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Stellaris Dev Diary #193: Signal Discovered

Hello everyone!

This week we are going to talk about something new that we’ve been working on - namely improving first contact and extending the exploration aspects of the game. All of this is work in progress and may not accurately represent what the game will look like once all of this work is finished. A lot of UI is very much work in progress, so don't pay too much attention to icons or such.

Background
Exploration has always been one of the best parts of Stellaris, and it is perhaps what sets us apart from other games that follow similar themes. Looking back, Stellaris has mostly revolved around the physical exploration of space, discovering an ancient galaxy full of wonders. We believe that exploring and uncovering the galaxy is such an important and fun aspect of the game that we really want to dive deeper into those experiences. We intend to take the next steps by improving the means by which you can establish communication and make the process of learning more about alien civilizations a part of the exploration gameplay.

In this dev diary we will be outlining some of the changes and additions that we are currently working on, so that you can get an idea of what to expect from our next big update.

First Contact
The first steps we are taking is that we are changing how first contact works. First contact is now a much more engaging process with interesting choices that are supported by great narrative.

When you first have an alien encounter you are able to set a policy for what your approach will be. First Contact Protocols is a policy option that lets you dictate your stance when it comes to dealing with newly discovered alien civilizations. Each option has different effects that should suit different types of diplomacy.

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Friends..?

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First Contact Protocol Policy options.​

First Contact Investigation
In order to establish communication with the alien contact, an Envoy will need to be assigned to the First Contact Investigation. The investigation will then be able to begin, and it will run through stages and will contain events similar to an archaeological dig site. The reason why we chose a system similar to archaeology is because its a great way of letting a process run over time in a way where it can also deliver some narrative along the way. The difficulty of the first contact investigation will be affected by things like how friendly the target is, or how difficult it is to translate their signals.

Since First Contact now uses an Envoy, that also means that it no longer pauses Society Research, and it is possible to run multiple first contact investigations simultaneously as long as you have the Envoys required.

(Envoys do still currently not have traits or levels, but it is something we are actively discussing.)

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The events that you can get depend on the type of empire you are, and on the type of alien you are trying to contact.

There are friendly/peaceful paths as well as ... less so.

As a xenophobic empire with an aggressive first contact protocol it is possible to secure a couple of specimen for a closer look.

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The choices you make during first contact can also have long-term effects on your relationship with the alien empire. Choose wisely and decide which trade-offs you are willing to make. Are you perhaps a materialistic and xenophobic empire that values scientific progress above all?

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Stay on your side of the galaxy and all can be well.

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Let’s agree to disagree.​

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That is all for this week! Next week we’ll be showing you some new features that allow you to explore maps like the one posted here below.

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Can we get a special option for barbaric despoilers/slaver guilds to put the abducted specimen to work as a pop on the homeworld?

Please take a look at the despoiliation war goal too. The potential reward for winning are pitiful for most parts of the game and often don't even pay for the lost ships.
 
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Pale Blue said:
We already have that micro in the game. You are encouraged to swap in the most suited researcher when you start researching a new tech, because if their research speed traits. You are encouraged to swap in another scientist close before you finish a tech to get the most optimal chance to draw the techs you want, just to immediately swap them out after you rolled for the tech cards.
Same for admirals. Stack sub light speed on a general and use them to move fleets over longer distances, but swap them out before they enter combat for a admiral with better combat traits.
I don't mind adding the same to envoys, because the manually adjusting your leader part is already in the game.

I also hate having to do all that leader juggling and would prefer if that whole system would get scrapped and reworked to some kind of Mini-Leader-building game
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They should really give us the ability to swap in place, though, instead of first assigning B to A's old job and then going back to B's old job and assigning A to it. It's really annoying how, if the game isn't paused, swapping a Scientist off a survey ship cancels the survey and all queued survey orders... even if you immediately assign a scientist again. Swaps would fix that.

It even already does swaps for a leader stepping down from being ruler (assuming they don't just vanish into the void).
 
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On sidenote, this does make me kinda wish barbaric despoilers had their own ai personality. I mean, the ai could decide to instantly try to rush to your undefended planet to raid them for pops before first contact is established and borders successfully closed :D
 
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Pancakelord said:
Could we please get some modding commands for terra incognita, to make it "regenerate" or re-appear?
  • I'd love to play/make a "hard mode" mod, whereby the galaxy is always "greyed-out" if you lack sensor coverage (e.g. low or medium intel as well as the no intel level).
  • Heck you could even make this a game mechanic by adding "Shroud generators" to starbases or as megastructures, that will re-hide the map for that(and local) star systems - like GAP generators from C&C Red Alert 1 lol.
  • Right now I think there are only like 2-3 places where terra incognita is exposed to modding, and they're all just variables in defines, with no way to manipulate the TI layer, via script or events, itself (aside from increasing intel level from a star from None to X).
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Yes Please! @grekulf Please consider this. The game needs a proper hardcore mode (or mod as @Pancakelord suggested) which hides more things and keeps the galaxy obscured for seasoned players that know how to metagame everything already.
 
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Pancakelord said:
How will this interact with the Galactic community?
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Not much, the idea is that you end up in the community with countries you have comms with. So there's not that many people left to do first contact on at that stage.

HFY said:
2 - Is that first image a pop-up? Having more pop-ups -- one for every alien empire -- would make the game worse. Let me set my empire policy in advance.
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It's a one-time popup, because policies are a bit hidden and quite easy to forget (especially for new players). Also it won't pop up if you've picked the policy already.

Ninking said:
I hope it's not stated that they speak *exactly* the same languages in the flavour events, as they'd still have been exposed to languages developing in different directions for a very long time!
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I believe it is described as a "strange dialect" in the event text.
 
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I am curious though(especially if no new ai personalities get added), how WILL the old ai personalities interact with espionage mechanics? Like will they all use them in same way, will they use them based on ethics or do each personality use them differently?

Its something I'm kinda worried about since I don't think there has been for a while mechanics the ai personality interacts with in special manner :O Like even in current version, doesn't seem like the ai personalities ever change their default policies(so even robot liberator modifier personalities never give ai citizen rights)
 
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Looks amazing, really looking forward to seeing it all in action.

I hope it will be possible to intentionally slow first contact in more ways than merely being cautious:
1. First contact Policy - Aggressively Cautious. Killing any envoys on sight that try to sneak into your territory to reset their progress (different from trying to learn about the enemy with vivisections, here you're trying to deny the enemy any knowledge, but you don't actually want to learn about the aliens).
2. Mysterious pop traits - Mysterious main-species pops are harder to understand and struggle to understand others, Shapeshifters are better at first contact and can make themselves either harder or easier to understand at will
3. Indecipherable civics - An opposite to Diplomatic Corps/Empath, that hides you from enemy eyes perhaps Counter-intelligence Corps/Apathy
4. Buildings - Planet shields/Stronghold/Precinct House/Sentinel Posts could all function to reduce the ability of empires to plant spies/envoys on worlds and reduce first contact speed in some way. e.g. +1 difficulty to first contact for each of these buildings on the homeworld.
5. Starbase Modules - Communications Jammers could provide a stacking +1 penalty to first contact difficulty.
6. Traditions to slow enemy first contact - Overwhelming Force/Great Game in Supremacy. Or speed up your own - Kinship in Harmony (Diplomacy will already help with the +1 envoy).
7. Ascension Perk - Enigmatic Engineering. Probably arrives too late to be relevant in most games, but it should certainly increase the difficulty of first contact when it does apply.

In short, I like the idea of making it so difficult to understand that even by the mid game an empire is effectively still hidden to all empires and every empire that tries to initiate first contact has events related to envoys being killed by warships, caught by soldiers, communications blocked by jammers and so on. I want to be able to hide from Galactic powers or have a mysterious hidden threat with unknown capabilities, like the Earth-Romulan war being fought before ship-to-ship communications took place. You can't really have that situation if +2 difficulty just adds 3 months to first-contact time, so hopefully the difficulty value is a big deal.
 
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shadow737 said:
adding a special type of new military ship, an explorer class ship
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At that point, you may as well just scrap science ships entirely and add a Science Probe that goes in the ship weapon slot. Then you could have ship components that improve your exploration capabilities, which would mean tradeoffs between scanning speed, sublight speed, defenses, weapons, and so on.
"Do I pick the Supplementary Image Processing Systems for a bonus to anomaly discovery, or do I play it safe and install an extra set of shields?"

Of course, this would all be much more interesting if science vessels still played an important role mid-lategame. Imagine how much science you could fit on a 'battle'ship.

SeekingEtermity said:
They should really give us the ability to swap in place, though, instead of first assigning B to A's old job and then going back to B's old job and assigning A to it. It's really annoying how, if the game isn't paused, swapping a Scientist off a survey ship cancels the survey and all queued survey orders... even if you immediately assign a scientist again. Swaps would fix that.
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Yeah, I suggested that a while back.
[QoL] Add a 'Swap Assignments' button for scientists (and other leaders)

Pale Blue said:
You are encouraged to swap in the most suited researcher when you start researching a new tech, because if their research speed traits.
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This, I don't mind.

Pale Blue said:
You are encouraged to swap in another scientist close before you finish a tech to get the most optimal chance to draw the techs you want, just to immediately swap them out after you rolled for the tech cards.
Same for admirals. Stack sub light speed on a general and use them to move fleets over longer distances, but swap them out before they enter combat for a admiral with better combat traits.
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This, on the other hand, is just ugly and annoying. I'm not sure if there's an easy solution.
 
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Caligula Caesar said:
I believe it is described as a "strange dialect" in the event text.
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"We don't quite know what they're saying, but it's clearly similar enough to our speech that it got to be a dialect of some obscure {Species} language."
[Compare language to library of old {species} languages]

?
 
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Caligula Caesar said:
It's a one-time popup, because policies are a bit hidden and quite easy to forget (especially for new players). Also it won't pop up if you've picked the policy already.
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Whew, okay -- once per game is acceptable UX.

Thanks for the info.

Being able to save policy choices inside my custom empire could help alleviate that pain.
 
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Making first contact an archeology chain definitely seems like a good re-use of existing mechanics. I'm wondering though whether it gets repetitive fast though. You usually have at least a few first contacts per game, and that's a lot of writing, even with branching event chains.

One suggestion that's come up a lot is to have unknown aliens (e.g. "Alpha Menace") show up as an empire on the galaxy screen (i.e. with "Alpha Menace" and an unknown logo in place of where the normal empire names/logos sit), which would be really helpful to keep track of where they are.

The last teaser image suggests that you won't really know where all of a nation's space is until you explore it - definitely a step in the right direction. Still seems like we're sticking with the "first person to put an output on it claims dibs forever" system though.
 
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