• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Stellaris Dev Diary #127 - Trade Value and Trade Routes

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we're going to continue talking about the 2.2 'Le Guin' update, on the topic of Trade Value and Trade Routes. As said before, we're not yet ready to reveal anything about when Le Guin is coming out, only that it's a long time away and we have many more topics to cover before then. Also as said before, screenshots will contain placeholder art and interfaces and non-final numbers.

Trade Value
Trade Value is a new value that's being added in the Le Guin update for non-Gestalt empires, representing the civilian and private-sector economies of these empires. All Pops generate a small amount of Trade Value based on their living standards, with higher living standard Pops generating more trade value, and is also produced by a number of different jobs such as Clerks and Merchants. Additionally, Trade Value can be found as deposits in space, representing various resources that don't have a direct industrial application but might still be desirable to your population (for a real-life example, think of things like as precious stones used in jewelry). Trade Value has no inherent purpose, but can be turned into other resources by being exploited, representing taxation and tariffs imposed on the civilian economy by an empire that has the necessary infrastructure in place to benefit from it.
2018_09_27_1.png

In order for Trade Value to count as exploited, it has to fulfill two conditions:

1) There must be an upgraded Starbase in range from the system to collect the Trade Value. By default, upgraded Starbases can only collect inside their own system, but their collection range can be extended by constructing additional Trade Hub modules, with each module extending the collection range by a single system up to a maximum of 6 hyperlane jumps away. You do not need to build an orbital station to collect trade value from planets - this is done automatically if it is in range of a collecting Starbase.

2) Once collected, Trade Value needs to be sent to your capital system. This will be done automatically if the Starbase collecting is located in said capital system, but otherwise the Starbase must be connected to the capital through a Trade Route (more on that below).

Trade Value that is successfully exploited will be converted into other resources (currently, trade value is turned into energy credits at a 1:1 conversion rate, but which exact resources it becomes is fully scriptable and may differ depending on your empire type) and added to your monthly income.
2018_09_27_1_2.png


Trade Routes
Trade Routes are paths are that used to connect remote Starbases to your capital in order to exploit the trade value collected there. Each upgraded Starbase can support a single Trade Route by connecting to another Starbase, which is where the first Starbase will send all of its collected trade value. For example, an empire might have a remote Starbase (we'll call it starbase A), which is sending trade value to another Starbase closer to the capital (starbase B), which in turn sends on both its collected trade and all trade sent to it by starbase A on to the capital. The player has full control over which Starbase sends its value where, and can redraw routes, though there may be an efficiency loss on a newly drawn route for a time.

This means that if starbase A collects a value of 10 from the systems around it, and starbase B collects 15, 10 value will be sent from A to B and all 25 combined value is then sent on to C (the capital) and is successfully exploited. Any trade value that fails to reach the capital, either because of lack of collection, lack of a route, or piracy (more on that below) is wasted - the empire gets no benefits from it - so it'll be especially important to ensure any populous colonies that are generating a lot of trade value are properly connected via trade routes to your capital.

Trades routes will have a special map filter showing routes, protection and piracy, and is also planned to be visualized inside the systems, but more on that later.
2018_09_27_2.png

(Ignore any weird visuals such as sector borders, it's just a bug)

Piracy and Trade Defense
Of course, all that lucrative merchandise being moved through space won't exactly go unnoticed by the less savory elements of your empire. Over time, piracy will begin to accumulate along trade routes, especially routes with a high degree of trade value moving through them. For each system with piracy that the trade route passes through, a certain amount of the trade value will be lost. To combat piracy, an empire can make use of a combination of Starbases and fleet Patrols. All upgraded Starbases will have a trade protection value, that is essentially a minimum amount of trade value that will always make it through any system under their protection, regardless of the level of piracy (representing heavily escorted merchant convoys). By default, this trade protection is only for the system they are located in, but can be extended to additional systems by building defensive modules such as Hangar Bays.
2018_09_27_3.png


Additionally, any military fleet can be given orders to patrol a route between two Starbases to actively eliminate pirates and reduce the amount of piracy in the systems. The old system of spawning pirate ships in empty systems adjacent to your empire will also change - instead, pirate fleets may spawn in systems where a large amount of trade value is being lost to pirates. Overall, pirate fleets is something you will experience less often and can actively work to prevent, but will be more of an actual threat when they do spawn. We will most likely keep some sort of penalty for having a sprawling empire with a lot of unprotected connections, possibly by simply raising the amount of piracy experienced along your trade routes, or some sort of efficiency penalty. We may also have a system similar to the old pirates for Gestalts, since they do not have access to Trade Value or Trade Routes.
2018_09_27_4.png

(Yes, we know the grammar/spelling is wrong, no need to point it out - the icons are also placeholders)

That's all for today! Next week we're continuing to talk about the Le Guin update, on the topic of Decisions and Planetary Bombardment

EDIT: Since it keeps being asked, at this point we are not ready to talk about how trade trades/trade agreements with other empires will work, only that they will exist in some form.
 
Last edited:
Huh. Forget Le Guin being like Victoria 2, when Victoria 3 comes out, it'll be like Le Guin :D

Scaled up amount of resources, and districts and buildings in every province? Yes please! :D
With proper logistics (coal actually have to reach your steel mills) and civil merchant fleets (carts/cars/trucks included). That would be awesome.

And in the completely wrong forum.
 
For the gestalt empires I think it would be really cool to have some kind of rogue parasitic/rogue drone issue in place of piracy. For that to work though you'd need to have something in place of trade for hive minds, which personally I would call a resource distribution network. Profit from good networks could be from increased hive efficiency for better distributed resources, instead of being called trade profit it could be called something like efficiency bonus. Then some drones malfunction all the time and feed off the distribution network and the more unchecked they are the more they grow in numbers until a fleet appears and the greater the penalty to the efficiency bonus.

However as I write this I also realise it might be better to not have trade at all and balance it with some other bonus' and have a separate challenge for the gestalt empires that enhances their uniqueness. however I do think this idea would work for gestalt quite well. Hives would need to move resources around in order to meet the needs of its drones and projects. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the end product of 2.2 whatever happens, but I do feel there could be a place for a trade-like system for hives.
 
For the gestalt empires I think it would be really cool to have some kind of rogue parasitic/rogue drone issue in place of piracy. For that to work though you'd need to have something in place of trade for hive minds, which personally I would call a resource distribution network. Profit from good networks could be from increased hive efficiency for better distributed resources, instead of being called trade profit it could be called something like efficiency bonus. Then some drones malfunction all the time and feed off the distribution network and the more unchecked they are the more they grow in numbers until a fleet appears and the greater the penalty to the efficiency bonus.

However as I write this I also realise it might be better to not have trade at all and balance it with some other bonus' and have a separate challenge for the gestalt empires that enhances their uniqueness. however I do think this idea would work for gestalt quite well. Hives would need to move resources around in order to meet the needs of its drones and projects. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the end product of 2.2 whatever happens, but I do feel there could be a place for a trade-like system for hives.
Hiveminds have "rogue drone" pirates now and the dev diary explicitly states they'll probably keep those.
 
This trade mechanic looks nice! I would like to see in it a greater difference between liberal or socialist economy then we previously had on other versions. For example, non-optimized trade routes could pop-up spontaneously if you're in a liberal economy, while socialists could have to create their own, but it would cost them a fair amount of credits. Also, you could have pop lifestyle (I think it's how you call it in English, I'm playing in French) that costs you "trade ressource", and which could also be covered up just by exploiting trade in the system. It could make really interesting gameplay as an empire which as just lost a war could sign a free-trade treaty with others, in the hope that someone come to exploit its ressources, effectively allowing him to augment the lifestyle of his people from, like, poor, to decent. It could really give a player the feeling he is building an economic empire in all the galaxy, building a United-States like network of trade that is sucking all the "trade ressource" from the neighboring empire, with everybody getting dependent of the lifestyle he generate in their empire while his own pops lifestyle would be utopic.

P.S. Don't judge my English to severely, please... :)

You should check out how Utopian abundance works now. Unemployed pops generate unity (and Wiz said science as well, at least in their current non-final build that isn't shown here). Every pop has exactly the same political power, and will generate a lot of trade value from the consumer goods consumption. Wiz said they are playing with the idea of transforming trade value to things like consumer goods or alloys, but they will have to test how that plays.


We don't know much about trade between empires yet, but it would definitely be awesome to have a CB that forces empires to open trade in some way.

Regardless, what you are asking for sounds like it *should* be moddable in the new system, although I'm not sure about the CBs.
 
will patrol ships on trade routes effect speed of game? Cuz every ship we send to patrol will consume ram or etc.Do you guys test it? if it will add mor lag to the game you can make patrols via imagination or on paper.For example build patrol ships on planet on paper and it says you got xxx numbers of ships and protected xxx trade value etc.So no unnecessarily lag ...
 
Sorry if this has been answered already.

Will there be a visual representation / eye candy other than trade routes on maps? Having some moving trade ships would be a great chance to enhance immersion, in an otherwise very static universe.
 
Sorry if this has been answered already.

Will there be a visual representation / eye candy other than trade routes on maps? Having some moving trade ships would be a great chance to enhance immersion, in an otherwise very static universe.


My memory may bretray me , but they liked the idea, but i'm not sure they will be able to . it may be added by mods atm .

but the answers (seems) to be no ( if i remember right from the dev stream, and forum) .

ps. you may prefer looking in one of the first "show leguin" streams.
 
My memory may bretray me , but they liked the idea, but i'm not sure they will be able to . it may be added by mods atm .

but the answers (seems) to be no ( if i remember right from the dev stream, and forum) .

ps. you may prefer looking in one of the first "show leguin" streams.

It would be a shame to leave this out. The galaxy does need more life in it than random space whales.
 
index.php

(Ignore any weird visuals such as sector borders, it's just a bug)

This image was already showing at that date the problems with auto-generated sectors that we still suffer today. It would be useful if the player could redraw the sectors as he wants by adding and removing planets.
 
It would be useful if the player could redraw the sectors as he wants by adding and removing planets.

Sectors are having issues, but this wasn't the solution before, and it hasn't suddenly become any better than it was. Sectors should be treated like duchies in CK2 or states in EU4, where they are a general unit of galactic geography and fixed to the map. Instead of sectors being sub-national entities which you by definition cannot control all of, they would be groups of planets that are assigned on day one and cannot be added to or removed from.

That would be way better. No more choices over what goes in a sector or not, no more settling worlds in a particular order to make the sector capital a particular planet. And it would be more consistent with sci-fi. If you look at Star Wars, they refer to the Core Worlds, the Outer Rim, etc, and they aren't defined as being "around this planet" or "wherever Coruscant decides they start and end". The Outer Rim is always the same set of planets, no matter what happens.
 
States aren't fixed geographical features and neither are borders. They can and should shift according to the whims of the player. Just compare a map of the world circa 1900 vs 2000 to see how borders and capitals can change.
 
States aren't fixed geographical features and neither are borders. They can and should shift according to the whims of the player. Just compare a map of the world circa 1900 vs 2000 to see how borders and capitals can change.

They are somewhat geographical though, you seem to think they would change a lot faster than they actually do. These aren't borders of a "this is where France ends and Germany begins and the moment they go to war they change", sort. Sectors should be more like saying "New England" or "Scottish Highlands". If the countries owning those areas collapsed tomorrow, they wouldn't change in shape or size. The size of New England wouldn't change even if Canada owned Maine and Vermont, and Rhode Island declared independence.
 
They are somewhat geographical though, you seem to think they would change a lot faster than they actually do. These aren't borders of a "this is where France ends and Germany begins and the moment they go to war they change", sort. Sectors should be more like saying "New England" or "Scottish Highlands". If the countries owning those areas collapsed tomorrow, they wouldn't change in shape or size. The size of New England wouldn't change even if Canada owned Maine and Vermont, and Rhode Island declared independence.
But countries change the size and number of their constituent regions/states to fit their purposes. Like the suggested splitting of California into three, or, in the history of my own country, splitting the ~16 voivodships into ~50, and then reverting it back to 16, years later after a regime change. Things like that should be in the discretion of the ruler of the empire, the player.
 
How about this: each time you would need a new sector, you can manually select the ‘center system’ of the sector, with the only restriction being that it is wothin two systems of whatever system you just colonized.
 
How about this: each time you would need a new sector, you can manually select the ‘center system’ of the sector, with the only restriction being that it is wothin two systems of whatever system you just colonized.
I've suggested this a few times but I think it would be much better to select "Sector Capital" systems every time you need a new sector.

Also as a mechanism for encouraging sectors without the arbitrary planet limit, I've suggested certain things should get more difficult if they're too far away from a capital. EG resource extraction etc.

Sector capitals would also work as the nodes for the trade network as opposed to arbitrary trade hub buildings that don't necessarily map onto the sectors.
 
States aren't fixed geographical features and neither are borders. They can and should shift according to the whims of the player. Just compare a map of the world circa 1900 vs 2000 to see how borders and capitals can change.
Who cares about the realism argument here? Let's not reinvent the wheel. Fixed states/duchies works in EU4, CK2, HoI4 and Vicky 2. There's no reason to not use them in Stellaris.
 
Who cares about the realism argument here? Let's not reinvent the wheel. Fixed states/duchies works in EU4, CK2, HoI4 and Vicky 2. There's no reason to not use them in Stellaris.
The difference is, that fixed states work in EU, CK and HOI because they reflect existing places. meanwhile the galaxy gets randomly generated each time you press play. There's no way it's gonna work nearly as well here.
 
The difference is, that fixed states work in EU, CK and HOI because they reflect existing places. meanwhile the galaxy gets randomly generated each time you press play. There's no way it's gonna work nearly as well here.

Why would that make it not work as well here? What actually changes just because the star systems are generated at the start of each game? Or do you think that there are actual technical limitations that the dev team can't overcome? If it's the latter, which I doubt, then so be it, but I don't at all follow the reasoning if it's the former.