Stellaris 3.0.3 Open Beta Announcement

[Pancakelord]

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

It would be cool to have a section on how you/the team tune and evaluate the AI and economy, when that post rolls around. Flicking through the economic_plan and job_weight files reveals some odd numbers, ones that must come from observations/feedback, somehow.

Naturally, I imagine you've got dedicated tools, but screwing with Forge/CG balancing mod ideas necessitated me creating a set of "income map filters" to track (in this case) CG output of all AIs net income in observer mode: (White < 0 CGs a month, Red +0-10 CGs p/month, orange +11-20 a month, green is 21+ p/month),

Interestingly, I find that every single time, AI score more-or-less maps to CG output on ensign difficulty, the top half all have positive CGs, whilst the bottom half have none / < 5 and the bottom quartile are lacking in food (death spiral) with the last lacking in energy too (double death spiral).

This relationship breaks down as the number of free jobs increases, though shrinking planet sizes caps this issue, and I'm able to get ... not quite stellar, but servicable AIs in 2300 as a result by reducing the min moon size to 6 and min planet size to 9 whilst reducing the number of districts yielded by planet size from 1 to 0.80 ~ 0.70 (so 20%-30% less districts on average, and making smaller worlds statistically more likely, which caps off the max number of free jobs the AI has to melt-down over when allocating pops to jobs, which seems to be the root cause of economic death.

• Likewise, reducing required pop growth to 1 but only letting them grow when free jobs exist via game rules [i.e. always full jobs skips the pop-job-scarcity issue], leads to surprisingly economically strong AIs - again suggesting that Jobs allocation is overlooking some fundamental factor, which likely feeds back into income deficits and the AI overbuilding/underbuilding certain districts, exacerbating its situation).

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Love how excited everyone is for this, however, we're going to have a more structured approach to feedback in the open beta, just so everyone is aware.

Don't tire yourself out leaving feedback here.. feel free to do so, but be sure to leave feedback in the appropriate space at the appropriate time, after playing 3.0.3.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

Any sneak preview of the nature of the pop growth adjustments?

 

[joeenochs]

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.

Can't you see that he is talking about the total size of the empire as such so it is a totally different thing?

I like the idea that you have housing as a limiting factor in your model, but you never said what you want to do about the spamming of habitats which can provide more and more housing.

 

[joeenochs]

Any sneak preview of the nature of the pop growth adjustments?

I am curious too. This determines my interest in playing the beta in the first place.

 

[Brael]

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.

That is not the case in my games I’m pretty sure. It seems like they’ll fill other jobs first but still fill those if there’s nothing else. In most situations that would be ok, except I want to hit unemployment so that the pops resettle elsewhere. Thus, filler jobs end up being quite bad.

 

[Brael]

I use an i7 6700k, 16gb ram and a 980ti.
The game is also on an SSD, if that even makes a difference.

I'm not disputing that there's a lot less pops than there used to be.
I'm just surprised that after all the talk over the years about pops being the major cause of lag, that it made the little difference it had for me,
Because I know full well, that when I crack world's, the performance increases

Its possible in that case that it means you’re being gated by some other factor than pop calculations.

Pops are a bottleneck but if something else is creating lag then clearing up the pop count won’t help much.

 

[ToxicKiev]

Can't you see that he is talking about the total size of the empire as such so it is a totally different thing?

I like the idea that you have housing as a limiting factor in your model, but you never said what you want to do about the spamming of habitats which can provide more and more housing.

I didn't think of habitat in my previous model, so I've just come up with one:
For every 200 admin points, you can hold another habitat to add a bit more pop. If you have a voidborne origin, you can easily lift the limit. But if you only have the ascension perk for a larger habitat, the requirement for another one is 150 pt each.
Btw, every habitat has an upkeep of 30 alloys (reduced if having a voidborne origin) and a ringworld requires 150 alloys. This can surely limit the unreasonable expansion in late games because ad fully artificial colony requires enough resources to uphold.

 

[Rhym3z]

Its possible in that case that it means you’re being gated by some other factor than pop calculations.

Pops are a bottleneck but if something else is creating lag then clearing up the pop count won’t help much.

Well, it's funny you say that. i did some testing. I deleted all but 1 other empire from the map at 2787 using the console. This empire had 1031 pops and I had 984, I know, not a lot, I was pacifist.
The increase was nowhere near what I have come to expect from cracking world's pre 3.0.
While it increased tick speed from fastest = normal tick rate to fastest = fast tick rate, that sheds some light on something else potentially not playing ball, because the game should be buttery smooth with 2000 ish pops surely.

The only thing I did differently on this playthrough compared to all my others pre 3.0 was turn on abandoned gateways and wormholes, but I can't imagine that would be the cause

 

[Balesir]

The player wants his planets filled with pops working on all jobs. They don't want to feel bad for working on Clerk jobs or other bad jobs. So please, if you guys want to cut Pops, cut the amount of jobs too and rebalance the economy.

I don't know if you have noticed, but with the addition of amenities production, clerks are not the complete waste of POPs they used to be. I have actually built for some in my latest game as an amenities/energy/consumer goods (through trade) top-up at minimal investment.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Well, it's funny you say that. i did some testing. I deleted all but 1 other empire from the map at 2787 using the console. This empire had 1031 pops and I had 984, I know, not a lot, I was pacifist.
The increase was nowhere near what I have come to expect from cracking world's pre 3.0.
While it increased tick speed from fastest = normal tick rate to fastest = fast tick rate, that sheds some light on something else potentially not playing ball, because the game should be buttery smooth with 2000 ish pops surely.

The only thing I did differently on this playthrough compared to all my others pre 3.0 was turn on abandoned gateways and wormholes, but I can't imagine that would be the cause

There's also a one_year console command, that will tell you exactly how long one year takes in seconds, so you don't have to go "by feel".

 

[sillyrobot]

Well, it's funny you say that. i did some testing. I deleted all but 1 other empire from the map at 2787 using the console. This empire had 1031 pops and I had 984, I know, not a lot, I was pacifist.
The increase was nowhere near what I have come to expect from cracking world's pre 3.0.
While it increased tick speed from fastest = normal tick rate to fastest = fast tick rate, that sheds some light on something else potentially not playing ball, because the game should be buttery smooth with 2000 ish pops surely.

The only thing I did differently on this playthrough compared to all my others pre 3.0 was turn on abandoned gateways and wormholes, but I can't imagine that would be the cause

The gateway / wormhole system used to provide abysmal performance if anywhere near trade routes. I think that is fixed, but how many trade collectors do you have? I generally only operate one (directly on a gateway), but multiples had terrible performance in the past.

 

[Rhym3z]

There's also a one_year console command, that will tell you exactly how long one year takes in seconds, so you don't have to go "by feel".

Oh wow I didn't know that. Thanks

 

[Rhym3z]

The gateway / wormhole system used to provide abysmal performance if anywhere near trade routes. I think that is fixed, but how many trade collectors do you have? I generally only operate one (directly on a gateway), but multiples had terrible performance in the past.

Collectors, as in trade hubs? 7. 1 would pass through a wormhole but I don't have the borders on the other side

 

[DanielPrates]

Excellent. Review growth if you must, but please none of the "pls remove so and so".

 

[HFY]

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

Spoiler: Like this?

There's also a one_year console command, that will tell you exactly how long one year takes in seconds, so you don't have to go "by feel".

Can you have them print that in my game log automatically every year, and have it discount pausing?

Then I can upload a bunch of logs and you all can see if my game is performing to expectation, while I give feedback about how that performance feels subjectively.

Excellent. Review growth if you must, but please none of the "pls remove so and so".

Some things should be replaced, but yeah careful consideration and all that.

 

[Red Earth]

EDIT: just to make sure people understand: i'm talking about LITERALLY USELESS JOBS, because there will never be enough pops to work them. A Ring World will be full of useless jobs because you will NEVER grow enough pops to work all of them.

This highlights a pet peeve of mine that people use words that should be absolutes and redefining them via hyperbole. Useless means without use; zero uses. Not "less useful than something else." One should not have to say "literally" before saying "useless" to get people to understand that they mean it is without use. Especially since people use "literally" to mean the opposite of its meaning.
Hyperbole is literally ruining language.

Now, I'm sure to get "respectfully disagree"s on this, and I welcome them as it lets me know that those of you who are wrong, have seen me being right, and know that you are on notice, and shall face opposition. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
You are figuratively the worst, and your contributions are of less use than those of others.

 

[sillyrobot]

Collectors, as in trade hubs? 7. 1 would pass through a wormhole but I don't have the borders on the other side

You could try to remove those modules and see if your game speeds up. It's just a thought.

 

[adil3tr]

I really think there should just be some divergent choice in the mid game that steers you towards having a tall or wide empire. Tall empires should have megastructures, ecumenopolises, and ring worlds. Wide empires shouldn't need to be nerfed in such a broken way.

 

[blahmaster6k]

t's how the pop growth penalties make your Empire full of useless jobs that will never be worked.

So...don't build districts or buildings until you have the pops to fill them? You're just ending up paying district/building maintenance on unproductive buildings. And if you don't build jobs unless you have enough pops, you won't have the issue of jobs that will never be worked, either. I typically will build my next building/district when I have zero free jobs on the planet, and it works great. The only thing you ever need to pre-build are city districts, because increasing planet capacity speeds up your growth. And the thing about city districts is that once you turn off your first clerk job, further city districts won't add more jobs because they will already be auto-disabled.

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 in the galaxy are you still doing in 3200?