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Stellaris Dev Diary #23 - Multiplayer

Good news everyone!

Today’s Dev Diary will be about Multiplayer and what makes it so great in Stellaris.

Let's start with the basics. Players are able to host games with 32 player designed empires and optionally, several extra randomized AI empires. If you have a new person who would like to join an ongoing campaign they can hotjoin into an already existing empire. This also allows the players to leave or take a break from the ongoing multiplayer campaign and leave their empire in the capable hands of the AI. The host may also choose to host a multiplayer game from a save game allowing players to play grand campaigns lasting several weeks.

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One of our longstanding issues with multiplayer is that clients desynchronize, which is usually solved by having the host rehost the game, but this can be quite a menace when playing multiplayer with 20+ people, so we’ve decided that this is an issue we should prioritize higher in Stellaris. Thanks to persistent testing and fixing of out-of-syncs as soon as they happen, we’ve managed to make Stellaris our most stable multiplayer experience yet, allowing us to run stable multiplayer with up to and probably more than 32 players. We test our multiplayer stability weekly by playing multiplayer with our betas and the developers on the project, and it’s loads of fun.

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We’ve designed Stellaris with a couple of things which affects the multiplayer experience which you might want to know.

One of them is that empires have a relationship value of other empires, but the value doesn’t decide the options a player can take against another empire but decides the responses AI controlled countries gives to your requests, demands and offers.

Another thing which Stellaris has that our other grand strategy games don’t is a symmetrical and randomized start, this means that in a multiplayer game everyone starts on more or less equal terms. This makes the game, in our experience, more competitive and a lot of fun. Will you be able to claim ownership of that specifically resource rich system before your neighbor? Or should you enter an alliance to stop a specific neighbor from expanding in your direction?

One more thing which affects the multiplayer experience on an early stage is that players are anonymous until you have established communications with their empires, making you unable to know whether the first aliens you meet will be your greatest allies or your worst enemies.

Next week is all about the AI.
 
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Ornlu Wolfjarl said:
@Jormungandur Since you are here, is it possible for 2 (or more) players to manage the same nation, like in EU4?

Can't wait to play multiplayer now.
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It is not, no.

Just a Joke said:
Is the fire icon next to fleet number/cap means firepower points or something? How would the game measure it? The one in distant worlds don't work at all, as their "firepower" based on weapon type are far from real dps.
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It's the estimated power-value of the fleet, yes. It uses some pretty arcane math, taking in to account both defensive and offensive stats.
 
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Stormcow said:
Ha!

I honestly thought when they said that this weeks DD would be about multi player that it was just a flippant joke. I could not imagine why anyone would want to play a paradox game multi player. I also don't believe there are people out there with the time to do this! mythical creatures like the unicorn, sure we have heard stories but no one has ever really seen one.

Is this for real? and why do this?

I am tired, confused and a little suspicious that i am now living in a parallel world.
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You can just save your file and continue later, like in single player and you don't finish sp campaign in a day anyway. Sure, you might need to schelude a bit but it's no different from playing Descent, Civ or DnD which all work just fine.
 
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i must confess i nerver played any multiplay from paradox and i have NO plans for stellaris.

but i still happy to see new pictures and just for know that you guys are working to make something how works even if i not use.

VHA ZI MAELSTROM, is this some rare COOL secret to find?
 
Alexivan said:
Good point, It's currently random, but we might add an option for clustering players together :)
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That would be really really nice... but i can imagine that it will be hard to plan... i wouldn't want ALL players around me.. especially in 20+ game.

Maybe some sort of "teams" but without the fixed alliances.. maybe some sort of mutual "likes" during setup? or people could vote + and - for every other player before game start... the more + from both sides the nearer they are?
 
racionador said:
i must confess i nerver played any multiplay from paradox and i have NO plans for stellaris
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Then you will never have the satisfaction of forming an alliance with another player because the king of France slept with both of your wives, fathering children, all the while they gloat until you destroy them and cause them to rage quit the game
 
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Ingros said:
That would be really really nice... but i can imagine that it will be hard to plan... i wouldn't want ALL players around me.. especially in 20+ game.

Maybe some sort of "teams" but without the fixed alliances.. maybe some sort of mutual "likes" during setup? or people could vote + and - for every other player before game start... the more + from both sides the nearer they are?
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Maybe something like clustergroups. You and your friends choose the same group, done. Like Teams in Other Games (but without automatic alliances)
 
I don't personally play multiplayer, but I do like watching (the salt it creates is glorious!)
 
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I'm skeptical of this fixing out desynchronization. Sure you guys test it, but you guys are in an office where you develop the game and I assume logically that this is the same place where you test synchronization for multiplayer. But how do you know your solutions will actutally work when you got people from Europe, USA, Asia, etc all playing in one game with various internet connections as opposed to the testing in the office.
 
Alpha2518 said:
I'm skeptical of this fixing out desynchronization. Sure you guys test it, but you guys are in an office where you develop the game and I assume logically that this is the same place where you test synchronization for multiplayer. But how do you know your solutions will actutally work when you got people from Europe, USA, Asia, etc all playing in one game with various internet connections as opposed to the testing in the office.
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The betas we test with are all over the world.
 
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Jormungandur said:
It's the estimated power-value of the fleet, yes. It uses some pretty arcane math, taking in to account both defensive and offensive stats.
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two quick questions: One, is it always correct?
and two: Does it always determine the winner of a battle or is it just a suggestion?
 
While I'm not that interested in Multiplayer, more information on Stellaris is always exciting. One question, What is the 'Other' in the first screenshot? The Empires list looks like there are check boxes that allow you to show or hide four different categories of empires: Empire, Other, Primitives, and Fallen Empires. Three of them are fairly clear, but what is Other? Are they vassals/uplifted species or something else?
 
IcyBlizzard said:
two quick questions: One, is it always correct?
and two: Does it always determine the winner of a battle or is it just a suggestion?
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There is no way for one number to be "correct". Say fleet A is rated 100 and fleet B is rated 80. Perhaps in most cases, fleet A is superior, but you can't rule out that fleet B was designed to take advantage of A's weaknesses. Like A has a lot of small craft with light weapons that have a hard time penetrating B's heavy armor. In Stellaris, every shot is simulated and shown in the graphics. It's not just a meaningless light show.
 
I got a question:
Will achievements be available through a mp game? Or alternatively will there be mp achievements?
 
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Not a fan of multiplayer in general in these sorts of games, but even less of a fan of how this seems to be affecting the design of the proper game. For example the symmetrical starts which were obviously added in for Multiplayer, are now part of the single player game as well. I personally think multiplayer should be a separate add-on akin to a DLC so it's less likely to affect design decisions in the future.
 
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Strager said:
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Not a fan of multiplayer in general in these sorts of games, but even less of a fan of how this seems to be affecting the design of the proper game. For example the symmetrical starts which were obviously added in for Multiplayer, are now part of the single player game as well. I personally think multiplayer should be a separate add-on akin to a DLC so it's less likely to affect design decisions in the future.
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Symmetrical starts are a norm in most 4X games, which Stellaris is Paradox's take on. Since they are not tied to historical fact, there is furthermore nothing to stop them from doing it and if it was just for MP, they could simply have made it a part only in MP.

It was not designed this way because of MP. The majority of paradox players don't even participate in it!
 
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Strager said:
Not a fan of multiplayer in general in these sorts of games, but even less of a fan of how this seems to be affecting the design of the proper game. For example the symmetrical starts which were obviously added in for Multiplayer, are now part of the single player game as well. I personally think multiplayer should be a separate add-on akin to a DLC so it's less likely to affect design decisions in the future.
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There be mods.
 
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Ok, serious question, not trying to be mean or anything.

Is the way grand strategy MP works such that a "resynch" option is impossible? I mean, stability is good and all (and eu4 mp right now is pretty damn stable) but the occasional desynch still happens. Is there no way to simply add a "resynch" button that will resynch all players to the host?
 
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TheDungen said:
nd yes thta was a friendly reminder that most people play single player and prefer the game to be balanced for that primarily.
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SP and MP are constructs of the past. This game will be balanced for hedgehogs.
 
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