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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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Tarakia said:
Personally, I love the idea of the L-cluster as its like the milky way's small Magellanic cloud, and that as a random chance (like the Virgil achievement species/anomaly) that something has been held in there, and that the sabotaging of the L-Gates might be due to a ancient empire trying to keep something locked away, or that there is something like in the Horizon story pack that is trying to get species/players to find them. But if there is some sort of alien beast hidden in there that when you open the L-gates there that the alien will destroy whatever you have in the system that it's in and move through the gate rampaging across the galaxy (like the shroud!), but maybe there is just a bigger Dimensional horror there and a massive multi-empire fleet(s) are sent in there to deal with it! who knows? all I know is the modding community on steam is going to love this.
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These would all be very interesting scenarios for modders to try out. Another scenario I had talked about earlier here was some empire using the L-Cluster as a sanctuary after an end-game crisis destroys most of the galaxy, closing off the L-Cluster so that whatever is attacking cannot reach them. While I had mainly talked about it in reference the player could do if they trigger something like the End of the Cycle, it would also be really interesting if you found a fallen empire in the L-Cluster, secluded from the rest of the galaxy for countless millennia and only now opening up due to the intrusion of new explorers.
 
spendabuck said:
These would all be very interesting scenarios for modders to try out. Another scenario I had talked about earlier here was some empire using the L-Cluster as a sanctuary after an end-game crisis destroys most of the galaxy, closing off the L-Cluster so that whatever is attacking cannot reach them. While I had mainly talked about it in reference the player could do if they trigger something like the End of the Cycle, it would also be really interesting if you found a fallen empire in the L-Cluster, secluded from the rest of the galaxy for countless millennia and only now opening up due to the intrusion of new explorers.
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Or, you start in the L-Cluster, and if you don't open the gateway yourself, it opens at some set time... To a galaxy that has been completely conquered by one of the 3 regular crises. But they only have 1 way into your territory, so you get to try to make footholds and retake the galaxy.
 
Ur-Quan Lord 13 said:
Or, you start in the L-Cluster, and if you don't open the gateway yourself, it opens at some set time... To a galaxy that has been completely conquered by one of the 3 regular crises. But they only have 1 way into your territory, so you get to try to make footholds and retake the galaxy.
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That sounds awesome!
 
G.JuliusCaesar said:
Bring back Warp and Warm hole tech. You've alienated a large portion of your players who will stop playing the game, including myself, until its brought back.
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Go to the discussion thread for that if you want to talk about it.
 
Tarakia said:
And isn't there mods for this stuff? I'm pretty sure it's on steam, and you Could just revert to 1.9

P.S. You spelled wormhole wrong.
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There are not mods. It is impossible for a mod to restore them, as the code that made them work is completely gone.
 
Wiz said:
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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Dosn't that mean that anybody can just make a mod ou of this feature and thus making it available for evryone?
 
Azedeco said:
Dosn't that mean that anybody can just make a mod ou of this feature and thus making it available for evryone?
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There are several features that modders could feasibly copy over the data for and release as a free mod. In this case, it would be the narrative events tied to the L-gates that are part of the DLC and then build a duplicate of the L-gate mechanics to stick those narrative events in. However, I suspect that such a mod would be quickly taken down since that's probably against Paradox modding policy.

Building your own network with your own events or mechanics tied to them is totally fine though.
 
Azedeco said:
Dosn't that mean that anybody can just make a mod ou of this feature and thus making it available for evryone?
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TheDarkMaster said:
There are several features that modders could feasibly copy over the data for and release as a free mod. In this case, it would be the narrative events tied to the L-gates that are part of the DLC and then build a duplicate of the L-gate mechanics to stick those narrative events in. However, I suspect that such a mod would be quickly taken down since that's probably against Paradox modding policy.
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If it becomes a mod it'll be like that short-lived sabaton music mod for HOIV on steam. it'll fringe on copyrights
 
Larz1695 said:
Every time I say to myself that's it Paradox! No more expansions for me! They dangle something like this in front of me and I say SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
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Not this time for me. The game is literally boring now with an AI so awful. I can read a scifi novel about cool stuff that doesn't affect "the game".
Like... do you really believe they are going to teach the AI how to exploit these new additions? No - at best they can distract you from the fact that there is no opposition in this space sim.
 
Opening a gate could be a hilarious way to start crises (especially if someone rushes to open it as soon as possible), or a crisis opens the gate from the other side if it remains closed by the endgame and uses the L-cluster as a staging area, making it necessary to go through the L gate to stop the crisis. Also the modding opportunities are endless
 
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