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[Dunamisdeos]

OK, let's go over it then.

1. You chose a center for your sector manually before, and how many systems were in it. Unless the specific capital has some sort of sweeping, game-changing effect (unlikely, most it'll be is a minor bonus of some kind) this is just the AI adding planets to a sector for you and undoubtedly doing it exactly as well (lol) as it does everything else. What's that, the sector AI thinks it needs your living metal for farming? Sounds great.

2. I'm sure this will be completely different from focusing on energy and minerals or science. It won't be options like "balance between energy and minerals" or "focus on unity". Sure. What's going to actually happen is you're going to want to make a science sector, but you can't choose the capital you want with good science bonuses because there's like 3-4 good science planets that are just outside of it's reach, so the numbers will balance out to exactly what they were before the update either due to a sub-par capital or sub-par planets in the sector.

3. Auto budget is the only thing I acknowledged as different, but it's really just automating a process that you did manually before. Saves a few clicks, and that IS GOOD, but it's hardly game changing.

4. It is good to be able to choose what type of planet focus you want, but I don't see how that's really different from "just build alloy structures for alloy bonuses". Are we going to build farms then change it to a forge world bonus? I think not.

I'm not sure what he's about with governors and sectors. They already have bonuses to sectors. Governors have always had effects for whether they were on a planet or a sector. Is he talking about governors that have sector specific bonuses instead of planetary? Because I already hire/fire governors to get things I actually need often enough, thank you.

This is all just "AI automation options for stuff". I will be glad to have more options but it's not going to change the way anyone plays.

[Cruxador]

There's a governor rework mentioned as well, so as to make them more sectorian and less planety.

I think it's an exaggeration to call it a governor rework, it sounds to me like they're just adding a few more traits and revisiting the balance on the old ones.

[E. Albright]

It sounded more like they were changing the type of traits govs had from ones that were planet-type-specific to ones that applied more generally to different types. So gov trait rework rather than gov qua gov rework, yes. But we'll have to wait to see if it's a tweak of one or two things, or a tweak of 10. I myself am not expecting anything dramatic, mind you. This IS Stellaris.

[Kanil]

This is all just "AI automation options for stuff". I will be glad to have more options but it's not going to change the way anyone plays.

The new sectors having a size limit means you'll have to actually deal with them, rather than just jam it all into one sector and ignore it. Even if they're mechanically exactly identical to how they used to be (depending upon what they mean by policies, they could be different), that'd still have an impact on how I play.

Perhaps that's not significant enough to meet your definition of "change the way anyone plays" but it's certainly noticeable to me.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean, it's not for me, but I don't want to be one of those bitchy bitches that complains about new free content and tries to convince other people they also should be complaining.

If this is a coolthing™ to you, I am happy for you and you should keep being a cool and happy person.

[Telgin]

I'm happy for improvements, but somehow I've managed to be someone who didn't really care much about how sectors were implemented.  I guess it was kind of annoying when the current system generated 1 system sectors, but I never hated the current system overtly.

Being able to manually designate planet types will be nice though.  I've had a few cases where the game decided a planet I'd built up for something was a different class than I intended.  Usually refinery worlds.

[Teneb]

Changes are coming to megastructures.

In short, only the Ringworld, Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor are now bound to the ascension perk. The rest will show up as rare research options. The ones bound to the perk also need to be researched after the perk is picked, though I think it'll be a guaranteed option every time. DLC requirements still apply.

The dev handling the DD acknowledged that Habitats are currently Not Good.

[Telgin]

I think I like the changes.  I definitely agree that unlocking all of the megastructures from one perk was too much, and I like that they're moving some to techs partly because that means I might be able to get them sooner than before.  I also like the alternative suggested by one of the posters to tie the individual megastructures to relevant ascension perks, but this is okay too.

I hope ringworlds and habitats do get buffs too.  grekulf is the game director so if he says he agrees there's a problem and would like to see it fixed, that's at least an indication that someone who matters wants it fixed.

[Cruxador]

Yeah, it's nice to have a dev diary that's unambiguously positive.

[gimli]

Correct me if I am wrong but IIRC the devs are working on the AI now? I was thinking about starting a new game, but I'm gonna wait for the "AI patch", if they work on that.

[Telgin]

I haven't heard anything about it, so I wouldn't hold out for an AI patch specifically.  My understanding is that they're working on another larger patch instead of incremental bugfixes, but whether that's already a DLC patch or just more fixes and bigger changes to systems like sectors we don't know.

Not to sound too defeatist, but it seems like the developers think that the AI is good enough and they probably won't spend a lot of time on it in the foreseeable future.

[gimli]

Not to sound too defeatist, but it seems like the developers think that the AI is good enough and they probably won't spend a lot of time on it in the foreseeable future.

Eh.   

[Orb]

If they're going to make sectors important again I hope they at least make the planet AI smarter.

[Il Palazzo]

First time played long enough to see an end-game crisis (never had the heart to slog through a hundred or so years of boring late-empire management).
That was underwhelming. Turns out, killing the Prethoryn vanguard before the main body arrives ends the invasion.
How much stronger the main body is, anyway?

[Telgin]

I've only seen the Prethoryn once, but I think the main invasion fleet is at least twice as powerful.  Maybe more.  I encountered the Prethoryn when their infestors were broken, so the invasion petered out and I never got to see it really do much, but I didn't get the impression that the main fleet is that much harder to destroy than the vanguard.

I'm going to try 5x crisis next time.  It's kind of funny how the first time I played a 1x crisis was almost too much to handle, but now 4x wasn't even really a challenge.  I don't know if that's because I don't let the crises snowball or what, but even at that strength their tactics usually mean you can pick off their fleets one at a time with minimal losses.

If they're going to make sectors important again I hope they at least make the planet AI smarter.

Let's hope.  I do have a little hope that they'll improve it some since they're focusing on sectors to an extent, but I'm pretty sure the sector AI is the same as the main AI (or at least closely related), so I'm a little skeptical that it will improve significantly.

What I'd really like to see is planet templates, but I understand the difficulty there since planets vary so much in what they can support.