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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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The balance model they are going for is that ships tends to be best against ships that are one size class smaller than them, but have trouble against ships that several size classes smaller. Basically battleships should lack enough small, rapid-recharge weapons to efficiently engage corvettes (though it depends on what sections you pick). Hopefully there are weapons that corvettes can mount that allows them to efficiently damage battleships.

Of course, there is still the problem that larger ships can be so "chunky" that they avoid losses in small battles. This effect is multiplied when repair is cost-free and easy and rechargeable shields make up a large portion of the "hitpoints".

This is really good, this is something that virtually all 4x games ignore. Fleet composition should allow for organic fleet doctrines to emerge. Some people will build their fleets around carriers, creating a carrier based doctrine. Others will build around super capital ships. Others might opt for swarms of frigates and destroyers with maybe a couple of big fellas in the back. It could be very interesting to see dynamic fleet doctrines emerge.
 
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"Capable hands of the AI"


*Le me leaves game


Insta break alliance and diplo-rival.
 
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I wonder how much DDs there are left.

Man I hope we can get our hands on this soon. I am anticipating this so much, to the detriment of the enjoyability of other other games.
 
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"Capable hands of the AI"


*Le me leaves game


Insta break alliance and diplo-rival.
Breaks alliance -> Rivals -> Calls in allies for war on event generated claim on previous ally -> expects all those allies to join since the AI has like 99 favors with them -> Develops capital to 43 development for some reason while falling behind in tech and ideas -> nobility on a 1 manpower provence -> makes 6/6/6 king a general.
 
Actually this could be a game that I will play in MP. It looks like fun. I just hope that it can cope with me living in Singapore and playing with people in Europe :) Ping 300
 
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I've never really played MP on any of the paradox games I have, but I must admit I am very intrigued - might be an interesting concept with a couple of friends and then maybe finding a timezone which works for someone in +8 GMT!

I also logged in for the first time in years to say thank you for these updates, I think people are spending a bit too much energy "worrying" about each specific developer diary, such as what "multiplayer" is taking away from the rest of the game, instead of focusing on the fact that the time is being spent introducing features and functions in a slow, drip-feed method.

I'm very excited for this game, keep up the great work and I'll keep playing them!
 
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