Is the 'Governer Shuffle' the intended way to play?

[HorseBattery]

Every time I want to check my planets for the next round of building, I pause the game and shuffle my governer with Architectural Interest around all my planets and queue up the next set of buildings. Same deal with Environmental Engineer and clearing blockers. Once every thing has been queued up I reassign them to their relevant sector position and unpause the game. Is this really the intended way to play the game or am I missing something? It feels really cheesy but it saves a lot of resources.

 

[Calvax]

My impression is that it’s intended to an extent. The pioneer veteran class for governors suits newer colonies better, implying the intent is you have those governors speed up development of a new world and then move them on.

But I doubt the devs intended it to be this much micro. I think it comes down to some balance issues with the traits and how they relate to mechanical changes. Tile blocker and building construction traits got a straight nerf thanks to the change to how sector governors work. The only way to make them worth while is to juggle them, which isn’t fun.

Personally I would much prefer it if planetary governors were removed. Aside from how irritating it makes the UI (constantly making you feel 90% of planets are lacking) it doesn’t mesh well with the idea of having fewer, better leaders. But if it does stay then I hope these kinds of traits get reworked to council traits because the micro of governor shuffling is unfun, but if you don’t do it you might as well ignore these traits completely.

 

[Strangedane]

If it isn't the intent whoever made it is seriously naive about how players approach opprtunities for snowballing.

Especially in a game where we can pause and unpause as needed and always have the relevant govenor the right place, it feels bad to not have a bonus we could have so easily if we just micro harder.

"control yourself" I hear them whisper, "you aren't supposed to micro that hard"
Sure buddy, and we're not supposed to use the ship designer either, nor are we supposed to do anything else with a planet except automate it.
I'm sorry, but it's decidedly unfun to play intentionally sub-optimally to save micro.

 

[HFY]

I'm sorry, but it's decidedly unfun to play intentionally sub-optimally to save micro.

Agree.

And it's unfun to do too much micro.

Game design must not reward tedious micro unless that's the intended skill for the game.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

It's one of the many examples in this patch where little to no thought was put into how the game design concepts would play out in practice beyond the casual play level.

This is the kind of thing that happens with a rushed release, lack of game design expertise and presumably little playtesting. I had hoped we were past this point with Stellaris, since the past few updates had been relatively polished.

Edit: Toggling edicts on and off to avoid paying anything for them is a similar design failure, but it's not nearly as annoying to deal with since it's contained in a single screen. Both problems need to be solved though, easily done with cooldowns, or for edicts, an activation cost.

 

[Zoomy]

Govenor shuffling was always a thing, but it was better when you shuffled between sectors rather than planets.

 

[Dr. B]

I would like travel time for leaders like in good old MOO2.

 

[x-cessive]

I really dont understand, why they implemented 2 layers of governors (sector and planet), when one of their design goals was to reduce the number of leaders. Now we have more micro, the UI still lacks info for this feature and there are the problems with stacking negative modifiers. Hopefully they will remove planetary governors again.

 

[Peter34]

Game design must not reward tedious micro unless that's the intended skill for the game.

In particular it means that in MP games, you're forced to do the micro-management if you want to stay at least reasonably competetive. And that's a parameter that has some relevance in social/RP MP too, not just in PVP MP.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Every time I want to check my planets for the next round of building, I pause the game and shuffle my governer with Architectural Interest around all my planets and queue up the next set of buildings. Same deal with Environmental Engineer and clearing blockers. Once every thing has been queued up I reassign them to their relevant sector position and unpause the game. Is this really the intended way to play the game or am I missing something? It feels really cheesy but it saves a lot of resources.

It's the only way those traits are useful. If you don't shuffle them around, Architectural Interest saves you fewer minerals in a constantly building world than just getting Private Mines for flat mineral production.

If you're not intended to shuffle them, then those are dead traits.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I would like travel time for leaders like in good old MOO2.

Travel times would be great.

CK3 has a system that tracks where your characters are in the game world and this would be a great addition to Stellaris.

Only downside is that it’d be obnoxious when your scientist dies and you have to wait for the new one to arrive at the science ship, or realistically, you build a whole new ship entirely.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Travel times would be great.

CK3 has a system that tracks where your characters are in the game world and this would be a great addition to Stellaris.

Only downside is that it’d be obnoxious when your scientist dies and you have to wait for the new one to arrive at the science ship, or realistically, you build a whole new ship entirely.

I think Stellaris had travel times early on, at least I remember being frustrated at sending scientists between science ships. In short, it's a terrible solution.

The obvious quick fix for governors is to just make them sector-wide again. It would fix the ship building exploit too. I'm sure the devs must realize this is the way to do it.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

It would fix the ship building exploit too.

It would fix the exploit, but make the balance issue worse.

Everyone can do the exploit where they stack 3 governors in a system (eventually). Without it, modifiers cap at -60%, plus another 5-15% per admiral on the council, which is far, far worse than everyone sitting at 90%.

You are playing a fairly generic empire. You have one admiral on the council (your minister of defense), so by the time you have level 5 leaders, you're sitting at -65% discount. Before the patch, you would have been sitting at -5% (the production tech for whatever ship type you prefer).

Your neighbor is a FP.

• In 3.7.4, they get -15% build cost (plus another -5% from the tech). They could make 18% more ships than you from the same alloy (.95/.8). After Interstellar Fleet Traditions, when Retired Fleet Admiral can spawn, they would get another -10% and have 35% more ships than you (.95/.7), assuming you didn't yourself roll governor with that trait.
• In 3.8.X, post-exploit-fix, they get a free -15% and two Admirals on the council beyond what you have (the civic position, and their ruler), for another -20%. That puts them at -100% (capped at 90), so they get 6.5x as many (+550% more) ships than you do. Before they get veteran leaders, it's "only" a 75% increase in fleets.

One can be savvy and overcome a 35% fleet disadvantage. Make clever use of starbases, out tech them, whatever. No one can overcome a 6.5x fleet disadvantage from a near-peer.

tl;dr: Having the modifiers float around -60% for the average empire means every additional build cost reduction beyond the baseline is multiplied by at least 3x in terms of its impact on the fleets you can support. A -15% build cost reduction goes from meaning 18% more fleets to 75% more fleets, for instance.

 

[Me_]

If cost reduction traits are to stay, then they should change building cost from one-time payment to over-time payment.

 

[Pancakelord]

My impression is that it’s intended to an extent. The pioneer veteran class for governors suits newer colonies better, implying the intent is you have those governors speed up development of a new world and then move them on.

Has anyone found the pioneer vet class useful? Unless im rushing XP, i've already got to the point where i'm industrialising economies by the time I have a "decent" rank 4 governor. And by then, if i'm attempting to stay near to the leader cap, i'm going to be dropping a governor on my forge/factory world, over a random bumpkin colony.

 

[Methone]

Every time I want to check my planets for the next round of building, I pause the game and shuffle my governer with Architectural Interest around all my planets and queue up the next set of buildings. Same deal with Environmental Engineer and clearing blockers. Once every thing has been queued up I reassign them to their relevant sector position and unpause the game. Is this really the intended way to play the game or am I missing something? It feels really cheesy but it saves a lot of resources.

Did you do this pre-3.8, shuffling them between sectors?

No?

THEN DON'T

 

[InvisibleBison]

Did you do this pre-3.8, shuffling them between sectors?

No?

THEN DON'T

The problem with this attitude is that, as has been stated already in this thread, plenty of people find the idea of not doing something optimal to be unfun, even if doing the optimal thing is also unfun. Games should not put people in a position where they have to choose which kind of unpleasant experience they shall have.

 

[Thiend]

If cost reduction traits are to stay, then they should change building cost from one-time payment to over-time payment.

This would also make many, many projects much easier to start without having to stockpile resources, which I see as a bonus. Example: arcology project paid over the duration instead of upfront starts basically whenever you want, as it should because it already takes as much or more time filling in the dang city districts.

Although, talking of arcology project, it should be a default feature for all empire types with an AP to make them slightly better restricted to some - they're too mandatory.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Did you do this pre-3.8, shuffling them between sectors?

No?

THEN DON'T

So you recommend no one take the Architectural Interest trait, and just take Private Mines instead?

 

[velles]

Did you do this pre-3.8, shuffling them between sectors?

No?

THEN DON'T

Pre 3.8 had sector-wide governor traits, so there was no need to shuffle (or at least no need to shuffle that much), now we have useless planetary governor positions and sector governors essentially had been nerfed.