Stellaris Dev Diary #106: 2.0.2 patch notes and the Road Ahead for Cherryh | Page 24

Guthuk Gaming · Mar 2, 2018

Nictis said:
I'll admit that I haven't read through the thread so I might be repeating someone, but the unity calculations are still wrong.

I'm unsure on if the Colony costs are still multiplicative or if they're just additive now, but the System cost is still 2% per system even though the UI shows it as 1% and the amount per tree unlocked is multiplying the total amount.

I'm looking at a cost of 761 unity with only 1 planet and 16 systems (15 for calculations) I have the Discovery tree finished, so 5 traditions unlocked.

Here's what the unity overview shows me.
Base: 100
7 Traditions: 457 (I don't understand why it says 7 either, does the finisher effect count as a tradition as well for this?)
1 Adopted Tradition Category: +5.00%
15 Systems: +15.00%
Cost: 761

So the equation that I'm seeing is: 557x1.3x1.05
When it's supposed to be: (.15+.05)557

TRADITION_COST_MULT_NUM_SYSTEMS = 0.01 # Each System adds +X% Tradition cost

That's in their defines.

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

I played for several hours on the new patch last night and I really like the changes. Maybe the negative to happiness could be a bit bigger in a prolonged war. To the guys that are against the infinite wars - AI will always accept status quo if their war weariness is 100%. I think having 0 influence income would slow your progress significantly with the new system. The 1 energy per outpost is also really cool, you don't grab every system now, also something has to balance out the lesser penalty for having large empire. Also energy generation is quite easy later in the game, either with dedicated planets or habitats.

Damedius · Mar 2, 2018

FantasticDamgae said:
I played for several hours on the new patch last night and I really like the changes. Maybe the negative to happiness could be a bit bigger in a prolonged war. To the guys that are against the infinite wars - AI will always accept status quo if their war weariness is 100%. I think having 0 influence income would slow your progress significantly with the new system. The 1 energy per outpost is also really cool, you don't grab every system now, also something has to balance out the lesser penalty for having large empire. Also energy generation is quite easy later in the game, either with dedicated planets or habitats.

Why should you be hesitant to grab territory in a strategy game? The concept is foreign to me.

They have taken a game I used to enjoy playing and penalized expansion to the point where I fall asleep watching time go by because any expansion will hurt my empire.

Why go to war? It just hurts my research and tradition costs.

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

Damedius said:
Why should you be hesitant to grab territory in a strategy game? The concept is foreign to me.

They have taken a game I used to enjoy playing and penalized expansion to the point where I fall asleep watching time go by because any expansion will hurt my empire.

Why go to war? It just hurts my research and tradition costs.

I dont see much decision making in free grabbing territory - basically the early game becomes a "who can close bigger blob on the map" with weirdly elongated empires. Now it is much more steady and involves managing your energy in order to continue expanding. Before it was all about minerals systems and not much about energy ones, now it is more balanced.

Damedius · Mar 2, 2018

FantasticDamgae said:
I dont see much decision making in free grabbing territory - basically the early game becomes a "who can close bigger blob on the map" with weirdly elongated empires. Now it is much more steady and involves managing your energy in order to continue expanding. Before it was all about minerals systems and not much about energy ones, now it is more balanced.

I guess.

All it seems to do in my opinion is slow the game down and put me to sleep.

Jazerus · Mar 2, 2018

Unity comes in far too quickly, now - I'm on track to finish every tree by 2350 at the latest, with 32 planets and 107 systems. Even if I conquer half the galaxy, as long as I put down the unity buildings on every planet I acquire, I should be able to keep up with the unity curve indefinitely. There's no strategy to tradition picks like this - by the time big wars are going down, everyone will have every tree finished, and the economic bonuses from being able to fill out so many traditions so quickly make minerals and energy even more abundant than before.

The 2.0 & 2.0.1 exponentially increasing system was too harsh, but maybe a gentler exponential curve is called for here to make small empires genuinely better at getting traditions than large empires, without every tradition after your third tree requiring over a decade for a large empire as in 2.0 & 2.0.1.

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

Yes, I also noticed unity is really easy to get now, I am at 2320 or something and I am close to finishing the last tree. Maybe we need more traditions? There is a really nice mod with that but we'd rather have them in the original game

TGK72 · Mar 2, 2018

Snoipah said:
Stellaris is a game that pays homage to science fiction writers, which you admit like their infinity wars. It's only fitting that the game has infinity wars.

Checkmate.

Stargate: Ori and Goa'uld wars were pretty inventive, granted replicators are just a copy of the Borg.
Star Trek: Borg changed the landscape of science fiction forever, and Voyager had it's fair share of fascinating wars like with Year of Hell, Species 8472, and the episode "The Void" is pretty inventive.
Warhammer: Literally everyone is fighting for different reasons. Imperium cause aliens and heresy is bad, tau because communism, tyranids because they're hungry, and Orkz cause it's fun.

Making wars auto status quo is.

Disagree, seems to be a vocal minority or yesmen.

If you're using influence for something like a defensive pact, don't you get negative influence?

Also forgetting the hit to happiness. Letting wars go on forever is usually not the best idea when it is such a massive hit to your resources. I don't see them lasting forever unless you're in a war where if you status quo, you lose or be put into a position you cannot recover from.

Infinity wars, however much they add to the backdrop of an exciting story, are not plausible in a grand strategy title trying to not only simulate the wars and conflicts of a galactic community, but also the interests and demands, both political and diplomatic, of the citizens caught in the midst of it all.

Total war might be possible in a culture centered around war/eradication/consumption (devouring swarms, fanatic purifiers, determined exterminators) but it's NOT between two typical empires with citizens who are just trying to live their lives that simply get caught up in a fight their two governments.
Fact is, in a realistic sense, a government can only fight for as long as your soldiers/crews are willing to, once they lose that will, it's no longer a choice a governing body can enforce, or at least do so for long.

So you may like your infinity wars, but in the end, they do NOT fit into a grand strategy title that is trying to achieve a general sense of political simulation. Unless of course the title in question is literally built around the events of a war (HOI1-4), MOST of Stellaris players want limited warfare, whether that limit is a hard or soft one, if you have been paying ANY attention to the numerous posts regarding it.

Speaking of, it's laughable that you actually believe that players who enjoy shorter wars are the minority if you have followed the discussion's of just about every thread made on the topic. The 50/50 divide is between those who support forced status quo, and those who dont, and even the greater majority of BOTH sides agree, regardless of what the actual ratio is, that "infinite" wars is NOT good for the overall gameplay or the pacing for that matter. Especially if you know ANYTHING about how the general playerbase felt about the never ending wars of 1.0 way back when that was the forums hot-topic.

If you believe a grand strategy title such as Stellaris should go down a more action-packed total war style game, then, well, you've missed the point of like, the entire second half of the game.

Snoipah · Mar 2, 2018

FantasticDamgae said:
The 1 energy per outpost is also really cool, you don't grab every system now, also something has to balance out the lesser penalty for having large empire. Also energy generation is quite easy later in the game, either with dedicated planets or habitats.

Erm, you weren't supposed to grab every system before this change.

33% hit to tech penalty with a very VERY minor loss to energy/mineral gain.
With 2.0.2, you take an even smaller hit to energy gain by playing this way:

Woozywyvern · Mar 2, 2018

I want to add my voice to the concerns for the energy upkeep to outposts. Especially if the AI gets this mitigated to some degree like the fleet upkeep. I am not the best player by any means, and I already struggle to maintain expansion pace and fleet strength against most of the AI empires I come up against.

Spartan322 · Mar 2, 2018

Few things:

Jamor said:
* You are no longer forced to make peace at 100% war exhaustion, instead your Influence and Unity monthly gains are reduced to 0 and a happiness penalty is applied to all Pops until you make peace

I and others have said a few things on this, personally I dislike this change for not being harsh enough, Influence and Unity is an issue for after war mostly but it contributes nothing to war (you'll just have a difficulty in claims and be handicapped a little for longer wars in terms of both Unity and Influence), the happiness penalty is essentially ignorable, it be more effective if it was ticking and affected by pushing for and denying of status quo (if its pushed from one empire and rejected they'd get a temporary WE penalty removal while the rejecting empire would get a temporary increased penalty for a short time maybe, something to incentivize the player to endwars even if they are winning)

Jamor said:
* Occupation no longer contributes to War Exhaustion, but instead is displayed as a separate factor in war overview, to make it clearer what you need to do in order to enforce demands

I suppose this is alright, I'm hoping the rest of WE was balanced for this. Given the tributary change maybe, but most of the war goals still seem unreasonable imo.

Jamor said:
* Reduced War Exhaustion per ship and army killed

Finally, the price was too damn high before and made wars even shorter then they already were.

Jamor said:
* Militarist ethics now gain -10%/-20% war exhaustion gain instead of army damage bonus

I like this change, I was asking for something like this, finally something that makes the Militarist ethics playing war feel a little bit different.

Jamor said:
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance

To be honest, this makes a lot of damn sense, combined with the removal of the Unity cost issue, I started my games in decent no crap spots and it really didn't take me long to get to a point where I was throwing enough energy out that I'd crash a damn market, in the early game it was a bit difficult to build up energy fast, but as I went on it really was becoming easy. I do have an issue with this in that 1 energy per base is actually too much, even as a late game empire I'd definitely not be able keep up with that, at the very least I'd probably be stuck at less then 25 gain with ships docked. Could this be tuned down to say 0.25 energy or something because this be debilitating for expansion in early game, but it would just make the system expansion play way worse in the mid game if it was set at 1.

Jamor said:
* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of additive

DEAR GOD FINALLY, this was the most annoying crap, it made unity buildings actually worthless mid to late game at least and destroyed the ability to use traditions at all, they were nightmares. (and probably ambitions but I haven't bothered to unlock them as of my current games) Although thinking about it, how easy would Unity become now? Admittedly I wasn't noticing Unity issues until I had 5-6 planets and over a 100 systems, and I hadn't really stuffed my planets with Unity beforehand, maybe the Unity curve will need to be tweaked to be a bit more extreme, IDK, but I'm happy at least I can get some mid to late game traditions again.

Also doesn't seem to be on here and not sure how many people have gotten but I've been getting it constantly, a bug that has been happening to me has been in the offer deal display, often when I select something in the demand section and then deselect it, it still acts like it has something in it and I can't remove it without exiting the screen, I can try to figure out but the best way I've been able to reproduce currently is on the demand click on the resource demands and then click on that selection again to remove it, only it didn't seem to act removed.

Overall I like this patch but still think it needs a lot of tuning.

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

TGK72 said:
Infinity wars, however much they add to the backdrop of an exciting story, are not plausible in a grand strategy title trying to not only simulate the wars and conflicts of a galactic community, but also the interests and demands, both political and diplomatic, of the citizens caught in the midst of it all.

Total war might be possible in a culture centered around war/eradication/consumption (devouring swarms, fanatic purifiers, determined exterminators) but it's NOT between two typical empires with citizens who are just trying to live their lives that simply get caught up in a fight their two governments.
Fact is, in a realistic sense, a government can only fight for as long as your soldiers/crews are willing to, once they lose that will, it's no longer a choice a governing body can enforce, or at least do so for long.

So you may like your infinity wars, but in the end, they do NOT fit into a grand strategy title that is trying to achieve a general sense of political simulation. Unless of course the title in question is literally built around the events of a war (HOI1-4), MOST of Stellaris players want limited warfare, whether that limit is a hard or soft one, if you have been paying ANY attention to the numerous posts regarding it.

Speaking of, it's laughable that you actually believe that players who enjoy shorter wars are the minority if you have followed the discussion's of just about every thread made on the topic. The 50/50 divide is between those who support forced status quo, and those who dont, and even the greater majority of BOTH sides agree, regardless of what the actual ratio is, that "infinite" wars is NOT good for the overall gameplay or the pacing for that matter. Especially if you know ANYTHING about how the general playerbase felt about the never ending wars of 1.0 way back when that was the forums hot-topic.

If you believe a grand strategy title such as Stellaris should go down a more action-packed total war style game, then, well, you've missed the point of like, the entire second half of the game.

How was it okay before 2.0 to have infinite wars and now it is such an issue? It makes me think majority of people are okay with long wars..

SineNomine_! · Mar 2, 2018

Nothing about the un-direct nerf to PSC since you get alredy survey system with the empire you get in contact to?

Shiolle · Mar 2, 2018

Since war exhaustion represents loosing the will to continue fighting, may I suggest adding army damage penalty (larger) and ship rate of fire penalty (smaller) as a mean to reflect poor morale? This would directly affect the ability to continue the war, and I hope would make for a better incentive to end it sooner.

hermithill · Mar 2, 2018

Jazerus said:
Unity comes in far too quickly, now

Unity comes too quickly, because it's bugged - colonies are not taken into account, whille systems cost twice as much (2% instead of 1% as it should be now).

Snoipah · Mar 2, 2018

FantasticDamgae said:
How was it okay before 2.0 to have infinite wars and now it is such an issue? It makes me think majority of people are okay with long wars..

I've been thinking the same thing.

People claim it can't work . . . but it's been working since release! People just don't like being wrong I guess?

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

Snoipah said:
I've been thinking the same thing.

People claim it can't work . . . but it's been working since release! People just don't like being wrong I guess?

Yeah, I think it is the idea that terrifies people, but in reality if you actually sit down and play a game of Stellaris you would see how well it works. Before we had the AI to be more and more willing to white peace out of the war the longer it goes. Now we have absolutely the same thing with war weariness and status quo. The only addition is if you are stubborn and want to finish capturing a planet or two you will get the penalty for a few turns. In a normal Stellaris game having no influence and unity gain should totally destroy your competitiveness in the long run. If you hold half of the galaxy maybe you don't care. But if you hold half of the galaxy it is absolutely ridiculous to be unable to totally annihilate someone, being forced to grab several systems per 10 years. And don't come out with the "your people are tired of the war" or "loosing willingness" - tell that to the fanatic purifiers/devouring swarms/driven assimilators/fanatic militarist empires, they actually exist for the purpose of being in a war. The idea of small skirmishes just doesn't make sense for half of the government types out there!

Beanstalker · Mar 2, 2018

Beanstalker said:
I'm a bit puzzled that there are no changes to fleet travel times, considering is the one thing everyone agrees on and seems like an easy thing to change. Is this something that you plan on addressing, or just something we have to get used to?

Other then that, Good Stuff! I don't think this is the best solution to WE quite yet, but that's not surprising - this is going to take some trial&error, I expect.

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?

Spartan322 · Mar 2, 2018

Weren't people complaining about wars being uninteresting for multiple reasons before? I remember some of them being just how uninteresting long wars could get. Personally I think infinity wars in a sci-fi strategy game seem like a boring and plainly just uninteresting idea that only works well for roleplay at best, and even then I feel like that's reaching. Unless you can justify the waste, the only reason I can see it outside of just because roleplay is because you're being malicious.

FantasticDamgae · Mar 2, 2018

Spartan322 said:
Weren't people complaining about wars being uninteresting for multiple reasons before? I remember some of them being just how uninteresting long wars were. Just gonna say infinity wars in a sci-fi strategy game seem like a boring and plainly just uninteresting idea that only works well for roleplay at best, and even then I feel like that's reaching.

I think before the wars were not that interesting because you just clash a doomstack into a doomstack. If you are weaker, you kite their doomstack as long as possible to reach a white peace or produce ships - this part was quite boring the longer it was.

Field Marshal

Recruit

Lt. General

Recruit

Lt. General

Second Lieutenant

Recruit

Socially Awkward Molluscoid Foundation

Major

Sergeant

Second Lieutenant

Recruit

Recruit

Corporal

Major

Major

Recruit

Second Lieutenant

Second Lieutenant

Recruit