Stellaris Dev Diary #158 - Federation rework

[Duuk]

you can have a federation of spiritualistic empires without having special mechanics for it - if anything the Galactic Union (for a United collection of spiritualists) or Hegemony (like a papacy) or a militaristic alliance (like crusader states) cover most spiritualist type federations.

I feel people are getting too caught up in the prerequisites for founding a specialized federation (which isn’t the same as joining either) - a military alliances and science collaborations are more of a function than an ethic, as are hegemony and trade leagues. In Stellaris you get 3 ethics points, odds are you have access to at least one of the special federations

Roleplay and themes. You have a themed militarist federation, but spiritualists have to just shoehorn theirs into a generic one?

Keeping in mind that a text bug that says, "It's time to elect a new RULER" STILL DOESN'T USE THE RIGHT RULER TITLE since game version 1.0.

So it's not like Stellaris cares about making roleplay easier.

"Oh, I can just make a hegemony of spirtualist empires that use the psionic challenge, and the Federation Rule Title will be Supreme Arbiter."

10 years later:

"There is an election coming up to elect a new President."

 

[Dlin369]

Roleplay and themes. You have a themed militarist federation, but spiritualists have to just shoehorn theirs into a generic one?

I’m saying that each of the federation types aren’t really pigeonholed into one ethic - a military alliance can be pure militaristic aggression (for mainly militarists), one that pushes democracy (for egalitarians), one that pushes armed but friendly relations (for xenophiles), one that pushes religion (spiritualists), etc. I’d say that we should be looking at each federation type as filling in a role rather than advocating a specific ethic; military alliances for working together on your militaries, galactic unions for working together politically, trade leagues for combining trade, research groups for combining research efforts, and hegemonies as a less oppressive vassal system.

 

[Duuk]

And I'm saying that they rushed Lithoids and Federations and both came out half-cooked. Lithoids shipped with bugs that ruined what should have been an easy launch and skipped any Dev Diary hype time. Federations is almost certainly going to be released in early December, already looks half-cooked, and is almost certainly going to be Megacorp 2.0. The rushed launch schedule for these DLC did not need to happen.

I'm finding it VERY hard to be optimistic about Stellaris while I'm drooling over CK3 and how polished it already looks.

 

[Dzan]

Something is missing there are all the One Churches, Unions of the All-Galactic World, Xenophobic Enclaves, etc.
Cool federations can only be created by militarists, materialists, authoritarianists and corporations. Other ethics somehow cheated

 

[Ecervele]

We need a religious federation type!!!

*covenant intensifies*

 

[NilsFabian]

6. Fallen Empire/Khan Federation types

Those will be most likely Hegemony type Federations. With a succession rule you can't win

 

[Dryvus]

>Federation xp and levels

Gross, I hate it.

The rest is great.

 

[Heretic Saint]

This looks exciting, I'm certainly looking forward to this xpac.

I am also relieved that the "level ups" via "XP" aren't just a gamified achievement system, but actually just a badly chosen term for internal stability, and that federations can thus "de-level" as well. I very much agree with @benjaseth that more in-universe terms would make for better immersion. Or at least call it "stage" instead of level. Could probably rename XP to Cohesion as well, and just use Unity for Cohesion. We already have an empire-level currency that describes exactly the same thing; why call it something else for federations?

I'm hyped for the added management functionality, though I wish it would be possible to have more forms of Succession, specifically:

• Representative Democracy (Pop numbers),
• Weighted Voting, as proposed for the UNPA (balance between Pops and Strength),
• and Council Vote, where federation members would manually pick the next president (since for some reason the Favors system seems to be restricted to the galactic senate, the AI could just pick based on a combination of Opinion + Trust + proximity, maybe even influenced by Authority and/or empire traits and recent Events)

I suppose in the system as-is actual democratic voting could be represented just by picking the "Random" option, but it's kind of meh that we don't get an option to actually vote on the president. Would have been particularly nice for multiplayer games, but even in singleplayer I might like one empire more than another.

For Arena Combat, it would also be nice if Rulers could send one of their Generals as a proxy/champion, perhaps as a sub-setting to the primary option. Not sure if some of this could be modded?

An even cooler option for Challenge would be some sort of "tournament", where each member state sends a single ship worth a specific amount of military points for a deathmatch you could watch; it'd be like some sort of militarized racing car tuning challenge with people trying to build the best ship without going over the points limit. I understand that this would probably be way out of scope to implement, though.

Now we need an equivalent system to deal with Subjects...

One of my few but notable gripes with Stellaris is how each of these aspects has its own dedicated and completely segregated system, when they are all related levels of governance. Even the galactic senate is, technically speaking, just an opt-out federation that gets angry if non-members disregard their resolutions. Why can't normal federations apply such developments as well and, say, issue embargoes against empires who, for example, keep transgressing against their values? Happens in the real world all the time.

Planets in a sector, sectors and vassals to an empire, empires in a federation, and empires in the galactic union are all based on similar or identical types of interaction, but in the game they have all been constructed in complete isolation and end up looking different, each missing something another system has. Most damning, this segregation also makes it impossible or at least unnecessarily hard (for developers or modders, if they ever wanted to add this option) for these relationships to evolve/devolve into another, such as promoting sectors to vassal states (real world example: British Empire to Commonwealth), or breaking a single empire up into a federation of smaller states (real world example: Soviet Union to Russia).

It would have been nice if the Federations rework would have tackled a unification of these disparate systems.

The DLC still looks cool anyways, of course.

Given how there was an "Opposition" list in the tooltip of a law in one of the screenshots, I would imagine changing the federation laws so that you need psionics to make a bid for leadership will sour relations with non-psionic empires in the federation and might persuade some of them to leave.

It would be nice if - depending on the type of federation! - laws would actually have to be voted on by members, instead of federations imploding just because the previous option enabled someone to toggle a fait-accompli.

For something that is supposed to, in most cases, represent a democratic union, there seems to be an awful lack of democracy in these federations.

 

[Diezy]

Interesting, seems there'll be incentives for both the President to make the Federation nicer for the members, and for the members to conform and cooperate!

I'm curious what forms of political pressure there'll be, and if each member can make their Federation policy wishes transparent to the AI President.

 

[Make Victoria 3]

Keeping in mind that a text bug that says, "It's time to elect a new RULER" STILL DOESN'T USE THE RIGHT RULER TITLE since game version 1.0.

Are absolutly certain that this bug was indeed in the game since 1.0 because that would be absolutly ridiculous. (Started playing with version 1.8.? and thats probably also about the time where i played/tested democracies the last time).

 

[MGSteve]

Looks good and I'll no doubt get it the day it falls (unless I'm half way through a run at the moment).

But, please for the love of Zarqlan (all glory to Zarqlan!), please fix the Federation Fleet AI. The main reason I don't use Federations at the moment is that the AI is useless with a fleet. Its only any good if you control it. The AI will often warp back into your own space with the fleet and sit on your home planet whilst you struggle at the front. Whilst not Fderation related, it appears that if you create any subjects via a war, they never build up any fleets either.

I would be quite happy for this to be delayed if it mean sorting out the following high priority issues (as far as I'm concerned)

* Mid-End game lag. (Why does it keep shuffling pops around jobs every day - surely this doesn't help lag?)
* Friendly AI - They never adhere to a fleet with 'Follow me' set and often don't help out at all in a war
* Subjects - When created from a war, they never seem to rebuild their fleets at all, I've got two subjects who, despite me sending them 100 alloys a month for 30 years didn't build a single ship
* Trades, please add a way to cancel a trade (see point above).

Whilst I'm on it (and perhaps this could be part of Federations), it would be great if you could grant a tech to a subject or a federation. So many times I have a vassal / subject with deactivated gateways which never get activated. It would be great if as their overlord you could gift them the tech, or simply, activate them yourself.

Don't get me wrong, I love Stellaris and love the sound of federations, but I just wish you'd pay some attention to the current issues before adding more content on top of a game that has some really annoying flaws.

 

[Make Victoria 3]

Can there also be diplomatic relations between federations like non aggression pacts or research agreements and methods to unite different federations in case a sufficient threat (game crisis or genocidal human player) appears?

 

[Methone]

Those will be most likely Hegemony type Federations. With a succession rule you can't win

Why would they be federations at all? Right now Awakened Empires force you into a special Subject, as does the Khan.

 

[CanonOverseer]

Will you be able to reform federation types? (eg starting as a martial alliance then to a galactic union) (or atleast in commands)

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Then why don't research societies, whose entire motif is academic research and debate, have an election mechanic about "Breakthrough Science Challenge" or "Federation Prize Challenge"? Why have a psionic challenge if there is NO SPIRITUALIST THEMED FEDERATION?

Maybe there should be a science-based election method.

And if you're going to go to the hassle of having SOME federations that are ethics locked, common sense says you should do at LEAST opposing federation locks. If a materialist federation exists, then a spiritualist federation should exist SO A NATURAL RIVALRY CAN EXIST, if a militarist federation can exist THEN A PACIFIST PEACEFUL UNION should exist that would oppose them.

If there isn't a useful/interesting gameplay hook, I don't see the point in building a Federation type for an Ethic.

Militarists are All About War, so it makes sense that they'd have a special, fleet-focused Federation type (which may also bypass their usual reluctance to join Federations).

Pacifists... don't like fighting. So wouldn't the best fit for them be... a research/economic Federation? Or even just a default one, where everyone plays nice with each other?

Similarly, Spiritualists don't have a solid mechanical hook of their own to hang Federation gameplay on. Research is a universal mechanic, and Materialists are good at it, so Materialists get a research-centric option. Spiritualists can't say the same.

 

[NilsFabian]

Why would they be federations at all? Right now Awakened Empires force you into a special Subject, as does the Khan.

Was replying to DrFranknfurter he was asking for special federation types

 

[uleslaw]

wow, all of that in one DD. So, is this DLC going to be that heavy, or... we are really that close (a month or so) to a release? I like both options

 

[Methone]

we are really that close (a month or so) to a release? I like both options

I do not like it. Lately Stellaris expansions have had pretty bad QA. It'd be nice if they actually took their damn time and got it right.

 

[Methone]

Maybe there should be a science-based election method.


If there isn't a useful/interesting gameplay hook, I don't see the point in building a Federation type for an Ethic.

Militarists are All About War, so it makes sense that they'd have a special, fleet-focused Federation type (which may also bypass their usual reluctance to join Federations).

Pacifists... don't like fighting. So wouldn't the best fit for them be... a research/economic Federation? Or even just a default one, where everyone plays nice with each other?

Similarly, Spiritualists don't have a solid mechanical hook of their own to hang Federation gameplay on. Research is a universal mechanic, and Materialists are good at it, so Materialists get a research-centric option. Spiritualists can't say the same.

If we think about it, the special federation types are just expanding off existing diplomacy stuff.

Hegemony expands off Vassals.

Research Coops expand off Research Agreements.

Trade Leagues expand off Commercial Pacts.

Martial Alliances expand off the Federation Fleet.

But there isn't one for spiritualists, or egalitarians etc.

 

[Fermi's_Solution]

Yes, this also means that Barbaric Despoilers and Criminal Syndicate are no longer excluded.

Oh, that's nice. Neither of them were very good at the whole "stand on your own" thing, on account of getting no military bonuses.

Perhaps we’ll have enough psi-capable pops next time...

Heh, nice. "Oh, you want to run for presidency? Well too bad, the rules say fuck you! ... No, really, that's what they say. I wrote them myself."

Anyways.

Galactic Union gets +50% exp, effectively. Ethics drift penalizing cohesion might be interesting in a strictly hypothetical future where ethics change was adjusted to, you know, actually change ethics.

Martial Alliance is the normal federation with added bells and whistles. Sure, okay. And unless I'm tragically mistaken, it also looks like it says "we can all individually kick the stuffings out of that purifier over there."

Research Cooperative is materialists being materialists, nothing to see here.

Trade League: sweet Hera, that's terrifying. Literally all the benefits of all the trade policies with none of the downsides, right off the fucking bat.

Hegemony is objectively the best as long as you're the one running it.

And in other news, a militarist materialist authoritarian merchant guilds empire can apparently make all federation types. Personally, I'm still waiting for the Federation Federation federation type, where two or more federations combine into a federation of federations.

Looking at it objectively, Paradox literally just took all the existing diplomatic actions and made federation types out of them. There is no spiritualist federation because there is no spiritualist diplomatic action. Same for egalitarian, and pacifist, and so on.

That said. Spiritualism and Egalitarianism are the "contagious" ethics. That is to say, an empire in a positive diplomatic relationship with a spiritualist and/or egalitarian empire gets higher ethics attraction for those two. If (and that's a very big emphasis on "if") Paradox does something about ethics shift to make it matter, especially seeing as cohesion plays such a huge role in these federation mechanics, then spiritualists and egalitarians could, how you say.... poison the well, yes? A few drops of egalitarianism might do interesting things to a Hegemony, or that same hegemony might use transmitted spiritualism to keep the others firmly under its thumb.

First complaint that comes to mind: my xenophobic egalitarians ought to be allowed to make hegemonies.