Welp, I was right. Instead of addressing the problems with the new pop growth system they stuck on the sliders from the beta and called it a day. Now we have yet another broken feature that is here to stay.
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[Dev Team] 3.0.3 Patch Released (Checksum d281)
- Thread starter Obidobi
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Thanks for the awesome patch, especially the attention to rogue servitors.
One thing I did want to comment on is that I'm a bit sad that the growth sliders stuck around. Keeping the old version of growth that's exponential in the vanilla game implies to some extent that there'll be more support for that way of playing. Yet it seems pretty impossible to simultaneously balance for the new linear-ish growth and the old exponential model. I know there's a disclaimer, but I really hope turning the increasing cost off is treated like turning off all competing empires or setting the crisis to x25 strength. They're technically supported, and shouldn't cause the game to crash, but little to no development time is spent making sure they're a balanced or performant way of playing.
I know the new growth system has been unpopular, but so much of that is because the effects are misunderstood. I wish there would have been some work put into the UI to better show growth rate at the empire level or something similar so people had something to look at that wasn't the number of months a single planet takes to grow a pop. That's a horrible representation of how growth functions now, but that's what 90% of upset players seem to focus on.
One thing I did want to comment on is that I'm a bit sad that the growth sliders stuck around. Keeping the old version of growth that's exponential in the vanilla game implies to some extent that there'll be more support for that way of playing. Yet it seems pretty impossible to simultaneously balance for the new linear-ish growth and the old exponential model. I know there's a disclaimer, but I really hope turning the increasing cost off is treated like turning off all competing empires or setting the crisis to x25 strength. They're technically supported, and shouldn't cause the game to crash, but little to no development time is spent making sure they're a balanced or performant way of playing.
I know the new growth system has been unpopular, but so much of that is because the effects are misunderstood. I wish there would have been some work put into the UI to better show growth rate at the empire level or something similar so people had something to look at that wasn't the number of months a single planet takes to grow a pop. That's a horrible representation of how growth functions now, but that's what 90% of upset players seem to focus on.
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There are a lot of reasons why people dislike the new growth system, but none of them are because we don't understand it. It's the opposite, actually: We don't like it because we understand it.
There is no "growth at the empire level". That's just not a thing. Planets grow pops, as they always have.
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From what I've seen the people who *do* like it are those who don't understand it. So if you made it clearer it would ironically make it more despised instead of ignored.
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I'm going to be honest, I'm a bit wary about you guys actually fixing a lot of the underlying issues because I don't think it's easy to tie the time needed to fix to profits as people at higher levels of management would require (development hours aren't cheap and if you're not making DLC or something to sell, you're not making money for the company to continue to exist and profit). However, I think the recent events with regards to EU IV and the horrific backlash that has come from that game may have given those more in the know about issues the leverage they need on projects other than EU IV to point to and go, "Do you want this game to end up with that type of reputation?"
There are a lot of legacy issues that have not been fixed and the AI is extremely problematic right now. Hopefully, you peeps will get the time you need to focus on buckling down and dealing with a lot of the issues. I'm also hoping you can steal some of the things from the mods that actually do good work (I'm looking at the balance mods that you've taken a few things from previously if I remember). I have some hope because of what else has happened at the larger development studio but I'm also a bit wary. Once bitten, twice shy.
There are a lot of legacy issues that have not been fixed and the AI is extremely problematic right now. Hopefully, you peeps will get the time you need to focus on buckling down and dealing with a lot of the issues. I'm also hoping you can steal some of the things from the mods that actually do good work (I'm looking at the balance mods that you've taken a few things from previously if I remember). I have some hope because of what else has happened at the larger development studio but I'm also a bit wary. Once bitten, twice shy.
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Conclusion from reading this thread: the state of Stellaris is still not polished enough for me to purchase Necroids and Nemesis, despite outright bugs being largely fixed.. As far as AI and balance goes, developers continue to be in the "we're always doing the most to improve the game and fix issues identified by the community, kthnxbai" mode.
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Temple of Prosperity still doesn't produce crime when playing a Criminal Syndicate. This has been killing me since release, and has expanded to buildings gained through tech as well.
I'm just going to have to march my way over to Sweden, join the dev team, and fix it myself.
I'm just going to have to march my way over to Sweden, join the dev team, and fix it myself.
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We’ve got a number of positions open currently. That would fall under the remit of the content designer role.
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Lower total number of jobs per planet: Good.
Not adjusting amenities production and impact on crime from pops: Bad
Both amenities and crime have been functionally removed from the game. My 3.0.3 empire with ~800 pops has never once had anybody employed as a clerk or entertainer. The capital building and gene clinic provide all the amenities even my biggest planets need.
Same issue for crime. The enforcer jobs provided by the capital are far more than enough. It's essentially a non-feature because I give absolutely zero consideration or thought to that crime entry on the UI because it's forever and all time just a 0 with no input from me.
Not adjusting amenities production and impact on crime from pops: Bad
Both amenities and crime have been functionally removed from the game. My 3.0.3 empire with ~800 pops has never once had anybody employed as a clerk or entertainer. The capital building and gene clinic provide all the amenities even my biggest planets need.
Same issue for crime. The enforcer jobs provided by the capital are far more than enough. It's essentially a non-feature because I give absolutely zero consideration or thought to that crime entry on the UI because it's forever and all time just a 0 with no input from me.
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This patch coming out like this further diminishes my faith in the game improving... 3.0.3 just was not in a good state. The AI right now is basically non-functional, and probably in its worst state ever, yet after all that megathread stuff, it has no changes.
It also seems like some easily-fixed things were just not touched, like how Machine Empire organic secondary species don't get Ring World preference (making Shattered Ring stupidly OP for both RS and DA), or the weird prioritization issues with Maintenance Drones, or even that nonsense with Habitats not being counted by multiple techs after they finally got housing benefits on their housing districts.
At least Void Dwellers' game-crippling inability to move off people was fixed.
I know you guys are having a lot of trouble right now, but it feels like somewhere along the way, the entire point of having open betas was forgotten. They're for rapid testing, so you can try and fix something, push it out, and then immediately hear from people who signed up for brokenness to complain you broke the game. There were posts showing wrong parts of the AI logic and how to fix them to make it halfway competent, which could have been used to try out changes with the rapid testing enabled by the beta.
...but no, the 3.0.3 open beta simply made one initial change (economic plans doing away with research, so the AI now has terrible tech but a slightly less fragile economy) and never leveraged it being a beta, so we just had tons of "Hey, the AI doesn't build research labs" atop the same issues known about since 3.0.1 and earlier.
Please at least tell me there's plans to do an open beta for 3.1, and plans to do it like an actual beta test where you do dangerous tinkering every few days to more rapidly reach a good state; there's so much wrong with the AI right now that I think with how little time gets devoted to it, that's the only way it could really be fixed sanely.
It also seems like some easily-fixed things were just not touched, like how Machine Empire organic secondary species don't get Ring World preference (making Shattered Ring stupidly OP for both RS and DA), or the weird prioritization issues with Maintenance Drones, or even that nonsense with Habitats not being counted by multiple techs after they finally got housing benefits on their housing districts.
At least Void Dwellers' game-crippling inability to move off people was fixed.
I know you guys are having a lot of trouble right now, but it feels like somewhere along the way, the entire point of having open betas was forgotten. They're for rapid testing, so you can try and fix something, push it out, and then immediately hear from people who signed up for brokenness to complain you broke the game. There were posts showing wrong parts of the AI logic and how to fix them to make it halfway competent, which could have been used to try out changes with the rapid testing enabled by the beta.
...but no, the 3.0.3 open beta simply made one initial change (economic plans doing away with research, so the AI now has terrible tech but a slightly less fragile economy) and never leveraged it being a beta, so we just had tons of "Hey, the AI doesn't build research labs" atop the same issues known about since 3.0.1 and earlier.
Please at least tell me there's plans to do an open beta for 3.1, and plans to do it like an actual beta test where you do dangerous tinkering every few days to more rapidly reach a good state; there's so much wrong with the AI right now that I think with how little time gets devoted to it, that's the only way it could really be fixed sanely.
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Try my mod here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2484702578
I am double-checking the file for 3.0.3 right now and it'll be updated soon.
[edit] Updated for 3.0.3 to include all the PDX changes to the same file.
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Makes me wish I could do remote work. I'm a C# dev, but I live in the USA.We’ve got a number of positions open currently. That would fall under the remit of the content designer role.
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Typically Paradox does offer assistance with relocation for international hires if that helps
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Until they get deported for the previous company failing to update documentation, anyway. OK, so it was a singular example.Typically Paradox does offer assistance with relocation for international hires if that helps
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We’ve got a number of positions open currently. That would fall under the remit of the content designer role.
Can I work from America? Even if I have only scripting/modding skills and not actual C++/etc. skills? Could quickly learn, it's been ten years+ since I've been in school!
The 3.0.3 economic plans have a goal of 0 research in the early plan and 50 of each type of research in all later plans. This means that the AI can reach all of it's research goals ever by building 4 labs total in it's entire empire and that's not counting the effect of stability or tech that boosts science. That's extremely low and it's no wonder the AI is struggling to keep up with research.
I was honestly quite surprised to see it actually released as part of the official 3.0.3 patch instead of the old research targets being restored.
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Remember how well Galaxy Command was recieved (and was the 'exciting' news presented off of the back of 2.5(6?), when everyone was looking at how the game was going to get fixed.)
I will always hope that one day Stellaris gets fixed, but my interest in this game for the last few years has been to check the new patch, see it's still not fixed a lot of issues, put away my wallet and occasionally play with some personal mods until the next patch. On repeat.
Please break the cycle.
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Any plans on running OpenAI kind of AI to make players completely miserable? I know that game has lots of variables but still.
It also may motivate to speed up calculations since you need to run some millions of games to make AI really good.
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I'd like to say guys you're doing great job. I'm not sure if anyone from team reads this but I left stellaris when 2.0 went out since pops micromanagement was hell and I felt game is boring. I liked hyperlines-wormholes rework, but the other stuff was so bad. And game performance was so bad I even posted perfmon statistics.
Now game is much more polished, lots of interesting things happen and perf is somewhat decent. Of course I see you've just hacked "less pops that make more resources"
But if it works then it is totally acceptable Tbh I'm not sure stellaris is any kind of game you can have an ANN AI working instead of scripted one, but I think you *actually* could play around it. It could not be able to calculate everything but it may be some module to make better estimates than scripted ones. Like tech to pick weights, buildings to build weights and stuff. They all are probably hardcoded, but you could try to estimate in somewhat automated way. Just an idea though, if you don't have any resources for this kind of experiments than shame but what you gonna do right?
Anyway, thanks for 3.x it's just so great I returned to the game and absolutely enjoying it.
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I strongly urge you to reconsider gating quality of life features behind specific civics/government types and long wait times. Transit hubs dont work for backwater planets (starbase capacity) and auto resettlement isnt working for slaves. Seeing as slavers can just manually resettle much much much much more reliably the slave processing facility resettlement nerf doesnt make any sense. They are slaves. why shouldnt some supervisor be able to just put them somewhere else like RIGHT NOW? At the moment slavers are buffed to oblivion because they can basically resettle as before while all other empires have to put up with extremely long wait times or huge influence costs.
Please make auto resettlement reliable for every empire. Please find a way to cause unemployment that isnt negated by tedious manual resettling micro.
I am also of the opinion auto surveying, auto research and auto resettlement should be treated the same as the "pause" button - unlocked from the start. For really casual gamers chilling till 2500 this might not be an issue but for minmaxers and competetive players where 10 ingame years is the timespan to double their economy it just creates an extreme amount of tedious hassle.
I would just like to direct you to lessons learned from development of "command and conquer:generals": If you watch any tournament game, it is always without minimap, because players can save a few resources not unlocking it (selling their command center to be precise). To me this is bad design, forcing a choice between efficiency and basic quality of life.
Giving minmaxers the opportunity to gain even a tiny advantage by not going for quality of life feature unlocks essentially removes those features for them.
Please make auto resettlement reliable for every empire. Please find a way to cause unemployment that isnt negated by tedious manual resettling micro.
I am also of the opinion auto surveying, auto research and auto resettlement should be treated the same as the "pause" button - unlocked from the start. For really casual gamers chilling till 2500 this might not be an issue but for minmaxers and competetive players where 10 ingame years is the timespan to double their economy it just creates an extreme amount of tedious hassle.
I would just like to direct you to lessons learned from development of "command and conquer:generals": If you watch any tournament game, it is always without minimap, because players can save a few resources not unlocking it (selling their command center to be precise). To me this is bad design, forcing a choice between efficiency and basic quality of life.
Giving minmaxers the opportunity to gain even a tiny advantage by not going for quality of life feature unlocks essentially removes those features for them.
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