Stellaris Dev Diary #106: 2.0.2 patch notes and the Road Ahead for Cherryh | Page 32

Primo Teonori · Mar 3, 2018

Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title

Y E S

terrycloth · Mar 3, 2018

Sakkura said:
That's a wasteful use of a habitat. Also gamey as heck.

Gamey how? You built a giant habitat full of defenses and buried a dozen FTL inhibitors in it. It'll take a while to find them all, whether you send in troops or just bombard it with your spaceships.

What's gamey is the devs deciding that 'habitats aren't for that', so unlike planets or space stations it's impossible to put an FTL inhibitor on them for some reason.

khade · Mar 3, 2018

So I'm asking this here as the game is running the beta.

I had the game give me a random species and my species is Servile, which among other things gives a -1 to leader level. So the question is how can I get the scientist level max up, I know it's possible, but I've never had to worry about it actively so I don't remember the specifics, but level 4 max scientists is going to be a problem quickly, even with the 33% less exp.

I posted a picture in the strange screenshots topic, but if you want I can put one here too.

BlackUmbrellas · Mar 3, 2018

Primo Teonori said:
Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title

Y E S

Yeah, that's an excellent change.

Now we just need the option to change our flag and our ship name prefix.

Dr_Gentech · Mar 3, 2018

Beanstalker said:
That's a lot of disagrees for something I thought would be fairly uncontroversial, because so far I've seen a few people complain about the new travel times, and no one bothering to defend them.
Now, that discussion is probably too far off topic for this thread, but can someone point me towards threads where people argue in favor of the new travel times?

The new travel times mean that placing fleets is actually strategic, so you can't take your doomstack out of the enemy empire, across your own, and arrive before the planet is occupied when you've been flanked. It means you actually have to put thought into where you place your fleets and defences.

I think most people who support nerfs or otherwise restricting the power available in game for the purposes of making the game have more depth don't feel like arguing for it because you have to argue against people's desire for everything to be simple or easy, which is hard to do without sounding like you're being a jerk and critiquing someone as a person (e.g. "Lern 2 strategy, filthy casuals" etc etc), which I don't want to do because I don't support or hold those opinions, I've just got a preference for how the game should be.

Dr_Gentech · Mar 3, 2018

VTros said:
Playing Ironman, year 2600+. Do I need to start fresh game after 2.0.2 hits? Also please do fix pirate empires. AI seems to be buying their service all the time and because there is no visible timer how long their raid last, I cannot hire them fast enough before AI empire does.

The AI should have a cool down before buying again, and AI who've been waiting should have at least a half a month or something (randomised) before they "realise" they're available and buy them, and you should be able to get information on how long it is until you can hire them.

Ari54x · Mar 3, 2018

Didn't see it in the notes, but you should also be cautious to suppress offers to hire attacks from pirate empires to gestalt consciousness empires, or at least, reflavour them so that they say something like "We've sent out for bids to attack you again, primitive machine/dirty hivelings."

Missing strings/Eklund pls: tr_supremacy_natural_order (& its _desc)
It's probably on your list, but I thought I'd note it because it's not tagged with "Eklund pls" ingame.

Dr_Gentech · Mar 3, 2018

Snoipah said:
Honestly, just making it so war exhaustion isn't insanely high fixed my problems with it and wars ending too early(fanatical militarist for the win).

I haven't ran into a forced status quo yet, buuuut theres the issue of you almost take a planet(takes a long time to take a planet) and then "nope status quo" which I haven't experienced but I can see happening.

Make 100% war exhaustion reduce your mineral surplus to 0, that way people can finish taking planets, but also you can't stay in war forever with max exhaustion.

Bare in mind, I mean mineral gains, not out. If you have a fleet that requires 100 minerals and you're making 200 a turn, you don't start losing minerals, you still make enough for upkeep, but you cannot gain a surplus.

I think that'll make all sides happy:
Carebears don't have to worry about most empires steamrolling the galaxy
Players who are on the verge of taking a planet before 100% exhaustion don't have to worry about losing the progress on the planet
And amazing players (like myself) who has massive reserves of minerals at all times can drag out a war for a century.

As long as there are other penalties, like a ramping happiness penalty that eventually reaches 100%, and a ramping energy production debuff that eventually reaches -50%, that and the current drawbacks would be a good option to kick in at 100% WE. Wars have flexible timing to end, if you want to push your luck you can, but you can also overextend yourself and end up with a worse loss for not surrendering earlier.

ThatFuzzyTiger · Mar 3, 2018

Maybe it's my old age but I don't see fixes to the AI cheats Wiz fessed up to (Namely the 50% discount on upkeep and consumer goods, which direly needs to go or be nerfed down to 10% like, this patch) nor the "Pirates not spawning in AI territory" issue, this doesn't need a "Casual" setting, Normal setting should mean the AI plays by the same rules as the player, can we see a proper baseline implemented?

President Jyrgunkarrd · Mar 3, 2018

FRagganoia said:
I think corvettes are a little OP right now. I did some battle tests on naked corvettes and bad ass level 5 ones...matched them up with bigger ships and whenever they lost i tried to counter their counter and so on. I ended up using torpedo + stormfire corvettes with tons of targetting. The only ship so far i found to beat that was 1 configuration of destroyers (though i didnt do all possible combinations, there are potentially more). However under the assumption that big weapons are a no go against corvettes, the options are indeed very limited. It also seems like fighters no longer target rockets or torpedos...which makes carriers sitting ducks.

So here is why Corvettes are super super strong right now:

Fastest game in the ship

Lots of firepower for a small ship with high end rockets/torpedos an if you balance the weakness of the torpedo with another weapon quite omnipotent

Hits nearly every ship nearly always

Is so fast, its a good firefighter if something happens

Is built extremely fast

Doesnt even get close to die as fast as it can be replaced

Cheap and energy can actually stay at level 5 even if you have a higher level generator...still maxing out effectiveness

Considerable amount of bang per buck doesnt feel in line with other ship types

This makes the corvettte the current backbone as you get speed, nearly always on top in most configurations the only enemy is a small weapon/pd destroyer and potentially some other small weapon configs of the same type. You do lose a considerable amount still which can drive up warscore a bit faster but if the enemy does not manage to save his bigger ships, who cares...

I am honestly tired of having to deal with balance problems like this every single patch. There's zero need to reinvent the wheel here; every single other modern space strategy game has figured this out:

- Strike Craft are Rock
- Capital Ships are Scissors
- Everything else is a slightly different texture of Paper

Done.

You get that basic formula in place, and then you can tweak ship roles as needed within the framework.

There's not much excuse for Stellaris to wildly swing from 'Naked Corvettes Best Always' to 'Battleships Best Always' and back again when this shit has been refined into a science by many, many iterations of space games.

BlackUmbrellas · Mar 3, 2018

President Jyrgunkarrd said:
I am honestly tired of having to deal with balance problems like this every single patch. There's zero need to reinvent the wheel here; every single other modern space strategy game has figured this out:

- Strike Craft are Rock
- Capital Ships are Scissors
- Everything else is a slightly different texture of Paper

Done.

You get that basic formula in place, and then you can tweak ship roles as needed within the framework.

There's not much excuse for Stellaris to wildly swing from 'Naked Corvettes Best Always' to 'Battleships Best Always' and back again when this shit has been refined into a science by many, many iterations of space games.

That's funny because I hear constantly about similar "spam this ship type with this equipment to win forever" strats any time other 4X space games get brought up.

Admiral_Obvious · Mar 3, 2018

President Jyrgunkarrd said:
I am honestly tired of having to deal with balance problems like this every single patch. There's zero need to reinvent the wheel here; every single other modern space strategy game has figured this out:

- Strike Craft are Rock
- Capital Ships are Scissors
- Everything else is a slightly different texture of Paper

Done.

You get that basic formula in place, and then you can tweak ship roles as needed within the framework.

There's not much excuse for Stellaris to wildly swing from 'Naked Corvettes Best Always' to 'Battleships Best Always' and back again when this shit has been refined into a science by many, many iterations of space games.

You can actually get strike craft to work in this patch? I thought they were bugged.

President Jyrgunkarrd · Mar 3, 2018

BlackUmbrellas said:
That's funny because I hear constantly about similar "spam this ship type with this equipment to win forever" strats any time other 4X space games get brought up.

Okay then, pop quiz: What do you spam in Homeworld or Homeworld 2 to win every single game?

If that doesn't count because NOT 4X, fine: What do you spam in Mo2 to win every single game? (I'll make an exception here and cry foul if you cite the Creative ability to cheese with Phaser + Achilles Targeting + Structural Analyzer, because the problem in Stellaris isn't that there's a specific cheese build. It's that you must only build mono-fleets and some hull types are just way, way better than others).

Draguss · Mar 3, 2018

Hopefully when the 2.02 beta transitions into a full patch, the issue of trade deals working (and responses displaying) properly will be addressed. Otherwise I'm having lots of fun and loving 2.02 and all of its tweaks!

Midn8t · Mar 3, 2018

any chance of getting a federation re balance so federation ships are not 100% free,

I keep running into doomfleets = up to 150 to 200 power rating at times, along with using federations to just creat insane size fleets my self my last game i had a free fleet that was 4 times larger then my real fleet my real fleet was maxed out at total power of 40k but federation fleet i controlled with my 4 allys was 250k and that 250k was just one fleet all by it lonesome.

and there was not even any battleship technology in game we where mid game.
for each member in federation you get .5 half a full fleet based on every ones naval cap all free.

so four members means 2x fleet size free no cost.

I only lost game cuz there was a federation in game who had 5 members and there doomsday stack was 350k maintenance free.

it also makes it impossible to play against federations if your not in one or if you are a smaller fedration.

bigger always wins cuz they get that many more free-ships as along as they can build them.

there no way to compete at all to that, because every other way to make ships cost maintenance except that way.

so if you are not in a federation and you run against a federation of 2 or 3 you will have to always fight 2 or 3 times the number of ships vs what you will have.

you have to fight the ships they pay maintenance on and the 2x that number that they have for free.

so if you have member 1 has 200 fleet cap you have 200 fleet cap and member three has 200 fleet cap that means in total federation fleet cap is 300 so you have to fight fleet cap of 600+300 free ship cap of there federation

if its two member it be 400 +200 that you would have to fight if you are a single empire fighting 400 vs 200 be hard enough yet along anther 200 fleet cap worth or freeships that are all in one fleet.

which is other issue with it now, federation fleets auto = total size of there fleet cap brought in by all members and empires can not match this yet alone also matching the ships of members that are not free.

no other trait or ability gives you free ship maintenance which means to win you have to be in a federation no matter what - if you are going to play large maps with 30 AI

on smaller maps this is not quit as big of an issue but on larger maps the more unbalance the federations get.

on a large map best way to win is spam naval anchors and get as many members as you and then just create doomsday federation fleets and hope to god you do not run into a larger one and majority of my loses all of them been when i had small federations or tryed playing single empires.

all my wins been 4+ federations my last win was 2.0 and that was also with being in a 4+ member federation..

mike8472 · Mar 3, 2018

Not sure if this has been mentioned.

The new penalty for ignoring the 100% war exhaustion is rather good for machine empires, the -20% happiness penalty will not affect robot populations, just the influence cost.

Perhaps for machine empires ignoring war exhaustion gives a hit to mineral/energy production or unity instead to balance it.

King Travis · Mar 3, 2018

ThatFuzzyTiger said:
Maybe it's my old age but I don't see fixes to the AI cheats Wiz fessed up to (Namely the 50% discount on upkeep and consumer goods, which direly needs to go or be nerfed down to 10% like, this patch) nor the "Pirates not spawning in AI territory" issue, this doesn't need a "Casual" setting, Normal setting should mean the AI plays by the same rules as the player, can we see a proper baseline implemented?

AI cant learn from previous games like we can. It needs things to prop it up.

King Travis · Mar 3, 2018

mike8472 said:
Not sure if this has been mentioned.

The new penalty for ignoring the 100% war exhaustion is rather good for machine empires, the -20% happiness penalty will not affect robot populations, just the influence cost.

Perhaps for machine empires ignoring war exhaustion gives a hit to mineral/energy production or unity instead to balance it.

Why would a machine, a hive mind or a devourer ever get tired of war? It seems like it would have a single minded purpose, until given another reason

Butterstrokeboy · Mar 3, 2018

I really like these changes, especially with war exhaustion. No more rushing systems when you are about to peak at 100% WE. From the few 2.0 wars I've done already, I would have loved the penalty instead of the forced peace.

* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title

HAHAHA Time to have my rulers be like the Louis' in France. No more weird names for you!

* Fixed a crash when quitting to the main menu in the middle of a war

Might be useful depending on the state of the war, but not for most wars I'd imagine.

I like what I see and can't wait to try out the new patch in beta! Keep it up!

Tale · Mar 3, 2018

King Travis said:
Why would a machine, a hive mind or a devourer ever get tired of war? It seems like it would have a single minded purpose, until given another reason

You look at a brain the size of a galaxy, trillions of processes all operating in parallel, diverse tasks, needs, wants, all striving to be part of the one...

And you think it simpler than a brain with only four lobes that gets bored of sitting in a chair for too long. Than the competition of id, ego, and super ego. You think it no more complex than a toaster, capable of only one thing until repurposed.

This is why coexistence can not be.

Private

Lt. General

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The Catsitter

Banned

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