• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
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:
2018_03_08_1.png
 
Last edited:
Great information and Bravo Zulu (Naval term for job well done) to Wiz and crew! Very encouraged by the list of issues / improvements being considered for the next update. Also, very pleased with the teams continued support of the awesome 2.0 and Apocalypse update/DLC!

Just my two cents regarding priority of list for future improvements...

1.
A 'galactic community' with interstellar politics and a 'space UN'.
2. Deeper Federations that start out as loose alliances and can eventually be turned into single states through diplomatic manuevering.
3. Empire trade mechanics and trade agreements.
4. Espionage and sabotage mechanics.
5. More story events and reactive narratives that give a sense of an unfolding story as you play.
6. More anomalies and unique systems to explore.
7. Improved galaxy/hyperlane generation with better placed systems and dangers.
8. 'Living systems', making empire systems feel more alive and lived in
9. Less micromanagement and more focus on interesting choices in regards to planets, the ability to grow planets beyond current fixed size.
10. A galactic market where resources and strategic resources can be imported and exported.
11. More interesting mechanics for pre-FTL civilizations.

Thanks again to Wiz and team!!!
 
@Wiz I have to second the above and I'm surprised given what you had previously said about micro and people's perception of it being everywhere.
I will say, while I generally agree with this, having an "upgrade all" button on planets, as well as having earlier automated exploration or automated exploration right off the bat would make the game feel a bit smoother.
 
What about adding more options for organics? Like a special bio-ship set and living buildings, unique plague mechanics for plantoids and hive minds? Any chance we might one day see something like that?
 
I will say, while I generally agree with this, having an "upgrade all" button on planets, as well as having earlier automated exploration or automated exploration right off the bat would make the game feel a bit smoother.

I guess I can't argue with that, providing that that's not the only way to upgrade.
 
Thank you for the return to default button. For the future, more ethincs specific event chains, buildings, and asymmetric gameplay is one of the best way to increase replayability and depth. There is currently a dearth of space communism that could be improved, I want my Laika Cosmonationale.
 
Scaling difficulty looks really interesting, I guess its a pain to balance properly, but I can imagine it would be quite useful. Multiple levels of scaling difficulty would be nice too, at some point, I think.
The maximum is somewhere around Admiral level (it's not the exact same bonuses).

Maybe we could get a slider to adjust the (maximum) scaling???
 
As already mentioned in this post by other people, having the scaling option as a separate toggle option would be more intuitive. The "rank" would indicate the starting bonus and scaling would allow those boni to grow.

To translate it in internet:
 

Attachments

  • scaling_drake.png
    scaling_drake.png
    1,4 MB · Views: 102
Last edited:
Still hope someday warp and artificial wormholes will return.
The artificial wormholes could be interesting, to add that flavor back in, as an alternative to gateways or jump drives. But how is it functionally different? I think most people hate how homogenous late game empires become than the loss of the actual mechanic. But that falls into functional paths and players are also vehemently against that. Just look at ascension a parallel.
I really hope that governments/leaders get some attention in the diplomacy update. There's really nothing interesting, mechanics-wise, separating the government types other than how frequently your ruler gets replaced and some differences in available civics. Leaders themselves aren't remotely memorable or interesting; they're just +10% research-speed guy #2 or whatever.
I semi agree, but that's part of where Stellaris works: your leaders die. How many carefully crafted individuals can you make for a democracy? Now, I think there should be more types of specific bonuses and they should evolve more through their lives, maybe even being able to put together a cabinet of advisors. Do you pick the leader of a faction to appease them or put your first choice in that role.

There's a lot of room to handle government from above and make interesting decisions. Hell, I think leaders should have ethics that affect your diplomatic options. Pick an Admiral to open up fleet possibilities, get a Xenophile to help with public relations. On and on, but my point is simply I think leaders are uninteresting because their role is largely relegated to the bonuses to their area of responsibility, so just pick the bonus you need. Very little to weight or consider.
 
What about adding more options for organics? Like a special bio-ship set and living buildings, unique plague mechanics for plantoids and hive minds? Any chance we might one day see something like that?

I'd also really like to see something like that. Organic space vessels/buildings are a pretty big staple of sci fi, especially for devouring swarm-style hiveminds.
 
I guess I can't argue with that, providing that that's not the only way to upgrade.
well yeah, I can't imagine that would be the case.
 
Is it intended that citadels, starholds and starbases downgrade straight to outpost as opposed to incrementally down one to their lower level?

In what situation would you want to downgrade one level lower but not all the way down to outpost? It still takes up a single starbase capacity slot.
 
Looking forward to my Federation changes in the future, Space UN stuff, treaties, politics and the ability to create single states (ideally with another player in a multiplayer game, for example). Hoping that's next up on the docket for an expansion.
 
In what situation would you want to downgrade one level lower but not all the way down to outpost? It still takes up a single starbase capacity slot.

Considering the maintenance difference is only 1 EC per level, yeah, I don't see the purpose of this at all.
 
"
  • Ship appearance that differs for each empire, so no two empires' ships look exactly the same.
"


I'd love to see organic ships, stations and components, or at least ships and stations. I',m not talking about mechanichs changes, just graphics and text.

It would be way more fitting for those hive mind devourers so they would look more like Tyranids, Zergs, etc..

I would even like it as a DLC
 
Wiz, I do not know why but the 2.02 beta just deletes the "planetary survey corps" tradition (under discovery). Only possible to get 4/5 of that tree in the beta. I loaded the exact same save up in base (2.01) and the tradition was there again.
 

Attachments

  • 20180308113151_1.jpg
    20180308113151_1.jpg
    285,7 KB · Views: 60
Wiz, I do not know why but the 2.02 beta just deletes the "planetary survey corps" tradition (under discovery). Only possible to get 4/5 of that tree in the beta. I loaded the exact same save up in base (2.01) and the tradition was there again.
They did just change the tradition to give assist research instead, it may be necessary to start a new game, the new patch might not be compatible...
 
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:
Will the slider tooltip mention the exact percentage bonuses that the AI will get? Seems like something that's good to know when you're considering strategies at higher difficulties.
 
So just to be clear, the 1/2 maintenance bonus that the AI is currently getting will not show up at all in Ensign difficulty? Also, I assume Scaling difficulty means the AI won't have the maintenance bonus at the start, but will it scale up to the current 1/2 bonus that they have now or will it now scale up even more than that by late game? And will they get additional benefits in Scaling that they don't normally get in normal now? Just trying to figure out specifics here that we can compare to current difficulty settings.