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

[Kenshi]

Oh Wiz thank you! I was really concerned you would keep the penalty thing. Faith in PDS restored.

 

[Iyur]

Yeah, we're really waiting for fixing variable's issues.

 

[Nin6]

While I agree with your changes to war exhaustion, Currently in the beta 2.0.2 the Ai have problems with basic economic management. There all starving to death. This is not a higher priority to fix over war exhaustion?

There are no war games without an opponent. And ai’s ( even on insane difficulty ) can’t build ships.

 

[Shoobs]

Hello and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. As we are still in full post-release support mode, until we are ready to get back to regular feature dev diaries, we're not going to have full-length dev diaries. Instead, we'll use the dev diaries to highlight certain fixes or tweaks that we feel need highlighting. Today, we're going to be covering some changes coming to the 2.0.2 beta in regards to War Exhaustion and forced Status Quo.

In 2.0, with the new war system, we added forced status quo peace as part of the new war exhaustion mechanics. We felt that this mechanic was necessary to ensure that limited wars could actually happen and so that the outmatched side in a war still had a reason to fight (pushing the enemy into 100% war exhaustion in order to force peace and reduce their territorial concessions). There were some problems with this mechanic, however, primarily that people felt surprised by a sudden peace in which they might lose systems the enemy has just occupied days ago, and also that certain wars (such as subjugation wars) were very difficult to fully win before being force-peaced out.

After receiving intial player feedback on these issues, we decided to try out a different model of war exhaustion in the 2.0.2 beta, replacing the forced status quo with a penalty at 100% war exhaustion. We have since been playing, testing, tweaking and collecting further feedback, and coming to the conclusion that our original design was correct - forced peace is necessary for the new war system to not simply become a series of single wars to the death, or powerful empires forcing a weaker empire into 100% war exhaustion and refusing to peace while their enemies were crippled by penalties.

For this reason, we will be reintroducing forced status quo peace, and this time it's here to stay. However, we are not simply going to roll back to exactly the way it is in 2.0, instead it will now work as follows:
- When a side in a war reaches 100% war exhaustion, they are now flagged as being at high war exhaustion, and get the alert as before
- Once at high war exhaustion, a 24 month timer will start to tick down for that side in the war. Once the timer is up, that war side can be forced into a status quo peace
- There will be no penalties for war exhaustion, but we will leave in the functionality for modders, as well as the ability to change the number of months before a forced peace is possible or disable forced peace altogether, so that those who truly hate to the idea of ever being forced to peace can at least change it through modding

These changes should mean that a status quo peace is something that doesn't come as a sudden surprise, and give the player time to start winding down their war and retake occupied systems when that war exhaustion counter ticks over into 100%.

We are also going to look into the possibility of changing Subjugation and Forced Ideology wars to either provide a clearer path to win such a war when the enemy has allies defending them, or by allowing Status Quo in such a war to achieve a 'limited victory' (liberating/subjugating part of the enemy empire instead of the whole).

These changes will not be in the very next version of 2.0.2 (as that is already being internally tested and will hopefully be with you before the end of the week), but we expect to roll them out sometime next week if all goes well.

That's all for today! See you next week for another 2.0 post-release dev diary.
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@Wiz, is there a chance you are able to make this forced status quo peace depend on the size(s) of the empires, whether relative to one another or not, as well as the actual goals of the wars in question? 2 years might not be enough time to get your fresh ships off of the line and into proper battle from a central hub in some larger empires, atleast on the system sizes I use.
( obviously between large empires, having it larger is a good idea, but still liberation-fight the powa style wars should still ramp up rather quickly as the goal is just to take a small chunk out of th eempire vs. I WILL END YOU wars. )

 

[g4borg]

so now its even easier to just cap that station, wait until it repowers and watch enemy trying to retake it, while rebuilding your fleet with the enemy starports before the war is over?
any plans to change that mechanic?

it just kind of feels weird, that war exhaustion would kick in for a small empire that lost most of their assets, while the overpowered villain slowly nibbles them to death. you would think in that case people would actually push even harder... maybe some edicts?

to be honest, atm. playing pub games, if you dont get desynced, just became ultra hard because there is no point in taking anything but an undiplomatic full war race, since every other build just struggles to keep up with fleetsize, stations wont do squat for early rush, and if you manage to upgrade them, the enemy will just use it against you.

instead of just internal tests, i suggest to join a few pub games and witness the real problems first hand.

 

[karimjebari]

I think these are great changes, but I do agree that WE should penalties. Although, I think it would be better if they scaled, as in EU IV.

 

[Shuul]

Thanks, here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/critical-issue-with-variables.1075534/

In a nutshell: multiply/check/divide/subtract_variable = { which = var1 value = var2 } is broken.

I double on this one, makes modding much more difficult!

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

Two questions Wiz:

1. Will occupation go back to generating WE?

2. Will WE in the beta be increased? Reducing WE gains, removing WE from occupation, then adding WE reduction has made... WE very unimpactful generally.

I very much appreciate you keeping forced status quo, but I feel the beta currently allows WAY excessive wiggle room.

 

[tom025]

24 months still seem too much in my opinion, 12 months (maximum 18 months if more than enough)

But glad that you're looking into it

 

[etranger01]

Thanks for the update! I'm sure the forum response will be measured, considered, and not at all hysterical.

 

[The Great Guardian]

I think these are great changes, but I do agree that WE should penalties. Although, I think it would be better if they scaled, as in EU IV.

Indeed otherwise people will just try to keep the war going for 2 years if there is no penalty in not accepting it earlier. This will just make it so every war ends 2 years later than meant to.

 

[Matt516]

AI is basically always willing to accept status quo at 100% WE, this is mostly for players. Whether they will surrender or not isn't tied to this.

Any chance you could change the behavior so an AI which is undeniably winning and actively taking planets will still try to "run out the timer"? Maybe by removing the extra +100 status quo acceptance modifier from "high war exhaustion" so at least *some* naval or occupation advantage is required to get them to accept the offer?

I still remember my first experience in 2.0 watching a defensive AI smartly prolong a war it was winning even though it could've forced peace on the attacker - that was pretty cool. It would be a shame to feel like I'm exploiting an asymmetric advantage every time I prolong a war by a little bit.

All in all though, this definitely seems like a step in the right direction! Eagerly awaiting said patch.

 

[Horror In The Deep]

We are also going to look into the possibility of changing Subjugation and Forced Ideology wars to either provide a clearer path to win such a war when the enemy has allies defending them, or by allowing Status Quo in such a war to achieve a 'limited victory' (liberating/subjugating part of the enemy empire instead of the whole).

I really, really hope you will take this possibility into reality. One of the things I (and not I alone) miss very much in 2.0 is an old Liberation CB

 

[Madzai]

Initial problem with people raging about Forced peace isn't only about mechanic itself, but because the WE gain was messed up and unclear.
Unless WE gain is a) clear b) reasonable c) abuse-proof d) balanced between ethics\techs\Empires, the situation will repeat itself.

 

[Lumpy]

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

 

[Matt516]

Indeed otherwise people will just try to keep the war going for 2 years if there is no penalty in not accepting it earlier. This will just make it so every war ends 2 years later than meant to.

You could look at it that way, or you could look at it as the "meant to" end of a war is 2 years after one party reaches 100% WE. The main difference now is that the timing of the end of the war is predictable.

Adding in penalties again still only hurts the loser in the vast majority of cases because they reach 100% first - often decades before the winner. Hurting the loser for the entire second half of their war makes the game more snowbally, not less.

And besides, the beta showed that even a fairly significant penalty like zero unity and influence production won't stop a determined attacker.. So again you get to a point where the loser is crippled by penalties they don't need and the attacker is not dissuaded by them. It just didn't work. Leaving penalties out is the correct decision.

 

[Borgratz]

That sounds great! Especially the status quo war goals for other kinds of wars.

I know nothing is final, yet, but will you keep the 2.02 WE changes for now or do they get reverted back to 2.0, too?

 

[Horror In The Deep]

On a more general note...You know, one of the things I really appreciate in PDX an amount of attention you give to the community.
Many other devs will think like "we don't have anything new to say in DD, so we will just not say anything at all". The thing that you guys prefer instead to give us an information on what you are thinking about currently, even just to keep us in touch is a really nice thing)

 

[Shuul]

AI is basically always willing to accept status quo at 100% WE, this is mostly for players. Whether they will surrender or not isn't tied to this.

Seems a bit gamy though, maybe its better to make ai go and try to retake/defend what was lost before the cooldown expires?

 

[Naelar]

The numbers tweaking need to happen with WE. There also should be some tweaking to how status quo works... It seems silly to me that you can avoid all their major defenses (depending on hyper lane routes) and just simply go for all the resource systems they own, then at 100% war score (which happens way too fast atm) just dip out and leave the other empire a broken mass, even if they were equal in power to you. It's happened to me and I've done it to others. It's an annoying cheese for either side of the fence... Status quo should be similar to white peace where nothing changes hands. You should only win it if the other empire surrenders it.