Stellaris 3.0.3 Open Beta Announcement

[Bankipriel]

I am *really* happy to see this news.

However, if the beta is still using a *modified* S-curve & total empire population malus, then I will not be wasting my time on it. This system is a failure of vision & understanding of your own game's mechanics (many of which are from paid DLC).

If you guys want to try out something *different*, I will gladly dive into a beta and give feedback, but I've already wasted enough time on the terrible systems implemented with 3.0. Until something new is introduced, I will be utilizing mods that offer reduced pops with *zero* additional micro or planet babysitting.

Thank you again, very much, for allocating resources and dev team time to work on this.

Please don't waste our time by presenting modifications of a broken system.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Could you please, along with the open_beta, release a statement/Dev Diary about what you want to achieve with the changes and the design goals.
For example until the current Dev Diary #210 a number of people considered breeding worlds an unintended consequence of the system, instead of an intended one.
And the discussions if your design achieves it's goals or if your design has a "bad idea" are different ones, I feel should be adressed early.

If you guys think that Pops are the major cause of Lag in the game, you need to rebalance jobs, cutting most of them and improving the production so the ratio of Pop/Jobs is the same.

Or we could address the massive amount of pop-based calculations and see which are necessary, which are not and which can be optimized.
There might be solution that keep many pops while adressing performance, but for most of us these systems are a black box.

It’s incredibly micro intensive to go in and remove 2 more clerk jobs every time you add a city district, since you can’t do it as you queue them but only after they finish.
Not to mention some of the others where the optimal job number is 40 so you need to build to 40 jobs then upgrade then remove a couple more to get it back down to exactly 40.

If you reduce jobs, new jobs of the same type start disabled. So if you disable the first city districts 2 clerk jobs, the amount of open clerk jobs should stay 0 even if you build more.
If that's not the case in your game that might be a bug.

 

[Scanz]

FIX AI please, it like potato after war - never building or building strange things (like 3 adm building for 2 pops)

 

[Sedrel]

or just migrate stacks of the same jobs and pops to one big pop and job like you have 30 miner jobs on a planet and 40 population you have 3 stacks of 10 pop and 3 stacks of 10 miner jobs, then you already have to deal with 27 less pops and 27 less jobs on this planet, if jobs or pops decrease you can split them up again. the most jobs are mining, energy and agricultur jobs and are crowded on single planets, doesnt make sense to treat every single one of them.

 

[Hiksday]

I'd rather see the mechanic tweaked so abuse isn't rewarding -- so you get full growth from pops easier, and you don't suffer a penalty until you're actually tight on housing.

One thing the original Carrying Capacity mod did was to count unbuilt districts as 10 capacity, not 3-4 capacity as Dick does. That alone probably helped a bunch.

I just don't see how we could achieve a good result with how the mechanic work . We either make it too easy to get and so the system become useless because everyone get the bonus or we nerf it too much and nobody care anymore .
Let's face it , you can tweak the numbers as much as you want , if you can modify the number of jobs , force resettle and build districts as you want it won't work .

 

[Zenicetus]

Just would like to add: Don't release it on Friday without a chance to fix some, maybe new introduced gamebreaking, issues, please.

It's easy to back out of a Beta branch on Steam and revert to the current official version, if something breaks badly enough. Just sayin'...

Also, thanks to the devs for listening to community feedback!

 

[HFY]

I just don't see how we could achieve a good result with how the mechanic work . We either make it too easy to get and so the system become useless because everyone get the bonus or we nerf it too much and nobody care anymore .
Let's face it , you can tweak the numbers as much as you want , if you can modify the number of jobs , force resettle and build districts as you want it won't work .

The devs are able to change the mechanics.

Do you really think it's impossible for them to make any type of logistic growth work in the game?

I think it's possible for logistic growth to be made useful, and I'd like them to do so.

Just would like to add: Don't release it on Friday without a chance to fix some, maybe new introduced gamebreaking, issues, please. It can happen, I believe we even had it in a beta release before, but it would be a shame, after the really stable releases of 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 and your quick reaction to feedback.

Just saying, don't shoot yourself in the foot, please.

(And of course, I would like a release tommorow.... )

Dropping a major release on a Friday afternoon -- right before you leave for vacation -- is a reliable recipe for a very exciting Monday, for other people who are not on vacation.

 

[monkeypunch87]

It's easy to back out of a Beta branch on Steam and revert to the current official version, if something breaks badly enough. Just sayin'...

Also, thanks to the devs for listening to community feedback!

I know, whats your point? I would still like to play the beta during the weekend without major issues.

 

[fourteenfour]

So... an announcement that there will be an announcement of an open beta. OK, better than what we had I suppose.

Well movie trailers now get a preview before they are released, when in Rome...

I believe so yes.

The thing is, people have differing expectations of what they consider good late game performance for a game like this.

I wouldnt consider it satisfactory as it is right now.
If anything the performance around 2600 feels the same.
The noticeable difference was around 24-2500 for me, which is great, but obviously late game is the the target area and I'm just not seeing any difference personally.
I'm still stuck on fastest = normal tick rates by 2600/2700 and onwards and that's only on a modless 600 star galaxy.
So to me, it hasn't achieved its goal.

For my system performance, I would be satisfied being able to run up to the year 3200 at the fast speed tick rate on a 800 star galaxy.
What pains me the most, is that this used to be possible back in the days of the tile system

You do realize you are outlier, seriously out there. Developers need to optimize for year ranges which most players will experience. How long is a day processing? Do you have saves you can share? I would be curious if my machine melts or just says "oh hell no" when I load up such a game

 

[Alfray Stryke]

FIX AI please, it like potato after war - never building or building strange things (like 3 adm building for 2 pops)

As Enfield said, we're looking at AI. When we can give you solid details on it, we will

This initial offering is primarily focused on pop growth. But once that's in hand adding AI tweaks for example is not off the table.. I know that's frustratingly vague but I can't make any firm promises just yet.

But I spent a significant chunk of today looking into our AI situation


As for various other fixes, this is a version of the upcoming 3.0.3 build, so there will be some but not all. We will be working on 3.0.3 for a little while longer yet, so that we can keep fixing things and make additional tweaks as needed.

 

[Rhym3z]

Well movie trailers now get a preview before they are released, when in Rome...




You do realize you are outlier, seriously out there. Developers need to optimize for year ranges which most players will experience. How long is a day processing? Do you have saves you can share? I would be curious if my machine melts or just says "oh hell no" when I load up such a game

I have saves, not that I can send currently however.
I understand 3200 maybe a long end date, but what purpose does it serve as an option if it's not viable on smaller galaxies in particular.
Tick rates are at the maximum normal game speed (if that makes sense) by 2600, regardless of faster speed settings, with a couple of hiccups, on 600 stars, max ai, with 6 of the ai destroyed.
Crisis has been and gone around 2750 and that was when I simply gave up on that game after their defeat.

 

[Kamis51]

Hope fore empire cap for pop grow will go scrap and 'm OK for planetary cap. Full overcrowded planet can have capped grow ore even can have minus value it's can be kind of invisible in stellaris death ratio.

 

[Everstill]

*you* might, aside from my OCD, I don't really care if my pops are working on "suboptimal" jobs. As long as they're working and I don't need to micro every three years to build housing, shuffle pops, etc, which means I find 3.0 a very relaxing change where I'm not micro'ing 20 planets every year.

ETA: Okay, I do admit I would not mind seeing the pop growth rebalanced, though. It is.. someting when I don't even bother to fill up the ring-worlds I get from the Cybrex chain because the growth is.. slow.

You don't understand the point. In the previous system, you had infinite Pops, you could have any "suboptimal" jobs you wanted because one year later you will get another Pop and this previous Pop will not hurt you, in fact, it will help unlock building slots and capital upgrade.

But now it's different, you have a limited number of Pops on your empire, so every single pop on suboptimal jobs will hurt you forever. You will never fill all Jobs positions on your empire, so your Clerk is active hurting all your future better jobs because it will make a new Pop take decades to Grow.

All your planets will have vacant jobs in this version, because your Empire will only have more or less 800 pops. Instead of removing the micro by adding an automatic pop migration (that solved all problems of the previous system), they simple removed the micro by your empire stop growing pops so you never have a full planet anyway.

 

[Zenicetus]

I know, whats your point? I would still like to play the beta during the weekend without major issues.

The point is that it's unreasonable to expect a Beta to be free of game-breaking problems. That's what they're for; to expose problems.

If you're really worried about it, just track the user feedback on the Beta branch here on the forum before diving in. Anything truly game-breaking will probably show up fairly quickly.

 

[King Harkinian]

You don't understand the point. In the previous system, you had infinite Pops, you could have any "suboptimal" jobs you wanted because one year later you will get another Pop and this previous Pop will not hurt you, in fact, it will help unlock building slots and capital upgrade.

But now it's different, you have a limited number of Pops on your empire, so every single pop on suboptimal jobs will hurt you forever. You will never fill all Jobs positions on your empire, so your Clerk is active hurting all your future better jobs because it will make a new Pop take decades to Grow.

All your planets will have vacant jobs in this version, because your Empire will only have more or less 800 pops. Instead of removing the micro by adding an automatic pop migration (that solved all problems of the previous system), they simple removed the micro by your empire stop growing pops so you never have a full planet anyway.

This post is literally nothing but misinformation and wrong math.

You still have infinite pops, and as long as you keep colonizing new planets, the growth is mostly linear throughout the game. No, it does not stop at 800 pops. A pop in a bad job doesn't hurt you in some fundamentally different way now than it used to - the Clerk job has simply been nerfed compared to the other jobs, and with fewer pops, a single bad job makes a bigger difference. But not by much.

And automatic pop migration WAS added, despite your implication that it wasn't. But pop resettlement micro was NOT the reason the system was changed, not in the slightest. The system was changed to reduce the late game lag, and to make it possible to catch up to a snowballing empire.

 

[monkeypunch87]

The point is that it's unreasonable to expect a Beta to be free of game-breaking problems. That's what they're for; to expose problems.

If you're really worried about it, just track the user feedback on the Beta branch here on the forum before diving in. Anything truly game-breaking will probably show up fairly quickly.

I'm sure, I haven't articulated it "unreasonable". I also know what a beta is. Also, you could always roll back, even at a none-beta-release. Still, I would like that they don't release it at Friday afternoon at the end of the working day without the ability to release a hotfix, if somehow necessary. Expectations seem to be high, beta or not, and I would like them to avoid a shitstorm, is all.

Again, what are you trying to explain?

Edit: Well, actually, I'm not to interested. I made my original comment in good faith and don't want this itty bitty stuff right now. Bye.

 

[Hiksday]

The devs are able to change the mechanics.

Do you really think it's impossible for them to make any type of logistic growth work in the game?

I think it's possible for logistic growth to be made useful, and I'd like them to do so.

On a planet basis : i don't think it's possible with the liberty the game give to the player .
On an empire basis : well that's pretty much what we have right now (indirectly ) and it doesn't work , everyone complain about it and players cheat the system quite easily with war and vassal .


The old system problem was exponential growth , huge micromanagment to build planet and lag . The new system problem is no growth past an arbitrary point and micromanagement on planet to double your pop growth (leaving planet with low amount of pop forever)

What i think could be done to have the best system (and by that i mean the less bad one ) is :
-Keep the new planet build system , it's so much better than the old one
-Remove planetary logistic growth (way too easy to cheat )
-Go back to 100 growth point = 1 pop , increasing pop cost sucks .
-Put a hard cap on the population growth you can achieve at an empire level (let's say 100 or 1 pop/month ) to prevent exponential growth . We should also put penalty to said cap after war (based on the number of pop gained in it ) to make war worth it but not instant win .

That's the best i can come up with .

 

[Everstill]

This post is literally nothing but misinformation and wrong math.

You still have infinite pops, and as long as you keep colonizing new planets, the growth is mostly linear throughout the game. No, it does not stop at 800 pops. A pop in a bad job doesn't hurt you in some fundamentally different way now than it used to - the Clerk job has simply been nerfed compared to the other jobs, and with fewer pops, a single bad job makes a bigger difference. But not by much.

And automatic pop migration WAS added, despite your implication that it wasn't. But pop resettlement micro was NOT the reason the system was changed, not in the slightest. The system was changed to reduce the late game lag, and to make it possible to catch up to a snowballing empire.

You don't have infinite pops anymore. Every single planet you colonized before added speed to new pop production. As the game passes you got faster and faster pops on your empire. You filled planets fast and this filled planets keep feeding Pops to new colonies, filling planets faster than the start of the game.

But now you have to game the system: need to resettle the planets so the S curve does not hurt your growth in case you have a low amount of planets or all your planets will never be filled it anyway because the Growth slowed so much it takes decades to produce a new Pop. You will NOT keep colonizing new planets the entire game dude.

And yes, your empire stop at an arbitrary amount of pops because your pop production becomes so slow that the End Game date arrives at a much lower population count.

And yes, a Pop in a bad job hurt you much more. Suppose you conquer an Enemy that have 300 pops working on Clerk Jobs. In the old System, nothing changed, you got more pops, more production, and more planets producing more pops. In the new System, this 300 pops will hurt your pop production forever, adding 150 growth points for a new pop. In the old system it was just sub-optimal, in the new system, it actively hurt you.

Have you tried playing something like a slaver empire....? Only my main species work on Ruler and high level specialist jobs. Every single new slave slows a new Main species pop in the new system, while in the previous system, nothing changed.

And I KNOW the automatic pop migration exist, it was not added now, it was added with the Greater than Ourselves edict of the Galatic Comunnity. They transfered the functionality to the normal game, and this would fix all the boring micro we had on previous version, but now planets don't fill anyway, so it really does not matter if pops auto migrate, as the planets will never be full.

" and to make it possible to catch up to a snowballing empire."

But you said nothing changed on the pop growth speed...?

 

[Azhcristokos]

Looking forward to testing it out. = )

Damn, this is like the opposite of a lot of previous releases...we got the first hotfix with the patch, another one very soon after, and a week after release the devs announce an open beta for the third. It inspires some optimism.

 

[Kayden_II]

This week (date to be confirmed) we will be publishing an open beta to Steam that includes a revision of some of the population growth changes.

Hey, a "little" hint:
Cut down the number of jobs that're provided by districts ( actually, districts are more or less fine, I've just mentioned them for the sake of my argument ), but especially buildings and target the providers of districts / buildings ( the colonies ) in the same manner as well.
You will be quite surprised how this will lower the number of POPs ( against too much micro-management and performance-drops ), targets the actual problem ( the NEED for a quad-zillion of POPs ) and isn't just a delay ( the lower growth ) ... of a symptom ( the POPs themselves ).