Is anything further planned for sectors?

[maxp779]

Because the way they work right now I have two options for planet management:

1. Ignore sectors and manage everything manually (I hate this)

2. Use sectors and just push through the grind of using them. And by that I mean having to send them resources manually every so often. Also replacing the leaders every ~80 years is a pain. I've never liked doing that but now its orders of magnitude worse since I have a lot more sectors to deal with now.

Here's an example of my 2.2.3 mid game:

I have 39 planets across 18 sectors. I really don't see the point in using this transfer resources screen 18 times every so often to send a sector resources. I play this game for fun. That is not fun. I also don't really see the point in manually managing 39 planets, I just don't want to do this it's too much. And I don't even control 25% of the galaxy yet!

Honestly the transfer resources popup looks kinda half finished... it makes me think there is more that didn't meet the deadline or something.

tl;dr
New sectors suck. I would like to know if there is anything planned with regards to sectors? Or is this it and it's staying this way?

 

[Sifer2]

I would imagine they will fix it sometime after they get back from vacation. It can't really stay like this as it makes a wide playstyle have 10 times more busy work, and micromanagement than it did before. Despite one of the stated reasons for getting rid of tiles to be reduce all the meaningless clicking. Of course someone will pop in to say it's so deep to build your 21st alloy foundry on your 30th planet. Really the new system is mostly interesting early game or for tall empires. Which is probably all they had time to playtest.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

I pray they ran out of development time before xmas, and simply released it as-was, in its unfinished state.

Any other explanation is too depressing to express in words.

 

[methegrate]

There has to be. Otherwise there's no point to have kept sectors at all, no less to have put in hours rebuilding how they work.

As of 2.2 sectors only do two things: optional AI management and governor assignment. Neither need a whole sectors mechanic jury-rigged into the game. Just stick an "AI manager" button on the planet screen and let you assign governors to multiple planets at once. A lot easier than rebuilding and keeping an entire game mechanic (no less one as controversial as sectors).

So it seems like there's got to be a plan for sectors as a game mechanic.

Then again I've assumed that from the beginning. Sectors don't add features or options, so they aren't a part of gameplay, and forcing players to use a micromanagement/UI tool never made sense. I've always figured that sectors as-is are just a placeholder for some future mechanic the dev team hasn't gotten around to building yet. Otherwise there's no reason not to just replace the whole thing with an AI button on the planet screen.

 

[Truly_xtreem]

I really hope they do something with sectors, to be honest its the only change I do not like along with some buffs needed for ME's

I love to play MEA I think it is a good balance for my game style but after a few wars I am just using a colossus to blow up planets rather than assimilate them as i I just can't face the amount of micro management I know feel I HAVE to do on new planets as they are always borked and need a ton of changes and babysitting to look after (don't even get me started on this with a normal army assault!)

Previously I would invade or nanobot them and just assign to the nearest sector, OK so the AI did not do an amazing job but they did stop them from spiking huge amounts of unrest and crime causing a million pop ups which is what seems to happen now no matter what i set into the sector settings, previously the most I would have to do assign some patrol drones if it was a high pop world taking it's time to assimilate to keep unrest down, now all the crime pop ups, unemployed pops due to buildings offline is just too much, so blow them all up

 

[maxp779]

I love to play MEA I think it is a good balance for my game style but after a few wars I am just using a colossus to blow up planets rather than assimilate them as i I just can't face the amount of micro management I know feel I HAVE to do on new planets as they are always borked and need a ton of changes and babysitting to look after (don't even get me started on this with a normal army assault!)

Destroying entire planets rather than face the micro of managing them Yeah that says it all really. Also good idea, im gonna start doing that from now on.

 

[Namfuak]

I think that from the beginning sectors have been an idea PDX really wants to have, but can't figure out how to do in a way that balances reducing micro with actual utility. I think the current system could work much better if two things happened:

1. Players were able to redraw sectors within the rules - either just that they could choose a new central system for each sector, or that they could create free-form sectors so long as they had a certain number of contiguous systems. I also suggested in another thread that sectors could be drawn by the player but limited to a number of systems/colonies/districts that totaled the empire's admin cap (or have penalties for going over).

2. The transfer resources feature definitely needs tweaking, probably update it to allow either monthly transfers, or allow us to set specified resource minimums and let sectors take out resources after that, like as long as there is at least 5000 minerals or 7000 EC stored sectors can withdraw from that pool to build buildings. You could keep the option to just dump resources one-time in sectors and for the player to build buildings themselves.

 

[Blurb]

I think that from the beginning sectors have been an idea PDX really wants to have, but can't figure out how to do in a way that balances reducing micro with actual utility. I think the current system could work much better if two things happened:

1. Players were able to redraw sectors within the rules - either just that they could choose a new central system for each sector, or that they could create free-form sectors so long as they had a certain number of contiguous systems. I also suggested in another thread that sectors could be drawn by the player but limited to a number of systems/colonies/districts that totaled the empire's admin cap (or have penalties for going over).

2. The transfer resources feature definitely needs tweaking, probably update it to allow either monthly transfers, or allow us to set specified resource minimums and let sectors take out resources after that, like as long as there is at least 5000 minerals or 7000 EC stored sectors can withdraw from that pool to build buildings. You could keep the option to just dump resources one-time in sectors and for the player to build buildings themselves.

One problem with sectors is that PDX is trying to both make them an administration tool AND a gameplay hook.
These two functions have contradictory design requirements:
A gameplay hook needs limitations, rules and ingame benefits/drawbacks to make for interesting and non-abusable gameplay.
A pure administration tool should be completely free of rules, so that players can organize things in whatever ways and groups they bloody wish to.
Trying to do both means you need enough rules to prevent ridiculous abuse, while avoiding the rules that makes an admin tool useless.

Sectors will remain an absolute mess until PDX goes for a final solution and decides what a sector is supposed to be.
Until that time comes, sectors will be stuck in development purgatory, going back and forth between various flavours of pain in the ass.