Stellaris Dev Diary #166 - Federation Q&A

[methegrate]

I don't think you can do this. The economy already doesn't work during the early game because you can't put a large enough percentage of your population on specialist jobs until you either get tier 2 buildings or an ecumenopolis. Empires end up with too much of the base resources with nothing to spend them on except the marketplace.

By strategic resources I just mean motes, gas and crystals. Those aren't early game resources, so it shouldn't harm that stage of the game.

Although we may just have different perspectives. I think the only time the economy does work is in the early game, because that's the only stage where there's any scarcity. After that, the only resource I don't have way, way too much of is alloys. It's not that long into the game that I'm selling off strategic resources 100+ at a time and minerals in batches of 1,000 because they're kind of flooding in the door.

Without scarcity, the economy can't drive conflict or trade. As a result it can't contribute much to diplomacy. I mean, what's there to talk about, right? There's nothing you can have that I want because I already have more than enough of everything.

I'm not saying this wouldn't lead to shortages, but imo that's a feature, not a bug. The game is designed to have pretty much everything connect through the economy. (That is, almost every action costs or generates resources. What connects your decision to invade Proxima II with your choice of living standards is that each costs resources and can bring new resources in.) This is a fine model as long as the economy has enough tension in it that choices in one area meaningfully shift options in another.

But the Stellaris economy is also currently designed to make sure that every player can always have enough of everything. This is what makes the game feel like nothing is interconnected. There's so much slack in the economy that the costs and benefits of one choice rarely change a player's options anywhere else. It's like if we had a bunch of strings tied to a ring, and the idea is that every string you tug on would pull on every other. That can work great unless every string has two feet of slack in it. Then almost no amount of pulling will affect anything else. It would feel like they weren't tied together at all.

My point with this tangent is just that scarcity in the economy might seem like a bad thing because it would limit player options. But in fact, that's arguably the most essential piece that the game is missing. If player options were limited by the resources at hand, without an easy way to generate more on their own, then they would need things from each other. That's how we generate conflict or cooperation and, in turn, how we make diplomacy much more interesting and essential.

Otherwise, the only reason to interact with other empires is to tick an arbitrary win condition or (more often) just kinda out of boredom.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

By strategic resources I just mean motes, gas and crystals. Those aren't early game resources, so it shouldn't harm that stage of the game.

Although we may just have different perspectives. I think the only time the economy does work is in the early game, because that's the only stage where there's any scarcity. After that, the only resource I don't have way, way too much of is alloys. It's not that long into the game that I'm selling off strategic resources 100+ at a time and minerals in batches of 1,000 because they're kind of flooding in the door.

Without scarcity, the economy can't drive conflict or trade. As a result it can't contribute much to diplomacy. I mean, what's there to talk about, right? There's nothing you can have that I want because I already have more than enough of everything.

I'm not saying this wouldn't lead to shortages, but imo that's a feature, not a bug. The game is designed to have pretty much everything connect through the economy. (That is, almost every action costs or generates resources. What connects your decision to invade Proxima II with your choice of living standards is that each costs resources and can bring new resources in.) This is a fine model as long as the economy has enough tension in it that choices in one area meaningfully shift options in another.

But the Stellaris economy is also currently designed to make sure that every player can always have enough of everything. This is what makes the game feel like nothing is interconnected. There's so much slack in the economy that the costs and benefits of one choice rarely change a player's options anywhere else. It's like if we had a bunch of strings tied to a ring, and the idea is that every string you tug on would pull on every other. That can work great unless every string has two feet of slack in it. Then almost no amount of pulling will affect anything else. It would feel like they weren't tied together at all.

My point with this tangent is just that scarcity in the economy might seem like a bad thing because it would limit player options. But in fact, that's arguably the most essential piece that the game is missing. If player options were limited by the resources at hand, without an easy way to generate more on their own, then they would need things from each other. That's how we generate conflict or cooperation and, in turn, how we make diplomacy much more interesting and essential.

Otherwise, the only reason to interact with other empires is to tick an arbitrary win condition or (more often) just kinda out of boredom.

I see, that makes more sense. The issue I was bringing up was that I always find I can't get enough of specific jobs, due to the building system, until up to tier 2. It isn't so much a scarcity problem, though you're quite right that I wish there was more to that. Strategic resources both need to be more valuable, and also harder to get, in order to make them worthwhile. It would also be great if there was a way to truly specialize more. So there's a good justification for going through the trouble of generating x good per month as well as a high price for doing it that makes it so you can't just make everything.

There's an awful lot to be desired when it comes to the economy still. The only real restrictions are purely arbitrary and once you get past those you're kinda flooded with the advanced stuff as you said. It's very rare someone would actually want to synthesize them. Constantly being short on resources because I can't put 66% of my population into research and alloys, even though I could afford to, isn't a good economy limitation.

 

[methegrate]

I see, that makes more sense. The issue I was bringing up was that I always find I can't get enough of specific jobs, due to the building system, until up to tier 2. It isn't so much a scarcity problem, though you're quite right that I wish there was more to that. Strategic resources both need to be more valuable, and also harder to get, in order to make them worthwhile. It would also be great if there was a way to truly specialize more. So there's a good justification for going through the trouble of generating x good per month as well as a high price for doing it that makes it so you can't just make everything.

There's an awful lot to be desired when it comes to the economy still. The only real restrictions are purely arbitrary and once you get past those you're kinda flooded with the advanced stuff as you said. It's very rare someone would actually want to synthesize them. I'm constantly short on resources because I can't put 66% of my population into research and alloys, even though I could afford to, isn't a good economy limitation.

I feel like this also speaks to what other people have pointed out, that there seems to be a lack of clear design direction in the game. It often feels like Stellaris wants to please everyone at once. As a sandbox game, this economy model makes sense. You want to play with all the toys. But that same idea breaks a strategy game, which has to limit players as much by what they can do as by what they should do.

 

[InvisibleBison]

By strategic resources I just mean motes, gas and crystals. Those aren't early game resources, so it shouldn't harm that stage of the game.

Although we may just have different perspectives. I think the only time the economy does work is in the early game, because that's the only stage where there's any scarcity. After that, the only resource I don't have way, way too much of is alloys. It's not that long into the game that I'm selling off strategic resources 100+ at a time and minerals in batches of 1,000 because they're kind of flooding in the door.

Without scarcity, the economy can't drive conflict or trade. As a result it can't contribute much to diplomacy. I mean, what's there to talk about, right? There's nothing you can have that I want because I already have more than enough of everything.

I'm not saying this wouldn't lead to shortages, but imo that's a feature, not a bug. The game is designed to have pretty much everything connect through the economy. (That is, almost every action costs or generates resources. What connects your decision to invade Proxima II with your choice of living standards is that each costs resources and can bring new resources in.) This is a fine model as long as the economy has enough tension in it that choices in one area meaningfully shift options in another.

But the Stellaris economy is also currently designed to make sure that every player can always have enough of everything. This is what makes the game feel like nothing is interconnected. There's so much slack in the economy that the costs and benefits of one choice rarely change a player's options anywhere else. It's like if we had a bunch of strings tied to a ring, and the idea is that every string you tug on would pull on every other. That can work great unless every string has two feet of slack in it. Then almost no amount of pulling will affect anything else. It would feel like they weren't tied together at all.

My point with this tangent is just that scarcity in the economy might seem like a bad thing because it would limit player options. But in fact, that's arguably the most essential piece that the game is missing. If player options were limited by the resources at hand, without an easy way to generate more on their own, then they would need things from each other. That's how we generate conflict or cooperation and, in turn, how we make diplomacy much more interesting and essential.

Otherwise, the only reason to interact with other empires is to tick an arbitrary win condition or (more often) just kinda out of boredom.

This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would actually work. If strategic resources are universally scarce, how would you be able to get more by interacting with your neighbors? They won't be willing to trade you any, because they don't have enough for their own needs, and conquering their production also gets you their consumption, so you're no better off. And even if you find a way around that, there will be times when you can't get any resources from other empires, be it because you're playing an inward perfection empire who refuses to trade with anyone, or you've only met genocidal empires who are too strong for you to conquer, or you're playing without any other empires at all.

 

[methegrate]

This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would actually work. If strategic resources are universally scarce, how would you be able to get more by interacting with your neighbors? They won't be willing to trade you any, because they don't have enough for their own needs, and conquering their production also gets you their consumption, so you're no better off. And even if you find a way around that, there will be times when you can't get any resources from other empires, be it because you're playing an inward perfection empire who refuses to trade with anyone, or you've only met genocidal empires who are too strong for you to conquer, or you're playing without any other empires at all.

Re: trade, I agree completely. That’s why trade needs to be positive-sum. My suggestion was to change trade to a system where each empire gets a %-boost to production based on the other empire’s production, like it works with commercial pacts.

Re: the others, I feel like that’s a feature, not a bug. It means you’d have to be smarter about conquest instead of indiscriminately gobbling everything up. Or just grab key systems, or maybe keep those resources for the core planets and make everyone else serfs. All tricky, complicated options, much more so than the current model of “take planet, get richer.”

As to the rest, to me that feels like a fair challenge in the game. Playing a strict isolationist should be the equivalent of hard mode. Being surrounded by strong genocidal neighbors... well, tbh I feel like you have even bigger problems.

 

[Alkaid98]

I definitely want to say that I really appreciate the extra transparency and willingness of the devs to (likely knowingly) put themselves under fire by actually addressing these Q&A questions directly, rather than the usual evasiveness. Even if the response may seem harsh, I think this does the community far better than dodging questions or wishy-washy answers that just leave people often stewing and upset regardless.

That said, I still have to agree with some of the posts here how it's mostly a big list of "no" to the majority of interesting ideas, and has dropped my excitement for the update/DLC. I'm worried the development of this game is in a tougher spot than I thought these days, despite how the game seemed on an upward turn again after emerging from the long cleanup of the terrible Dec 2018 DLC/update's launch and successful release of the Archaeology DLC early last year. I was hoping for something significant, either in addressing core existing issues or an especially strong-looking DLC, after so many months of almost nothing since last summer, but that doesn't sound to be the case.

Now perhaps the lacking feel of this DLC/update, despite the longest wait period yet for this game, will be worth it if they come out and say performance and other big issues have been addressed in a significant way finally. The bad vibes I'm feeling would dissipate greatly if that really happened, but I can't say with the track record so far that I have much hope for that actually being the case.

 

[ArgoStar]

Your AI minions will follow normal expansion rules, generally being willing to create an outpost in a system two jumps away from another system they occupy.

And so I will have to grab that mod that prevents this. I do not like the AI jumping borders in their expansion.

 

[PostWomanism]

I've been mulling over this for a few days, but would just like to echo what some others in this thread have said much more thoroughly and eloquently.

While I don't think any of these features are bad (I think they're all good ideas), I'm still a bit disappointed. We're coming up on 4 years since Stellaris' release this May, which means nearly 4 years I've been waiting for "The Diplomacy Update". Somehow this doesn't feel like "The Diplomacy Update".

It feels like a doubling down on number manipulation instead of tangible actions. Lets say I want to form some sort of deal with an empire that has a neutral opinion of me. Because of our neutral relationship, they're unwilling to trade. I assign an envoy to increase a number, and leave that running in the background until I remember to check back and see if that number is high enough yet. I'll readily admit that since I haven't played with the new system yet, I can't be certain of how it works/feels but I've been following news about Federations closely since PDXcon and I think there are a number of problems with this system:

-Envoys have a single use and single purpose when dealing with individual empires: directly increase/decrease the opinion number, with no story indication as to how they go about that. Instead, we could assign envoys with an express purpose like "Secure a commercial pact", "Negotiate open borders" and of course "Improve relations" to represent the envoy being sent to lobby or negotiate over a particular goal.
-In the 3 and a half months since the Federations reveal, I've seen no mention of diplomatic events, related to envoys or otherwise. Simple story events that can pop as an envoy works towards their goal, giving you choices than can help or hamper your efforts, could go a long way to making them feel less gamey.
-Deals and pacts are entirely static, with no choice involved and absolutely no concept of negotiation. There is no choice to provide a higher percentage of trade value to an otherwise unwilling partner in order to secure a deal, or to use another empires good will or desperation to make a deal that benefits me more than them. No option to make a research agreement with an inferior party that excludes military tech, and no terms to negotiate in a non-aggression/defense pact. Every deal you make is the same.
-Diplomacy in Stellaris is on a first come, first serve basis. Empires are generally unwilling to form pacts with a new partner if they already have a number of them, and there is zero ability to interfere in that. Rather than sitting on our hands until the "make friends" button ticks up high enough to overpower the malus caused by their existing pacts, we could send envoys to negotiate a better deal than they're currently getting. The Groknaploran Star Concordat has a commercial pact with my neighbour that provides 10% of trade value both ways, so I draft up an agreement where I provide 15% in exchange for 10% and send an envoy to tell them why it's the greatest thing they've ever seen.

With all that said, I do really appreciate the transparency even if I dislike the direction.

 

[Knotz]

-In the 3 and a half months since the Federations reveal, I've seen no mention of diplomatic events, related to envoys or otherwise. Simple story events that can pop as an envoy works towards their goal, giving you choices than can help or hamper your efforts, could go a long way to making them feel less gamey.

Lowkey one of my biggest concerns too. The only time I think I've seen the devs mention events is wrt origins, which is appreciated, but if we're getting a diplomacy pack with little or no events tied to diplomacy... that's gonna be an issue for me.

 

[fanaticAuthoritarian]

I don't think you can do this. The economy already doesn't work during the early game because you can't put a large enough percentage of your population on specialist jobs until you either get tier 2 buildings or an ecumenopolis. Empires end up with too much of the base resources with nothing to spend them on except the marketplace.

the economy works perfectly early game. you don't have an abundance of everything so you have to be good at management.

by 2280 you can have ludicrous 300+ alloy incomes and 1000+ naval cap. there's nothing to manage. there's no meaningful difference between 300+ alloy income and 500+ alloy income even though they're so different: you can build ships to capacity yet a surprise doomstack will still sink your entire empire.

if there was a meaningful management challenge where not keeping your pops happy, not managing your economy, overbuilding ships/research, etc. could legitimately hurt you then it'd be more interesting.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

the economy works perfectly early game. you don't have an abundance of everything so you have to be good at management.

The AI with all its planets maxed out on empty districts and 100 assault armies sitting in orbit around their planets says otherwise. Too many minerals and nothing to spend them on is a consistent problem if you don't colonize literally every single planet. That's with 0 mining districts. I usually have enough energy for the first fifty years that I'm regularly buying bulk alloys on the marketplace while also running all the edicts and patronizing the curators and artisans. Mostly from all those extra technician jobs I don't need, but don't have anything better to get my pops to do.

 

[fanaticAuthoritarian]

The AI with all its planets maxed out on empty districts and 100 assault armies sitting in orbit around their planets says otherwise. Too many minerals and nothing to spend them on is a consistent problem if you don't colonize literally every single planet. That's with 0 mining districts. I usually have enough energy for the first fifty years that I'm regularly buying bulk alloys on the marketplace while also running all the edicts and patronizing the curators and artisans. Mostly from all those extra technician jobs I don't need, but don't have anything better to get my pops to do.

there's somewhat an abundance of minerals starting as early as 2210, but energy is in short supply. 2250 is essentially already midgame. games are decided by 2250 anyhow. I don't know how you are getting that much energy. are you playing something like 1.0 habitable planets on a large galaxy? I almost never see an empire with more than 4-5 planets in a small maxed out galaxy and 0.25 habitability and a galactic superpower only needs 8-10 planets.

the base AI is not meaningful resistance for balance purposes, it might as well not be there. so multiplayer (for Paradox since they cannot endorse any mods) and (for single player) aggressive modded AI like StarNet should be the benchmarks. I don't even play base AI anymore, it is too broken. it is like hitting a punching bag and thinking you are sparring a heavyweight pro boxer.

against resisting opponents in an economically scarce galaxy the economy is quite meaningful until ~2230 or so. then everything is easily abundant.

 

[Kanzhuu]

It isn't a problem that a federation is stronger together, it's that there's nothing you can do to break up a federation or prevent one from forming. If you've spawned in a galaxy where three empires are between you and everything else and those three empires form a federation within 10 years of the game starting, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. The only path is direct conquest, which generally should not be possible with a 3 to 1 disadvantage.

Assuming you are not the leading federation anyways, I guess you will have to wait for another X expansions until we get espionage.

 

[methegrate]

This expansion focuses largely on positive diplomatic interactions - espionage/subterfuge/destabilization type systems would deserve a full development cycle.

I think this is something else I'd disagree with.

There seems to be this idea that disruptive diplomacy requires espionage and subterfuge. As if the only way to interfere with trade deals and alliances was to sabotage them.

But that couldn't be farther from the truth. The best way to interfere with someone else's deal is to simply offer a better one. Allow players to offer alliances conditional on exiting an existing one. Allow them to intervene in existing wars, or to negotiate doing so for a price. Allow them to offer better commercial pacts and research agreements. (Also, absolutely put in other forms of trade deals.) As someone else mentioned, integrate the events system into diplomacy. This was promised before the game was even released, that events would play a key role in the diplomacy and life of the galaxy. Build that out, because it was always a great idea.

Sabotage is probably the worst possible solution to this problem because it feels pretty much like being trolled by the RNG. That doesn't mean there are no good options.

 

[InvisibleBison]

the base AI is not meaningful resistance for balance purposes, it might as well not be there. so multiplayer (for Paradox since they cannot endorse any mods) and (for single player) aggressive modded AI like StarNet should be the benchmarks. I don't even play base AI anymore, it is too broken. it is like hitting a punching bag and thinking you are sparring a heavyweight pro boxer.

This is nonsense. The overwhelming majority of people who play Stellaris, myself included, don't use Starnet. The fact that you're really good at the game doesn't mean that the game is too easy by default; it just means that you're really good. You should take pride in your accomplishment without trying to make the game prohibitively hard for the rest of us.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

I think this is something else I'd disagree with.

There seems to be this idea that disruptive diplomacy requires espionage and subterfuge. As if the only way to interfere with trade deals and alliances was to sabotage them.

But that couldn't be farther from the truth. The best way to interfere with someone else's deal is to simply offer a better one. Allow players to offer alliances conditional on exiting an existing one. Allow them to intervene in existing wars, or to negotiate doing so for a price. Allow them to offer better commercial pacts and research agreements. (Also, absolutely put in other forms of trade deals.) As someone else mentioned, integrate the events system into diplomacy. This was promised before the game was even released, that events would play a key role in the diplomacy and life of the galaxy. Build that out, because it was always a great idea.

Sabotage is probably the worst possible solution to this problem because it feels pretty much like being trolled by the RNG. That doesn't mean there are no good options.

Hard agree. We have the ability to put making pacts and federations on the table as offers, but not breaking them.

We don't even have the ability to say "do this or we declare war" for anything except vassalization. Certainly we should at least be able to do this for demanding claimed systems, or the breaking of alliances?

We also don't have the ability to counter-offer for more concessions. That's how impoverished "negotiations" are in this game.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

This is nonsense. The overwhelming majority of people who play Stellaris, myself included, don't use Starnet. The fact that you're really good at the game doesn't mean that the game is too easy by default; it just means that you're really good. You should take pride in your accomplishment without trying to make the game prohibitively hard for the rest of us.

Strong agree. Starnet is irrelevant as a benchmark, because it's... not actually part of the game. The AI is currently in a pretty bad spot, so much so that even unskilled players can get the advantage over it with a bit of luck, but its been better previously and it will likely be better in future.

 

[methegrate]

Strong agree. Starnet is irrelevant as a benchmark, because it's... not actually part of the game. The AI is currently in a pretty bad spot, so much so that even unskilled players can get the advantage over it with a bit of luck, but its been better previously and it will likely be better in future.

I don't disagree with him about the economy though. It isn't that long until I'm running the strategic resource edicts as permanent modifiers and still selling off the excess in batches of 100+ at a time. Consumer goods I sell off 250 or 500 at a time. Minerals and food 1,000+ at a time. The economy needs an across the board rebalancing, but I feel like you could accomplish a ton by just making strategic resources an order of magnitude harder to manufacture.

Literally, 10 times harder. I know that seems drastic, but at least in my games it's common to have stockpiles of more than 1,000 motes, crystal and gas apiece. It would be one thing if that was endgame, while facing the crisis, but this is barely into the middle. The solution needs to be scaled to the problem. Things aren't working right when I'm building my most advanced labs on every frontier world. This should be one of the big things that separates the rich planets from the poor (or the late game resource utopia from the middle).

Also, would it make sense to have strategic resources require two basic resources to produce? Right now they all require minerals. What if instead if was minerals and energy; minerals and food; food and energy? (Maybe for crystals, motes and gas, respectively?) It seems like that might help keep some pressure on basic resources throughout the game, or would it not really work out that way?

 

[Deknay]

"there is no mechanic to merge a federation into one empire"

Hype going down to the floor.

 

[Mojo1987]

"there is no mechanic to merge a federation into one empire"

The really sad part about this is the fact that the ST:NH team implemented this feature for the United federations of planets nearly 3 years ago in their mod... The whole federation dlc for me seems underwhelming.