Stellaris Dev Diary #108 - 2.0 Post-Release Support (part 1)

[Almond_Brown]

Not sure if this is a bad thing but my last BIG War was basically a Losing proposition, I had reached 100% WE, the attacker (2 members of a 6 member Federation - 4 Pathetics never ever showed up) but when I read the Surrender agreement I had to kinda of laugh. I was eating the "penalty" and sloowly getting their WE up, very slowly, but to Surrender read someth9ing like, System A, System B, System C, System D and 56 others...
WTH! No way I was giving up 60 systems unless the enemy took those 60 systems from my cold dead hands.

My point, I guess is, can we get the AI to relax on the totally bonkers Surrender demands thus allowing the Player to declare defeat with some dignity... 60 plus systems lost leaves no dignity, let alone anything to work with after said Surrender. Thus Surrender is NEVER an option really.

P.S. 2 years after 100% WE sounds great and always some dignity to be had.

 

[Foefaller]

So far no change is planned to for the opaque and poorly balanced WE accumulation formula?

We're also definitely still looking into the numbers and rate of WE gain.

 

[permeakra]

or this reason, we will be reintroducing forced status quo peace, and this time it's here to stay.

The game features several civics that literally imply that the empire is built for infinite wars (all genocidal empires, and possibly some militarist empires to begin with). Also, with WE mechanic even small-scale conflicts might result in eventual forced peace for a large/strong empire, which doesn't make much sense. Also, defending empires in some cases (total war against genocidal empires, for example) should have some bonuses.

Please, consider introduction of ways for these special cases to shake off WE. For example, devouring swarm should shake off some WE for devouring enemy pops.

 

[Slynx]

The fallen empires? I don't see a reason why they can't enforce peace, if they can demand you go to war as well, why not?

first of all he was talking not about FE. but about game mechanics.
second: if we take your post seriously: FE can't do it because they are too weak and usually a prey to warmongering player in mid-late 2300t-2400h

 

[pieman]

We're also definitely still looking into the numbers and rate of WE gain.

Thanks for your team's hard work Wiz.

Right now in 2.0.2 WE definitely seems a little too slow, it makes border skirmish wars escalate too much because of people spamming additional claims after war start.

I am a bit worried that 24 months might still cause similar problems with people gaining too much influence in the interrim, and still make wars too long to achieve those really snappy contained wars over single systems from 2.0.0, but it does at least give back smaller empires the chance to take and grab systems off of a larger but distracted foe if they play their cards right. Instead of having status quo denied until the large empire finally gets around to grinding them down.

Maybe make it so that people can't make new claims in that 24 month period after 100%? not sure how to make it work cleanly.

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

first of all he was talking not about FE. but about game mechanics.
second: if we take your post seriously: FE can't do it because they are too weak and usually a prey to warmongering player in mid-late 2300t-2400h

Mechanically, it's mostly "I'm gonna tatle to your mum".

I could see adding a FE element to peace enforcement being a practical mechanical addition, at least for the early and mid game.

 

[Lheim]

I'm perfectly fine with forced peace at 100% war score - but I think there's a disconnect between what the player is counting as a victory and what the computer does.

A recent experience of mine, and an apparently common one, is coming out of a battle having control of a system, having driven off an enemy fleet in defeat, and suffering more war exhaustion for it than the enemy.

Two reasons for this, I think:

Fleeing enemy ships don't count as a win, even if they're limping off at 5% health. I've had situations where I lost two ships and not killed a single enemy ship. I think either ships are fleeing too frequently, or we need to count fleeing in terms of giving war exhaustion to the fleeing force, or - and this is a big assumption - we need to count loses from emergency warp damage as 'ships killed in combat'. I don't think the game currently does, but I've definitely sent off crippled, diminished fleets where I didn't get a single kill that counted.

Occupation needs to count for war exhaustion again. Please.

edit: Latest patch notes.

* Battle losses from emergency FTL are properly registered​

Well, I'll be!

​

 

[Ixal]

Well, nobody said that penalties should be completely crippling. -10-20% happiness is good enough, if we take also add forced peace after 2 years into the equation. Also, imho, the aggressor should have bigger 100% WE penalties than the defender.

I am still amazed that there are people who think -20 happiness is a serious or even noticeable penalty.

 

[zeredek]

MY BABY IS BACK

 

[ashbery76]

Good.No knee jerk reaction changes in the future please.

 

[NemoRow]

My dear friends I think we are better to be more concrete in our statements and visions, or otherwise we create a usual holy-war (two competing ideas believed in) environment.

After thinking about this in the background for a few hours, this what I came to subjectively from my side:
* The game already has different metrics and resources which model population/economics/politics/military effectiveness and production
* WE is a newly introduced very genuine in its core idea of measurement of influence of ongoing war company

I don't like WE timer-based events-enriched nature because its mostly bypasses existing in-game mechanisms which should model the same process. Also it does not supposed to be for all cases that the war is exhausting at all - as supply line and troops can be taken care of, kept refreshed and as safe as possible. So the timer nature itself is artificial, but of course this is a game, that is a simulation a model and we may need some simplifications.

So instead of WE being calculated by itself through war mechanics, what I think part of us feels it should be - it should be just a meter-like statistics calculated from what is happening in summary to my population/economics/military. That is if (not genocidal examples):
* War is taking a long time, my egalitarian population wants peace, as US hippies and USSR population during the cold war. Government ethics attraction lowers, pacifist increases.
* Supply ships (non-existing at the moment) instead of bringing resources between systems are taking care of deployed fleets, in case of insufficient number of them it troubles the economy.
* Occupied systems (and starbases) require population, so core worlds become depopulated and deplete economy/science. Population can more easily die on occupied starbases on border wars.
* Ships require regular maintenance when flying and fighting, without it fleet modifiers decrease (fire rate, hull points etc). Can be introduced a probability of weapons failure during the battle, but I guess we don't want to complicate the battles more.
* Occupied systems can give higher penalties to unity and science income, as this will model the occupation itself
* Grows rate reduces as people does not want to bring children into war world
* ...
In summary the act of war itself should bring disturbance into economics, military and population which results in the exhaustion through the normal existing means of the game. This is what everyone likes, as it feels like real simulation without 'galaxy rules'. I understand however that this can be too deep and too difficult to be brought as it is. So this is why I propose mainly some compromises, mainly as gradual penalty-based system, which would take into the account existing game mechanisms (from happiness and population growth to additional military costs and occupation costs) so it will be felt that I am exhausted of war, not just someone tells me that. And that it takes me time to recover from it.

Genocidal WE would be simplified by removing the political and in all case but purifiers population cases. So if they would feel exhaustion by economical, research and military means it would always make sense for them to stop at some point, as this war may cost them their place in the galaxy.

Also an empire can be exhausted by building a megastructure/starbases, expanding/colonizing too much/too fast. As of this and multiple wars - single per empire exhaustion measure would make sense. As:
* If its war and empire A is exhausted by war with B its not less exhausted in case of war with C started just after war with B ends.
* If our empire A is exhausted by expansion or constructing too much, it can be weaken by it and targeted for war.
* If empire A is exhausted by war it can be too exhausted to build a Dyson Sphere or to rebuild its fleet fast just after the war.
* Exhaustion means doing the same things are less effective, for most cases this means that population is less happy, has reduces growth speed and so on. For exceptions there are still other in game methods to make them feel their ineffectiveness, from simple population debuff to more global ones.

There is also stays the case of war cultures, where their warrior ways say that forever war is the Greater Good. Those moments can be modeled by differences as of what exactly the current ethos reads as the exhaustion. For personality-based empires this would be loosing lots of people, for traders - lots of money, for military - lots of good warriors. All the different things which only add to the game, as it actually starts to make difference who fights whom.

I think I want have much more to say in this thread, unless we would have some burst of practical ideas I've enjoyed reading through it, thank you all.

 

[NoOneBCE]

Making a beta branch in order to test a substantial change is not a knee jerk reaction, it's exactly the opposite, a way to properly take the time and the feedback needed in order to evaluate that change...

Kind of the knee jerking part is how radical the tested changes were I think, instead of trying something closer first immediately going to: Make wars more final and all in than they ever were.

 

[NoOneBCE]

I like your Ideas as well, but think that kind of war and peace system is far out it needs a lot of testing and feature intgration into war.
I'd like so se a massive war exhaustion update down the line but that is almost an entire expansion on its own, so I guess for now the forced peace is the best simple solution.

I am exited to see paradox focus on the other aspects such as growth and diplomacy for the next few updates.

 

[Chosen One V13]

The fallen empires? I don't see a reason why they can't enforce peace, if they can demand you go to war as well, why not?

And what if there is no Fallen Empires in game?

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

And what if there is no Fallen Empires in game?

Tattle to the Hive Queens Mum.

 

[Matt516]

third side will FORCE two warring alien species in to peace...

No, one side will force the other into peace. Status Quo doesn't automatically happen at 100% WE, it just allows the opposing empire to force the exhausted empire to make peace if they so choose.

And what's the real difference with the current system in place? Just a longer timer?
Wouldn't it be wiser to just tweak the WE increase number?

Longer timer, and it's also more predictable. I think this will make the "big final push" of many wars more fun as well, as you won't have to worry that you'll top off at 100% WE and be forced to peace out in the middle of your last few battles or anything. Instead, you know how exactly much time you have left to accomplish your objectives.

They have been tweaking the WE increase numbers and continue to do so.

 

[NoOneBCE]

I could see something interesting happening like people playing the war carefully (as much gain with a little WE as possible) and as soon as they get the 2 year warning they will just rampage untill force peaced because WE does not matter at that point only time.

 

[Zerefeil]

how about making it so that we can cancel forced status quo peace by paying influence - like it was with the warscore mechanic where you could put it off for a while before succumbing to demands, and the longer you "postpone" it the more rebellious your empire gets for example foreing species or not supported factions etc.

 

[pieman]

What annoys me is that i have to compete with my allies to see who can occupy enemy systems first or risk losing out at at the end of the war. We should be working together strategically not racing to make sure we get their first.

we need a HOI4 style end of war divide the spoils screen please.

But claims rectified this issue?

It doesnt matter which ally captures the system. It's who has the most claims.

 

[RedAxon]

Any news on planet crackers etc having more impact in war regarding war exhaustion? When I destroyed someones capital system they got 2.5% to war exhaustion - which is tiny. Hoping its a bug i have