Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be focusing on the road ahead after Cherryh and Apocalypse, and our long-term priorities going forward.

Cherryh Post-Release Support
As mention in last week's dev diary, the immediate priority for the team is post-release support for Cherryh and Apocalypse, fixing bugs, addressing balance/feature feedback, and working on quality of life and performance improvements. We are maintaining a running 2.0.2 beta patch which we will continue to update every few days or so until we are happy with the state of the game.

The Post-Apocalypse
Apocalypse and Cherryh were an expansion/patch focused almost exclusively on war, and with it out, we are now going to be moving on to other, non-war related priorities for future updates, expansions and story packs. To give you an idea of what's coming, we're going to revisit the list of long-term goals for Stellaris I made and updated for Dev Diary #50 and Dev Diary #69. This time, we're going to organize the goals into the ones we feel have been delivered on, old goals that were added to the list before 2.0, and new goals that we have set for ourselves after 2.0 (there is no prioritization difference between goals based on when they were added or whether they are considered old or new for this particular list).

As before, the list is NOT in order of priority, and something being considered completed NOT mean we aren't going to continue to improve on it in future updates, just that we consider it to be at a satisfactory level.

As before, THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE OR FINAL LIST, NOTHING NOT ALREADY COMPLETED IS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN AND THERE ARE NO ETAS

Completed Goals

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
• More potential for empire customization, ability to build competitive 'tall' empires.
• Global food that can be shared between planets.
• Ability to construct space habitats and ringworlds.
• Factions that are proper interest groups with specific likes and dislikes and the potential to be a benefit to an empire instead of just being rebels.
• Ability to set rights and obligations for particular species in your empire.
• Buildable Dreadnoughts and Titans.
• Deeper mechanics and unique portraits for synthetics.
• Reworking the endgame crises to be more balanced against each other and the size/state of the galaxy.
• Reworks to war to address the 'doomstacks' issue and make the strategic and tactical layers of warfare more interesting and less micro-intensive.
• Superweapons and planet killers.

Old Goals

• A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
• Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
• More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
• More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.
• 'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in

New Goals

• Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.
• Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
• A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
• Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
• Improved galaxy/hyperlane generation with better placed systems and dangers.
• More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

That's all for today! Over the next few weeks, dev diaries will continue to focus on post-release support. Feature dev diaries will resume when we have new features to talk about. Finishing off this dev diary is a screenshot of how we're reworking difficulty modes in the next update to the rolling 2.0.2 beta:

 

[Popenhauzen]

I think its okay if unity is a system not to be employed by all factions,or to the same degree. If you want heavy unity unlocks, play a unity faction. Don't try to do everything at once. Also i think its okay if you don't max unity by 2300. I see a lot of people go crazy with sliders in MP setting things like 0.5, or 0.25. Guys its ok if it takes longer. in fact where is the fucking trade off if the costs are reduced? just play max mineral spam with slider at 0.1, there, happy now?

 

[Tacticus101]

That's all for today! Over the next few weeks, dev diaries will continue to focus on post-release support. Feature dev diaries will resume when we have new features to talk about. Finishing off this dev diary is a screenshot of how we're reworking difficulty modes in the next update to the rolling 2.0.2 beta:
View attachment 343256

Every time i see evidence of Paradox listening to the community it makes me appreciate them more.

I think its more the lopsided nature of difficulty in Stellaris.

Early game the AI is fine, when you have only a few planets It can keep up with the player. Mid game the AI starts to fall behind, it doesn't expand as efficiently, start good wars or design its ships well enough. Late game is when it really suffers though, that's when the player Empires really take off, the AI just cant fight wars as effectively enough. The problem is, difficulty settings apply equally. So early game you end up with impossible to defeat fleets but late game the bonus is not enough to make up for the huge player advantage.

What I think would really work, and I think the OP is asking for, is a difficulty that ramps up over the course of the game. So the AI starts off with a very small bonus in the early game that slowly increases over time until late game when it hits the 100% (if not more) bonus' of insane. It would result in a much less frustrating game whilst keeping it challenging throughout.

That's not a bad idea at all, honestly. I'll consider it.

Early Game is in the worst state since launch

 

[Caekdaemon]

• Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.

• More potential for empire customization,

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the video game Stellaris. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new world types, to seek out new ship sets and new civics, to boldly go where no Paradox game has gone before.

Seriously though, this really should be a continuous mission. There's no such thing as too much diversity or customization when it comes to space boats!

 

[Todie]

This is looking great!

Two questions relating to OP /wiz :

#1: Have you considered adding the "scaling feature of dicciculty as an additional setting alongside the linear difficulty settings, as apposed to having it be a difficulty setting in and of itself? ---- i suppose this would require plenty of tuning, concerning combinations of rate-of-scaling and leanear-difficulty-setting.... but maybe for a later patch?

#2: the way tactical movment / manouvering in / proximity to / wartime, in 2.0 is IMHO really great. however, before jump drives are reseaarched manouvering fleets around/across the galaxy in peacetime takes years, decades.. this has big implications on how to best play the game, AND the AI's ability to defend / wage war / be a useful ally. Some unintended implications im sure. (like BC being less useful because they cant keep up with smaller ships and it beign a GOOD option to disband a far away fleet and jst build a new one when/where needed)

........... Any thoughts on when / how to adress this going forward? strategic redeployment? hyperspace mode for 5x speed/jump cd at the cost of a debuff and extra EC maintenance?

thank you. i cant wait to keep playing when the next 2.02 update/fix goes out... today?

 

[IlyaZ]

Two things:

1. There's an event where you find diamonds, gems or something similar. It gives you energy, probably as a reference to "valuables", but shouldn't it be minerals? Energy = power. Minerals = matter.

2. Some modifications may be needed, but why not train a neural network to play the game, get some time at a supercomputer and make it play millions of games? Then save the generated neural net at different generations as difficulty level and/or pool it with experiences from all distributed AI vs player games.

 

[Njordin]

Okay I agree and play most games on max difficulty, got annoyed with how easy that was, and then started modding AI in some games such as Distant Worlds to try to improve it with the limited modding capability available. What you are saying is a totally different point to the one I made.

How i would love to see an icemania mod for stellaris ai! Good to see you here.

 

[James Fire]

For what it's worth, one of the things that would go a long way in reducing micro is the ability to pay for a building to be upgraded fully. Maybe you could ctrl when clicking on the upgrade button and then it will allocate resources for all possible upgrades.

Shift-click on the upgrade button.

 

[Jorlem]

• More anomalies and unique systems to explore.

On the subject of anomalies, I recall there being mentions in one of the streams of plans to add unresearched anomalies to the situation log in 2.0. Any chance that is still in the works, or has it been dropped?

 

[Devanor]

Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets

Can this be taken as confirmation that it's intended to change the current pop/planet system? Personally I don't like how it currently works, but I'm fine regardless if it stays or goes.

the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.

Do you mean this in a metaphorical way? Because doesn't the "new" Mastery of Nature do just that?

 

[Spartan322]

2. Some modifications may be needed, but why not train a neural network to play the game, get some time at a supercomputer and make it play millions of games? Then save the generated neural net at different generations as difficulty level and/or pool it with experiences from all distributed AI vs player games.

I don't think you realize how resource intense a decent neural net that can actually stand up to the current game's "AI" would still be, aside from needing a supercomputer to make it (and it would take a long while for something decent alongside being likely out of budget range), its also not that feasible for the player in any account. Neural nets especially have an issue of providing inconsistent behavior for things like games if they're worth anything, that's what makes highly evolved ones so challenging but for a video game that's actually a terrible trait because games need consistent behavior in "AI" and making something that's always unpredictable basically equates to either doing something stupid or doing something bullshit. (the former we already yell at the current "AI" for and the latter fundamentally destroys the game as the player feels they're being screwed a fair challenge) You would also need to run multiple non-player empires through the neural net which depending on a lot of things can become expensive, and its not even guaranteed what is to happen in any case. Using true AI techniques to create game "AI" isn't done because there are too many problems and true AI doesn't remotely share the same purpose nor will it contain the same goals as game "AI" and I really wish people would stop trying to equate them.

 

[khade]

Are there techs that lower the negatives to the Jump Drive? either lowering cooldown or lowering negatives to the cooldown or both? If not, those would be a good idea, I think.

A possibility of playing from pre-FTL could be fun.

Also, quality of life request: can we get a tab for pending anomalies? Sometimes they're hard to find.

 

[Zedex76]

May I make a suggestion?

Back in the changelog of the 2.0 update (Dev Diary #105):

* Only science ships staffed by scientists can now enter systems that you completely lack intel on (stops 'corvette exploration')

While I see why this was implemented, it can lead to some awkward situations, such as in the Ransomeers event chain, when the ransomeer space station spawns in a system right next to your borders that you don't have any intel on, meaning you have to pull your science ship from halfway across the galaxy all the way back to your borders just to enter this system, possibly risking your ship and your scientist in the process.

Perhaps events like these could be adjusted in a way that makes sense? Like the captives finding a way to send a scan of the system to you, letting you send your fleets in without having to send in a science ship first.

 

[Medicine Man]

Wiz and company,

Have you considered adding in special features for planets, similar to the natural wonders that Civilization 5 implemented? It would be interesting if the occasional planet had special modifiers or a unique tile blocker due to a great thermal rift or colossal canyon system, etc.

 

[James Fire]

Our fleets need to realize that they can't travel through Gateways in others' territory. They keep getting stuck because they can't, but they also won't go a different route unless I specifically tell them to.

 

[Jakman217]

I'm still hoping for some Tech slaves, and better population management (maybe the ability to built bio pops with via cloning eh?). Cause I know nothing is more annoying than not having enough of the right pop because another moved in or grew over the desired spot. If not that then better planet specialization would be kool.

Other then that I look forward to many more hours in game.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Please please PLEASE let us designate custom factions to be Fallen/Mauraders/Primatives. I hate using randomly generated empires.

 

[Nussor]

A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.

Been playing Offworld Trading Company lately, mh? I actually thought to myself: this would be fun in a game like Stellaris.

 

[General Karthos]

Warp could only be a late-game tech or defensive starbases in border systems would become irrelevant (again) and we have the reworked Jump Drive in that area. Punching holes in space-time to create your own wormholes would be pretty sweet though.

Edit: Also, mods.

I would love to have punching holes in space time with the possibility you could accidentally bring something in from the other side. Not necessarily the current end game scenario. Perhaps you accidentally bring in another dimensional horror, except that in manifests in full scale in our dimension so it's far more powerful.... Something along those lines.

Not that it would ALWAYS happen, but there would be a small (tiny?) chance of it happening every time you used the tech to create your own wormholes.

I'd also be interested in the idea of being able to construct additional hyperlanes, naturally at a huge energy and time cost. I have systems that are practically touching but that it takes 16 jumps to get between. It's my own fault for playing at 0.5x hyperlanes, but learning a super-advanced, hyper-rare, ultra-dangerous technology (perhaps from one of those unique systems you have to discover) would be pretty cool. (Perhaps discovering the homeworld of those who constructed the hyperlane network.)

So many events could build off of the [discovery of the technology to construct/act of constructing] new hyperlanes. Awakening a fallen Empire could be just one possibility. Giving a bridge into our universe beings of pure energy who wiped out the original network builders, etc. I don't know. Seems like you could do a lot with it. In addition to the benefits of creating shortcuts in a winding Empire. Maybe giving those inward perfectionists the options to actually destroy hyperlanes, allowing them to FINALLY have some peace and quiet that could only be disrupted by jump drives and those pesky wormholes we were talking about before.

 

[MPixels]

I'd also be interested in the idea of being able to construct additional hyperlanes,

This would be pretty sweet. I'm pretty sure the "galactic road map" we see is implied to be the work of some Precursor Empire and it might be possible in code to create/delete hyperlanes since when you find a Precursor home system it does just seem to plonk a new system-plus-hyperlane somewhere.

Yeah I dig this...

 

[tangled axile]

Wiz and company,

Have you considered adding in special features for planets, similar to the natural wonders that Civilization 5 implemented? It would be interesting if the occasional planet had special modifiers or a unique tile blocker due to a great thermal rift or colossal canyon system, etc.

Alphamod already does a bit of neat stuff like this, so it's definitely possible. Making it a full-fledged feature would be fantastic.

Also tbh it'd be nice if they took a bit of inspiration from what Endless Space does. There aren't very many planets that feel special in ES, so not that bit, but the ones that are special are FANTASTIC. Wonderful feel to them. A lot more stuff like that in Stellaris would really go a long way towards making the galaxy 'vast and full of wonders,' which was one of the most compelling promises of Stellaris, IMO.