Why the new job system -feels- wrong

[Ferrumius]

Number of clicks is not important. In old system upgrading buildings was chores because there was no thinking process involved. In current system, before I upgrade something I check rare resources I have, pop situations of the planet and other planets if I need to resettle, current need of my empire, what kind of world the planet is and so on. In the process I click way more than just upgrading a tile but it doesn't feel like a chore.

Also upgrading building is defenetely rewarding. It's one of the few ways to increase job in your planet. More jobs leads to more pops which leads to more buildings and merchants.

I rarely have issue with unexpected promotion because I'm playing slaver empire now but I can see how it can be problematic since you have no control over which pop promotes.

 

[SpectralShade]

The new system prevents mindless clicking, you only upgrade if you need the resource and can support it.

actually it increases micro-managing and cliclicking. Because you need to constantly click and spend time to 'check up' on the status of all of your colonies. The bigger your empire gets, the worse it gets as you need to scroll through the list on the right side of the screen too all the time.

And you need to manage your fleets in a war at the same time, while you also deal with diplomacy, and exploration, anomilies and.... and... and...

You should see where this is getting to. ESPECIALLY if you play multiplayer with a couple of friends. Either the game never really moves forward (because someone somewhere is pausing the game to be able to do what he needs to do), or you drown in things you need to do at the same time because the amount of stuff you need to take care of at the same time simply stacks up.

When playing singleplayer I NEED to pause the game every now and then because things I need to respond to happen too often if I just let time tick away. This wasn't really a problem pre 2.2, and I had many interesting multiplayer games in the past. Now I wouldn't dream of bothering to try with multiplayer because it strikes me as being decidedly unfun and stressfull.

 

[The Boz]

Can we please, please, please do away with this tedious reductave dumbing down that is 'numer of clicks' which only serves to hide a more meaningfulland potentialy move valid criteque. It really dosent convince any one, and its just hiding the more valid issue that people only have the capacity to make so many choices in a given span, and too many can result in what can be termed choice fatiuge (Or for those of us who ran into this via being or knowing someone who is, Autistic 'running out of spoons'. )

I'm just so sick of seeing the 'too many clicks' argument I'd rather french kiss a running woodchipper at this stage and it does nothing what so ever towards the evolution f the debate or the resolution of the issues in any way that wont strip out other peoples fun.

Your wrong.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Your wrong.

And if that the best counter-argument you can muster, I am happy to be so.

I mean do you click counters apply that standard to other games? I can't imagine you playing Borderlands, you have to click for every shot on some weapons... Some of those shots might even miss and then you waste a click! Think of Baldur's Gate and all the clicks just to make it though character creation.

What does talking about an excess of the most inconsequential action gain that framing things in the more productive mode of choices and choice fatigue does not?

I'm trying to reframe things so we might find some common ground and move on instead of being set 2 sides in eternal strife which is just boring me at this point.

I mean I'm dyslexic and I blew well let me count the clicks to clean this post 16 clicks including getting in and out of my spellcheck (which I don't always use as I should.)

 

[The Boz]

You are being intentionally obtuse now. Counting clicks isn't literally counting the mechanical action of clicking.

 

[th3freakie]

I don't understand. You want to build buildings and then have pops not use them?
If I don't want pops to promote up, I don't build buildings. If I spent resources building buildings, it is because I want pops to get on with producing alloys/consumer goods/research, and I'd be pretty pissed if the pops continued growing turnips instead.

 

[SpectralShade]

I don't understand. You want to build buildings and then have pops not use them?
If I don't want pops to promote up, I don't build buildings. If I spent resources building buildings, it is because I want pops to get on with producing alloys/consumer goods/research, and I'd be pretty pissed if the pops continued growing turnips instead.

he wants NEW pops to use them. So he is actually able to plan ahead and say: "on this planet I want to build this building, because I feel I can use this thing it gives me in the future." without it meaning that the parameters he made his asumption on (how things are now) suddenly change because the baseline he asumed from vanishes when his baseline moves into his building instead of new pops that get added over time.

One of the reasons the new system is so micro heavy is because it prevents you from planning ahead and needs you to keep acting on it NOW instead of setting up parameters for the future.

 

[Hyomoto]

It's been said but I'll still emphasize: it seems that much like the impulse to avoid the admin cap, there's an inbuilt tic some players have to "upgrade and build everything". My experience was that collapsed my economy and took my Empire to what I thought was the brink of ruin.

The planets are more complex now, true. But they seem to need less attention, less often. Even when it comes to unemployment you can handle a few unemployed pops. It's not ideal, at all, but a few unemployed workers also isn't going to destroy your society. The big change is redevelopment: there's a big emphasis now on altering your infrastructure to meet your needs.

For example, early on its much better for me to build three research centers than one upgraded one because the cost of the building in energy is less than rare resources. Yes, it takes away those slots for other things but that's the price I'm paying to save on science. If I happen to have exotic gases, that changes somewhat. Later on when I have energy coming out my ears, that extra building slot becomes more valuable than the 13 energy I might spend on gasses and the upgrade becomes worth it. But that's over decades, not years.

The new system seems to actively discourage micromanagement because of how ineffective it ultimately is. Planets take time to develop, period. No amount of managing jobs and strata is going to change that you, ultimately, are waiting on pops to grow and migrate. I agree some tweaks are needed, pop assignment needs work and being able to set job priority would go a long way to fixing what little micro people obsess over.

 

[AlanC9]

actually it increases micro-managing and cliclicking. Because you need to constantly click and spend time to 'check up' on the status of all of your colonies. The bigger your empire gets, the worse it gets as you need to scroll through the list on the right side of the screen too all the time.

I'm not sure I'd use "need" there. By the time you're that size, you should be running enough surplus to not really care about minor inefficiencies. Unless this is an OCD thing?

 

[AlanC9]

For example, early on its much better for me to build three research centers than one upgraded one because the cost of the building in energy is less than rare resources. Yes, it takes away those slots for other things but that's the price I'm paying to save on science. If I happen to have exotic gases, that changes somewhat. Later on when I have energy coming out my ears, that extra building slot becomes more valuable than the 13 energy I might spend on gasses and the upgrade becomes worth it. But that's over decades, not years..

And eventually you'll want to concentrate those research centers on one world to get the planet bonus. Ideally you'd do that from the start, but in the early game you'll be constrained by building unlocks a bit. By the midgame swapping one building for another is fairly cheap.

 

[Guluere]

It's possible to add weight to job depending on the pop, but for some reason, the devs never added them. Weird.

 

[Mergoth]

I think the new job system is wonderful, but I do dislike one thing about it: If you dont want to lose workers to specialists, you have to build up some unemployment first :S Not that its a problem for me, since I manage to get a good surplus of minerals, food and energy so losing workers doesnt affect me, but still.

 

[QuietusStar]

So. Despite having a more intrinsicate and interesting economy system, there is just a bad feeling in you when you upgrade an alloy factory and suddenly five pops move from resource generation to resource consumption: it feels like I am getting punished for developing my world. In a game, you want your players to feel rewarded when expanding, when advancing your empire, but you made a system that makes you feel like 'o shit my economy is crap becaue I tried expanding it', and it's poor psychological design. Compare to Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings: build a building, you now gain more ducats/gold each month.

Suggestion: Population should not be automatically promoted to higher strata. Available higher job strata should be filled when there are unemployed workers on your planet, or through an easy to access button that promotes a pop for you- Could even have two buttons, one for at each building interface to employ a lower strata pop into it, and one general button that is just 'fill all your higher strata jobs with workers' or something such - this could even be ticked to automatically fill jobs like the current system does.

Taking away control from the player is a bad thing. Making the player feel punished for building a building or upgrading a building is a bad thing. The system is good, the implementation is not the best from a gameplay experience point of view.

I honestly have no idea why you're being downvoted so heavily, as all these posts saying that you should just wait until your planets are overrun with the homeless and jobless before building anything is just stupid to me. Even if you have equal the number of pops and jobs, building more jobs will still take away from older jobs, potentially leaving you in the negative on a resouce. Just waiting until after an adequate number of unemployed people have taken to the streets demanding jobs before you build anymore is definitely not how I envision my empire, nor is it how I prefer to play my game, and if I get punished for trying to take a more proactive approach instead of just a reactive one, then that's bad game design in my grand strategy game. People play this game differently, and I prefer to plan ahead and build before I need a building, taking a more proactive approach in the growth of my empire rather than just a reactive one. Perhaps another solution would be to proactively set job priorities on a planet, instead of just reacting to pops and telling them that no one can work in the new lab, why not encourage them to work on the farms instead.

 

[FleetingRain]

I honestly have no idea why you're being downvoted so heavily, as all these posts saying that you should just wait until your planets are overrun with the homeless and jobless before building anything is just stupid to me. Even if you have equal the number of pops and jobs, building more jobs will still take away from older jobs, potentially leaving you in the negative on a resouce. Just waiting until after an adequate number of unemployed people have taken to the streets demanding jobs before you build anymore is definitely not how I envision my empire, nor is it how I prefer to play my game, and if I get punished for trying to take a more proactive approach instead of just a reactive one, then that's bad game design in my grand strategy game. People play this game differently, and I prefer to plan ahead and build before I need a building, taking a more proactive approach in the growth of my empire rather than just a reactive one. Perhaps another solution would be to proactively set job priorities on a planet, instead of just reacting to pops and telling them that no one can work in the new lab, why not encourage them to work on the farms instead.

Dude. Planet has 10 available Housing and 2 available jobs. Build something for the future pops. But only ONE building. You'll be fine. What OP thinks is a good idea is to just build all 15 buildings and hope the economy won't tank.

What I think would be good however, and in that case I might agree with OP, is that we need some notification that we're running out of job/housing/amenities. Right now the game only alerts you in the outliner when you're already overcrowded or with unemployed pops.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

What I'd like ( said this in another thread) is rather than only being told when something is broken, we had the /housing/jobs icons by colonies at all times
Green: room to spare
Amber: exactly full
Red: Unemployment/Overcrouding.

That keeps the toothsome economic fiddling but gives us more sense oh when places need attention.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

actually it increases micro-managing and cliclicking. Because you need to constantly click and spend time to 'check up' on the status of all of your colonies. The bigger your empire gets, the worse it gets as you need to scroll through the list on the right side of the screen too all the time.

That's not mindless clicking busy-work, though; that's having to actually manage your planets. A decision in which there is an immediate and obvious "right" answer is not a decision worth having; that IS mindlessly clicking..

New system is VASTLY better than just queuing up buildings once and forgetting about it.

 

[wundergoat]

I honestly have no idea why you're being downvoted so heavily, as all these posts saying that you should just wait until your planets are overrun with the homeless and jobless before building anything is just stupid to me. Even if you have equal the number of pops and jobs, building more jobs will still take away from older jobs, potentially leaving you in the negative on a resouce. Just waiting until after an adequate number of unemployed people have taken to the streets demanding jobs before you build anymore is definitely not how I envision my empire, nor is it how I prefer to play my game, and if I get punished for trying to take a more proactive approach instead of just a reactive one, then that's bad game design in my grand strategy game. People play this game differently, and I prefer to plan ahead and build before I need a building, taking a more proactive approach in the growth of my empire rather than just a reactive one. Perhaps another solution would be to proactively set job priorities on a planet, instead of just reacting to pops and telling them that no one can work in the new lab, why not encourage them to work on the farms instead.

I too do not understand all the disagrees either.

I’ve decided that this planet will get a specialist building and I want to staff it over time. The current UI makes me have to jump through a lot of hoops to accomplish this, in clicks and time, to say nothing of the mental overhead sucked up remembering to go back and adjust.

A simple toggle to disable auto promote, staffing specialist positions with new pops instead, accomplishes this.

As I’ve said before, the fun in these games comes from making meaningful decisions and 2.2 is fantastic for adding more meaningful decision points. However, the UI requires a TON of work for implementing some decisions, taking away from the actual decision making. I mean, the suggestion to hold off adding specialist buildings until you have excess pops is actually a decision to avoid the UI hassle, not some deeper economic choice.

Improving UI for this (and job priority) shouldn’t be controversial.

 

[AlanC9]

he wants NEW pops to use them. So he is actually able to plan ahead and say: "on this planet I want to build this building, because I feel I can use this thing it gives me in the future." without it meaning that the parameters he made his asumption on (how things are now) suddenly change because the baseline he asumed from vanishes when his baseline moves into his building instead of new pops that get added over time.

One of the reasons the new system is so micro heavy is because it prevents you from planning ahead and needs you to keep acting on it NOW instead of setting up parameters for the future.

You seem to be muddling up making a plan and executing that plan. Planning to build a building and actually building that building are not the same thing.

I take it the actual point is that remembering the plan is hard, so it'd be easier to just execute the plan immediately?

 

[th3freakie]

I'm not sure why folk are saying you have to wait for unemployment. That might be true in some marginal case or another, but in 99% of the cases by the time I build an alloy forge I will either have enough minerals stores to see me over while pops keep growing OR, much more likely, I have other planets mining minerals, so the mineral (or whatever else) will take a hit but well within what I wanted. It really seems like people are moving too hard too fast on refined resources without having a suitable primary resource economy behind it.

 

[SpectralShade]

You seem to be muddling up making a plan and executing that plan. Planning to build a building and actually building that building are not the same thing.

I take it the actual point is that remembering the plan is hard, so it'd be easier to just execute the plan immediately?

When you have dozens of different planets needing different plans, I shouldn't need to keep track of the plan for every planet in my head. As a PLANNER I am supposed to figure out what needs to be done, and then telling the system about it and letting it happen according to what I ordered.

What you are talking about is the day to day overseeing work of a mid-level executive. There's nothing "grand" about being forced to keep being needed to make mid-level adjustments because the system prevents you from setting up the plan for grand-/top-level planning.

Especially as this isn't supposed to be a colony management game, but a game where the growth of your colonies is only a small part of it. Now, it's the majority of your game time spent doing what you should have been able to delegate to the computer that you wanted to get done. If my old phone from a few years ago would be able to keep track of small plans ahead of time, why is it seemingly impossible for a galaxy-spanning empire to delegate plans ahead of time when the technology should have improved compared to my old phone?