Stellaris Dev Diary #139 - 2.2.x post-launch patch

[Andrzej I]

What has EU4 got to do with this? If it is really necessary to get ideas from other paradox games, I think it is better to look at HOI, the development, construction and retrofitting of ships offers a lot more strategic flexibility in that game, in others it is just the choice build now or later. Mostly I just want a more engaging game, for this to work existing mechanics need to change, be expanded upon and more interlinked.

Despite all the dlc and patches stellaris still feels quite shallow there are not many strategies to pursue, no real mutual exclusive choices to be made. The most profound choices you can make are the ascension paths and what kind of empire you start with (robot, biological, hive, etc.). On top of that the most important strategy is making sure you have the biggest fleet possible, all choices need to be made serving this purpose. If there was a bit more leeway of this by maybe giving land armies bigger roles or limiting the effectiveness of your fleets, wars wouldn't need to be that one sided, more engaging and it would allow for more roleplay.

Definitely agreed on all points. It's a major reason why I hope that leaders will get fleshed out with a bit more life, too, allowing for engaging mechanics during peace and making each game a little more distinct from the last with the way leaders would interact with the state (and perhaps each other?). As @Bearjuden has just suggested above, perhaps there could be disloyal admirals if their aims do not align with the state, or scientists of a Spiritualist state secretly researching sentient AI.

Shifting away from mechanics during peace, I feel like there could stand to be more nuance for ships as well, definitely agreed there. As it stands, it's far too easy to build a rather monotonous fleet of one design per class, constantly upgrading the ships to the same form. As you suggested earlier, perhaps some modules or hulls could be locked in, allowing for distinct designs to form ("Oh, that's a Mercedes Romero-class cruiser, it's a design from 2240!"), giving more variation to fleets. Perhaps if there were game rules, this could be one.

 

[Parmenedes]

It’s nice to see this, and thanks for the update. Although to me (not saying this is the most important aspect to others), trade route patrols are far and away the most glaring thing that needs to be fixed. Please change this from being actual fleets that take up space in the fleet manager and that constantly have to be tweaked in annoying ways into an interface-based change, as has been suggested in numerous threads, and/or polish it in other ways.

Also... sectors. I honestly don’t even know where to begin here, but there has been tons of feedback on the forums about what’s wrong with them and suggestions to make them better, or at least to make some kind of sense.

Lastly, please please please add the ability or option to adjust starting policies and species rights from the empire creation screen *before starting a game* so that we don’t have to tweak that stuff every time we start a new game. That would be a nice bit of polish that I’m surprised wasn’t added months or years ago.

I believe that once 2.2 gets polished a bit more, it will definitely be the best iteration of Stellaris and am looking forward to seeing it get more fleshed out.

Thanks!

 

[Ingros]

• Making admiral experience a thing again (I know it technically is, but...come on, it's negligible) and admiral levels consequential, so a smaller fleet with a better admiral stands a better chance.
• Adding positioning penalties for having lots of ships in one battle (even if they are in multiple fleets) so that while each additional ship helps, you get diminishing returns.
• Making powerful admirals with lots of ships big political problems, especially if disloyal and/or friendly with the enemy (this would obviously require two big overhauls, one each for politics and characterization).

All would help, I think. I'm sure there's other stuff but this is what occurs to me.

I would also add more crew levels and more impact on the ships... hell maybe add some captains with certain boni as flavor

 

[Ridixo]

There really isn't anything wrong with it. We can already change world preference, add stacking habitability bonuses, and terraform all by the mid game. Just look at what all the other unremovable civics give you and compare them to post-apocalyptic and you can see how the latter is subpar. It doesn't even give you a size 25 planet like life-seeded does. You get +10 to leader life and +70% habitability to tomb-worlds, which are rare compared to most other planet types anyway, so it is a really weak civic.

And that is my point. Where is the big problem, the awful bug? I get that now your species habitability trait is based in the type of homeworld, so tomb world give you tombworld habitability. That is a bug bot no one who needs to eliminate a accidental perk for you species as part of its fix.

Machine empires have different mechanics, but everyone else have only 3 classes of planets in the yellow/green, while Tomb World Adaptation gives you all. That's a lot. That's not even something you could get to with techs, in most cases you'll have class mismatch below 50%

In this case you can only change the Tomb habitability trait to give, lets say, 35-40% habitability is all the other planets. Tomb world habitability is a good trait. Getting for free is very good but it is not OP in that a empire with it is steamrolling the rest of the galaxy 25 years into the game. That is why i see wrong take it away of a species with the survivor civic, i am using it in my current game and it is not that OP because habitability is no longer a concern. Prior 2.2, when habitability capped the species happiness, yeah it could be OP. Now habitability rating just affect the services a pop consumes, not the big deal.

 

[ouimet1p]

Hello everyone!

The Pops tab is also being cleaned up a little, and you’ll now be able to prioritize one job per strata, which should make it easier to make your workers prioritize farming without having to juggle the priorities of other jobs in the same strata. The ability to “star” a job was actually the original design, but it was changed into an on/off prioritization.

View attachment 444482​

Planet view work in progress, prone to change. In this picture we can see that it's now possible to see down-prioritized jobs and starred jobs.​

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Grekulf,

Thank you very much for the Dev diary and for all your hard work making Stellaris a fantastic game. So far I've enjoyed 2.2 much more then I thought I would and I think it very much a worthy addition to the game, even if some things still need some work. That being said, please please please stop hiding the pops. Before 2.2 I could open up the planet screen and see the planet, it's infrastructure and its people interacting with this infrastructure. Now, when I open up the planet I see the infrastructure, in a separate sub-screen there are the wonderful new planet features, and in a completely different tab I can go see the people of my empire. Under the proposed UI revision I would need to open yet a further sub-tab to see the people of my empire.

Must I have an empire with no people? I understand you want to add functionality and streamline the user interface, but perhaps we could have somewhere where we see the pops, the infrastructure and the planet features all interacting with each other graphically? Please? This could be a completely different tab and the people who don't need the emotional tie to their population could ignore it, but for me graphical representation drives story telling. In 2.2 as it is the story of building new worlds for my people to inhabit is all but gone. I do not see them, so they do not exist. In their place there are spreadsheets of facts and icons of buildings. This is wonderfully fitting for a machine empire but I generally do not play machines, nor am I one. I need to see people to connect with them emotionally. Thank you for any notice you take of this feedback. I look forward to all the wonderful things that 2019 will bring the game!

 

[Sifer2]

Kind of surprising there is no mention of them overhauling Sectors. That struck me as the most immediately broken/unfinished thing in 2.2 patch. The game is almost unplayable late game with a large empire unless you pause, and don't mind clicking to build 20 something buildings manually every 5 minutes or so. I don't intend to come back to the game until they bring some kind of stockpile/autobuild to new sectors.

 

[BlackholePD]

Big discussion on reddit at the moment about that trade UI bug.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/ak2hbp/i_was_unprepared_for_my_neighbouring_empires/

Someone is saying it's to do with having a resource at zero. If so then that might explain why it seems to occur more frequently with the list on the side of the AI empires. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?

 

[BlackholePD]

Big discussion on reddit at the moment about that trade UI bug.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/ak2hbp/i_was_unprepared_for_my_neighbouring_empires/

Someone is saying it's to do with having a resource at zero. If so then that might explain why it seems to occur more frequently with the list on the side of the AI empires. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?

@Jamor @grekulf I can confirm that this seems to be the case. Last time I reported this I was told that the issue was in there not being a reliable way to reproduce the glitch, but having just attempted a trade with 0 of a resource (in my case, minerals), and then purchasing some minerals on the market and trying again, at first I experienced the bug on my side of the menu UI and the second time it disappeared.

Assuming that was non-coincidental, then it would seem that this bug affects the dropdown menu on the trade UI of an empire that has zero of a given resource. It happens more often with the AI because they are more likely to have poor economies, I would imagine.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Machine empires have different mechanics, but everyone else have only 3 classes of planets in the yellow/green, while Tomb World Adaptation gives you all. That's a lot. That's not even something you could get to with techs, in most cases you'll have class mismatch below 50%

That really is a moot point, all things considered. First and foremost, terraforming isn't even expensive anymore. It costs anywhere from 2k-10k energy to terraform a planet, and that 10k is only for fixing a tomb world or upgrading a planet to a gaia/hive/machine world, planet preference can be changed at no trait cost, and species of other planet preferences can be added to your empire with or without going to war. With techs and 2 trait points you can give yourself at least +30% habitability, raising the most incompatible preferences to 50% and the rest to 70-100%, and a single tech raises tomb world habitability by 20%. Even if you don't take steps to mitigate poor habitability, which is very easy to mitigate, the penalties don't mean much, especially now that it does not affect pop growth. Even pre 2.2 I ignored habitability at no significant penalty. It was all about getting planets with at least 20 tiles, but now that tiles are gone and even a size 12 planet can be expected to fill out all of those building slots there is even less reason to consider habitability unless you took Life-Seeded, in which case yes, 0% habitability across several planets does actually impact your economy in the early game.

People focus way to much on habitability. At best it drains consumer goods early game, but that can be offset by a couple extra artisans (easy to do if you colonize all those lower habitability planets) or just buy some extra consumer goods while you wait for your terraforming techs to kick in. My biggest problem with the post-apocalyptic civic is it is comically underpowered compared to all the other civics that cannot be added or removed post game start. Having it grant Tomb World Preference instead of +70% habitability to tomb worlds only would make it cool and offer some semblance of a bonus (+10 leader life is not a bonus if you have to permanently lock a civic to get it, especially when you get can +20 leader life with 1 trait point).

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I wholeheartly agree. More strategy besides having the stronger fleet would be welcome.

Unfortunately, i have little ideas about how. Space has no terrain features and logistic is hard to implement.

I know of two 1developer games which implemented decent logistic systems into space games. I disagree with your statement.

• Making admiral experience a thing again (I know it technically is, but...come on, it's negligible) and admiral levels consequential, so a smaller fleet with a better admiral stands a better chance.
• Adding positioning penalties for having lots of ships in one battle (even if they are in multiple fleets) so that while each additional ship helps, you get diminishing returns.
• Making powerful admirals with lots of ships big political problems, especially if disloyal and/or friendly with the enemy (this would obviously require two big overhauls, one each for politics and characterization).

All would help, I think. I'm sure there's other stuff but this is what occurs to me.

Do you mean the Force Disparity Combat Bonus, which is already implemented?

In my opinion the combat model just needs to be scrapped and redone. It should allow for the player with the fleet more suitable to the situation to win, not for the player with the bigger fleet to win. I agree with the idea that terrain should matter more.

 

[Shirasik]

I agree with the idea that terrain should matter more.

As well as formations, order of engagement and other stuff that isn't implemented at all. Ships just rushing to battle and that's all.

 

[FIBBIDEH]

Pop Growth
We’ve heard your concerns about how pop growth currently functions, and how it in some cases can create situations that feel wrong. We will be adjusting how pops are chosen for growth, and try to avoid having pops move to, or being chosen for growth, on planets where they have a very low habitability. I feel like moving pops to those planets should be based more on player choice.

Why isn't population growth a policy to be set by the player?

The default setting could be based off of population ratios, example a planet with 9 of pop A and 1 of pop B will eventually grow into a planet with 90 of pop A and 10 of pop B. This would make sense from an ethics standpoint. Xenophobic pop growth policy could have a +20% growth to the primary species and -20% to foreign species, the neutral setting will have no leaning toward one species or the other, and the xenophile policy can be the "all pops MUST be equal" system we have now.

This can tie into the faction happiness system as well.

 

[Wurutana]

Hello Paradox, first of all let me say that the game is awesome...all of my request here are done by a perfectly satisfied gamer of this game ;-)
There a couple of things I'd like you Devs take note:

First of all the performance. I'm referring to the stutter that occurs while the time passes every 4-5 days. I've read that it is related to market; I don't know if it is real but I don't want to sacrifce one aspecto of gameplay in order to resolve some issue with the game itself. And don't blame my rig, Intel 7820x and 1080ti and 16GB RAM are way above the "bare necessities" of this game. I ask only ofr a little refining of this aspect.

Second in line the starbases. I love the idea of a bulwark of power for the most strategical important systems, but two aspect of this fact mu st be tuned for my little opinion. First the possibility of destroying them...I know I know that they are the "pin" on which is based the system control, but you should allow during battles to choose if the fleet must attack in order to "Conquer" it or to "Destroy" that base, maybe with a stance in the fleet behavior screen...and if the station is not destroyed needs to be conquered with troops as planet; we are talking of MASSIVE citadels after all...however thesecond thing about Starbases is MUCH more important for me...CONFIGURABLE Starbase...yeah, there platform, but I'd like to also change weapons that are automatically put on the station. I like the aspect of using uno weapon or another based on MY preferencies. Also the platforms need fixing cause they are sometimes glitching throug the starbase and moving in a not so clear way during battles.

These are some of my suggestions that would make the game abolutely perfect to me, scoring from 99,8 tu 99,9 [I'd give 100% to Stellaris 2 XD]; meanwhile tehre are some minor glitches as the names of the plasma weapon or some other little stuff, but I hoper that are in the way of beeing changed in the next patch...I hope that my thred will be read by you and take seriuosly...by bye

[Sorry for double-posting, but I don't know where I can be heard]

 

[FiddleSticks96]

In the spirit of performance improvements, whenever I toggle "opinion mode" in the galaxy view anytime except the early game the game violates my frame rate and I can never show you where . Nothing in this game slows my computer down more than the opinion mode with the exception of a CTD. Even the performance nosedives in 2.2.0 didn't lag the game like opinion mode. I don't know what is going on with this process but it drops my FPS to 10 or below. This isn't really a priority as far as I'm concerned, but it has been around since at least 1.8.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I know of two 1developer games which implemented decent logistic systems into space games. I disagree with your statement.

Describe then.

 

[Picard 359]

Please Fix in-game performance when planet and building GUI is open in mine games it slow down to crazy level after I open a planet view especially when building tab is open after v2.2 not on begin in mind and late game I play with tail empire about 120 planets
Mine PC is notebook ThinkPad E540 I7 4702QM, 12 GB RAM, SSD, Nvidia Geforce 740M 2GB

 

[Kayden_II]

Pop Growth
We’ve heard your concerns about how pop growth currently functions, and how it in some cases can create situations that feel wrong. We will be adjusting how pops are chosen for growth, and try to avoid having pops move to, or being chosen for growth, on planets where they have a very low habitability. I feel like moving pops to those planets should be based more on player choice.

NEW_POP_SPECIES_DIV = 0.5 # The higher this is, the more planets will tend to grow species that are underrepresented on the planet
(If you want to run a "logical" simulation then this has to be erased / changed + If any, this belongs into a new type of policy or species-right etc. pp.) ...
NEW_POP_SPECIES_RANDOMNESS = 1.0 # The higher this is, the more random species selection of new pops will be
(Dito as above (first part)) ...

NEW_POP_HABITABILITY_THRESHOLD = 0.6 # If habitability is under this, apply exponentinally increasing penalties to new pop weight
(This is a part to run a "logical" simulation, but I would have expected: 0.8 (exact climate-match)) ...
NEW_POP_HOMEWORLD_MULT = 2 # Pops have increased weight for growing on their homeworld
(Dito as above (first part)) ...
NEW_POP_GROWTH_MOD_MULT = 0.66 # How much does species growth mod trait matter for new pop weight
(Dito as above (first part), but does this consider all the positive growth-traits as well as all the negative ones ?) ...
NEW_POP_IMMIGRATION_MOD_MULT = 1 # How much does species immigration growth mod trait matter for new pop weight (when there is immigration)
(Dito as above (first part), but does this consider all the positive immigration-traits as well as all the negative ones ?) ...

By the way no. 01, why you don't consider A. the world-preference of a species + B. the amount of positive / negative traits (or better: trait-points) of a species ? ...

By the way no. 02, could someone explain the following stuff ?:
NEW_POP_EXACT_SPECIES_WEIGHT = 0.5 # The higher this is, the more new pops will be weighted by number of exact same species Pops
(Represents this the "overrepresentation" of a species on a colony since if yes then this would also be a part of a "logical" simulation, but shouldn't this be setted higher ?) ...
NEW_POP_SAME_SPECIES_WEIGHT = 1.0 # The higher this is, the more new pops will be weighted by number of same or subspecies Pops
(Represents this the "overrepresentation" of a species + its sub-species on a colony since if yes then this would also be a part of a "logical" simulation, but it should be higher, too ?) ...
NEW_POP_SLAVERY_WEIGHT = 0.5 # The higher this is, the more new pops will tend to be balanced between enslaved and non-enslaved species
(The explanation of this is pretty confusing: How I have to adjust this to get more (respectively fewer) slaves or better: Is it possible to adjust this, that it's "deactivated" ?) ...

By the way no. 03, if you want a "dynamical" simulation then ...
A. The first of the following lines has to be higher than the second one:
OVERCROWDING_NO_GROWTH_THRESHOLD = 1.5
OVERCROWDING_DECLINE_THRESHOLD = 2.0
B. In compensation to A., I recommend, that the first of the following lines has to be higher than the second one, too:
BASE_POP_GROWTH = 3
BASE_POP_DECLINE = 5

Ship Upgrade
I think the experience of upgrading ships could be better, as it feels a bit awkward that cancelling your upgrade at 99% doesn’t actually leave any ships upgraded. I want to address that by making each ship upgrade individually, one at a time, and that this process should make use of multiple shipyards in the same starbase. This should mean that if you cancel a fleet upgrade at 50%, roughly half of the ships will still be upgraded. We’ll also take a look at tweaking the upgrade costs and time.

Perfect.

Planet View

The Pops tab is also being cleaned up a little, and you’ll now be able to prioritize one job per strata, which should make it easier to make your workers prioritize farming without having to juggle the priorities of other jobs in the same strata. The ability to “star” a job was actually the original design, but it was changed into an on/off prioritization.

A bit incomplete / underwhelming / half-cooked ...
01. I would expect to be able to prioritize the stratas, somewhat like this:

02. I would expect to be able to prioritize (all) the jobs, somewhat like this:

03. Something to save / load such template(s).

We’re planning to release a definitive 2.2.x version at the end of the post-launch support period, before all of us start working on The Next Cool Thing™.

"Edited": How long is this post-launch-support-period ?

 

[Vielmann]

I would like if the buildings window in the planet view was more of a list. Something like this:

I Capital U D
I Research Lab

I T1 3 U + -
I T2 1 U + D
I T3 0 + D // This in grey cause none build​

I Gene Clinics Build // Here a list with the buildable buildings

I = Icon
U = Upgrade
D = Demolish/Downgrade

I can see several advantages for something like this:

• A lot less clicking
• You don't need to search the buildings list if you have already build something
• It would be possible to add something like a size for buildings
  
• Differing amounts of buildings depending on planet would be possible without screwing with the UI
• It's possible to autosort this list which would help with OCD

Edit: I don't know how to whitespace, so its a bit messy :/

 

[Vaelrisian93]

An idea I would like to see added to the game at some point is a galactic history tab that shows all information for each war that occurs in the galaxy, as well as when new empires were founded, empires were destroyed, and when empires changed government types and names. It would greatly help people who like writing after-action reports.

 

[Nuboed]

Oooh i want it!!