First-time player to Stellaris experience with (apparently) 2.2... just saying

[mammothhunter]

Fatal in the sense that credits and minerals became negative, and that was the end of that on more than one level.

Check the edicts tab, you can enable +20% energy or minerals production edicts in an urgency for 300 influence. You get access to these edicts after researching +% energy and mineral building technologies in 2.2, energy grid and mineral processing plant. Its planetary capital tech in 2.1 for minerals, and power plants upgrade for energy. It usually lasts for 10 years + whatever your bonus edict duration is. If you like gaining extra income from edicts, you can try the +50% edict duration ascension perk to make it your strategy.

Edicts cost influence, but you shouldn't problably be short on it in 2.2. In 2.1 you might, if you expand very wide. If you like rapid expansion, there is the interstellar dominion ascension perk to save influence.

 

[Surimi]

Let me sum it up. Every time I want to make a change to a planet's output OR fix a planet output, I have to consider a causal chain of events where one building with one pop makes one thing that goes to another building with another pop, BUT you might loose the first thing if you move a pop to the second building, and you can't really experiment about with all combinations and permutations to get the right output, cause you can't demote pops or change buildings quickly.

To put it very simply, you're overthinking it.

At the bottom of the planet interface you can see two numbers. One is the number of pops on the planet, and the other is the number of jobs on the planet. The key things to consider is that you don't increase the number of jobs too far above the number of pops. As long as you do that, things will basically be fine most of the time.

The problem is that if you create too many specialist jobs, what will happen is that you will pull pops away from creating basic resources (food, minerals and energy) and into advanced resources, which often require the above, so you're creating a double problem.

Beyond that, the only thing to worry about is to make sure you devote a significant proportion of your empty building slots to consumer goods factories. Everyone needs consumer goods, and demand for them will keep growing continuously.

Keep those two things in mind, and you have a working economy. As the game goes on, you'll want to build on it and over time you will figure out playstyles and how to get more efficiency out of it by stacking bonuses, but for the most part that's actually unnecessary. You can get through an entire playthrough just by building enough consumer goods factories and making sure you don't binge out on specialists.

If you have a temporary shortage, you can also set up a monthly trade on the market to get what you need. You lose a bit of efficiency, but in general using the market to correct small deficits is very easy.

 

[Person012345]

It's almost like strategy games require you to figure out a strategy or something.

Economy is a bit weird right now because of how jobs are assigned, but beyond that it's not really that complicated. Hopefully they'll fix the AI.

 

[k0r3]

So..a couple of days ago I bought Stellaris with all major DLCs except MegaCorp. I am not new to 4X games etc.
[…]

Welcome to Paradox games

 

[#Tukuro]

Let me sum it up. Every time I want to make a change to a planet's output OR fix a planet output, I have to consider a causal chain of events where one building with one pop makes one thing that goes to another building with another pop, BUT you might loose the first thing if you move a pop to the second building, and you can't really experiment about with all combinations and permutations to get the right output, cause you can't demote pops or change buildings quickly.

Questionable design decisions aside, here's a simple way to explain it:

• Minerals/Energy/Food/Trade Value are - outside of starbases and mining stations - tied to jobs; Miners/Technicians/Farmers/Clerks
  
• The first three come from Mining, Power and Agrarian districts. (In the planet screen they're listed as Urban/Energy/Mining/Agrarian)
• Trade Value is converted into energy too. And comes from clerks, which come from Urban districts and Commerce buildings...
• All of these jobs belong to the Worker strata.

Important to note here is that the other resources; alloys, consumer goods, research, unity, etc. come from Specialists; Metallurgists, Artisans, Researchers & Culture Workers/Entertainers.
If you want to prioritize, you have to know that pops promote to Specialists before they promote to Workers. Meaning that if you have more Specialist jobs than Worker jobs, the Specialist jobs get filled first.
Knowing this, you'll have to prioritize accordingly when building new districts/buildings; If you want more Minerals/Energy you'll have to build more mining and power districts. And you'll have to make sure that you either have unemployed pops, or that - when new pops grow - you do not have more Specialist jobs than Worker jobs.

 

[cscx]

This is all very good (thanks all for the head ups and tips), what I don't understand is why the more I clicked on the pluses and minuses in the planet/pops/priorities screen, the worse it all became and there was no way to go back to the values I saw before I started clicking on the pluses and minuses. This is a bit tongue in cheek, but I'm also serious; any game mechanic that penalizes a player for just trying things out is probably not a fun mechanic - why would I touch the pluses and minuses ever again?

I am being deliberately simplistic in this specific post to illustrate the point better; I'm a relatively experienced strategy games player, otherwise I wouldn't be trying to micromanage in the first place.

 

[Surimi]

This is all very good (thanks all for the head ups and tips), what I don't understand is why the more I clicked on the pluses and minuses in the planet/pops/priorities screen, the worse it all became and there was no way to go back to the values I saw before I started clicking on the pluses and minuses. This is a bit tongue in cheek, but I'm also serious; any game mechanic that penalizes a player for just trying things out is probably not a fun mechanic - why would I touch the pluses and minuses ever again?

So, the plus and minus buttons are used to effectively ban pops from taking particular jobs. I agree the interface is kind of hard to read, but on the plus side, it is almost never necessary to do this. Like, I can think of a handful of situations in which you'd want to.

In general, it's better to build up slowly and ensure there aren't a huge surplus of unfilled jobs than to create lots of jobs and then fiddle around trying to ban everyone from doing them. For one, you'd still be paying maintenance on the buildings which noone is using.

For now, just click all the plusses a bunch of times and you'll make every job available.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

There's a significant lack of empathy here...

If you are not new to the game, you have no business disagreeing with the OP.
As most frequenters of the forums are not new to the game... shame on you.
The OP was reporting on the new player experience of the 2.2 patch; a valuable insight for PI.

I can absolutely see where the OP is coming from; 2.2 does drastically increase the complexity of empire management, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing.
However the UI for supporting this increased complexity is sorely lacking.

 

[Blinky78]

We finally had one that did appeal to people who don't like the other pdx grand strategy games, and now its gone.

The tile system was boring, and most people hated it. The new system isn't that complex.

 

[Awoogamuffin]

I think the new system is great, but it's definitely overwhelming at first. My advice is this:

At first, build very few specialist buildings. Go for mining / agri / energy districts. When you do start building specialist buildings, keep these two impacts in mind:
1. The job will take worker jobs away as they get promoted to the specialist job (so now you're getting fewer raw materials until those workers are replaced). This will be recovered over time, or immediately if you have unemployment on that planet.
2. It will also take away resources. Minerals go into allows and consumer goods, and labs will take consumer goods (which in turn came from minerals).

This means you need to think long and hard before building specialist buildings, and you want to ensure a strong production of raw resources before going up the tech tree. Secondly, only build one specialist building at a time, and wait for the population to regrow.

This means you want to be comfortable with that little orange house next to your planet indicating that you have a building slot free. Only build when you know you can afford it (building production districts, on the other hand, will have no negative impacts on you whatsoever).

Be even more careful about upgrading specialist buildings. After the first stage they start requiring gas, crystals or motes. This is where the interface could be improved - you have to hover over the strategic resources to see how much you are producing. Maybe that information could be shown whenever you're thinking about building / upgrading something which requires that resource?

I think it would also be nice if, when hovering over a specialist building, you get detailed information about how many resources go in (per job or even for the whole building if all jobs are filled) and how many go out, similar to what the population tab shows, to make planning easier.

 

[Ag3nt49]

I think the new system is great, but it's definitely overwhelming at first...

...I think it would also be nice if, when hovering over a specialist building, you get detailed information about how many resources go in (per job or even for the whole building if all jobs are filled) and how many go out, similar to what the population tab shows, to make planning easier.

100% agree with this. Took me forever to figure out the pop tab could expand to show how much of each resource a job was taking vs how much it was producing

 

[Raph]

100% agree with this. Took me forever to figure out the pop tab could expand to show how much of each resource a job was taking vs how much it was producing

This is already in the game (at least if you opt in to the beta patch). Wasn't at 2.2 release though.

 

[Losttruppen]

The tile system was boring, and most people hated it. The new system isn't that complex.

I never said the new system was complex, only that Stellaris was different than all the other PDX grand strategy games and now it isn't. The tile system can't have been "hated" by most people considering the game has been growing for 2.5 years while running it.

I think you spend too much time on forums where a vocal minority who already enjoy the other paradox titles are established and seem to dominate any discussion thread with bloated additions from those games. I don't mind good features creeping over between games, but this is blatant homogenization into a format most people avoided for a reason. If you liked those games go play them, don't change this game because it wasn't like the others.

 

[AlanC9]

If you have a temporary shortage, you can also set up a monthly trade on the market to get what you need. You lose a bit of efficiency, but in general using the market to correct small deficits is very easy.

I've found that, being a fairly sloppy player, I'm better off doing trades as one-shots rather than monthly. That way the screen keeps showing me as being in deficit until I've actually fixed the problem, instead of everything looking good while I'm eating an efficiency loss.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Only, what if many of those people were playing despite not because of the Tile system? I know that was the case for me.

 

[sillyrobot]

The tile system was boring, and most people hated it. The new system isn't that complex.

The new system isn't that complex. It is also still boring and it shifts the player's attention from a single long-duration pass (establishing first-gen buildings on the tiles) plus occasional fast later touches with a constant review of pop levels plus new builds.

That's good for very tall playstyles (more things to pay attention to) and bad for wider styles for the same reason.

I expect it'll be a hated interface once people get used to it.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

The new system isn't that complex. It is also still boring and it shifts the player's attention from a single long-duration pass (establishing first-gen buildings on the tiles) plus occasional fast later touches with a constant review of pop levels plus new builds.

That's good for very tall playstyles (more things to pay attention to) and bad for wider styles for the same reason.

I expect it'll be a hated interface once people get used to it.

The longest game I've managed in 2.2 is 70 years; by that point I'm so frustrated with the colony babysitting and the clunky interface, that I give up & restart.

Though I think this time, I'll stop and wait for a few patches before I try again.
If it doesn't get any better after that..... meh, there are plenty of other games & genres around.

A little annoying as the promise of 2.2 (created by the gagged Twitch streamers), combined with heavy discounts, got me to buy up all the previous DLC.
Never again Paradox. A burnt customer is a lost customer.

 

[Losttruppen]

Only, what if many of those people were playing despite not because of the Tile system? I know that was the case for me

I did not like the old tile system itself, I just know I certainly preferred it to what we have now because it was simpler to understand. I get that it bogged down the AI and resulted in lots of tedium when you upgrade your building tech, but it was still unique among paradox grand strategy games. I also know I specifically avoid playing CK, EU, and HoI because of their resource systems and complex mechanics that have now crept into Stellaris.

If you did not like Stellaris' systems you could play their other titles, but now if you don't like those other titles you are forced to abandon Stellaris. Just because a system is implemented poorly, does not make it a bad system.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

If you did not like Stellaris' systems you could play their other titles, but now if you don't like those other titles you are forced to abandon Stellaris. Just because a system is implemented poorly, does not make it a bad system.

The same could be said of the present system because it is actually quite simple in funtion. Its just the simplicity is hidden under one of the worst and moast secreatave UIs I've seen.
Look, I'm autistic I know all about not liking change, and I'd be the first to admit the present econ in its state is deeply flawed. But Tiles were abysmialy bad at making intresting worlds or giving reallchoices that matterd. We just need better job priotitsation, clearer UI comunication.

 

[morangias]

I never said the new system was complex, only that Stellaris was different than all the other PDX grand strategy games and now it isn't. The tile system can't have been "hated" by most people considering the game has been growing for 2.5 years while running it.

I think you spend too much time on forums where a vocal minority who already enjoy the other paradox titles are established and seem to dominate any discussion thread with bloated additions from those games. I don't mind good features creeping over between games, but this is blatant homogenization into a format most people avoided for a reason. If you liked those games go play them, don't change this game because it wasn't like the others.

Can't speak for others, but Stellaris is definitely my favorite of Paradox games, and I still find the changes to economy extremely welcome and necessary. Previous economy was simple to the point of being brainless.