Issues with Sectors? Read This!!!!

[Dethavin]

Alright so I may have found the current issue with Sector AI and it acting very very strange or not working at all in some situations. A number of days ago I made a post asking if anyone knew why Sector's were not colonizing, building research/mining stations and or defense stations. As well as why after some time it just stopped doing anything except upgrade buildings very slowly even with maxed out resources with 100+ income for both minerals and credits.

I have found the solution and answer... I think. So after a couple of days someone commented on my post with a lengthy maybe reason as to why my Sector was not working correctly. At the time I was only using 1 massive sector with 9 planets in said sector with an additonal 13+ habital planets that it was no colonizing. He/She stated that the game or AI might be breaking because I am using such a big sector and the AI even though maxxed out on resources is trying to stockpile enough resources to upgrade/colonize/build everything or too much for the size of my sector so it in short, short circuits the AI and stalls it out because it cannot save up enough due to caps to do what it wants/needs to do. After thinking about this for a while it made perfect sense to me at least that the AI itself would be getting bogged down with way too much stuff to do and is stalling itself out.

Here is what I did to test this out and found some pretty amazing results. I logged into my current game and split my 1 sector into 2 with 1 sector having 4 planets and the other 5. Right off the bat the constructor ships went right back to work building research and mining stations as well as building a colony ship and started colonizing. When both sectors hit 5 planet's each the AI stalled again for some reason so I split those 2 sector's up into 3 with each sector having 3/4/4 planets. As soon as I did this the construction ships went right back to work once again building research/mining AND defense stations! as well as a additional colony ship. As I am watching this now 1 sector is fully built in terms of research/mineral stations so the constructor is idle, the second secctor is happly building away mineral/research and defensive stations while the 3rd sector is idle with things to be built. Why it's idle I have no idea I have all 3 sectors over 5k on minerals/credits, but for now it is a marked improvement and does go to show that while Sector AI is not 100% broken it is also not working correctly either. Hopefully this helps some of you out there who have been having issues with sectors not working correctly. For now I will continue out this game and see how it manages.

Cheer's

P.S On a closing note I think this should prove beyond a doubt that while sector's and the AI is not 100% broken, something is very very wrong and not working as it should. Anyone is able to test this out very easily just by building 1 massive sector and you should see what I have been talking about for some time now that the sector and AI just stalls out and does nothing. Why this is happening I have no idea but my guess is that it has too much it wants/needs to build and for some reason it's wanting to stockpile more resources/credits then you can possibly have to do so. This is just my 2 cents on the matter.

 

[Anschau]

I've always thought it weird that sectors can be as big as you want them to be. There really should be a hard cap to the amount of planets, especially if the AI stops functioning at a point.

 

[Frederick III]

I guess I finally have a reason (other than game performance) to not cram everything into on gigantic super-sector. Though I figured I'd have to stop doing that when sectors gained the ability to rebel against their tyrannical metropoles in some future expansion.

 

[Kryndude]

So limit sector planets to maximum 4?

 

[The Founder]

He/She stated that the game or AI might be breaking because I am using such a big sector and the AI even though maxxed out on resources is trying to stockpile enough resources to upgrade/colonize/build everything or too much for the size of my sector so it in short, short circuits the AI and stalls it out because it cannot save up enough due to caps to do what it wants/needs to do.

That does make sense.
The "stockpiles to keep" would be based on number of planets. And if the required stockpile becomes bigger then teh storage capacity, it could break.
It especially explains why I saw those issues so rarely, but so many people reported about it. I just keep sectors small to begin with.
Plus the devs are propably running such small sectors as well and nobody ever told them it happens with a big one.

I logged into my current game and split my 1 sector into 2 with 1 sector having 4 planets and the other 5.

When both sectors hit 5 planet's each the AI stalled again for some reason so I split those 2 sector's up into 3 with each sector having 3/4/4 planets.

Question:
Planets or Systems with Colonies?
It was changed to core Sector Systems (vs Planets) way back. And sectors affected all Planets in a system to begin with. Makes a differnt with multiple habitable Systems.

I've always thought it weird that sectors can be as big as you want them to be. There really should be a hard cap to the amount of planets, especially if the AI stops functioning at a point.

That it stops functioning is decidedly not wanted. The Sector AI is just a ofshoot of the Empire AI, with a seperate storage of resources. Something in that additional code might be wonky.

 

[Yenzen]

So limit sector planets to maximum 4?

That makes governors rather questionable...

 

[jmj36]

I remember your reddit post, I was one of the guy's that commented on it. I think the sector size thing may be intended, as your sector limit does go up by one for every 4 systems you have if I remember right. I suppose they are showing the inefficiency of governing lots of systems at once, you can do it, but its not gonna work if you do. Since you can only control 5 systems to start, it makes sense the sector governors can't control more than that without a halt in production. I wonder if you play a government that adds more controllable planets, or get tech that adds to your controllable planets, that also affects the sector AI in being able to manage more than 4 planets?

I think the main issue I have with the sector AI at the moment is with planets with less than full population and unique ethics buildings. Have never seen the AI build one, and if you build one manually and hand the planet off to a sector, it re-arranges the pops off of it, I am guessing because it produces nothing. Can be an issue if you are trying to stack happiness, as the happiness drops once you hand over the planet. Because of this, I usually don't put planets into sectors until every tile is filled and the population is maxed, that way all the AI is doing is upgrading buildings for me. Then I colonize manually and build up all new colonies myself.

If there was an additional sector option that did not allow sectors to re-arrange pops, and ethics buildings were flagged to be immune to redevelopment, I think sectors would be perfect for me and my playstyle with how I use them. That way I could just build up a new colony to the point where I can place all my ethics buildings, then hand over the colony and not worry about those buildings not being used.

 

[PiotrD45]

In some games I've had sectors with 40 or more populated planets, occasionally I had to intervene regarding food issues, but my sector governor(s) were building special buildings and upgrading buildings etc. But in other games things did not go so well, untill I changed governors, I guess not all governors are up to the task at hand. At least that did the 'trick' for me, I think the defs may want to look and change some things regarding sectors and governors especially if you, like me, are playing a large map. And yes, everytime I split a sector things would get better, but not allways like I would like to see. I once had this governor who was just removing jungles etc. on tiles on planets and just letting population grow on food tiles without (allmost) building farms. That governor did not last long I can tell you.

 

[Risa]

Some input: In one of my game I have a sector covering about 10 systems. In sector setting I set it to respect tile output, and allow space construction only. It works smoothly in upgrading ground buildings. In space construction it seems to have difficulties in building mineral mining stations, a problem also commonly observed in AI empire.

 

[GuildenSpur]

When Stellaris first came out, there was some info on this forum about lowering the levels of resources the sector AI saves before upgrading.
I lowered those in my own mod and it worked, the sector AI constructed and upgraded faster.
As a result I also stated that it would be handy if Paradox explained how they see the sectors should be used as they claim the sector AI to work ok.
As suggested here, the fact that one can build so many sectors probably means sectors should be way smaller.
If the player as emperor can only handle 5 planets before receiving penalties for resources, it seems logical the sector AI's max planet would also be something like 5 planets.
From your test, it's seems to be even lower, like 4 or 3. Interesting to test out.

 

[Elothan]

As for myself, I generally use smaller sectors (2-5) and I have not noticed anything gamebreakingly bad. They are not as good as a human min maxer by any measure, but they do an ok-ish job. Then again, I usually que up 2-4 basic buildings, like farms and if its needed, a happiness boosting building before I hand them over.

 

[seePyou]

I do not understand why getting Sectors right is not priority No1 for the devs. I do not see them saying something about it, and I do not read sector related news or fixes of any real importance. We are still in the same spot of having to play along a slow idiot when at least half of us can immediately see extremely basic shortcomings in its logic. It would be one thing to experience behaviour that is hard to explain, but simply not building anything when there are resources available, or using the wrong population on a production tile. I could be very wrong, and I accept that, but we need active developer engagement and an open dialogue in sorting through the Sector AI problems. This is not to be confused with "What do you want the Sector AI to do more?", but only "Why is the current Sector AI not doing the jobs it was designed to do, and how can we fix it (before adding more jobs to it)?"

 

[Metztli]

When Stellaris first came out, there was some info on this forum about lowering the levels of resources the sector AI saves before upgrading.
I lowered those in my own mod and it worked, the sector AI constructed and upgraded faster.
As a result I also stated that it would be handy if Paradox explained how they see the sectors should be used as they claim the sector AI to work ok.
As suggested here, the fact that one can build so many sectors probably means sectors should be way smaller.
If the player as emperor can only handle 5 planets before receiving penalties for resources, it seems logical the sector AI's max planet would also be something like 5 planets.
From your test, it's seems to be even lower, like 4 or 3. Interesting to test out.

What files and what lines needed to be change, can you please tell me ?

 

[Shachza]

Here is what I did to test this out and found some pretty amazing results. I logged into my current game and split my 1 sector into 2 with 1 sector having 4 planets and the other 5. Right off the bat the constructor ships went right back to work building research and mining stations as well as building a colony ship and started colonizing. When both sectors hit 5 planet's each the AI stalled again for some reason so I split those 2 sector's up into 3 with each sector having 3/4/4 planets. As soon as I did this the construction ships went right back to work once again building research/mining AND defense stations! as well as a additional colony ship. As I am watching this now 1 sector is fully built in terms of research/mineral stations so the constructor is idle, the second secctor is happly building away mineral/research and defensive stations while the 3rd sector is idle with things to be built. Why it's idle I have no idea I have all 3 sectors over 5k on minerals/credits, but for now it is a marked improvement and does go to show that while Sector AI is not 100% broken it is also not working correctly either. Hopefully this helps some of you out there who have been having issues with sectors not working correctly. For now I will continue out this game and see how it manages.

Have you compared how the sector AI behaves with certain system totals versus your empire's core system cap? Say, if you bumped your cap to 6, would the sector only stall once it has 6 systems in it?

I have no idea how we might test the other possibility I thought of. Is the sector AI is the same builder AI as the other computer empires use. What if the sector AI reaches the point where it wants to divide its "empire" into sectors, but it can't because it's already a sector?

 

[Derp]

I remember your reddit post, I was one of the guy's that commented on it. I think the sector size thing may be intended, as your sector limit does go up by one for every 4 systems you have if I remember right. I suppose they are showing the inefficiency of governing lots of systems at once, you can do it, but its not gonna work if you do. Since you can only control 5 systems to start, it makes sense the sector governors can't control more than that without a halt in production. I wonder if you play a government that adds more controllable planets, or get tech that adds to your controllable planets, that also affects the sector AI in being able to manage more than 4 planets?.

seriously bruh?

next you'll tell me the poor lategame performance is intentional in order to give players more time to think

 

[LordPavel]

In 1.3, I had a sector with a deep negative income.
I create a new sector, and put the first sector in the second sector, and at the end, the new same sector was very very better. Nothing change, except the name and no big stock of ressources.
Look like an old sector become ''broken'' specially if there is lot of planets inside.

The sectors work, not very wells, but work. I am very very more worry about IA empire. I just invade an old empire, and even on planets very old (100 years), the planet is very very badly developp. The most important ''bug'' is the IA remove very very few blockers.
Sectors are important for players, because we love our empires. But the most important bugs/weak game design are the IA empire. They are really bad right now. And this part of the game explain why the IA are weak and we play often in hard lvl (= huge boost, and we dont understand ''how'' the IA are so strong).

 

[GuildenSpur]

What files and what lines needed to be change, can you please tell me ?

It's in the file 00_defines.lua.
I created a mod following the instructions on the Stellaris wiki.
Basically it's a folder in your Documents folder in your profile assuming you're on Windows.

...\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\mod\mychanges\common\defines

In this folder, you copy the original 00_defines.lua
I called the mod "mychanges".
I also used a descriptor.mod file in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\mod\mychanges with just some text explaining what the mod does.
Lastly you need a mychanges.mod file in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\mod with this content. As you can see the changes date back from version 1.2.1

name="My Changes"
path="mod/mychanges"
tags={
"Balance"
}
picture="mychanges.jpg"
supported_version="1.2.1"

Then changes I made where these

-- MAX_MINERALS_STORED_SECTOR_POST = 1000, -- Minerals AI will store for each budget post in sectors
MAX_MINERALS_STORED_SECTOR_POST = 500, -- Minerals AI will store for each budget post in sectors
MAX_MINERALS_SPENT_ON_NAVY = 0.50, -- Spend no more than this fraction of mineral income on navy maintenance
...
--SECTOR_STATION_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.30, -- Fraction of budget going to stations
--SECTOR_BUILDING_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.40, -- Fraction of budget going to buildings
--SECTOR_SPACEPORT_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.20,-- Fraction of budget going to spaceports
--SECTOR_ARMY_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.10, -- Fraction of budget going to armies
SECTOR_STATION_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.01, -- Fraction of budget going to stations
SECTOR_BUILDING_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.92, -- Fraction of budget going to buildings
SECTOR_SPACEPORT_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.02,-- Fraction of budget going to spaceports
SECTOR_ARMY_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.05, -- Fraction of budget going to armies

Other fun settings:

ENERGY_COLONY_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.3, -- AI will spend this fraction of their energy on new colonies
ENERGY_FACTIONS_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.2, -- AI will spend this fraction of their energy on factions
ENERGY_TILE_BLOCKER_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.2, -- AI will spend this fraction of their energy on tile blockers
ENERGY_ROBOT_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.2, -- AI will spend this fraction of their energy on robots (transfered to colonies if no robots)
ENERGY_SAVINGS_BUDGET_FRACTION = 0.1, -- AI will spend this fraction of their energy on savings

This made the sector spend more resources for buildings, far less for stations (you should change this if you want them to build stations) and some budget for armies. There are loads more settings you can try and change.

 

[jmj36]

seriously bruh?

next you'll tell me the poor lategame performance is intentional in order to give players more time to think

Yeah, seriously. If you think it should be good gameplay to be able to just make one super sector to handle all of the systems you aren't controlling, I don't know what to tell you.

Take the United States, for example. 50 states, a governor for each state, and Washington D.C., where the head of the federal government resides. Now, how much sense would it make to combine all 50 states into one super state, with one governor? The inefficiency in how that super state's government would run would be insane compared to how 50 smaller state governments run.

 

[The Founder]

Yeah, seriously. If you think it should be good gameplay to be able to just make one super sector to handle all of the systems you aren't controlling, I don't know what to tell you.

I agree with your asumption that smaller sectors are intended. The evidence is rather plentyfull for that. The similarities between Coresectorlimit and Demnesse from CK 2 are rather striking.

I disagree with them sabotaging the Sector AI and not telling us about it to archieve that goal. Wich I asume Derp had an issue with as well, even if he did not communicate that clearly.

So while I agree with there being a clear intention, I doubt the AI bugging out is the proper solution. More likely a unintended sideeffect of design decisions.

 

[Derp]

I disagree with them sabotaging the Sector AI and not telling us about it to archieve that goal. Wich I asume Derp had an issue with as well, even if he did not communicate that clearly.

I thought that was pretty obvious

no amount of realism arguments will make covertly breaking the AI for crossing a hidden and arbitrary threshold a good design decision, and I choose to believe that Paradox wouldn't be so stupid as to do that



but then again, they did release SotS2