Nostalgia for the Tile System.

[maxirage]

The current system is just as much micro as the old one. With tiles I didn't have to worry about ludicrous mechanics like demotion time (why is this still a thing?). The only reason it feels like less is because there are less buildings on each planet.

The real problem with later Stellaris is resource/mechanical bloat. Once upon a time each resource acted differently and served a purpose. Then they changed food to act just like minerals. Then they introduced alloys that act just like minerals. Then consumer goods from a mineral penalty into a resource that was just like minerals. Then they changed strategic resources to act just like minerals. Eventually the game had so many different minerals to juggle they had to introduce the galactic market to compensate for that gigantic mess. Why did the devs feel the game needed 7 types of minerals? I have no damn idea. Because galactic market resources are interchangeable you could combine them all into a single resource type and not lose anything besides pointless micro.

It appears the Stellaris devs introduce random stuff with the hope that it will pan out into something good in the future, which it rarely does. It's a very bizarre approach to game design that has turned it into gaming's Frankenstein's monster.

 

[HFY]

I honestly never understand the nostalgia for the early Stellaris features like multiple FTL methods, tile system, borders expanding on their own. From my perspective, everything we have now is far more consistent and better. To each their own, I guess.

In the old version, Alien Pets (d_alien_pets_deposit) were a deposit which you could use as a luxury good.

In the current beta, a planet with d_alien_pets_deposit allows you to research Alien Zoo which gives 2 Entertainer jobs, just like an un-upgraded Holo Theater.

Alien Zoo = Holo Theater is certainly consistent, but in my opinion it's boring compared to what came before, and in this case boring = worse.

The current system is just as much micro as the old one. With tiles I didn't have to worry about ludicrous mechanics like demotion time (why is this still a thing?). The only reason it feels like less is because there are less buildings on each planet.

In my experience, the current system is more micro and worse micro.

There was a hard cap on how many pops you needed to poke (1 pop per tile, up to 25 max). Happy pops stayed where they were put. Pops didn't decide to change tile based on hidden weights.

 

[ASGeek2012]

I started playing Stellaris at the tail end of the tile period. I found the tile system to be okay and had some merits, but when the new system was implemented, I discovered I liked it better. I actually prefer my planets to be more abstracted, which is what the current system does better than the tile system. I much prefer not to have to deal with details like where to put my buildings down on planets. I'd rather concentrate on the overall management of the colony and the empire.

 

[NotAYakk]

I can imaging a way for the tile system to work without unbounded micro.

What if Tiles mattered a whole bunch at the new colony stage, and started mattering less as your planet grew? Eventually it would matter not at all, because your infrastructure reaches the point where "which tile you are on" is irrelevant.

The same would be true of planets in a system. At the start, what is on what planet matters a lot; you have mining around venus, a research base at jupiter, etc. As the system infrastructure levels up, location stops mattering. Your population and buildings are system-wide, and people can commute wherever.

Then the same can happen for sectors.

A holotheatre (tile level) upgrades to a holonetwork (planet level) upgrades to a holostation (system level) to a holomatrix (sector level).

You start out fiddling with placing things on planetary tiles, then fiddle with what planet something is on, then what star system something is in, and then what sector something is in. In each stage, the fiddling starts to not matter as you approach the next one ("adjacency bonus" goes from adjacent, to 2/3 away, to anywhere on the planet for example).

 

[Mitchz95]

With the tiles, planets felt like worlds with geography and resource deposits. When you clicked on a planet, you got what looked like a map, which made it feel like a place that mattered.

With the current system, planets feel like spreadsheets devoid of soul. Deposits are still there but they're hidden behind a dropdown menu and not particularly interesting to look at.

 

[Unseelie]

The tile system was quite frankly tedious after you had half a dozen planets to manage. Just another level of busy work that I don't miss

Well, these days I often find myself looking for things to do at fastest....and a large proportion of my play is multiplayer and limited by lag....so this is much worse, most of the time.

I would welcome, especially in the mid game, a puzzle that I can make improvements on while the days tick by and I've got nothing to do but click the build cruiser or build research lab button.

I'm not looking for busy work, because...no one ever is, by the meaning of the term. I am, however, playing a game to fill my time. In-game-down-time is...such a waste of my time.

 

[Zoomy]

So, random undeveloped idea that popped into my head when reading the thread, I had a thought on how tiles could make a comeback. Like, you keep nearly everything in Stellaris the same; districts, pops, sprawl, the Stellaris 3.x we all know and love/tolerate [delete as appropriate]. But, you use tiles to represent the planet on the ground combat screen.

Soldier jobs still provide defence armies, only now the armies are tiles you place on the tile map and instead of production bonuses the tiles give bonuses or penalties to armies, although you'd have to let troops stack multiples on a single tile so they can all fit. Maybe have three troop types, for example infantry, vehicles and fliers, have them work in a rock/paper/scissors fashion, something nice and basic. The AI can autoplace defenders as they're created but the player can go in and shuffle things around, maybe swap troop types if the enemy is spamming something in particular, so like ship design you can ignore it but if you do you won't get the best results.

Meanwhile, invasion side it's the same idea, you'd build up assault armies as before only now when they land they land on the tile map in a auto-formation you can click okay on or adjust manually for best results, and then the invasion happens and the troop icons smash into each other (so yeah you'd also have to assign them directions to go I guess, there's another mechanic) and the better one wins. Like I say it's something mostly thought out as I wrote it, but it gets rid of the thing no-one likes and replaces it with something that at least some people liked.

 

[Pancakelord]

In the current beta, a planet with d_alien_pets_deposit allows you to research Alien Zoo which gives 2 Entertainer jobs, just like an un-upgraded Holo Theater.

Alien Zoo = Holo Theater is certainly consistent, but in my opinion it's boring compared to what came before, and in this case boring = worse.

Finding Betharian stone on a nice 5x tile layout with EC deposits and an energy hub was so good. Microey? Yes. But 4 years on I can still visualise the tile grid of a particularly favourable tile distribution. I cant say the same for any modern stellaris planets (the little district counter doesn't tickle the mind in the same way, and planet features feel like the ginger stepchild of the planet interface) as much as it makes me sound like a Pepperidge farm escapee.

I still feel like pdx missed an opportunity with lithoids to re-introduce Betharian stone as a resource - one with new lithoid-aphrodisiac properties.
Imagine a bunch of rocky bois declaring space jihad for one of your colonies containing Betharian stone, all so they can have pop-growth orgies there.
Or weirder stuff like using it to build a (limited number) "supercharged" betharian ship aux mod, increasing weapons fire rate - and naturally using this on a titan for gratuitous overkill.

I'd like to see more planet-bound or "limited-output" resources and buildings unrelated to the core economy. Maybe you can export alien pets to a neighbouring empire, in return for diplomatic kudos (see: panda diplomacy) or maybe you can use them in a special purge type, or a planet decision that speeds up purging on a local level if an entertainment building exists, where pops fight imported alien animals to the death.

Slightly more on topic, the one thing I miss most about the tile system was that up to 25 pops could grow (or assemble) and purge simultaneously. Not just 1-3.
Declining pops has never worked properly (with respect to the original intent) post-tiles. The game always declines the "highest rate" pops first, so purging by both forced labour (alien 1) and neutering (alien 2) will lead to alien 2 hanging around till all of alien 1 is dead on that planet, before they decide to die off next.

 

[klopkr]

Everyone saying the current system is as micro as tyles are forgetting about adjacencies. Not only can the AI not figure them out, anyone that is using them as they need to have to stop and actually think about what they're doing.

You can't argue that one of the benefits to micro and the AI in the new system is the ability to more or less build the same world on similar planets.

 

[exi123]

Everyone saying the current system is as micro as tyles are forgetting about adjacencies. Not only can the AI not figure them out, anyone that is using them as they need to have to stop and actually think about what they're doing.

You can't argue that one of the benefits to micro and the AI in the new system is the ability to more or less build the same world on similar planets.

Its true that the AI was terrible at building with adjacencies. But it wasnt more mirco at all and the benefits were very small compared to the impact inefficiency has in the current system. You had to think and visit a planet ONCE to build up a planet in the lategame, not 10-20 times over the course of 75 years like it is now. Then the planet was put into a sector which upgraded the buildings and managed the pops around if the sector needed to be stabilized.

The game had a decent curve from managing planets early to managing sectors later on. The system wasnt perfect, the current is one also interesting to play, but from a management perspective Stellaris felt much better before 2.2. We just need some more or less simple tools to get back to easier planet management, like templates or smart queues for the player to reduce the amount of attention for every planet.

 

[Mastikator]

Everyone saying the current system is as micro as tyles are forgetting about adjacencies. Not only can the AI not figure them out, anyone that is using them as they need to have to stop and actually think about what they're doing.

You can't argue that one of the benefits to micro and the AI in the new system is the ability to more or less build the same world on similar planets.

The ONLY (and I mean only) benefit of the tile system was the sector AI, because you could turn off redevelopment and put it in charge of upgrades. This reduced micro in the tile system from "why god why" to "manageable".
However we didn't have strata and jobs, not really. We just had tiles, buildings and pops that worked there. The closest we had was the caste system but honestly I think the current strata system works much better, not only from a game mechanical point of view but also from a roleplay perspective.

Another huge difference was the fact that once you built every building a planet was completed. This happened very quickly too and you only had to manage your empire while you were expanding, this lead to boredom. The tile system was boring. In the new system your planets continue to evolve for at least 100 years. AND for the most part it's not tedious busywork but decision making, which is why it's so hard to make an effective AI. You don't want an AI to make choices for you, AI's only job is to automate busywork.

 

[exi123]

[...]

Another huge difference was the fact that once you built every building a planet was completed. This happened very quickly too and you only had to manage your empire while you were expanding, this lead to boredom. The tile system was boring. In the new system your planets continue to evolve for at least 100 years. AND for the most part it's not tedious busywork but decision making, which is why it's so hard to make an effective AI. You don't want an AI to make choices for you, AI's only job is to automate busywork.

Building up planets was boring because we just had a few buildings these days. The economy was much simplyer, it would also be more interesting to build up a tiled planet with the current systems in place. Mines on minerals, farms on food tiles, the ones without would be interesting for factories, forges and all kind if stuff we have now. Amenities could also be a thing...

Its interesting how some say the current system is micro heavy, you have to do everything by yourself.... and others say its a better experience because planets evolve more over time (which is a good argument)... For me the current system is also better, its more interesting and engaging, but i havent played a 1x planet galaxy after 2.1 for once. It really depends on how you want to manage, for me it ebcomes boring when I have to manage 25 planets in the year 2400 and dont see an end on the horizon and have no useful tools to plan my buildings ahead so i can focus on greater tasks...

As mentioned before, the tilesystem had at least some scaling in the management, from planetary management early on, to creating sectors midgame and later to fighting wars and crisises over the whole galaxy, where expanding itself wasnt really that interesting anymore.

 

[Koopatin]

you could make a boardgame out of it. space puerto rico.

 

[HFY]

you could make a boardgame out of it. space puerto rico.

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