[Dev Team] Stellaris 2.2.6 Released (checksum 8645)

[Army Pea]

I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next bloke but it’s not a laughing matter that the sector system , which previously was “decent” at reducing micro, is now a shadow of itself.

It’s hard to be an interstellar tyrant when your also doing the job of minister of labour and goods without any staff

 

[Duuk]

I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next bloke but it’s not a laughing matter that the sector system , which previously was “decent” at reducing micro, is now a shadow of itself.

It’s hard to be an interstellar tyrant when your also doing the job of minister of labour and goods without any staff

I think you missed the point, and it's a good one:

There are still pretty decent sized issues in the game and "sectors still don't work" has become background noise for Stellaris because, well, every time the devs "fix" sectors it only becomes broken in a different direction. Yes, right now it is "broken because it doesn't work at all" and we're all micromanaging our empires, but there is an entire mega-thread where a LARGE number of forum-goers said that is pretty much exactly what we wanted. IE: "If you can't make sector AI perfect, just remove it and make sectors just lines on a map with governor bonuses and let us manage it ourselves!" Well, that's what we got in 2.2 (even if it was unintentional) and people are now howling for it to go back to the old system.

The irony of it is mind-blowing.

So, I know I'm one of the resident people that likes to make long-winded posts that point out every. single. thing. that the Stellaris team does wrong and how they've failed spectacularly on 2.2, but as far as sectors go I'm going to do something you won't expect:

I'm going to side with the Stellaris team.

This should be priority 997 out of 900. It shouldn't even make the list of things they're worried about for this DLC's corrective action. Not even 1 single hour of developer time should be wasted on correcting sector AI. Not one single minute, even. Get the rest of the bugs worked out, get the AI managing its economy and fleets, make it so a hands-off game can resist an end-game crisis, do All of The Things in the bug forum. Ignore sectors completely.

Because the diplomacy pack for 2.4, which should include internal diplomacy and factions, will include a massive recode of sectors. And that will be sexy.

 

[Army Pea]

I think you missed the point, and it's a good one:

There are still pretty decent sized issues in the game and "sectors still don't work" has become background noise for Stellaris because, well, every time the devs "fix" sectors it only becomes broken in a different direction. Yes, right now it is "broken because it doesn't work at all" and we're all micromanaging our empires, but there is an entire mega-thread where a LARGE number of forum-goers said that is pretty much exactly what we wanted. IE: "If you can't make sector AI perfect, just remove it and make sectors just lines on a map with governor bonuses and let us manage it ourselves!" Well, that's what we got in 2.2 (even if it was unintentional) and people are now howling for it to go back to the old system.

The irony of it is mind-blowing.

So, I know I'm one of the resident people that likes to make long-winded posts that point out every. single. thing. that the Stellaris team does wrong and how they've failed spectacularly on 2.2, but as far as sectors go I'm going to do something you won't expect:

I'm going to side with the Stellaris team.

This should be priority 997 out of 900. It shouldn't even make the list of things they're worried about for this DLC's corrective action. Not even 1 single hour of developer time should be wasted on correcting sector AI. Not one single minute, even. Get the rest of the bugs worked out, get the AI managing its economy and fleets, make it so a hands-off game can resist an end-game crisis, do All of The Things in the bug forum. Ignore sectors completely.

Because the diplomacy pack for 2.4, which should include internal diplomacy and factions, will include a massive recode of sectors. And that will be sexy.

Hell. If the devs came out and said something similar to your point , I would gladly accept that.

It’s not hard to park Stellaris when it’s broken
It’s hard not knowing if a feature will ever get priority on being fixed

 

[Duuk]

Hell. If the devs came out and said something similar to your point , I would gladly accept that.

It’s not hard to park Stellaris when it’s broken
It’s hard not knowing if a feature will ever get priority on being fixed

There is no way they'd ever say it. Have you met this forum? The howling would be legendary.

Legen...

...wait for it...

..dary.

 

[sillyrobot]

<snip>

So, I know I'm one of the resident people that likes to make long-winded posts that point out every. single. thing. that the Stellaris team does wrong and how they've failed spectacularly on 2.2, but as far as sectors go I'm going to do something you won't expect:

I'm going to side with the Stellaris team.

This should be priority 997 out of 900. It shouldn't even make the list of things they're worried about for this DLC's corrective action. Not even 1 single hour of developer time should be wasted on correcting sector AI. Not one single minute, even. Get the rest of the bugs worked out, get the AI managing its economy and fleets, make it so a hands-off game can resist an end-game crisis, do All of The Things in the bug forum. Ignore sectors completely.

Because the diplomacy pack for 2.4, which should include internal diplomacy and factions, will include a massive recode of sectors. And that will be sexy .

If the sectors weren't destroyed in 2.2, I'd agree with you. But, they didn't break themselves. The devs deliberately went out and changed something in a way that broke a function. They released a subsystem that was not ready for release even under superficial examination -- it took what, 30 seconds to notice that the new sector system was non-functional. They should fix what they broke -- even if that means reverting to the working code. Should they put time in to fix it? Yes, but only because they put enough time in to break it in the first place!

 

[Duuk]

If the sectors weren't destroyed in 2.2, I'd agree with you. But, they didn't break themselves. The devs deliberately went out and changed something in a way that broke a function. They released a subsystem that was not ready for release even under superficial examination -- it took what, 30 seconds to notice that the new sector system was non-functional. They should fix what they broke -- even if that means reverting to the working code. Should they put time in to fix it? Yes, but only because they put enough time in to break it in the first place!

Take a look at the greater bug reports. The AI is overall unable to manage its economy and world management right now. There IS no "fix" for sectors.

Do you really WANT to put the AI in charge of upgrading your planets? Because up until the most recent version of patches that would have meant building 3 precinct houses and never upgrading any buildings and running you massive deficits. The AI is NOT CAPABLE of running planet economies right now. It is NOT CAPABLE. So the "sector sub system" isn't the problem. It's not even remotely a problem. Because the AI can't handle planet economies. So just stop. Let the devs work on the AI and make the AI understand the game and the new economy. Once that works (which they'll be doing during the 2.3 cycle story pack and More Mammals! species pack) then and ONLY THEN will they start working on sectors for the 2.4 diplomacy expansion which will include internal politics.

 

[sillyrobot]

Take a look at the greater bug reports. The AI is overall unable to manage its economy and world management right now. There IS no "fix" for sectors.

Do you really WANT to put the AI in charge of upgrading your planets? Because up until the most recent version of patches that would have meant building 3 precinct houses and never upgrading any buildings and running you massive deficits. The AI is NOT CAPABLE of running planet economies right now. It is NOT CAPABLE. So the "sector sub system" isn't the problem. It's not even remotely a problem. Because the AI can't handle planet economies. So just stop. Let the devs work on the AI and make the AI understand the game and the new economy. Once that works (which they'll be doing during the 2.3 cycle story pack and More Mammals! species pack) then and ONLY THEN will they start working on sectors for the 2.4 diplomacy expansion which will include internal politics.

Pretty much immaterial to the "it wasn't broke (in this way), now it is. You touched it, you bought it. So fix it." The old sector system at least gave me a place to dump "completed" worlds so I didn't have to review them frequently. That's gone. As is the freedom to assign systems to different governors.

Should the devs have touched sectors at all? NO. There's nothing in 2.2 that screams "we need a new sector system to support this!"

The devs (and every other dev team) should only release/replace functionality if it is immediately necessary. That's really the only time in the project where the requirements are defined well enough that you can be certain work isn't going to be wasted building something that only sort-of fits the eventual need. It's also the only time QA and testing groups can review the submitted work and verify it meets design need and actually functions well enough for release.

But if a team DOES release something early, It is on them to repair any problem they cause through that release.

 

[Duuk]

I'm confused. If the world is completed, what is the issue?

 

[jonjowett]

You have to tell the game to generate the modifiers in 00_common_categories.txt

Thanks for the pointer. The economic category file changed a lot between 2.2.5 and 2.2.6, and that's probably the cause of my issue. I guess I'll play around a bit and see if I can figure out how this all works.

<rant>
It would have been really nice if this change was described at all in the patch notes. It would also be really nice if these categories had basic documentation, like most of the rest of the code - eg. a wiki entry; and/or comments at the top; and/or a readme file.
</rant>

(Perhaps I missed the relevant entry in patch notes. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right place for the documentation. But the end result is that I find this lack of information rather frustrating. Perhaps I'm not cut out for modding!)

 

[sillyrobot]

I'm confused. If the world is completed, what is the issue?

Pre-2.2, I had between 500-750 colonies in my late game empire. Under 2.2, I find scrolling just over 100 colonies in the outliner to be my breaking point. I'm pretty sure either my finger or the mouse wheel will wear out if I were to stomach the game long enough to reach late game.

I can either (a) leave sector view on and effectively double the space consumed in the outliner but be able to "turn off" systems once they reach a quasi-complete stage (after manually reviewing all worlds in the sector to confirm that yes every last one is now complete) or (b) turn off sector view and see all the planets.

What I can't do is have a sector labelled "completed colonies" and assign systems to it as they mature and hide that one. Do I want the sector AI to do anything? No.

 

[giggz]

If you can't make sector AI perfect, just remove it and make sectors just lines on a map with governor bonuses and let us manage it ourselves!" Well, that's what we got in 2.2 (even if it was unintentional) and people are now howling for it to go back to the old system.

i mean it was alot easier to manage it on our own before 2.2, just put people on the right squares and click some arrows. it isnt really hypocrisy to want some automation when the system was completely changed

 

[Duuk]

Pre-2.2, I had between 500-750 colonies in my late game empire. Under 2.2, I find scrolling just over 100 colonies in the outliner to be my breaking point. I'm pretty sure either my finger or the mouse wheel will wear out if I were to stomach the game long enough to reach late game.

I can either (a) leave sector view on and effectively double the space consumed in the outliner but be able to "turn off" systems once they reach a quasi-complete stage (after manually reviewing all worlds in the sector to confirm that yes every last one is now complete) or (b) turn off sector view and see all the planets.

What I can't do is have a sector labelled "completed colonies" and assign systems to it as they mature and hide that one. Do I want the sector AI to do anything? No.

Ok. I'm not being snarky here at all.

What you're ACTUALLY saying you want is a UI improvement to allow you to pick which sectors are shown in the Outliner?

Because THAT I'll agree with. The massive outliner scrolling spam is kind of huge, and being able to pick what is shown in it would be great.

Then if you wanted to go back and mess with older planets you could always find them in the "full" UI menu of planets/sectors, of course.

You're not actually saying you want the AI to manage your colonies for you, just that you want to be able to suppress which ones are shown since they're basically "No longer needing attention". Maybe give the option to flag planets as "Planets of Special Attention" like how CK2 has a character flag for that?

 

[sillyrobot]

Ok. I'm not being snarky here at all.

What you're ACTUALLY saying you want is a UI improvement to allow you to pick which sectors are shown in the Outliner?

Because THAT I'll agree with. The massive outliner scrolling spam is kind of huge, and being able to pick what is shown in it would be great.

Then if you wanted to go back and mess with older planets you could always find them in the "full" UI menu of planets/sectors, of course.

You're not actually saying you want the AI to manage your colonies for you, just that you want to be able to suppress which ones are shown since they're basically "No longer needing attention". Maybe give the option to flag planets as "Planets of Special Attention" like how CK2 has a character flag for that?

No, I want the old UI where I got to pick which systems are attached to which sectors which got changed for "reasons" without sensible review of consequence or functionality. I do not care if the AI offers to manage said sectors. I don't want 100+ sectors. There is no value to that categorisation.

If the AI were to be improved to the point where its decisions were sensible, I probably still wouldn't want the AI to manage sectors simply because I can't tell it my longer term plans for each colony, region of space, and/or my expected need for strategic resources. The AI doesn't (and can't) work to a plan. It reacts to current conditions. That's acceptable for an opponent, but is unhelpful when part of a human-who-plans' empire.

 

[Duuk]

The game is obviously moving towards a future (2.4, woo) update where internal politics will matter. The "200 system mega sector" gamey way of playing is over. Is it possible that it is too restrictive now and should be upped to 6 or 8 hops instead of (3? I think it's 3), probably.

But I'm about 90% sure that @grekulf is planning on a DLC where those sector governors are going to revolt and try to declare independence, and I'm reasonably sure you don't want 75% of your empire revolting under the "Completed Sector Union" banner.

 

[sillyrobot]

The game is obviously moving towards a future (2.4, woo) update where internal politics will matter. The "200 system mega sector" gamey way of playing is over. Is it possible that it is too restrictive now and should be upped to 6 or 8 hops instead of (3? I think it's 3), probably.

But I'm about 90% sure that @grekulf is planning on a DLC where those sector governors are going to revolt and try to declare independence, and I'm reasonably sure you don't want 75% of your empire revolting under the "Completed Sector Union" banner.

Sure, I see that. But to reiterate my first point, you shouldn't change something until the need is pressing. Because you know what I learned over my decades of dev work? Often, maybe even most times, your initial guess as to the work that will be necessary is right. But it is wrong often enough in ways you don't expect that waiting until you know the design and build to meet it directly minimizes both workload and failure rate. Especially when facing a tremendous amount of "must be done" work as was generated by 2.2!

And as for the second, the same user constraint can be met by assigning a maximum system count per sector -- that still allows the player to design sector borders that are meaningful. Though I would prefer if the system count was tied to galaxy size so a 100 star galaxy won't fit in 3 sectors and a 1,000 star galaxy won't require more than 30. My last game I had maybe 10% of the galaxy in my empire and had already broken 20 sectors. Hundreds of sectors are useless for humans.

 

[Duuk]

Ok, now I know why discussion of sectors gets relegated to the mega-thread:

You launched an attack on poor DR for sectors not working... and in all of the replies have said you don't actually WANT the AI to be in charge of sectors, you just want to be able to draw a big box on the map and click "don't bother me with alerts from these planets", and that is the "sector system" you want.

So... let's let this thread get back to its regularly scheduled discussion of the 2.2.6 patch.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Thanks for the upload. I hope you guys continue to work on the balance of the game and civics.

Its safe to say that there is a huge difference right now between empires with and without access to Ecumenopoleis.

The 20% ressource output bonus to everything together with the bonus of not having to use any ressource production buildings for volatile motes or synthetic crystals on you Ecumenopoleis is so strong that without it you simply cannot compete. Empires with ecumenopoleis are only limited by minerals if synth ascended as all other ressources are very easy to come by.

To close the gap between Ecumenopoleis Empires and the ones who do not have access to it, I propose the following:

• Reduce the ressource output of ecumenopoleis from 20% to atleast 10% or 5%.
• Come up with some ideas for non ecumenopoleis empires to also gain more efficiency when producing special ressources (an example see my suggestion below for Hiveminds).

Your work on the Ascensions is also very welcome. I hope the Biological Ascencion and the Psionic Ascencion will get some improvements to further distinguish them from Synthethic Ascencion. I would be happy if Spiritualist ascencion yielded some more reliable bonuses instead of the Shroud Roulette. Maybe give us the options to choose between covenants instead of simply taking the offer or not and having to wait again for the next one.

For Biological Ascencion I have some special wishes and ideas along with buffs to Hiveminds:

Biological Ascencion ideas:

• Allow us to pick Xeno Compatibility without being Xenophile if we picked Biological Ascencion.
• Allow us to allocate species to jobs to make micromanagement easier.

If I engineer 5 different species each for 1 specific job I want an easy to use system that does exactly that, without having to micromanage every planet.
The 20% pop growth boost is needed to compete with Synth Ascencion + Immigration. Also an evolution focused empire should have the ability to force species to breed with the goal of creating a super-species. For Hiveminds this also makes sense as the goal is to make the Hive as strong as possible. Or maybe we could get a special Civic around this playstyle? Similar to Horatio for those who have played Endless Space 2.

Hivemind ideas:

• Change planetary prospecting decision from the adaptability tree: Grants a 2-4 rare ressource deposit ontop of the planet which can be exploited by building a mining station.
• Better Biological Ascencion than "normal" empires and unlock Xeno Compatibility (or add a special civic for it?)
• Overall balance (read: Improve) and add better and more interesting civics.

Hiveminds in particular have been largely nerfed since 2.2 while all other Empire Types have received huge buffs. I think its time to either take back some Hivemind nerfs and/or give us long deserved updates on their civics. They still have the old Technocracy-like civic for +1 tech option. In the recent patches you added Meritocracy as a new top tier civic with an insane +10% specialist output. Hiveminds need a civic to increase complex Drone output to compete. They are also nowhere near the best at growth, leaving them with lackluster growth speed and efficiency compared to normal empires.

The idea about planetary prospecting is because it becomes mostly useless later on. You don't care about 2 or 3 optional mining districts when all of your planets are Hive worlds (which they will be). Instead if you find guaranteed rare ressources like volatile motes, you can save some buildings slots on producing these ressources, to compete with Ecumenopoleis.

 

[Defoli Scoyfol]

You must be playing a different game from everyone else because biological ascension and hiveminds have been particularly powerful in 2.2.x compared to regular empires. Both can use more flavor but definitely not more buffs.

 

[Duuk]

You must be playing a different game from everyone else because biological ascension and hiveminds have been particularly powerful in 2.2.x compared to regular empires. Both can use more flavor but definitely not more buffs.

bio ascension is best ascension!

And if they'd fix nerve stapled, it would be godlike!

 

[King Harkinian]

It's encouraging to see the devs chime in and interact directly here on the forum. Stellaris has been in a bit of a rut lately and I haven't been playing it as a result, but it's finally getting places again, and knowing that the devs are seeing the same bugs and issues that we do makes me pretty confident that the next big patch will bring the game fully back to greatness. I still think the planet management overhaul wasn't worth all this trouble, but once all is said and done I look forward to exploring it more.