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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.
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!
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!
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.

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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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At least in theory all of this sounds absolutely lovely.

Please tell me that excessive psionic battles would lead to warp, err I mean shroud incursions. Pretty please?
 
How will treaties like th reearch agreement and the trade agreement work when inside a federation? as previously those were incorporated into the federation treaty. Will higher level galactic unions be able to again automatically give research and trade agreements for free for all members when they are ahigher level?
 
A conceptual nightmare.
Really. I, a human player, am having quite a hard time following up with the different choices and potential contraptions of this new "feature".

Do you devs expect me to believe that you'll get the AI to perform handling federation mechanics when they are still unable to keep up with their own empire economics?

This will be a disaster. A feature for the player to toy with a while and trample over the AI and then be just another accesory or forgotten and broken piece of code.
Yet again Paradox, your greed for more money is pushing away your real customers. It's sad but I seem to be forced to say the same thing I did a few months back:
Don't expect me to buy this.
 
Yet again Paradox, your greed for more money is pushing away your real customers.
Funny, because I've bought every Stellaris DLC and even upgraded my base purchase to get the Arachnoid portrait, and I fully intend on buying this one too. It looks great, and I'm not sure where you're getting the idea its "too complicated".
 
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.

I’m reeeeeeally hoping that Paradox can prove you wrong. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely confident.

Call me cautiously optimistic for now, until they tell us the release date.
 
Ck2 laws in stellaris...sounds like a fun time! I know I’m ready to subvert interstellar democracy and enthrone myself as the permanent, unchallengeable ruler of my Federation!
 
I'll admit it. I love it, but I'm worried. You see, the AI... um. It's a bit... dim. While having federations start weaker than they did before and require work to build up to what they were and then perhaps even beyond is super cool and encourages actual investment into diplomacy and playing nice with the galaxy...

I'm just saying that if Paradox takes the AI for granite and doesn't put in the required effort to update it, federations could become even more frustrating.
 
A conceptual nightmare.
Really. I, a human player, am having quite a hard time following up with the different choices and potential contraptions of this new "feature".

Do you devs expect me to believe that you'll get the AI to perform handling federation mechanics when they are still unable to keep up with their own empire economics?

This will be a disaster. A feature for the player to toy with a while and trample over the AI and then be just another accesory or forgotten and broken piece of code.
Yet again Paradox, your greed for more money is pushing away your real customers. It's sad but I seem to be forced to say the same thing I did a few months back:
Don't expect me to buy this.
If CK3 comes out 7 years after CK2, then by Analogy I only have to wait 4 more years for Stellaris 2. See you then.
 
Funny, because I've bought every Stellaris DLC and even upgraded my base purchase to get the Arachnoid portrait, and I fully intend on buying this one too. It looks great, and I'm not sure where you're getting the idea its "too complicated".

It's not bad that the feature is complicated. I'm just saying, we've all seen this before and if you want to keep pouring $$$ into stellaris that's your choice. Just not mine.

Basically all major updates promised a plethora of new shiny things, and they delivered on that front.
But all patches came with an ever increasing backlog of "underliying" promises that were not addressed.

Megacorp "promised" to make AI competitive in economics. This did not happen.
Apocalypse "promised" to make AI competitive in war. This did not happen.
Utopia "promised" to add customization and multiple paths of gameplay. This did not happen.

The rest are basically content expansions and addons which are basically new content to explore, everything ok there and not much to expect from those.
 
Well, I shall be playing a Hegemony of Lithoids for my first Federations playthrough.

Question: Is a Hegemony Federation similar at all to the HRE a la EU IV? Like is it Elective Monarchy on a grand scale or is it Always the leader "elected" as Hegemon?
 
Well, I shall be playing a Hegemony of Lithoids for my first Federations playthrough.

Question: Is a Hegemony Federation similar at all to the HRE a la EU IV? Like is it Elective Monarchy on a grand scale or is it Always the leader "elected" as Hegemon?

Yeah, that's interesting... if you're forced into a Hegemony via the war goal, but later become more powerful than the President, can you challenge the President for leadership of the Hegemony? Or can you just fight him to leave it and form a new one?
 
A conceptual nightmare.
Really. I, a human player, am having quite a hard time following up with the different choices and potential contraptions of this new "feature".

Do you devs expect me to believe that you'll get the AI to perform handling federation mechanics when they are still unable to keep up with their own empire economics?

This will be a disaster. A feature for the player to toy with a while and trample over the AI and then be just another accesory or forgotten and broken piece of code.
Yet again Paradox, your greed for more money is pushing away your real customers. It's sad but I seem to be forced to say the same thing I did a few months back:
Don't expect me to buy this.

I don’t understand how any of this is overly complicated or too complex. Aside from some of the inner workings/specifics, everything was laid out concisely to give a broad look at the new federation systems.

As for the claims of corporate greed, I don’t see where you’re getting that from in this dev diary. The announcement of Stellaris: Galactic Commode is Paradox dipping their toe into toxic AAA cashgrab territory (but this isn’t the right place for that discussion). This, however, is a continuation of the tried and true Paradox method - improving and expanding their games through free updates paid for by accompanied DLC. IF they had announced a release date right around the corner, I might be more inclined to lean towards your disposition. But. This is the first MAJOR content diary, of an upcoming expansion, that by the looks of things is at LEAST two months away from release, if not more.

Temper your expectations, certainly, but at least wait until the release announcement to light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.
 
I don’t understand how any of this is overly complicated or too complex. Aside from some of the inner workings/specifics, everything was laid out concisely to give a broad look at the new federation systems.

As for the claims of corporate greed, I don’t see where you’re getting that from in this dev diary. The announcement of Stellaris: Galactic Commode is Paradox dipping their toe into toxic AAA cashgrab territory (but this isn’t the right place for that discussion). This, however, is a continuation of the tried and true Paradox method - improving and expanding their games through free updates paid for by accompanied DLC. IF they had announced a release date right around the corner, I might be more inclined to lean towards your disposition. But. This is the first MAJOR content diary, of an upcoming expansion, that by the looks of things is at LEAST two months away from release, if not more.

Temper your expectations, certainly, but at least wait until the release announcement to light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.

Fair enough, I might be getting ahead of things right now. But as I said this is definitely turning into a trend so you cannot just talk me out of me feeling distrustful.

And again I seem to have expressed it the wrong way. It's not that the new system is complicated. More like it's complicated or too complex for the AI to handle in any meaningful way, so the only way you'll get to interact with this system is by you, playing alone and using this new feature to, YET AGAIN, beat the AI into submission without opposition.
 
Everybody runs the same code, regardless of their DLC. It just happens that the code has "host_has_dlc" checks in it on certain options and events. Sometimes those checks even only apply to player empires; I saw AI megacorps after 2.2 came out but before I bought the DLC.

In other words, it would work just fine. They could either keep the existing system for people without the expansion, or (more likely, IMO) make it use the new system (with Hegemonies and so forth) except players can't create those themselves, and maybe cannot become the leader of them.
Megacorps already exist without the dlc, they just don't have any mechanics. They're tied to the Corporate Dominion civic (which gets removed if you buy the dlc).

Lol why did people downvote this? It's a fact that picking the Corporate Dominion civic without the megacorp dlc will give you an Oligarchy variant called "Negacorporation". You can try it yourself if you don't have the dlc or temporarily deactivate it.
 
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