Stellaris Dev Diary #164 - Summary of the Year 2019

[Minervo]

Liked that ideia of Institutions. Hope it will come next with espionage

 

[Deathly_God]

I for one look forward to joining the newly formed Village Hidden in the Stars.

 

[safe-keeper]

I'm cautiously optimistic about espionage in Stellaris as HOI4's system (see the dev diaries) actually seems to be more engaging and thought out than "hire spy, send spy, roll die, blow up enemy battleship", so I hope Stellaris can have a better intel/subterfuge/espionage system than that. Just please, no stupid systems like "lolololol I rolled a die and now there is a civil war in your country".

 

[DrNukeLear]

Any chance of unifying the console and PC editions? Cross platform would be cool. But mainly once you have the engine running the same across all platforms future changes are easier because you can bring more people to bear on the same issue.

 

[Duuk]

Any chance of unifying the console and PC editions? Cross platform would be cool. But mainly once you have the engine running the same across all platforms future changes are easier because you can bring more people to bear on the same issue.

There is a better chance of The Bug being fixed than of the console edition ever coexisting with the PC version. Which is to say, none.

 

[DrNukeLear]

There is a better chance of The Bug being fixed than of the console edition ever coexisting with the PC version. Which is to say, none.

I agree completely with your assessment, still a man can dream,

 

[scaper12123]

I dunno about you guys but, after Federations and this lead developer shift, I hope next year focuses heavily on improving the existing mechanics of the game rather than adding new stuff. Brand new systems are all very well, but there are so many issues with the current game holding them back. Bad AI, increasingly bad lag, and a general vapidity of mechanics like Primitives and Piracy.

 

[TrueTexan]

Finally some politics.

 

[RoboticManiac]

I like the enthusiasm obidobi has, and I\m sad to see jamor go.

 

[Hoplites]

Haven't checked back in a while. Has the new launcher's mod management been fixed?

 

[Whousthat]

I've loved all the new DLCs... The only thing I am missing is machine, hive or Ecumenopolis ring worlds.

For the Lithovores, I'd love to see a "Gaia" version specilized for them. Like lava world or some such. It'd make sense for them to not care about tiny little birds and flowers, but rather easy access to yummy nummy minerals.

 

[Whousthat]

Could we get “Succesion type: Weakest”. Sometimes I just want a federation that I am never in charge off.

Or a opt-out of leadership

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

Institutions and religions are at the top of my wishlist for 2020 along with espionage. All three of those in my opinion would create a lot of story and roleplaying opportunities.

Along with alien reindeer for Christmas 2020.

 

[Spaceception]

Institutions: Define which institutions make up your empire’s internal departments (such as Diplomatic Corps, Xenology Bureau etc.), and their funding, size and power.

One thing that may help factions become more unique instead of samey, would be for Institutions to directly change your factions issues. An institution could affect one or more factions, and determine what each one cares about. You can start out with factions/institutes based around your starting conditions, and gain "neutral" factions with vanilla issues and goals. But if they get powerful enough, they could gain their own institution(s).

Institutions can be based around your government/ethics/and even certain civics to make your factions different. So if Machine cults become a thing, they could gain an Institute that makes the Spiritualist faction like robots. Or some sort of Institute that promotes Bio-Engineering over Cybernetics for Materialists. To help Institutions and factions feel more involved in your Empire, they could have short and long term goals/issues to address as well.

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

One thing that may help factions become more unique instead of samey, would be for Institutions to directly change your factions issues. An institution could affect one or more factions, and determine what each one cares about. You can start out with factions/institutes based around your starting conditions, and gain "neutral" factions with vanilla issues and goals. But if they get powerful enough, they could gain their own institution(s).

Institutions can be based around your government/ethics/and even certain civics to make your factions different. So if Machine cults become a thing, they could gain an Institute that makes the Spiritualist faction like robots. Or some sort of Institute that promotes Bio-Engineering over Cybernetics for Materialists. To help Institutions and factions feel more involved in your Empire, they could have short and long term goals/issues to address as well.

I like this idea. it creates a lot of stuff to play around with and structure our empire our way. This could also work for religions and cults.

 

[Spaceception]

I like this idea. it creates a lot of stuff to play around with and structure our empire our way. This could also work for religions and cults.

You're right! Institutions should be the core, while Religions and Cults could be the bonus for Spiritualists.

 

[Johann7]

Perpetual development remains a terrible practice - deadlines are what force difficult decisions, and ever-shifting design targets mean nothing is ever stable in terms of tweaking/addressing unforeseen effects of new systems/bug fixes - and changing leads every year or two just exacerbates the problems, because there is no consistent vision (hence the radical change in design goals for this game, apparently when Jamor took over). Your AI hasn't been able to competently play the game (and is an atrocious - and mandatory - substitute for player decision-making in the capacities where it's supposed to aid the player and reduce micromanagement) for nearly two years, because changes to fundamental design goals have meant that it has to be redesigned from the ground up rather than tweaked a little to deal with with new features (though clearly neither truly have been attempted, given that there are mods that give better AI decision weighting than the base game).

I wish all of you the best, and PDX management needs to shape up quickly and stop leaning in to the worst emerging practices of the industry, or the studio is going to lose the credibility that took two decades to build. If people are getting sick of working on your games, it's a sign that development is extending far past the point that it should. Determine your final feature sets for major versions and stick to that; resist the appeal of perpetual development (because the problems it introduces are worse than the benefits). Your core audience will be happy to buy new major versions rather than endless DLC, and potential new players will be far less turned off by the upfront price of buying e.g. CK3 or EU5 or Stellaris 2 rather than dropping hundreds of dollars (euros, pounds, whatever) on a years-old game with 20 expansions. Especially when the old game engine can't actually run the new features in a playable manner.

I, for one, hope that new project management means a radical change - in development practice, if not feature set. Though I would still welcome rolling back everything that has been introduced since version 2+ and proceeding from there, even if it didn't come with a refund of all DLC purchased after the major design overhaul (though it should). Functional AI scripting and late-game engine are mandatory, not optional. Unless both the AI and engine issues stand to be entirely resolved in Federations (ha!), you're just piling more fuel onto a burning fire, in which case admitting the failure and reverting to the last functional version as a new starting point is the best option. I enjoy Stellaris, but I haven't been able to recommend it (and have actively warned people away from purchasing it) for years now. At the very least, increase time between adding new features to allow for bug fixes and AI updates to address the existing feature set; overall, though, I'd seriously rather pull the entire team from current Stellaris development, leave it a broken mess, and move on to making a Stellaris 2 with a unified vision and stable design goals right from the start. It's the ongoing hucksterism of pitching new features for an increasingly broken game that bothers me the most.

Of course, you're still better than Valve, which hasn't shipped a game developed in-house since The Orange Box (and HL2:E2 was the only part entirely developed in-house; the original concept for TF2 was acquired by Valve hiring the TFC team, though there were subsequently enough redesigns that we can maybe credit Valve internal development, while Portal was mostly developed by an external team that was subsequently absorbed; L4D2 isn't so much a new game as an expansion of L4D, which was again developed externally and then acquired, though it DOES demonstrate the viability of new major version releases as full games even if they are basically an old-school expansion pack). But that's setting the bar at ground level. Paradox HAS been better, so I know it CAN be better, especially when it has additional income from an expanded role as a publisher. I'm rooting for you, I want to see you succeed, and that's why I'm not going to pretend that the last several years have been rainbows and sunshine instead of a mess.

I don't envy anyone who has to helm this particular ship, but I hope Obidobi has a better idea of the destination and the course required to reach it. And I hope Jamor is a better fit in the new role.

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

You're right! Institutions should be the core, while Religions and Cults could be the bonus for Spiritualists.

That would be cool!

Another thing I hope to see in the future is more interactions with primitives: maybe we can have an event where we can use either a science ship or military ships to stop a nuclear war from happening. That always bothered me that I couldn't stop a nuclear war from taking place and all I could do is sit back and watch! Dang it! I want to save the primitives from nuking themselves! Or if you fail to conquer a primitive world the natives might have a chance to reverse engineer your tech to either move into the next age or two or even gain FTL travel! Of course if that happens they have a bit of negative Diplomacy modifier as they remember that you tried to invade them in the past!

 

[FelipeCamiroaga]

A very interesting update.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

You're right! Institutions should be the core, while Religions and Cults could be the bonus for Spiritualists.

Nah. Everyone gets access to religions and cults to some extent (based on dev statements they can form during gameplay based on "worship of powerful entities", but Spiritualists get a STARTING religion.