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

[Borgratz]

The 3.5 things I really would like you guys to work on, because they really detract from my game experience:


planet automation: give us templates or "the plan 2.0" or something. Or just make buildings prebuildable, so that you can build them all in one go, but they only start working once the appropriate number of pops have been reached.

fleet manager: I constantly end up with 10ish 1 ship fleets, because I want to click on my actual fleet to give it an order and the game thinks "hey, I bet he actually wants to select all fleets in that sector" and creates a bunch of new fleets.
I'm not sure if possible, but a button toggle, that makes reinforcement fleets unselectable, so that they will reinforce the real fleets or die trying, would make using the fleet manager a much less infuriating experience.

federation laws:
Show me why an empire is voting for or against something, so that I can make informed decisions on who to invite into my federation in the future.
I currently feel like inviteing new empires into my federation is a form of russian roulette, because I have 0 idea what makes them say yes or no to the things I want to do. Adding favors to bribe them is making this less painfull, but doesn't really fix the underlying problem of being in the dark about WHY my allies want to be in a federation that has no fleet (and so on).

same thing goes for the GC, to a lesser degree: If there was more information on why empires decide to vote for or against something, I would feel more like I can make a strategy.


And also: thanks for fixing the game so much. All of these are little annoyances. AI and Performance were just straight up game breaking to the point that you could have added whatever you wanted and it wouldn't have mattered. So, yay. Your game is awesome again

 

[Gilbert95]

First I want to say how impressed I am with the expansion (both free update and DLC). Overall this is one of the most polished and substantive updates to the game. I am really enjoying playing now. The origins system really fires up the role-play creative juices. The Fed and GC give you some other areas to focus on besides economic development and war.

Now for ideas. First Fed
1. I would like more ways to play with cohesion and XP (possibly through events).
2. I would like Fed projects or other things the Fed can focus on.

For GC Resolutions
1. How about something that plays more with the Galactic Market and Slave Market. Right now reducing market fee is about the only thing you can do to the GM. You might have something that increases or decreases the price of certain resources, or perhaps bans them all together.
2. How about something that plays with the map and galactic terrain. I could see resolutions that affect wormholes, gates, hype lane travel (for example make it faster in owned space but slower in un-owned space). Perhaps something that affects the size or visibility of nebulae.
3. How about something that interacts with megastructures. Making them more or less expensive, placing a galactic cap on number of a certain type that could be built (like the assembly or military hub). You might have something that promotes restoration of disabled megastructures or conversely declares them historical treasures that must be preserved in their current form, preventing restoration.

That's all for now. Back to working from home

 

[Yaskaleh]

I love the new AI overall, even the military one after a few plays. It seems to be quite undecisive but it manages to surprise you once in a while. As FP I'm in a war with a 2 member federation that I were stronger than. but they took their time, held back their forces and maxed out their fleets and especially their federation fleet. I missed that as I were juggling economy with all the new pops I had to put in my happy work camp and suddenly I faced forces twice my own. I only survived because I snuck a broken fleet and 12 armies behind enemy lines of the weakest empire, trashed their capital, lost 7 armies taking it and then smashed their last fleet and station over their last world with only 5% of that fleet remaining. My armies then landed and in the end 2 survived which killed off that Empire and I had less fleets to deal with on the main frontline.
Very enjoyable /thumbsup

 

[Pellaken]

The more I play the more its clear to me that the Hegemony federation, or the Hegemony origin, need to be re-named. Both are using slightly different definitions of Hegemony that cause a lot of confusion.

 

[PhroX]

I hope there's a third way to approach the Tiyanki: farming.

 

[Skoell]

vassalizing and integrating pathetic federationmembers

 

[DarkEye5]

Can we please also get some changes to Robots, Droids, and Synthetics? Synthetic ascension ist way to strong. The game is forcing players to use robots cause of the big pop growth (at least equivalent to +66% bio pop growth on 100% habitability). There should be a trade-off when someone is using robots in general. You balanced Maschine Empires well. Now we need similar changes to normal Robots and Synthetic Ascension. Using Robots should be an ideological choice, not an economic necessary choice. Which means there is no choice at all in the current state of the game.

I mean, the reason for going robots would usually be an economic one, but I get what you're saying and i kindda agree. I had a run with Shared Burdens and Agrarian Idyll and it was really hard for me to justify taking the Robotic Workers tech from a RP standpoint (I did up finding some sort of RP justification in the end though, bun man it was convoluted).

The easiest fix would probably be with resolution chains with impact on robots. There is of course an obvious one with focus on spiritualism which would put continuously harsher restrictions on robots (and maybe even on research in general) in favor of unity and happiness where the first levels would ban synths, the intermediate levels would ban droids and the last levels make it illegal to even allow AIs and maybe give everyone a CB on Machine Intelligences.

Another route could be the "They took our jobs!"-route where empires who uses certain types of living conditions (such as Utopian Abundance, Social Welfare or Shared Burden) would get additional drawbacks of having unemployed organic pops if they at the same time are having employed robotic pops.

It'd be nice if Galactic Community resolutions could apply ethics attraction to all empires in the Galactic Community for particular paths (although this would require each ethic to have a matching path).

The Rules of War resolution chain even features this, it seems odd that this isn't applied to some of the others where the underlying ethics are quite obvious. The Greater Good is clearly egalitarian and Unchained Knowledge should be materialist.

 

[Shadowstrike]

One thought about the spiritualist (progressively outlaw AI) and authoritarian (prohibit prohibiting slavery) chains could be to break diplomatic weight by pops into three categories: by organic pops, by free specialists/rulers, and by free workers. That way, there would be way to boost diplomatic power that is preferable to one ethic versus another.

 

[DarkLapiris]

Could you guys maybe add number of jobs available/unemployment to the planets section of the planets and sectors tab? Would make it easier to see which planets will soon be facing unemployment, etc. for bigger empires.

 

[DarkEye5]

On another note, it would be nice with a resolution to change the host of the Galactic Market after a certain period of time.

 

[Fox McCloud]

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.

Even if admin cap was expensive, the last two tiers of unchained knowledge really still aren't worth it.

+10% science output for +25% extra consumer goods upkeep and -15% worker happiness? That's a fairly sizeable downside for little benefit; if you have 1000 research (300 from science nexus), it's only going to shave off ~3 months from a 50,000 cost tech (out of a total research time of 50 months). That's...not much--unless you're grinding your workers into dust, that'll probably impact your stability by around ~5 points---itself a total output drop (for all strata) of 3%---which makes that 10% gain more like ~7%, which means that ~3 month bonus is more like ~2.5 months faster. Over a 100 year period, that means 1 extra repeatable tech level.

That's....not significant at all.

 

[fodazd]

Even if admin cap was expensive, the last two tiers of unchained knowledge really still aren't worth it.

My personal opinion: They are worth it if you are a gestalt, in order to weaken non-gestalts.

 

[nfmarque]

Will the take point (follow me) will ever be fixed?
Very important for federations.

 

[Pancakelord]

This is something I approve of - choice - the GC has been fun to play around with, but honestly it feels a too rigid - it forces the galaxy down a more "inclusive" path (for lack of a better term).

There is no choice to let us potentially create a pro-spiritualist galaxy that hates machine life - or even a galaxy ruled by a machine community which goes so far as to outlaw organic births within the community. This means every game, the GC eventually ends up playing out the same - broadly speaking.

And if you leave the GC you don't really have any mechanics that encourage an "Anti-GC" federation, either, like an axis-powers or "league of evil" (depending on your definition) etc.

There's a lot of potential for mutually exclusive resolutions that promote:

Spoiler: "Alternative path" Resolutions

• A Slaver dominated GC:
  • "Livestock reforms", "slavery consortia / slave husbandry standardisation" and 'standardised forced labour' resolutions; all increasing:
    • purge speeds/resources from purges,
    • discounting slaves on the market
    • increasing slave growth speed and resource yields.
  • Making it so you're in breach of GC law if you dont always have atleast one slave up for sale lol - Got to take part in the galactic passtime.
• A spiritual-dominated GC:
  • Extermination of robotics/synths/banning assembly,
  • Free claims on anyone with a colonised machine world in their territory.
  • Promoting two-tier class structures - psychics on top, the masses below.
  • Anti-materialism ethics attraction - bookburning etc, mandating temples be built.
• For militarists:
  • a "no cowards" resolution - if you lose a humiliation war, you're in breach of the GC for 5 years, to make humiliation wars actually useful.
• A Pro-machine/machine intelligence GC:
  • Encouraging birth control / family planning to lower organic pop growth.
  • Forcing all empires to use sapient combat computers if they have them & discounting AI research.
  • Banning of biological births / only permitting robotic/synthetic construction.
• Pro-Authoritarian GC "A community of kings":
  • Outlaw democracy.
  • Or even force everyone to have dictatorial / imperial succession
    • (or have authoritarianism as a ruling ethic if a MC)

• Counter the "meta" by
  • banning kinetic artillery (or literally letting you pick any weapons type to ban?) - declare its use a crime against intelligent species.
    • Or "arms-reduction": banning just the higher tier (3+) variants of weapons.
    • Fielding ships with banned technology puts you in breach of GC.
    • [could be automatically lifted if galactic focus is set to crisis]
  • banning Battleship construction
    • (or driving up battleship upkeep costs and battleship per-ship fleet-cap usage massively, so you can support fewer at a time)
  • banning Colossi (WMD) / the use of Total war CBs
  • banning Sapient combat systems.
    
  • banning Armageddon / pox / indiscriminate orbital bombardment

• Whilst not strictly a reform, there is no counterplay to the GC, If you leave, you're on your own.
  • Really, if there are several non-purifiers not in the GC, the game should fire an event with a low chance to form an 'axis' federation opposing the 'oppressive GC',
    • With how the current GC runs, you could think of this as a league of slavers or barbarians etc.
    • This would make those later military reforms (pre-emptive attacks on non-GC members) more interesting and lead to a mini war in heaven between the GC and not-GC.

• The slave market should not be tied to the galactic market founding imo,
  • The slave market founding should be separate or just arise on it's own once there are enough pops in slavery in the galaxy,
  • it's a bit weird to have fan egalitarians accepting something like a slave market coming about, along with a galactic market (even if you can trade robots on it).

• The game needs a slider in game creation to control how long GC voting takes, too, imo,
  • it's so slow now (5 years?) that I've literally been able to invade & conquer people opposing my votes, rather than bothering with diplomacy/ diplomatic weight lol.
• Its also impossible to see when the federation president election will next happen.
• And commercial pacts are invisible currently - unless you offer it yourself you'll never know what you're getting..
• Research agreements are also pointless, a large empire on its own can benefit from more economies of scale (more research labs) to out-tech a collection of small ones in a research federation.
  • Research pacts should instead (also?) share a % of each members current research output with each other. E.g. I'd get 15% research from my ally on top of whatever i'm making, no matter what i'm researching.
  • This is because getting a slight boost to already researched technologies is so minor its not even noticeable most of the time, and often the AIs don't research like humans do - they don't "techrush" for the good stuff, so their completed techs are usually pretty crap/irrelevant for a player who wants to get ahead too.
• If a vote fails in a federation it never says why - or even who shot the vote down (both for federal laws & for inviting in new people).
• Please stop diplomatic requests from automatically opening when i'm doing something else - they never used to - its driving me nuts.

Edit: If we are in a war and are not the war leader - let us use favours to force our AI allies to white peace (or push for victory if it will pass).
Edit 2: like commercial pacts, if you aren't war leader, its actually not possible to see precisely what peace/victory/surrender outcomes would be, so you don't know exactly what you are voting for ...

Spoiler: POV of war leader vs "ally"

 

[Red Earth]

I'd like a sanction that prevents contact with vassals, protectorates etc. of other empires, as well as active study of pre FTL races. I call it the Don't Talk to Me or My Son Ever Again act.

 

[LWE]

The economic AI is so much better, the military AI is close but there's a few odd behaviours and bugs around that, I think if they are fixed it'll be SUCH a huge improvement..

The military AI, in my experience, isn't remotely close. Most of the time, it is completely borked, both regular AI empire and crisis. Its old state was preferable, frankly. It needs to be revamped. I am not buying Federations until it is fixed.
The only good news about it so far is that Glavius is back in the modding business.
2.6.3 really needs to be more extensive than 2.6.2.

 

[Svennie 135]

I don't know if it is posted before but in my previous game the comunity was voting for sanction laws over and over again (I mean the law has passed and a few decennia later they vote for the EXACT same law without it being repelled or changed) It was really annoying because the support was greater for this than for the galactic council. Soooo it took a while before that one passed. The laws themselves are great tho.

 

[crabby654]

In terms of Federations themselves, can we please get more information? As an example XX Empire starts a vote to invite YY Empire to federation....well who or what is YY Empire? Time to open the contacts log and search alphabetically for the YY Empire to see if their compatible or even strong at all.

Federations need a lot more information when votes pop up, theres only a yes/no option with a question and zero explanation. Also for some reason the game doesn't pause when your federation votes on something and you can totally miss it.

 

[DerMoe]

Hi devs,

I have a more general suggestion. It would be nice to have an opportuninity to go back to the last planet. If you clicked on something like the market, policies, .... the planet window is closed right away in contrast to event messages or so.

Realization suggestion:
1. It could be realized by a notification in the message queue. The notification pops up, if you go to one of these menus that currently close the planet view. The notificaiton stays until you actually close the planet window.
2. Another navigation bar item to go back to the last planet.

Cheers,
Moe

 

[Emperor_Vindicare]

I have a lot of ideas on how to expand empire-to-empire diplomacy but...

For the love of god, please give us a screen in our federations that tells us WHO and WHEN the next president will be.