I am frustrated with 2.2. Reasons why, and suggested remedies.

[Rybear]

I've now played, partially, 3 games of the new system. I'm probably dropping playing this game until I see things come back to fixed. I am FURIOUS that you messed things up this badly.

This details my comments, appreciations, and complaints, with suggested remedies. If this should go somewhere else...well, I started the thread, don't feel a need to respond. I mostly hope this makes it to the product owner so they have input to fix this stuff. (Yes, I'm in agile software dev myself.)

Very high level summary:

• You have made a game that was mostly executive in nature into a complete micromanagement slog-fest.
• Things are so micro-oriented now that I'm genuinely looking for something else to play.
• The complexity you added in 2.2 is not balanced with playability.
• Many of the ideas are good but they needed more polish. I suspect this update had minimal broad playtesting.

SUBJECTS

1. TRADE. Interesting system. Adds a new resource that has some flexibility. Overall I like it.
2. PIRACY. Valid concept, too complex. UI is kludgy, feels like you bolted it on to the side of an existing system. Suggestion: Abstract the antipiracy activities greatly. A system I've seen be successful in the past is to assign ships to antipiracy. They're taken out of the main play and manage themselves. Assigning them and de-assigning them is like changing a policy. You could buy "police ships" the same way you buy construction and science vessels. You pay maintenance on them, but they're just out there, doing their thing. You don't manage where they go. Occasionally you have to add more due to length of trade routes, increased piracy, or ships getting shot down. You could still have pirate bases or fleets that the Navy needs to take care of, but that's not part of trade.
3. SECTORS. You added a ton of micromanagement to planets, then nuked the very effective sector system. I cannot understand how this was successful in playtesting. Managing planets is now a game to itself. Suggestion: Simply restore the old sector system. This will go a long way towards fixing things. Alternate suggestion: permit sector capitals, then a radius of control in jumps that the player can set. Systems which would overlap have a tiebreaker rule, like sector created first or senior governor.
4. SECTOR INSTRUCTIONS. I suspect this is actually a defect. I cannot give instructions to governors that make any sense; only the old 4 categories, no management of pops, construction in sector space, or anything else. Suggestion: clean this up & restore useful abilities.
5. RESOURCE CHAINS. I actually like that there are levels of refinement necessary, and everything isn't just "easy to build". I have always felt that ships were too easy to build to massive fleets, and preferred the idea that battleships should be a Big Deal, not just tons of them everywhere. So, some of this is good. The problem: you've made me micromanage this aspect of the game. Resource levels swinig wildly up and down for no reasons I can tell. Suddenly shifting between +50 income to -25 deficit, or the reverse, without any clear reason to me. I'm sure there is one, but I'm not poring over every planet to figure out what alloy plant just came online that is now draining my volitile motes! Suggestion: Make this easier. Give me some UI that shows me what is draining my "X" resource, what is producing it, and levels of use (in a graph) over time. Alternately, make this simpler overall as this is a ROYAL pain in the ass to manage.
6. PLANETARY MANAGEMENT. You added depth to planets in a way that adds to the game...and changes it to a new game completely. I like the foundations of the new system - planet populations being larger/growing, sector management, limited "special" building spaces being earned with increasing size. Good ideas. Just...a wholly different game when you implement this much of them. Now I'm focused not on my empire and being an executive, I'm a micromanager in the accounting office. Combine this with the sector problems I describe....and the game is almost unplayable. Suggestion: If you're going to keep this level of complexity you have to add something that makes it easy, not just pretty. You're going to have to show me many or all planets at once, let me perform operations right on that screen, and understand the impacts of them. I need to see planets in the context of other planets. You clearly are rewarding specialization of planets in the current design, so I have to make sure the whole design of specializations hangs together. Again, this has become REALLY complex in a way I wasn't looking for. A good UI would make it easier.
   
7. BALANCE OF FORCES. This is actually kind of positive. As I noted a little earlier, I like that it's not so easy to just sit things out, make a fleet of 40 battleships, and start kiling things with a 150K point fleet. Because of alloys and other resources fleets aren't as huge, fights are more balanced (and therefore harder to win) and bases count for more. I do like this. I hope there's a way to keep it without me having to be an accountant at the same time (see other points here).
8. FUNCTION KEYS. I'm sure this is minor, but should be easy to fix. You changed the F[x] hotkeys. Suggestion: make these player configurable in an easy UI. I see there's a textfile to edit. Don't make me think that hard, OK?
9. EVENT LOG. Strange as it sounds sometimes when I'm pressing keys to do things, the game pops me a message of some kind and I inadvertently dismiss it because I was already pressing the ESC key to exit a menu. Sometimes I can guess what it was, sometimes I can't. Suggestion: Couldn't you write a record somewhere and show me an event log of these things so I could at least know what happened?

A couple of game enhancement suggestions.

1. MORE JUMPLANE / WORMHOLE SPECIALS. Things that could add mid or late-game interest is the ability to scan for "hidden" wormholes or jumplanes, where they require hyperdrive 2 or 3 to traverse. Sudden changes to geography in the game could make it interesting.
2. MID/LATE GAME SCIENCE SHIP OPPORTUNITIES. Similar to the above, perhaps have some events which can only be detected with new sensors, developed generically at tech 3-4-5. Possibly adapt the Curator labs for this purpose. This could permit a new round of discovery, or other uses for science ships. This might give the game more of a "final frontier" flavor.
3. IMPROVE CARRIERS. Lots of workshop ideas have been done here: you should adopt some of them. Make carriers and fighters more useful as standoff weapons, and antimissile weapons.

I think that's enough for now.

Best wishes with the game. I'm hoping to see good things in the future...I just will probably stop logging hours on it shortly.

Rybear.

 

[Dalwin]

It is simply a paradigm shift. It is different now. Give it a chance and once you get used to it, you may agree with the many who think that it is actually much better now than it was.

Admittedly it is a bit of a shock at first. The game is now very different.

The micromanagement is not so bad if you accept that you don't have to 100% eliminate inefficiency by checking all your planets every 6 months. Loosen your standards a bit on that and most of the micro is gone. It introduces less inefficiency than the old sector governors used to.

 

[SemperSaevio]

"Now I'm focused not on my empire and being an executive, I'm a micromanager in the accounting office."

This. Exactly this is my own problem with 2.2.

Speaking only for myself, I do not want to play a game simulating the everyday work of finance and trade ministers. As important as economy micromanagement and structure is to a nation I personally find it incredibly dry and uninteresting and managing it is outright tedious. It feels too much like WORK for a game.

I want to play as president or fleet admiral, making top level executive decisions on the direction and policies of my country, and major military strategic level decisions. Pre 2.2 this was the majority of what the player did in this game and I loved it. Economy was abstracted and could be largely ignored beyond balancing the budget in two resources and saving up for capital projects or stockpiling to run deficits during wartime or rapid expansion.

In my humble opinion, I believe the current massively enhanced complexity can be left in just the way it is for those who want the more traditional Paradox spreadsheet management economy simulator. Just offer the option to AUTOMATE it. If I do not choose to micromanage the economy I might sacrifice some potential efficiency gain. I am willing to accept that as long as the automated mode will produce comparable, competitive results vs the AI empires. In fact, I would opine that this will produce a more "realistic" experience at the executive level, since in reality most nations do not have a god emperor possessing relative super-intelligence running their economies at maximum efficiency. The fact that as a human I can out-think and out-plan any AI in a micro heavy economy simulator is an unfair advantage that the developers are forced to balance by giving arbitrary bonuses to the AI.

For those that derive great satisfaction in crafting and managing a highly complex (for a game) economic model the option would remain and they can play and win this way. But I for one would love to have the option to avoid at least the vast majority of micromanaging the economy and leave that to a competitively competent AI. It does NOT have to be anywhere close to maximum efficient. Just competitively competent vs its peers in game. And I'll manage the executive decisions within the budget and resources it provides me.

 

[sunyc]

the sector (or rather high penalty to force to create sectors) is the key here. The current admin cap penalty is simply too easy to ignore, which kinda force you to Have lots of planets and micromanage a lot, for profit , but soon you will be consumed by micromanagement and the game is no longer fun.

 

[wingren013]

PIRACY. Valid concept, too complex.

What's so complex about putting your ships where there is piracy?

Managing planets is now a game to itself.

That was the point of the update.

MID/LATE GAME SCIENCE SHIP OPPORTUNITIES. Similar to the above, perhaps have some events which can only be detected with new sensors, developed generically at tech 3-4-5. Possibly adapt the Curator labs for this purpose. This could permit a new round of discovery, or other uses for science ships. This might give the game more of a "final frontier" flavor.

I like this, but this is a dlc/patch all to itself.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

I happen to disagree with the thread title but the OP is quite well thought out that I happen to agree to it anyway.

 

[Lumion32]

I agree that the new system is good but needs polish. Balance wise and quality of live wise. I do not quiet get the mico complaints, as we have far less buildings and stuff then bevor...sure we have production changes, but those are simple to handle.
My main thing is the mid game needs more stuff. I would suggest new stuff to explore and scan that gets unlocked with scanner tech and a lot more colony events and ones with a bigger MTTH or certain requirements, so we get them sprinkeled in the whole game. And events with different paths, with random chance, with multiple good choices.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

While i disagree with you about the actual level of micromanaging needed, i absolutely agree with you about the necessity of QOL patches that makes managing planets easier, with an improved interface and smoother mechanics (i'm looking at you, Piracy System). AI improvements, expecially Sector AI, would greatly reduce the workload for players and make all much more enjoyable.

Bad thread title, good points.

 

[wingren013]

Something I'd like to see is the return of the unemployment notification, and the addition of a high piracy notification.

 

[AlknicTeos]

I like micromanagment, still I would like have some comfort features. Anyway, I'm a big fan of which direction this game went. The new system can be easily exploited to. I have 4,8k pops and 61k research, and within some years I have fight empire crawl off

 

[Losttruppen]

Something I'd like to see is the return of the unemployment notification, and the addition of a high piracy notification.

Do you mean like a pop-up message? They already have a little red symbol beside the planet name on the outliner which works for me. There is actually a high piracy notification but you need to toggle the trade map-mode, I think this should appear on the regular mode when the skull turns red.

I'm inclined to agree with the OP that this patch would have been much better with more testing and bug fixes prior to launch. Though I feel this new economy is much better in theory, in practice it is a chore at the moment. We waited 2.5 years for them to fix the halfbaked tile system and they replaced it with something we are going to need to wait longer still before we see a fix.

Right now I'm satisfied with Life-seeded runs at 5x habitable planet and going really tall(thank you Fen Habbanis) but I can see this economy being a nightmare for a wide colony heavy playstyle. It's actually kind of enjoyable building up planets one at a time, but as soon as I start claiming my neighbours, building habitats, or terraforming new gaia worlds(still kinda broken) I lose all interest in that playthrough.

 

[wingren013]

Do you mean like a pop-up message? T

I'm talking about how you used to have a little symbol in your top bar that you could click to bring you to the planet with unemployment.

 

[Dalwin]

"Now I'm focused not on my empire and being an executive, I'm a micromanager in the accounting office."

This. Exactly this is my own problem with 2.2.

Speaking only for myself, I do not want to play a game simulating the everyday work of finance and trade ministers. As important as economy micromanagement and structure is to a nation I personally find it incredibly dry and uninteresting and managing it is outright tedious. It feels too much like WORK for a game.

I want to play as president or fleet admiral, making top level executive decisions on the direction and policies of my country, and major military strategic level decisions. Pre 2.2 this was the majority of what the player did in this game and I loved it. Economy was abstracted and could be largely ignored beyond balancing the budget in two resources and saving up for capital projects or stockpiling to run deficits during wartime or rapid expansion.

In my humble opinion, I believe the current massively enhanced complexity can be left in just the way it is for those who want the more traditional Paradox spreadsheet management economy simulator. Just offer the option to AUTOMATE it. If I do not choose to micromanage the economy I might sacrifice some potential efficiency gain. I am willing to accept that as long as the automated mode will produce comparable, competitive results vs the AI empires. In fact, I would opine that this will produce a more "realistic" experience at the executive level, since in reality most nations do not have a god emperor possessing relative super-intelligence running their economies at maximum efficiency. The fact that as a human I can out-think and out-plan any AI in a micro heavy economy simulator is an unfair advantage that the developers are forced to balance by giving arbitrary bonuses to the AI.

For those that derive great satisfaction in crafting and managing a highly complex (for a game) economic model the option would remain and they can play and win this way. But I for one would love to have the option to avoid at least the vast majority of micromanaging the economy and leave that to a competitively competent AI. It does NOT have to be anywhere close to maximum efficient. Just competitively competent vs its peers in game. And I'll manage the executive decisions within the budget and resources it provides me.

But you CAN automate it. Of course the new sector governors might not be even as good as the old ones, but the automation is still present. IF they do too bad of a job you can always compensate by lowering difficulty by one notch and still enjoy playing just the macro game.

 

[Nakkivene]

I agree with many things OP says, though I don't understand the less ships angle I keep hearing about. Now you can have a pile of battleships off the back of just a few planets. I don't think the new economy system is bad, and the scope of change is more than enough to breathe new life to Stellaris, however the increased micro unfortunately doesn't come with more shortcuts or other ways to deal with micro. Can we at least have :

- Allow either automatic resettlement of pops or a scoop function to take all unemployed pops from planets to a place until it's jobs are filled. Clicking 70 times when I conquer a FE world or build a ringworld section is horrible. It feels like how many companies run their webstores, that is, complete ass.

- How about allowing me to order more than one corvette / click in my fleet? I obviously assumed it would be CTRL or Shift but no, and if there is such a function, sure, call me lazy, but why is it not the same key as all the other +/- functions? And if there's not, WHY? 230 corvettes clickclickclickclick what is this supposed to be anyway, Starcraft 1?

- Why do I need to zoom in systems? I do not care to look at your graphics. I have seen space done a hundred times, and it's always space. Please do not drag me from the actual gameplay screen for no reason.

- Why can I not queue a space station to completion?

I don't care to click at things for no reason, I don't need to be kept occupied with busywork, I'll rather just drink and wait.

Also screw the pop-ups. I have always hated them in every Paradox game. The most annoying feature in any website in a game. Why? Get out of my way I'm doing things what did I click yes to rhghgerhgrgh

 

[Delthor]

Very high level summary:

• You have made a game that was mostly executive in nature into a complete micromanagement slog-fest.
• Things are so micro-oriented now that I'm genuinely looking for something else to play.
• The complexity you added in 2.2 is not balanced with playability.
• Many of the ideas are good but they needed more polish. I suspect this update had minimal broad playtesting.

I feel like you can level this exact criticism with zero modification at 2.0's changes to war and FTL. Or even at the whole war system in general. You have to move individual fleets where you want them, choose how to build different ship classes, deal with this whole rock/paper/scissors element, worry about having multiple fronts, manage fleet reinforcement, and so on. There's a lot involved in waging war, and more than ever starting in 2.0. Yet I don't think I saw anyone ask "Why can't I just tell my admirals what their priorities are and let them do what they need to do to wage war while I focus on managing my empire that funds said war?"

Now that it's the economy side of the game that actually has depth, people are up in arms? Why is it acceptable to ask for the economy to play itself so you can focus on war in a game where an entire ethos is pacifism? That's absurd. Sure, ask for some improvements to automation. That's fine, and I think it's pretty much universally agreed that sector generation/assignment/automation is poor and needs improvement. But don't declare the game dead like this, since it's sensationalist and will just get you ignored.

Way too few of these whine-fests focus on the real solution to their issues, which is better sectors. You make it two bullet points of 12, yet it's the solution to 90% of your issues with 2.2. Also, why not title it something like "Sectors need to be improved to reduce economy micro" or something similar?

 

[Zenopath]

The new system isnt that hard. you have your planets up in the Outliner, if you see an icon of some sort under the name, an action is required. Done.

The old system was tedious and mindless, while also requiring a fair bit of time.

 

[Nakkivene]

The new system isnt that hard. you have your planets up in the Outliner, if you see an icon of some sort under the name, an action is required. Done.

The old system was tedious and mindless, while also requiring a fair bit of time.

The new system is interesting to me, in theory at least, because if you lose a world or two, or even if they were bombarded WW2 style, you could be in trouble if you specialized your world or even if you didn't. Clicking on easy to figure out things that you do by the motions is not the good part about it. But it is good.

 

[exogeologist]

I happen to disagree with the thread title but the OP is quite well thought out that I happen to agree to it anyway.

Yes, completely agree with this. The title is very aggressive, but the post is well-thought-out and provides positives and constructive ideas for improvement. I'd definitely suggest editing the title just to be sure more people see this and can weigh in.

I was in the process of writing my own post on this exact subject, but the OP was really well done so I'm going to +1 and add a few more thoughts.

TLDR: I love this update as well. But we need UI improvements.

I just got to a point in the game where my empire has become unmanageable. Large galaxy that I control about a third of, with ~95 planets (and for some reason, 30+ sectors). I want to keep expanding and reasonably will hit 200 planets or more (planets, habitats, ringworlds). I want a large empire! It's part of what makes 4x games fun for me.

I actually *prefer* to micromanage my planets, within reason, and this economy update makes that achievable. I can build out some infrastructure, then go away for a while while the population grows into it. The icons in the Planets menu are useful to indicate where I need to add housing, or jobs. But I have to scroll through the entire list. Let me FILTER/SORT this list, so that the active list on the right side of the screen is *only* the planets that need attention *and* have an empty building queue. At any given time it should only be a few planets needing my attention, and I can let them sit there in a "to-do" list that I can address when I have the minerals/attention.

Along with filter/sort on the right-hand menus (should be implemented beyond just Planets), it'd be great to be be able to have some control over the alerts at the top. With filter/sort I'd disable the Planet alerts entirely. I'd probably also disable Starbase and other alerts, depending on the control given in the right-hand menus.

Also, big +1 to fixing the auto-sectors... 30 sectors for 90 planets is ridiculous, and unreasonable for setting governors.

And a big +1 to the changes to the Function hotkeys. Research is now off the hotkeys entirely, which is really irritating. It takes multiple clicks to get to that menu now when I used to just be able to hit F4. Let us configure hotkeys.

But overall this patch is great and I'm looking forward to where the game goes from here!!

 

[Losttruppen]

I can let them sit there in a "to-do" list that I can address when I have the minerals/attention.

Adding a list of planets/megastructures that need your attention to the Outliner would be a great boon.

 

[xxHanasaku]

I have to agree with OP on this one. One aspect of this game that has been common for me is this: every major release starts with me feeling like "this release just ruined the game for me" but eventually turns into "this is actually pretty good". However, this time is different: I do feel like there is a whole lot more "mouse clicking" and a lot less "lead my empire to victory in a cruel and hostile galaxy" (even if I'm the one making it cruel and hostile).

In the current release, planetary management is far more a "reactionary paradigm" than a planning paradigm, meaning that the most efficient way to manage your planets is to react a single primary event, pop growth, to plan your next planet action rather than simply periodically scanning the planets, deciding what improvements you want to make, queuing them up, and moving on to the next task.

This is where the "click fest" begins: find the planet in the outliner, click on it. Look at the jobs, look at the pops, look at the empty building slots, look at the current production, decide what is most important to keep my economy going, and then repeat for every other planet. Failure to do this correctly will kill your economy.

No matter how the game changes, there will always be a level of "reactionary economic management" (or reactionary event management) to it and that is part of the fun (at least for some). I don't think the current UI is optimal for this task.

The "Outliner" needs to go away.

For me, one of the biggest problems with the previous release was the fact that most actions were funneled through the outliner. In the late game, the outliner was so bloated with selection options (I've had to scroll through over 50 star bases to find the one I am looking for) that it was far more of an impediment than a tool. The majority of actions I needed to take all funneled through the outliner whether it was planetary management, assigning science ships or constructors, finding fleets, etc. (that's after assigning all ten hot keys).

I think a better UI paradigm would be a more "dashboard" approach where significant events and data could be collected into a more concise summary and the player could click on options to respond to important events. In addition to a "dashboard", a more tabular or spreadsheet based management control would help reduce the number of clicks.

Here is an example of what I think would be a better approach. The "dashboard" continues to display the essential information that is currently at the top of the screen, but it also tells me that I currently have xx planets., xx fleets, xx star bases, or xx anything else that I might need to know. Next to planets, there are icons that tell me I have zz unemployed pops, zz planets that have housing issues, zz open tiles, etc. If I mouse over the unemployment icon, the tool tip tells me the name of the 4 planets that have this problem. If I click on the icon, then a table lists these four planets along with a statistical summary of what's happening on this planet, and a few controls to allow me to deal with the problem then and there. It could also include a button or a link to open the full planetary display should the player need the full resources. A dashboard could also queue up diplomatic events (you know, like that trade offer from another empire that you accidentally closed without reading) and provide a way to look at all of those at the same time.

I don't think a dashboard approach would solve everything, but if it made it possible to do the 50% most important or click-consuming tasks, it would be a major improvement over the current UI.

I will get used to the new economy and eventually figure out how to build out my planets, etc., in a more optimal way. But we need a better UI than the outliner.

PS Is there any way we could get "Technology" assigned to the "F11" function key? I access Technology far more than many of the other assigned functions and the "F11" key isn't busy right now.