MegaCorp ... i am tired and sad

[Rayzen10]

Stellaris is my main game so to speak. I was waiting the new expansion for months. I did preorder every DLC and even with the bugs i was still fine playing it. But after 12+ hours of this new game what i feel is just tired ... and sad. The game systems made me feel tired and i am sad due the the fact that this is my main game and i need to force myself to play it now.

While i do like more complex systems what i seen here is just over-complicated, with a bad design and interface representation witch is TAKING YOUR CONTROL AWAY. Or you are doing nothing looking at a planet bad interface waiting tens of minutes for a pop to grow or the system is creating so many problems and deficits you are constantly trying to fix what the devs over-complicated and poorly designed. At the end i feel tired, bored and very unfulfilled of my work and time spent. The old tile systems was too simple this is just boringly hard to deal with.

If you can't feel satisfied of you empire managing despite you very hard try and have to feel content to things NOT being right how you want them this is becoming more of a frustration game rather then a fun one. At one point i went from +60 energy to -15 in 2 minutes with no idea why exactly and no way to see a detailed report ( the one explaining revenue vs spending was not giving me any help ). And that deficit is very hard to fix also due to systems being bad, very indirect or depending of other parameters.

I know most of you will disagree with me but i strongly feel that this systems are great in theory but very bad in practice. They are over-complicated, taking your control away and very micro intensive when something goes bad. And the frustration of trying hard to fix things over and over again ...

From an empire builder i have become a constant problem manger ...one with basically indirect control over things.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

I kinda understand. I personally didn't have much problems, but damn, 2.2 upped the learning curve of this game A LOT. It really feels more like EUIV or HOI4 now, which as Paradox enthusiast is of course wonderful, but I guess it's not the same for more 4X-type players.
Sometimes the changes in economy feel pretty mysterious. One big thing I didn't realize is that when a building with specialist jobs is completed, workers are promoted to its jobs, which can mean that your generator guys were made clerks or metallurgists or something like that, causing a spike. Another one is the new trade system, where one pirate-spawn can plummet your energy income.
I personally love how much harder stable economy is to maintain, as now I have something to do even as a pacifistic empire. If you have loved the game so far, I'd recommend giving 2.2 a chance. It might feel pretty overwhelming at first, but at least I've found immense satisfaction in building a working economy in Le Guin.

 

[SiFreshBread]

I also feel like sometimes the new system can be very confusing. The main source of confusion to me is the fact, that I have to open population tab, locate the specicfic type of worker and hover the cursor on it in order to see how much the worker produces and consumes, vs the tile system, where you could see production values very clearly.

Still, I had a couple of "sit and push some buttons, see what it does, ruin my empire, start over" type of games, and now I have the grip on how this works, having a blast with new economy. While it's complex, I wouldn't say it's over-complicated.

The only thing I don't like about this economy is the fact that maintaining some upgraded buildings requires strategic resources, yellow upgrade signs constantly trigger me, but I can't upgrade the building, because I want that +1 (in early stages) income. Feels like it would be better, if upgrades didn't cost strategic resources to maintain, but i'm not sure, since, obviously I didn't test this as much as developers did. If the upgrades didn't cost SR, it wouldn't be such a hustle to fix shortages over and over again.

btw having shortages is fine, the market system is neat.

 

[resand]

The systems them self aren't bad. But by god the UI is just a pain to use.

 

[Astax]

I have been playing Hivemind, as they seem easier to manage in new system. I get the frustration. Until we figure out how to prebalance the builds so there is no shuffle, it will be lot of frustration.

 

[Zagreb 887]

I like the new system, but I find it very confusing too. The constant spikes in ressources are very hard to manage, because like OP says it's realy hard to see where the problem come from. The job system is also very anoying, probably because I don understand realy how it work, I find myself with a food deficit and a planet with 3 farmers jobs empty, just because my pops prefer starving as specialist than working in farm.

Is there a solution for this? Can we force a population to get a job without being autoritarian?

 

[HamHamJ]

I like the new system, but I find it very confusing too. The constant spikes in ressources are very hard to manage, because like OP says it's realy hard to see where the problem come from. The job system is also very anoying, probably because I don understand realy how it work, I find myself with a food deficit and a planet with 3 farmers jobs empty, just because my pops prefer starving as specialist than working in farm.

Is there a solution for this? Can we force a population to get a job without being autoritarian?

I feel like this is very realistic and I for one like the fact that you do not have perfect control of your economy.

 

[kingtiger3]

I had a game where my empire completely collapsed because i mysteriously wasn't making enough minerals to make consumer goods so my people were extremely unhappy which lead to less production of minerals and food so we were starving and I was then out of energy credits from filling the voids. The new systems are nice but they just need to give us an easier way to see where out resources are going. and not having pops not immediately move up and down the job ladder seems silly because is shouldn't be that hard to go from an office worker to a power plant worker or a miner. (should it?)

 

[Hecktor]

You have to take care when building specialized buildings. The worker pop gets "promoted" instantly which can cripple your economy with the missing resources of their previouse jobs and uprising consumer goods (from 0.1 to ~1.0 per pop).

Whats bugs me are these useless clerks which should go on farms / in mines. Dont need +20 amenities. Just do something useful.

 

[resand]

I like the new system, but I find it very confusing too. The constant spikes in ressources are very hard to manage, because like OP says it's realy hard to see where the problem come from. The job system is also very anoying, probably because I don understand realy how it work, I find myself with a food deficit and a planet with 3 farmers jobs empty, just because my pops prefer starving as specialist than working in farm.

Is there a solution for this? Can we force a population to get a job without being autoritarian?

The Priorities jobs button does this. You can disable jobs, by clicking the -
But if they are already specialist, you're SOL, as it takes something like 10 years for them to demote

 

[Zagreb 887]

The Priorities jobs button does this. You can disable jobs, by clicking the -
But if they are already specialist, you're SOL, as it takes something like 10 years for them to demote

Priorities... Remind me of old Caesar III games ^^ But ok, thx for the advice, I will check if can force some of this overqualified psionic bastard to work in cropfields!

 

[Annihilat0r]

The system is great, but the UI, tooltips and tutorial definitely need some love. I was following the dev diaries closely and also had an occasional look at the dev clash stream, so I kinda knew what to expect. Still, the first 1-2 hours was a lot of pausing and reading, and many questions were left unanswered by the tooltips and had to be solved by trial and error. I can understand how this can be frustrating for some people. I figured everything out eventually though and my empire is thriving. Actually, I am producing so much stuff that I don't know what to do with it, since we don't have the sector stockpiles any more.

 

[Tshi]

The new systems are nice but they just need to give us an easier way to see where out resources are going. and not having pops not immediately move up and down the job ladder seems silly because is shouldn't be that hard to go from an office worker to a power plant worker or a miner. (should it?)

It should, how many scientists do you know, that are happily ready to just drop everything and start working in a mine instead? Planning is needed!

 

[Whitecold]

The solution is to manage how many jobs you have open. Don't build stuff unless you have spare pops right on the planet, then you don't have pops wandering off to different strata

 

[Spaceception]

The Priorities jobs button does this. You can disable jobs, by clicking the -
But if they are already specialist, you're SOL, as it takes something like 10 years for them to demote

Didn't know that, thanks for the heads up, I thought the "-" button shuffled job placement or whatever, prioritzing what gets done first, but I didn't think to test it. I assume pressing + makes the jobs available again

 

[Zagreb 887]

The solution is to manage how many jobs you have open. Don't build stuff unless you have spare pops right on the planet, then you don't have pops wandering off to different strata

But the pop's grow so slow, it takes ages to fill up a planet and it's a common reflex to just build a structure, even if there is not enough pop to use it. Old tiles system habit I guess

 

[Sifer2]

I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. The system is really ambitious with a very complex new economy. It's fun when your managing a few number of worlds but starts getting really complicated as you grow larger. And especially crazy once your taking territory through warfare since it's like a big puzzle trying to figure out how to rebalance your economy after you add new developed worlds to your Empire from conquest. I feel like if they had left the Sector system more as it was with local economies, and automation that might have taken some of the edge off it. More than ever this game needs a good AI that can help you manage your bigger Empire. At the moment with that system pretty much broken it's a massive hassle to manage it all, and it's blatantly apparent they spent the bulk of their time playtesting small Megacorp empires, and not larger one's.

 

[King of Zoot]

Yeah you should wait until all jobs are full before adding a new building or district. Empty buildings still cost maintenance while not providing any benefit.

 

[Bankipriel]

The systems them self aren't bad. But by god the UI is just a pain to use.

I wish the planet management screen was twice as large & contained the first & second page on 1 larger main window

 

[Meat Vegetable]

The new population management system is pretty easy =S Just passively feel your way at first then go hard