Two major things that need a fix: Crisis and Pop Growth

[Delthor]

the fact that they don't get more of them as they expand, and that as they expand, the construction ships have no sense of travel time and keep trekking back and forth across their territory

The first request is a fairly small balance change (and arguably not a good one, since it may be to keep the crisis from snowballing too hard) and the second sounds like a bug to me at most. Neither of those issues requires a rework to fix. The critical thing is them freezing up.

Reworks are expensive, which means they require a lot to justify the time dedicated to them. A big crisis rework means fewer new features, less time spent improving performance, less improvements to the the regular empire AI, or less improvements to other existing systems.

People are way too quick to jump to full reworks of systems. Right now, I'd much rather see them focus on stabilizing and perfecting what they have, rather than making large changes. Nothing in the game has the fundamental issues that the old FTL/expansion system or the tile system had.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

The first request is a fairly small balance change (and arguably not a good one, since it may be to keep the crisis from snowballing too hard) and the second sounds like a bug to me at most. Neither of those issues requires a rework to fix. The critical thing is them freezing up.

Reworks are expensive, which means they require a lot to justify the time dedicated to them. A big crisis rework means fewer new features, less time spent improving performance, less improvements to the the regular empire AI, or less improvements to other existing systems.

People are way too quick to jump to full reworks of systems. Right now, I'd much rather see them focus on stabilizing and perfecting what they have, rather than making large changes. Nothing in the game has the fundamental issues that the old FTL/expansion system or the tile system had.

Nah, the crisis factions definitely need some reworking. Purge times need major adjustments and they shouldn't even be using constructors to expand ideally.

 

[Methone]

Reworks are expensive, which means they require a lot to justify the time dedicated to them.

Well given that the entire endgame crisis feature has been nonfunctional for... over two years now I'd say that's deserving of a rework!

 

[Methone]

What? It uually works for me! It also works for others, e.g. see a whole playthrough here on the current patch (boring parts edited out, crisis strength set to 25x, you'll see that it poses a very serious challenge):

Did you and I watch the same video? The Unbidden, even at TWENTY FIVE TIMES STRENGTH, with a moved up endgame date, didn't ever become more than a blip on the map.

 

[Evangeline]

Did you and I watch the same video? The Unbidden, even at TWENTY FIVE TIMES STRENGTH, with a moved up endgame date, didn't ever become more than a blip on the map.

Maybe posting a video of an expert player who beat it quickly was a bad idea. The vast majority of players (according to statistics) play on Ensign/Cadet and can definitely struggle with the crisis.

But mostly, I guess it was a vocabulary issue: you used the word "non-functional" which - to me and the dictionary - means that it truly doesn't function, doesn't appear, doesn't do anything, doesn't attack, or cannot be defeated. What you probably meant was "too weak for my taste" - okay, now we're in agreement. Latham, in the video, explains that the crisis usually proceeds in waves: it takes something, then stops and waits, then takes more, etc. He is able to stop it quickly, so we don't see it spread much. A simple balance fix that reduces or removes wait periods in between spreads would take care of the problem, right? And I mean, he did need hours to defeat it, it just didn't take a lot of systems (which could easily be balanced differently, as mentioned.) So why would a complete redesign be necessary?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Maybe posting a video of an expert player who beat it quickly was a bad idea. The vast majority of players (according to statistics) play on Ensign/Cadet and can definitely struggle with the crisis.

Maybe you missed the recent thread where the crisis had wiped out almost the entire map and just stayed a few disconnected clusters of systems vs. one AI empire for 400 years. The Crisis straight up doesn't spread effectively. It's broken.

 

[Evangeline]

Maybe you missed the recent thread where the crisis had wiped out almost the entire map and just stayed a few disconnected clusters of systems vs. one AI empire for 400 years. The Crisis straight up doesn't spread effectively. It's broken.

And maybe I did mention that bug explicitly in my posts, only for everyone to ignore that I did so?

 

[Methone]

Maybe posting a video of an expert player who beat it quickly was a bad idea. The vast majority of players (according to statistics) play on Ensign/Cadet and can definitely struggle with the crisis.

Expert players shouldn't beat it at all. And certainly not so soundly. 25x - and before it, 5x crisis - were implemented as the 'end of the galaxy' strength. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say 5x should become the new 1x, and 25x should be made the new 5x.

A simple balance fix that reduces or removes wait periods in between spreads would take care of the problem, right

Indeed.

.) So why would a complete redesign be necessary?

Because he's not the reason it didn't spread out too long. The crisis's flaws are why it didn't spread out too far.

I had a 5x Crisis spawn, before 2.6. It spawned in the middle of a Fanatic Purifier, and the Unbidden proceeded to hollow them out without breaking a sweat. Because they were Purifiers, I couldn't get into their territory to stop the Unbidden. So I watched, with my Sentry Array, as the Unbidden spent some half a century, unopposed, to take something like 60 systems. Out of a 1000 star galaxy! Hardly a 'galaxy threatening menace'.

Compare that to this 1.9-era Prethoryn Scourge AAR and you see the difference. I noticed it too, personally. The difference going from 1.9 to 2.0 was like night and day.

 

[Evangeline]

Thanks, that's a helpful reply - still don't understand why you believe it needs to be redesigned from scratch if it worked fine for you in 1.9, though. Why go back to the drawing board, spend tons of manpower and hours and months of work and re-invent it all in a different way, if a previous patch already did what you want it to do?

 

[Methone]

Thanks, that's a helpful reply - still don't understand why you believe it needs to be redesigned from scratch if it worked fine for you in 1.9, though. Why go back to the drawing board, spend tons of manpower and hours and months of work and re-invent it all in a different way, if a previous patch already did what you want it to do?

I'm sorry, but the mind just boggles at this logic.

"Why do you care they broke one of the core features of the game? Just reset back to the version of the game before they broke one of the core features of the game."

Not to mention that post-1.9 actually did do a lot of good things for the game; the FTL rework, 2.2's economy rework, 2.1's anomalies etc are all things I like very much. I shouldn't have to throw all those out - as well as the post-1.9 DLC I bought that won't work in 1.9 - just because Paradox broke one of the core features of the game and I don't want to play against a broken feature.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Thanks, that's a helpful reply - still don't understand why you believe it needs to be redesigned from scratch if it worked fine for you in 1.9, though. Why go back to the drawing board, spend tons of manpower and hours and months of work and re-invent it all in a different way, if a previous patch already did what you want it to do?

Nobody has even said it needs to be "redesigned from scratch". Wanting a rework just means we want them to work on it more and make some changes, not rip it out from the ground up.

They need to purge better and use something similar to total war territory flipping. Thats mostly it.

 

[Delthor]

Nobody has even said it needs to be "redesigned from scratch". Wanting a rework just means we want them to work on it more and make some changes, not rip it out from the ground up.

You're using a different definition of "rework" than I am. I totally agree that there are improvements needed. There are several bugs to be fixed, behaviors to adjust, and numbers that need balancing. I wouldn't consider that broken, though, and nor would I consider the changes needed to be a rework. To me, a broken system is one that fundamentally does not create a good experience in a game, even when it's working exactly as intended, and reworking a system is stripping things down and starting from scratch or nearly so.

That's the main reason why I object to what's being requested for the crises. I don't even object to most of the specific things being criticized or requested. I'm mostly confused why such strong language is being thrown around when what's being requested is at worst, a few tricky bug fixes and a smallish improvement an existing feature.

I'm probably just too used to these terms being used in more precise ways because I work in software, so I'm overreacting to the language rather than focusing on the specific ideas, which is my bad.

 

[Evangeline]

Why do you keep putting things into my mouth? I never said anything about "simply reset to previous version". I was simply asking why you rejected the suggestion that a patch/bugfix/rebalancing was sufficient and instead insisted on a rework (which usually means scratching a design and re-doing it anew).

 

[Evangeline]

You're using a different definition of "rework" than I am. I totally agree that there are improvements needed. There are several bugs to be fixed, behaviors to adjust, and numbers that need balancing. I wouldn't consider that broken, though, and nor would I consider the changes needed to be a rework. To me, a broken system is one that fundamentally does not create a good experience in a game, even when it's working exactly as intended, and reworking a system is stripping things down and starting from scratch or nearly so.

That's the main reason why I object to what's being requested for the crises. I don't even object to most of the specific things being criticized or requested. I'm mostly confused why such strong language is being thrown around when what's being requested is at worst, a few tricky bug fixes and a smallish improvement an existing feature.

I'm probably just too used to these terms being used in more precise ways because I work in software, so I'm overreacting to the language rather than focusing on the specific ideas, which is my bad.

Yes, exactly the way I understood it too (and I don't work in software. But e.g. in an art project, if a client asks for a rework, that means "scratch that design and do it all again". I also reacted the same way to "broken".

 

[Methone]

Why do you keep putting things into my mouth? I never said anything about "simply reset to previous version".

?!?!?! You literally said:

why you believe it needs to be redesigned from scratch if it worked fine for you in 1.9, though. Why go back to the drawing board, spend tons of manpower and hours and months of work and re-invent it all in a different way, if a previous patch already did what you want it to do?

I was simply asking why you rejected the suggestion that a patch/bugfix/rebalancing was sufficient and instead insisted on a rework (which usually means scratching a design and re-doing it anew).

Because the old FTL methods and the old methods of controlling systems allowed the crisis to expand really fast, and the new one does not. Using construction ships to expand simply does not cut it, so short of Paradox bringing the old methods back just for the crisis they need to rework how the crisis expands, away from construction ships, to something else.

 

[DrNukeLear]

I actually like the speed the Grey Tempest rips through and doesn’t bother with territory.
It may be an idea for crises combined with a slower territory crawl behind. With more construction ships, which don’t cross the galaxy to build a station and then cross to another front.

 

[Evangeline]

I think maybe we're speaking too different languages for effective communication to be possible.

When I say "it used to work the way you want, so all that is necessary is for them to make it work again", you hear "they don't need to change anything, you have to revert your game to an older patch".
And when you mean "they have to fix this so that it's more challenging again" what you actually say is "the game design is broken and non-functional and needs to be re-done completely".

So then two people who actually agree (!) have a long argument just because they express themselves differently. Well, we may not agree on the construction ships: as said above, simply having more and pathing them correctly may be enough.

 

[Methone]

as said above, simply having more and pathing them correctly may be enough.

It may not, because even then the ships are easy to assassinate. And unless you have the crisis commit a fleet to every single constructor to defend them - like the Unbidden did pre-2.6, but there was only 3 ships to defend - it'll stay a problem. And if you do commit that many of the crisis's resources to that, then that leaves fewer resources to actually going out and razing worlds - something that, mind you, they're not doing so well with even today.

 

[Liggi]

Another thing I'd like to see is the AI actually mounting an opposition to the crisis. What does the player do when the crisis hits? We retool our economy to produce as many ships as possible, and then we build massive doomstacks and try our best to fight back.

Whereas the AI does... basically nothing. They don't really doomstack their fleets, and they rarely attempt to coordinate any sort of counterattack on the crisis. Occasionally I've seen Fallen Empires attempt to fight back against the Prethoryn a bit, and that's really fun! I'd like to see more of that generally.

EDIT: I could even see this being a feature that doesn't seem like a LOT of work... maybe the occasional notification: "other empires are gathering fleets in the <X> system for a counterattack", so that you can choose to join them or not.

 

[Kruzenstern]

One of my main beefs with Stellaris is acutally the rather counterintuitive way pop growth works. Imho a rework should borrow heavily from good old Master of Orion 2...

There iirc pop growth depended on existing pops and remaining pop slots on the planet. So a planet that had lots of pops already but also lots of real estate open for new people would grow rather fast, while one that had lots of pops but was also close to being 'full' would grow slower and one that was just colonized with tons of land to grab but very few pops would also grow slow.

And actually setting up a colony ship COST you pop, which is something that could benefit Stellaris as well imho, every colony ship creating 1-3 pops out of thin air is also something that I find rather silly.

So basically I would like to see pop growth based primarily on existing pops on planet, kept in check by remaining capacity, as well as modified by other Stellaris things like habitability and happiness. Definitely not the flat growth per planet we have now, where you instantly increase pop growth manyfold by creating tons of struggling colonies. In combination with needing pops for the colony ship it should make the decision to start new colonies not a no-brainer but something that will at first handicap you because you will siginificantly slow your pop growth (and thus your economy) if you send a large fraction of the pops on your home planet out to colonize, Otoh you will need colonies to expand at all. So you have to decide whether and when something is worth colonizing.

The issue with single species planets gaining their pops faster than multi-species planets can be fixed as described by shadowstrike in post #18 Two major things that need a fix: Crisis and Pop Growth