Sectors completely ruin immersion

[Darkath]

I noticed this too. I'm currently allowing myself to have control of 150 core systems, modified it from defines.lua. I usually end up controlling something between 20-30 myself, rest I drop to sectors. So practically only keeping to myself ones I colonized and built myself, dropping conquered ones in to sectors.
Would really like if core system cap was at least 15 as base value.

I agree. Usually the way i like to play is to have 5 to 10 "core worlds" that i want to keep control of, have 0-10 colonies that i want to micro so they build themselves up correctly, and when the outlying colonies are sufficiently built up i assign them to sectors.

 

[Randwarf]

Apparently we became dumber since CK2 and can't handle this kind of complexity

It is not about becoming dumber, it is just that stellaris is targeted at wider, more casual auditory

 

[Akka le Vil]

I completely agree with this. Since there is a planet cap AND a sector cap, having sectors of unlimited size makes the sector cap basically pointless. The only reason to have more than one sector is to have different foci, but then you probably only need three (one for energy, minerals and research).

If each sector had its own planet limit (maybe equal to the size of your directly-managed worlds, 5 at game start) it would actually mean the sector limit becomes relevant. Also adds more realism because each governer would be responsible for, at most, five planets or so.

It's something I've often supported in the discussions early after release.
Sectors should have a maximum size, which would be able to be increased (be it through technology, or global size of the empire, or both), and the "core planets" should be a sector in their own right - it's pretty weird that there is a fixed cap on the core world number, which doesn't change wether you've a tiny stellar dominion of two systems, or hold half the galaxy in your grasp (yes you can change it a bit with tech and governments, but the base number stays the same).

It'd be much more logical to have all sectors increase in maximum size progressively, allowing for your core world to expand with time too.

 

[Zenicetus]

Why is it "strange" that Paradox decided to put boundaries on the difficulty of balancing their game design by deciding that empires would, for the most part, all use the same mechanics?

Because this is a game about aliens meeting each other in space, and it's reasonable to assume that outer space aliens wouldn't all act as if they had human culture and history. A good space 4x game shouldn't just be a re-skin of a land-based strategy game with rubber alien masks and no real differences between them.

I know this probably won't change because it's the path Paradox has taken, and it's easier to adapt mechanics from their historical games about human civilizations. But it would still be nice to be able to play some classic sci-fi tropes like hive minds, networked machine intelligences and so on, that wouldn't have "ethos drift" and would instead have some other balancing mechanic to compensate. It would allow for more alien-seeming aliens in the game.

 

[PirateJack]

Personally, I think sectors will become something unique and fantastic once Stellaris is developed some more. There's a lot of room for internal politics when it comes to sectors, especially once they get their own fleets and factions have a greater range/involvement. It makes intuitive sense to me that factions should be tied to a given sector/governor, for example. It wouldn't go full CK2, because this isn't CK2 in Space and because the scope of the game is a lot broader than Paradox's previous grand strategy games, but it would make for some interesting gameplay where you have to keep your subordinates in line as much as conquering the galaxy.

It's especially interesting because the ethos system means you can have a completely different game even if you play exactly the same each game, the only difference being the ethos you choose. A militarist population, for instance, could become antsy if you sit on your laurels for too long, while Individualists could be more likely to push for secession/vassalisation of sectors.

There's a ton of room for variation in there and once Stellaris gets a few DLC under its belt, it'll be as awesome as all the other PDX titles. It's just that we have to wait for the game to get to that point.

 

[Grattons]

You have stated exactly what I have tried to get them to recognize. But not carrying forward human perceptions/beliefs/thought processes seems to have escaped them. I suspect they have not spent 10 years reading sci-fi books, so they don't get that aliens are really alien from us. They can be imagined and explained. Not just humans in rubber suits. But I think we are talking to the Wall. They are not listening.

 

[terrycloth]

As it is right now, sectors want independance when pops are unhappy, which only happens when you conquer someone elses planet.

Maybe just having different ethics should be enough for them to join a separatist faction, which could be released as a friendly empire with those ethics? That kind of dumps on individualists and xenophiles, though, since their whole thing is managing different ethics instead of purging and enslaving unhappy pops like collectivists can.

Also, you'd need positive ethics divergence to diverge towards one thing instead of randomly scattering the ethics all over the place. It could be random per planet or per sector.

 

[HydroAC]

I have no problem with the ideas of sectors. In fact, it is an interesting idea that makes sense in an space empire. If well implemented it will reduce the bane of empire games - micromanagement.

But sectors as they currently are implemented have created micromanagement headaches for me that seriously suck the fun out of the game. Whenever I get another colonization type and start internal colonization then I have to shift many of my sectors - costing influence. Then I get another planet colonization type and have to do it again. Rinse and repeat a half dozen times. This is still an issue when I create under-sized sectors (e.g. 4 of max 5), allowing some room to grow.

Fiddling with sector boundaries multiple times for an empire of 50 to 100 planets or more is not fun - it is micromanagement drudgery, pure and simple.

And tech that increases sector size comes way too late to be helpful.

So no thank you to sectors.

I gave up on sectors completely and use a mod that sets my core to more or less whatever I want as a free policy. In my current game I have 118 planets and 995 'core' planets. Cycling through the planets periodically to build improvements is pretty easy, and there are no irritating sectors to worry about.

 

[chrisjwmartin]

• Whether sector is allowed to enslave/emancipate
• Whether sector is allowed to build spaceports and construction ships
• Whether sector is allowed to build military stations (this will replace the military sector focus)

Could you also add a toggle to allow sectors to colonise planets in their sector? It would help to bypass some of the "40% colonised of colonisable planets" grind.

(Of course a better approach would be to change it to "40% owned of colonisable planets", but baby steps.)

 

[alxgvr]

Sector Improvements
Since barely a day goes by without a new thread on the topic of sectors and enslavement, we would of course be remiss not to deal with this particular bugbear. We intend to spend a considerable amount of time on the sector AI for Heinlein, but I'm not going to go into specifics on bug fixing/AI improvements but rather on a series of new toggles that we intend to introduce to give the player more control over their sector. In addition to the current redevelopment/respect tile resource toggles, the following new toggles are planned for Heinlein:

• Whether sector is allowed to enslave/emancipate
• Whether sector is allowed to build spaceports and construction ships
• Whether sector is allowed to build military stations (this will replace the military sector focus)

We're also discussing having a sector toggle for building and maintaining local defense fleets, but we don't think we'll have time for it in Heinlein.


from: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...is-dev-diary-42-heinlein-patch-part-3.964098/ in case you missed it

Don`t make defence fleets. Army in any country controlled by central goverment. AI will never do it right. His fleets will be to weak to stop enemy invasion. Just waste of resources. Defence stations will be enougth to slow down invasion and give player time to send troops in that system.

 

[Randwarf]

Could you also add a toggle to allow sectors to colonise planets in their sector? It would help to bypass some of the "40% colonised of colonisable planets" grind.

(Of course a better approach would be to change it to "40% owned of colonisable planets", but baby steps.)

They already have it

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/769304656908517376

 

[chrisjwmartin]

They already have it

https://twitter.com/Martin_Anward/status/769304656908517376

Hooray! Ty.

 

[brycef]

Heck, the simple fix I'd like to see is for the player to be able to modify what buildings a planet in a sector has, just as you can with your core planets. I'm not asking for much but if you had this option half of my complaints with this game would go away. There is no reason you need spend influence to un-sector, change something, and re-sector a planet just because your AI made a mistake or you need more food production on a planet and need to get rid of that surplus mine and change it to a hydroponic tile. Locking you out of the surface screen is just stupid, especially when you can still make changes to the starport, the armies or edicts to the planet!

As it is, this one "feature", locking you of the surface screen, really makes this game less enjoyable for me. As it is, the real only thing you get to do as leader is fight wars (that are over quickly because of the lack of depth and independence your allies show and the boring ground combat) or diplomacy (where now the only thing you negotiate in trade deals is resource or research trades)...boring really. Believe it or not, there are a lot of us who DO enjoy micro-managing and creating things and the occasional quick fix to problems on planetary surfaces! As it is I feel locked out of my own game and limited in what I can do to fix planetary problems with this system.

 

[brycef]

i wonder why you guys dont get it, in Stellaris and most other Paradox games, you are not any dictator/ruler/king/whatever.
you rather some kind of overall spirit of the nation/race. so all that arguments like "a dictator cant handle this and that" are not relevant at all.

Because if I can't manage it, then I'm not a player. Instead I'm just an observer. I might as well play SimCity then.

 

[Naelar]

Because if I can't manage it, then I'm not a player. Instead I'm just an observer. I might as well play SimCity then.

Can just have a higher core planet limit, though sectors should stay. The AI improvements coming should resolve a lot of issues players have. I haven't seen too many so far, though I am as purge happy as purge happy gets, so I avoid a lot of issues like that.

 

[Challenge]

Because if I can't manage it, then I'm not a player. Instead I'm just an observer. I might as well play SimCity then.

Not really, no. The idea of a GSG is that I'm supposed to make big decisions and policy choices leaving the implementation to the lackeys.

I like the idea of having Sectors and see the reasoning behind them. The total lack of control, the fact that their excess energy credits and minerals are not accessible when the main empire stockpiles are low or we are going to war, the ships and troops built in sectors are hidden from me, and the limit on how many vs number of planets in them, all contribute to my dissatisfaction with the implementation. The new changes to sectors may go a way to fixing the control issue, but I wait to see how they work before making additional whining noises.

Cities Skylines is a better choice than SimCity, IMO. (Not just because it's by Paradox). And even with both of those you have to make decisions about budget, taxes, building placement, and policies to direct the city. Now I don't really get to influence sectors as much as I do my city in Skylines.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I think sectors are a good idea however the implementation is pretty bad.
I played a lot of mods that allowed more core planets and found that for me the optimal number of planets to control personally is 20-25. Above that i perefer using sectors. The 5 system limit is far too low.

I think the other thing to mention about the system limit is that you hit it really early on, when you're still expanding your economy and your colonies will still reward significant manual optimisation.

There comes a point where having more planets under personal control doesn't matter so much from an optimisation standpoint, they're just a useful way to access spaceports in the outliner, but you hit the limit considerably before that point. Almost immediately if you've explored well and lined up a number of colonisation targets before your first expansion wave gets built.

 

[Akka le Vil]

Not really, no. The idea of a GSG is that I'm supposed to make big decisions and policy choices leaving the implementation to the lackeys.

Well, the problem being that Stellaris doesn't work like that. It's designed to be micromanaged - you'd have nothing to do for years on end if you limited yourself to general policies settings.

 

[Vind7]

Sector AI need a good leash with plenty of settings because after so much time it still cant do anything except moving pops from happiness and divergence buildings to farms creating unrest and rebellions in sector.

 

[Madzai]

Well, the problem being that Stellaris doesn't work like that. It's designed to be micromanaged - you'd have nothing to do for years on end if you limited yourself to general policies settings.

This. I always find it amusing that person who strongly disagree with current Sectors implementation are automatically labeled as "micro-control freak". The fact that you have nothing to do for decades mid-game, aside from participating in wars, that are currently a mix of total clusterf* and a whack-a-mole(depending on your and your enemies FTL method) is ignored.