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Stellaris Dev Diary #111 - Anomaly Rework & Expanded Exploration

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to start talking about the 2.1 'Niven' update, which will be the next major update after 2.0. At this point I cannot give you any details on the exact nature of the update or when it's arriving, but I *can* talk about some changes we're making and new features we're introducing in regards to exploration, galaxy generation and anomalies.

Anomaly Changes
In 2.1, we're changing the way anomalies work in a few ways. First and foremost, we are removing the concept of failure risk - we found that the possibility to fail on anomalies added little to the game in terms of interesting choices, and mostly frustrated players or made them wait with researching said anomalies until their chance of success was maximized. As such, instead of making it so that anomalies have a failure risk based on scientist skill level, we've instead made it so that the time it takes to research an anomaly is heavily dependent on the scientist skill versus the level of the anomaly - researching a level 2 anomaly with a level 2 scientist will be a comparatively quick affair, while attempting a level 10 anomaly with the same scientist can take a very, very long time, and might mean that it is better to return to it later with a more skilled scientist, so not to hold up your early exploration.
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(Note: Not final numbers, etc)

As part of this we've also added an anomaly tracker tab to the situation log. The anomaly tracker will keep track of anomalies that you have discovered but not yet researched and easily let find and you return to them.
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Hyperlane Generation
Another thing that is changing in 2.1 is the way the Hyperlane network is generated. Rather than simply attempting to connect stars to nearby stars, we've created a new generation algorithm that builds up 'clusters' of stars with a high degree of internal connectivity, that are connected to each other by thinner 'highways' which form natural chokepoints. These chokepoints are also registered as such by the game, allowing us to find actual chokepoint systems and avoid placing Leviathans and other powerful space monsters there, as well as improving the AI's ability to detect suitable spots for defensive starbses. The hyperlane connectivity setting will determine the level of connectivity between clusters, and thus how frequent and easily circumvented chokepoints are.
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(Note: Image is not final. We're still working on the algorithm)

As part of this it will now also be possible for modders to easily generate systems and clusters of systems that are not connected to the main hyperlane network.

New Stars & Systems
Lastly for today, we've added a bunch of new system and star types to the game. First out are binary and trinary star systems - systems containing more than a single star. These systems come in a variety of configurations, and will often contain more planets and resources than conventional, single-star systems. We've also added some new star types to the game in the form of Brown Dwarves (not technically stars, I know) and Class M red super-giants. We've also made it possible to generate more than a single asteroid belt in a system, and created some new mineral-rich asteroid-heavy systems. Finally, there are some new unique systems to find with large amounts of resources in them, guarded by powerful space creatures.
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That's all for today! Next week we're going to be talking about something just a little bit mysterious called the L-Cluster... see you then!
 
Damn, so chances are the next Expansion will be Exploration focussed, not Diplomacy/Politics. :(

No mention of a DLC alongside 2.1 as yet and the established pattern suggests there won't be one. So I'd say it looks like a patch-only development cycle dedicated to exploration and then I'd guess a patch/DLC focused on diplomacy and trade. Or something like that.
 
While I'm obviously excited about the new map gen, what are you talking about re: wormholes?

Default wormhole generation is pretty reasonable, but you can always turn it down if its too much.

Also, displaying wormhole routes would be ugly. It shows you when your fleets are set to use them- that's good enough, considering its not difficult to memorize which wormhole goes where and to check manually if you really need to.

Try several wormholes in a bigger map, have 40 or more planets, a hundred or so systems, fight a war with several enemies and you might start to understand what i am trying to get accross. It is a logistical nightmare with a clumsy ui, and if it can be made any easier i am all for that. The new layout of the map does indeed look like it could make wormholes better managable. Right now wormholes often result in your empire being split across the entire universe.

Now combine that with losses in the war, reinforcements, maybe losing some of your transports which need replacement... all of a sudden you have dozens if not more single ship fleets moving EVERYWHERE. creating one hell of a clusterfuck you cannot really follow anymore. They go into wormholes out of them, go into another trying to find short ways to their destination. If the enemy takes a wormhole they might ignore and die. It becomes really tedious...thats what i am trying to say regarding wormholes
 
Try several wormholes in a bigger map, have 40 or more planets, a hundred or so systems, fight a war with several enemies and you might start to understand what i am trying to get accross.

I generally play large empires with 50+ planets in 800 star galaxies with wormholes turned up to 2x. I don't understand what you're trying to get across. You just have to be mindful of the wormholes within your empire, and also gateways. Building your shipyards in gateway systems helps a lot.
 
On the random anomaly failure: I agree that making it dependant on scientist level wasn't very interesting and that it could as well be made into a prerequisite (which is already in place to investigate projects).

However - the failure could potentially have some interesting gameplay effects, such as the choice of going for a tradition that reduces failure chance early (discovery tree) or as an opportunity cost on a given civic, policy or the Map the Stars ambition.

Essentially - as long as you can mitigate risk chance by taking decissions that require a certain tradeoff, I think that failure chance is not a bad thing from the PoV of gameplay. if something unforeseen happens (like a big enemy declaring war on you suddenly or a FE awakening nearby) those choices might hinder you, but they can be a solid power up, especially early on.
 
@Wiz so bit of a feature request for the upcomg patch, can we get the scripted ui elements updated to be like the HOI IV scripted gui stuff? In particular the ability to specify a context?
 
Please actually DO put space monsters in the chokepoints though. Having chokepoints blocked off by 'natural hazards' is an interesting, dynamic way to control the politics of empires, and it's an interesting mid/late-game question when you'd actually remove a barrier like that (or have it removed by an enemy empire).

I would suggest making it a galaxy generation option.

It could look like this for example:
- as much hazards on choke points as possible
- no hazards on choke points at all
- random mix
 
[neat stuff]

Could you also please add a button that lets you start upgrading all the star base defense platforms in your empire at the same time?
 
Please actually DO put space monsters in the chokepoints though. Having chokepoints blocked off by 'natural hazards' is an interesting, dynamic way to control the politics of empires, and it's an interesting mid/late-game question when you'd actually remove a barrier like that (or have it removed by an enemy empire).

I agree that would be a good option, however I think it should be possible for the player to decide if he wants monsters and/or other bariers to spawn in choke points. So while setting up galaxy for the game choose:

Monsters/leviathans/bariers/obstructions spawn in: Chockepoints/ clusters/ random/ mostly clusters and sometimes in chockepoints

Something like that.
 
In regards to the star systems. There is one feature I was dying to see from he day one.

Planets orbiting the star.

I mean they are fixed to one spot. Eternally frozen. They do rotate around their own axis, however they do not orbit its star.

In one of the updates Wiz wrote that they are aiming to make star systems feel alive and more going on in them. Moving planets could be a good start, I guess. It would be definietly pleasant to the eye!

It should be tied to the game time obviously, and each planet should have its own property how many days it takes for it to make a full cycle. Some planets going faster some going slower. It could have some interesting tactical aplications. For planet moving around a system could potentialy have impact on wars. If your fleet is set in orbit around a planet then planet might get further or closer to the desired system entry/exit possibly affecting your reaction times. On the other hand planet can get closer to the hostile system entry possibly puting it at risk - or get further from it.

Well it has few obvious downsides.
Firstofall it could be quite draining to the pc performance to callcullate positions of all planets in a galaxy especially on max game speed.
Secondly it could cause some graphical issues like objects passing through each other.

Eiher way I would like to see that happen ;D
 
I am concerned at removal of failure risk for anomaly. If anything, the failure risk should've been hidden by default and modified by something more substantial. In my opinion, having research on an anomaly succeeding all the times, even if it is slower with progressively higher levels, is rather implausible because some anomaly of certain types would certainly have some unknown dangers about them.

Science is always a trial-and-error thing... throughout the history, some lives were lost in the name of scientific work. The expeditions to and through the Arctic where many people had lost lives attempting to cross or reach them comes to the mind. Furthermore, even people who were skilled, talented, or experienced were known to have made mistakes that had negative consequences. The personality of a scientist thus should come into play besides their skill and the circumstances of an anomaly.

Space exploration and scientific investigation should be no different. Even with an abundance of caution exercised by a scientist in charge, there is always that chance for failures that could potentially be catastrophic to the exploring party and maybe even the nearby party (e.g. inadvertently activated a space-based nuclear platform that strikes a planet whose civilization had reverted to pre-nuclear/space age) depending on what the circumstances is. Maybe even a mere contact with a probe would inadvertently trigger a disastrous event in which a ship was lost. You never know, as the space is full of dangers and unknowns, aside from the alien civilizations that may not like you.

Failure risk for an anomaly should instead be retained, hidden and not displayed, and of course modified by something more substantial than a skill of scientist. Especially modified by factors that human players cannot always anticipate.
 
I am concerned at removal of failure risk for anomaly. If anything, the failure risk should've been hidden by default and modified by something more substantial. In my opinion, having research on an anomaly succeeding all the times, even if it is slower with progressively higher levels, is rather implausible because some anomaly of certain types would certainly have some unknown dangers about them.

Science is always a trial-and-error thing... throughout the history, some lives were lost in the name of scientific work. The expeditions to and through the Arctic where many people had lost lives attempting to cross or reach them comes to the mind. Furthermore, even people who were skilled, talented, or experienced were known to have made mistakes that had negative consequences. The personality of a scientist thus should come into play besides their skill and the circumstances of an anomaly.

Space exploration and scientific investigation should be no different. Even with an abundance of caution exercised by a scientist in charge, there is always that chance for failures that could potentially be catastrophic to the exploring party and maybe even the nearby party (e.g. inadvertently activated a space-based nuclear platform that strikes a planet whose civilization had reverted to pre-nuclear/space age) depending on what the circumstances is. Maybe even a mere contact with a probe would inadvertently trigger a disastrous event in which a ship was lost. You never know, as the space is full of dangers and unknowns, aside from the alien civilizations that may not like you.

Failure risk for an anomaly should instead be retained, hidden and not displayed, and of course modified by something more substantial than a skill of scientist. Especially modified by factors that human players cannot always anticipate.
The primary consideration of any gameplay mechanic should be "is it fun?". A RNG telling you "sorry, your explorers were eaten by a polar bear, nothing you can do about it" which sets your exploration efforts back for years is not fun. There should be challenges, a game without challenges is not fun, but challenges in a game need to be able to be interacted with, and the player needs to be able to overcome them. An event chain that potentially could lead to success or the death of the exploring party depending on choices made by the player would be great. The game killing your explorers based on random chance, without any sort of player input would be horrible. It would serve no purpose except frustration.
 
I am concerned at removal of failure risk for anomaly. If anything, the failure risk should've been hidden by default and modified by something more substantial. In my opinion, having research on an anomaly succeeding all the times, even if it is slower with progressively higher levels, is rather implausible because some anomaly of certain types would certainly have some unknown dangers about them.

Science is always a trial-and-error thing... throughout the history, some lives were lost in the name of scientific work. The expeditions to and through the Arctic where many people had lost lives attempting to cross or reach them comes to the mind. Furthermore, even people who were skilled, talented, or experienced were known to have made mistakes that had negative consequences. The personality of a scientist thus should come into play besides their skill and the circumstances of an anomaly.

Space exploration and scientific investigation should be no different. Even with an abundance of caution exercised by a scientist in charge, there is always that chance for failures that could potentially be catastrophic to the exploring party and maybe even the nearby party (e.g. inadvertently activated a space-based nuclear platform that strikes a planet whose civilization had reverted to pre-nuclear/space age) depending on what the circumstances is. Maybe even a mere contact with a probe would inadvertently trigger a disastrous event in which a ship was lost. You never know, as the space is full of dangers and unknowns, aside from the alien civilizations that may not like you.

Failure risk for an anomaly should instead be retained, hidden and not displayed, and of course modified by something more substantial than a skill of scientist. Especially modified by factors that human players cannot always anticipate.
The anomaly system allows for multiple outcomes, some of which can be ambigious or negative. This is unlikely to change.

Anomalies were never big enough to actually direct your course. Not getting a deposit or a small chunk of resource or even losing a scientist is not something you even need to adapt to. Which makes denying a bit of flavour for a boring failure also achieves nothing.

"Nope, it's nothing" is not a good outcome, and it is also somewhat weird due to retroactive application. Your false lead was false because scientist who followed up on it sucks. That's silly.
 
Please actually DO put space monsters in the chokepoints though. Having chokepoints blocked off by 'natural hazards' is an interesting, dynamic way to control the politics of empires, and it's an interesting mid/late-game question when you'd actually remove a barrier like that (or have it removed by an enemy empire).
But at the same time you could get screwed over in the beginning and not be able to expand at all until really late, so there's that.
 
All current tool-using sapient life in the Stellaris galaxy consists of oxygen-breathing liquid water users, or highly advanced robots built by oxygen-breathing liquid water users to function well in oxygenated atmospheres at temperatures where water is liquid.

I don't see why them all reaching a similar conclusion about fleet logistics is such a terrible shock.
I just assume there was a singular origin of native habitable world life in Stellaris's galaxy, and all the planets ultimately stem from the terraforming efforts of that species or the uncountable successor races.
 
Please actually DO put space monsters in the chokepoints though. Having chokepoints blocked off by 'natural hazards' is an interesting, dynamic way to control the politics of empires, and it's an interesting mid/late-game question when you'd actually remove a barrier like that (or have it removed by an enemy empire).

I can't agree more. Sometimes those natural barriers are a god send. It actually happened in my previous game, the only thing saving me from total annihilation was a space monster epic boss blocking the 1 way into my systems from the fanatical purifiers who kept spamming me with insults and who were 5x stronger than me. It's an interesting situation that lends to not only dynamic situations, but also interesting stories.
 
A small element of risk always adds excitement. Losing your scientist was, perversely, an element of fun and reminder of the dangers of space exploration, to me anyway,

They must be planning on many new anomalies if they are not repeatable. I hope that some will be dynamic, so that the same anomaly will give you different results in different games. It would be nice if Anomaly A did not always give x result, but sometimes w,y or z results. The make a choice anomalies are fun. Change the results and the interest factor will be extended greatly.

Also, it would fantastic if the Enigmatic Fortress answers changed and re-set with every new game, such that the correct answer was not always use the x size explosion, or throw the rings over the third pole from the left, or send in the monkey rather than the lemur with the snack tray.

Lastly, what is the L cluster? WHAT IS THE L CLUSTER????