Stellaris Dev Diary #159 - Galactic Community

[Sir Roderick]

You... did see the half-paragraph I devoted to just-off-the-top-of-my-head ways to make manpower strategically interesting, right? Getting more-experienced-out-the-door ships, getting ships/starbase upgrades/etc. faster, having a lot of stockpile (reservists) that build up over time but cost upkeep vs. pushing recruitment to the max when you need it (press-gangs/drafts/compulsory service) at a sudden steep cost to civilian economy (probably directly consumes pops) and possibly also to popular support/stability, focusing on quantity vs. quality vs. automation, etc. The idea is that you can't just pair recruitment to your alloy production for long, you can in fact run a "disproportionate" ratio while still building at full tilt (just, getting better or worse soldiers/ships/etc. as a consequence), and you have different ways to solve the problem.

Yes, if you're doing nothing but steadily building ships whenever you have the alloys with no consideration to things like upkeep, spoofing your combat strength (which the game tells everybody, but in imprecise terms that can be gamed), holding off on production while you get a significant tech upgrade, diverting alloys to starbases/colonies (especially if machines)/megastructures, or the obligate mention of roleplay, then sure, you'll want to keep your manpower recruitment at a pretty steady rate. However, that kind of thing being the optimal way to play is one of the things that manpower (or logistics in general) is explicitly designed to interfere with, so you have to make choices. If you did attempt that, it should just bite you on the ass when some large percentage of your would-be productive workforce is doing nothing but building and operating weapons. On the other hand, if you're actually playing strategically - that is, you're trying to deceive the enemy, or plan for the future, or avoid spooking your neighbors (did you know that certain AI personalities are friendlier if they perceive you as weak?), or do literally anything other than amass the biggest fleet you can in the least time - then you'll probably face the prospect of quickly hitting the manpower cap and needing to figure out whether you'll have enough when you step up military production, or focus on building up manpower and shipyards so you can really crank out fleets when you need them, etc.

Also, manpower should be more than purely military. Construction ships should take manpower. Megastructure construction should take a lot of it (in fact, the game already justifies the megastructure construction limit explicitly using the word manpower), and when the structure is done you should get some of that manpower back but some should be perpetually consumed by the megastructure. Starbases - especially upgraded ones - should take some even if they're just trade hubs. Finally, as with the megas, disassembling starbases or fleets (not the same as losing them in combat) should return some manpower, so you can make decisions like "I don't really need such a big merchant marine right now, let's shift them to manning warships".

In fact, I think you're being unfair to the game's current strategic depth; there are significant options already beyond just "spend 5100 alloys". If you've out-teched them, jump drive into under-defended space. If it's not too late in the game, turtle up instead of building an offensive fleet; starbase upgrades are slow but are far more effective, alloys-to-fleet-power, than early corvettes or destroyers. Scout them out to figure out what their fleet is weak to, and refit to counter it. Pay the marauders to raid them. Spend strategic resources on combat boosts (the cost for that really ought to scale with navy size or even fleet power, not just empire size, but oh well). Spend minor artifacts on military applications. Meet them in a pulsar system with an all-armor fleet. Lure them into your Rubricator system and spawn Shard while they tangle with the starbase (OK, they'd probably just retreat, but it'd be a funny way to kill or at least send home an enemy fleet if you get the timing right, and if you build up a ton of clues with a really low-level scientist then have a high-level one finish the last few days of the last chapter, you probably can).

Megastructures limits on manpower are totally arbitray since you could easily have more than 1000 pops in many ecumenopolis, etc. that could increase manpower to trillions or more

 

[The Founder]

Unless diplomacy is about more than just uniting militaries, it is an accessory to the war system. You're using diplomacy to get more ships to fight a war, and not as an alternative to war.

So nothing they ever add to the game will be anything but a "Addition to war", for you, because you are incapable to see anything but War?
If I am wrong, please provide me with a example of a mechanic that "would just not add to war" by your definition.

 

[Zalmoxis]

Except that reactor clearly go on fission, then fusion, then cold fusion, then antimatter, zeropoint energy and then dark matter, so at least the last 3 shouldn't have any problems since they are creating energy ex nihilo (maybe not the antimatter one but the zeropoint and dark matter reactor definetely create energy ex nihilo).

But just because you have energy doesn't mean you have everything an FTL drive would need to use. Especially since hyperspace/hyperlanes are pure fantasy. If it were warp drives or wormholes you would need negative-mass matter.

 

[Sir Roderick]

But just because you have energy doesn't mean you have everything an FTL drive would need to use. Especially since hyperspace/hyperlanes are pure fantasy. If it were warp drives or wormholes you would need negative-mass matter.

With effectively inifinite energy created ex nihilo, you can create everything you need, like an epic D&D mage that gets an epic spell that refills his spell slots every day.
Warp and wormholes drives don't exist anymore, and there are also Jump Drives that simply make tunnels in reality, without being ridicolous like suicide teleporters.

 

[sortulv]

With effectively inifinite energy created ex nihilo.

Stellaris does not have this. Otherwise we would not have energy as a resource in the late game.
Ships need to carry an amount of matter of some sort(*) as fuel, which is presumably produced in the generators. Luckily ships have large fuel tanks, and logistics is abstracted by simply having unseen ships deliver fuel to the ships.

(*) antimatter, dark matter, hydrogen, plutonium, whichever...

 

[Sir Roderick]

Stellaris does not have this. Otherwise we would not have energy as a resource in the late game.
Ships need to carry an amount of matter of some sort(*) as fuel, which is presumably produced in the generators. Luckily ships have large fuel tanks, and logistics is abstracted by simply having unseen ships deliver fuel to the ships.

(*) antimatter, dark matter, hydrogen, plutonium, whichever...

If you read the descriptions of the reactors from antimatter onwards, they produce more energy than they consume, which means they can create more matter to consume in an endless feedback loop only limited by how much surplus they produce each time and the time available

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

If you read the descriptions of the reactors from antimatter onwards, they produce more energy than they consume, which means they can create more matter to consume in an endless feedback loop only limited by how much surplus they produce each time and the time available

If that were actually true, any reactor above Antimatter would give infinite energy.

 

[Zalmoxis]

With effectively inifinite energy created ex nihilo, you can create everything you need, like an epic D&D mage that gets an epic spell that refills his spell slots every day.
Warp and wormholes drives don't exist anymore, and there are also Jump Drives that simply make tunnels in reality, without being ridicolous like suicide teleporters.

Where does it say you can get infinite energy? I don't know the limitations of zero-point energy extraction technology here, other than ships still have upkeep costs and don't act as powerplants providing energy when not in combat. The assumption is that however advanced the on-board reactor is, the ship itself consumes more energy than the reactor is able to provide.

 

[Sir Roderick]

If that were actually true, any reactor above Antimatter would give infinite energy.

Where does it say you can get infinite energy? I don't know the limitations of zero-point energy extraction technology here, other than ships still have upkeep costs and don't act as powerplants providing energy when not in combat. The assumption is that however advanced the on-board reactor is, the ship itself consumes more energy than the reactor is able to provide.

I found this on Reddit, which includes the description of antimatter I suppose:

Posted by

Paradox Doesn't Understand Orders of Magnitude

An order of magnitude is a power of 10. Something which increases by several orders of magnitude increases by at least 100 times.

In order for the description on the Antimatter Reactor to be correct, "By harnessing the energy produced by matter/antimatter annihilations, our efficiency at generating power will be orders of magnitude better than fusion, " the antimatter reactor would have to produce 100 TIMES the amount of energy produced by the Cold Fusion Reactor.

A Large Cold Fusion Reactor produces 60 power. For the Large Antimatter Reactor to produce "several orders of magnitude" more than the Large Cold Fusion Reactor, it would have to produce at least 600 power. Instead it produces only 80 power which is only 4/3 more and thus not even 1 order of magnitude more. The technology in Stellaris is incredibly underwhelming, and the lack of benefit of researching new technology which is only barely better than the previous technology when it should be 100 TIMES MORE is part of the problem.

Instead of filling our ships with tons of reactors, reactors which barely classify as being better than the less advanced reactors, we should have one reactor and then lots of fun stuff to stuff in there. For example gravity scoop projectors which pull Corvettes and Destroyers backwards or subspace rifts which cause space to bend in such a way that weapons fire which enters the subspace rift leaves the rift with a random vector.




Do you have any screenshots of the antimatter, zeropoint, and dark matter reactors?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Paradox Doesn't Understand Orders of Magnitude

I'm quite confident they do.

It's just that gameplay mechanics and lore and never guaranteed to line up.

 

[Zalmoxis]

What if they made reactors a component that gives energy to all the ships in a system rather than to just individual ships (Like the Titan's auras)? Better reactor technology allows you to fit less reactors in a fleet to get the same energy output as many lesser reactors. Like, one dark matter reactor on a single ship can cover the energy costs of many ships. Perhaps the reactors themselves can have upkeep costs of some kind, like alloys or minerals or something else. The dark-matter reactors have dark-matter requirements so its already a thing.

Examples: Fission reactors would use nuclear fissionable materials (Uranium, Thorium, Plutonium), so an upkeep can be minerals. Or a nuclear fuel resource refined from minerals can work too. Likewise an anti-matter resource for anti-matter reactors. Another option is alloys are used as upkeep, representing constant maintenance materials to keep the reactors running.

 

[The Founder]

An order of magnitude is a power of 10. Something which increases by several orders of magnitude increases by at least 100 times.

A scientific order of Magnitude? Sure.
A Science Fiction order of Magnitude? Meh.

What if they made reactors a component that gives energy to all the ships in a system rather than to just individual ships (Like the Titan's auras)? Better reactor technology allows you to fit less reactors in a fleet to get the same energy output as many lesser reactors.

The issue is never about producing energy, but actually about keeping the ship cool enough to not murder crew and electronics.

I simply asume that between changes in Energy Output, Cooling Need, Fuel Storage and the like, Reactor Components have this slow increase.

 

[Chicossauro]

The issue is never about producing energy, but actually about keeping the ship cool enough to not murder crew and electronics.

What bothers me is that new reactor techs have no effect on Energy Districts. If only each generation of reactors added +1 energy to the output of Technicians i'd be satisfied, or maybe a +20% empire bonus to energy yield for each tech, or something.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

So nothing they ever add to the game will be anything but a "Addition to war", for you, because you are incapable to see anything but War?
If I am wrong, please provide me with a example of a mechanic that "would just not add to war" by your definition.

Read back through the thread. I've given plenty of examples.

See Diplomatic Negotiations - Diplomacy 3.0 for a full test concept of a "social combat" system that does not ultimately depend on war.

 

[Monturiol]

I found this on Reddit, which includes the description of antimatter I suppose:

Posted by

Paradox Doesn't Understand Orders of Magnitude

And pleddit doesn't understand the difference between energy and work. But that's pleddit for you.
It would be quite easy for the reactor to GENERATE 100 times the power but you're only able to harness an additional 33%, because the rest of the output gets lost in heat.
DIDN'T THINK OF THAT, DID YOU

Also "power" is a time-averaged quantity. If the antimatter reactor has to be "always on", like nuclear power stations, then maybe over its lifetime it produces 100 times the power of the cold fusion reactor, but 98% of that power is wasted because you're producing it and dumping it while the ship isn't doing anything. So at times of high demand (i.e. combat situations) the antimatter generator is only slightly better than the cold fusion generator, even though averaged over all times it's 100 times better.

People complaining about flavor text always amuse me, because 9 times out of 10 they're Dunning-Kruger-ing HARD.

 

[methegrate]

And pleddit doesn't understand the difference between energy and work. But that's pleddit for you.
It would be quite easy for the reactor to GENERATE 100 times the power but you're only able to harness an additional 33%, because the rest of the output gets lost in heat.
DIDN'T THINK OF THAT, DID YOU

Also "power" is a time-averaged quantity. If the antimatter reactor has to be "always on", like nuclear power stations, then maybe over its lifetime it produces 100 times the power of the cold fusion reactor, but 98% of that power is wasted because you're producing it and dumping it while the ship isn't doing anything. So at times of high demand (i.e. combat situations) the antimatter generator is only slightly better than the cold fusion generator, even though averaged over all times it's 100 times better.

People complaining about flavor text always amuse me, because 9 times out of 10 they're Dunning-Kruger-ing HARD.

Flavor text and realism. I always chuckle a little when, in our game about space dragons and psychic mushroom marines, someone complains that a mechanic just wouldn't be realistic.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

Flavor text and realism. I always chuckle a little when, in our game about space dragons and psychic mushroom marines, someone complains that a mechanic just wouldn't be realistic.

Easiest way to knock out these complaints is to just link to the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness and ask them where they think Stellaris falls. That gets everyone on the same page, really quickly.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

A scientific order of Magnitude? Sure.
A Science Fiction order of Magnitude? Meh.

I’m sorry, I find this a bit unsatisfactory.

And pleddit doesn't understand the difference between energy and work. But that's pleddit for you.
It would be quite easy for the reactor to GENERATE 100 times the power but you're only able to harness an additional 33%, because the rest of the output gets lost in heat.
DIDN'T THINK OF THAT, DID YOU

Also "power" is a time-averaged quantity. If the antimatter reactor has to be "always on", like nuclear power stations, then maybe over its lifetime it produces 100 times the power of the cold fusion reactor, but 98% of that power is wasted because you're producing it and dumping it while the ship isn't doing anything. So at times of high demand (i.e. combat situations) the antimatter generator is only slightly better than the cold fusion generator, even though averaged over all times it's 100 times better.

People complaining about flavor text always amuse me, because 9 times out of 10 they're Dunning-Kruger-ing HARD.

Power is not necessarily a time averaged quantity, it can exist instantaneously, just like velocity. Now if we start talking about quantized time, then we’ll really go off the deep end .

It’s still a poor argument, as there is more energy available per mass for anti-matter/matter reactions than fusion. Hand waving that these fictional reactors must have some efficiency imbalance feels like you are trying to explain that your fictional TNT bomb is totally better than some nuclear weapon. Like ... ok maybe ... but isn’t this an edge case at best?

Let’s leave the vague sci-if tropes for power generation to just be abstractions with cool names and stop there.

Still, I’ll do you all one better, prove to me that the power scale of the stellaris ship designer is *linear* and not *logarithmic*.

 

[sortulv]

Magnitude, like decimate (kill/remove 1/10) and quantum, is a term often misused in literature and common parlance to mean an great amount.

 

[sortulv]

What bothers me is that new reactor techs have no effect on Energy Districts. If only each generation of reactors added +1 energy to the output of Technicians i'd be satisfied, or maybe a +20% empire bonus to energy yield for each tech, or something.

Were do you get the fuel for the reactors? Pretty sure you don't have a huge anti-matter mine somewhere, so you need to generate the energy, and then convert it to antimatter to run the starships. (Similar for other fuels)