Stellaris 2.2 is unplayable right now

[Muramas]

So you are just starting up a new game! Ready to explore the universe and conquer races!

(this is a mock story to explain the difficulties a normal player may encounter)

==You make up your race and pop into the game. You need to do all the default starting things like setting up default policies, species setup etc.

The are all things you SHOULD be able to set your default policies, species settings at the race creation screen instead of every time when you start.​

==You continue on choosing your starting tech current opening tech: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MFEchhGtip5gmTZVXCBVGIAAEFK8pevG4ePZbV3_blA/edit

For some reason I am able to research interceptors (without having a ship that can use them until cruisers), hydro farms (which are pretty useless),and orbital boost tech (which I don’t have any yet)​

I also noticed that there isn't a way to get food processing building or mineral purification building in the starters (unlocking it from eco simulation/geothermal fracking) so I either choose ship tech or research +tech (the boring choice).​

==I am finally done setting up my initial empire settings. I only have 100 minerals so I can’t do anything on my planet and I noticed that my starting planet is only a size 16.

In MP you could have an advantage over someone for something that could be fixed.

Currently you can have somewhere between 16-22 planet start. Having a 16 means you only get 3 unlocked or 6 extra districts only and will totally hurt.

Suggestion from Bearjuden:
Having a "Standardized Homeworlds: On/Semi/Off" could fix this issue. "On" could be identical district allocation as well as size, whereas Semi would produce homeworlds of identical size but with randomized district allocation.​

==I select my constructor ship in my main star I have a 2 mineral and 3 energy orbital ready to used. The mineral tile will take 50 months (4 years) to recoup costs (plus 1 energy upkeep on to of that) and the energy will take 33~43 months (2.75~3.6 years) or so. I build the energy orbital.

The income generated from expanding generally is not a lot unless you luck out with high number of mineral or energy tiles. One fix for this would be to have all 2 orbitals (not rares) should be changed to 3 and then see if other fixes are required, prob lowering orbital upkeep)​

Currently to expand you are paying 100 alloys (equivalent to 400 energy) and 100 minerals . On top of that each station and orbital cost 1 energy and generally ends up costing more energy than it is worth expanding.​

==I see a planet beside me and I want to start building a colony ship and take it over.

Newly built colonies have a -50% to pop growth, they are already a huge drain on resources and time. It takes years before they are able to produce anything. This -50% should either be just for the first 5 pops or removed.

~note that hive mind does not have this​

==After getting myself situated, I go to war with my neighbor. I take over one of this planets and I take territory. I immediate notice that everything is in the red because all the AI’s pops are doing clerk jobs and there is not enough energy or food on the planet.

Currently the AIs does not build districts. When you take them over they have a huge deficient of food and energy and takes years to stabilize.

​

==So after you conquered the new planet and you want to replace a building.

The building promotes before checking if the building you are replacing has an pops for the jobs. So your replaced building creates two unemployed pops.​

~If you took over a hive mind they generate a ton of unrest and crime for generations

~Note: Hive mind do not have demoting issue​

~If you took over a robot they are slowly disassembled which generates another issues. The game organizes your buildings automatically and whenever pops drop between a certain number it ruins the building. You have no choice which building gets ruined first and generally it sorts it so civilian industries are the first building ruined which is an important building to your empire.​

Buildings should either be allowed to manually sorted or at least sorted smartly where culture buildings, followed by research are on the bottom. Your empire won’t crumble if your unity production stops...
​

==So now you have unemployed pops. This could of happened because when you took over a planet, you specified that the new race is a resident. This means that any of main race pops will displace all rulers and specialists.

Unemployed pops should be demoted right away. It takes way too long right now and it is just a broken system currently to have pops do nothing for years. If you want to keep a part of this system, make demoted pops upset that they get demoted but if a job of their type opens up they will take it and be happy again.

​

==Okay so you have two pops, you notice that one of your races are starting to grow on unsuitable planets which increases consumer goods costs by a lot.


==Since your races are not suited for the other world at all. You decide to lock in one race to grow. If you do that then you get a -20% growth speed penalizing you further.


==If you are playing Egalitarians / adjacent, you cannot choose which race grows AND which robots to build


==At least the Pops are of different types and one is good at food, the other is good at energy. Then you look at your workers and notice they do not work the jobs they are better suited to and you either need to manually fiddle with the priority buttons, migrate them to other worlds or hope pops move around eventually.


==Then you notice the priority button doesn’t actually do priority but disables the jobs. This needs to be changed so you can tell the AI which jobs you want to “prioritize” and fills others when those are full.


==So after all that fiddling you want to move around the pops with resettlement.

~First if you are egalitarian / adjacent...you can’t.​

~Second the resettlement screen needs more information such as how many pops are on planets, number until a building is destroyed (currently sometimes it notifies you, sometimes it doesn’t), habitability to and from planet etc.​

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/a5r05n/resettlement_planner_redesign_mockup/

​

==I have been building robots on a planet and noticed it has been an issue keeping up with districts needed to keep them busy.

Robots only work farm and miner jobs which doesn’t make sense, they should be able to work all worker type jobs. Without it, robots fill up a planet and start becoming unemployed or you need to keep building districts and eventually start running out of power because they don’t work generators but you need power to power the robots and you are making food / mines for the robots to work.​

~If you are egalitarian / adjacent you can’t move robots off planet​

~If you stop the building you have unemployment / empty building slot​

~Research for droids (specialists) is really far down the science track

​

==I am expanding my empire and I have a lot of SRs (strategic resources) in my space but I don’t have the tech to get them.

Gas should be switched to physics and crystals to sociology. This will split the difficulty between all the sciences instead of relying on engineering alone for all the techs.​

On top of this the UI needs to split the common SRs (motes, gas, crystals) out so I can see them on my top bar...i have a lot of room up there.​

Also since more techs have been introduced I find even playing on .75% that the tech acquisition rate is out of wack. It should be easier to get early tech, or older techs.

​

==The game needs to change the hotkeys; technology, species need to be on it. Move policies and expansion planner off. If possible, remap F11 off screenshot and use 11 and 12 for faction and leaders.


==Altering pops should not take research, just time. It takes a long time to get the tech and currently it also slow down my research by another 100+ months to change some negative or add a small mod.


==Allow me to declare a war of vassalization or tributary no matter the size of the other empire. Also the vassal casus belli expires too fast.

For reference, i play on the latest beta​

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Mate, a ton of what you said is being discussed in, like, a dozen different threads.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

I don't have any problems getting my game going. It's a little slower than I'd like at times, but I'm able to have ample resources and to expand at a decent rate.

 

[pc_gamer_1]

I play the game for one hour, meet my neighbors now the game is so laggy and stuttering that i cant play anymore. GG.

 

[AlanC9]

A lot of this just seems to be whining that the start is too hard.

 

[Muramas]

A lot of this just seems to be whining that the start is too hard.

? Are you even reading it?

I am a pretty high tier player multiplayer matches. Like I have done excel sheets on calculations on how much resources each pop produces.

I am down for challenge and different playing styles but these are pretty big issues with the new version where I have to change the way I play because I encounter literal bugs.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, I completed a game with few problems as a megacorp in pretty terrible conditions and I really ought to be the bottom-tier of single players who only doesn't qualify for "filthy casual" because of the time I spend, so I have to call hyperbole on the thread title.

 

[WhapXI]

I am a pretty high tier player multiplayer matches

Hahahahaha.

I'm sure you're just swell at this game in which you have difficulty settling a second planet and keeping up in tech.

A lot of your points are valid and are already being discussed. The rest seem to be complaints because you don't understand how to play 2.2 yet.

 

[Bearjuden]

Planets should be locked at a 20 size unless you have a civic such as life-seeded. Having a 16 planet start means you only get 3 unlocked or 6 extra districts only and will totally hurt.

Everything else aside (there are some decent points in there, robots should be valid clerks, workers should do what they're better at, some not so decent, like distributing special resource techs amongst society and physics and not using research for gene modding), I completely disagree with this. Planets have different sizes. Not every race is going to grow up on a carbon copy of every other race's world, that's just hands down flatly unrealistic. I think there should be caps, especially upper limit ones, so that as you say life-seeded is still really strong as a civic. But it shouldn't be always so similar, I've loved having very different homeworlds on each run so far.

I certainly haven't had any issues that were so problematic I had to stop playing. Even with pops migrating to low habitability planets and robots only being partially employed and yadda yadda yadda, I haven't had issues creating planets with hundreds of amentities and high populations and generating tons of resources, and I am by no means whatsoever a particularly talented player. Good points and otherwise, methinks you're blowing this a little out of proportion.

 

[Muramas]

...Icompletely disagree with this. Planets have different sizes. Not every race is going to grow up on a carbon copy of every other race's world, that's just hands down flatly unrealistic..

I changed it a bit, I think 18 planet is an okay start but under that is still pretty bad. Also if you are looking at this from a multiplayer aspect this means that by default some players have a random handicap that could be fixed.

 

[Bearjuden]

Also if you are looking at this from a multiplayer aspect this means that by default some players have a random handicap that could be fixed.

Hm, I don't really do multiplayer so I didn't think of that but perhaps a setting in the beginning for "Standardized Homeworlds: On/Semi/Off" could be in order? On could be identical district allocation as well as size, whereas Semi would produce homeworlds of identical size but with randomized district allocation.

 

[Muramas]

Hm, I don't really do multiplayer so I didn't think of that but perhaps a setting in the beginning for "Standardized Homeworlds: On/Semi/Off" could be in order? On could be identical district allocation as well as size, whereas Semi would produce homeworlds of identical size but with randomized district allocation.

I like that!

 

[Magdaki]

While there are certainly plenty of issues (I sure hope pop growth is fixed soon), I'm having a blast playing the game. I've put in about 40 hours or so since MegaCorps release.

 

[nstgc]

After a major patch, Stellaris is going to have issues, but this is nothing compared to when 2.0 game out. Its more stable, and more fun. 2.0 was a cluster fuck of great ideas poorly implemented. This just needs to tweaking. So if PDX can make something wonderful out of the garbage that was 2.0, then this patch, which I'm finding far more enjoyable than any previous patch, will not be a problem at all.

Also, "unplayable". Do people even know what that means? It means "can't be played" as opposed to "something I'd rather not play right now". Even 2.0 with its bugs and anti-features wasn't unplayable.

That said, I logged in to post screenshots of 3 different bugs. Off I go!

 

[Studoku]

After a major patch, Stellaris is going to have issues, but this is nothing compared to when 2.0 game out.

Paradox having a history of unfinished, buggy releases is not a point in their favour. Even the most loyal shill should acknowledge that.

 

[Alblaka]

If the game is, objectively and factually 'unplayable'
how comes I've logged 50 hours into the game after 2.2, playing 2.2 and had fun for most of the time...

Unless you're implying I can apparently have fun doing nothing (since unplayable games cannot, you know, be PLAYed), you may want to rethink that claim/phrasing.

 

[Cymsdale]

Unplayable is a funny term. Is the game able to be played? Obviously. I played it for many hours last night, with enjoyable moments. My ally pulled me into a liberation war and I was sucked in, playing for far longer than I planned because I got seriously invested in the results.

The fact that the war was basically won, but the liberation war bug (which I was unaware of at the time) caused the results of the entire war to be instantly reverted was like a punch in the gut. So I was able to "play" the game, it was not unplayable, but a major bug (that frankly, shows the patch was released far too early) felt like it instantly sucked away all the fun I had and made me feel like I wasted a huge amount of time.

But sure, the game is certainly playable.

 

[nstgc]

Paradox having a history of unfinished, buggy releases is not a point in their favour. Even the most loyal, overchromosomed shill should acknowledge that.

Who said I was making excuses? I was more commenting on the absurdity of calling this "unplayable" as well as the apparent surprise. Why did you focus on half of one sentence and ignore the rest of the post?

If the game is, objectively and factually 'unplayable'
how comes I've logged 50 hours into the game after 2.2, playing 2.2 and had fun for most of the time...

Unless you're implying I can apparently have fun doing nothing (since unplayable games cannot, you know, be PLAYed), you may want to rethink that claim/phrasing.

I too am curious.

 

[AlanC9]

? Are you even reading it?

I am a pretty high tier player multiplayer matches. Like I have done excel sheets on calculations on how much resources each pop produces.

I am down for challenge and different playing styles but these are pretty big issues with the new version where I have to change the way I play because I encounter literal bugs.

That's why I said "sounds like." My take was that you're expressing yourself very badly, and making your argument sound worse than it is. But yeah, my bad for not explaining why.

You've got an implicit assumption there that things should be less randomized at the start, which is doing most of the work here. That assumption is going to be a tough sell for players who don't play "high tier player multiplayer matches," since enforced parity would make SP worse, not better. Dealing with challenges like not getting a great HW and initial tech options that aren't very helpful is part of the fun.

And some of your stuff is just whining. If you don't think the mining stations have a good enough ROI to be worthwhile early, then don't build them.

The hysterical thread title doesn't help much. "Unplayable" is just silly.

 

[Trueno33]

Good summary then. Thanks OP