Stellaris thoughts from a Lurker.

[Belkeirun]

Dear Stellaris Team.


Firstly thank you for your continued support and hard work for this game.


I have decided to write a lengthy post regarding your latest expansion, stellaris : megacorp. Warning for post length.


My first couple of games were filled with optimism as I played with the exciting new mechanics. However now having played a longer game with a better understanding I have encountered a few issues.


1) Micromanagement


If it was your intention with the new update for the planets to reduce the micromanagement then you have failed. Like totally failed. With the old tile based system you eventually got to the point where a planet could be placed into a sector for the AI to not build anything and just provide you with resources as required.


With the new system every couple of years you are required to visit almost every planet, move excess population, construct/upgrade a district/building. You cannot build excess districts/buildings as you still pay the upkeep for them whether someone is working them or not. (This was the cause of my economy tanking in the first game)


Suggestion(s) :


a) Remove the upkeep costs from the district/building if it is not in use.

b) Remove the upkeep costs from the district/building and add it to the provided Jobs.


With either of these suggestions we would be able to build ahead on planets and then hopefully not be required to visit them so often. However this will probably create another problem of Job allocation so an easier way of globally prioritising certain jobs would be required.


2) Strategic Resources


Strategic resources as upkeep for upgraded buildings is just bad. Normally when you need more people on a job you don't go and add 'Exotic Gases' to the building, that normally results in less people wanting to work there. Making refinery buildings to give you strategic resources is just a bit sad. You shouldn't NEED such resources ever, they should only improve. Selling an infinite amount on the market place is worse than sad, completely invalidating the refinery and actually finding any yourself on the map.


Such resources should be cherished, protected and fought over. Please give us a reason to fight over them. Not just as an upkeep for buildings and as a cost for nebulous edicts.


Suggestion(s) :


Strategic resources should be used for 'improved' components and construction. They should provide tangible benefits for the ships/meagstructures that you build with them. When you research a ship component you get a basic version requiring only alloys, and a strategic resource version which in addition to alloys requires an appropriate strategic resource/strategic alloy. The strategic resource version would be equivalent to the next tier research. If you don't have that resource it's not the end of the world as you can still build the basic components.


Megastructures should be constructed with a modifier dependant on the quality of the resources you used to make it. A basic ring world constructed from standard alloys should not be as good as one made from Living Metal alloys. Maybe a difference in the number of districts it can support, or a happiness bonus?


3) Internal/Galactic Market


Bad. Really bad. Please remove. The only reason I can think you added this was because your AI needed somewhere to go and buy donuts for all the enforcers.


Suggestion(s) :


If this feature must remain I suggest every month having the available market resources being a percentage of each resources total galactic production. During the month you can 'bid' on the available resources and at the end of the month the best bids win. This way the market is not infinite.


4) Sectors & Trade


Sectors are a complete non-entity. They are a computer generated area of space which a governor can affect.


Trade, nice concept shame about the implementation. The old adage about trying to pick oneself up in a bucket springs to mind. I'm not sure which is the exact problem but either calculating the trade routes through multiple gateways/wormholes or calculating the 'trade hub' resource collection through multiple gateways/wormholes basically causes the game to grind to a complete stop.


Suggestion(s) :


Change the 'trade hub' so it can only be built in a Sector 'Capital'. It then gathers ALL the 'trade' in the Sector. Then any trade routes are calculated between the trade hubs. Being able to manually adjust the Sectors would be vastly appreciated as at the moment the computer seems to generate very unnatural sectors at times.


5) Districts


An interesting concept. Though I feel it could have been vastly expanded on. They seem to have the majority of the housing and basic resource collection, whilst the buildings have the specialists and utility. Though there are exceptions in both cases. The reasoning behind which districts certain planet types get to build all seems a bit weird at times. The Ecumenopolis can build industrial districts, but a regular world is stuck only with an industrial building. The habitat can build a science district but the Ring world can't, even though it is only using 3 of the possible 4 districts.


Suggestion(s) :


I would suggest being able to specialize the planets a bit more, let us change the available districts on any planet to better suit our needs. For example the Ringworlds 4th district could be any one of the following 'Science, Leisure, Trade, Industrial, Foundry, Warehouse, Military'. A planetary edict could change the terraformed Tomb World I just colonised to remove my 0 buildable Farming Districts with something more useful. A resort district specifically for resort worlds would make much more sense than a vast collection of Luxury Houses and Trade Buildings.


Just give us a few more options. At the moment a Ecumenopolis is the only option for Industrial & Foundry worlds. Give us a halfway option in between an Industrial Ecumenopolis and a Standard World with Industrial Buildings.

Thank you to any bored individual who managed to read it all.

 

[Delthor]

1) Micromanagement

People need to be willing to let a planet be "done." You shouldn't build every little mining colony up to the maximum number of districts like it's a trade hub that just happens to have some mining districts.

The problem is really with immigration. Emmigration push doesn't get high enough to hit pop decline, at least not on a reasonable time period. So you can't have a planet's growth d, irected elsewhere except through intense micro. We need some options that effectively stop growth through emmigration, even if it's somewhat costly so it's not just a better "stop population growth."

Other than that, I haven't had any issues with micro once I learned to build buildings and districts more wisely so I didn't need to micro pops. For planets that are growing, you should need to be making the decision of when to build each building or district.

A basic ring world constructed from standard alloys should not be as good as one made from Living Metal alloys. Maybe a difference in the number of districts it can support, or a happiness bonus?

I think the way the resources work is fine. The more powerful buildings that require resources are much, much better in terms of jobs per building slot. However, they're not better at output per pop, so you really only need every building to be upgraded on fairly crowded worlds. Making these super urban worlds expensive and difficult to maintain is a really good way of balancing out their power.

let us change the available districts on any planet to better suit our needs

I think this would end up trivializing an important part of the game. Right now you have to adjust your plans based on what districts are available on your planets. It adds to the depth of the game, and makes different games with the same empire quite a bit more different based on what resources are available. It also makes mining districts rare and worth fighting wars over, since you're hard limited on the amount of minerals a given amount of space can produce.

 

[anamiac]

I actually like all of the OP's ideas.

Megastructures should be constructed with a modifier dependant on the quality of the resources you used to make it. A basic ring world constructed from standard alloys should not be as good as one made from Living Metal alloys. Maybe a difference in the number of districts it can support, or a happiness bonus?

I really like this one. For instance, if living metal meant the difference between 6 district habitats and 10 district habitats. Make strategic resources strategic again! If you're playing a government strategy that wants habitats, now you're motivated to go seize a living metal deposit from your opponent. As it currently stands, could you ever imagine starting a war to gain a living metal resource, just so you can check off some edict?
I would like to see starbase modules that could improve the gathering of resources in the system. ie, instead of getting 1 living metal now you can get 7 if you've got a star fortress with 6 of the resource gathering modules.