Matrix Games Forums

The planetary upgrade process really, really, really needs some love, especially the planetary admin line.

1) You have to individually go to each planet, click on the existing facility and hit upgrade (which also is not at all obvious for a new player). An option to upgrade all would certainly be nice, a policy setting allowing for automatic upgrades would be awesome. The policy setting on construction doesn't help as is, I don't want to be spammed with all the facilities I don't want on most of my colonies.

2) Visually there is nothing to distinguish between the facilities, so you can't just scroll through to see who needs upgrading, you have to hover and wait for the tooltip to find out what building is there, or click on it to see if the upgrade option shows up.

3) For some reason upgrading seems to essentially start off scratch. I can't tell because all I see is a progress meter, but after choosing upgrade you start off at 0% instead of 50%, 66%, etc. depending on what level the existing upgrade already is and is going to.

4) Part of this means that you lose the existing bonus for what is already built, which has a decent impact on your economy, corruption, happiness, etc., in the meantime. Planetary admin staff can't work from home during construction in the future? Also, when you micromanage tax rates like I do, you have to start watching them all like a hawk or all of a sudden some of your core planets start rebelling when their happiness takes that big hit from losing the corruption and happiness modifiers from the higher level facilities during the upgrade. 'Hey, we're building you a bigger, better facility', 'What, it'll take a couple of months? Screw you guys, we're indpendent now!'.

Agreed on all points. It is a pain.

It is however less of a pain if you use the Colony > Infrastructure list. It's easy to filter to 'administrative facilities' and all the planets are grouped and sorted nicely.

The biggest pain is that you lose the benefit of the current facility while it's being upgraded, so doing too many planets at once can crash your economy (or result in rebellion as you pointed out).

Thanks Michael, I had forgotten about using the infrastructure list, that will help.

We will give this a look.

I want to add to this, but in the form of a question because I cannot remember...

After a more advanced Planet Administration Facility has been researched, is the newer (lets say version 2, the more expensive better benefits) the only option to build? Can version 1 be built anywhere after version 2 has been researched?

I have to ask because I do not know how to build the lower versions or it may not be an option.

Anyways. Hope all is well. Love the game still. and it has such a great runway for the future.

You can only build the latest one. Downgrading is not an option.