Stellaris Dev Diary #128 - Decisions and Planetary Bombardment

[Zetesofos]

Man, can't wait for this updated, looks awesome!

@Wiz , out of curiosity, are they're any plans of increasing the total number of tradition trees for the base game? (7 feels a little low, wondering if 10-12 might allow one for each ethic, and cover a few other major factors of play, like governance).

 

[BoooooogieMan]

How does it affect Migration? If a planet has a huge migration pull and even a major devastation won't reduce it, then we may have a situation when POPs move to that planet just to get themselves killed in ongoing bombardment. In many situations this is not what we may want

Since overpopulation and missing amenicities makes people wanna leave, I would guess, they would all try to leave the planet

 

[TempusxX]

how will Armageddon bombardment work with this new system? Will we still be able to bomb a planet into a tomb world like we can now?

 

[laptor]

I like to hear about changes to Edicts / Desicions!

 

[fodazd]

The new Decisions sound interesting. Like some other people, I am hoping for an auto-renew option, or maybe a popup that lets me conveniently renew them when they are about to expire.

Bombardment still sounds a bit weird. Unless I have raiding (which might actually be good in 2.2 maybe?) or am FP/DE, I don't see much incentive to bother with it for more than the short amount of time until my transports arrive. If I have to spend resources to fix the damage I did once it is conquered, then I would probably actively avoid doing it.

I am also curious about traditions.

 

[Kaj Sotala]

I'm all for Traditions getting a more complex overhaul with more tradition swaps or mutually-exclusive trees or something. But until we know more, complaining that that Tradition is "out of place for pacifists/egalitatians" or "regressive" sort of misses the point.

I wasn't complaining; I was pointing out that it sure seems like a hint that a teaser of a "tradition rework" would contain no suggestions of any major changes but would show a tradition that seemed out-of-place for several ethics.

Yes, the Domination tree has been there all along. But the fact that they'd specifically highlight that particular part of the traditions, while also hinting of major changes of which there were no other hints, sure feels like it might suggest something.

 

[Amorenkaire]

Yeah, the planetary rework mechanics have gone through some iterations since the dev diaries. I'm going to talk about it more on stream today.

How will that impact habitats then, since their main feature was unusually high infrastructure for their pop/size?

Also land clearance's tool tip still says it increases the size of the planet by one, shouldn't it be changed to say it increases the maximum number of districts possible by 1, since size and district number are separate (albeit dependent) values?

 

[SapphireFox]

It looks like the art for the Supremacy tree has been completely changed as well as a few from the other traditions. Color me curious as to the possible changes from that.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I wasn't complaining; I was pointing out that it sure seems like a hint that a teaser of a "tradition rework" would contain no suggestions of any major changes but would show a tradition that seemed out-of-place for several ethics.

Yes, the Domination tree has been there all along. But the fact that they'd specifically highlight that particular part of the traditions, while also hinting of major changes of which there were no other hints, sure feels like it might suggest something.

I guess it depends on how you interpret it. I took it at face value-- with the mechanical changes elsewhere, they're changing what Traditions do what. Crime is a re-emphasized form of Unrest, and forcefully suppressing Unrest fits well for the Domination tree.

If we saw more than just that teaser, maybe I'd feel better making guesses as to more sweeping changes- but for now we only know what we've been shown.

If anything, the most I'd speculate off this is that "Police State" doesn't exist as a civic anymore.

 

[Serenity84]

When a building slot becomes invalid due to no longer having the amount of Pops required for it to operate, the building occupying it will become Ruined.

That seems a bit backwards. In reality it's more common to have enough workers but destroyed factories. And workers are much easier to replace than infrastructure

Judgement Corps should be locked behind Authoritarianism. It makes sense there, but is badly out of place when you play a free society. And that it's in the Domination tree is no excuse as there is strong incentive to get all traditions anyways.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

When a planet gets bombarded it will suffer Devastation. Devastation ticks up from 0 up to 100, and is a direct penalty to your planet’s housing, amenities, trade value and pop growth. Clearing Devastation will take time and cost resources, as one would expect.

Does the rate of Devastation build-up depend on the size of the colony? Does the size of the colony affect the cost of removing Devastation?

I'm a little concerned that it might take exactly the same amount of bombardment to ruin a colony that has just been established and a size-25 planet-spanning city world that took hundreds of years to build. Also that cleaning up the ruined baby colony will be just as expensive as cleaning up the planet-spanning city world.

 

[Sigma 582]

How will that impact habitats then, since their main feature was unusually high infrastructure for their pop/size?

Also land clearance's tool tip still says it increases the size of the planet by one, shouldn't it be changed to say it increases the maximum number of districts possible by 1, since size and district number are separate (albeit dependent) values?

planet size is exactly limit on total number of districts you can build. while each district type (except city) have its own cap based on available deposits, total number of districts is limited by planet size.

Also, +1 size (and even +2) seems rather weak and not worth an ascension perk.

 

[FleetingRain]

What does planet size do?

 

[Mr Thursday]

The bling on the alien tentacle ring icon seems offset from the gem stone. Is this intentional and can it be modded to be more centered?

 

[James Fire]

planet size is exactly limit on total number of districts you can build. while each district type (except city) have its own cap based on available deposits, total number of districts is limited by planet size.

Also, +1 size (and even +2) seems rather weak and not worth an ascension perk.

+1 on every one of the 30 planets you own is a whole nother planet that doesn't give you any more planet-based penalties.

 

[sortulv]

The bling on the alien tentacle ring icon seems offset from the gem stone. Is this intentional and can it be modded to be more centered?

Isn't this were the light touches the stone? Seems good to me....

 

[fodazd]

+1 on every one of the 30 planets you own is a whole nother planet that doesn't give you any more planet-based penalties.

...Except when empire size penalties are calculated per district instead of per planet, bonuses of these types (Mastery of Nature, Master Builders) suddenly become a lot less good.

 

[James Fire]

...Except when empire size penalties are calculated per district instead of per planet, bonuses of these types (Mastery of Nature, Master Builders) suddenly become a lot less good.

...right. Well damn.

 

[XT-489]

"Pop growth reduction: +3%"

Can you please avoid such double-negatives? It's mind-bogling.

"Pop growth: -3%" or similar is easier to grasp.

 

[Philadelphus]

Glad to hear about the tradition rework. I think it might be interesting if Stellaris, having copied a great mechanic from Civ V, could also take a page out of Beyond Earth's book and make it so that you unlock ascension perks for every six tradition slots you unlock (counting unlocking a tradition tree itself as one), rather than only when you finish a tree (there could still be bonuses for finishing the trees as incentive to do so). The current way penalizes mixing and matching tradition trees, which is often what I find myself wanting to do in a game. Still, I'm sure whatever you guys come up with will be good.