Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part One

[Eladrin]

Aside from factions not generating influence anymore, can we expect more changes to them?

I'd like to go more in depth into empire institutions, factions, and the like in a future release. The scope of factional changes will be minimal for now.

I just hope wide playstyle is not killed on the spot with those sprawl change.

From my experience with the systems thus far, wide is still very effective (and if I want to be less diplomatic, it's still more powerful overall) but these changes give tall play some niches that skilled players can exploit.

Playerbase appeased: +10 unity per month

Time to activate some more edicts!

The wording of this suggests that the changes outlined above in this DD won't be released to coincide with the 3.3 Update, but sometime later as a point update to 3.3.x, is that correct?

Unless the Open Beta overwhelmingly tells us "Ship it! No additional changes needed", I ideally want to move it live in a 3.3.x patch. We can gather so much more data with even a week of player testing and feedback than we can do internally, and these are touching so many systems that I'd like to be able to iterate on it some more before taking it live.

For rogue servitors, how will this affect bio-trophies and will Servitors get access to Coordinator Drones?

In the current build, Servitors rely on Bio Trophies for incidental unity, and are blocked from the normal Machine unity buildings. If the goal is to reduce incidental unity, will bio-trophies be rebalanced to less unity and servitors able to focus planets on unity production?

Bio-trophies will remain the primary source of Unity for Rogue Servitors. (And they'll remain cut off from the other normal Machine sources.)

Will planets get a unity-cost reduction designation akin to the industrial designations, or will your unity worlds still be best as the urban world designation for building upkeep reduction?

The Bureaucratic designation will be turned into a Unity based designation.

If factions no longer give influence, how will the Authoritarian influence roles be adjusted? The current balance is Egalitarians get more influence over time thanks to factions, but authoritarians have a flat influence buff at game start. If Egalitarian goes unity-boons, will authoritarian also get a flat unity boon, or will it keep influence but have fewer internal things to spend it on?

Currently Authoritarians retain their Influence bonuses, and Egalitarians get extra Faction Unity rather than Faction Influence.

If factions give unity, will non-state ethics reduce unity, since they are ideologically opposed to the ruling government?

Not at this time, but we've discussed things along those lines, including rebellious pops gaining Unity upkeep. We may explore such ideas more in the future.

 

[Eladrin]

So in Feudal Society you won't be able to change resarchers until they die? I don't know if that's worth the extra unity.

You'll be able to reassign their jobs, but won't be able to permanently fire them. While they have a job, they don't cost Unity, so that scientist that developed half a dozen negative traits gets put on a ship and sent to explore until he dies.

This all sounds very good. My one point of disagreement is that you're going with Bureaucrats as Unity producing job for regular empires and scrapping Culture Workers. I would've preferred it if Culture Workers were the standard Unity job and Bureaucrats were a Culture Worker replacement job provided by the Byzantine Bureaucracy civic (much like Warrior Culture replaces Entertainers with Duelists).

Planets full of bureaucrats maintaining the order of the empire are a common sci-fi trope, but admittedly a little dystopian. Maybe there's still a spot for Culture Workers out there.

I do like the idea of using influence for espionage - makes way more sense as well.

Influence may benefit from a few additional sinks. We'll keep an eye on some of this, but it's possible that it would be a better resource for it than energy.

 

[Eladrin]

Re Power projection, just so i understand, maximising fleet power whilst minimizing empire size, will increase/maximise power projection? (i.e. small country big fleet)

To maximize bonuses from your power projection you'll try to keep your fleet size above your Empire Sprawl.

If all means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed does it mean its cap will increase dynamically/automatically? Otherwise after colonizing few planets or just by building districts you could very fast get to, as example, 200/30 AC and get something like +100% tech cost in early game, leading to same tech lab rush you want to avoid.

The penalties for Sprawl are unavoidable in this system, but numbers have been reduced. One of the things I plan on watching during the Open Beta is whether we'll want some base Admin Capacity to exist. (For example, "Sprawl under 50 is ignored.")

 

[Eladrin]

Small niche UI comment: Part of why being over admin cap feels bad is the UI presents it as bad. It's red, and everywhere else in the UI red = bad. If going over admin cap is expected then high sprawl should be a neutral yellow or blue or similar. If anything being under your admin cap should be red because you haven't picked up all your "free" systems, which is bad, while being over just means you've got a lot of stuff, which is good.

Empire Sprawl will be displayed in a neutral manner in the UI.

This does sound very interesting. So somehow unity is going to turn into repeatable techs like 5% mineral output bonus, Energy weapon attack speed, naval capacity?

No, they'll get a different system to improve their empire. We'll talk about it in next week's diary.

Mmmmh, like others have said, your capacity to field a large fleet make sense in offering capacity to project on international politics, aka influence.
And, it might not be clear, but I did understand that you get a fixe amount of influence per month, which is then reduced if your fleet doesn't match your empire size.

This is an accurate interpretation of how Power Projection will work.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

1. Does this mean Spiritualists will still build the Temple building sequence?
2. If yes, given the Autochthon Monument is being turned into this other building, will non-Spiritualists get a different building, or are Temples now a special distinctive perk of having Spiritualist ethics?

We're looking at which empire configurations get which buildings as part of the rework, not everything we're changing could fit in a single dev diary.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

...an army of slaves...

Regardless of any of your other arguments, the Egyptian pyramids were not built using slave labour.

That said...

Explain to me how Megastructures needing Unity makes ANY effing sense at all?

Megastructures still require alloys for construction as the material resource, the non-material resource (previously Influence) is now Unity as we are making Unity the "resource" to model internal political pressure, while Influence is external pressure.

The Force Projection concept is asinine, since it's based only on size of fleet.

There's other factors that play into it as well.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Just a thought, but please don't rename bureaucrats to managers. While managers has perfect sense for a corporate authority, the name seems quite out of place for states that are bases on a monarchical or republican government form.

Managers are for corporate empires already, so no need to be worried about that