[Dev Team] 2.6.3 Beta Patch Released [checksum ae56]

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

So either the way POPs change ethics is broken, or the way in which the game interprets how many of your POPs are expected and observed to be following a specific ethic is broken. Both are massive problems that are not 'fixed' as @Obidobi's patch notes imply.

No, the first case isn't broken at all. You just have non-materialist synths, who joined the materialist faction anyway. 2 different numbers that are usually closely related but, in the specific case of synths, are not.

However, in all other cases, yah, it's either pops not switching ethics correctly still, or the game misrepresenting the expectations by not taking all the information into account.

Edit: And, I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 things are happening. More synths in the faction than have the ethic, more attraction to the ethic than reported due to pop modifiers, and attraction still not actually working right...

 

[Snoipah]

Can we get a federation option that doesn't give us xenophile attraction for us xenophobes?

 

[Olterin]

@Ur-Quan Lord 13 No, I am not actually sure about the individual pops and all their separate ethics and faction membership. That'd take checking roughly 2k pops in the save in question, by hand. You're right, after finishing synth ascension pops are going to be part of the materialist faction, and that's happening. However, if the pop tooltips I did look at are anything to go by (*), then the materialist ethics attraction is, in fact, around 60% (it's 59.8something%). So, assuming I believe that tooltip, and assuming I believe the tooltip about ethics distribution for materialists, in 2430 I have 20% materialists out of an expected 60%.

(*) I looked at approximately ten separate pops across 3 planets. All planets are in the capital sector for what that's worth, it's a rather "tall" game where I don't actually have much more than that in terms of space. Since I found no meaningful differences in the ethics attraction to my empire's main factions (egalitarian and materialist) I'm assuming that's true for all main-species pops across the empire. Fair warning.

I can post the save tomorrow after re-checking it, if it would be helpful (perhaps in another thread?)

 

[pmchem]

trip report from a friend regarding starbase upgrade problems in 2.6.2/2.6.3:

Also I loaded up the file and switched to the strongest AI, they have ten unupgraded starbases with no modules or buildings. Only about 15% of their naval cap is from anchorages! The rest is from the techs (including the repeatable the maximum of five times), Strategic Co-ordination Center, and the Ascension perk. They could have almost doubled their naval cap by building anchorages in empty slots, upgrading their anchorage starbases, and bothering to build even a single naval logistics office! They've sold over 60k alloys to the market and are currently at 34975/35000, they could easily have afforded that. Admittedly they couldn't have actually maxed out that bigger naval cap, but they could still have 50% more ships.

 

[Jack_Aqab]

Hey guys New problem since 2.6 version, I think. I wonder why when separatists appear inside AI empires they are of a different and random species? In one of my longer games in the neighbouring AI empire, five new separatist empires suddenly formed through 50 years and only one was of the same species as AI empire (real separatists), while the other four are randomly selected species in appearance, characteristics, ethics and name of course. Is this supposed to be a bug? Suddenly, e.g. from the AI lithoid empire, i.a. bird-like and later dragon-like separatists formed, which were not in the game at all (even 1 population!). Problem is the founder species has 0 (!) population to the end of the game and new AI empire take a name from these new species (which basically doesn't exist and the subjects are also randomly generated species mixed with those from the game... it's a mess). None of the low stability rebels that are created produces an empire with a founder species that actually exist. This spoils the game's immersion... Is it possible to fix it quite fast?

 

[J0hn185]

Guys, made new account just to see if things weren't working properly. I used the beta and still seems pops do not change, or if they do, they go to a supressed ethic. I am playing a xenophobe militarist, and a lot of pops go to pacifism, even if I suppressed the ethic since the beginning of the game, used one vision, have blacksites in the systems AND in the endgame used unity to change ethics shift chances. its getting annoying because we need influence for EVERYTHING, and since it should be part of the mechanic, that you invest in the ethics of your empire at the beginning, that later on you would enjoy a surplus of influence, stability and happiness. It also ruins the main part of the game for me, which is immersion.

 

[GeorgieBest]

Guys, made new account just to see if things weren't working properly. I used the beta and still seems pops do not change, or if they do, they go to a supressed ethic. I am playing a xenophobe militarist, and a lot of pops go to pacifism, even if I suppressed the ethic since the beginning of the game, used one vision, have blacksites in the systems AND in the endgame used unity to change ethics shift chances. its getting annoying because we need influence for EVERYTHING, and since it should be part of the mechanic, that you invest in the ethics of your empire at the beginning, that later on you would enjoy a surplus of influence, stability and happiness. It also ruins the main part of the game for me, which is immersion.

Long story short the system isn't working, even after the last two patches including 'fixes'.

It's only been broken for 2+ years, I'm sure they'll get round to it eventually.

 

[Vainfall]

Will anything be done to address the imbalance between gestalts and non-gestalts? Synthetic ascension was nerfed - which, I suppose, is decent as it was far and away the strongest non-gestalt build, but it was also the only one that was somewhat viable. Now non-gestalts are just... incredibly far behind. They need to be buffed up.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Guys, made new account just to see if things weren't working properly. I used the beta and still seems pops do not change, or if they do, they go to a supressed ethic. I am playing a xenophobe militarist, and a lot of pops go to pacifism, even if I suppressed the ethic since the beginning of the game, used one vision, have blacksites in the systems AND in the endgame used unity to change ethics shift chances. its getting annoying because we need influence for EVERYTHING, and since it should be part of the mechanic, that you invest in the ethics of your empire at the beginning, that later on you would enjoy a surplus of influence, stability and happiness. It also ruins the main part of the game for me, which is immersion.

Bear in mind that suppressing a faction reduces its attraction, but it doesn't eliminate it. A suppressed faction that also has ethics attraction from any other sources (such as traits, treaties, wars, ascensions, ruler's faction, etc.) can still have a positive attraction and thus there's some chance that pops will spawn with it or switch to it.

Of course, it SHOULD happen (in most cases) that more pops spawn as other factions, or switch from it to other factions, so the suppressed faction should generally shrink. However, I see a lot of people implying that it should go away entirely, which... no. Not unless it has no positive modifiers at all, not even hidden ones like Deviant pops spawning with that faction just because, you know, fuck the man.

 

[TheAzureLiger]

Did you make a bug report? If not, you can hardly hope for it to have been fixed

I made one, of course.

 

[LWE]

To be fair to Paradox, imagine the unplayable bugfest that would happen had they released Federations by the time they originally planned to do it. As of now, in 2.6.3 they did fix some of the very annoying previous bugs.

 

[Olterin]

Long story short the system isn't working, even after the last two patches including 'fixes'.

It's only been broken for 2+ years, I'm sure they'll get round to it eventually.

@Ur-Quan Lord 13 as an update on my previous post, I looked at the save again, and did a fresh test specifically for ethics attraction (which I shall outline further below). First, about the save - it's 2438, the Cirrulan Coalition (my empire) has 3361 pops, and the expected number of materialist pops is said to be 67% per the tooltip, with the actual number being 46%, again, as per the tooltip. I looked at some individual pops - the synths have an attraction to materialist of some 68%, with cybernetic organics having about 65% - however, the number of cybernetic organics is very low relative to the synths (59 pops). For regular bio pops that do not have "recently conquered" (I just finished eating a Fallen Empire) it's at some 60%, and they contribute 87 pops. Judging by the fact that the expected number of materialists is said to be 67%, not 68%, I'd say the tooltip is actually taking individual pops' attractions into account. Or at least some average of it.

Now, since I don't quite remember how I got the void dwellers in question to this point (it was late in the evening/night), I cannot speak as to wars conducted other than that Fallen Empire war, but I do have a mess of factions, possibly due to being in a federation (with fellow egalitarian materialists I might add). I shall attach the save for anyone's perusal, however be aware that I was playing ironman. (All DLC, no mods)

Now, as to the actual test I did: I started a game as spiritualist/fan. militarist (and swiftly got my posterior handed to me by Commodore AI, but that's another matter). Paying close attention to the ethics distribution, and conducting no diplomacy other than a rivalry that was forced upon me, this is what I observed:

The capital started out with a fairly random distribution of ethics on the pops, as we have come to expect from this new update. By the time factions spawned, there were not enough pops to generate anything other than a spiritualist and a militarist faction (of which the militarists had more support, as you might expect from a fanatic ethic). Now, I did build a temple first thing on my capital, and it did affect the expected pop distribution from 40% to 41.18% or so, and it remained there. I also picked the species trait for +30% gov. ethics attraction, and picked up the One Vision AP for further stacking of government ethics attraction. By 2247, there are exactly 1% egalitarians left out of 90 pops, so it's one pop kicking around somewhere, the rest are as follows:
13% xenophobe / 26% expected (I'm in a defensive war against xenos right now, the second one. They started out at 10% or so when the game started)
47% militarist / 34% expected (Bit surprising that xenophobia is so relatively strong, but then again, I don't blame my pops, brutal wars being lost)
37% spiritualist / 40% expected

I will note that I used the isolationist diplomatic stance for a while before coming into serious contact with other nearby empires to further stack unity and ethics attraction.

Now you might say that those numbers don't quite add up to 100% and you'd be right, I expect that particular tooltip not showing decimals is the culprit, seeing how I don't have exactly 100 pops. However, what this test showed is that pops do shift ethics. Quite rapidly, in fact. My capital only has that one egalitarian pop left, all the others are as you'd expect. In fact, the ethics shift fast enough for a defensive war to cause a xenophobe faction to spawn and grow.

I will note that I did not use any promotion/suppression of factions - as you can see from the numbers and context provided, outside factors influence internal factions quite heavily (as does the ruler's faction in an oligarchy, who'd have thought). So, to conclude - pops shift ethics, and they shift them in the general direction of what you'd expect, however accessing the breakdown of factors and their actual attractions is ... a thankless task. Moreover, due to the arcane nature of attraction modifiers, it is often difficult to understand exactly what contributes how much to the overall ethics attraction.

Right, I promised save files, so here they go. Ironman save is the materialist one, the other one is the test save, if anyone wishes to try to rescue what I view as a hopeless cause. For anyone wanting to take a look, I'll reiterate - saves are using all DLC, no mods.

 

[Kayden_II]

To be fair to Paradox, imagine the unplayable bugfest that would happen had they released Federations by the time they originally planned to do it.

I've still indifferent feelings: Yes, Federations was delayed ( for several months ), but its post-period of patches was obviously shortened in return. That looks pretty indifferent to the obviously rushed MegaCorp-relase back in 2018 and its "extended" post-period of patches ( for several months ) afterwards.

As of now, in 2.6.3 they did fix some of the very annoying previous bugs.

And as far as I've read / observed other ones are still in:
AI doesn't upgrade its starbases any further: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-3-fix-the-ai-starbase-upgrade-issue.1371095/
The "reluctance" of POPs to shift their ethics 01. way more often and 02. to the intended composition ( attraction of ethics ): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...thics-and-ethic-switch-in-2-6-3-beta.1375202/ or https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ing-ethics-attraction-been-fixed-yet.1363197/
On top of the previous one, the new occurance that despite being an empire with ethic X or / and Y or / and Z, the "reluctance" of POPs to follow said ethics right from the start as if your empire is near the treshold of a coup / revolution: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fix-faction-and-ethics-for-new-games.1371341/
The mess with xeno-compatibility that the game generates a zillion of hybrid-species: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...remove-xeno-compatibility-in-ironman.1374223/

 

[Nahadoth]

I've still indifferent feelings: Yes, Federations was delayed ( for several months ), but its post-period of patches was obviously shortened in return. That looks pretty indifferent to the obviously rushed MegaCorp-relase back in 2018 and its "extended" post-period of patches ( for several months ) afterwards.


And as far as I've read / observed other ones are still in:
AI doesn't upgrade its starbases any further: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-3-fix-the-ai-starbase-upgrade-issue.1371095/
The "reluctance" of POPs to shift their ethics 01. way more often and 02. to the intended composition ( attraction of ethics ): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...thics-and-ethic-switch-in-2-6-3-beta.1375202/ or https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ing-ethics-attraction-been-fixed-yet.1363197/
On top of the previous one, the new occurance that despite being an empire with ethic X or / and Y or / and Z, the "reluctance" of POPs to follow said ethics right from the start as if your empire is near the treshold of a coup / revolution: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fix-faction-and-ethics-for-new-games.1371341/
The mess with xeno-compatibility that the game generates a zillion of hybrid-species: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...remove-xeno-compatibility-in-ironman.1374223/

And being in a federation breaks Defensive Wars.
There's something dodgy with Claims and the Conquest Casus Belli as well. The game doesn't always recognise when you have claims.
There's weird interactions with the Scion origin and the War in Heaven.
Turning your (non-Hegemony) federation in the League of Unaligned Powers and having empires join can trigger your original federation members to leave due the opinion malluses from their rivals joining.
Crisis AI still doesn't work.
Every non-gestalt AI empire, regardless of ethics, gets the robot uprising in every game. Indicating that they all build robots, even fanatic spiritualists, and they don't give them right, even the egalitarians and xenophils.
The AI sometimes stops building armies. Making them unable to take planets, and more importantly retake their own planets after a robot uprising or other war even after they have retaken all the starbases.

They fixed a lot in 2.3.6 but most of those where really minor issues compared to the game breakers listed here. There's no point in a better AI if it's still crippled by so many bugs, or how the endgame events are one big pointless disappointment because they bug out so often.

 

[pmchem]

possible fix for starbase upgrades here? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...se-upgrade-issue.1371095/page-2#post-26467010

 

[SupremeSoviet]

Please Allow scrolling again in the UI

 

[NilsFabian]

Do you have any plans to change how the favor system works in the galactic community?

 

[ZonemanPL]

Hi all.
I'm new on this forum and I really believe on this patch we haven't any desync (pop_mod, itd.).
Please fix it ASAP.

 

[Acenoid]

@pmchem
The thread contains no possible fix (yet?)

 

[Searban]

* Fixed the bug when ethics almost never shifted.

This bit right here is great news. However, are there any plans to deal with the issue of extreme ethics deviation from intended governing ethics among pops at the beginning of each game? Spiritualist renaissance resulting in emergence of an entire faction isn't exactly what I want to deal with right off the bat almost every time I pick materialism.