The "randomness" does not add extra value to the game...

[FinbarFlin]

I have crystals... i want more consumer goods... but i cant upgrade my consumer good factories because the god of randomness decides that it will take another 10 ears until the tech pops up...

I have those leaders and admirals... they have different level of experience gaining traits... but oh boy suddenly my level 3 governor finds out that drugs exist and will not progress any longer...

There is that fancy desert planet... but somehow a pop who has the continental trait decides to grow there... i can change that but, A) The game will reverse my change for some unknown reason or B) keep it but with a 20% growth penalty because i dont want people to choke to death...

Why cant we have a proper tech tree? Why cant we have rulers with a trait tree so we can decide what trait we need or want... why cant i control my pops and revert stupid decisions made by a stupid AI? Someone really must have a random boner at the development department or just want to hide how shallow this game is thus "spice" it up with unbearable randomness to simulate an alternative outcome of the same shit one does for 5 years...

 

[prismaticmarcus]

because stellaris is about randomness. i think you might have mentioned that.

 

[mial42]

I agree on the leaders (at least lategame, where cost is no object and cycling 50 admirals for a Cautious one is a PITA. Let us pay extra for guaranteed traits.) but not on the techs. That would make the early/midgame a bit too predictable for me.

 

[LoLuecoLueco]

I agree with OP on the issue of technology and growth, it really makes no sense that tech is "random" and, to those who think making it a standard tech tree would make everything the same every game, you just have to choose to follow a tech path every new game to make things different, if people really care about different options they will be able to make do with a standard tech tree and their own choices.

On the issue of growth, it really doesn't make sense that species with lower habitability would grow faster than ones with higher hab just because, it should be determined by a calculus involving habitability, rights, avaliable jobs (you could take it a step further and add the species traits that have synergy with jobs to it as people would like to go to a place were their abilities are best put to use) etc. instead of just randomly picking one to grow as it seems like is the case currently.

I have, however, to desagree vehemently on the issue of leaders. Leaders are people like you and me, they make bad decisions and sometimes it fucks their lives over, its just the way things are, its part of the empire experience stellaris is trying to emulate and i think removing it would be a loss. In fact, i think leaders should have a larger spectrum of traits to show better the human element in this game, i hope it arrives one day.

And to those who believe stellaris is all about randomness, i think you guys are projecting your own particular preferences into the wider player community or the devs, the game isn't mainly about randomness, nowhere it is advertised as such and, like the majority of the paradox playerbase, most players i see come here to rp the imperium of man or play microsoft excel with kino visuals, many would actually disagree with the idea the game is all about randomness if you asked them. Not that randomness doesn't have a very important place in the game, i believe it has, just that sometimes it hampers the experience, the tech and habitability being examples of such.

 

[Ryika]

I agree with OP on the issue of technology and growth, it really makes no sense that tech is "random" and, to those who think making it a standard tech tree would make everything the same every game, you just have to choose to follow a tech path every new game to make things different, if people really care about different options they will be able to make do with a standard tech tree and their own choices.

That's quite a silly argument in my opinion. You're essentially saying "Just make bad decisions, and the static tech tree will be different every game!", but that's now how people work. People want to optimize things, and most would obviously go down the path they think is the strongest every game. That's the beauty of the current system, it doesn't force you to intentionally play bad, and still brings variation into the game.

And it's not even that random, you can manipulate a lot of stuff by choosing proper scientists and selecting the right techs. Sure, there's an element of randomness, but there's also a lot of room for skillful navigation of that random environment.

On the issue of growth, it really doesn't make sense that species with lower habitability would grow faster than ones with higher hab just because, it should be determined by a calculus involving habitability, rights, avaliable jobs (you could take it a step further and add the species traits that have synergy with jobs to it as people would like to go to a place were their abilities are best put to use) etc. instead of just randomly picking one to grow as it seems like is the case currently.

That's not correct, habitability and growth bonuses are already factored into the system that chooses which pop to grow next.

 

[LoLuecoLueco]

That's quite a silly argument in my opinion. You're essentially saying "Just make bad decisions, and the static tech tree will be different every game!", but that's now how people work. People want to optimize things, and most would obviously go down the path they think is the strongest every game. That's the beauty of the current system, it doesn't force you to intentionally play bad, and still brings variation into the game.

I think you are projecting too much on how other people want to play, i'm sure there are people out there who want to optimize shit every game, i have many friends who are like that after all and the posts on this forum stand as a testament to this baheavior in the paradox community, but you miss that there are people out there who care more for roleplay than min. maxing, i myself do a good deal of synergization to ensure that my planets are productive, but i don't keep most of my time looking for ways to optimize things, because frankly i find it boring and rarely do i need the entirety of my productive capacity to beat the AI, after all its a paradox AI.
And, frankly, the people who would go down the path of most profit wouldn't care that research looks more or less the same every game imo, why bother if you always research the same shit if you care more about gettin' the best output instead of making roleplay with tech?
In a nutshell: those who would streamline research wouldn't care that it is the same every time anyway, and those who wouldn't will not have a problem with playing "Bad" to roleplay, after all they aren't there to min. max their empire by definition.

And it's not even that random, you can manipulate a lot of stuff by choosing proper scientists and selecting the right techs. Sure, there's an element of randomness, but there's also a lot of room for skillful navigation of that random environment.

That is true, but still i think the tech tree would benefit a lot from adopting the orthodox style and shedding this randomness aside.

That's not correct, habitability and growth bonuses are already factored into the system that chooses which pop to grow next.

I'm taking my info from the wiki article about population, because i don't know how the system's inner part works but they certainly seem like they do, and there it is said that: "Any species existing on the planet or which has immigration access to the planet may be selected to grow there. When choosing a species to grow, planets will generally prioritize species that are under-represented on the planet and have citizenship equal to that of the already existing species. If immigration access is lost to all planets containing the currently selected species, a new species will be selected and all existing growth progress will be erased. Species can be chosen manually for growth if the Population Controls policy is set to Allowed."

As you can see, it makes no mention and habitability and growth bonuses being factored, if you can point me to something that says the contrary i would be most grateful tho.

 

[Ryika]

I think you are projecting too much on how other people want to play, i'm sure there are people out there who want to optimize shit every game, i have many friends who are like that after all and the posts on this forum stand as a testament to this baheavior in the paradox community, but you miss that there are people out there who care more for roleplay than min. maxing, i myself do a good deal of synergization to ensure that my planets are productive, but i don't keep most of my time looking for ways to optimize things, because frankly i find it boring and rarely do i need the entirety of my productive capacity to beat the AI, after all its a paradox AI.

Even if we assume that to be true, how does that counter the arguments made by people who care enough about efficiency? How does it negate the clearly negative impact that this change would have on the people who want to play efficiently, on some level at least, and keep the variety of the current system?

And, frankly, the people who would go down the path of most profit wouldn't care that research looks more or less the same every game imo,

I care enough about efficiency that I would likely go down the same path most games, and I care enough about variety that I prefer the current system over a static tech tree.

In a nutshell: those who would streamline research wouldn't care that it is the same every time anyway, and those who wouldn't will not have a problem with playing "Bad" to roleplay, after all they aren't there to min. max their empire by definition.

I find it a bit ironic that you tell others - twice - that they're projecting when they're making statements about others, but then immediately go on to make broad statements about others.

This isn't the first time that this topic is being discussed, and as far as I have seen, the majority of people always seem to be of the opinion that the tech system should, at least roughly, be maintained as it is now. There is certainly room for improvement - transparency and ingame access to information about the system being a big one - but the idea that the current system should be replaced with a static tech tree is unpopular, at least in these forums.

That is true, but still i think the tech tree would benefit a lot from adopting the orthodox style and shedding this randomness aside.

And I think we would lose a lot more than we would gain.

I'm taking my info from the wiki article about population, because i don't know how the system's inner part works but they certainly seem like they do, and there it is said that: "Any species existing on the planet or which has immigration access to the planet may be selected to grow there. When choosing a species to grow, planets will generally prioritize species that are under-represented on the planet and have citizenship equal to that of the already existing species. If immigration access is lost to all planets containing the currently selected species, a new species will be selected and all existing growth progress will be erased. Species can be chosen manually for growth if the Population Controls policy is set to Allowed."

As you can see, it makes no mention and habitability and growth bonuses being factored, if you can point me to something that says the contrary i would be most grateful tho.

It's lower down on the same page.

New_Pop_Species_Randomness	0.5	The higher this is, the more random species selection of new pops will be
New_Pop_Same_Species_Weight	1.0	The higher this is, the more new pops will be weighted by number of same or subspecies pops
New_Pop_Exact_Species_Weight	0.5	The higher this is, the more new pops will be weighted by number of exact same species pops
New_Pop_Slavery_Weight	0.25	The higher this is, the more new pops will tend to be balanced between enslaved and non-enslaved species
New_Pop_Species_Div	0.05	The higher this is, the more planets will tend to grow species that are underrepresented on the planet
New_Pop_Habitability_Threshold	0.75	If habitability is under this, apply exponentially increasing penalties to new pop weight
New_Pop_Homeworld_Mult	2	Pops have increased weight for growing on their homeworld
New_Pop_Growth_Mod_Mult	0.33	How much does species growth mod trait matter for new pop weight
NEW_POP_Immigration_Mod_Mult	1	How much does species immigration growth mod trait matter for new pop weight (when there is immigration)
Pop_Decline_Threshold	3.0	A species will decline when there is another species with a growth priority this many times higher

 

[DukeLeto42]

That is true, but still i think the tech tree would benefit a lot from adopting the orthodox style and shedding this randomness aside.

Technological development is not a purely linear process, and Stellaris' move to make it based on research options is a partial reflection of that.

I care enough about efficiency that I would likely go down the same path most games, and I care enough about variety that I prefer the current system over a static tech tree.

Same

 

[Casko]

Not going to lie, I just wish that SOME Techs, not all, just selected few, had few ways of increasing their spawn rate.

I had one game where I had basic Civilian goods buildings.... while already had unlocked Titans into my navy....

Similarly I had forever and a 30 to gain access to Exotic Gas refineries, as my side of the galaxy had none. This made upgrading my various buildings and using better weapons on my ships... tad... tricky.
That said I did enjoy this challenge of not having exotic gasses for the longest time throughout the game.

Edited English

 

[methegrate]

People want to optimize things, and most would obviously go down the path they think is the strongest every game. That's the beauty of the current system, it doesn't force you to intentionally play bad, and still brings variation into the game.

I agree, but I'd actually put it differently. This is a strategy game. People want to play it well and have the game still be challenging and surprising.

That's my concern whenever the talk of optimizing and min/maxing comes up. Talking about how players want to optimize their game, I think, makes it sound like it's the players' fault when a system breaks. Then it becomes easy to dismiss a lot of Stellaris' underlying problems as just being about players wanting to optimize every game. Like the post you're responding to, the answer seems to be "just ignore the problem and role play differently."

That may be right if this were Baldur's Gate or Divinity, but it's not. This is a strategy game first and foremost. You're supposed to play to win. It's okay to want to play as well as you can, and it's the game's job to give us clever, asymmetric challenges while we do that. If there is one approach that always wins that's not optimization. It's flawed design.

 

[methegrate]

I have crystals... i want more consumer goods... but i cant upgrade my consumer good factories because the god of randomness decides that it will take another 10 ears until the tech pops up...

I have those leaders and admirals... they have different level of experience gaining traits... but oh boy suddenly my level 3 governor finds out that drugs exist and will not progress any longer...

There is that fancy desert planet... but somehow a pop who has the continental trait decides to grow there... i can change that but, A) The game will reverse my change for some unknown reason or B) keep it but with a 20% growth penalty because i dont want people to choke to death...

Why cant we have a proper tech tree? Why cant we have rulers with a trait tree so we can decide what trait we need or want... why cant i control my pops and revert stupid decisions made by a stupid AI? Someone really must have a random boner at the development department or just want to hide how shallow this game is thus "spice" it up with unbearable randomness to simulate an alternative outcome of the same shit one does for 5 years...

Idk... I'm torn.

I think randomization is essential to a game like this, because it's great when games give you an unpredictable challenge. It's a feature, not a bug, when I roll a technology, a leader or a map that I'm unprepared for. The challenge should be figuring out how to use the leaders/tech/planets/etc. I do get, not just rerolling until I draw the ones I wanted. It's about using what I have to win the game.

But to do that, you need a game that lets you take different approaches and build different strategies. That's where I'm definitely sympathetic.

I think that this is the same issue that comes up in a lot of different areas. While Stellaris is great at giving you randomization, I don't think it's great at giving you meaningful randomization. Resources on the map are randomized, but there's no way to play as an empire that specializes in crystals because it doesn't have any motes or gas. You need all three. You can't compensate for techs you do or don't draw, because there aren't alternative ways to build your empire. Every empire needs the same thing. You can't make different decisions around leaders, because leaders don't matter worth a damn, nor can you use maps differently, because the only meaningful difference between planets is habitability.

The game kind of locks you into one build and one strategy every time, so there's no real way to create an alternative strategy based on the luck of the draw. The upshot is that Stellaris' randomization tends to feel more punitive than helpful. You can't pursue a different strategy based on the game's random elements because there are no different strategies to pursue.

There are flashes of insight in there certainly. The dangerous and rare techs are a great idea, that never amount to anything. The idea of building your naval strategy around the admirals you draw would be great, if it worked. Etc. It doesn't really pan out though. Instead the randomization does seem to usually boil down to waiting to draw the tech that you need to advance on the game's linear path. And that's frustrating.

 

[Fenris_SE]

I have those leaders and admirals... they have different level of experience gaining traits... but oh boy suddenly my level 3 governor finds out that drugs exist and will not progress any longer...

While I can see how having leaders develop negative traits can be more "realistic", I just don't see how it adds much to the game other than being annoying. When I play now, I just take an "I don't care" attitude and throw whoever is available into the job in early game fully expecting them to develop a negative trait. In mid and late game it just becomes an annoyance, a leader gets a negative trait, that leader is immediately fired and the "find a decent leader lottery" begins.

And I know some people will say it is more realistic having leaders sometimes develop negative traits. What else is realistic is drug rehab and mental health careers. If we had a way to try to "fix" leaders who have fallen on hard times, I'd mind it less. It shouldn't be a 100% chance to help them out, but something. As it stands now, when a leader develops a negative trait they are dead to me.

 

[Miesha]

For the tech tree in particular, find a mod that adds more research options, typically it'll just default to something like 6 or 10. Those mods are ridiculously easy to edit; go into its folder, find the right file, open it and edit the number to something like 25 or 50, and you'll have all tech options available to research at all times. Even engineering repeatables only have 14 options to pick from, so 50 might be overkill unless you got a bunch of tech mods.

 

[LoLuecoLueco]

Even if we assume that to be true, how does that counter the arguments made by people who care enough about efficiency? How does it negate the clearly negative impact that this change would have on the people who want to play efficiently, on some level at least, and keep the variety of the current system?

Variety doesn't emanate simply from the research options you do, your games can vary depending on anomalies you find, your neighboors, the kind of race/origin you go for, etc. If you want to be optimal, you can't be varied on everything, because optimization by itself implies one thing being better than others, so you will have a lot of the diversity cut down by default.
So yeah there will be a drop on diversity but i don't think it will be big enough to make every game notably less diverse than the last for the optimization people, and that it is a simple consequence of wanting to stick to the better path. Mind you, i'm not saying its a bad thing that people want to optimize, i'm just saying it comes with some sacrifices, like many things.

I care enough about efficiency that I would likely go down the same path most games, and I care enough about variety that I prefer the current system over a static tech tree.

Well, if its your personal preference i doubt there's much i can do about it.

I find it a bit ironic that you tell others - twice - that they're projecting when they're making statements about others, but then immediately go on to make broad statements about others.

Its kinda ironic indeed, perharps i am projecting too, but i try to extracting what i say about others based on some logic of their actions, i try to make sense of a premise (if people care more about optimization, they wouldn't be so angered about a lack in diversity since optimization by definition chooses one thing over others always) instead of just making a statement about how i think people work out of nothing (" People want to optimize things, and most would obviously go down the path they think is the strongest every game"). You can still say that i'm just using a double standard ofc but i think our situations are different enough to warrant distinction.

This isn't the first time that this topic is being discussed, and as far as I have seen, the majority of people always seem to be of the opinion that the tech system should, at least roughly, be maintained as it is now. There is certainly room for improvement - transparency and ingame access to information about the system being a big one - but the idea that the current system should be replaced with a static tech tree is unpopular, at least in these forums.

Indeed more transparency to this system would go a long way in improving it, since the way it stands now you will have to go to the wiki to see the modifiers and shit, but with all due respect i don't think your anecdotal evidence of how much people in these forums feel about this issue is much of use, if we try to use it as legitimacy by majority feeling i would point out that its unlikely the majority of the stellaris playerbase regularly meets on this forum considering the number of people talking in comparisson to the wider community on places like youtube, this place seems much more like a very small minority, as forums tend to be. If we try to use it as legitimacy by logic or something, the opinion of the majority isn't necessarily truth. Not saying you are defending either position, just pointing out these problems.

It's lower down on the same page.

Then i stand corrected and the pop growth system on that area seems to be perfectly fine imo.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

And I know some people will say it is more realistic having leaders sometimes develop negative traits. What else is realistic is drug rehab and mental health careers. If we had a way to try to "fix" leaders who have fallen on hard times, I'd mind it less. It shouldn't be a 100% chance to help them out, but something. As it stands now, when a leader develops a negative trait they are dead to me.

Admirals at least have a very small chance of losing negative class-specific traits by winning battles. Having similar systems for other leader classes, and for generic traits, would be nice though.

 

[LoLuecoLueco]

Technological development is not a purely linear process, and Stellaris' move to make it based on research options is a partial reflection of that.

The problem with this statement that the tech system is a move towards representation of a "non-linear development" is that the system isn't quite like that., let's go by points.
1) Is it truly "non-linear"? Consider for a moment the majority of the technologies avaliable to us: ship parts. They make up a considerable bunch of both the physics and engineering trees, but a good portion of these fields of research is just "laser lvl 2" or "shield level 3", you don't actually have any non-linearity/innovation like IRL, you just have objectively better versions of the same kind of product.

I picked the ship parts to make a example of the issue but you can see it on most things imo: the naval capacity techs for society always do the same shit, the research station/mining station boots also do it, robotics just makes your robots capable of doing more works as each level progresses, etc.

So really the core of the system still is linearity, you have some randomness on wich line you will follow but at the end of the day the tech will always progress the same: Laser I > Laser II > Laser III, even if you wait around to research it and do others in the meantime the line will be the same in the end, and one has to remember that in practice the stellaris system already has a vital element of the tech tree model: you can't research some techs without first discovering some lower-level ones, so in truth the game already has a tech tree, it is just hidden behind some mysticism and modifiers that force you on some choices to give the ilusion of freedom.

2) Does the system even reflect irl tech development well the way it is? I would disagree here too, one of the most glaring problems i see with this system in comparisson to reality is that you can draw a tech card one day, meaning that your scientists came up with the idea to research it or something, but then in 5 years not be able to research it again. Why is that? The option certainly is floating around the "collective scientific consciousness" of your empire, so why not give you the option to pick and research it again? I really see no reason or way of defending this instead of just randomness for randomness sake, the system is already set up in a way that all research is treated as a centralized one-foccused endeavor (anyone with a basic grasp of scientific development knows this isn't the case in science even in the most commandeering societies like USSR or NK), so what impedes the dear leader from getting that farming project he didn't accept 10 years ago and order it to be researched now?

And as i said in the middle of the former argument, the system already enforces linear centralized state-command of tech, something wich really isn't all that compatible with how science works irl, so if you want to defend the system based on "that's how it works irl", your defense kinda falls flat and would actually work against the current system.

 

[Fenris_SE]

Admirals at least have a very small chance of losing negative class-specific traits by winning battles. Having similar systems for other leader classes, and for generic traits, would be nice though.

I had no idea lol. I guess from now on my decent admirals that get negative traits will be leading the charge.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I had no idea lol. I guess from now on my decent admirals that get negative traits will be leading the charge.

Only way you could know is if you either see it happen (which you won't if you always replace leaders with bad traits) or if you read the game code.

It's not a particularly high chance, but it's as likely as getting a specific positive trait:

on_fleet_destroyed_perp = {
    [...]
    random_events = {
        300 = 0       # 300/314 = 95.5% Nothing happens
        2 = leader.1  #   2/314 =  0.6% Get a new level 2 admiral with two traits
        2 = leader.5  #   2/314 =  0.6% Gain Trickster
        2 = leader.6  #   2/314 =  0.6% Gain Aggressive
        2 = leader.7  #   2/314 =  0.6% Gain Unyielding
        2 = leader.8  #   2/314 =  0.6% Gain Gale Speed
        2 = leader.9  #   2/314 =  0.6% Lose Lethargic
        2 = leader.17 #   2/314 =  0.6% Lose Nervous / Unstable Code Base
    }
}

 

[DukeLeto42]

2) Does the system even reflect irl tech development well the way it is? I would disagree here too, one of the most glaring problems i see with this system in comparisson to reality is that you can draw a tech card one day, meaning that your scientists came up with the idea to research it or something, but then in 5 years not be able to research it again. Why is that? The option certainly is floating around the "collective scientific consciousness" of your empire, so why not give you the option to pick and research it again? I really see no reason or way of defending this instead of just randomness for randomness sake, the system is already set up in a way that all research is treated as a centralized one-foccused endeavor (anyone with a basic grasp of scientific development knows this isn't the case in science even in the most commandeering societies like USSR or NK), so what impedes the dear leader from getting that farming project he didn't accept 10 years ago and order it to be researched now?

Tech in Stellaris is effectively a set of grant proposals. Now it's absolutely unrealistic in that we aren't deciding on several hundred projects to throw support behind; we can rationalize it by saying all "techs" are really a suite of projects and we're just choosing a category of research to pursue, or we can accept that Stellaris is a game and can't ask us to manage hundreds of choices in one aspect all at once. If you spend enough time around research groups, you'll see that projects don't remain viable indefinitely - research groups form and dissolve, researcher interests change and other priorities come to the fore, and people retire / are hired.

This is also what I mean in the sense that "science isn't linear." It isn't linear in the sense that even though the Mark II version is the next step for a technology after the Mark I is complete, you are liable to complete the Mark I only to find that the ideas for a Mark II aren't really ready for full-scale funding, or there are far more viable projects ready to go now that funding needs to be assigned. The next stage might languish for years, decades, even centuries, and might do so simply because nobody bothered to look back at the Mark I and ask if a Mark II might be possible (for example, the recent reversal of the Archimedes Screw - there's nothing that requires it to be a modern invention, but it ended up being one). There are, of course, exceptions for techs that are just waiting in the wings to be developed and generally always will be, but Stellaris offers a solution for them in the form of "pinned" tech options from debris research, special events / projects, and ascension perks.

Stellaris concentrates a model of scientific development as a mix of "what avenues we see as important right now" and "what we are ready to pursue right now" into an immediately accessible card-drawn system.

 

[grommile]

Not going to lie, I just wish that SOME Techs, not all, just selected few, had few ways of increasing their spawn rate.

All techs have ways of increasing their spawn rates.

Most trivially, every tech has a subcategory assigned to it (Voidcraft, New Worlds, Computing, etc.) and if you have a scientist with the matching Expertise you're more likely to draw that tech.