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[Stellaris] Robo Mommy Returns to Dom Meatbags [Machine Age DLC]
Just read up on the latest dev diaries for Overlord. Looks interesting. Haven't played in ages, and now it's a case of why start when the next patch is coming out. Then I'll probably end up waiting for the NEXT patch after that.
I'm kind of on the face with the 3 month or so update the custodians have going for updates. One one hand, yeah, that can kill current sessions. On, the other hand, it's three months, unless something major happened in your life, you probably were going to finish the game if it wasn't something like 500+ years from endgame. On the other, other hand, there is also the whole thing of needing tons of fixes to deal with all the changes done before they realized they'd needed something like the custodian team.
I actually figure that after a year or two, the custodians updates should hit a point where it's not really disruptive. That that just leaves the yearly expansion they do as the sole disruption that is guaranteed to break games. Species and story packs aren't going to do that.
I was planning to go Hive Mind for my Overlord game, because I basically always go Hive, but I have to admit that having a species start out as latently psionic is very tempting, if only in a role-playing sense. So I might have to play a regular Empire for once.
Well, unless Progenitor Hive turns out to be a really awesome origin.
Are there any mods out there that have bioships/living ships/breedable dragons as a thing? Like using Food as an upkeep for your ships?
Here be Dragon's origin lets you get dragons that you can put into fleets. I do believe you're capped at only being able to have 10 at a time and they do use food for upkeep and that's worth keep in mind because the mother dragon you get for free can goose your food needs up quite a bit and can be a rude surprise if you weren't expecting it.
There is also the civic that gives you a chance to rez leviathans and dragons from empires with the here be dragons origin. Not sure on the full mechanics on what you can rez, as in do you need to kill it or can you scavenge the kills of others. Don't know if they still use food, I'd assume, but never tried the civic. I know you can rez bubbles, so maybe you can rez deceased amebas and space whales.
I do know their is a bioship mod that uses the models from the swarm crisis IIRC and changes your economy by being reliant on food and exotic gas to make them and not in the sense that catalytic converters is reliant on food.
Pretty sure the leviathan one is a reanimator/necroid civic. And yeah here be dragons is neat but not something you can really build your empire around.
Gwen's Additional Playstyles is working on a Dragon Hatchers origin and I do like the idea of fielding a fleet of fucking space dragons.
Hive Queens seems like an option I'll give a go to
So orbital rings aren't quite the same as gigastructures's. IIRC that one only gave districts. Waiting for dev clarification because I want to say the gigastructure one gave large worlds something like 4 districts, but it has been a while. The in game ones might be worse for living space if we're only allowed to have one habitation module, but could be better if all four orbital ring modules can be habitation modules; especially, if I'm misremembering the total district boost that gigagstructures variant gave. Granted, can't remember if gigastructures made pick between habitats or rings for colonized worlds.
On the other hand, the in game one is probably going to be better overall because it's a way to make your system harder to take because the things come with defenses and you can make them even beefier, but at the expense of your civil infrastructure. They get special buildings that let you further specialize your worlds and can also host buildings that are normally on starbases (again waiting for clarification on if we have any starbase buildings that can't be built on orbital rings). This is going to be huge boon in a way because depending on what building we can put on them, that could mean we get trade protection, blacksites and transit hubs in our inhabited systems without having to build starbases. So that frees up our starbases for chokepoints, strategic systems that you want to be really hard to take and exploiting rarer resources when you have a few to spare that aren't need for a chokepoint or further locking down a key system (aka you can get that extra stuff form the blackhole system, get further boons from your incorporated enclave or exploit that nebula for some extra resources).
I'll admit, the downside to orbital rings is that it's likely a huge boon for wide empires. Assuming colonized worlds only, they'll have more of them and picking between a habitat and a orbital ring will sting less because plenty of uninhabitable worlds that host those habitats. Not to mention they can make better use of the starbase flexibility that orbital rings will afford us.
The Quantum Catapult sounds like it could be fun if you're suddenly jumping into somewhere in enemy territory and somewhat stressful if it's an enemy fleet suddenly showing up somewhere in your territory.
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I'm kind of on the face with the 3 month or so update the custodians have going for updates. One one hand, yeah, that can kill current sessions. On, the other hand, it's three months, unless something major happened in your life, you probably were going to finish the game if it wasn't something like 500+ years from endgame. On the other, other hand, there is also the whole thing of needing tons of fixes to deal with all the changes done before they realized they'd needed something like the custodian team.
I actually figure that after a year or two, the custodians updates should hit a point where it's not really disruptive. That that just leaves the yearly expansion they do as the sole disruption that is guaranteed to break games. Species and story packs aren't going to do that.
I just leave it on the build I was using.
Im an expansion behind at this point. Itll be two when this one comes out. Im determined to keep going on my game.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Of course it has to drop the week before my semester ends. I can just see it now:
Oh, hi department chair, what? Oh, I haven't submitted final grades yet? I'll get right on that, still finishing up grading those final projects, they just take forever, ya know? *oh drat, someone just opened up the L-gate* Oh, nothings wrong, just a student used an logic gate instead of a flip-flop....
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
+2
LokiDon't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
So, uh, is there some kind of rule of thumb involved in keeping empire sprawl down to a dull roar? Should I just make a planet full of administrators?
Also, I actually just found out about the ascended button for planets which seems to increase the planet's bonus? Is there a good rule of thumb for using that as well?
Edit: So, is building hyperrelays like the Stellaris equivalent of sending out a Vogon fleet to build a hyperspace bypass?
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Planetary ascensions are suppose to be a means to burn excess unity. Generally, they are worth touching if your traditions are done and you have the unity ambitions you want. Also worth touching if you need a slight boost to something, but it's impractical to create a new colony or steal someone else's. Finally, ascending a planet could be a good way to reduce sprawl, since each ascension reduces the sprawl generated by each pop on the ascended world.
As for reducing sprawl, there are some methods. Planetary ascension is probably the best one because it also doubles as pop efficiency improvement. There are civics, perks and traditions that also help here. Generally, the weakest one is one that reduces sprawl from systems because those are going to be a fraction of a fraction of your sprawl at the end of the game (aka don't take expansion just to get the system sprawl reduction). IIRC there is a ascension perk that reduces sprawl from worlds, which kind of a missed bag, if you have a shit ton of colonies you'll notice it, but it's also fairly easy to miss it. Generally, anything that reduces sprawl from pops is going to be great for reducing sprawl overall.
All that said, anything that isn't ascending a planet will always come at the expense of getting something else and sometimes even planetary ascensions, might be coming at the expense of delaying something else (If you conquer someone's ringworld or ecumenopolis and they have it pretty well build up, it's probably worth delaying a tradition and perk, just to get an ascension or two on it. Hell could even speed things up on the tradition front). This is also why I don't mention the docile trait, I do think it does become worth it at a certain point, but early and midgame, it's not worth investing in.
Really, the biggest way to offset sprawl is to gear up your economy to support more research and unity production to stay ahead of the malus. This is also where we see the argument by some about how the current malus likely is still too generous and still puts wide ahead of tall by a noticeable amount (mileage will vary based on how much one loves or hates microing).
Devs noted that lithoids don't eat thee pop growth malus from cave dweller. So origin is going to be stronger for them. IMO seems like it needs a little more oomph because the bonuses don't seem like they fully offset the maluses. Worth keeping in mind that the vassal rework, could make having most traits that improve base resource gathering be less useful. Why be good at mining if you can turn someone into a vassal and make them do the work for you?
Also a bit weird that subterranean empires don't get bonuses to defending their worlds from army invasions. This just means that people won't spend much time on bombardment and will just pile on armies. So empires with the origin have little reason to play much differently from everyone else. You'll want to get your planetary defense up so that you can discourage foes from jumping fleets in below a certain power. If they had bonuses to defending worlds with armies, that would at least open the option of not having to invest much in planetary defense and maybe going with orbital rings geared more towards maximizing resource output because orbital bombardment will take forever and an invader would need much bigger armies to make invasion not take forever.
Devs noted that lithoids don't eat thee pop growth malus from cave dweller. So origin is going to be stronger for them. IMO seems like it needs a little more oomph because the bonuses don't seem like they fully offset the maluses. Worth keeping in mind that the vassal rework, could make having most traits that improve base resource gathering be less useful. Why be good at mining if you can turn someone into a vassal and make them do the work for you?
Also a bit weird that subterranean empires don't get bonuses to defending their worlds from army invasions. This just means that people won't spend much time on bombardment and will just pile on armies. So empires with the origin have little reason to play much differently from everyone else. You'll want to get your planetary defense up so that you can discourage foes from jumping fleets in below a certain power. If they had bonuses to defending worlds with armies, that would at least open the option of not having to invest much in planetary defense and maybe going with orbital rings geared more towards maximizing resource output because orbital bombardment will take forever and an invader would need much bigger armies to make invasion not take forever.
They get the bonus because their bombs have to go through rock and dirt, rather than just walk into a cave like an army can.
Don't know about others, but I generally don't do much with orbital bombardment. I find it's just quicker to build the armies and invade. Also less devastation, so if I'm conquering the world, it means I can turn it around into a net gain quicker.
Don't know about others, but I generally don't do much with orbital bombardment. I find it's just quicker to build the armies and invade. Also less devastation, so if I'm conquering the world, it means I can turn it around into a net gain quicker.
Bombardment's a nonfactor since many releases ago, it's true.
This Origin feels a bit more mechanically focussed, I think. Not sure I'll be able to wring a whole lot of roleplaying potential out of this that you couldn't already get with regular Hive Minds.
I haven't played this game in a while.... I got frustrated with new updates breaking old mechanics. Does the AI in this game work reasonably well now? Or do new update keep resetting core mechanics?
They keep changing core mechanics forever it feels like. I dunno if the AI works better or not, I think they've at least made it more efficient so the game chugs less when the galaxy's filled up.
This Origin feels a bit more mechanically focussed, I think. Not sure I'll be able to wring a whole lot of roleplaying potential out of this that you couldn't already get with regular Hive Minds.
I do like that it adds a new mechanic. I haven't played a hive mind in a loooong time, so maybe they've changed it, but from a mechanics standpoint, it always felt like the hive mind was just "you can ignore certain mechanics, and these other ones have changed values". The RP aspect is cool, but the implantation was kinda ho-hum.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Not a huge fan of the first look videos. I get what Paradox is trying, but too often the discussions around them end up being griping and a fair bit of the griping ends up being unfounded because we find out, in what really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, the first look videos often do not include all the information about what they are showcasing. It's a bit sad how on the official boards, people accuse you of white knighting for the devs when you point out that these videos aren't in depth videos, they are first looks and we've seen many details that get left out of them. Off the top of my head, things that didn't get mentioned or weren't accurate when these videos were recorded:
-Teachers of the Shroud, explaining that the origin essentially gets a free ascension perk because you get all the bonuses that mind over matters provides and locking you into the psionic path on day fucking one. (can't remember if you have to research the techs or not, even if you still have to research those techs, that isn't nothing because you don't have to fish for psionic theory nor do the special project for it. Granted, I think it was implied in the video, but the devs have to really clarify this point in the following dev diary.
-Subterranean, mentioning that the pop growth malus only applies to biological pops. This was a case where they had changed the tooltip since the video was recorded. I still have doubts about this origin, but that puts it on much better footing for a lithoid species than a biological one.
-Progenitor Hive, failing to mention that it's the only hive that can split off parts of itself as vassals. That is actually pretty huge when you think about it because it opens up some options; especially, if the devs ever hit a point where super wide stops being easy mode. Also no mention on how offspring ships get prioritized for fleet targeting and that's the huge make or break for this origin. It's going to be shit if they are on the top of the list, if it works like here be dragons, that can be really good if they are the last thing to be targeted. Also no mention if a subjugation war against that that goes into white peace, will take any occupied colonies and create a progenitor hive origin vassal.
Think the other two are probably narrative enough, that it wasn't too hard to include most of the mechanics because obviously, they didn't want to spoil the narrative stuff for Imperial Fiefdom and Slingshot to the Stars. I'll say I'm worried the last one won't meet the intended goal of origins, where the origin has a mechanic impact on how your empire develops. Imperial Fiefdom looks a bit weak on that aspect as well, but watching Aspec's play of it so far, tells me that it still has a pretty huge impact on how you develop your empire for a decent chunk of the game. Possibly longer, hard to say because he had to edit stuff before he could put it online, so even his playthrough is going to keep details sparse.
They keep changing core mechanics forever it feels like. I dunno if the AI works better or not, I think they've at least made it more efficient so the game chugs less when the galaxy's filled up.
I’m still genuinely mad at how population works now. It was overly simple before, sure, but it worked and it was easy to understand and satisfying to manage! I have no clue whatsoever how to engage with that system at all now and I’m not sure I should even bother learning because they’ll probably change it again later
They keep changing core mechanics forever it feels like. I dunno if the AI works better or not, I think they've at least made it more efficient so the game chugs less when the galaxy's filled up.
I’m still genuinely mad at how population works now. It was overly simple before, sure, but it worked and it was easy to understand and satisfying to manage! I have no clue whatsoever how to engage with that system at all now and I’m not sure I should even bother learning because they’ll probably change it again later
Yeah, exactly this. I'm happy to dig in and figure a system out, but I resent having to do it if the system is buggy or will be changed again.
+2
MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
It would be awfully nice to have the game's central functionalities not constantly mutating like a Tyranid hive fleet in a all you can consume Chinese buffet sector.
It's different for things like expansions, but the core game shouldn't become incomprehensible on a regular basis... and I say this even liking Stellaris.
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
Has anyone figured out a good system to deal with the concept of having pops and making them important in the way that you need to?
I didn't care for the previous pop system. There was the issue that it was the biggest source of lag. I also didn't like how the game would essentially turn into a game of whack-a-mole; especially, with wide empires. Where you'd sort out all your worlds and then the first world you sorted out, would have grown enough to require further sorting. Not to mention when jobs become scarce and housing nonexistent, I kind of doubt many people are eager to breed like rabbits.
The current system is an improvement. Cuts down on lag. You do hit a point where you can focus on other parts of the game and that seems to be forcing the devs to actually work on those areas, rather than trying to unfuck things caused by massive population. Only issue is they haven't quite hit a good solution. Pop growth is a little game, it's pretty much understanding how much free housing you need based on planet size to get max growth. The other big issue is that pops are way too damn important, which makes conquest, pop raiding and farm vassals way too fucking appealing. I'm hoping they'll figure out some way to hit a point where there are alternatives over just getting more pops.
The sprawl rework was a missed opportunity. Sprawl malus being to generous just continuous the whole issue of pops being the best resource to get no matter what. A good pop malus could have created a setup where the player eventually doesn't want more pops, but wants to make their pops more efficient. Like I don't think the new pop growth system should be the thing that leads us to wanting less pops, it really should be about making the game sane by cutting the lag and sparring us from constantly microing employment on all our worlds. So that sprawl could have been the thing that makes us want to focus less on "gain pops as quickly as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!"
They keep changing core mechanics forever it feels like. I dunno if the AI works better or not, I think they've at least made it more efficient so the game chugs less when the galaxy's filled up.
I’m still genuinely mad at how population works now. It was overly simple before, sure, but it worked and it was easy to understand and satisfying to manage! I have no clue whatsoever how to engage with that system at all now and I’m not sure I should even bother learning because they’ll probably change it again later
Yeah, exactly this. I'm happy to dig in and figure a system out, but I resent having to do it if the system is buggy or will be changed again.
Heh yeah, my attitude towards any DLC or patch now is pretty lukewarm. They can be good sometimes! But they have a habit of breaking a lot of things, or introducing systems that aren't quite as satisfying to play as the old.
I'm supposed to play some multiplayer Overlord on Friday, so we shall seeeee.
Posts
I actually figure that after a year or two, the custodians updates should hit a point where it's not really disruptive. That that just leaves the yearly expansion they do as the sole disruption that is guaranteed to break games. Species and story packs aren't going to do that.
Well, that's not ominous.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Well, unless Progenitor Hive turns out to be a really awesome origin.
Here be Dragon's origin lets you get dragons that you can put into fleets. I do believe you're capped at only being able to have 10 at a time and they do use food for upkeep and that's worth keep in mind because the mother dragon you get for free can goose your food needs up quite a bit and can be a rude surprise if you weren't expecting it.
There is also the civic that gives you a chance to rez leviathans and dragons from empires with the here be dragons origin. Not sure on the full mechanics on what you can rez, as in do you need to kill it or can you scavenge the kills of others. Don't know if they still use food, I'd assume, but never tried the civic. I know you can rez bubbles, so maybe you can rez deceased amebas and space whales.
I do know their is a bioship mod that uses the models from the swarm crisis IIRC and changes your economy by being reliant on food and exotic gas to make them and not in the sense that catalytic converters is reliant on food.
Gwen's Additional Playstyles is working on a Dragon Hatchers origin and I do like the idea of fielding a fleet of fucking space dragons.
Hive Queens seems like an option I'll give a go to
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
So orbital rings aren't quite the same as gigastructures's. IIRC that one only gave districts. Waiting for dev clarification because I want to say the gigastructure one gave large worlds something like 4 districts, but it has been a while. The in game ones might be worse for living space if we're only allowed to have one habitation module, but could be better if all four orbital ring modules can be habitation modules; especially, if I'm misremembering the total district boost that gigagstructures variant gave. Granted, can't remember if gigastructures made pick between habitats or rings for colonized worlds.
On the other hand, the in game one is probably going to be better overall because it's a way to make your system harder to take because the things come with defenses and you can make them even beefier, but at the expense of your civil infrastructure. They get special buildings that let you further specialize your worlds and can also host buildings that are normally on starbases (again waiting for clarification on if we have any starbase buildings that can't be built on orbital rings). This is going to be huge boon in a way because depending on what building we can put on them, that could mean we get trade protection, blacksites and transit hubs in our inhabited systems without having to build starbases. So that frees up our starbases for chokepoints, strategic systems that you want to be really hard to take and exploiting rarer resources when you have a few to spare that aren't need for a chokepoint or further locking down a key system (aka you can get that extra stuff form the blackhole system, get further boons from your incorporated enclave or exploit that nebula for some extra resources).
I'll admit, the downside to orbital rings is that it's likely a huge boon for wide empires. Assuming colonized worlds only, they'll have more of them and picking between a habitat and a orbital ring will sting less because plenty of uninhabitable worlds that host those habitats. Not to mention they can make better use of the starbase flexibility that orbital rings will afford us.
I just leave it on the build I was using.
Im an expansion behind at this point. Itll be two when this one comes out. Im determined to keep going on my game.
Edit: new dev diary
And considering the length of a typical playthrough of a Paradox Grand Strategy title, so is June.
Oh, hi department chair, what? Oh, I haven't submitted final grades yet? I'll get right on that, still finishing up grading those final projects, they just take forever, ya know? *oh drat, someone just opened up the L-gate* Oh, nothings wrong, just a student used an logic gate instead of a flip-flop....
I’ve been waiting for a Synthetic Dawn type DLC for Tyranid-type races for years.
Also, I actually just found out about the ascended button for planets which seems to increase the planet's bonus? Is there a good rule of thumb for using that as well?
Edit: So, is building hyperrelays like the Stellaris equivalent of sending out a Vogon fleet to build a hyperspace bypass?
As for reducing sprawl, there are some methods. Planetary ascension is probably the best one because it also doubles as pop efficiency improvement. There are civics, perks and traditions that also help here. Generally, the weakest one is one that reduces sprawl from systems because those are going to be a fraction of a fraction of your sprawl at the end of the game (aka don't take expansion just to get the system sprawl reduction). IIRC there is a ascension perk that reduces sprawl from worlds, which kind of a missed bag, if you have a shit ton of colonies you'll notice it, but it's also fairly easy to miss it. Generally, anything that reduces sprawl from pops is going to be great for reducing sprawl overall.
All that said, anything that isn't ascending a planet will always come at the expense of getting something else and sometimes even planetary ascensions, might be coming at the expense of delaying something else (If you conquer someone's ringworld or ecumenopolis and they have it pretty well build up, it's probably worth delaying a tradition and perk, just to get an ascension or two on it. Hell could even speed things up on the tradition front). This is also why I don't mention the docile trait, I do think it does become worth it at a certain point, but early and midgame, it's not worth investing in.
Really, the biggest way to offset sprawl is to gear up your economy to support more research and unity production to stay ahead of the malus. This is also where we see the argument by some about how the current malus likely is still too generous and still puts wide ahead of tall by a noticeable amount (mileage will vary based on how much one loves or hates microing).
New Subterranean origin, for those of us who want to get our moleman on.
+50% habitability
+15% minerals from jobs
-20% Pop Growth Speed
+10% Empire Size from pop
75% less damage from orbital bombardment
Uncapped mining districts
Mining districts provide 2 additional housing per district
Every 3 mines grants an additional building slot
If you're going for a mineral build, this would be the origin to go with, good grief.
Also a bit weird that subterranean empires don't get bonuses to defending their worlds from army invasions. This just means that people won't spend much time on bombardment and will just pile on armies. So empires with the origin have little reason to play much differently from everyone else. You'll want to get your planetary defense up so that you can discourage foes from jumping fleets in below a certain power. If they had bonuses to defending worlds with armies, that would at least open the option of not having to invest much in planetary defense and maybe going with orbital rings geared more towards maximizing resource output because orbital bombardment will take forever and an invader would need much bigger armies to make invasion not take forever.
They get the bonus because their bombs have to go through rock and dirt, rather than just walk into a cave like an army can.
Bombardment's a nonfactor since many releases ago, it's true.
This Origin feels a bit more mechanically focussed, I think. Not sure I'll be able to wring a whole lot of roleplaying potential out of this that you couldn't already get with regular Hive Minds.
I do like that it adds a new mechanic. I haven't played a hive mind in a loooong time, so maybe they've changed it, but from a mechanics standpoint, it always felt like the hive mind was just "you can ignore certain mechanics, and these other ones have changed values". The RP aspect is cool, but the implantation was kinda ho-hum.
-Teachers of the Shroud, explaining that the origin essentially gets a free ascension perk because you get all the bonuses that mind over matters provides and locking you into the psionic path on day fucking one. (can't remember if you have to research the techs or not, even if you still have to research those techs, that isn't nothing because you don't have to fish for psionic theory nor do the special project for it. Granted, I think it was implied in the video, but the devs have to really clarify this point in the following dev diary.
-Subterranean, mentioning that the pop growth malus only applies to biological pops. This was a case where they had changed the tooltip since the video was recorded. I still have doubts about this origin, but that puts it on much better footing for a lithoid species than a biological one.
-Progenitor Hive, failing to mention that it's the only hive that can split off parts of itself as vassals. That is actually pretty huge when you think about it because it opens up some options; especially, if the devs ever hit a point where super wide stops being easy mode. Also no mention on how offspring ships get prioritized for fleet targeting and that's the huge make or break for this origin. It's going to be shit if they are on the top of the list, if it works like here be dragons, that can be really good if they are the last thing to be targeted. Also no mention if a subjugation war against that that goes into white peace, will take any occupied colonies and create a progenitor hive origin vassal.
Think the other two are probably narrative enough, that it wasn't too hard to include most of the mechanics because obviously, they didn't want to spoil the narrative stuff for Imperial Fiefdom and Slingshot to the Stars. I'll say I'm worried the last one won't meet the intended goal of origins, where the origin has a mechanic impact on how your empire develops. Imperial Fiefdom looks a bit weak on that aspect as well, but watching Aspec's play of it so far, tells me that it still has a pretty huge impact on how you develop your empire for a decent chunk of the game. Possibly longer, hard to say because he had to edit stuff before he could put it online, so even his playthrough is going to keep details sparse.
I’m still genuinely mad at how population works now. It was overly simple before, sure, but it worked and it was easy to understand and satisfying to manage! I have no clue whatsoever how to engage with that system at all now and I’m not sure I should even bother learning because they’ll probably change it again later
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Yeah, exactly this. I'm happy to dig in and figure a system out, but I resent having to do it if the system is buggy or will be changed again.
It's different for things like expansions, but the core game shouldn't become incomprehensible on a regular basis... and I say this even liking Stellaris.
I didn't care for the previous pop system. There was the issue that it was the biggest source of lag. I also didn't like how the game would essentially turn into a game of whack-a-mole; especially, with wide empires. Where you'd sort out all your worlds and then the first world you sorted out, would have grown enough to require further sorting. Not to mention when jobs become scarce and housing nonexistent, I kind of doubt many people are eager to breed like rabbits.
The current system is an improvement. Cuts down on lag. You do hit a point where you can focus on other parts of the game and that seems to be forcing the devs to actually work on those areas, rather than trying to unfuck things caused by massive population. Only issue is they haven't quite hit a good solution. Pop growth is a little game, it's pretty much understanding how much free housing you need based on planet size to get max growth. The other big issue is that pops are way too damn important, which makes conquest, pop raiding and farm vassals way too fucking appealing. I'm hoping they'll figure out some way to hit a point where there are alternatives over just getting more pops.
The sprawl rework was a missed opportunity. Sprawl malus being to generous just continuous the whole issue of pops being the best resource to get no matter what. A good pop malus could have created a setup where the player eventually doesn't want more pops, but wants to make their pops more efficient. Like I don't think the new pop growth system should be the thing that leads us to wanting less pops, it really should be about making the game sane by cutting the lag and sparring us from constantly microing employment on all our worlds. So that sprawl could have been the thing that makes us want to focus less on "gain pops as quickly as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Heh yeah, my attitude towards any DLC or patch now is pretty lukewarm. They can be good sometimes! But they have a habit of breaking a lot of things, or introducing systems that aren't quite as satisfying to play as the old.
I'm supposed to play some multiplayer Overlord on Friday, so we shall seeeee.