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[forsaken1111]

I haven't noticed any real slowdown but I'm on the testing branch, that may have some optimization they've worked in?

The 'ghost window' is from the UI window snapping to the center of the screen on close for one frame before hiding itself. I don't know why they can't make it remember where you put it, or hide it before moving it.

[Whivy]

I didn't play for some month before 2.2, but I don't remember lags before the update, even on a large galaxy. Now, at mid game, with a large galaxy, i can't go past speed 2, and game is just still playable, but close to a turn by turn gameplay, with days almost taking a full second. So yeah, definitly more laggy than before, on my side.

[Telgin]

The game is absolutely slower overall, but there are several sources of it with varying levels of being fixed or worked on by the developers.  Stuttering at higher speeds hasn't been fixed to my knowledge, but the test branch did fix performance problems related to trade routes and gateways that previously made the late game unplayable if anyone built or reactivated any.  That said, especially to make it easier to relearn the game, I've been playing at normal speed and the game runs fine without stutters for me, even in a 1,000 star galaxy.  Higher speeds do have stuttering though.

Anyway, I'll agree that the planetary UI is really, really confusing at first.  It progresses to being mildly confusing as you get used to it, but I do think that some things like the terraforming button could have been made way more obvious.  The job window can also be kind of a disaster on smaller screens if you have lots of pops, since the output indicators can get badly mushed together.  The planet's overall output and its accompany tooltip are also so cluttered as to be almost useless.

Still, despite the issues I've put like 30 hours into the game over the last week, and plan to put more in once I get home this afternoon.

[Rolan7]

I've recently started experimenting with overproducing consumer goods and setting my pops to social welfare then maintaining a large unemployed population. Unemployed pops produce unity on social welfare so its been a nice unity boost to get a few specific traditions early, then I ship them off to colonies to work.

I like that bonus too, but if you want to do it intentionally, you really want Utopian Abundance from Egalitarian so they're making research as well.

[EnigmaticHat]

With the alloys + trade value + 3 main uncommon resources, they've added something the exploration system deeply needed: loot.  Seriously, I could never go back to minerals/credits/food at this point.

I do have some eco complaints tho.  Orbital research is really inconsequential relative to planetary research, its still worth getting but I'd honestly prefer if there was some decision making involved with orbital research.  Since its now the only manual way to specialize research beyond pop traits*.  On the other hand planetary special resource harvesting is in an odd place right now.  Since the harvesters are identical to the synthesizers aside from inputs, your mote trap isn't REALLY making 2 motes, its producing 20 minerals.  Which is... great, true, but not what you'd intuitively expect resource deposits to do.  I'd prefer if synthetic production was either less space efficient but also less costly, or if there was a universal resource harvestor that would just grab everything.

Alternately, it would be cool to have special resources that can only be harvested by having enough of a specific district.  So the 3 uncommon resources could be gained by mining districts, and then maybe there could be bonus food/pop growth/happiness resources gained from agriculture, and tech bonuses from generators.  So like you'd go to a planet and it would have like, I don't know, "electric volcanoes: +5 physics research".  And your first generator district would just produce a volcanologist job in addition to what it normally does.  Would make planets a little more special.  Only question would be if there's more than one resource how do you decide which order they're assigned to districts, without cluttering the interface.  Maybe the job could just be there and you don't need to do anything to access it.

*although I think the devs have consciously made society research the only one that can be boosted easily, because it has no techs that improve ship military power

[ZeroGravitas]

Since its now the only manual way to specialize research beyond pop traits*.

they need to get rid of the generic research labs building and replace it with specific ones the grant specific jobs, for exactly that reason

[Paul]

Generator vs trade world depends on habitability of the planet and your empire. If you specialize in trade you'll never need generator districts. Thrifty is a huge boost to the efficiency of clerks. Throw in xenophile and other trade bonuses and you can turn your home world into a 1000 trade monster.

As an example a 20 hab world on the usual living standards the clerk uses .45 consumer goods 1.8 food 1.8 amenities. Factor in the cost of all that and the upkeep on the building and he's losing money. But on a 0.8 world he only uses .3 consumer goods and 1.2 food and amenities.

In short, the per pop production is greater on technicians - so they're better on lower hab worlds and early on when every pop is valuable. Once you have extra pops and on high hab worlds you can crank up clerks and make a good profit with them.

Spamming clerks still kind of sucks once you start to get the + technician and + worker bonuses, since clerks don't come with a + trade tech and none of the production bonuses work on their trade generation except thrifty. Clerks are only good long term if you have thrifty pops working them or some good + trade bonuses.

[EnigmaticHat]

Since its now the only manual way to specialize research beyond pop traits*.

they need to get rid of the generic research labs building and replace it with specific ones the grant specific jobs, for exactly that reason

But we had that and it was cancer.  Maybe it could be done with the policy menu, something like -10% to 2, +15% to 1.

Re: clerks vs technicians, that's not even a contest in the longterm.  Cityworlds are OP, with two housing districts and a recreation district you can support 3 upgraded commerce buildings and (once you get the pop up with other districts) a galactic stock exchange, which is... 120 credits.  From 4 building slots and 3 districts.  And as long as its in your geographic core that trade will need 0 protection.  To get the same effect with a generator planet you would need, I think... 9 districts and one building slot.  Plus unless your planet is huge you're effectively "spending" 5-10 building slots with that setup.

Maybe in more of a competitive/MP setting where everyone tries to snowball with conquest and build wide, quick and dirty generator planets is the way to go.  But if you're just trying to optimize your empire for fun or build tall, technicians fall off hard.  Farming is fine because hydroponics bays + farming districts allows you to get a lot of mileage out of food processing plants, and mineral planets make sense because city worlds can process minerals without having to spend building slots.  But technicians fill a weak niche in a city planet economy.  Stronger earlier, sure, but clerks still have their place on non-generator worlds in the earlygame (namely to provide a counterbalance to the <5 employment most buildings provide, and because you need amenities anyway).

[Dunamisdeos]

4th game I completely snowballed before I had T3 lasers. Time to up the difficulty.

Also, I figured out how to move specific pops off of captured planets.

[ZeroGravitas]

Since its now the only manual way to specialize research beyond pop traits*.

they need to get rid of the generic research labs building and replace it with specific ones the grant specific jobs, for exactly that reason

But we had that and it was cancer.

no, we didn't. at most it was stuff that primarily did something else (gene clinic, planetary shield generator), and the generic research labs were always there too.

Maybe it could be done with the policy menu, something like -10% to 2, +15% to 1.

ironically this did exact for a while, and it sucked.

[Telgin]

Regarding research specialization: I wish there was still some way to do this, if only because it drives my inner OCD bonkers that I can't keep my research fields roughly equalized.  It also hurts that you can't balance your research income to match the disparity in techs in the different fields.  Once you're in repeatables, for example, physics and engineering become kind of decoupled because there are more engineering techs to research.  I'm currently bringing in about 10% more physics research than physics, and it kind of bugs me.

On another subject, does anyone fully understand trade routes and piracy yet?  I thought I did, but clearly not.  My home system star base has at least one trade module (I'm at work and can't check it), with two star bases 2 jumps away that also have trade modules.  All three star bases also have gun modules.  Yet, despite this, I'm getting pirate spawns one jump away from my home system's star base, which doesn't make sense.  I previously thought you had to have trade protection on top of collection radius, but three overlapping star bases with protection should keep the piracy down.  Now I'm reading that if a system is within the collection radius of a base, you don't need protection at all.  And yet three overlapping star bases' protection radius is still producing pirates.

Is this bugged or am I still misunderstanding how it works?  If it matters, the systems spawning pirates don't actually have trade value in them and are just part of a trade route.  But one jump in any direction leads to a star base with guns and trade modules.

[MorleyDev]

You only get an amount of trade protection, anything over that can still be pirated.

A gun module will only provide 1 jump protecting 5 trade value. A hanger is 1 jump protecting 10 trade value.

I once had a world with a stupidly high trade value and it was getting pirated because the fully decked out defence star bases couldn't cover enough of it. Had to add an extra hanger-only station in between just to cover that route.

[Dunamisdeos]

From what I can tell, collections do not require protection.

What does require protection is trade lanes, AKA a starbase is collecting trade value from a couple neighboring systems, then that trade value is being collected from that collection base to your homeworld. The goods being moved FROM the collection point TO your homeworld are what get pirated. Any system along THAT route in susceptible to piracy.

That said, I always just build starbases along my trade routes. There can be no piracy in a system if there is an upgraded starbase of any kind. So I just build all my anchorages along those lines.

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm talking about the original research labs that upgraded into versions that would produce more of one or the other.  It was pointlessly micro intensive and it didn't matter because tech is a global resource and unlike the other global resources, you get no feedback when you run low.  So it was just... not rewarding or interesting.  There's little point to any tech modifiers that are local because they add up to either a lot of work for little effort, or forcing the player to do a bunch of mental math to achieve balanced research (which is broadly better than specialized because of how tech cost works).

I guess space deposits sort of matter, because in the extreme earlygame if you find 10 physics in neighboring systems that can be a huge spike (+33% I believe).  But again in the long term those are going to come out about average.  Ditto for the titanic lifeforms society research.

Edit: In edition to what Dunamisdeos said, if a starbase is in a system only it will collect from that system.  This doesn't really matter unless its within your homeworld's collection range, as all that trade is collected with no need for protection.  The trade collection range of a station is the number of trade hubs on it, so potentially 6 per starbase.  Also small ships are better for patrolling, hangars on starbases are really good (and protect at long range), and the max piracy value of a system is simply the amount of trade passing through it.  Finally, all pops produce trade value based on their social status (and possibly happiness?), so expect any populous world to become a trade hub eventually.

[Rolan7]

ninja'd but w/e
Are you clicking the new trade route mapmode?  It shows the actual routes.

Your capital starbase won't generate any piracy ever, and its collection radius seems to have priority over other starbases - EXCEPT in their systems!  If your capital is collecting from some core world, but you build a starbase in that core system, it'll take priority and start a potentially heavy (though short) trade route.  Anyway, I can't stress this enough, you generally want to fill your capital starbase with trade posts since each one increases that radius of free collection.

For protection, you want to stack hangers.  They provide twice as much protection as guns, and each weapon increases the *protection* range by one just like a trade post increases *collection* by one.  This is why I suggest dedicating starbases to protection OR collection, to maximize ranges on all.

For a system to be safe, you need to stack protection on it equal to the total trade value moving through it.  This means core worlds can require a lot of protection, since multiple distant trade routes might be meeting each other near your capital.  The solution is several overlapping hangar-starbases (preferably placed in systems which aren't generating trade, so they don't steal from the capital and contribute to the routes!).  Leaving or patrolling a few corvettes can also help, if the hot spot is small enough.  Generally though, I'd try not to produce too much trade in distant systems - minimize the need for protection.