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Stellaris Dev Diary #158 - Federation rework

Hello everyone!

It was great to finally reveal what we’re working on at PDXCON, and today we’re back with yet another dev diary where we will dive into some more details on the reworked federations.

The screenshots still feature a bunch of work-in-progress stuff, like every federation perk using a placeholder right now. Numbers and effects aren’t necessarily final either.

Federation Types
Like we mentioned at PDXCON, federation will now come in different Federation Types. Each federation type has a unique passive effect and can unlock federation perks as they level up.​

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Certain federation types have requirements on what type of empire can suggest to form them, but there are no limitations on who can join a federation (except for killer empires & inward perfection). Yes, this also means that Barbaric Despoilers and Criminal Syndicate are no longer excluded.
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Galactic Union
This will be a more generic type of federation that will fit most groups of empires. This federation makes it easier to cooperate with empires, as diversity of ethics will have a less negative impact on maintaining cohesion. This federation type will be available to everyone in the free patch.​

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Fleet bonuses a plenty!
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Martial Alliance
This federation type is focused around having a very large and powerful federation fleet. Only militarists can suggest to form this federation.​

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Free and automatic research sharing!
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Research Cooperative
Empires who wish to cooperate in achieving technological mastery should join together in a research cooperative. Only materialists can suggest to form a research cooperative.​

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New trade policy!​


Trade League
If trade value is the focus of your empire, the Trade League is probably a very good federation for you to be a part of. The Trade League gets access to a new Trade Policy which combines the bonuses of all other trade policies. An empire needs to be a Megacorporation or have the Merchant Guilds civic in order to be able to suggest to form a trade league.

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Did you know there is an Origin that lets you start as the president of a Hegemony?​

Hegemony
This federation type is built around one strong core member. The president gets most of the bonuses, but the bonuses for the members are also quite powerful. Only authoritarian empires may suggest to form a hegemony.

Federation Perks
Federations will get access to new perks when they level up, and the perks they get access to depend on their type. There are usually 2 perks that gives bonuses to every member and 1 perk that gives bonuses only to the president. However, the Hegemony flips this around by giving the president 2 perks and the members 1 perk (which does not benefit the president in this case!).

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Hegemony member perk.​


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President gets an additional Envoy.​

Each time a federation levels up, they will get access to 3 new perks.

Level Up & Cohesion
In order to level gain XP, a federation needs to have positive Cohesion. The amount of XP a federation gains (or loses!) per month is directly tied to its Cohesion, which is a value that ranged from -100 to +100.

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There are a number of things that will reduce Cohesion every month, such as every member, diverse ethics and opposing ethics. Federation members can counteract this by assigning Envoys to the federation, which will increase monthly Cohesion.

When Cohesion is at +100, the federation will gain +10 XP every month. If a federation loses XP and drops a level, they will lose access to their perks after a few months.

Federation Laws
It is possible for federations to customize some aspects of its rules. In some cases, federation types also have access to different laws at different points. A Research Cooperative can never have the highest level of fleet contribution, and they also require higher centralization to increase their Fleet Contribution.

Each federation type will start with a certain set of default laws.

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There are a number of laws which define certain rules for the federation.​

Centralization
Many federation laws require federation centralization to be high enough. To increase centralization, a federation needs higher level. In fact, centralization is the only law locked behind federation levels right now.

Increasing centralization isn’t always easy though, as doing so will have a large negative impact on Cohesion. That means more Envoys will need to be assigned to the federation to maintain its Cohesion.

The primary reason to increase centralization is to unlock new laws.

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The Galactic Union federation type requires Medium centralization to have a 20% Fleet Contribution.​

Fleet Contribution
Most federations will not start with the ability to build a federation fleet, as their fleet contribution will start on “None”. The Martial Alliance and the Hegemony do start with a “Low” fleet contribution, however. The Martial Alliance is also able to change its fleet contribution law to “High” as early as Medium centralization.

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Most of the other laws not visible earlier.​

Succession types
As you could see in previous screenshots there are a bunch of different laws for how federations can decide who becomes the president. Strongest is the empire with the greatest economy. Diplomatic Weight is the empire with the largest Diplomatic Weight (we talked about that at PDXCON, but more on that later). Rotation will rotate the president. Random will choose a president from a random member. Challenge succession type allows you to pick a challenge type for your federation.

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

There are currently two different challenge types:
Psionic Battle lets psionic pops battle it out over which empire should be president.
Arena Combat lets the rulers of competing empires battle it out. Certain traits for the ruler (both species and ruler-specific) will influence how large chance the ruler has at winning. The Chosen will of course be very hard to beat.

----

That’s it for this week, and we hope you survive the information overload! We realized there are so many details we possibly could share, but this should cover the most important parts.

Next week we will be talking about the Galactic Community, Resolutions and more!
 
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Te. Kenzo said:
why not also a simple succession law like "election"? Is maybe going to be "diplomatic weight?" I'm curious.

Also, I think that challanges should be not only for psionics! some kind of space ordalia could be interesting even without super powers.
Click to expand...
For the first, this might be because it's a federation of empires, rather than a singular empire. At that level of government, elections simply don't matter anymore. It's all about how much of X you can bring to bear, where X is any of: military might, economic power, political skulduggery, and so on.

For your second, I'll just quote directly:
grekulf said:
There are currently two different challenge types:
Psionic Battle lets psionic pops battle it out over which empire should be president.
Arena Combat lets the rulers of competing empires battle it out. Certain traits for the ruler (both species and ruler-specific) will influence how large chance the ruler has at winning. The Chosen will of course be very hard to beat.
Click to expand...

There are (at the time that was posted) two kinds of challenge: psionic battle, and arena combat.
 
Kind of disappointed my Democratic Crusaders can't make a hegemony. There's a lot of possibility for an empire that believes in equality within itself, but doesn't extend the same to 'inferior' states around it. Or states that aren't capable, or trusted, or guiding themselves and require the guiding hand of an enlightened empire, for example.
 
Two things I want out of this.

1: Hegemony is obviously the conqueror's federation. Restricting it to authoritarian feels bad. At least let xenophobe use it as well.

2: I hope there is some way to push or coerce an empire in a federation closer to my ethics. Especially if I am a Hegemony head.
 
Can we have succession based on total trade value. May make sense for the trade league;)
Also is it possible for the Horde will be reimplemented as a hegemony?
 
So martial alliance and trade league both get unique and powerful boosts while research cooperative saves its members some influence on a deal that doesn't even benefit the most advanced empire all that much... It doesn't offer any benefit if you're a fanatic xenophile with the diplomacy tradition. That's rather disappointing. I feel like a federation created in the name of research should be more than just a glorified set of research agreements, especially with the disadvantage of not being able to reach as high of feet contribution.It

It seems like any of the other types would offer you much more value if you're xenophile or ahead in research, even if your goal is technological dominance.
 
This dev diary - and apparently this expansion as a whole - seems to fit the very definition of Lipstick On A Pig.

You can have 5 Federation types? FEDERATIONS DO NOT WORK, SO WHY WOULD ANYONE CARE.

In my current game I joined a Federation, because, well, Federations haven't worked since... ever and I wanted to see if they worked in 2.4.
They don't.
I've spent the last 200 years without undocking my fleet from my citadel because everyone it's impossible to get (or at least impossible to predict) when war-dec resolutions will pass.

And the bonuses? "Starting ship experience +100, starting army experience +100, ship build speed +25%?"
Why didn't you just write "Nothing important" and save yourself some characters, for all the difference that would make to anyone's strategic situation.

"Federation policy on whether subjects can join"? In what possible galaxy are the devs living in that they think anyone would care about the answer to that question? A Stellaris galaxy usually has an average of maybe ONE subject nation outside FE thralls in the entire playthrough (without intentional player intervention) and they're always one planet minors who would never contribute anything to the Federal budget or fleet if they did join, so... again, who cares?

AND SPEAKING OF THE FEDERATION FLEET. Hey Paradox, cogitate on this - when the majority of AI-controlled Federation fleets spend their time going "Duuuuuuuuuh, let's bombard this one planet for 50 years or sit quietly in our dock while a Crisis rages and put all the onus on the player to stop our own planets being cleansed", you'll forgive me for not being exactly enthusiastic about the prospects for the DAZZLING and DYNAMIC "+1% to ship speed" perks I might get from butting my head against the diplo screen for 30 years trying to get the AI to form a Military League.

Let me tell you in two short bullet points why this is going to be totally lame:
  • The AI is currently so dumb that forming a Federation is always a bad move, shackling you to a bunch of braindead liabilities who couldn't organise drinks in a brewery, let alone a coherent defence to an external threat, AND AT THE COST OF INFLUENCE, the most important resource int he game
  • There aren't enough nations (a maximum of what, 36?) in the biggest possible Stellaris map to make even half of these Federal laws / policies / bonuses remotely important
But that's just modern Stellaris in a nutshell, isn't it? Throw a bunch of buttons at the UI to give the illusion of strategic depth, then dust your hands and say "Job done". AI doesn't work enough to make it worth anyone's while? Game grinds to a halt in 2400 so no-one will be able to see the fruits of their labor? "Lol don't care, the screenshots look nice".

Because that's the target demographic now, isn't it? That's been the target demographic for a long time, the only people who'd put up with this: people who like to take screenshots of RP meme empires. The people who never play a game to 2400 so don't realise how unfunctional it gets; the people who never try to delve below the most facile level of gameplay so they don't realise how shallow it is and how 90% of the "choices" don't ever affect anything important.

tenor.gif


Sigh.
Y'know, let me channel my inner Lao Yeng and just cut to the chase: there is no chance I will buy this.

There is a slight chance I will buy this if I watch many many Youtube videos which unequivocably demonstrate that Federations DLC comes with a massive improvement to fleet AI, and a concomitant reduction in the way in which (present-day 2.4 federatons) are a ball and chain around any player empire except that of the stupidest n00b.

But that's never happened in this game, and I know that's not going to happen, and all you reading this know that's not going to happen.

So, what more is there to say.
 
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Nwaij said:
No Great United Church (spiritualists) federation?
Click to expand...

Adding religions for spiritualists is something they've talked about several times; considering the Galactic Union and the base mechanics are going to be added to vanilla, there is a nonzero chance that a Spiritualist Federation could show up in the future.
 
Vilhelm said:
Finally, a way to make federations more interesting! Though I'm a bit disappointed there doesn't seem to be a way to make your federation a single super-state like the UFP from Star Trek (unless it's a detail for later). It would give a big incentive to play diplomatically and add a new, interesting way to subdue your neighbors.
Click to expand...
I don’t think they will go this far in this dlc but maybe later. on the other hand. Do you want to micromanage 100 ne planets after forming the super state.
this kind of deep integrated federation is szar trek
 
Nwaij said:
No Great United Church (spiritualists) federation?
Click to expand...


I actually really like this. It would start out as a conglomerate of spirit-minded empires working together, and over time they could develop a unified faith with actual spiritual flavor.
 
Techcraft said:
Can Militarists form a Hegemony? I would love to be able have a "security belt" of "definitely equal" satellite states like the Warsaw Pact.
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Appears to be authoritarian only based on the dev diary. I think militarist and phobe should be able to do Hegemony as well. Since it appears its supposed to be an advanced form of vassals.
 
Why do federation types need to be dependent on civics? Are you saying that for example pacifist empire can't join research or trade alliances or militarist/xenophobe empires can't impose their dominance via Hegemony? These limitations are frustrating.
 
krwr13 said:
Why do federation types need to be dependent on civics? Are you saying that for example pacifist empire can't join research or trade alliances or militarist/xenophobe empires can't impose their dominance via Hegemony? These limitations are frustrating.
Click to expand...
To be at least a little fair, it's technically impossible for your empire to be only pacifist.

Additionally:

"Certain federation types have requirements on what type of empire can suggest to form them, but there are no limitations on who can join a federation (except for killer empires & inward perfection)."

So, as per the description, pacifists can in fact join research or trade alliances. They just can't be the ones who created them.
 
In real life external politics don't depend on the country values not a bit, the most democratic and the most totalitarian nations do pretty same things. I don't see any reason to have these artificial limitations in the game.
 
krwr13 said:
Yes but it's the same thing, you don't want to wait for a random npc to create a federation to join it, you want to do it yourself.
Click to expand...
A pacifist megacorp or pacifist with merchant guilds can create a trade league. A materialist pacifist can create a science federation. An authoritarian pacifist can make a hegemony (unless the dev diary left out there is a mutual exclusive here). The only thing pacifist is blocked from is the military federation for obvious reasons.

I agree militarist and xenophobe should also unlock hegemony but again, they do not block authoritarian. So not mutually exclusive like you seem to be implying.
 
Yeah i can read. Just come up with any pacifist who are not materialist and don't have merchant guilds and you will have a pacifist who can't create research and trade federations.
I am implying, actually directly stating that civic dependency is unnecessary.
 
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