Does anyone use the Planets and Sectors Screen?

[unmerged(350868)]

One of the areas I think it would be good to improve would be the planets and sectors screen.

Most 4x games have a planet/city summary which allows you to see at a glance exactly what each planet (etc) is producing and building.

The current screen has only two uses as far as I can tell, one for checking a sector has a leader, and to top up on shared resources for the AI to use.

What would be handy is to have a sortable list of colonies not locked into sectors. You should be able to sort it by output, jobs, and more importantly, job vacancies. This will allow you to fine tune your empire by shifting pops around jobs. At the moment you are pretty much dependant on the AI managing this for you, and I regularly go into massive deficits in some resources, and have a difficult time sorting it out as you have to look at each colony screen manually. If you have dozens of colonies, the can start to become impossible without a pencil and paper to note down who is doing what, where.

I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts?

Plus the game really needs some graphs to plot resource production and usage over time.

I do absolutely love this game, but I think the UI needs a massive overhaul. There are so many quality of life improvements that could be made that most other games of this type have by default, so it is not as if we are reinventing the wheel here.

Cheers!

 

[legionof1]

the only use for the sectors screen is to swap around governors, since it's the only screen that lets you remove one without firing them. Automating sectors leaves them in the hands of the AI which is just okay at best, or downright stupid. And doing so will cripple you on higher difficulties where the full AI empires get chonk bonuses to support there idiocy, and your sectors wont.

 

[Stahl-Opa]

I use the Sector Screen to see quickly which world has the biggest research output.

I need this to decide which planets gets a supporting research ship.

But tbh, that the only thing I ever did at that screen xD

 

[VladMar]

the only use for the sectors screen is to swap around governors, since it's the only screen that lets you remove one without firing them. Automating sectors leaves them in the hands of the AI which is just okay at best, or downright stupid. And doing so will cripple you on higher difficulties where the full AI empires get chonk bonuses to support there idiocy, and your sectors wont.

hey, any way to swap scientists?

 

[Aybara978NE]

Most 4x games have a planet/city summary which allows you to see at a glance exactly what each planet (etc) is producing and building.

I think this would be great. And as I learned when micromanaging my necrophage pops during my last play through, It would be especially useful to more easily compare unemployment and job details.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

I use the Sector Screen to see quickly which world has the biggest research output.

Even that is a faff.

In my current game, I was doing the same thing, but I have about 30 sectors and 165 colonies. You have to manually open each sector and scan down the list as it is unsortable.

Mind you, I only just noticed the trade route not collected icon on some of my star bases (presumably the integrated and captured ones that have not upgraded?)... I have soent the last couple hundred years missing out on around 1,500 per month. So I clearly dont know what I am doing most of the time...

 

[Bezborg]

Only thing I want is to add a Megacorp layer to it.

Should have been done years ago. YEARS.

 

[Kolath]

@unmerged(350868) , for charts and graphs you might want to check out the Stellaris Dashboard mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1466534202

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

The OP is spot on here.

The UI could definitely do with an upgrade in a number of areas, but the main one is the 'individual planet UI box' (I'm sure it's got a formal name).

When you go into that 'box' the key information is split over 2 tabs, so you end up cycling through all the planets with one tab open looking for problem areas to tweak, and then you cycle through all the planets with the other tab open doing the same thing.

All this key information should just be in a planet list menu, a bit like the Sectors UI, so you can scroll through and find the problem areas to deal with.

Ultimately, we just need a tarted-up spreadsheet to manage our planets

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

Further to my post above, a possible reason why the devs haven't given us a 'tarted up spreadsheet' to manage our planets, is that it could make the game too 'sterile' since we'd rarely go into the individual planet UI areas.

Or perhaps it's an oversight.

Who knows?

In my opinion, it does feed into the ongoing debate over whether Stellaris is too bland, with not enough immersion. If it was a full-on Space Opera, it should be more character driven. And if it was a full-on 4x game, with special focus on the economy, then it should have plenty of spreadsheet menus.

It feels like it's fallen inbetween the two and in some respects this is reflected in the UI.

 

[exi123]

I manage my colonies 100% with the outliner, which i am only able to use after 25 ingame years because i use the tiny outliner mod (i stil use the sector view for planets, so i can collabse them to shorten the list even more). That screen was once very use- and powerful, but when they crippled sectors in 2.2 it had become a near to useless tool. I use it only for a quick view if all sectors have a governor.

 

[RupertTheBear]

I have exactly one use for it: after I get a notification of a Governor dying, I open this tab to assign a new one. That's it.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

Not sure if I'm using the Sectors Function properly, but I find it a bit fiddly.

Wouldn't it just be easier to create whatever Sectors you want and put as many or as few planets into these Sectors as you want?

I mean, I'm the Galactic Emperor; if I want a new Sector 1 FTL jump away from my capital, I'll have it thank you very much.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

@unmerged(350868) , for charts and graphs you might want to check out the Stellaris Dashboard mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1466534202

Make love to me...

This is the most awesome thing I have seen in my life. It even has a timedelay colour map thingy.

I am assuming this only works with autosaves. If I set it to monthly I should get more details, but will I still only get a rolling 4 save . Hmmmm...

My day has been made!

Cheers dude!

 

[Bezborg]

Not sure if I'm using the Sectors Function properly, but I find it a bit fiddly.

Wouldn't it just be easier to create whatever Sectors you want and put as many or as few planets into these Sectors as you want?

I mean, I'm the Galactic Emperor; if I want a new Sector 1 FTL jump away from my capital, I'll have it thank you very much.

Yeah, some design choices in the last few years are inexplicable to me.

We used to have total control of the sectors, they used to build their own stuff and they had an automated construction ship of their own.

Man, Stellaris used to be a much more advanced game - in practice

We added many layers of complexity to it since then, but complexity does not mean refinement. I say Stellaris has become a great deal less refined than it used to be.

 

[legionof1]

hey, any way to swap scientists?

From the tech screen for research leaders, and from the ships themselves, a right click dismisses the leader. But for whatever reason you can't dismiss a govoner from the planets screen within their sector in the same, and must do so from the sector tab instead.

 

[Darth.]

I have exactly one use for it: after I get a notification of a Governor dying, I open this tab to assign a new one. That's it.

Click the notification icon when the skull pops up and it immediately takes you to the sector capital. I literally never open that tab unless I'm releasing a vassal and I rarely do that.

This is why I feel they should let you reorder the shortcuts for those tabs or just reorder the list itself in the vanilla game. A tab as insignificant as sectors shouldn't have pride of place with F3 while the Leaders screen gets no shortcut and tech is way down in the F(n) list.