Moving NInterface to a non-checksum file was GOOD, but adding NCamera to that as well would be EVEN BETTER. 4k Monitors have lots of room to scroll out into the galaxy and still see details 
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[Dev Team] 3.9.0 Open Beta Patch #1 Now Available
- Thread starter MrFreake_PDX
- Start date
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The new Habitat system is looking really good. Its so close to greatness, but its missing a few QOL features and has a few VERY devastating balance issues right now.
1: Housing. Housing is crippling to pop growth and building up a Habitat with meaningful productivity. With so few districts, you're not getting much carrying capacity on your Habitats anyways, and spending your meager number of districts on housing is painful. This is by far the worst problem Void Dwellers has right now.
-Give a a few housing and/or a few carrying capacity to orbitals. Large systems with 8+ planets and 4+ moons should be equivalent to an 18-20 size planet.
2: Alloy upkeep for the new Habitat system is crippling. Out of 100 alloy production I'm spending 57 on upkeep. Habitat orbitals, planetary buildings, and districts all having alloy upkeep is horrendous. Having extra costs for them is double dipping on punishment for expansion. Remember that regular planets are free on upkeep, and even their capital complex and districts are cheaper than the new Habitats.
-Only the orbitals should have alloy upkeep, this would scale cost as you grow your systems. Districts and buildings are built ON the orbitals after all.
3: Space resources. There are several problems with space resources. Losing them when you build orbitals over them is very punishing, especially in the early game where a +4 mineral deposit is worth a noticeable amount. Building a major orbital over that, losing the +4. THEN waiting until the orbital is finished building, THEN spending minerals to build a mining district, THEN waiting for a pop to grow to work the job. This does not feel good.
-No space deposits should ever be lost when building any orbital.
4: Building slots, planet size, and orbitals affecting the overall max size of a Habitat is a problem. Since Habitats cannot be spammed anymore. They need to be equivalent to normal planets for the most part, the tradeoff for being able to build them in any system is the alloy and influence cost. Habitats right now are ranging from 6 to 12 in size. The largest systems I've seen in several games now support only up to about +6 districts, even for the largest trinary systems, with 75% of habitats being size 8 or smaller. Instead of building 8 size 4 habitats in a system and getting 32 planetary size out of it, possibly upgrading them to +6 for a total of 48 planetary size, the same system now has a single size 12 habitat. That's a 75% nerf. Upgrading a Habitat with the Void Dweller cost reduction still costs thousands of alloys as well, therefore being more expensive per planetary size. A large system supporting a "size 11" habitat costs over 4000 alloys to full upgrade and over 400 influence. Normal empires can settle a size 11 planet and clear its blockers for maybe 1000 energy..... Habitats need to be FAR bigger and cost less.
-Major orbitals should give a whole district and cost 400 alloys and 25 influence, and minor orbitals should give half a district (their cost is actually pretty spot on).
5: Energy deposits are almost always found around stars, which you cannot build orbitals on. This makes energy production extremely hard. And since the removal of trade builds entirely, there's no good alternative to energy production. There are an a dozen different ways to fix this, but it NEEDS to be fixed.
If the Beta 3.9 numbers go live, please ad the "CHALLENGING ORIGIN" tag to Void dwellers at the very least.
1: Housing. Housing is crippling to pop growth and building up a Habitat with meaningful productivity. With so few districts, you're not getting much carrying capacity on your Habitats anyways, and spending your meager number of districts on housing is painful. This is by far the worst problem Void Dwellers has right now.
-Give a a few housing and/or a few carrying capacity to orbitals. Large systems with 8+ planets and 4+ moons should be equivalent to an 18-20 size planet.
2: Alloy upkeep for the new Habitat system is crippling. Out of 100 alloy production I'm spending 57 on upkeep. Habitat orbitals, planetary buildings, and districts all having alloy upkeep is horrendous. Having extra costs for them is double dipping on punishment for expansion. Remember that regular planets are free on upkeep, and even their capital complex and districts are cheaper than the new Habitats.
-Only the orbitals should have alloy upkeep, this would scale cost as you grow your systems. Districts and buildings are built ON the orbitals after all.
3: Space resources. There are several problems with space resources. Losing them when you build orbitals over them is very punishing, especially in the early game where a +4 mineral deposit is worth a noticeable amount. Building a major orbital over that, losing the +4. THEN waiting until the orbital is finished building, THEN spending minerals to build a mining district, THEN waiting for a pop to grow to work the job. This does not feel good.
-No space deposits should ever be lost when building any orbital.
4: Building slots, planet size, and orbitals affecting the overall max size of a Habitat is a problem. Since Habitats cannot be spammed anymore. They need to be equivalent to normal planets for the most part, the tradeoff for being able to build them in any system is the alloy and influence cost. Habitats right now are ranging from 6 to 12 in size. The largest systems I've seen in several games now support only up to about +6 districts, even for the largest trinary systems, with 75% of habitats being size 8 or smaller. Instead of building 8 size 4 habitats in a system and getting 32 planetary size out of it, possibly upgrading them to +6 for a total of 48 planetary size, the same system now has a single size 12 habitat. That's a 75% nerf. Upgrading a Habitat with the Void Dweller cost reduction still costs thousands of alloys as well, therefore being more expensive per planetary size. A large system supporting a "size 11" habitat costs over 4000 alloys to full upgrade and over 400 influence. Normal empires can settle a size 11 planet and clear its blockers for maybe 1000 energy..... Habitats need to be FAR bigger and cost less.
-Major orbitals should give a whole district and cost 400 alloys and 25 influence, and minor orbitals should give half a district (their cost is actually pretty spot on).
5: Energy deposits are almost always found around stars, which you cannot build orbitals on. This makes energy production extremely hard. And since the removal of trade builds entirely, there's no good alternative to energy production. There are an a dozen different ways to fix this, but it NEEDS to be fixed.
If the Beta 3.9 numbers go live, please ad the "CHALLENGING ORIGIN" tag to Void dwellers at the very least.
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Playing as Knights of the Toxic God (starts with planet + habitat)
1. It's not immediately clear what the 'value' behind a habitat is.
Planet-only habitats are relatively clear as to what their value is: the habitat is tied directly to a deposit, and thus a habitat built for that deposit has a clear use case for it.
The current, system-wide habitats are not clear as to their build case, which I think stems mostly from the following issue:
2. There's a discrepancy between what an Orbital does and what an Orbital feels like it should do.
Within the context of a habitat being fully built in terms of districts, adding an Orbital provides no bonus. a 6/6 habitat that gets, say, an orbital built onto a mineral space deposit adds 3 unbuilt mining districts onto a habitat, but does not make the habitat inherently capable of building those districts. mechanically, this means that the cost of the orbital is expended for no gain.
In that sense, building an orbital is counterproductive in terms of signaling that it is a beneficial player action.
3. I don't know where Habitats are supposed to be in terms of their economic benefit.
Overall, it's safe to say that the current Habitat model is cheaper and easier to bring up to full speed compared to the old one, but given that it's now hard-capped by the amount of systems rather than the amount of planets, it feels like it doesn't provide nearly as much as it should.
"Suggestions"
1: The percentage system feels out of place, especially after percentages were removed from the resource buff buildings to make them easier to understand (i.e. mineral +1 per worker rather than +10% per worker).
1.5: By that logic, let's say that major orbitals straight up give +2 district cap, minors give +1.
2: Upgraded habitat techs, in this model, gives building slots instead. +1 build slot for major, then +1 build slot for minor.
3: All Orbitals should be equipped with one Hangar slot for Scout Craft. Not because it's a good idea or anything, but just because I like the idea of a fleet of Space-Toyota Hiluxes going to bat in the case of warfare.
4: The current model of building orbitals everywhere should be first tested by having maps spawn deposits on 100% of space objects.
1. It's not immediately clear what the 'value' behind a habitat is.
Planet-only habitats are relatively clear as to what their value is: the habitat is tied directly to a deposit, and thus a habitat built for that deposit has a clear use case for it.
The current, system-wide habitats are not clear as to their build case, which I think stems mostly from the following issue:
2. There's a discrepancy between what an Orbital does and what an Orbital feels like it should do.
Within the context of a habitat being fully built in terms of districts, adding an Orbital provides no bonus. a 6/6 habitat that gets, say, an orbital built onto a mineral space deposit adds 3 unbuilt mining districts onto a habitat, but does not make the habitat inherently capable of building those districts. mechanically, this means that the cost of the orbital is expended for no gain.
In that sense, building an orbital is counterproductive in terms of signaling that it is a beneficial player action.
3. I don't know where Habitats are supposed to be in terms of their economic benefit.
Overall, it's safe to say that the current Habitat model is cheaper and easier to bring up to full speed compared to the old one, but given that it's now hard-capped by the amount of systems rather than the amount of planets, it feels like it doesn't provide nearly as much as it should.
"Suggestions"
1: The percentage system feels out of place, especially after percentages were removed from the resource buff buildings to make them easier to understand (i.e. mineral +1 per worker rather than +10% per worker).
1.5: By that logic, let's say that major orbitals straight up give +2 district cap, minors give +1.
2: Upgraded habitat techs, in this model, gives building slots instead. +1 build slot for major, then +1 build slot for minor.
3: All Orbitals should be equipped with one Hangar slot for Scout Craft. Not because it's a good idea or anything, but just because I like the idea of a fleet of Space-Toyota Hiluxes going to bat in the case of warfare.
4: The current model of building orbitals everywhere should be first tested by having maps spawn deposits on 100% of space objects.
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Or add an Orbital Ring in all but name and (lack off) model to Habitats, as it makes no sense why a space station cannot have hangers or smaller defensive platforms protecting it
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I don't know if this has been brought up yet but building large numbers of Orbitals is very tedious. You have to go to the system, select a construction ship, open the megastructure build list, scroll down to Major/Minor Orbital, click that, find the planet/moon/asteroid you want to build on, and then click it, and you have to do this for every single Orbital. This is especially annoying when you're building up a system with a large number of things to build on. It isn't a problem for early game Void Dwellers, since you probably don't have the alloys to build a lot of Orbitals yet, but by midgame it takes too much time and clicking. Also, since Habitats are now restricted to one per system, they really should get access to Orbital Rings, even if the name is changed for Habitats.
In conclusion, please make an option to order a construction ship to mass build Orbitals like they can for Mining/Research Stations.
I'd like to also echo that, for their price, Major Orbitals really should give +1 Max District Slots. I'd also like to see Minor Orbitals give +0.5 District Slots, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Edit: I had another thought. The removal of trade districts from Habitats makes Void Dwellers very RNG dependent for energy deposits. I just don't understand why they were removed when they weren't a problem before and are seemingly more important than ever for Void Dwellers to keep their energy income in the green.
In conclusion, please make an option to order a construction ship to mass build Orbitals like they can for Mining/Research Stations.
I'd like to also echo that, for their price, Major Orbitals really should give +1 Max District Slots. I'd also like to see Minor Orbitals give +0.5 District Slots, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Edit: I had another thought. The removal of trade districts from Habitats makes Void Dwellers very RNG dependent for energy deposits. I just don't understand why they were removed when they weren't a problem before and are seemingly more important than ever for Void Dwellers to keep their energy income in the green.
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Ran into an issue with mousing over the "other science" ship in the outliner causing my game to crash to desktop (happened 3 times in a row).
Might be mouse "tool tip" related?
Might be mouse "tool tip" related?
I've run into a weird bug.
A situation happened, suddenly there's yellow lines all throughout my home system, energy production is down 2000% and I get a Construction ship research to fix it but the months tick by and nothing progresses.
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Seems the bug is not permanently, suddenly it got further. Might be the calculated time is off. The reward at the end is insane.
A situation happened, suddenly there's yellow lines all throughout my home system, energy production is down 2000% and I get a Construction ship research to fix it but the months tick by and nothing progresses.
Edit:
Seems the bug is not permanently, suddenly it got further. Might be the calculated time is off. The reward at the end is insane.
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The new habitats are cool, but everything about them screams micromanagement hell.
After numerous games where I pause the game every few seconds to schedule my X construction ships to build more orbitals and habitats, I quit.
The last game ended with 28 construction ships(?!).
If you could consider some QoL improvements and minor changes that would reduce micromanagement without changing the core of the new system (because it is really nice):
- Make a separate tab under the colonization planner, called 'habitats'. Unlocked after tech to build habitats. It should list the systems that don't have a habitat central complex - and show an available number of major and minor orbitals, and possible districts.
- [If expansion planner is expanded with habitats tab] It would be cool if a colonization ship could directly build a habitat on a planet. We could use a planner to just send the ship, it would build a habitat and turn it into a colony with literally one click.
- Allow building major and minor orbitals via planetary decisions - I'm old, my eyes are not that great, and I waste a lot of time looking for the last one or two orbitals inside the system. This would also reduce the required amount of construction ship fleet, and nicely clean up outliner. As for the order of building orbitals, we can go with strategic resources/advanced resources/research/basic resources/no resources.
These three simple things would reduce micromanagement of habitat construction and expansion, without cheesing it with a fleet of redundant construction ships fleet obscuring outliner, and without zooming in and out of the system to hunt for last orbitals.
A bit of context - Finding a good place to build a habitat is very taxing, as in Galaxy View the yields are summed per system. Meaning if you are looking to build a mining habitat, that 10 minerals system with a single mining station is way worse than a 6 minerals system that contains three stations with each giving two minerals.
Also, a fun build if you want to play with void dwellers in the current open beta is hive mind terravore - you can basically eat all the planets, living only on habitats, and get tons of alloys, minerals, and pops to build more habitats. On top of that war doesn't cost you claim influence, so that means even more habitats. Energy is covered by gestalt energy collectors (which actually begs the question, why normal empires cannot have that building?) and picking unyielding early for +4 space stations cap and -50% space station upgrade cost.
Would eat the galaxy again 10/10.
After numerous games where I pause the game every few seconds to schedule my X construction ships to build more orbitals and habitats, I quit.
The last game ended with 28 construction ships(?!).
If you could consider some QoL improvements and minor changes that would reduce micromanagement without changing the core of the new system (because it is really nice):
- Make a separate tab under the colonization planner, called 'habitats'. Unlocked after tech to build habitats. It should list the systems that don't have a habitat central complex - and show an available number of major and minor orbitals, and possible districts.
- [If expansion planner is expanded with habitats tab] It would be cool if a colonization ship could directly build a habitat on a planet. We could use a planner to just send the ship, it would build a habitat and turn it into a colony with literally one click.
- Allow building major and minor orbitals via planetary decisions - I'm old, my eyes are not that great, and I waste a lot of time looking for the last one or two orbitals inside the system. This would also reduce the required amount of construction ship fleet, and nicely clean up outliner. As for the order of building orbitals, we can go with strategic resources/advanced resources/research/basic resources/no resources.
These three simple things would reduce micromanagement of habitat construction and expansion, without cheesing it with a fleet of redundant construction ships fleet obscuring outliner, and without zooming in and out of the system to hunt for last orbitals.
A bit of context - Finding a good place to build a habitat is very taxing, as in Galaxy View the yields are summed per system. Meaning if you are looking to build a mining habitat, that 10 minerals system with a single mining station is way worse than a 6 minerals system that contains three stations with each giving two minerals.
Also, a fun build if you want to play with void dwellers in the current open beta is hive mind terravore - you can basically eat all the planets, living only on habitats, and get tons of alloys, minerals, and pops to build more habitats. On top of that war doesn't cost you claim influence, so that means even more habitats. Energy is covered by gestalt energy collectors (which actually begs the question, why normal empires cannot have that building?) and picking unyielding early for +4 space stations cap and -50% space station upgrade cost.
Would eat the galaxy again 10/10.
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Oh that does sound fun. And the backstory could be that you were a science experiment on an orbital station that got loose and ate your creators' homeworld.
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The fact that was possible is absolutely hilarious
About time, we all know a year only has 360 days
You fixed the bug that displayed system names while queuing the survey command, boo
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You fixed the bug that displayed system names while queuing the survey command, boo
View attachment 1017732
It was indeed a very useful bug!
Weirdly I've found I appear to be unable to use Collosus based total war. I'm just getting the "standard" war options. (I have built a collosus myself *and* acquired one from a vassal).
Has anyone else been unable to use Collosus total war?
Also, should I get to keep collosi that one of my vassals made before I annexed them?
Has anyone else been unable to use Collosus total war?
Also, should I get to keep collosi that one of my vassals made before I annexed them?
The new empire creation UI is AWFUL. You have to scroll to see the description of authorities and civics are constantly spawning popups if you so much as glance at them sideways.
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Someone made a youtube guide about it. So we took it as a challenge.You fixed the bug that displayed system names while queuing the survey command, boo
View attachment 1017732
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Someone should make a youtube guide about the invincible enemy fleet bug.
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If someone can reliably reproduce it, I'm sure the devs will be more than happy about another challenge.
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I haven't had a lot of time to play the beta so will fill out the form if I can get a few more hours in. Overall I think it's an interesting change and it's nice to have a difference with other empires. I also agree with a lot of the comments so far, particularly how punishing it is that orbitals don't collect the base resource of the celestial body they're built over. It doesn't feel great (especially in the early game) to build an orbital over a +5 deposit and see your income decrease by 5. I feel like the orbital should collect the resource and unlock districts. I'm also not a fan of how the district number is fixed. It creates a weird, non-immersive incentive where you want to develop your orbitals in order of the poorest bodies first.
I'm also not sold on the idea of fractional districts or buildings. It's not very intuitive and tbh I just don't find it fun to have to think "ok I need two of these districts and one of these to get one building slot", especially as it's not clear on the AI. I really hope this is reworked as it keeps drawing me out of the game. EDIT: As an example of this annoyance, I swapped a mining district for an industrial district on my capital as I no longer needed it and wanted more alloys. It ruined one of my labs because I had no warning or UI tool telling me that the loss of that 0.25 building slot would take me under my current limit. Please reconsider this fractional building slot mechanic or make it much clearer in the UI (preferable with a pop up warning if you try to demolish or change a district that would drop it under the current level)
So far I've not found it too micro intensive but I've only played for the early decades and have 3 habitats (EDIT: after several more hours of play it is tedious, particularly as it's hard to spot small celestial bodies with all the nameplate clutter a developed system gets). I still find I'm jumping around a lot so I can only imagine what it will be like in the later game. An option to automate orbital construction would be good (particularly if it was like science ship automation where you can tick box what you want built). With planets in the late game you can click on the automation and let them do their thing but you can't really do that with habitats anymore. Alternatively let us right click "build major/minor orbital" from the galaxy screen and have available celestial bodies shown when details are ticked on.
Lastly it's a small point and I'm not sure how others feel, but I don't like the look of having an orbital and a central complex over the same body so close together. I feel they should be exclusive and the central complex should just get a buff to compensate
I'm also not sold on the idea of fractional districts or buildings. It's not very intuitive and tbh I just don't find it fun to have to think "ok I need two of these districts and one of these to get one building slot", especially as it's not clear on the AI. I really hope this is reworked as it keeps drawing me out of the game. EDIT: As an example of this annoyance, I swapped a mining district for an industrial district on my capital as I no longer needed it and wanted more alloys. It ruined one of my labs because I had no warning or UI tool telling me that the loss of that 0.25 building slot would take me under my current limit. Please reconsider this fractional building slot mechanic or make it much clearer in the UI (preferable with a pop up warning if you try to demolish or change a district that would drop it under the current level)
So far I've not found it too micro intensive but I've only played for the early decades and have 3 habitats (EDIT: after several more hours of play it is tedious, particularly as it's hard to spot small celestial bodies with all the nameplate clutter a developed system gets). I still find I'm jumping around a lot so I can only imagine what it will be like in the later game. An option to automate orbital construction would be good (particularly if it was like science ship automation where you can tick box what you want built). With planets in the late game you can click on the automation and let them do their thing but you can't really do that with habitats anymore. Alternatively let us right click "build major/minor orbital" from the galaxy screen and have available celestial bodies shown when details are ticked on.
Lastly it's a small point and I'm not sure how others feel, but I don't like the look of having an orbital and a central complex over the same body so close together. I feel they should be exclusive and the central complex should just get a buff to compensate
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I have to chime into the fact that habitats seem a bit weak now. Not sure how they should be buffed, but the whole idea is that you need nothing but space and resources to build more habitable capacity. Some ideas:
- modules should be upgradable
- more technologies, perhaps even some mid game repetables! I Like the concept of mid game repetables.
- buffed traditions - note the plural, add more habitat stuff on other traditions.
- straight out more upgrade levels, and cheaper levels at that.
- introduce capacity as overcrowding for influence and happiness.
There's an incoherence, where you have good and extremely bad systems that don't have stellar bodies for upgrades, and on some level this feels like it shouldn't play such a big role. If anything, an orbit is just the place to park the thing.
Can't wait to see your update on 3.9 later this week!
- modules should be upgradable
- more technologies, perhaps even some mid game repetables! I Like the concept of mid game repetables.
- buffed traditions - note the plural, add more habitat stuff on other traditions.
- straight out more upgrade levels, and cheaper levels at that.
- introduce capacity as overcrowding for influence and happiness.
There's an incoherence, where you have good and extremely bad systems that don't have stellar bodies for upgrades, and on some level this feels like it shouldn't play such a big role. If anything, an orbit is just the place to park the thing.
Can't wait to see your update on 3.9 later this week!
WIth habitats: I got the system with the attack crystals that ends with a load of mineral deposits that would have made for a fantastic mining habitat system, but I didn't have enough district capacity to actually utilize the bounty found in the system. Only one actual planet! not sure what could be done to help with that.
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