The most urgent fixes for 2.2

[Snake_Squeezins]

THE A.I.

Having played deep into 2 games now I can say the AI is not right. I haven't seen any empire that can manage its own affairs. Every one of them that I have seen (via war or sensor link) has descended into crime and homelessness; their inability to get their economy straight means they can't manage to keep up in tech or military power. Even an uplifted, one-planet protectorate in the middle of my empire can't manage its affairs - mostly it just overpopulates itself and then emigrates to my lands, which I guess is not all bad news since those are free pops.

 

[Dug]

Hello everyone, decided to chip in myself a little bit.

1) I can confirm that I was experiencing the graphical stuttering much like everyone else. I think there is some screen tearing involved when the game is set on fastest.

2) Empires both old and new (before patch and after patch) seem to have an occasional bug where the starting leader will not have any talents/traits. I cannot remember correctly but I think this was omnipresent in my IMPERIAL and/or DICTATORIAL empires.

3) A friend of mine while playing MP together has disconnected several times of his own desire to "fix the game". Claiming it behaved weird. I think these are most likely desyncs.

4) AI MegaCorps spam branch offices unreasonably. Even if the planet does not have enough population for ONE branch office building. The AI MegaCorp will establish a branch office regardless. There should be a bare minimum requirement for a planet to be developed enough for the AI to consider it as a lucrative and interesting investment instead of spamming branch offices everywhere. From my experience it does not evaluate the distance, and it does not evaluate the potential usefulness or income from establishing a branch office. I've seen branch offices on as little as 0.7 energy income. This is not good. Instead who ever signs a commercial pact with the MegaCorp AI will instantly become a target of establishing branch offices on ALL planets regardless of quality or potential profit.

5) Synthetic empires and empires that rely on robot populations or desire to build large numbers of robot populations are actually at a loss in this expansion. For instance in comparison to their organic counterparts, the robots take much longer to obtain a significant population. Which in turn actually renders them useless both in the short run and in the long run. The lucrative nature of automation and creating a robot labor force is the fact it should be quicker, cheaper and more effective. Which is why it's lucrative early game for a rapidly developing economy, but also dangerous as you approach late game given the looming threat of AI crisis. All it takes is one robot building empire to go wrong and BAM. Galaxy aflame. I'd like to add given that the game plays in 2200+ you'd think these factories would be capable of assembling menial work drones at quite the speed. Except that doesn't happen. Instead we have a building that occupies a slot and serves as a leech to the economy along with the robots it creates.

The best example of this is the game I had recently with a friend. I made a rapid breeding organic empire that focused on slavery and got the fanatic authoritarian ethic with the domination tradition incluuuuuuuding slavery guilds (mad resources). After 150 years in game I went to analyze the save as not only did my friend barely expand but even after colonizing TWICE as many planets as I did including a Ecunomopolis he still couldn't measure up to me at all.

The conclusion was as following:

- In fleet power I entirely eclipse him. In fact I have two fleets that are of the same firepower yet double the amount of firepower of his one fleet.

- He is economically dependent on me. I feed him 60 energy per month and 30 minerals per month. This was recent though as I noticed his slow progress and decided to give him a boost. It's worth noting that my economy is unphased by providing this amount of resources to him. I still have well over 150+ in both energy and minerals.

- My population eclipses his. While he has many planets and builds twice as many pops, I'm the one struggling with overpopulation. Not to mention I've obtained a few refugees, bought a few slaves off the market and had caravaneer pops consistently join my empire. There was a war where I obtained an alien planet but the pop amount was insignificant. EVEN AFTER THAT it seems to me that the little insignificant planet has started to outclass some of his that have been around for a while.

- We are equivalent in research. Just about the only thing that is fine because I focused myself on establishing a strong economy first. Even so I think I'm about to take off as when we next play I intend to create quite a few research labs given that all others needs meet more than just demand. I'm practically sustaining an empire next door that has probably over 8 planets. WHILE I have two fleets. I mean. Come on. Something is not right here. Oh yeah. One of those fleets (mine) are always deployed on pirate patrol. :|

6) I do not agree that the pirates/pirate patrols are tedious. This is the prospect of hoping to manage a successful empire. You have to be careful about your trade routes. Juicy planets may exist but they might also be the perfect headache if they're too far from home. Colonize responsibly.

I'm going to build on this with the fact that starbases, their techs and their related ascension perks have never been more useful. I'm unsure if people noticed but gun batteries and missile batteries on starbases add trade protection ranges. You can chain these along your trade route if you think it is tedious to assign a fleet.

I also suspect that this is why AI empires are failing to grasp 2.2. They're still playing the old patch where it's desirable to expand as quickly as possible and to incorporate as many planets/territories into your empire. This expansion has put all that into a halt with what feels like a much slower paced game than before. Which might explain why my friend is struggling as well.

7.) Authoritarian faction demands stratified society even if my society is already stratified and the living standard matches that.

8) Game spawns too many anti-player empires. Example: I will pick xenophobes, the galaxy will have a larger amount of xenophiles. Or. I will pick xenophiles, the galaxy will have a larger amount of xenophobes. This wasn't as glaring in the past, at least not for me.

9) General performance seems to be down. Subtle stuttering is now visible even on medium sized galaxies as early as early mid-game.

10) The slave market is underwhelming. I feel like there needs to be an independent faction of merchants that serve this purpose much like the caravaneers. Most of the time there is nothing there and the AI buys too quickly for me to react. There should be a delay before the AI can buy so the player can pause the game and a notification when you can buy slaves if you have slavery enabled or desire to rescue pops into your Utopian Egalitarian empire. Also has anyone seen if you can sell robot pops on the slave market?

I think that's all. Maybe I'll remember something else.

 

[Greenslade]

I would like to have some more feedback on how much input to output a building at full capacity generates. I still don't know how much mineral an alloy foundry consumes, I just wing it.

Yes, more info here would fix things.

Hovering over built buildings to see how many pops are working there would be a nice ui QOL instead of switching tabs back and forth. Overall, I think planet stats could be organized much better so players don't have to dig around so much.

Yeah, I think some of the problems people are having aren't the mechanics as much as the UI

Being able set up placeholder ques for planet construction would be huge. Currently I have to go through each planet every five or so minutes and just build as i go. It's hard to plan out specific roles for planets when you have to keep track of over 30. I might have to break out MS Excel for this. Being able to preemptively plan out the next 10 slots for a planet and initiate them when ready would be great. Think of it like using blueprints in factorio.

I think being able to better set priorities for systems and sectors would be better, but I have more on this to come later.

Please, please, please let us decide the order in which fleets are listed on the UI and in fleet manager. Currently, I have patrol fleets mixed randomly with my big fleets, and I would prefer all my big fleets listed first. This really was not much of an annoyance in past versions, but no we have to manage a bunch of tiny patrol fleets. There is a way to switch the order, but it involves creating fleets and transferring ships which becomes extremely tedious.

Speaking of patrols and piracy, it's a pain. I like the idea, but in practice it's tedious and dissuades me from exploring the new trade mechanics because that means making more tiny patrols that clutter the ui and map and takes up valuable fleet size. It's also hard to tell which is my military fleet and what is a patrol on the galaxy map because they use the same symbols. And, if they are in the same star, i cant just click the icon on the map because it will select them both. I also noticed the ai sometimes won't do anything during wars because they are using their fleets to patrol. My ally neighbor was useless because he wouldn't defend his territory from attack since he needed his fleet to patrol.

Piracy patrols should be separated from military fleets, perhaps the military is used when pirates spawn. But i think there should be some kind of "space cop patrol" mechanic instead. Civilian patrol ships with civilian rules (auto upgrade, don't affect fleet power, etc.) They wouldn't be able to fight (or at least well) against actual military ships. This also means that the military UI would be less of a clutter since the patrols would be under a separate category with different map symbols. I imagine the AI may have an easier time managing 2 separate mechanics instead of balancing 2 intertwined systems; though, I know nothing about coding AI.

Let us draw out patrol routes. So instead of A --> B we can do A --> B --> C and so on. It's super annoying when I make a route and it paths around a piracy system forcing me to make 2 patrols when 1 would've been enough. (I already tried Shift + Click, it didn't seem to work)Let us draw out patrol routes. So instead of A --> B we can do A --> B --> C and so on. It's super annoying when I make a route and it paths around a piracy system forcing me to make 2 patrols when 1 would've been enough. (I already tried Shift + Click, it didn't seem to work)

Yeah I would like it if anti-pirate fleets were more abstracted away, so they were a resource drain but not literally ships flying about that you had to manually send between places.

 

[amocpower]

5) Synthetic empires and empires that rely on robot populations or desire to build large numbers of robot populations are actually at a loss in this expansion. For instance in comparison to their organic counterparts, the robots take much longer to obtain a significant population. Which in turn actually renders them useless both in the short run and in the long run. The lucrative nature of automation and creating a robot labor force is the fact it should be quicker, cheaper and more effective. Which is why it's lucrative early game for a rapidly developing economy, but also dangerous as you approach late game given the looming threat of AI crisis. All it takes is one robot building empire to go wrong and BAM. Galaxy aflame. I'd like to add given that the game plays in 2200+ you'd think these factories would be capable of assembling menial work drones at quite the speed. Except that doesn't happen. Instead we have a building that occupies a slot and serves as a leech to the economy along with the robots it creates.

The best example of this is the game I had recently with a friend. I made a rapid breeding organic empire that focused on slavery and got the fanatic authoritarian ethic with the domination tradition incluuuuuuuding slavery guilds (mad resources). After 150 years in game I went to analyze the save as not only did my friend barely expand but even after colonizing TWICE as many planets as I did including a Ecunomopolis he still couldn't measure up to me at all.

Did you watch "Dev clash" ? Kaiser John had about after 100 Years 800 pop, as Synthetic empire. Gaga have in same time 500 pop, as pacifiy Inward perfekt, with "Rapid Breeders". Same later had Kaiser twice pop then second one(was Gaga). He also had lots of Fleet and Economic power. You can see in pic blow. How many pop did you had after 150 years?

 

[Dug]

I will have to check when I get home to get proper numbers. However I've spoken with my friend and come to the conclusion he overexpanded. Could not support his robot population and in addition did not build robot assembly facilities for some reason. (Still getting like 2.1 robot growth despite that.)

 

[Paradoxon]

Did you watch "Dev clash" ? Kaiser John had about after 100 Years 800 pop, as Synthetic empire. Gaga have in same time 500 pop, as pacifiy Inward perfekt, with "Rapid Breeders". Same later had Kaiser twice pop then second one(was Gaga). He also had lots of Fleet and Economic power. You can see in pic blow. How many pop did you had after 150 years?

I can't speak for GAGA Extrem (although I think Wiz said he was a pretty good player, so I'm assuming he just managed to really play his cards well), but Kaiser Johan accidentally (or not ?) exploited an oversight in an earlier version of the clash that allowed him to have a ludicrous growth for his robots, which is why he's basically crushing everyone in the game, so it's not really a good example of "robot growth isn't broken".

 

[Kilmantor]

• I wonder why some civis like Life Seeded or Mechanist are not available for a MegaCorp?
• Fen Habbis (First League Homeplanet) is a Ecumenopolis now, which is pretty cool, but somehow overpowered as well, because you get a lategame-planet in early game which doesn't even need strategic resources for alloy production i.e. - this makes the First League the best precursor quest by far!
• Alloys are too important in the early game (costs too high or production too low or ship-upkeep to high) - you're always short on it and there are not many ways to boost the produktion in the same way.
• Upgrade costs (alloys) for ships are extremely high. I had to upgrade 20 corvettes just with new lasers for 900 alloys - which is insame.
• Terraforming Candidate anomaly is way too common again
• 0 resource systems are a thing again (rare, but it happens)
• Robots assembly speed is too slow
• Settling planets with Androids is gone - or am I missing something?
• It's now possible to settle planet with low habitability. Unfortunately the AI does not make use of it - which is especially sad when you set the guaranteed planets at the starts to 0
• As other users already mentioned, the AI struggles with the new economy system and can't keep up from mid to lategame.
• I don't understand how the races choose their jobs. So I have some drillbots (+15% minerals) working at the hospital while by humans meanwhile work in the mines.

 

[Cymsdale]

• I don't understand how the races choose their jobs. So I have some drillbots (+15% minerals) working at the hospital while by humans meanwhile work in the mines.

I think it was intended for them to be smart about this but it's currently bugged and simply doesn't work.

 

[HoneyBadger88]

+2 influence society research at the start of the game doesnt work... probably the biggest game breaker.

Are you sure you are not confusing Influence with Unity? Becuse +2 influence sounds insanely strong.

 

[Unfinity]

i really hope they fix the empire leaders soon and mandates soon

 

[klopkr]

I've noticed that primitives that enlighten themselves start with almost nothing. I'm not sure if they even have the ability to run their economy in a way to build buildings or districts.

I think they should start with maxed out stocks and a spaceship and space station and some basic buildings to give them a bit of a hand in their head start. Players can't play as them anyways so give them some help.

 

[mammothhunter]

Are you sure you are not confusing Influence with Unity? Becuse +2 influence sounds insanely strong.

I believe its propaganda broadcasts tech, the first one in the row that used to give influence along with capital buildings. It reads "+2 influence" but does not provide that.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

- Fix Synth Evolution:
Allow us to queue up different kinds of robots to build, like in the old system. When I have 5 miner jobs I want to queue up 5 mining robots. After that 5 research robots and 3 unity robots. With the current system I have to choose a new type of robot to grow manually and I have to keep going back to check its still building the correct one!

Allow us to assign pops into jobs manually, since the system doesn't min/max properly!

Give us the old system back that converts food straight into energy districts! I am not going to fill my tiles with bio-reactors. Why should I be forced to waste precious buildings slots now when that was not the case before? Right now we can trade food for energy each month which kinda works, until someone sells tons of food and the price drops. I would rather be self-sufficient and get my energy districts back.

Givign synths civil rights increases their housing and amenities consumption. Of course this makes sense, however in its current state your economy will immediately crash because you go way into negative housing and amenities, creating huge crime and tons of more problems.

- Bring back Ringworlds and Habitats

I haven't used them once because they were so heavily nerfed. They should allow us to collect all basic ressources.

- Fix performance

- Bring back proper min/maxing with the same amount of micromanagement as before, not more!

As I wrote above, new system creates more tedious work and less efficiency. I think the current system has a lot of potential but as of right now its lacking core features of the old system like queuing ob which robot pops to build and manually assigning pops to jobs. This should atleast work for Robots and Synths!

 

[Flame13223]

The devs need to take save files that are in the midgame, put on observer mode and analyze every single planet that the AI empires have and compare it to how players use planets then make adjustments.

Right now the AI is so terrible it often doesn't even clear tile blockers or upgrade buildings. Its INSANE.

 

[djmatipl]

I don't have any problem with ME except job assign. My empire, ofc energy edict active.

http://imgland.net/file/N1cunPxQePyIunPz83P3FTWg.png - don't know why but cannot implement image.

little empire but all AI now with tech are inferior most with fleet inferior some equvalent and 1 superior but got almost 400 pop and 6 colony. ME are strong but job assigned are fu*k like hell, most of time need resettle some robot, assign work rest and resettle back to assign work correct but 1 new pop and... most of time again... this is the worst BUG for me now

 

[EvilTom]

Settling planets with Androids is gone - or am I missing something?

You can do this, but it took me ages to figure out why. You have to go the species rights and allow them to colonise in there. They do not start with it as default!

Robots assembly speed is too slow

I agree. There should be ways to boost this (maybe spend minerals, influence, or put in another robot plant, or even another plant that just boosts speed?)

Urgent for me:
Sort out the population growth mechanics. It's counter intuitive and weird.

Not urgent, but A QoL one please. The terraform button was tiny and I couldn't find it and it looks nothing like it should. Please change it or make it more obvious (I suppose it's not a problem when you do eventually find it).

 

[ciurra]

im so goddamn disapointed that they released it unplayable buggy. has been waiting this game so long and now have to wait bit more. even preordered it damned

Remember to NEVER pre order the consumer has nothing to gain from it but the possibility of having wasted money

 

[Muramas]

1. Please show the rare resources in the top bar! It's really annoying to constantly have to click on the shared icon in order to see if you finally have enough Gases to upgrade the research labs. There is so much empty space to the right. Instead you show number of systems and planets, something that is not important for the day to day business of your empire and which is also displayed when you click on empire size.

• Agree but I don't need to see the more rare SR's. I would just like motes, gas and crystals pulled out.

2. Sectors are too small. I'm a small megacorp with 6 planets, but they are already divided into 4 sectors, 3 of which only contain one planet each. This ruins the good idea of ordering them in the outliner according to sectors.

• This is a non-issue, just hire a governor

3. Robots feel broken. They take forever to assemble and I can't even choose which template to build. At least I did not figure out how.

• Totally don't agree with the robot assembly (robots currently give you an equivalent to 65% growth speed which is crazy good), I think you just don't know how to play them and there are a lot more underlying issues. Egalitarians need to be able to choose which robots to build, robots should work energy and clerk jobs, applying templates should not take research.

10. The user interface definitely needs some love. Stellaris UI has never been particularly intuitive, but it worked fine with the level of complexity that the game had pre 2.2. Now, the UI does not support the player to handle the increased level of complexity. I was following the dev diaries closely and even watched some of the dev clashes, so I knew many details in advance, I cannot imagine how a casual player must feel.

• Priority jobs need to be actual priority instead of disable jobs
• Research, species needs to be on a hotkey
• Policies need to be able to be selected on empire creation

11. The pacing of the game feels a bit off. It generally feels much slower than before. After I figured out how to build an efficient economy, I spent most of my time wating for pops to grow and fill the jobs. I have never seen any crime or unemployment in my empire (year 2400). By now, I am producing so many ressources that I had to spam silos on all my planets, because I cannot use them. Which brings me to the next point:

• The research tree is off and needs rebalancing

12. It's very difficult to get naval capacity now. I don't want to be forced to build fortresses on all my planets, even the ones deep inside my empires borders. Please give us some naval capacity from pops. The tooltip actually still says that pops provide naval cap.

• You can, from soldiers if you build the strongholds on planets

I will update this list as I continue playing later today. Feel free to post your own observations in response.