Only 6 Leaders?

[Masked Ermine]

Agreed. People hate the leader limit because some game actions absolutely require a leader when they shouldn't (why can an empire the size of the galaxy only afford to have 5 scientists to win to the race to survey the L-Cluster?), and some part of the UI taunt you with emptiness when you don't assign a leader (fleets, sectors, etc.).

But that's not the same thing as "the US has hundreds of naval officers and thousands of scientists". Those wouldn't be scientist leaders or admiral leaders, even before 3.8.

The US has seven numbered fleets. The numbers of flag officers isn't relevant. And the US has 50 state governors, yes, but governors in Stellaris are leading entire planets at the very least.

We should have more leaders, probably scaling with the number of systems (as a proxy for sectors) and total fleet capacity (as a proxy for fleets). But the number of "governors" and "admirals" in the US has nothing to do with it, since they aren't even remotely similar positions. The fact that they used the same words is an analogy, but not one that means they must have a 1:1 correspondence.

Like I said, I agree with the direction of the argument, but the actual parallel you're trying to draw seems spurious.

I'm partial to the two tiered system: a finite number of high level leaders, mostly restricted to those sitting on the council, and then everyone else.

On they "they wouldn't be field officers" thing: in Stellaris, they would. Stellaris is a scifi simulator. So Arcturus Mengst commands his fleet from the front, even though he's probably actually be a leader positioned in safety in real life. Jean Luc Picard leads his science ship/warship/flying city as it explores the galaxy, even though any sane situation would have a ton of smaller ships and most of their data would likely be send back home (or to the flying city which stays at a safe distance from any unknown phenomenon instead of flying right up to it), rather than an enormous science ship with a small city being sent out into the unknown and constantly putting the non-crew at risk.

Stellaris copies scifi, not reality. And scifi has all the important figures leading from the front so it's more dramatic.

This is 'stellaris' and a 'scifi game' is not an excuse for having councilmen holding field positions. Jean Luc Picard was one of those 'nameless, unmentioned' captains....not a cabinet holder (at least not until after TNG...and even then he seemed to be one of those nameless flag admirals). Whilst you may get away with particular governments allowing their military cabinet officials running things from the front that should be a specialized government thing...not a rule for everyone.

Basically I see planet governors like I do mayors....and sectors as being like states (or provinces or admistrative districts). Basically if you were to reskin Stellaris to be a earthbound game...the planets would be cities, the sectors would be feifdoms or duchies, with the council being the emperor/monarch and their court.

 

[-Marauder-]

Worth keeping in mind that vocal people on the forum do not speak for the whole of the player base. I'd even cautioned people that are really unhappy with the patch to remember that most people that really love the new content are busy playing the game and not spending their finite time posting here. If we do post here, it's because we either taking a break or have a schedule that prevents us from loading up a game that requires a huge block of time to fully enjoy.

That's a logical fallacy. Simply assuming the "silent majority" agrees with you doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny. It's not an argument, whatsoever.

Statistically only a very small percentage of costumers ever give feedback, and even fewer people who dislike something or have complaints do. Which means when you have a sizable number of people upset and voicing it, that is often times significant enough to cause worry. https://cxm.co.uk/1-26-unhappy-customers-complain-rest-churn/

In case of Paradox, there's a second level of effort involved, since you need to actually find a "third party" site compared to Steam/GoG, then sign up to even voice your complaints.


So while we do not know how many people "love" this change, and how many dislike it. Given so far the complaints have come from across virtually the entire spectrum of Stellaris forum regulars, people who usually bitterly disagree about other topics and balancing and tend to have long and exhausting discussions. Assuming that most people are in favor of the change seems, fallacious.

 

[polarscribe]

While I agree with the direction of the argument in general, this... doesn't really work.

Clearly recruited leaders are figures with national significance. Ex. Albert Einstein would be a recruited scientist if 1930-40s US were somehow inexplicably a Stellaris nation. But the "thousands" (hundreds of thousands) of scientists in the US working at universities, corporate R&D, etc. would be researcher pops, not scientist leaders. Nor would every literal admiral be an Admiral leader in Stellaris: Admirals/Generals would likely be the equivalent of 5 star generals. You may not recruit any new ones at all during peace time.

But literally every fleet in the U.S. Navy has an admiral. They may not all be world-renowned names, but they exist.

Paradox is asking us to swallow, from an RP perspective, the idea that the Navy would be like "welp, we ran out of admirals, too bad, I guess we'll have to send the Fifth Fleet out without any sort of leader whatsoever." Which, when stated that way, is obviously absurd.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

I am 70 years in, and I have a few comments now (hopefully this reads okay... I have spent too long typing instead of playing).

I have stuck with a single admiral, and one governor, the rest being scientists. I gradually built up to 12 leaders without realising I had that many (I think losing a scientst, and regaining him later... the exile... a hero offering his services... losing a scientist when they becamse a ruler). I provbably wasnt prepared for the levels of micromanagement, especially when I have to rank up each one, and they all seem to retire or die much faster now.

On scientists:

In a huge galaxy, you really need as many science ships as possible because you can quite easily get boxed in quickly if you dont expand in the right direction.. This means probably at least 4 science ships surveying. Probably more once you get further away. I am averaging an anomaly in 75%+ systems, which means I need at least a couple of ships to reseach those to keep up*. Then there are the dig sites, some of which are impossible to clear if you cant level up. And what has been improved? Nothing that I can see. A few additional traits, but having fewer scientists is not required to make this work in any way. The head of research is now one person, but again what improvement does this mechanic give to the game? You have less overall bonuses to the main research. And running you expansion completely nerfs all of the other bonuses. Sorry but I am not really seeing an improvement to game play.

* As an aside.. I do appreciate the autoresearch for anomalies now, and not pausing the game everytime you find one. I am still finding I have to manually queue surveys, as the ships tend to skip systems for some reason, meaning I have to recall one to survey the gap to continue expanding, and sometimes they can give up in their assigned corner to explore the other side of the map. No idea what the ai is doing there. Clearly the galactic core is really boring... so good idea, but needs an improvement to the implementation.

On Admirals:

Early game, so I have only one fleet. And it has been greatly increased in size due to rank. But when he dies I will lose this (and leaders do seem to die more quickly imho). So the council position does give a global upkeep modifier. But only being able to have one fleet with a manned admiral sucks, especially when I tend to have 3x x5 crises in the end game. Hoovering up 50 admirals from one of the Raiders should not be a viable strategy... But then if already have 12 leaders, being able to recruit 50 level 3 admirals for 2k each seems like a pretty good deal (unity allowing) as there wont be any other meaningful nerf.

Governors:

I am still trying to understand this. What is the point of sectors now? It great I can now edit them. But... I can only afford one governor... who may end up as the leader. Their bonus applies to a single planet . Does this have to be the sector capital... if I want to move to a different planet in my staring sector, do I have to move my capital?. Some of the traits seem stupid (army build speed? The army builder now allows you to spread out building armies. Who builds all of their armies at a single planet). Again, I am not seeing a gameplay improvement to this. Just less options and a nerf to big empires.


Generals:

Uhhhh ...

Random observations

Losing a scientist becoming Ruler is super annoying when it means you have to replace said scientist with someone new. Especially if they are diong something critical. Especially especially if they are the only high level scientist you have available for a dig site. . I know other positions can do another job. Should the ruler have that option too?

The improvements all relate to the council, which is pretty small, lets be honest. The head of science just reaplces the 3 you already had. With less bonuses overall. The "Grand Admiral" is a nice idea. Well... he is the only admiral now... so... All those other fleets will be much less powerful. And the Ruler still works the same way. The Council fails to offset the huge nerfs to to scientists governors admirals and... uhhh... generals.
Some of the new traits seem a bit useless... +4 minerals

Sorry Paradox. You have put a lot of effort into something which has not added anything to the game, and has in fact made it less satisfying for me. This is a grand strategy game, and you have made it feel smaller. You could have made all of these additions without changing the stuff thatr was already there. It makes no real sense from a game design point of view. The game is not better. Hero leaders, changes to ranks, the council as a concept could have just been added to what already existed and that would have been an improvement. You have smashed in the windscreen which installing some furry dice.

 

[Masked Ermine]

But literally every fleet in the U.S. Navy has an admiral. They may not all be world-renowned names, but they exist.

Paradox is asking us to swallow, from an RP perspective, the idea that the Navy would be like "welp, we ran out of admirals, too bad, I guess we'll have to send the Fifth Fleet out without any sort of leader whatsoever." Which, when stated that way, is obviously absurd.

And I'd go further than saying it's a 'UI issue fixable by deemphasizing the emptiness of slots'. When it comes to scientists, they are functionally necessary to get your empire to grow and the leader cap very specifically limits everyone....in that area....

 

[Gromit]

So while we do not know how many people "love" this change, and how many dislike it. Given so far the complaints have come from across virtually the entire spectrum of Stellaris forum regulars, people who usually bitterly disagree about other topics and balancing and tend to have long and exhausting discussions. Assuming that most people are in favor of the change seems, fallacious.

Might be worth mentioning too that there may be fewer complaints on various forums as the cap can be removed via mods. Currently, a mod on the workshop from yesterday that does nothing other than increase the cap to 50, is sitting at 1.5k+ subscribers.

 

[polarscribe]

And I'd go further than saying it's a 'UI issue fixable by deemphasizing the emptiness of slots'. When it comes to scientists, they are functionally necessary to get your empire to grow and the leader cap very specifically limits everyone....in that area....

Yep, absolutely. I play only 1,000-star galaxies with 12-15ish AI starts. I really enjoy the exploration and expansion phase, running anomalies and dig sites, precursor chains, finding defensible chokepoints, unique systems, etc. Five to seven science ships is my target, and even with that, by midgame there's still usually quite a few unexplored systems.

With this cap, I feel like Paradox is telling me "No, stop enjoying the exploration and expansion parts of our 4X game that you've played for 1,250+ hours, you should be micromanaging planet construction and the jobs that individual pops hold in a galactic empire, that's what we intend for you to do in our game now."

 

[Masked Ermine]

Might be worth mentioning too that there may be fewer complaints on various forums as the cap can be removed via mods. Currently, a mod on the workshop from yesterday that does nothing other than increase the cap to 50, is sitting at 1.5k+ subscribers.

Thing I hate about Stellaris's community and to some extent the devs' is this mentality of 'A modder will fix it'. No...a modder won't fix it...the COMPANY will fix it. The DEVS will fix it. I don't want to play a modded game, that will break every week when Paradox decides it needs to start pumping out buggy DLC every week....We got what two months with the last update...to get it finally passably fixed (not really fixed but passably)...and used to it and now this completely dumps on that and we're back to square one again....I just want to play the freaking game without having roll it back for a month or 'get a mod to fix a problem'....

 

[Bork_of_Boletaria]

I still think that a lot of the pains of the new system could be solved by:

1. decoupling scientists from science ships so that early game exploration isn't so restrictive or micromanagement heavy. At the very least simple hyperlane exploration should be possible with unmanned ships.

1. segregate the leader capacities since generals should NEVER be competing for a slot against scientists since that just isn't fair for anyone who isn't a scientist.

So I don't have as much a problem with the leader restrictions as some others do, but I also get the frustration. I think a big part of it is like you hinted at scientists are just so much more important than the others, especially earlier. What if instead of raising the leader cap (or along with doing so) we balanced the leaders a little.

Allow admiral commanded fleets to explore systems. I think that doing this instead of just letting empty science ships do the exploration is a bit better. It makes admirals a little more useful, along with your starting fleet, which in my experience anyway just does..nothing... The first few decades. And it also means you can't explore everything too fast with dozens of empty science ships.

I feel like part of the goal with their leader restrictions was to slow down the early surveying rush? If so doing this limits your exploration to leaders still, but at least not just scientists.

And, an idea I saw on Reddit, allow generals to be governors. Give them different bonuses. I'm not sure off top of my head exactly what buffs a governor applies to a sector, amenities and trade maybe?

If so, a military governor (general) could instead increase stability and reduce crime, maybe increase defense armies or bombardment resistance. Then we even can even give generals more skills for this role in particular. Maybe some civics like citizen service could also get bonuses here?


TLDR: Make the leader cap less harsh by making the scientists less necessary and the others more useful.

Allow admirals to explore (but not survey) so that all your early exploration isn't reliant on scientists

Allow generals to be governors (with a different set of buffs and traits) so that they are worth having

 

[ASGeek2012]

Worth keeping in mind that vocal people on the forum do not speak for the whole of the player base. I'd even cautioned people that are really unhappy with the patch to remember that most people that really love the new content are busy playing the game and not spending their finite time posting here. If we do post here, it's because we either taking a break or have a schedule that prevents us from loading up a game that requires a huge block of time to fully enjoy.

Take a look at the Steam reviews. The DLC is sitting at "Mixed" right now and most of the negative comments are complaining about the leader cap.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Allow admirals to explore (but not survey) so that all your early exploration isn't reliant on scientists

SURVEYING IS THE NECESSARY PART! The part that A: determines territory (and by extension gets you access to colonization) B: gets you anomalies C: finds archaeological digs.

 

[-Marauder-]

Might be worth mentioning too that there may be fewer complaints on various forums as the cap can be removed via mods. Currently, a mod on the workshop from yesterday that does nothing other than increase the cap to 50, is sitting at 1.5k+ subscribers.

That doesn't make it any better though, if anything it makes it worse.

Take a look at the Steam reviews. The DLC is sitting at "Mixed" right now and most of the negative comments are complaining about the leader cap.

To be fair, most of the recent DLC have fairly negative reviews. Partly because of strange choices. But yes, the feedback appears to be pretty universally negative on it.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

This is 'stellaris' and a 'scifi game' is not an excuse for having councilmen holding field positions. Jean Luc Picard was one of those 'nameless, unmentioned' captains....not a cabinet holder (at least not until after TNG...and even then he seemed to be one of those nameless flag admirals). Whilst you may get away with particular governments allowing their military cabinet officials running things from the front that should be a specialized government thing...not a rule for everyone.

Basically I see planet governors like I do mayors....and sectors as being like states (or provinces or admistrative districts). Basically if you were to reskin Stellaris to be a earthbound game...the planets would be cities, the sectors would be feifdoms or duchies, with the council being the emperor/monarch and their court.

Jean Luc Picard may have been one of those 'nameless, unmentioned' captains, but the show was still about Kirk/Picard/Janeway, so when people read their scifi short stories (anomalies), they want the person doing the researching to have a name. So scientist leaders take the place of Jean Luc Picard in game, even if it doesn't rationally make sense.

It's a science fiction simulator. The game is supposed to be doing what is narratively satisfying, not what's realistic.

To be clear: I'm not saying the system is good, or achieves all its goals. I'm just saying why (I think) it's the way it is, and why saying "but the US has thousands of scientists, not just 5" is missing the point.

 

[polarscribe]

It's a science fiction simulator. The game is supposed to be doing what is narratively satisfying, not what's realistic.

It's narratively incoherent to be told that there are only six people - total - in my FTL-capable civilization of billions of diverse pops who are talented enough to be any one of an admiral, an archaeologist, an explorer, a researcher, a general, or a politician.

I play the Broken Shackles origin (a load of fun! great DLC!) as fanatic egalitarian xenophiles (the Democratic Egalitarian Republic of People - which invariably founds the Democratic Order of Planets, natch) and it is in no way "narratively satisfying" for Paradox to apply an arbitrary cap on the number of leaders the Derps can support. My nation of revolted former slaves is literally about everyone being equal, so why is the narrative forcing them to have a tiny, elite group of leaders?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Paradox is asking us to swallow, from an RP perspective, the idea that the Navy would be like "welp, we ran out of admirals, too bad, I guess we'll have to send the Fifth Fleet out without any sort of leader whatsoever." Which, when stated that way, is obviously absurd.

The converse to "all leaders are figures of national significance like Einstein or Eisenhower" is "every fleet that 'doesn't have an admiral' really just doesn't have an admiral of national significance." The fleets aren't unmanned, or uncommanded. There's someone commanding it. They just can't send one of their superstars (who are so skilled that they cause the fleets to perform significantly above average).

Which is why it's stupid (and people are rightly complaining) that science ships can't survey/assist research/enter systems without sensors without a scientist on board.

Fleets without an Admiral leader are fine. They're still fleets. The issue there is the UI, with a big blank spot telling you you should fill the slot even if it's literally impossible. Science ships without a scientist make no sense.

I love the idea of a two tiered system that distinguishes between major/minor leaders (e.g. remove the cap, but only allow the council to level past 5). Another one I've seen is autofilling slots with de-emphasized pseudo leaders (who are just level 1, and a name, and no traits). Both would be fine solutions.

It's narratively incoherent to be told that there are only six people - total - in my FTL-capable civilization of billions of diverse pops who are capable of being any one of an admiral, an archaeologist, an explorer, a researcher, a general, or a politician.

Agreed. People hate the leader limit because some game actions absolutely require a leader when they shouldn't (why can an empire the size of the galaxy only afford to have 5 scientists to win to the race to survey the L-Cluster?), and some part of the UI taunt you with emptiness when you don't assign a leader (fleets, sectors, etc.).

 

[GeneralArmchair]

I feel like part of the goal with their leader restrictions was to slow down the early surveying rush? If so doing this limits your exploration to leaders still, but at least not just scientists.
...
Allow admirals to explore (but not survey) so that all your early exploration isn't reliant on scientists
...
Allow generals to be governors (with a different set of buffs and traits) so that they are worth having

I'm afraid that this doesn't really fix anything unless we also segregate leader caps for each case. Why should I care that an admiral can explore if I've already fired them to make room for more scientists and that my problem is that despite that I STILL can't hire enough scientists to staff an exploration fleet and am stuck with the massive quality of life problem of shuffling scientists between ships so that they get permission to jump? Letting generals infringe on governor's job lets them parasitically gain some extra value, but outside of niche cases NEITHER are worth precious leader cap compared to a scientist.

It's been years since there has been anything approaching a "problem" with exploration rushing. That was back in the day when corvettes could explore and back when corvettes were made out of minerals. Such a corvette exploration swarm could also serve double-duty as an early warfleet if you recall them into a unified group.

I don't see any reason whatsoever why unmanned science ships shouldn't be capable of performing hyperlane exploration and system surveys. None. If stellaris is a "sci-fi simulator", then we shouldn't be seeing the episodes where nothing happened and the crew just collected routine telemetry before moving on with their expedition. The no-name redshirts should be perfectly capable of scouting hyperlanes and doing a routine survey. Our sci-fi stories begin when something anomalous happens. That's when the people with NAMES show up. The only exploring where you should NEED to bring a scientist into the field should be to investigate anomalies, handle special projects, and excavate dig sites. There's still incentive to survey with scientists since scientists can do it faster, can be better at finding anomalies, and you don't want to ignore a source of EXP. But I think players should have the option of just letting the basic ships handle the routine stuff. Especially on huge galaxies where your main characters are busy unraveling the secrets of the progenitors and don't have time to be cataloguing rocks.

I also don't think that there is any problem at all with the prospect of someone doing an exploration rush with a big fleet of science ships. You can't weaponize a science ship. If someone wants to spend thousands of alloys on a huge fleet of science ships instead of a war fleet, then that's their choice. That play is vulnerable to hostile neighbors.

 

[Bork_of_Boletaria]

SURVEYING IS THE NECESSARY PART! The part that A: determines territory (and by extension gets you access to colonization) B: gets you anomalies C: finds archaeological digs.

I'm afraid that this doesn't really fix anything unless we also segregate leader caps for each case. Why should I care that an admiral can explore if I've already fired them to make room for more scientists and that my problem is that despite that I STILL can't hire enough scientists to staff an exploration fleet and am stuck with the massive quality of life problem of shuffling scientists between ships so that they get permission to jump? Letting generals infringe on governor's job lets them parasitically gain some extra value, but outside of niche cases NEITHER are worth precious leader cap compared to a scientist.



I don't see any reason whatsoever why unmanned science ships shouldn't be capable of performing hyperlane exploration and system surveys. None. If stellaris is a "sci-fi simulator", then we shouldn't be seeing the episodes where nothing happened and the crew just collected routine telemetry before moving on with their expedition. The no-name redshirts should be perfectly capable of scouting hyperlanes and doing a routine survey.

Y'all aren't wrong if we are coming at this with the idea of removing that cap and returning the game pace to how it was before this patch. But it seems to me (could be wrong) like the design intention here is using these limits purposefully to slow that exploration down, so I don't think that's happening. My suggestions are minor but still fit within that design. Does having an admiral explore instead of a third scientist work as well / quickly as before the patch? No. But it may help push it back slightly toward that direction and make it feel a little better. Letting that fleet explore still gets you that important early vision and contacts, and lets you prioritize areas to survey.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Allowing an admiral to explore systems does take a huge burden off the early game scientist. It makes galactic geography even less meaningful than it was before, though, as nebula no longer stop anything except leaderless fleets.

 

[GeneralArmchair]

Y'all aren't wrong if we are coming at this with the idea of removing that cap and returning the game pace to how it was before this patch. But it seems to me (could be wrong) like the design intention here is using these limits purposefully to slow that exploration down, so I don't think that's happening. My suggestions are minor but still fit within that design. Does having an admiral explore instead of a third scientist work as well / quickly as before the patch? No. But it may help push it back slightly toward that direction and make it feel a little better. Letting that fleet explore still gets you that important early vision and contacts, and lets you prioritize areas to survey.

Your exploration is still bound by the leader cap. It doesn't matter if it's 5 scientists or a mix of 3 scientists and 2 admirals. Both are still bound by the same bottleneck and you're just giving the exploring ships different coats of paint.


If it is their design intent to slow things down, then I'm quite confident that they made a very poor call with that decision.

 

[GeneralArmchair]

Take a look at the Steam reviews. The DLC is sitting at "Mixed" right now and most of the negative comments are complaining about the leader cap.

I took a look myself, and half of the positive reviews are mentioning that leader cap was a mistake! I'm starting to feel that only a slim minority likes the change.