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Stellaris Dev Diary #178 - Federal improvements (UI and more!)

Hello everyone!

Today’s dev diary will show you some of the improvements we’ve made to federations for the upcoming free update!

Federation Voting
Since the release of Federations and the 2.6 update we’ve wanted to make some improvements to how voting in federations is handled. Most of the improvements are related to UI and better feedback, but there’s also been some changes to functionality.

You are now able to use Favors to increase the acceptance chance for your AI-controlled federation members.

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You are now able to use Favors to increase the acceptance chance for federation law proposals.

We’ve also changed how AI acceptance works for federation laws, so that it is more transparent and more consistent with other features in the game. We look at the AI attitude a lot more now, and it will affect which laws the AI is attracted towards. For example, militaristic empires, or those with either Honorbound Warriors or Federation Builders personalities will be more likely to accept a higher fleet contribution law.

Generally speaking, the best way for you to pass new federation laws is to get the Federation Cohesion to 90 or above, and then suggest a new law change.

When it comes to suggesting changed, the AI will still not attempt to suggest changes very often, unless they are the federation president.

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The AI will generally not want to increase Centralization unless Cohesion is 90 or higher. Cohesion also directly affects the acceptance chance by a factor of x0.25 (100 cohesion equals +25 acceptance).

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The UI for voting on war declarations has received a face-lift. It’s now more clear which war goal is used, and you can see a summary of the target of the war, and which their allies are. This should hopefully make it easier for you to decide if you are in favor of the war or not.

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Whenever a federation law has been voted on, you will now get a pop-up that clearly informs you on what the results of the vote were, and how your federation allies voted.

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We’ve also improved the feedback you get whenever your federation unlocks a new level.

Joint Operations
Something we wanted to do, but couldn’t do for 2.6 due to lack of time, was to add some more flavor events to federations. We had some cool ideas for things we wanted to try, and we’re very happy that we’ve been able to add some events for the upcoming 2.7 update.

Joint Operations are events to which each member of a federation can contribute, and the types of events will depend on your federation type.

Research Co-operatives have the chance to engage in a joint archaeological dig across their region of federated space. Galactic Unions and Research Co-operatives alike may also find themselves dealing with strange new stellar phenomena at their federation capitals. Hegemonies will have the option of a grand project to celebrate cultural uniformity – and to see who’s still willing to tow the line. Military Alliances can partake in a joint training exercise, while Trade Leagues may seek to improve their collective worth through harmonized logistics.

In all cases, collaboration will bolster cohesion within your federation – however members may sometimes be tempted by individual gains, and further challenges may arise if the federation does not act as one.

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The beginning of a joint operation for the Research Cooperative!

Origins
A small change we’ve made, albeit probably a welcomed one, is to make it far less likely for the leader of a Common Ground or Hegemony start to be blocked off by their federation members. It’s very likely that they will have at least one open hyperlane to an unexplored star system.

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That’s it for this week! Next week we’ll be back with some more information regarding the upcoming free update!
 
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I'd love to see more galaxy-wide political events, like the mod "Dynamic Political Events" adds. The Federation ones are definitely a start, but I think there's a lot of potential for events going untapped in Stellaris right now. It'd be nice to have some ways to stop the galaxy being so static after the midgame.
 
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Is it no longer possible to only see Developer/staff replies in the forum anymore? There also doesn't seem to be anything clearly distinguishing posts by Devs, like there was before. Am I missing something, or is this just a step backwards for no good reason? (I guess the reason might be that it's not possible on this new forum, but... that's still not great)
 
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Yes, Karen, I wish PDX would understand we want their non-coders to do something else with their time.

View attachment 572417
Nice meme, expect you've made one mistake: it is not Paradoxians presenting me some tokens of love, it is me presenting Paradox my $$ tokens of love

I was not happy w/ performance and have not bought Lithoids until Paradoxians fixed performance in Federations --> I got very happy and purchased Lithoids DLC (along w/ Federations), now I am enjoying playing smoothly past 2400.

However I am not happy w/ poor AI and bugs and I am not going to buy next DLC no matter whatever features Paradox pours in: there are plenty of mods that offer far cooler features, however modders can't fix performance, modders can't fix AI, modders can't fix crisis, modders can't fix fleet manager, etc. <-- that's what I am interested in as a paying customer
 
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Maybe federations could build mega structures together and then the system gets owned by the federation and the resources it generates get divided amongst the members.
In fact it'd be cool if the federations could have rules where it siphons of some resource income from it's members in a way determined by a federation rule and deals it out in accordance with some other rule. Say you could have everyone gives a flat amount to the president, or the redistribution thing where you give depending on how much you earn and is dealt back inversely depending on how much you earn. The standard would obviously be it takes nothing and deals out everything it happens to get evenly.
 
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Is it no longer possible to only see Developer/staff replies in the forum anymore? There also doesn't seem to be anything clearly distinguishing posts by Devs, like there was before. Am I missing something, or is this just a step backwards for no good reason? (I guess the reason might be that it's not possible on this new forum, but... that's still not great)

the era of forums all over the internet which were perfectly fine being converted into burning trashfires with max metro/empty space and minimal text/information for i guess phone browsing started in full some time in the mid-late 2010's and continues to present decade. I guess web designers have to eat too. For what it's worth, this is far from the worst example of it I've lived through, at least they didn't decide to ditch paging in favor of infinite scrolling, and the animated web elements, while annoying, are not ovwehelmingly obnoxious or frequent. The color palate is also tolerable. As is almost always the case with forum overhauls it's a downgrade, but trust me it could have been far worse.

It's not like the old design was the epitome of old school forum design either though, so maybe that's why it seems less severe to me.

The most egregious thing to me at first glance was "sticky threads" (it's 'stickied') and """normal threads""" (lolcategory)
 
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Joint operations look really cool. Any chance of getting diplomacy events from the Galactic Community as well?
 
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  1. Will the commercial pact /research pacts get a UI update? Currently you can't see what you're getting out of them unless you propose it yourself (or only have 1 and do some mental maths with the tooltips)
It's also backwards. I'm in a trade union and it tells me I'll get:
x energy
and they'll get:
x energy, y consumer goods, z unity.
 
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the era of forums all over the internet which were perfectly fine being converted into burning trashfires with max metro/empty space and minimal text/information for i guess phone browsing started in full some time in the mid-late 2010's and continues to present decade.
Tbqf it looks like a social media more than a forum with that like/react function and the don't forget to share on Facebook,Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr and WhatsApp
 
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Does it now also give you a message when the federation president changes?

And since we're talking about improved UI and information, I'd love it if I could how I would benefit if an AI empire suggest a trade agreement. I can see it when I propose it myself, but not when the AI proposes it to me. Oh, and a place where I can see the detailed effects of all the trade agreements I have going would be great too.
 
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The UI for voting on war declarations has received a face-lift. It’s now more clear which war goal is used, and you can see a summary of the target of the war, and which their allies are. This should hopefully make it easier for you to decide if you are in favor of the war or not.
Great, now it only lacks mutual opinion/treaties indicator for everyone involved and it can be called informative.

Were other UI elements changed as well, btw? Like Association offers? Maybe, those spammy messages about ehtic changes (in which you can never tell who changed to what, especially if they also changed their name)? Research treaties (can't tell mutual benefits)? Comertial Pacts (same)? Or did we, finally, got an indication how much upkeep will these treaties cost us in influence?

We’ve also improved the feedback you get whenever your federation unlocks a new level.
Please, tell me it's not another "I'll block your game until you click me" message, we have enough of those as is.
 
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I will second that it's pretty important to be able to see the value of a commercial pact.

If someone else sends you one, you have no idea how much it is worth--so you have to do it yourself.....

And, even then, there still needs to be a way to see the value of each individual commercial pact on its own, as the game progresses.

If I'm giving something like 500+ energy credits, and I'm only getting like 5 energy credits back---at some point, I might want to re-evaluate the deal.
I'm rediscovering EU4, and one of the things I love about it is how good it is at telling you the actual end result of your actions. If you send a ship to protect trade, the game makes sure to tell you whether you'll lose or gain money by doing so. When you send a merchant to steer trade, the game will tell you exactly how many ducats worth of trade he will redirect.

I'm hoping this will make it into to Stellaris, too, because it makes the game so much easier to understand.
 
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I like the new federation events - I think they add to the flavor involved with being in a federation

Has there been any word on the liberation CB being fixed? It kinda breaks federation games where adding more members depend on similar ethics
 
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While you're at UI fixes, could you take a look at the bug reports related to Fleet Manager window?
This thing needs some serious love finally.
+1 please fix this.

Other UI stuff that needs some love:
- give us a tooltip / Info about the effects of our commercial pacts. At the Moment we cant see what we get out of them.
- rework sectors or at least give us an option to modify them a little (add or remove 1-2 systems)
- give us some influence on our ai allies when we go to war. Let us set/propose targets to them or our subjects.
- add a tooltip that shows us why a empire votes for or against a resolution in the Galactic Community.
- let us Control or influence the votes of our subjects in the Galactic Community.
 
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As an aside, a Casus Belli I have come to realize is broken in vanilla--the Spiritualist FE-bestowed "Stop AI/synth research" is no longer given to players when accepting the task from a Spiritualist FE. This makes one of their heavier tasks impossible to complete. Aside from that, all the FEs feel more and more stagnant as the game keeps marching forward. Would it be possible to get some TLC directed to the old space grandpas?
 
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