Stellaris Dev Diary #158 - Federation rework

[King of Zoot]

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.

What do you think games are other then a set of artificial limitations a.k.a. "rules"?

 

[Arch-Heretek]

I find it odd that there are fed types for authoritarians but not egalitarians, materialists but not spiritualists, and warmongers but not pacifists. At least two of those seem more disposed to cooperation than the others. Is it an issue of not enough perks?

 

[delta180]

can I join more than one federation, be in a UN type very decentralise Galactic union and also a more centralised EU type trade league

 

[Ecervele]

I find it odd that there are fed types for authoritarians but not egalitarians, materialists but not spiritualists, and warmongers but not pacifists. At least two of those seem more disposed to cooperation than the others. Is it an issue of not enough perks?

For egalitarian, every member should be equal so it doesn't change from standard federation...
For pacifists, I don't see what type of federation could added other than the standard one...
May be they should give specific bonuses or edicts to fit those ethics.
But religious federation need to be a thing.

 

[NexiKuro]

For egalitarian, every member should be equal so it doesn't change from standard federation...
For pacifists, I don't see what type of federation could added other than the standard one...
May be they should give specific bonuses or edicts to fit those ethics.
But religious federation need to be a thing.

I think an egalitarian federation would be different from the stock one, since egalitarians require a specific set of ethics. I don't think selecting a leader thought strength or diplomatic weight would make sense for them. And making them more accepting towards different ethics doesn't make a lot of sense either.

Religion is based on requiring certain things too, just of a different flavour.

Maybe they should add a crusader/interventionalist type of federation that gives you more options to bully people into using similar ethics, stop people from commiting atrocities or giving robots rights, liberate opressed/religious minorities.
As long as it makes sense in terms of the mechanic such a federation could fit multiple ethics.

And now that I'm rolling anyway:
Pacifists could have some kind of defensive version of the military pact, it would make sense for them to be more okay abdicating their own military might by centralizing their fleets.
I'd argue that the military one itself might warrant another look, because real world military pacts don't exactly rush into shared armies
Edit; granted this is a game and combining fleets from multiple players into larger, coordinated ones is probably harder than just making a federation one. So maybe the military fed is fine.

 

[sortulv]

A Millitaristic or xenophobe empire can form a hegemony - so long as it is also an authoritarian empire
Same goes for most of the X should be able to for Y. A militaristic, authoritarian materialistic empire with merchant guild civic can suggest the formation of ALL the federations.

 

[morarz]

Great news guys! Maybe You should add support independance too liberate nations, but not only diplomaticly but give a rebell goods, ships, army etc. ?

 

[skytta]

I do hope that the Federation Fleet mechanic will get a proper overhaul, because the clutter while reinforcement in the Fleet management intervace is abysmal.
And as mentioned before in this Thread the Fleet size limits in Federation Fleets should be enforced.

Besides the two above Points that didn't got any mention in this DD. The new option are a welcome improvment to the Federation system, if the internal politics gets a better system for civil war and fracturing. Maybe in some kind of "overextension + time = event" and a centralization/decentralization mechanic that can influence that.

Rely exited for the new DLC and hope a Sector/Internal politics dev dairy is coming soon.

 

[Marissa]

Stellaris Players: please fix the game before adding new things
Stellaris Devs: you want us to add more things? add more? add more? buy this??

I liked the ideas in Ancient Relics but I have barely seen all of it because its too buggy to really commit to long playthroughs of. Please at least address the concerns, and stop trying to just sell us more shit that'll just add more broken code on top of broken code, then take priority fixing, leaving everything even worse.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

The lack of Federations for Spiritualists, Pacifists, Hives and Machines... etc. feels bad for already fairly boring ethics.

The arguments here so far seem to be that those empires currently don't get any special diplomacy or interesting mechanics... so they shouldn't ever get any special diplomacy or interesting mechanics via DLC. I wholeheartedly disagree on both points and I think the opposite should apply. The empires who are currently boring should get *more* effort applied on adding interesting new features rather than no effort at all.

You could use the same logic to argue that Hive minds should never be updated to get any interesting civics - people don't like playing the non-devouring swarms, they don't currently get any special, interesting or job-swapping civics so they should never get them as there's nothing to work with?! Only Devouring Swarms have an interesting civic so only that civic should be the only ones to get buffs and new mechanics (oh dear, see Terravores)... making the already powerful and interesting stuff more powerful and more interesting... but doing that only makes the other stuff look even worse in comparison. You need to update the boring old stuff that's lacking mechanics and fun features or it looks more boring and less fun and you get stuck playing the same races each game.

Instead I'd argue that Spiritualists, Pacifists, Egalatarians, Hives are currently under-powered (lower growth, less options and more restrictions), under-developed (no work on Religions, Factions, ethics attraction) and under-picked (Barring Machine empires... those I just want to get a Federation for thematic reasons and so they aren't left out, though they are indeed less interesting if not using one of the 3 cool civics they have). The fact that they're currently lacking any special features should mean adding new features to make them more interesting is a priority, not ignoring them because they have so little interesting stuff to work with and so little to build upon.

Personally if we're just expanding existing mechanics, and people need existing features that could be built upon rather than adding new I'd expand upon the following for the ignored ethics:

Pacifist Federations focus on guaranteeing the independence of other empires (protect the weak!). Can join existing wars to defend friends that are losing territory. (Casus Belli against Warring races that have occupied claims that work even when Federation is set to no offensive wars - any taken territory is given to its rightful owner and all active claims are cleared when the aggressor loses the war. Forces the target empire to end any current wars with a white peace, after they remove their claims). Think Peacekeepers.

Spiritualist Federations focus on fighting Machines, Synths and Crisis factions, spreading spiritualism to members and converting other empires. Perhaps with additional/stronger Priest jobs for members. Special Casus Belli against anyone with AI rights, Synth Tech and (eventually, at max tier) Total War options against them. Think holy war.

Egalitarian Federations focus on abolishing slavery and imposing ethics on others. Perhaps with special Casus Belli and Wargoals against slaving empires who have federation member pops as slaves. (Repatriate Enslaved Members, Abolish Slavery etc.). Think Abolitionists.

Biological Hive Federations focus on Adaptability and biological conversion. They can turn other empires into fellow hive minds (Brain Slugs! Goa'uld - preferably unique to some new civics that do the same) and can adapt to uninhabitable planets by gaining the climate preferences of member races / Discounted gene-modding when another member already has that trait. Think Goa'uld.

Machine Federations focus on Synchronicity and mechanical conversion. They can merge with other machine empires. "Unity of mind begets unity of purpose. We must strive for synchronized action in all endeavours." But they share the penalties of being over admin cap, and grant a portion of their admin cap to other members (since there seems to be a push for them to be taller with the sprawl changes).

Those are just random bits of brainstorming, lots of ethics *and* civics could get new Federation types they could form. There's lots of untapped potential in this game. Arguing that the other ethics don't have enough material to work with is just... creatively bankrupt. There's vast quantities to work with. A multitude of options that just build on what's there... without even trying to come up with entirely new stuff (which there should be lots of too).

Also everything other than the Trade Federation has pitifully weak starting bonuses (the perks may be amazing but we haven't seen them yet):
Research Cooperative Federation type looks really underwhelming. I'd rather have something like automatic Research Pacts + 10% Member Research output is given to the Federation Leader. So more advanced empires benefit from forming it rather than only the enlightened primitives benefiting. I don't see any reason I'd want this if I had a tech-lead. Unless perhaps it unlocks unique perks later on... but it would still be nice to have a less conditionally useful/useless starting bonus.

Martial Alliance Federation type is similarly underwhelming. It's a free Military Academy and Fleet Academy and faster ship building... which is great if you don't have either (ships start at Experienced rather than Regular so +10% Damage for new ships)... but otherwise it's only 10% of the 1000 XP required to become veteran so it has no effect until many battles have passed and you get the rest of the XP. I like the idea of better trained ships... but the numbers are too small when stacked with the existing bonus you should have on your shipyards anyway. Perhaps an XP gain modifier would work better here? Or better yet some military exercises your fleets could perform to gain XP for both ships and admirals - e.g. joint military exercises when two Federation fleets are in the system, they fight in mock battles with -95% damage output (and 100% ship disengagement chance) for 120 days with XP boosts for the combatants on completion. Can only be performed at regular intervals (10 year cooldown).

Lastly...
I hope that it's not just the founding member ethics (i.e. the player) that decides the federation types but the two founding members so that I could form a trade federation by befriending a megacorp and not merely by being one/temporarily changing civics or waiting for them to suggest it.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

RE: Spiritualist Federations - I seem to remember grekulf saying he wanted a DLC that focuses on religions and cults, so maybe this will come in a story pack after Federations release, along with some new changes around this.

 

[Maxafield]

Will it be possible for Federation presidents to resign? Would be a quite advantageous option for multiplayer. Resigning doesn't have to be fancy, the president can just abdicate and a re-election according to succesion laws could be triggered.
(In my mind I can already picture the psionic battle between the Chosen Ones of different empires for the presidency, which would be insanely awesome. )

 

[darwinthepiercer]

Research Cooperatives should be able to have a trial by 5D Chess...

(this expansion is looking awesome!)

 

[CMDR_HERNE]

This expansion should go along way to make the later game more interesting

 

[StellarisFan1]

add winning target to the game or return old

 

[Liggi]

Couple of things that would be really awesome additions here:

Spiritualist federation type
A few people have pointed out that it doesn't really work because Spiritualism covers a range of beliefs and wouldn't necessarily gel into a single conglomeration, but I'm not so sure. I could definitely see religious empires banding together to protect "spiritualism" in general, even if that covers a wide base of beliefs. Faiths often have "inter-faith" discussions with one another. The Federation could be formed on the basis of allowing them to strengthen their own religions, so it'd do things like increase ethics attraction for Spiritualism, provide bonuses when fighting Materialist empires etc.

Machine federation type
This would be predicated on setting aside some computation power for shared endeavours. You could also have an equivalent of a "Psionic Battle" for machine empires, where a computational problem is offered up and the empire that solves it the most quickly and efficiently becomes the new leader.

EDIT: There's actually no reason that non-machine empires couldn't join (although probably couldn't lead) these Federations, too. As long as they offer up computing power (ie. energy credits?)


Doesn't seem hugely outside the existing mechanics, either.

 

[Incompetent]

The Trade League federation sounds a bit too powerful to me as a source of money, given that you get the special upgraded trade policy as soon as you create the federation.

Let's say you are some blob with 100 planets, but you have Merchant Guilds and are heavily invested in trade. One day you find some pathetic 1-planet empire (or just release your worst planet) to join your new 'federation'. Realistically, a 100-planet empire is not going to gain much by trading with a 1-planet one. But according to the rules, your trade policy flips to 'Trade League', which means the trade income from your entire empire is effectively doubled! (More precisely, you're getting the equivalent of Consumer Benefits + Marketplace of Ideas, which I suppose may not be worth exactly double your favourite policy, but at any rate, it's a lot more resources per unit of trade.) That's double *including* the effect of all the trade bonuses that apply planetside, by the way, not as an additive bonus, and without even considering any benefits of the federation that involve interacting with other members.

 

[Fermi's_Solution]

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.

That's blatantly false. Early Japan's isolationist values, China's values deciding its own policies, USA's own heavily interventionist policies...

In every system where the laws are made by people, those people will base those laws off what they think is right or wrong, and how they think the world works (or, how they think it ought to work). And in every case where a law or policy was changed after writing it, it only came after enough people were convinced of the former law being "wrong" by some description. You'd be surprised how this even even applies to the seemingly greediest corporate puppets. For example, try messaging your local politician about their stance on those newfangled internet laws. It doesn't matter which side they fall on, the argument you're going to get back will inevitably start by presupposing an answer to the question "is this right or wrong?"

Right from the beginning, country values apply to everything.

The arguments here so far seem to be that those empires currently don't get any special diplomacy or interesting mechanics... so they shouldn't ever get any special diplomacy or interesting mechanics via DLC. I wholeheartedly disagree on both points and I think the opposite should apply. The empires who are currently boring should get *more* effort applied on adding interesting new features rather than no effort at all.

Not necessarily. The arguments here (at least, on my end) start at disentangling the idea of federations from ethics, and considering them from a strictly diplomatic perspective. IMO, the only empire ethic that outright shouldn't have access to a federation type is Pacifists for Hegemony or Martial Alliance, because they can't freely declare war or demand subjugation. Those are diplomatic actions they can't use (technically, because their war policy doesn't allow it), so that'd be the reason why they can't create those federation types.

So, when I'm looking at it, I'm asking whether it's supposed to be ethics or diplomacy. Because, while the two aren't unrelated (see my response to krwr13), in Stellaris as it currently is, your diplomatic options come from your policies, with ethics determining your policies. The argument here being, if an egalitarian can subjugate other empires as vassals, then why can't they make a hegemonic federation?

 

[Zxcpoi]

Federation Types

So there is nothing for my genocidal FP gaming style?

Which features will add update corresponding with DLC?
Galactic Community feature will affect FPs ?

btw I miss Megacorp 'cos it lacks any genocidal innovations ;-)

 

[sortulv]

So there is nothing for my genocidal FP gaming style?

Sure there is; the galactic community might actually try to stop you in a slightly more effective manner... (Or provide better loot in the case of a research federation)