The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0

[LWE]

Civ population is limited by local food, which isn't a concern in Stellaris.

 

[Madzai]

I'm not arguing that, I'm just saying there unfortunately must be some kind of a cap.

I think softcap per planet together with scaling down POP counts\job may do the trick. Same with POP growth. You can some basic growth from planet size\habitability, then you get growth from combination of housing and Amenities. This way then you planet is almost full you growth will be near zero and if you want to fill it up, you need migration from elsewhere (maybe your own "breeder planets"). At the same time with downscaled districts\buildings, you will have to reason to continue to put more and more POP on the same world (because there won't be any jobs) and planetary features will finally have more importance.

 

[-Herek-]

Technically before habitats there was a hard limit on pops. You could only fill every planet that was colonizable with up to 25 pops based on its size.

Do you mean when tiles were a thing? I wasn't around much. So, you are probably right.
But yes, there should've been some kind of a cap when the rework occurred.

 

[UltimateTobi]

Settling a few people (or rather, people who popped out of nowhere cause you built a space ship) on your first colony would suddenly cause the growth rate of your entire species to double.

Though that has been the case since release; a Colony Ship plopping down a Pop, in order for the colony to start at all. (Don't forget that establishing a Colony also takes time and is not instant. Build time of the Colony ship + the time it takes to establish the colony.)
I am not arguing for or against that, but I am not in favor of doubling down on arbitrary and gamey mechanics. They implemented a lot of Pop Growth changes; why does an empire-wide penalty be part of that?
We have an S-curve per planet.
We have a lower ceiling on Housing; meaning a heavier penalty on Pop Growth if you reach zero Housing.
Pops are moved automatically when unemployed.
Why have an arbitrary limit on Pop Growth based on total Pops in your empire?

 

[alexlock]

You obviously missed all those conversations, didn't read the dev diaries, didn't understand why and didn't participate in the discussion with the community. So you all exploding in the forums now is just an immature reaction of uninformed customers and fans.

"You don't like it, because you are not a true fan, that spent every minute of their free time engaging randos on the internet. Do that for two years or more and then we can talk".

Go, change it back and play. Just don't come back here and complain that it's too slow, unbalanced or whatever, because the current 3.0 design will be expanded upon, and reverting this will feel completely off and unplayable in the future. You're on your own. And if you are going for achievements, that's too bad!

I really appreciate, when someone speaks on behalf of the whole community and tells people what to do.

I will deal with gameplay and design issues in other future posts.

Please no. At least not with THAT attitude.

 

[Abberon]

3. If you just halve the pops, you just solve the problem for the first hundred years. As you build more colonies and habitats in the end game, you end up creating exponentially more pops each year and reach 1000 new pops per year and continue to increase your growth. Changing the starting value of the exponentiation does nothing serious to curb or delay that. This was tried and was experienced with the Mod Stellaris Immortal - that was when most realized that we needed a *different equation for growth* altogether so that we can keep playing after the victory screen.

Key point here is what's the end game? Realistically you could play the stupid thing until year 3000. A guy in one of the other threads was saying that year 2600-2700 is "mid game" for him.

End-game for me is 2500-2550. I'm done after that. There's nothing else to explore Maybe Imperium pushes that out another 50 years but are we really basing major design changes on people who want to play the game into year 2800 and beyond?

First 100 years you never have a problem with pop anyways. It's the 2350-2400+ timeline when things get ugly, and if they could delay that by a hundred years then I'm 100% on board. I don't need an equation to make the game playable way past when it was ever really designed to be played for the same reason I'm okay ending my EUIV playthrough in the 1800's and my CKII playthrough ~1400. There aren't any features for timelines beyond that.

 

[-Herek-]

One of the professors told us: if I ever see someone uses "continue; break;", he better have a good explanation for that. It is a job of programmers to write a good algorithm, which calculates specific things as simple as possible, and it should be their job to improve performance throw the optimization, not by cutting everything what requires calculations off.
Talking about Stellaris, we can halve the number of pops by making districts provide 1 job, instead of 2. We can look onto Species itself, maybe it could work if the game didn't check the job for every worker, but used empires' species list, to define which species is better for every job and then apply it to every planet. This is the direction it should go into, not by cutting everything off.

Yes, but that isn't always true. Sometimes caps are necessary. And I don't think rework of pops/jobs is that simple and we won't probably get it in current iteration of the game.
Also, devs didn't want to only solve the lag problem with the cap. They wanted to balance tall/wide with it and also help the AI a little bit.

 

[Abberon]

What the devs wanted and what the players wanted seemed to be very different things. Saying that the Dick update helps the AI just lol though.

 

[-Herek-]

End-game for me is 2500-2550. I'm done after that. There's nothing else to explore Maybe Imperium pushes that out another 50 years but are we really basing major design changes on people who want to play the game into year 2800 and beyond?

If the game allows you to play it infinitely (meaning there is no real end) you should be able to play it infinitely without any (or at least major) issues.

 

[Abberon]

Yeah by all means go ahead, but don't design the game to be played infinitely. There's never been a 4x game released that worked properly for an endless playthrough and Stellaris falls apart worse than most the longer it goes.

 

[grommile]

if I ever see someone uses "continue; break;", he better have a good explanation for that.

There is no good explanation for writing a break statement that's unreachable because it's immediately after an unconditionally executed continue

 

[OgMummbles]

This whole update was to improve late game playability, and also kill late game playability. It's really annoying when i'm murdering the galaxy to see my own pop growth pretty much stop completely, Empire wide pop growth will not work, Galaxy wide pop growth caps might work, i don't even get my main system ring world full with how it works now, no point in even building a second one. I don't want to micro manage 20 colonies either to achieve any kind of growth late game. Ringworlds should be late game powerhouses, and now they are useless.

 

[-Herek-]

Yeah by all means go ahead, but don't design the game to be played infinitely. There's never been a 4x game released that worked properly for an endless playthrough and Stellaris falls apart worse than most the longer it goes.

But the game already allows to play infinitely, that's the problem. So it should be possible to play it infinitely. Don't know what you disagree with.
And there are many games that can be played infinitely and work (there's a guy that played one Civ II game for more than 10 years). And I'm talking about the technical side here.
Like, you shouldn't experience immense lag or memory leaks just because you play longer than other players and the game allows you to do so. That's just bad software design.

 

[Farbros]

There is no good explanation for writing a break statement that's unreachable because it's immediately after an unconditionally executed continue

What I mean is, if someone uses it instead of specific for that case loop.

 

[Cronos988]

Also, devs didn't want to only solve the lag problem with the cap. They wanted to balance tall/wide with it and also help the AI a little bit.

Both of which failed.

Like, you shouldn't experience immense lag or memory leaks just because you play longer than other players and the game allows you to do so. That's just bad software design.

A lot of parts of Stellaris may be badly designed, but that's not really an argument in favor of making widely unpopular changes to these areas.

Yes, and this is true. Sure, it's also an option, but this is more about how you deal with small and large empires.

How you deal with small and large empires? Not sure what you mean here.

 

[Andakingu]

In no particular order:

2.....You obviously missed all those conversations, didn't read the dev diaries, didn't understand why and didn't participate in the discussion with the community. So you all exploding in the forums now is just an immature reaction of uninformed customers and fans.

...

5. You do you:


Go, change it back and play. Just don't come back here and complain that it's too slow, unbalanced or whatever, because the current 3.0 design will be expanded upon, and reverting this will feel completely off and unplayable in the future. You're on your own. And if you are going for achievements, that's too bad!

I will deal with gameplay and design issues in other future posts.

We have been having reasonable and I would say, constructive conversations about the new pop mechanics. People have disagreed, but everyone has stayed focused on expressing their frustrations with the systems in place, not the people with whom they disagree. Might I suggest, that you follow that example, rather than attack people for having an opinion that varies from your own.

You're touching points about the gameplay I prefer to deal with those in another thread.

The point is that 2.X and to some extent 1.X was a big mess, and people are quick to forget about this - because they care only on their own specific and selective experience.

Yes, the parameters can be tweeked alot, but the end game experience will be the same - your pop growth will drop.

As far as the release is concerned, this is one of the best releases we had for stellaris ever.

1.X was not a big mess. It was alot tighter than the current build of the game, the problem, as I recall, was alot of people who found the mid and late game dull. The calls were for more to do mid game. Some real empire management. So the Devs came up with the new pop and job system in 2.2 to address these concerns.

I was one of those that argued against that change. I didn't like the tile system, but I and several others had found that pop checks were causing performance issues and were concerned the increased number of pops being proposed, was going to be a disaster.

I think this thread is too generalized and misses the mark.
I've seen no one complain about lesser amount of Pops, but how it's achieved. It doesn't feel organic and does feel gamey and arbitrary.

No-one has been complaining about less pops. People are complaining about zero growth. People I suspect would be happy, if that growth was capped at a planetary level. Max population per world. We don't need planets with 200 pops on them. It becomes meaningless.

There is an upper ceiling in stellaris. It's just very high. But much more relevant than the theoretical upper ceiling is having game mechanics that discourage you from trying to get to it. Civ 4 had no arbitrary limit on cities, you could theoretically plaster every possible spot with one. It just wasn't a good idea if you wanted to be effective.

Plus Stellaris has a limit on planets. I do agree with GnoSIS, that Habitats need to be controlled. I would even say, limit their construction to those that take the void dweller origin, or the void borne ascension perk. The AI Spams habitats for no good reason.

Oh, great, so you managed to make one actual argument before going for the condescending poisoning of the well?

I don't really think playing after the victory sceen should be a major concern for the development of the game. I get the feeling most players find it hard enough to muster the patience to get to the victory sceen at all. But regardless, different equations for growth have been suggested, and I think would generally be a good idea.

Nor I, but I would hope that the game could be and demonstrate growth into the end game. If it could, it would stand to reason that the game could go on beyond that, why anyone would want that ofcourse is beyond me (if the galaxy is fully settled/united, the end game crisis has been defeated, war in heaven occured and all relevant Galactic senate material played through... Why?)

Yeah, I already did that. I'm not writing here because "OMG I can't play without my achievements", but because I consider the current solution to be sub-optimal, to put it mildly. People can be interested in questions like this without personal investment, you know?

Yes.

Stellaris is also limited based on map size.



Yay, a strawman. Are you going to "how to debate in bad faith" bingo?



Presumably, you have read all those threads you disagree with so much. Plenty of suggestions to choose from. I personally would prefer getting rid of per-colony pop growth and replacing that with an empire wide growth curve combined with re-instituting the old sprawl mechanics (or making sprawl exponential) to discourage endledd growth.

There were a good variety of ideas for different solutions, indeed, many I hadn't considered and I personally enjoyed hearing peoples thoughts, both for and against, as they were respectfully offered and having had plenty of thought going into them before hand.

So yes, there must be a cap. It's sad, but other solutions, like complete rework of pops, are unlikely in the game's lifetime.

There was a cap back in the pre2.2 days. When the planetary tile system restricted pop count based on planet size and why they did away with that I will never know.

I feel the desire to move towards a more engaging pop/economy system was there and a considerable amount of inspiration came from Vicky2, anyone who has played it will see the shadow of that games model. But instead of making something similar, I feel they opted for a hybrid of the old tile system and vicky2's more statistical format and in the end, came away with the worst of both world.

I think softcap per planet together with scaling down POP counts\job may do the trick. Same with POP growth. You can some basic growth from planet size\habitability, then you get growth from combination of housing and Amenities. This way then you planet is almost full you growth will be near zero and if you want to fill it up, you need migration from elsewhere (maybe your own "breeder planets"). At the same time with downscaled districts\buildings, you will have to reason to continue to put more and more POP on the same world (because there won't be any jobs) and planetary features will finally have more importance.

There is absolutely no need for the obscene amounts of housing and amenities for pops and I feel these are a simplified version of vicky's pop needs.

I would be in favour of housing and amenities being removed entirely and having planet caps, with pop growth rates determined by a combination of habitability, current poplation numbers and techs/genetic advantages playing a role aswell.

But the answer isn't an empire wide growth cap at all. The aim should be to limit pops globally by limiting the total number of pops per entity. Not some arbitrary mechanic that slows growth because you have so many people already.

"You don't like it, because you are not a true fan, that spent every minute of their free time engaging randos on the internet. Do that for two years or more and then we can talk".

I really appreciate, when someone speaks on behalf of the whole community and tells people what to do.

Please no. At least not with THAT attitude.

Agreed.

 

[Madzai]

There is absolutely no need for the obscene amounts of housing and amenities for pops and I feel these are a simplified version of vicky's pop needs.

I'm not talking about "obscene" numbers. Other way actually. I just want planets to grow naturally so you won't have very slow grow initially, and actually need some work to be done so POPs grow at decent speed afterwards. And, ofc, squeezing in last few POP should be challenging. If we scale down POPs, buildings and districts having some spare housing and amenities to grow isn't too big or too small of a requirement. And having a breeder worlds that somewhat stimulate grow on other planets isn't that bad also. IMO. You will have some planets you can't properly utilize due to to bad features anyway.

I would be in favour of housing and amenities being removed entirely and having planet caps, with pop growth rates determined by a combination of habitability, current poplation numbers and techs/genetic advantages playing a role aswell.

Well, i think it's too late for that. We need to somehow work within current game rules. PDX surely won't make another major overhaul. Don't forget - their motto is: minimum effort, maximum DLC spam.

But the answer isn't an empire wide growth cap at all. The aim should be to limit pops globally by limiting the total number of pops per entity. Not some arbitrary mechanic that slows growth because you have so many people already.

That goes without saying.

 

[Ashantai]

I have merged two threads together as they did not need to be separate and discussed the same topic.

 

[maxirage]

Stellaris 1.x was never a mess. The only major problem was the tile system being very micro-heavy as you advanced into the mid-game. Thing is, sectors automated the process relatively well. It wasn't as efficient as a player, but it didn't crash your economy. The micro problem, the bad AI and automation (which people always complained about) was only made worse by 2.2. The tile rework was a solution in search of a problem. Just like the S-curve and empire growth stagnation, it might have sounded good in the developers' head, but that doesn't justify ruining something that worked.

 

[Janx14]

Stellaris 1.x was never a mess. The only major problem was the tile system being very micro-heavy as you advanced into the mid-game. Thing is, sectors automated the process relatively well. It wasn't as efficient as a player, but it didn't crash your economy. The micro problem, the bad AI and automation (which people always complained about) was only made worse by 2.2. The tile rework was a solution in search of a problem. Just like the S-curve and empire growth stagnation, it might have sounded good in the developers' head, but that doesn't justify ruining something that worked.

Even then the main 'micro' was just upgrading all your buildings periodically...which there were mods that automated it.