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Stellaris Dev Diary #211: 3.0.3 Beta Updates

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the tremendous participation within the 3.0.3 beta branch and for all of the feedback that you've been providing.

For those that are interested in joining the beta, you have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

This week we'll be talking about some more changes that we're planning on pushing in the near future to the 3.0.3 beta branch concerning further balance updates, AI, and more. These are highlights of some of the things that will be in the full patch notes and not intended to be a comprehensive list.

Bug Fixes and Further Balance Updates

From fixes to the end of the Cybrex precursor chain to correcting edict deactivation costs, we've fixed a number of issues that you've found and reported during the beta. Thank you for reporting things in the Bug Reports forum.

Regarding the economic changes, one of the common themes in the feedback has been that the sheer number of jobs in the game are too high, and we agree. Clerks are especially notorious for this, since in many cases you would rather actually see them unemployed and moving to a more valuable position elsewhere in the empire. We're taking some preliminary steps to reduce the number of jobs and changing things to focus on increasing productivity instead.

Here are some of the changes you'll be seeing soon:
  • [Balance] Reduced the number of Clerk jobs provided by buildings and districts by 40%.
  • [Balance] Clerk trade value has been increased to 4.
1620222575947.png

  • [Balance] Buildings that increased basic resource production and added jobs to basic resource producing buildings or districts (Energy Grids, Mineral Purification Plants, etc.) now increase the base production of the relevant jobs by 1 or 2 based on tier instead of their previous modifiers. Machine empires still gain the extra resource district slots as before.

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Yes, "Livestock" counts as a "Food producing job". (Or minerals, for Lithoids.)
  • [Balance] Manufacturing focus buildings (factories and foundries) no longer prevent the other from being built on non-Ecumenopolis planets, and no longer add jobs to Industrial Districts. They instead increase the base production of alloy or consumer goods producing jobs by 1 or 2, with a corresponding increase in upkeep.
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Secondary resources like Alloys do require more inputs to produce more, however.


Balancing the number of jobs and their output will be an ongoing task, expect future updates to have additional changes.

AI Updates

We're making some updates that will have significant changes to AI behavior that should improve the effectiveness of AI opponents, as well as some changes to reduce the impact to your empire if an AI were to take control of your empire for a short duration in multiplayer.

These changes give the AI a greater focus on economic stability and improves some research related behaviors, but are also a work in progress and will continue to be updated in future patches.

We'll put up a 3.0.3 AI Feedback thread once it's live so you can let us know how you feel about these changes.

Population Growth

We're continuing to make adjustments to the current population growth systems in the game, and are exploring additional changes. Some of these are longer term initiatives, however, so in the meantime we're currently adding a quality of life feature that many people have been asking for.

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Logistic Growth and Growth Required Sliders in Galaxy Configuration

These sliders will allow you to adjust the variables related to the bonus a planet can provide through logistic growth and the amount that pop growth increases per empire pop using sliders in Galaxy Configuration instead of needing to edit defines or use a mod to do so. Please note that these sliders can have major impacts on both performance and balance. Existing saves will use the default values. (Which can themselves be overridden in defines.)

Non-English localization for these changes will not be available in the beta as soon as the changes are up, but will be added shortly afterward. Apologies for the delay!

That's all for this week. Since we're currently in a post-release cadence (as well as next Thursday being a holiday in Sweden), the next Dev Diary will be two weeks from now on the 20th of May.

See you then!
 
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Are clerk jobs from urban districts also reduced somehow?

Edit: to clarify, I see that the dev diary states clerk jobs from districts were reduced, but I am wondering how the 40% reduction relates to this.
 
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If we have less jobs, will the number of housing will stay the same or will it will be change too ?
 
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Great work as always devs! Looking forward to try out the new tweaks once they are live on the beta branch.

In another thread, I made the suggestion to make it easier for players to understand the growth system by getting rid of planetary carrying capacity and use housing instead (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...capacity-why-not-use-housing-directly.1471713). It was well received by the community.

May I ask what your thoughts are on this? I think a lot of frustration with 3.0 comes from the fact that carrying capacity is obscure and hidden from the players, making the system appear illogical. Furthermore, it does not account for housing modifiers on pops, leading to many scenarios where planets stop growing even though they have plenty of free housing and jobs. Applying the currently implemented growth curve on housing instead, which is something that is prominently displayed in the UI and the players are familiar with, could be a solution to this problem.
 
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I question the wisdom of buffing resource production per job yet more while further buffing wide empires over tall ones (small colonies get more out of these changes).

Isn't dealing with problems like pop abduction, the relative value of conquest and genocidal civics more pressing?
 
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Seems these changes are on the right track. I'd still strongly reccomend getting rid of the logistic planetary growth curve and letting the empire-wide growth malus take care of slowing down pop growth; that'd simplify things and remove the incentive to micromanage the growth curve.

One minor concern, since basic resource production is apparently buffed pretty heftily, is there going to be a balance pass for consumption? Stuff like food is pretty easy to produce now. Additionally, a pass at tech cost scaling to make it harder to blaze through the tech tree by midgame would be most welcome.
 
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Are clerk jobs from urban districts also reduced somehow?

Edit: to clarify, I see that the dev diary states clerk jobs from districts were reduced, but I am wondering how the 40% reduction relates to this.
I guess from commercial zones, lvl 1 - 3 jobs, lvl 2 - 6 jobs ... I shall still wonder if anyone is building those except on full resorts worlds...
 
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oh, and if we have those both new sliders - will we also get a suggest settings from performance done on their pc ? like I have a potato it suggest 200 stars 0,25 hab etc. or i7-9700 -> huge , max hab, 0 pop growth modifier ?
 
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  • [Balance] Buildings that increased basic resource production and added jobs to basic resource producing buildings or districts (Energy Grids, Mineral Purification Plants, etc.) now increase the base production of the relevant jobs by 1 or 2 based on tier instead of their previous modifiers. Machine empires still gain the extra resource district slots as before.
  • [Balance] Manufacturing focus buildings (factories and foundries) no longer prevent the other from being built on non-Ecumenopolis planets, and no longer add jobs to Industrial Districts. They instead increase the base production of alloy or consumer goods producing jobs by 1 or 2, with a corresponding increase in upkeep.
  • Balancing the number of jobs and their output will be an ongoing task, expect future updates to have additional changes.
These all seem like positive incremental changes. Sounds good!
  • [Balance] Reduced the number of Clerk jobs provided by buildings and districts by 40%.
  • [Balance] Clerk trade value has been increased to 4.
These changes seem OK, but I'm not sure if they'll go far enough to really save Clerks in the court of public opinion/meta. I don't know what would, of course - and I think working on them is certainly better than not working on them - but I guess it remains to be seen.

On the subject of "logistic growth", I surely can't be the only person who don't really understands what that means and how it works. Pop growth I think we all get, but what's logistic growth when it's at home?
At any rate I'm a fan of sliders!
 
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Seems these changes are on the right track. I'd still strongly reccomend getting rid of the logistic planetary growth curve and letting the empire-wide growth malus take care of slowing down pop growth; that'd simplify things and remove the incentive to micromanage the growth curve.
If anything, I'd like to see planetary and empire-wide curves being separate settings on the game start. Being able to turn off completely illogical empire-wide malus and tune up planetary one will be perfect and very desirable solution for a lot of people.
 
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Sounds great! The only things I'm concerned about, per se, are the consumer good and alloy buildings not being mutually exclusive... but no real concerns, just not as 100% of them being good changes as I am about the others.

I think adding the sliders will be really interesting to you, from a data standpoint, to see what people prefer playing with.
I hope that there is a good tooltip to explain what each does, because 'logistic growth ceiling' is gibberish to me.
 
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Population Growth

We're continuing to make adjustments to the current population growth systems in the game, and are exploring additional changes. Some of these are longer term initiatives, however, so in the meantime we're currently adding a quality of life feature that many people have been asking for.

1620222442422.png

Logistic Growth and Growth Required Sliders in Galaxy Configuration

These sliders will allow you to adjust the variables related to the bonus a planet can provide through logistic growth and the amount that pop growth increases per empire pop using sliders in Galaxy Configuration instead of needing to edit defines or use a mod to do so. Please note that these sliders can have major impacts on both performance and balance. Existing saves will use the default values. (Which can themselves be overridden in defines.)
Is there any way to remove Logistic growth entirely?
 
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You shouldn't have added a logistic growth slider! Confuse newbies even more!

You wanted to revise the balance of operations, will it be in the near future?
 
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Hm, did not expect those pop growth sliders - I wonder how far they go?

Otherwise, looking to be on the right track. I do hope something is done to address the immense power of conquest over peaceful play, maybe by pops getting displaced/killed more and planets damaged more during orbital bombardment/ground combat.

... Also, I have a question - why do the capital building "throughput" techs not affect planetary trade value at all? That's just ... I don't know, it feels wrong, and would certainly help trade jobs a bit to keep up with regular resource producers.
 
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