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Stellaris Dev Diary #112 - The L-Cluster

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we're going to be covering the headline feature of the Distant Stars Story Pack that will be accompanying the 2.1 'Niven' update.

The L-Cluster
In Distant Stars, some Black Hole systems are home to mysterious "L-Gate" structures that the player can find while exploring the galaxy. Originally part of the regular Gateway network, these L-Gates were heavily modified shortly after the initial construction of the network. The gates are operable but stuck in perpetual maintenance loops, possibly due to intentional sabotage. L-Gates cannot be activated by the usual Gateway technologies, instead requiring the collection of insights relating to subspace and the nanite technology used to activate the gates. Insights can be collected in a wide variety of ways - from anomalies and exploration, from defeating certain enemies, and from researching a repeatable technology that becomes available once your empire is sufficiently advanced to conduct independent research on nanites.
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Once an empire has amassed enough insights, they will be able to open an L-Gate and access the L-Cluster, a cluster of stars located just outside the galaxy and entirely inaccessible from the regular hyperlane network. What precisely you will find there, we are not going to be spoil in this dev diary, but suffice to say that there are several possible outcomes, and that the gates may have been locked down for a reason...
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On a technical level L-Gates are a new and fully moddable bypass type, distinct from Wormholes and Gateways. L-Gates cannot be built and there is a finite number of them (up to 10) in the galaxy. They use a hierarchical (or hub-and-spoke) connection design, where all roads lead to the L-Cluster. This means that an L-Gate can only send a fleet to the L-Cluster, but once in the L-Cluster the fleet can travel to any L-Gate in the galaxy. This bypass type, along with the ability to create whole new areas of the galaxy (and specify their location relative to another system or the galactic core) is available for modders to use as part of the free Niven update.
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That's all for today! Next week we're going to continue talking about the Distant Stars Story Pack, on the topic of new anomalies, new systems and new Leviathans.
 
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Judikator said:
That would not be a bug, but a feature. Why should the modding be limited? If anything it should be as much customisable for modders as possible.
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Well, the reason why there should not be two 1000-stars galaxies would be the same reason why there should not be one 2000-stars galaxy : performance...

Not everyone plays Stellaris on NASA supercomputers... :rolleyes:
 
Es57 said:
Well, the reason why there should not be two 1000-stars galaxies would be the same reason why there should not be one 2000-stars galaxy : performance...

Not everyone plays Stellaris on NASA supercomputers... :rolleyes:
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Mods arent mandatory you know? Thats why they are called mods. Dont exclude the option just because it doesnt fit your taste.
 
Takfloyd said:
In real life, we can only see about half of the stars in our galaxy - the other half is obscured - either by nebulas or on the opposite side of the galactic core, behind layers and layers of interstellar dust as well as the densely packed stars near the core and in the galactic disk.
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IMO in Stellaris, the traversible star systems are not meant to represent every star in the galaxy. Most are "off-grid" and unreachable; this helps explain why you can find "new" stars, like in the Precursor event chains or at the end of the Contingency Crisis. The star was always there, we just didn't know it was significant and its connection to the hyperlane network wasn't known.
 
Amazing. Didn't they JUST release Apocalypse? Now they're pushing all these "features" plus a new money grab pack when the games AI isn't in a state where you can play an enjoyable game without resorting to user made mods?

Just wow, man.
 
I'm just imagining opening the L-Gate, finding some horror that should never have been released. While desperately trying to close the gate again, the Prethoryn spawn and RNG picks the L-Cluster. The horror eats the Prethoryn vanguard, resulting in a galactic-wide Prethoryn broadcast:

"We can see this galaxy is already beyond contaminated, so we'll just be on our way. Good luck."

Sapa Inca said:
If there exist severe outcomes about what is exiled in the L-cluster, would be hilarious if exist a 1% chance of found the Blorg Commonality exiled here.
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And one of the other options is the Dimensional Horror's mother. She's not really interested in the rest of the galaxy; she just wants to drag her wayward offspring home by its ear-equivalents for being out past its 300,000,000-year curfew. As long as you don't try and stop her once the gate is opened, nothing bad will happen to you. Probably. :p
 
Are there multiple potential stories in the L-cluster? I'm thinking there might be one "locked to keep you out" story and one "locked to keep something in" story.
 
Ok, this was partially asked, but will this DLC finally increase (physical size) of the galaxy map? I mean so we can create bigger galaxies which stars are even more distant? where there might be far reach that no species has reached yet? that we can make a truely grand scale game with say 5000 stars (and not like today, where it gets dense and not realistic)?
 
jabbahutt said:
Ok, this was partially asked, but will this DLC finally increase (physical size) of the galaxy map? I mean so we can create bigger galaxies which stars are even more distant? where there might be far reach that no species has reached yet? that we can make a truely grand scale game with say 5000 stars (and not like today, where it gets dense and not realistic)?
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I highly doubt they will implement this in vanilla as that would decrease performance very significantly. Unless they somehow find a way to increase ingame performance. Iam playing on a 4000 and 2000 sized galaxy and the decrease in performance is very noticeable. Iam using a selfmade mod which is pretty easy to create and there are multiple mods out there that increase galaxy size as well. If you want to play on a bigger map, just use a mod.
 
Judikator said:
I highly doubt they will implement this in vanilla as that would decrease performance very significantly. Unless they somehow find a way to increase ingame performance. Iam playing on a 4000 and 2000 sized galaxy and the decrease in performance is very noticeable. Iam using a selfmade mod which is pretty easy to create and there are multiple mods out there that increase galaxy size as well. If you want to play on a bigger map, just use a mod.
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Ok, thanks. Can you please point me to a bigger map mod?
 
I'm rather sceptical in regards to the (normal) clusters of these (new) galaxies, but these L-clusters and L-gates are good ...

Had somebody mentioned, that here's a pretty good opportunity for a small rework in regards to fallen / awakened empires and crises ? ...
I can totally see, that such L-clusters could be the base-territory for the fallen / awakened empires or the prethoryn scourge / extradimensional invaders / contingency + the activation of these L-gates could trigger them.
 
Kayden_II said:
I'm rather sceptical in regards to the (normal) clusters of these (new) galaxies, but these L-clusters and L-gates are good ...

Had somebody mentioned, that here's a pretty good opportunity for a small rework in regards to fallen / awakened empires and crises ? ...
I can totally see, that such L-clusters could be the base-territory for the fallen / awakened empires or the prethoryn scourge / extradimensional invaders / contingency + the activation of these L-gates could trigger them.
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Beat me to the punch, this was a thought I had, while I doubt crises would spawn in the L-Cluster, it would be nice to see the Scourge or the Unbidden spawn there and use it as a staging point for a galactic invasion since the gate in the L-Cluster can access all other L-gates in the galaxy. The home front would have to defend against multiple invasion points at once while trying to mount a counter invasion. Would be a cool challenge.
 
jabbahutt said:
Thanks but they don't look like they actually increase the play field size...
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The play field size seems to be hard coded. At least i havent figured out how to enhance it further than the recommended size of 500. Recommended is about 460, because with higher values the galaxy tends to shaped more like a box rather than a circle. Nevertheless with more stars in the same room the galaxy effectively gets larger. Since there are more nodes for hyperlanes you will need more time to traverse the entire galaxy. And who cares about empty space anyway? More Stars = bigger Galaxy. Even though the map size is technically the same.
 
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