2.2 introduces a new approach to strategic resources, with rare resources such as crystals and motes used to buy and maintain ship parts and buildings. Many players feel the result requires too much micro-management, makes for a very hard to manage game and an unpredictable economy with very wide swings in performance and output.
Who is saying this? They seem to be in the minority judging from the downvotes such posts attract. Building an efficient engine is part of the challenge and fun of the new system, giving a much more Euro-game style.
• Every resource will have very clear and singular use. For example, the resource magnesite will be used to purchase hull components on ships. It will not be used anywhere else. This will avoid cases where both buildings and ships require the same resource and making you have difficult choices on what to spend your resources.
• With two notable exceptions, being dilithium and crew, all the resources used in ship construction are only for purchase – NOT for upkeep. This means you only need to worry about accumulating the resources and your economy won’t take wild swings that will impact your ability to produce new ships.
This leads to a severe balance problem. Instead of specializing or making long-term, short term predictions, empires will just build everything at once. The big empires will keep getting bigger and there will be no additional strain on their economy to counteract this.
• All initial ship components and nearly every single building in the game will not require resources. Only advanced ship components will require resources, with a growing portion of the cost being in the strategic resource (so, say, a tier 5 hull would require about 40% of the cost in magnesite, while a tier 10 hull would be almost completely in magnesite).
Buildings and ships are free now? Why? We can just immediately build to and over fleet capacity and completely fill out a planet with buildings with the only constraint being time. This encourages rush and wide styles of play and penalizes everything else.
• Since a growing part of your ship costs is going to not in alloy but in other resources that will accumulate regardless of your alloy production, despite the fact that ships are far bigger, more powerful and more expensive in New Horizons, you will hopefully be able to produce them in a reasonable rate.
This seems to be a contradiction; perhaps it refers only to later stage ships because the last comment said there will be no initial costs for ships. Moving on, are resources just going to be generated for empires now, with no need of production lines or resource extraction? That seems to just be adding more resources for the sake of adding them without any tangible gameplay effect from it. This bullet here >
• Speaking of ways to obtain resources, ALL important resources could be obtained not only via the market, but also via a new commerce-oriented method. Planets may build starport buildings, that can produce any output you desire and require latinum as upkeep. This output can be changed via decisions on the planet, and latinum is going to be the trade currency in the game. Meaning, that you could always convert latinum via starports, and energy via the market, to purchase all strategic resources you need.
Seems to imply there is no actual production of these resources in any empire, they are simply bought or generated from starports.
• Buildings will almost never require resources. The few that do would require specific resources that would be easy to obtain and be quite global. Brizeen Nitrate will be needed for farms, a building that improves the production of all farm districts, and deuterium will be required for power plants, a building that improves the output of all energy districts.
If they're easy and global, plus without any upkeep, why add them in? It just increases resource and computing bloat without additional challenge.
• Power plants and farms, by the way, will give much bigger bonuses than the corresponding techs and buildings in vanilla. In general, much more of your economy in New Horizons will be tied to buildings and building upgrades – which will make your economy more predictable and manageable.
I'm confused by this. In vanilla, a large part of the economy is already tied to buildings, being the only way to generate research and finished goods, not to mention commerce, growth bonuses, and military fortifications. Meanwhile, the only other production path is of raw resources in the form of the farms, mines, and energy districts, with a few buildings to directly aid it.
• Buildings, in general, will give more bonuses and fewer jobs. Building upgrades will directly improve your economy instead of increasing your potential by adding more jobs. This will, again, make your economy more predictable.
• For various reasons, also to compensate for the changes to buildings, population growth rates are going to be reduced (and going forward, we hope to reduce the number of pops on planets entirely). This will, again, make your economy more predictable – you won’t have rapid changes to pop sizes that will result in pops moving to new jobs and shifting your economy.
This sounds like trying to go backwards to the way the economy worked pre-Le Guin, only without a tile system. That's dissapointing to me, honestly, because I believe Star Trek and New Horizons have all kinds of opportunity to exploit the new economic system to make even more engaging gameplay and complicated production chains, to explore the drains and pressures upon the states that make up the universe and potentially drive conflict or collapse. How often is Starfleet said to be overextended in its duties and outclassed by local opponents concentration of force, what happens to the Dominion if they cannot adequately supply cloning materials or Ketracel White, what drives Cardassian stratification and exploitation of its neighbors, and so on? Not every problem in Star Trek is some immediate existential threat like the Borg or the Undine that will immediately kill everything if unaddressed, there are much more intricate problems that if left unaddressed will also lead to collapse.
I'm sad to read this. I found Stellaris to be boring before 2.2. The new pop and "production chain" economy makes it interesting to me. I especially find this odd to read:
Isn't Stellaris supposed to be a strategy game? It's supposed to be about difficult choices, each having their advantages and downsides.
I must concur, this seems to be going in the opposite direction of Le Guin and its economy overhaul, making downtime between wars much more boing.
