Stellaris Dev Diary #159 - Galactic Community

[Endless Rain]

It is possible to reform the Galactic Community to include a Galactic Council...

By default, the council will have 3 members, but the number can be changed through Resolutions...

There will be Resolutions to declare the galactic invaders a threat to the galaxy, which means it will be against galactic law to have closed borders to any other Galactic Community member while the crisis is ongoing....

The Galactic Council also gets access to special powers such as veto rights or emergency measures...

Veto rights allows a council member to veto a Resolution that is currently in the proposal queue.

"Ah, yes, 'Prethoryn'. The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly invading from dark space. We have dismissed this claim."

RESOLUTION: "Declare Prethoryn a Threat to the Galaxy" vetoed by Council.

 

[Foefaller]

This is great and all but I'm not buying another piece of DLC until the late game lag is resolve. Paradox, you need to focus on making your new features work before adding even more new features. I have only made it to the end game crisis once and that was just to say I did it, but the lag was unbearable. I'm done with the constant exploration and I want a mature galaxy with some politics. This expansion looks amazing for that too, but why bother if by the time I get there the game is moving at a snails speed?

We're going to aim to get as many bug fixes and improvements as possible as we continue work on Federations. Stand by for more information about that in future dev diaries.

That's from the 2.5.1 patch OP. It's probably the average response we're going to get (other than the occasional confirmation that something has be fixed for the next patch in the bug forums) until the promised dev diary arrives.

It's not the "we're going to drop everything and work for free until every bug is fixed" response that some people are hoping for, but it's not silence for weeks either.

 

[Aed]

I'll abstain from this particular resolution from the Paradox council until I see how much more broken it makes the game...

 

[GnoSIS]

Yeah. The Clausewitz engine is becoming very outdated.

I have to disagree on this one Valentin. If the egine is old and doesn't have the capabilities they need perhaps they shouldn't throw at it more that in can hanlde and then sell it to you as a fresh DLC. Many would consider that to be fraud. Instead they should have stayed within the working parameters or try to find workarounds, because agreeing that the engine is old after many DLC sales and after the game is thrown into an abysmall state, is accepting and justifying customer abuse.

 

[methegrate]

The big thing I'd like to see in the update is a better, more integrated trade system. Commercial pacts and research agreement are a start, but they're too limited. And you can only ever have a couple at one time, meaning that after you make two or three trade deals there's nothing else to talk about with the rest of the galaxy.

I want a real system of trade and deals. There needs to be something you can get out of doing peace better otherwise the system risks staying at its current state of "is it worth the alloys to start shooting at you?"

 

[Puschkin]

Will there be a resolution on space fauna protection?

 

[verybad]

The big thing I'd like to see in the update is a better, more integrated trade system. Commercial pacts and research agreement are a start, but they're too limited. And you can only ever have a couple at one time, meaning that after you make two or three trade deals there's nothing else to talk about with the rest of the galaxy.

I want a real system of trade and deals. There needs to be something you can get out of doing peace better otherwise the system risks staying at its current state of "is it worth the alloys to start shooting at you?"

Oh god yes. Wanna be able to sell ships and merc out soldiers also. Interstellar trading, multiple resource trading on lines, resource requirement at local areas in order to produce some things, and planetary blockading (including using fighters for multiple system)

Historically trade and religion are the number one and number two bases for international involvement, I see no reason for that to change in interstellar diplomacy. Seeing trade ships moving around would be nice two (and yes I know mods)

 

[Valentin Vattista]

I have to disagree on this one Valentin. If the egine is old and doesn't have the capabilities they need perhaps they shouldn't throw at it more that in can hanlde and then sell it to you as a fresh DLC. Many would consider that to be fraud. Instead they should have stayed within the working parameters or try to find workarounds, because agreeing that the engine is old after many DLC sales and after the game is thrown into an abysmall state, is accepting and justifying customer abuse.

I'm neither accepting it, nor agreeing to it. And you're absolutely right in that they should take a look at making a new engine.

 

[GnoSIS]

PDX: "On our latest DLC you can have thousands of pops going around in the game doing their business and generate resources. It's a miracle of technology! only 19.99 for you!"
Customer: "I bought this and it looks cool, but it doesn't work lategame, it insanely slow. can you fix it? After all I payed for this and it should work"
PDX: "The engine is old, accept it and wait for our next game in the series"
Customer: "Oh yes the engine is old..."

 

[methegrate]

And this might be a big ask, but I think for the galactic community to work the way it's intended then politics are going to have to really matter.

I feel like one of the roadblocks to Stellaris' Big Ideas is that they require a lot of headcanon and role play. If my neighbor is a slaving despot or abuses the pre-FTL civilizations in their borders or is tampering with arcane forces best left undisturbed, the game wants me to care about that. I get the impression that the galactic community will double down on that through its resolutions.

But nothing in game drives that kind of conflict other than the generic diplomacy hit that comes from conflicting ethics. Beyond that, any conflict depends on me to imagine a story that the game isn't telling. The game should help tell that story though. There should be reasons, expressed through mechanics and gameplay, for why my Federation is pushing back on slavery and despotism.

I would use economics to tell the story of why empires want to get along. Peace can make you rich. (Except for empire types that just do not want to get along of course. There is no negotiating with the Borg.) I would use politics to tell the story that drives conflict. Personally, I would start with two mechanics: Factions should have their own goals and demands, and real teeth if their needs aren't met. And leaders should have their own agendas and preferences as well, again with real teeth if their needs aren't met. (I would put a bow on it all by finally creating a living, breathing political sector system, but one thing at a time.)

It should be impossible to ignore what my people and their heroes want. If I run an egalitarian Federation of Planets, at a certain point it should be difficult not to deal with the slave markets next door. I should push for a resolution to ban slavery because my people demand it to the point of being ungovernable, even if that means losing an insanely lucrative trading partner.

A better diplomacy system should be the set of tools you use to try and get those trade deals or escalate conflict short of war, and you do need better options than just "is it worth invading yet?" But the game needs a reason why you're escalating that conflict too, something better than just personal role playing. Politics and economics should provide that push and pull.

 

[BluBot MAP]

The Greater Good... *Tau orgasm sounds*

 

[Eelectrica]

That's from the 2.5.1 patch OP. It's probably the average response we're going to get (other than the occasional confirmation that something has be fixed for the next patch in the bug forums) until the promised dev diary arrives.

It's not the "we're going to drop everything and work for free until every bug is fixed" response that some people are hoping for, but it's not silence for weeks either.

Some people want a running commentary.

 

[AnimeInspector]

Im so excited for this "Free expansion" I meann what cruel people would make you pay to make a federation something that become very important in mid and late gameplay. I wonder if my "bugged" rockmen can throw rocks and riot at the next senate meeting.

 

[Gromit]

PDX: "On our latest DLC you can have thousands of pops going around in the game doing their business and generate resources. It's a miracle of technology! only 19.99 for you!"
Customer: "I bought this and it looks cool, but it doesn't work lategame, it insanely slow. can you fix it? After all I payed for this and it should work"
PDX: "The engine is old, accept it and wait for our next game in the series"
Customer: "Oh yes the engine is old..."

It's more like this I think.
PDX: We're back from vacation. Check out our new DLC that's coming out!
Customer: This looks great but the last dlc has a bunch of issues that you guys to need to fix, there's TODO lines in the code and it's been months since an update happened.
PDX: Buy our new DLC!
Customer: This looks great, but, well there's still a bunch of serious late-game issues that need fixing, can we get the crisis fixed maybe?
PDX: Yeah we'll get to it all, maybe. More importantly, check out some obscure experiments we did over summer for things no one asked for.
Customer: Ok... That's cool I guess.
PDX: Come to PDXCon it's going to be great!
Customer: It's been a few months now and nothing has happened again. The game is still slow late game, are there any plans to fix this?
PDX: Buy our new phone app, made by Gamebear, it's going to be really great and make us lots of money.
Customer: Isn't this just that Nova Empire game... Wait a second is that stolen art from Halo?
PDX: Uh... Did we mention have more DLC coming out?
Customer: Wow, that looks great, but, well there's still a bunch of issues you guys need to fix because late game is miserable and this is probably not going to work that well with the current AI.
PDX: Buy our new DLC!
Customer: Paradox, seriously, when is the slow down and all the other issues going to get fixed?
PDX Moderator: What slow down? I have no slow down? I see no slow down.
Customer: Are you serious, there's a mega (containment) thread on it.
PDX: Check out our new DLC, it's going to be so good and you're going to love it. Please buy it.

Also I don't think PDX have ever said Clausewitz is old and needs a massive overhaul.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Indeed. Look at how light the 2.5.1 notes were!

Heck, the 2.5.0 and 2.4.0 notes were light too, and half of them (when initially published) weren't even actually in the game yet! We had people asking why they couldn't shift-click ship counts in the fleet manager and devs telling us it should work, when in fact they hadn't even shipped the feature! I can understand light updates prior to a big one, but publishing a small patch (in terms of in-game features) that didn't even actually have those features, and then another tiny patch later to add them in... well, it's better than no patches, but two half-patches that each fix like 5% of the widely-known bugs or UI issues is not a great fix rate.

 

[CrazyJ]

I know this thread isn't about fixing the machines and hive minds, but i had an idea on the subject. The idea would be that any pop in the machine empire would recieve a malus to productivity depending on empire sprawl, no idea how to do the numbers, but synths would be immune, and there would likely be techs to reduce that penalty, this seems like a good way to curb the ridiculous power of the bots, driven asimalators would receive a smaller negative and since they have organics they would be less effected, although perhaps organics controlled by them would receive the negative. determined exterminators would likely receive an even smaller negative to cope with the nature of that play style. perhaps there would be a civic to further reduce the debuff.

Now this would help balance machines to be less op, but in the same sense that machines need a Nerf hives need a buff, they are just plain weak as it stands. The simple solution would be to give an increase to their adaptiveness, to represent the fact that a have cares very little for the lives of individual drones and thus would be able to live in worse environments without notable production issues, they should also receive a base stability bonus and maybe a resources from jobs bonus to account for the fact that workers working in perfect unison would be more efficient, and the stability just makes sense since a planet where most or all of the pops share the same mind would be very stable, plus improve the buff from hive worlds, perhaps something as extreme as 50+ stability because a world where the very ground is part of the hive would be impossible to rebel on, this should also effet deviancy,

apologies for the rant that this is, this idea has been kicking around in my brain for some time and i am highly caffeinated at the moment

 

[Valentin Vattista]

Also I don't think PDX have ever said Clausewitz is old and needs a massive overhaul.

They never said it, but it's rather self evident that it is. Well, at least as far as I can tell.

 

[Jorgas]

Please spend time on fixing all the issues that are all over the forums instead of releasing more content that'll be full of bugsand issues as well

 

[ThexLoneWolf]

Think we can get a full list of all resolutions? Not specifically asking what they do, just wondering if that's possible.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I do like the ideas in the Diary, lots of fun, new and interesting potential ideas and little homages to Star Wars. (though the Star destroyer icon, galactic senate background and stuff feels a bit cheeky so soon after the Halo thing... but these look more inspired by than borrowed from so should all be fine... I hope).

Only have two issues:
1. Galactic Hub Nominations are silly and really need a rework. It shouldn't be based on random chance with the planetary decision giving you a random boost to the random chance... that just feels horrible and sloppy... like temporary code put in place to make it look fully functional until you got a working system in the game that actually uses trade value or diplomatic weight... now that both exist it'd be nice to use them and not random numbers. Imagine if the new Galactic Council wasn't:

The council will be composed of a number of empires with the highest Diplomatic Weight

But was instead just a random weighting that allowed a few tiny 1-planet, recently-enlightened primitives to rule and veto every resolution. It'd be stupid. But that's how bad the galactic market is now and it really, really needs to be improved.

2. I'd love to see Fallen Empires in the Galactic Community... not doing anything... just being big and scary and abstaining from all resolutions unless something triggers them - or they owe you a favor for giving them a scientist/letting them inoculate you etc. and you drag them into politics. Perhaps each FE could have 1 or two resolutions that they will actually vote on, or even some special ones (like mandatory inoculations) they would propose that would be very hard to shut-down thanks to their huge diplomatic weight (unless you can pit the other FEs against them, call in a favor and maybe start a war in heaven via a diplomatic confrontation).