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

[FoolishOwl]

But, so long as you know one thing: Building the forge will take workers from elsewhere, where is the surprise? Is 'This thing provides more desirable jobs than that thing' thus creating a trade-off so very hard to understand?

Yes, it absolutely is hard to understand. Just look at how many threads there are, on this forum and elsewhere, complaining about this very point.

In this case, I was many hours into a game, and had just noticed it was possible to buy exotic materials on the market to upgrade the forge. It wasn't intuitively obvious that should be possible to buy exotic materials, given that I didn't have the technologies to extract them. It wasn't obvious that an upgraded forge would require more workers. The UI depends on mousing over tiny icons, hard to distinguish, and not all of which even have mouse-over text.

So I tried something I didn't know I could do, didn't notice the obscured indirect costs, and didn't realize that those indirect costs were huge.

I'm not seeing this as a bad system, but rather its a bad communication of a system.

Bad communication, in itself, is enough to make it a bad system. For one thing, if you're designing a game, you have to design it around how it will be communicated.

As it stands, this has become a game that actively punishes the player for experimenting. Most of the advice I'm seeing for how to play the game now, emphasizes very conservative play: avoid building things or upgrading things; if you're not sure what something is you shouldn't build it; concentrate on the basics that you get at the very beginning; don't expand. The feeling I get playing now is a constant nagging worry that I'll break something if I mis-click. It's just not fun.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Yes, it absolutely is hard to understand. Just look at how many threads there are, on this forum and elsewhere, complaining about this very point.

In this case, I was many hours into a game, and had just noticed it was possible to buy exotic materials on the market to upgrade the forge. It wasn't intuitively obvious that should be possible to buy exotic materials, given that I didn't have the technologies to extract them. It wasn't obvious that an upgraded forge would require more workers. The UI depends on mousing over tiny icons, hard to distinguish, and not all of which even have mouse-over text.

So I tried something I didn't know I could do, didn't notice the obscured indirect costs, and didn't realize that those indirect costs were huge.

You can't really distinguish the system from the UI that communicates the system.

As it stands, this has become a game that actively punishes the player for experimenting. Most of the advice I'm seeing for how to play the game now, emphasizes very conservative play: avoid building things, upgrading things, if you're not sure what something is you shouldn't build it, concentrate on the basics that you get at the very beginning, don't expand. The feeling I get playing now is a constant nagging worry that I'll break something if I mis-click. It's just not fun.

Of corse you can distinguish the system from the way its comunicated. Ever play D&D? the 2nd Edition AD&D to hit stsrem used THACO take a value called 'To Hit Armour Class 0' start it at 20 and go down depending on class. You subtract a targets armour from it, and that gives you the number on a twenty sideded die you need to equal or better to land a hit.

Third edition simply went 'attack bonus+die= best arour you can hit' the two ways of doing things are mathematicaly identical, they are the same mechanic in terms of probability and out comes. The only thing that changed was presentation such that it streamlined things.

And it only punished for experamentation of your idea of an experament is to jump in with both feet instead of taking a more measured aprach to new systems.

 

[FoolishOwl]

Of corse you can distinguish the system from the way its comunicated. Ever play D&D?

Yes, I'm familiar with that issue in D&D; in fact I had it in mind when I was complaining about this issue in Stellaris.

One person I was reading had a series of blog posts, discussing the different approaches to presenting that mechanic, with an eye towards issues like, which one is easiest to explain, which one works best at the table, and so on. One post discussed an unpublished early version of 1st Edition AD&D, and found that it included an explanation of the system, IIRC as a "target number" system. But, they didn't include that explanation in the published texts, they abbreviated tables ambiguously, and basically seemed to assume that people would infer the underlying premises of how the system was supposed to work. As best I can recall from the 80s: we didn't.

It seems like for some "old-school renaissance" people, it's all about rediscovering what the game designers had actually intended in the first place, but communicated badly. But here's the thing: it's no small problem that they made such a hash of it, that forty years later, you've got people still trying to track down old design documents to figure out what those intentions actually were. Bad communication can be a real problem.

And it only punished for experamentation of your idea of an experament is to jump in with both feet instead of taking a more measured aprach to new systems.

I think I was being measured; I was quite a lot of hours into the game before I made the mistake of upgrading the forges. And, for that matter, it's a reversible decision.

But, as a lot of people have pointed out, this update has changed the experience of playing Stellaris dramatically. And my sense was that previously, the game did rather encourage you to experiment by jumping in feet first; now it seems to require a much more cautious and conservative approach. Either way can be a good model for gameplay. But, it was a very dramatic change, and the combination of a dramatic change in game style and tempo, with extremely bad UI, is a problem.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I'll give you the UI, but was there any actuall gameplay in the tile system? You hit up a new world you looked at a random mix of symbols on a grid, you matched the symbols to the buildings and unless you had to come back to click an upgrade arrow, or to move blockers with a new tech, you never thought about them again.

There was no character no destinction, one world might not have the same combination of resorces as any other. But nor did it matter. All the big impactfull desions on the economy were already made desighning a race and civ. There were too many 'and' choices and no 'or' choices. No one was particularly bad at the economy but there was no actuallgame to be good at either. The tile system lead to the AI lagging my suffling pops, and lets not forget all the complaining about sectors?

Now there are tradeoffs. Now colonising is a deliberate act, the question 'what is this world for' is an actave one. In exonomy as war it is possible to over extend, or to stunt one self by excess of caution. We have to manage oue economy, to plan. We have to be gathering enogh resorces to maintain our indaustries, not to cause shortfalls by building impulsavely. I dontexagerate when I say I logged over 1000 hours in stellaris before 2.2 (closer to 2k if we are rounding that hard) and this is the moast involved I have felt and moast fun I have had in the game. Honestly I find warfare a little boring I was playing for the Naratave/simulation intersection of telling an empires emergent story as it rises and falls. So, I'll happily talk about making things clearer, ensuring the consequential cartelage between bony mechanical elements is more clearly labled. But as I seem to keep saying, having economic fail states is no more a mark of a bad or a flawed system than is having martial ones, and for the same reason. Mismanaging ones fleets and armies is punished, so too is mismanaging ones population.

 

[cscx]

but was there any actuall gameplay in the tile system

The tiles are definitely boring. TBH, I half expected to see an actual planet, which is a multi-faceted polyhedron, and place/move things there; a bit like the planets in Star Control Origins.
IF that can't be had (too much graphics design work probably), then tiles may not be the best abstraction and the planet screen may be better off being a representation of the society of the planet (as opposed to a physical 'hey we are in space!" representation); which it sort of seems is the way they have gone - a society is an abstract thing anyway. The underlying mechanics are still messed-up though, as in - they are more informative and something that just happens, than they are something that actually gives you extra levers.
The trouble with psychical representations is that no planet is ever going to have a farm on it which is the size of China, and another monument next to it the size of Germany. But on the other hand, too much abstraction (even if it is a better analogy), takes away from immersion.

 

[SpectralShade]

But, so long as you know one thing: Building the forge will take workers from elsewhere, where is the surprise? Is 'This thing provides more desirable jobs than that thing' thus creating a trade-off so very hard to understand? I mean I get the first time you do it it can be a nasty surprise. Happened to me in spectacular style. But the second and on? You know what's going to happen. You know there's no punishment to having open slots... I'm not seeing this as a bad system, but rather its a bad communication of a system.

job interviews is a new thing to you I take it?

Just because a job is more desirable for someone doesn't mean they have the CV to get accepted for it.

In 2.2 they are simulating jobs without simulating jobs, if you catch my meaning.

That new high tech job opening up that produces complicated electric components might be a better job than working in the mine, but how many miners would actually be able to apply and get accepted for working with designing those things? In the real world, pretty much none of them. In stellaris 2.2, everyone. And you will even see the guys that are better at mining get the job ahead of people that have more aptitude for it.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

job interviews is a new thing to you I take it?

Just because a job is more desirable for someone doesn't mean they have the CV to get accepted for it.

In 2.2 they are simulating jobs without simulating jobs, if you catch my meaning.

That new high tech job opening up that produces complicated electric components might be a better job than working in the mine, but how many miners would actually be able to apply and get accepted for working with designing those things? In the real world, pretty much none of them. In stellaris 2.2, everyone. And you will even see the guys that are better at mining get the job ahead of people that have more aptitude for it.

Have you not seen all the threads where at the lightest provocatonI talk up the need to have a lag moving strata in either direction? Like I think even this one. I accept the system has flaws, but I'm very against the notion of throwing out the changes that have given me more fun than anything in the game prior just because some people are vocal about touching thr hot stove after being burned once and saying this is too complex.

Edit: If I had my way there would be a whole hoast of people complaining that it takes too long to get qualified metalurgistsand now a neboring civ is pissed at them because they used a migration treaty to steal theirs and that as a result they had no fleet. Education as you rightly said takes time and its an aspect of the simulation that would both ease the primary resorce drain, and add another layer of tradeoffs especialy if you had to create training buildings (give traning time, etics shift chance and social reserch?) to make it less ardourous.

This would also be a nice way to give machine pops a USP, you can build them for exactly the task needed.

 

[cscx]

the need to have a lag moving strata in either direction

The real economy handles this by upping the salaries of workers (to keep them there). This is why no-one's working class anymore (in the old, 19th century sense of the word) income-wise, even if they are a plumber or "agricultural machine operator". So the simple fix is to take a credits hit every time you demote pops.
The more realistic fix is to have education coupled with credits upkeep of the workforce, depending on the education level (this would favor robots). That is, as soon as you educate the workforce - it costs more, period, irrespective of whether or not you keep them all in the mines. And we can have nicer touches such as wars being easier if the workforce isn't educated.
The trouble with this take, is that it would have to work automatically and not take too much of the player's time, unless you want to micromanage and get the results of the 'nicer touches' whatever they might be.

BTW, less than 10% of the workforce in a developed economy work in the farms; I don't think there actually is a 4x game that ever gets this right.