with demotion times:

• I hear it's 10 years (??) before modification for a Ruler to demote to worker. This seems way too [EDIT] slow unless the future has a 10 year period where they will send you unemployment checks .... Maybe 2-3 years max for Ruler -> Specialist demotion
• If the 5 years I heard for specialist to worker demotion is right that may be worse than above. I'd say 1-2 years max for Specialist -> Worker demotion.
• Have the above demotion times depend on civics, policies, edicts, tech, traditions, etc. As such I could see authoritarians have less demotion time [for example] but more unhappiness compared to Egalitarian empires.
• PLEASE update other systems in the game when you re-engineer huge parts of the game so they mesh together. This [IMHO] wasn't done enough.

******************************************************************

 

[Jman5]

Aan you explain how 'suboptimal playing just gave suboptimal results without actively punishing' will look differnt to punishing? Because you yourself, it kind of seems there is no differance. I have to keep saying this but one more time, sing it with me folks. The game not giving you everything you want without effort in economy is no more a sighn of a flawed system than instantly being able to win every conflict is in war.

And I will cheerfully say that any atempt to give poor play poor results will be read as a punishment.

It's a question of degrees as well as solving alternative problems the current system introduces.

With proposals like his, the game could immediately shuffle pops to where there are openings and then over time their resource generation ramps up to 100% (Or even 110% once they have been in a strata long enough). This allows a player to start addressing whatever resource shortfall he has without waiting ages for populations to grow/demote. The other problem it alleviates is that it reduces the amount of necessary finicky planetary management the game is currently encouraging. Third thing it does is allow players to much more freely re-adjust their planet building/districts which allows for more depth and customization as your empire evolves.

There are still optimal and sub optimal decisions that will effect your empire. They're just not show stoppers that leave pops idling around for 10 years.

I mean you must realize the current system is completely arbitrary right? It is not inherently realistic. Why is there no delay moving from Mining job to Clerking and vice-versa? Or Farming to Technician? Or Alloy to Consumer Goods? There is literally no end to the amount of micro-heavy complexity we could introduce to make it as punishing as possible for not constantly pausing and carefully considering every single building, district, and pop across dozens of worlds you will have by mid-late game. Game developers instead simplify stuff to allow the player to focus on the highlights of the game. You have to create a balance between customization/micro-management/optimization, and streamlining some of the more mundane stuff. IMO, the population job assignments should be streamlined for a variety of reasons laid out above.

Anyway, I'm just going to plug this mod again for anyone who doesn't agree with the current iteration of the promotion/demotion feature. Drops demotion time to 1/10. No point waiting for Paradox.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584571997

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

As for dealing with demotion times:

• I hear it's 10 years (??) before modification for a Ruler to demote to worker. This seems way too fast unless the future has a 10 year period where they will send you unemployment checks .... Maybe 2-3 years max for Ruler -> Specialist demotion
• If the 5 years I heard for specialist to worker demotion is right that may be worse than above. I'd say 1-2 years max for Specialist -> Worker demotion.
• Have the above demotion times depend on civics, policies, edicts, tech, traditions, etc. As such I could see authoritarians have less demotion time [for example] but more unhappiness compared to Egalitarian empires.
• PLEASE update other systems in the game when you re-engineer huge parts of the game so they mesh together. This [IMHO] wasn't done enough.

So, I'm not sure why some chunks of this thread appear to have been deleted, everyone seemed pretty civil, but I'll repeat what I mentioned about the demotion times realism:

1. Unemployed rulers probably don't need unemployment checks to survive for 10 years, or even for the rest of their lives, and would also probably never ever take a job below their station vs. just staying unemployed for the rest of their lives. To me, it makes more sense that "ruler demotion" represents a chunk of the ruler population (both employed and unemployed) dying of old age and being replaced by new youth entering the workforce until things equalize, than rulers actually stooping to taking a lower job.

a. That doesn't make sense for synths, of course, but it's better than "synth rulers never demote".

b. Also, if they do have that much money, why are they so unhappy about being unemployed?

c. That doesn't apply as well to specialists anyway, where I'd agree that 1-2 years is more realistic. However...

2. If a nation has 5% unemployment for 5 years, that doesn't mean that it's the same 5% of the population unemployed for 5 years straight. Some specialists (and even rulers) will get downsized, fired, their particular company/division disappears and a new one pops up somewhere else to take its place, or they just plain die. And now some unemployed pops have a job they get, while the other pops need to job hunt for a while. An individual specialist might demote to a laborer after 6 months of unemployment (more if there are unemployment benefits) but it'd take a long time for the whole 5% to reach that point.

a. Of course, if unemployment is like 25% instead, a lot less of that would go on, and people would demote faster. Which is one idea for a gameplay improvement: the higher your unemployment, the faster demotion occurs.

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Of course, there are plenty of other gameplay improvements that could be made in addition to that one. Like fixing that assimilation problem. Make ruler pops assimilate first, then specialists, then laborers? Even makes sense. And, also, gameplay trumps realism, so if reducing the time just makes things better, who cares if it's realistic?

I also think that a pop should need to spend at least a year in their new, higher position before they refuse to demote.

 

[KingAlamar]

So, I'm not sure why some chunks of this thread appear to have been deleted, everyone seemed pretty civil, but I'll repeat what I mentioned about the demotion times realism:
<snip for space reasons>

You're right that "high rulers" [governors, senators, presidents, etc.] don't usually have to worry about unemployment. However when I look at the ruler strata in Stellaris even on "Agri Worlds" I've got 12% of my jobs as "ruler" jobs. The vast majority of those staff / aid people likely don't have the resources to just "retire for life". In game I would contend those are the people that happen to be unemployed -- not the actual governor but all their aids, staff, associated bureaucrats.

This is why I contend that 2-3 years is plenty of wait time for demotion from "ruler" [staffer / bureaucrat] to "specialist". Add another 1-2 years to demote to worker if need be.

 

[Kinkness]

Well, I think there should be some friction moving down as well, no one likes to see their standard of living cut, and managing the social tensions has the potential to be fun.

But that could be solved in some other way, like a happiness penalty 'recently demoted' that would, in turn, be ameliorated via things like living standards, civics like shared burden and the tradition that presently reduces demotion time.

I'd want training time to be as gruelling as demotion is though (But again things like special education buildings, living standards, edicts even the ability to favour skilled migrants can all fix that if you want to pay the price.

This, in turn, would create something of the developed/developing world separation, where some nations are kept poor because they have to sell their natural resources in order to import manufactured goods from other nations who had a tech edge. Or in stelaris terms selling minerals/rare resources/food in order to buy alloys and consumer goods from nations with more specialists.

Though that might be too much a buff to clerks. But they, in turn, do have higher overhead managing a trade network, so but might balance out.

Otherwise, though I am in full agreement.

I like this idea. It enhances the living standard options making them even more important.