Stellaris 3.0.3 Open Beta Announcement

[mial42]

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.

Adding more and more mechanics to fix a non-functional mechanic doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Logistic growth serves no positive gameplay function; it fixes nothing. And making getting full growth easier reverses the performance gains from fewer pops in the first place (and screws over machine empires). If you were to do that, you may as well just change base growth to 6 and remove LG.

Better to remove a broken mechanic that adds nothing rather than add more mechanics to try and fix it.

 

[King Harkinian]

Hey, a "little" hint:
Cut down the number of jobs that're provided by districts, 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 ).

Districts already provide only 2 jobs, so rather than cutting down the number of jobs per district, they should cut down the amount of districts per planet. There's just way too many of them on an average planet now that most planets end up at only 20-30 pops.

They should absolutely reduce the number of jobs per BUILDING though. Research Labs should only give 1 job by default, making upgrading them useful again if each upgrade still adds 2 jobs.

 

[L.Y.HJ]

The staff needs to be enhanced, they can't even feed themselves

 

[Cymsdale]

They should absolutely reduce the number of jobs per BUILDING though. Research Labs should only give 1 job by default Making upgrading them useful again if each upgrade still adds 2 jobs.

I'm not sure that would change much for me to be honest. Many of my planets didn't even use all the possible building slots to begin with.

 

[joeenochs]

The natural way to get a logistical S curve for pop growth is to tie it to the number of planets in the galaxy and their size. That leaves the problem with habetats and ring worlds which bypassses this. Maybe only certain systems should be suitable to build those and your home world would be one of them. That would of course limit the extend, to which you can play tall, at least regarding the number of pops. I would be fine with that.
However, as soon as you allow an infinite spam of habetats and ring worlds, I cannot see any in game reason to limit the number of pops. We should not forget why the S curve exists in the first place in biology. It is because in the real world space is finite. Any S curve not rooted in space or resource limits will feel completely artificial. The question then is if you have to limit exponential gross. At some point the game is over anyway so why not have exponential growth until then. I guess the performance problems could be fixed by reducing the number of calculations but only the devs can judge this really. Regarding the AI I guess it is essier to handle a stagnant situation than exponential gross but again this is hard to judge without technical inside.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Looking forward to testing it out. Also, I don't think this is an "announcement of an announcement" as some have said, this is the announcement itself, it's just preceding the actual beta rather than coming the moment it's up.

I'm hoping to at least see the AI able to keep itself out of deficits. That's killer right now, and makes a lot of other things kind of hard to assess (e.g. is conquering too strong? Really hard to say when the AI can't fund its own fleet.)

As to carrying capacity issues being discussed, please please please consider making jobs at least factor into it. The current system of pops moving away because of no jobs, but carrying capacity being districts and housing, means it's ideal to have perpetually-unfilled planets stick at max growth. Even the simple dumb fix of changing carrying capacity to just be jobs would take away the ability to "game" the system. (Jobs + current carrying capacity)/2 would probably be at least a bit better.
If you also fix Habitat spam (higher upkeep please) and quash growth a bit (2 base instead of 3, 4 with double carrying capacity instead of 6), then that would pretty much gut the ability to spam pop growth in midgame, and then you probably wouldn't need any per-pop empire pop cost penalty at all, as pop numbers would pretty much be sorted out (just uh...please make the AI also not spam Habitats like crazy around its capital, it's really dumb).

 

[Koopatin]

to be honest... i would take planet size = max pops. buildings and districts = only for boni. city maybe +1 pop limit and eco triples that limit. something radical like that.

habitats will be glorified mining stations... no pops... or 8 pops... something like that...

demotion time.. take it out...

 

[ToxicKiev]

I've just come up with an idea about implementing a new pop growth system. Maybe you devs can make it easier:

When it comes to pop growth, you never leave biology behind. Let's take a typical Z-shaped growth (Indicated as the gray line) as an example. The growth speed is quite slow at the start because there are not enough basic pops to increase the number. Then it starts to explode exponentially to about 50% of the capacity. However, there's another limiting factor: environment. When there's not enough space and resources to spare, the growth curve starts to level after the 50% line, until it reaches the absolute cap where the environment simply cannot feed enough of them.

This is where the new blue parabola comes in. We can use the housing and many other elements for a better simulation. For instance, the max multiplier the algorithm can give is "X". The "X" is defined as the housing player has within the empire divided by any number you want to implement to balance the game (Even a new edict to shave the factor down?). The extra pop that exceeds 100% capacity will provide an overall debuff to slow the growth speed to a halt.

This gives an increasingly larger benefit when you have a large empire at the endgame when you need more pop to fill the jobs. When the X hasn't reached 1, the multiplier doesn't activate so that every other edict can come in as an incentive. You can also set a cap for X to balance off the difference between a small empire and a large one. The algorithm itself is also easy to build because it's a simple parabola with 2 given definitions and a given limit to solve.

Hope this can give you guys a new concept to build up a better bio pop system to test!

 

[joeenochs]

I think before trying to make some super detailed mathematical models you need to answer the basic question what limits space in a galaxy where always more habetats and ring worlds can be created.

 

[HFY]

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 empire penalty is NOT logistic growth -- there's no +growth portion at all, it's just a penalty.

Removing the empire penalty isn't removing logistic growth, it's a separate mechanism.

Adding more and more mechanics to fix a non-functional mechanic doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Logistic growth serves no positive gameplay function; it fixes nothing. And making getting full growth easier reverses the performance gains from fewer pops in the first place (and screws over machine empires). If you were to do that, you may as well just change base growth to 6 and remove LG.

Better to remove a broken mechanic that adds nothing rather than add more mechanics to try and fix it.

Machine Empires did have a buff in the original Carrying Capacity mod, which worked pretty well for me.

Not sure why moving towards something which I've seen work would make it non-functional for you.

 

[Hiksday]

The empire penalty is NOT logistic growth -- there's no +growth portion at all, it's just a penalty.

Removing the empire penalty isn't removing logistic growth, it's a separate mechanism.

I know that but the current system have the same effect that would have an empire logistic growth . You start pretty slow , colonize planet , pop explode and slow down later as the cost of pop become higher . They are using two mechanics for something you could do with one .

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

I think before trying to make some super detailed mathematical models you need to answer the basic question what limits space in a galaxy where always more habetats and ring worlds can be created.

Ringworlds, sure go ham, building them takes forever so they aren't a serious issue.
Habitats...they need something to limit how many you want to have. To take most major science fiction approaches, it's just not a good idea to have giant metal stations as your primary living area because you'll be doing maintenance with new metal all the time, making it infeasible to have a ton more than you have dedicated to mining and refining. Having Habitats at all is cool as a thing from a lot of sci fi, but they quickly just lose their luster and become more busywork when there's too many.

 

[ToxicKiev]

I think before trying to make some super detailed mathematical models you need to answer the basic question what limits space in a galaxy where always more habetats and ring worlds can be created.

One way to solve it is another model: count up the colonies available within the whole galaxy and the ones that have already colonized. When none of them is colonized, you get a globally +50% buff. The more you and the AI's go for, the less benefit you get. And the buff diminishes when ALL of them gets colonized. It's a proper boost during the initial expansion and a limit to stop CPU0 gets toasty at the endgame.

And it's a buff, anyway. Almost no one gets hurt.

 

[joeenochs]

One way to solve it is another model: count up the colonies available within the whole galaxy and the ones that have already colonized. When none of them is colonized, you get a globally +50% buff. The more you and the AI's go for, the less benefit you get. And the buff diminishes when ALL of them gets colonized. It's a proper boost during the initial expansion and a limit to stop CPU0 gets toasty at the endgame.

And it's a buff, anyway. Almost no one gets hurt.

I do not like that. Whether you call something a buff or an absence of a penalty is just an empty game with words. And for the system to limit growth it needs to have teeth so people will get hurt. Yes, everybody will be affected in the same way. But this not the problem. The problem is that you are inventing a modifier that is not rooted in the game world. You might as well link this modifier to the in game year number. It looks better to me than the current system at least in the sense that the empire size plays no role so exploits connected to this will be removed.

 

[John MacWhat]

The growth curves on a planetary basis are one form of limits on pops, and they at least make sense intuitively and from an RP perspective. So, other sources of growth must be that there are more planets to settle, habitats that can be built, and ring worlds. Also ecumenopoli would raise a planet's growth max. Ring worlds and ecumenopoli are very expensive unless you start with them.

So, that leaves us with habitats as the problem in terms of accommodating a potentially over expansion of population, so maybe pop limiting design should focus on them? Perhaps just give habitats a massive growth penalty directly, with the idea being they, particularly, are meant to be filled via immigration?

 

[joeenochs]

The growth curves on a planetary basis are one form of limits on pops, and they at least make sense intuitively and from an RP perspective. So, other sources of growth must be that there are more planets to settle, habitats that can be built, and ring worlds. Also ecumenopoli would raise a planet's growth max. Ring worlds and ecumenopoli are very expensive unless you start with them.

So, that leaves us with habitats as the problem in terms of accommodating a potentially over expansion of population, so maybe pop limiting design should focus on them? Perhaps just give habitats a massive growth penalty directly, with the idea being they, particularly, are meant to be filled via immigration?

Interesting idea. But how would you justify it from a RP perspective. If a species has everything it needs why wouldn't it grow?

 

[grommile]

If a species has everything it needs why wouldn't it grow?

When it's a species of self-aware tool-using abstract thinkers, that's a complex question with at least partly counterintuitive answers.

 

[King Harkinian]

Interesting idea. But how would you justify it from a RP perspective. If a species has everything it needs why wouldn't it grow?

Countries like Japan have everything they need and are not growing. That is the answer to your question. People are far less inclined to have children when they live a life of success. It's perfectly fine to have empire growth slow down as the empire gets bigger, both from a gameplay and realism perspective.

 

[joeenochs]

Countries like Japan have everything they need and are not growing. That is the answer to your question. People are far less inclined to have children when they live a life of success. It's perfectly fine to have empire growth slow down as the empire gets bigger, both from a gameplay and realism perspective.

We were there before. Do you really think that the growth in Luxemburg depends on whether it is an independent country or part of a European superstate when the political system is otherwise the same? To some extend, it is even hard to tell already today which is better describing the current situation. And would it make a difference for those Japanese whether they live on their island or a habitat in space with as much Sushi around and when this habitat offers everything else for a good life.

 

[ToxicKiev]

People are far less inclined to have children when they live a life of success. It's perfectly fine to have empire growth slow down as the empire gets bigger, both from a gameplay and realism perspective.

And this is why I set the limit by the number of housing for my model (tho not as realistic cuz some are caused by living pressure). Also, the more pop on one world, the higher chance to implode when anything bad happens. The cumbersome of a large country must take hold, but the current game mechanism is unreasonably harsh.