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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.

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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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I really like the Challenge concept. I'd love to see more unique ideas for it. I'd love to see something akin to the archeology site event, where, spoiler: Two old empires managed their warfare with basically a massive-scaled version of Robot Wars on a random asteroid. That'd be great. Maybe the event could give you a slight advantage on winning that particular Challenge if you did complete it?
 
Roddo said:
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.
Click to expand...

Now that sentiment I can understand, and personally always try and keep in the back of my mind. Help temper the hype and keep a rational approach, mostly.
 
Methone said:
So 2.65+4-0.75-0.6 is -100?

Curious about what Centralization actually is. Kinda glossed over that one.

Also why do Materialists get a special Federation while Spiritualists don't?

Also, I get we're going all in on the Federations train, but is there any word on all the many, many issues people have been bringing up for literal months now? And I'm not just talking AI and Performance. Stuff like Hive Minds-Machine balance, late-game events, etc.
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They might be holding off on that until they can flesh it out a bit more. It would be interesting to see a Faith mechanic for spiritualist empires, where all fed members get turned to spiritualist ethos as part of a larger Church or something similar.
 
Alternately, they might end up giving spiritualists, pacifists, and egalitarians something like an ethics affinity for others of the same alignment to compensate for the lack of specific federation types. I could also see each alignment having options to specific proposals, such as the banning of all slavery for egalitarians or the ability for Hive mind/machine members to allow non-gestalt pops into their empires.
 
Some people are pointing out the lack of a spiritualist federation... surely any federation full of spiritualist nations is by definition a spiritualist federation, I tend to bump into at least one in any game I play at the moment.

There may also be spiritualist flavoured federation perks which could possibly convert the hegemony (founded by spiritualist authoritarian), trade league (spiritualist megacorp), martial alliance (militarist spiritualists) or galactic union into spiritualist federations.

I also want a lithoid specific federation: The Rock Band!
 
The AI won't be cribbable from CK2 because there it's always (basically) advantageous for the ruler to centralize and the only time he needs to back off is when factions form, even then it's nice to have a buffer of higher centralization since it diverts faction attention. Here the AI is going to have to have shifting goalposts based on their position, less centralization if they're a weaker member and more if they are confident they outmatch anyone else in the federation. I really hope that winds up being the case and they don't just brainlessly endorse more centralization because they erroneously think they'll ever be president because otherwise this is just gonna be another way of the player lapping the AI.
 
Shadowstrike said:
Presumably based on their relative power. If you are much more powerful, then you probably want to choose the strongest succession and the longest term. If you are less powerful, then you'd want the reverse (i.e. by rotation and shorter terms). If you are close to the lead, then whatever leaves you more likely to lead, and maybe shorter terms so that you are more likely to get a chance to be Fed president.
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Perhaps. However cohesion is a thing. If you are secure in your position as top dog term length doesn't matter. However if low term length gives you better cohesion then that is the one I'd pick. We can confirm those decisions matter because in the DD the tooltip for medium fleet contribution shows two empires are opposed to it. I bet selecting it would decrease cohesion.
 
What I did miss in the dev dairy is a hint on some kind of unlockable federation market.
But what can I say I thought we get a cool Traid management system in megacorp. I mean who whant's to have a ledger with all his traid deals with all the other empires.
I do. So.... Hope dies last mentality on, check
 
This reminds me of ruling over vassals in CK2, looking great.
 
So, up until now, I always went with Inward Perfection as I regarded Federations 1.0 and most other diplomatic interactions to be a bit on the "MEH"© side.

Will Inward Perfection get a buff now to counter all the (pretty good) new stuff Federations 2.0 brings to the table or is my future interaction with the game reduced to either "gimp yourself even further with your xenophobic pacifistic Navel-Gazing" or leave your favorite shut-in playstyle behind forever?
 
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Inward Perfection is already one of the most powerful civics the game.
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I respectfully disagree, but that may be because of my inability to unleash its full potential. It is just my preferred type of gameplay in 4X games to be turtling it out somewhere with a fierce "armed neutrality" mentality ;-P
 
Pellaken said:
my main concern is they fix what I consider to be the biggest problems with federations. They've come part of the way on this already. Its when all your federation members want to go to war, but you don't want to. there needs to be a better way for this to be dealt with than simply stacking on ever-increasing negative dispositions.
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This, I've stacked up minus hundreds, because they just keep asking over and over again. As a result, I no longer join non pacifist federations. If it isn't fixed, I don't see much point in buying this DLC.
 
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