Sector Discussion/Quarantine Thread

[Madzai]

My point is instead of bitching about how lazy the devs are, just stick to telling them what the sector ai is doing wrong an maybe why u think it's doing that. The rest is just self righteous bitching an back biting because u think it makes u sound clever...

If you read a couple of last pages, not a couple of last posts, you you would have known that there is a tone of of example of that Sectors are doing wrong, and that they should do along with possible UI, gameplay and other QoL improvements.
But it seems that right now Sectors are a low importance task for PDX Their last comment there is from 9th of August. Last time we get not an improvement, but basically "do whatever your want" in form of almost unrestricted interference with Sectors. And even that was done in buggy or half-way way - as you can, f.e., pay for building in Sectors, but cannot pay for tiles blocker removal.

 

[Vortex79]

From what I understand it is sectors that cause late game lag. Try disbanding all of your sectors and hitting unpause. The game should run as if you just started a new game.

Sounds like it could be a combo of all those things, because lets face it, something stuck in a loop is consuming resources.

@rexx I am as quick to praise as I am to condemn when I like something.. I mean, look at all the paradox titles I carry. I love Paradox, but Stellaris really has quite a few problems that other comparable games, simply don't have. Fortunately, it has an extremely strong political engine and custom race engine which is all that spared it from the chopping block for me. That and the particularly strong mod community.

I call them as I see them. Honesty is the best policy, not white lies.

 

[rexx]

My issue is that none of us are "seeing" anything. U arent a dev. U don't know how that code is being put together or whos going without sleep to design it. If you are calling it as you see it then there's no need for u to tell me that because I won't be able to look back through this thread an find u bagging out lazy devs n shit programmers etc etc(an legit if I can't do that, good job, but also clearly I wasn't talking to you in that case).

The tone in this thread was gross. The accusations of lazy programmers were misguided n shitty. If u are not one of the ppl doing that, then I wasn't talking to you an u have no reason to care. If you are tho, u should be ashamed of yourselves. It's rude. There are real people on the other side of this forum that work hard and are clearly trying an any hyperbolic nonsense isn't helping. They know sector an is clumsy. U can tell because they are trying to damage control it. Telling them whats wrong is good. Telling them whats wrong with them an their work ethic an why u won't play their game an how shit it is is really bloody rude.

All I'm saying is, Have some respect for the people that made this amazing game you all clearly love, because they're people.

 

[Vortex79]

I love Paradox. I'm on the fence about this game. i play it a lot, but it's torturous. It is crappy, shoddy, programming that makes me get half way through, and then not be able to finish playing because it is grinding to a halt. I paid for this product, expect a certain level of quality. Past Paradox games have kept up with the technology and have been far less buggy, without the logical loops and having to remove features. They aren't now. I realize they're people. They're also people I know can do better.

Here's hoping if there is ever a Stellaris 2 it can actually make use of current systems.

I mean, look at Cities Skylines, an amazing game that can keep pace with current technology. It is not simply being rude when it is justifiable criticism.

 

[rexx]

Cities skyline is not deved by paradox. Also, there are structural problems with the design of stellaris(an I can actually say that because design is my job) but keep in mind that dev teams change. The designers are different now an theyre trying to make the game work the way they think it should.

You still don't get to judge the damn programmers tho. They use a custom engine for crying out loud. Everything they do is mod friendly. Do u get how hard that is to actually achieve. To make something that can be changed by amateurs easily an without breaking too much.

An the scope of the game. Theyre trying to program an ecosystem of ais, up to 21 over a thousand stars, an make it all work. U talk about your expectations like they're appropriate to have of people youve never met. This isn't some butchery cutting up a pig. This shit is really frigging complicated. You're judgements of these ppl are garbage. You paid maybe 200 dollars for over 200 hours of entertainment. That's a dollar an hour. An u sit there an act like that entitles you to make judgements about devs you've never met. Bah. You don't know what you are even talking about ffs.have some empathy for crying out loud

 

[FurorGermanicus]

Is it just me or is technological advantage in battles underpowered?

 

[Vortex79]

Cities skyline is not deved by paradox. Also, there are structural problems with the design of stellaris(an I can actually say that because design is my job) but keep in mind that dev teams change. The designers are different now an theyre trying to make the game work the way they think it should.

There are other game companies for which change is the norm. They get over this by documenting their work thoroughly. Change doesn't justify a malformed and out of date product.

You still don't get to judge the damn programmers tho. They use a custom engine for crying out loud. Everything they do is mod friendly. Do u get how hard that is to actually achieve. To make something that can be changed by amateurs easily an without breaking too much.

Yes, I do. I am their consumer. If you knew anything about IT quality control you understand that the End User IS your ultimate judge of work done and quality of work. I make that judgement every time I elect to buy their product or not. So what if they use a custom engine? They should know it better then and be able to improve on it. That doesn't make things better, it makes it worse. Mod friendly is awesome, but not unique or difficult. Stellaris isn't the first game or the last of its type to do this. And not all of the people making mods.. are amateurs. They're frequently programmers for whom this is just a pass time.

An the scope of the game. Theyre trying to program an ecosystem of ais, up to 21 over a thousand stars, an make it all work. U talk about your expectations like they're appropriate to have of people youve never met. This isn't some butchery cutting up a pig. This shit is really frigging complicated. You're judgements of these ppl are garbage. You paid maybe 200 dollars for over 200 hours of entertainment. That's a dollar an hour. An u sit there an act like that entitles you to make judgements about devs you've never met. Bah. You don't know what you are even talking about ffs.have some empathy for crying out loud

Again, you act as though this is original, unique or new. I've seen games handle more than 1000 stars, and even more plaents. I've seen games handle over 15,000 ships on screen with over 75,000 different weapons mounts present, many millions of polygons, and complex damage calculation that took into account the facing of those polygons, without significantly stressing my computer's resources. Stellaris struggles with 500.

So if this is so complicated, explain how others mastered it so firmly? Two hundred dollars is a lot to fork out for a game. Lets compare to other games I've purchased where 20.00 got me thousands of hours of entertainment. You see the disparity there? And does the 100 so hours attributable to game engine lag count towards my total game hours actually played? I'd disupte that. I have every right to judge this product and its quality as its purchaser. I know exactly what I am talking about and while you rant and rave about me judging the people I do not know by the quality of their work, you judge me with nothing, zero, zip at all to know my actual level of understanding. Given that, you are ill-equipped to argue with me as I have every right as a consumer to judge this product.. and you know nothing about who I am other than that I own just about every paradox title produced. This one, was not up to par for their historic production quality.

It's not rude either, it's criticism. They'll either do better, or I'll simply stop buying their product. Criticism is useful for companies, or should be, it lets them know where they need to improve. Especially, if it is informed criticism.

 

[Vortex79]

Is it just me or is technological advantage in battles underpowered?

No, if you design your ships proper you can wipe out fleets twice your fleet's registered strength on tech advantage. I've done this before using a combination of mega cannons and gamma lasers.. oh, and make sure your fleet has an engineer trait admiral at all times. In lengthy battles, it makes a huge difference. Design and leadership are critical. Make sure you're also maxing your DR with armor on anything above destroyer class. Use shields with capacitors destroyer class and below. You'll find it makes a huge difference. DR caps at 90% so don't put any more armor than you need to achieve that. Toss shields on after that for more resilience.

This may seem odd, but there is an understated and unrecognized performance factor regarding the weapons and that is "Time to/on Target". Gamma lasers and mega cannons have the best performance in this regard. Fighters and missiles can be intercepted or shot down and take a long time to reach their target. Put up a comarable M/G fleet against a carrier or missile fleet and many of the carrier or missile fleets constituents will be dead before their payloads (fighters or missiles) even arrive which takes a lot of their overall strength out of the fight.

 

[rexx]

I can judge you based on the words u use an the whiny bull they represent. They scream entitled consumer with no respect for the people that make the things he loves. People like that get exactly what they deserve.

I've said what I need to say. If u lot cant clean up the shit attitude an accusatory nonsense, that's your problem. They'll lock the thread or better yet just assume the complaints about the sector ai is just entitled whinging. Who am I to care, I'll just mod the sector ai to fix it in my own time. I can do that. Can you...

 

[Vortex79]

I can judge you based on the words u use an the whiny bull they represent. They scream entitled consumer with no respect for the people that make the things he loves. People like that get exactly what they deserve.

I've said what I need to say. If u lot cant clean up the shit attitude an accusatory nonsense, that's your problem. They'll lock the thread or better yet just assume the complaints about the sector ai is just entitled whinging. Who am I to care, I'll just mod the sector ai to fix it in my own time. I can do that. Can you...

The fact you.. as an apparent amateur, have to mod the sector ai to fix a problem the devs apparently couldn't, makes my argument for me. Thank you.

Companies that fail to yield a higher quality product in a highly competitive environment also get what they deserve. I'd rather not Paradox become the IBM/Tandy of the gaming industry. I have enjoyed their products too much.

 

[cedec0]

Not sure what to expect as the last dev comment was by Wiz, on Aug 9 2017, but I will optimistically add my suggestion to make sectors more fun.

I am proceeding with the assumption the following is true: (if not, then feel free to ignore this)

Interesting to read people wondering about what the actual purpose of sectors is. I thought it would be interesting to go back and reread the original dev diary, which makes it clear that they exist for one reason and one reason alone: to mitigate the micromanagement problems caused by the planetary tile system.

First, let me say that the planetary tile system is awesome. Also, I can understand why sectors were needed (the "micromanagement problems").

So here is my suggestion to improve both sectors and the planetary tile system in general:

1) Add a "planning" mode to the planetary tile system. In other words, a mode that lets player plan out the entire planet, by marking which tiles are for which purposes (food/industry/energy/happiness/research/unity/etc). Have this planning mode show expected outputs, based on current tech (so it could be a useful feature even for core worlds).

2) Have sector AI honor the "planning" layed out by the player, as much as realistically possible.

---------------------------------

I don't think a one time planning of this type (tile purposes) would be too much micro for most players. Especially if an "auto-complete planning" feature is added (ie: computer automatically fills in all tile purposes, and the player can then customize the parts he wants), like the option for ship designing.

 

[ShadowPsi]

Hello all, I have a clear, glaring, reproducible bug on sectors that for the nth time forced me to stop playing.
Now, I would really like to be constructive so that it is addressed (hope) because it's looking really obvious to me.
This is it:

• Ver 1.9.1 (83d2), only 36 years in game, I have a small sector with one planet plus one colonizable(75%) planet.
• Everything starts well: 2 constructions + 4 projects planned, one of the projects is a colony ship
• After few years, when colony ship cost is fully allocated, instead of starting to build it, it disappears from the projects but the minerals in the sector stays high and nothing builds in the starport.
• When this happens everything is screwed, no more projects. Only way to unclock it is to "steal" the minerals from sector spending influence but then the sector restarts the project of colony ship and then it locks again.

Sectors evolved and I really like them, especially the cartoon bubble showing how minerals/energy are currently allocated. But this bubble is also showing when something in the logic is getting screwed.
I noticed everthing is ok only while:
<Total of minerals allocated for projects> = <Total of minerals in the sector>
When there is a difference that means some projects have gone lost and things go wild.

What should i do now? Can I attach the savegame here? Or do I have to just wait for next patch hoping big things are sorted? Well I will do it anyway.
Is it something worked on about this?

I don't want to feel whiny but when 'big' things like this happens I lose interest on the game that otherwise I like so much.

 

[Iyur]

I suppose, there are several hidden factors affecting sector colonization. Seems, that sector considered colonization not so prior for that moment.

 

[ShadowPsi]

Did you check that savegame by chance?
That sector is clearly putting colonization as 4th project, low priority but definitely there, allocating minerals for it. That's fine. That is what i really like of the cartoon bubble, you can see what is happening 'inside'.
Then if you 'fast forward' few years ahead, as soon as it reaches the full cost of the colony ship it disappears BLOCKING the minerals forever (instead of building it now that all minerals are ready).

I'm fine with low priority, it could also decide to 'cancel' the colony project but then the minerals have to be allocated for SOMETHING ELSE, and that does not happen.

If i were a stellaris developer I would immediately check what the hell is happening in that moment. I would be incredibily curious to see what's there (being a developer myself).

 

[Cethanis]

Is it just me or is technological advantage in battles underpowered?

Yes it is, the difference between the weapons tiers will be increased in the coming patch to make tech "more meaningful".

 

[MarsTheGodOfWar]

I just want more granularity in the control of sectors. The ai can't know what every player wants, so give us more tools to tell it.

Being able to rearrange a list of sector priorities would be pretty cool.

 

[Shermanator]

I'm kind of wondering, sectors don't seem to be nearly the hot button issue they used to be, partially because of many updates have made a point of working on them and partially because it has become overshadowed by new issues, mostly FTL.

So I kind of wonder if this quarantine thread is necessary anymore.
Of course, maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Drachenfels]

What is more you can freely develop sectors on your own. With additional changes to starports that are coming next week, I do agree, this quarantine should be lifted.

 

[maxp779]

Sectors work... they don't work perfectly but they seem to work okay.

I did a test recently to see if they care about robomodding... i.e using my research bot on the research tiles.

Anyway long story short, they don't care about robomodding at all, they just seem to use a random template. Also I watched it dump a mine on top of a +2 energy tile. Respect tile resources were ON when this happened. Not great

 

[dezzmont]

The reason sectors aren't a hot topic issue anymore is that they essentially capitulated and allow free redevelopment of sectors, which is pretty much what I think literally any reasonable person wanted, because of how nonsensical it was that you were saddled with a sector AI you couldn't technically turn off, but which also could be entirely sidestepped with some micromanagement, turning a QOL micromanagement reduction tool that you would find in other games into this invasive thing that created MORE mandatory micromanagement because the sector AI was so bad that even if you were content to let "Governor AI" work in other strategy games for you Stellaris sector AI just... destroyed your empire if you didn't preempt it.

Sectors existing as an efficiency penalty for larger empires, and of course laying groundwork later for internal politics, makes perfect sense, the ONLY thing about sectors that really ticked people off was mandatory AI that existed for essentially no reason, and now that is, essentially, gone.

Now that mandatory AI is gone the main thing about sectors that could use work is just UI redesign, like allowing you to click the sector to see the planets in it while looking at the map, and maybe giving your core sector its own representation on the map just so that you can have a uniform "In character" sector map. Perhaps also the ability to see other empire's sectors. But nothing about sectors is really game critical anymore.

Of course sectors are always going to feel a bit lack luster until internal politics becomes a bigger thing and we start seeing things like sector specific factions that aren't just separatist factions, sector relations, tourism, sector homes for leaders, sector based political voting/power blocks depending on if your a democracy or empire, ect.