Stellaris Dev Diary #174 - Federations is out, now what?

[Lord Lambert]

We are very interested in hearing your feedback and ideas regarding Federations

the favours system is the only big change I would like. It was very galling to stockpile a bunch of favours and then it just increases my diplo weight by X%, changing nothing of the person I used the favours from. It think it would be much more flavourful if using favours took away diplo weight from the empire that sold/gave them, and to balance, make the favours cost quite a lot more to get. It should also be a scaling cost based on how much diplo weight the empire has... so it would be nigh on impossible to buy favours from an empire with high diplo weight, but trivially easy to buy it from someone with low weight.

 

[Olterin]

According to patch notes they work now, and they still don't work?

They uh, sometimes seem to work and others not so much. I've had a game run into 2375 with ethics attractions showing one thing, and actual distributions showing another. And then I had another where it was all fine. I need more data, since it's a random-ish process to say for sure - but it's really no fun having 35% of your pops being pacifists just because a pacifist faction spawned for no good reason whatsoever in your Militarist, Fanatic Authoritarian empire from the moment factions became a thing ... and allegedly only has 11% attraction but stubbornly sits at 35%+

 

[GeorgieBest]

According to patch notes they work now, and they still don't work?

Whatever they did in the patch didn't fix anything. The only thing it achieved was to break the mod I used to use for addressing it.

Doesn't help that the Devs refuse to comment on it any time it is brought up.

 

[Fox McCloud]

As for resolutions?

Galactic Commerce

• Overall a decent tree; doesn't really have terrible downsides----though the last law in this tree is oddly harsh. For a massive -25% happiness to specialists and workers, you get an extra 5% trade value, 20% extra weight for economy, and 10% worker output. This seems so niche to take advantage of that only extremely specific empire types will benefit (stability builds). If the -25% happiness just impacted the workers, it'd make a bit more sense. Overall, I kinda feel this needs an alternative pivot point to attract people to actually want to use it. I realize gestalts are an obvious shoe-in, but their very low diplomatic weight and the fact this resolution doesn't really benefit them until the penultimate law makes it an odd one

Industrial Development

• Overall a good law tree that has a good pivot; empires that go synth or bio-ascended can counter most if not all of the downsides (and machines of course don't care). This has very obvious strengths and a very obvious shoe-in for who can appropriately use it--a really good resolution tree, in my opinion.

The Greater Good

• Overall also decent; has the obvious pivot of being beneficial to egalitarian and high-living standard empires; though sometimes I feel it's a bit too specific--probably not a huge issue though. The major quip I have about this is it unhinges egalitarian philosophy from an RP perspective. Egalitarians are going to be very focused on everyone being as equal as possible, in terms of political power. Egalitarians that choose to give utopian abundance, however, and pass all these resolutions, wind up with a situation where each worker pop has 2 votes while the specialists have 1 and the rulers have 1....not exactly egalitarian.

Ecological Protection

• I hate this resolution tree. It just comes across as pure, raw spite. It has, effectively, zero practical benefits, and just heaps and heaps of downsides that come across as being in the category of "fine, if I can't have it, then no one will!". Even the first two resolutions in this tree are likely to get a stink-eye from most even slightly economic leaning empires, by virtue of the fact that consumer good and amenities useage are incredibly tiny boosts for a rather massive hit to economic diplomatic weight. Tier 4 and 5 laws I have no idea how they're supposed to be used. There's no obvious pivot here for who can take advantage of this.

Unchained Knowledge

• A decent resolution tree that goes off the rails awfully quickly. Tiers 1-3 seem fine, but once you hit tier 4, things just become unnecessarily harsh. -15% worker happiness for a mere 10% boost to research output? I guess the pivot point is supposed to get gestalts? Most of the benefits of this law from tier 3, onward, because some ridiculous niche, that the only real advantage to passing them is the science diplomatic weight. The penultimate law isn't even that great. You pay 500 Zro and 1 Zro upkeep per tier 3 lab to get +1 extra dimensional portal researcher job. By the time you can pass this resolution, most empires are going to be well on their way for completing science---and bit of extra physics research isn't even going to do much by that point. The downside to this isn't even that bad---the Contingency still have the overwhelming chance to occur even if you pass this law.

Mutual Defense

• Simplistic resolution tree; no real strong opinions on this one. Decent all around

Rules of War

• Overall fairly decent; I feel this favors pacifists a bit too much, but I don't think it's particularly awful either

 

[Duuk]

When you mouseover a "Repeal" resolution in the GC, it would be nice to be reminded what it was.

 

[Spaceception]

Could you adjust the Lost Colony origin so that if multiple Lost Colonies of the same species spawn (ie are force-spawned) they have the same parent empire instead of all spawning their own parent empire? Bonus points if it's set up to detect other (force-spawned) non-Lost-Colony empires of the same species and use them. I'd really like to be able to set up a situation with the fragmented successor states of a formerly-galaxy-spanning empire.

Yes! I, for one. would like to have another Human Empire alongside the Commonwealth. It'd also be nice if we got more pre-events before we find each other (kinda like the CoM gets), and an early boost in relations. The first contact event also needs some rework when you find them/especially if they're the first ones you find.

EDIT

Also, the new UI layout for federation laws is very good, why not use it also for your empire policies screen. Let the Age of Needlessly Small Windows For Long Lists come to an End!

Oh, and when you mouse over a change, it should tell you which factions would explicitly like/dislike it, and the affects on influence/resource production (if possible) I feel this should be in regardless if they change the UI layout, but I would like this. Maybe it would be a bit smaller though? I don't know

 

[Gilad Pellaeon]

The game still needs much more love on the performance side. This supposed "big" performance fix is... Pretty damn "Meh...".

 

[Jobbb555]

How about focusing on a hotfix for the bug that disables numerous CB’s while in a federation. I haven't seen AI feds involved in those wars either, so i’d argue its pretty game breaking.

 

[DrTree1]

I have been really enjoying the new update, especially the changes to AI. For the most part they are doing a lot better at keeping up economically and are semi-competent at wars now. There's still one major issue that I would love to see fixed. Whenever an AI declares war, they'll often do it without moving any of their fleets to the borders of their enemy. This leaves me with a year+ of prep time after war has been declared to build up my fleets/starbases and move them into position. I think it would greatly improve the AI's ability if before they declared war on anyone they had to move all their fleets to the borders first so that they can actually use their initiative instead of starting every war on the back foot.

 

[Lord Lambert]

The game still needs much more love on the performance side. This supposed "big" performance fix is... Pretty damn "Meh...".

The game is objectively massively improved when it comes to performance. It is not supposed, it is actually a big improvement fix.

 

[Nahadoth]

Please, add the election option in how we choose our federation ruler -- none of the ways available looks appropriate to a Galactic Union founded on the principles of democracy.

Egalitarians should kust have it rotate. That's the most equal. It's also what the EU does.

 

[FleetingRain]

I'd love to know why my dear federation mates don't want to vote for a certain law and then suddenly change their minds out of nowhere.

Also, something about the AI spamming sanction votings. I don't even bother with the GC anymore because I know the next five sessions will be about some dumb sanction no one will ever suffer anyway.

 

[James Fire]

Whatever they did in the patch didn't fix anything. The only thing it achieved was to break the mod I used to use for addressing it.

Doesn't help that the Devs refuse to comment on it any time it is brought up.

Yeah, it did partially fix it.

If the mod broke, it was made badly. Modding ethics shift chance is as simple as changing a single line, and if that doesn't work, they're doing a lot more they don't need to do.

And since it's as easy as changing a single line, why don't the devs just fix it? Because you can make all the changes you want, but if you don't test them over the whole game, what's the point of making the change?

And how many times has it actually been brought up where a dev actually actively refused to comment, and not just, idk, didn't see it?

 

[ThirdOff]

There are lots of great input in here already, like more diversity in the Galactic Community's resolutions to reflect the great diversity of its potential members. We need resolution categories for any playstyle to make the Galactic Community relevant in any playthrough. More resolutions would logically also give incentive for some changes in the time it takes to pass them and between sessions, so you can actually get the biggest and most impactful resolutions passed before the endgame crisis hits. Also a bit more consistency in the way AI empires vote would be nice.


Speaking of diversity - did you guys try forming the League of Non-Aligned Powers? I did, and it was absolute chaos.
The galaxy had two great, opposing federations before the War in Heaven hit, both got merged into the League of Non-Aligned Powers (and we were this close to having all the ethics in one federation), as expected, some random empire that wasn't even strong enough to be on the Council was chosen as president (WTF?). Then 90% of the AI empires left, leaving my own original federation in the League and no other federations in the galaxy. And that was just the first month of the WiH.


On the topic of Federations, more laws would be nice. A few great ideas have already been proposed here, but I just want add one thing of my own - more laws for votes.
There are already laws for all votes being equal or based on power, unanimous or majority votes for wars, new members etc, so adding a similar law to other aspects of federations like for changing federation types is a must in my book. I had great fun taking over someone else's federation through majority votes by diplomatic power because I had more diplomatic power than all the other members combined, but even for all my power I still couldn't change the federation type. Talk about showstopper.


Otherwise, I've been having great fun with the Federations expansion, the performance and AI improves, the lot of it. I took a break after 2.5, but now I just can't stop playing.

 

[Pale Blue]

Can we get resolutions to share relic effects with federation members and one to allow trade/conquer relics?

 

[Nahadoth]

I'd love to know why my dear federation mates don't want to vote for a certain law and then suddenly change their minds out of nowhere.

Also, something about the AI spamming sanction votings. I don't even bother with the GC anymore because I know the next five sessions will be about some dumb sanction no one will ever suffer anyway.

Same. All my fed mates weren't interested in having the leadership change policy being set to the change in power one. And the all of a sudden all of them where in favor of it, and I have no idea why.

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

I can only say one thing... uwu

 

[Todie]

Unchained Knowledge

• A decent resolution tree that goes off the rails awfully quickly. Tiers 1-3 seem fine, but once you hit tier 4, things just become unnecessarily harsh. -15% worker happiness for a mere 10% boost to research output? I guess the pivot point is supposed to get gestalts? Most of the benefits of this law from tier 3, onward, because some ridiculous niche, that the only real advantage to passing them is the science diplomatic weight. The penultimate law isn't even that great. You pay 500 Zro and 1 Zro upkeep per tier 3 lab to get +1 extra dimensional portal researcher job. By the time you can pass this resolution, most empires are going to be well on their way for completing science---and bit of extra physics research isn't even going to do much by that point. The downside to this isn't even that bad---the Contingency still have the overwhelming chance to occur even if you pass this law.

We should keep in mind that the balance of sprawl / admin cap is way up in the air right now - especially when it comes to discussing unchained knowledge and any other consideration related to science, research and unity progression.

Its cheap and easy to stay below your admin cap now, and market prices normalize so fast that youre fine running a deficit on cg and gases to fund your research.

... meanwhile, the AI does neither of the above, so players arnt really compelled to lean into something like pushing for unchained knowledge resolutions to get an edge in research peocression - it can be gotten easily anyway.

 

[Oglesby]

Please, add the election option in how we choose our federation ruler -- none of the ways available looks appropriate to a Galactic Union founded on the principles of democracy.

Wouldn't Challenge (Thesis or Golden Rule more heavily) and possibly Random represent an 'election'?

 

[Liggi]

Oh, one huge thing I think we could really use: MORE EVENTS.

Federations events, and special Galactic Community events. They would make these things feel so much more alive.