Stellaris Dev Diary #238 - Ascensions, Betas, and More

[RhysTheT00n]

Yea I mean...there's basically no downside at all, and that just seems really silly honestly. This is like going from....regular Superman to Superman Prime 1,000,000. Kinda bonkers really.

I'm not complaining, just as long as the AI is buffed to be a consistent challenge throughout the game.
I just wanted to make sure that I was understanding all this correctly and the buffs we'd be getting were actually intended by the devs. I just hope that you can still improve your admin cap with tech

 

[Redeemed Sinner]

So I have to ask, why did you guys go with replacing so much stuff with unity costs instead of just fusing together the unity/admin cap/edict cap systems?

I mean you kinda did that with edicts, but you could have made systems have unity upkeep while getting rid of admin cap. This would mean Tall empires could focus traditions/edicts without having to focus on producing massive amounts of unity (or massive amounts of unity going solely to tradition gain and edict upkeep) and Wider empires would have to produce massive amounts of unity while forgoing much in the way of tradition gain or edicts until they stop expanding (and thus stop consuming more and more unity for newly gained systems).

 

[Nevars]

So I have to ask, why did you guys go with replacing so much stuff with unity costs instead of just fusing together the unity/admin cap/edict cap systems?

I mean you kinda did that with edicts, but you could have made systems have unity upkeep while getting rid of admin cap. This would mean Tall empires could focus traditions/edicts without having to focus on producing massive amounts of unity (or massive amounts of unity going solely to tradition gain and edict upkeep) and Wider empires would have to produce massive amounts of unity while forgoing much in the way of tradition gain or edicts until they stop expanding (and thus stop consuming more and more unity for newly gained systems).

Because they would still get the same problem as admin cap just replacing it name with unity which is sprawl penalty becoming just a meme cuz it can be bypassed trivially.

Now we return system to what it once was, you have to compensated it by optimizing your empire, not by bypassing it entirely and easily with admin cap jobs.

 

[Maethendias]

You are free to choose to play poorly for roleplaying reasons, but a lot of players prefer to play to win. You would be absolutely crushed by any player who specializes their planets, and even by the AI on higher difficulties, regardless of planet designations or ascensions.

"play poorly"

and yet i dont have any problems with actually managing my planets, having them produce just fine

 

[Redeemed Sinner]

Because they would still get the same problem as admin cap just replacing it name with unity which is sprawl penalty becoming just a meme cuz it can be bypassed trivially.

Now we return system to what it once was, you have to compensated it by optimizing your empire, not by bypassing it entirely and easily with admin cap jobs.

Yes, but you also neuter Wide play. Having so many penalties pile up makes it so people who enjoy conquering the galaxy can't really do that anymore because they have to focus way more on Pops, planets, and resource production. Sure it benefits playstyles like the one I normally prefer, Tall, but it does that almost to point of swinging things in favor of Tall being preferable to Wide. Which was the opposite meta before the current changes.

Make all that reliant on a unity/admin cap fusion and conquerers can still focus on what they like best, conquering, but pay the piper when it comes to gaining Traditions and using edicts. They'll still be able to produce more than Tall empires but gain less miscellaneous benefits like Ship Build speed, Survey speed, Extra Pops from colonizing planets, and so forth. They'll also be way slower on Ascension Perk gain.

But all their losses will be offset by all their resource production, which will greatly outstrip that of a smaller empire, and allow for far larger fleets, population sizes, and so forth. I know penalties for going over the system cap have been reduced but I'd greatly prefer not to have to deal with those penalties at all. It doesn't make sense for an empire to have no means of handling excessive size constraints.

I have the same issue with how they handled making unity useful again. They did so by making systems that were already working fine be completely reworked with unity in mind instead. Sometimes in places it doesn't quite make sense to do so. If they wanted to make unity relevant and hate the way unity is somewhat useless, then alter the systems with which they have the most issues, not everything else.

A lot of things make no sense to have made unity instead of something else. Scientists, for example, are hired, so why are we hiring them with empire unity? How does that pay the scientist's bills? Megastructures kinda make sense, but I would add the unity cost on top of the Influence costs, because you need to be able to make sure someone isn't going to interfere with such a massive project, through espionage or threats. That requires influence.

Then again, I still quite haven't understood all the changes made so I could be wrong with some of this. Just seems to be utterly excessive with unity to point of nerfing the importance of both energy and influence, which you didn't use a lot of to begin with, and in the case of energy, can be gained so easily that it kinda needs to have more things that use it.

 

[Soranya]

It would be nice if every level of planet ascension had some unique flavor text.

I would like to see the current ascension levle being reflected in the Planetpicture.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

I would like to see the current ascension levle being reflected in the Planetpicture.

Maybe new Modifiers as well.

 

[KopiG]

What I hope they will change is that the Capital Designation should be an additional bonus with the Planet Designation and both should be affected via the Planetary Ascension. Capital Designation was the worst already and it still will be even if you give it a production bonus because the special designation is always better.

 

[Nevars]

Yes, but you also neuter Wide play. Having so many penalties pile up makes it so people who enjoy conquering the galaxy can't really do that anymore because they have to focus way more on Pops, planets, and resource production. Sure it benefits playstyles like the one I normally prefer, Tall, but it does that almost to point of swinging things in favor of Tall being preferable to Wide. Which was the opposite meta before the current changes.

Make all that reliant on a unity/admin cap fusion and conquerers can still focus on what they like best, conquering, but pay the piper when it comes to gaining Traditions and using edicts. They'll still be able to produce more than Tall empires but gain less miscellaneous benefits like Ship Build speed, Survey speed, Extra Pops from colonizing planets, and so forth. They'll also be way slower on Ascension Perk gain.

But all their losses will be offset by all their resource production, which will greatly outstrip that of a smaller empire, and allow for far larger fleets, population sizes, and so forth. I know penalties for going over the system cap have been reduced but I'd greatly prefer not to have to deal with those penalties at all. It doesn't make sense for an empire to have no means of handling excessive size constraints.

I have the same issue with how they handled making unity useful again. They did so by making systems that were already working fine be completely reworked with unity in mind instead. Sometimes in places it doesn't quite make sense to do so. If they wanted to make unity relevant and hate the way unity is somewhat useless, then alter the systems with which they have the most issues, not everything else.

A lot of things make no sense to have made unity instead of something else. Scientists, for example, are hired, so why are we hiring them with empire unity? How does that pay the scientist's bills? Megastructures kinda make sense, but I would add the unity cost on top of the Influence costs, because you need to be able to make sure someone isn't going to interfere with such a massive project, through espionage or threats. That requires influence.

Then again, I still quite haven't understood all the changes made so I could be wrong with some of this. Just seems to be utterly excessive with unity to point of nerfing the importance of both energy and influence, which you didn't use a lot of to begin with, and in the case of energy, can be gained so easily that it kinda needs to have more things that use it.

Did you actually played previous version of game before admin cap? Or better yet do you actually playing the beta?

Wide is never neuter (well except in one specific patch that make vassal swarms so overpower that it blow literally all playstyle out of water, wide included) and even in this beta, wide is still better than tall so your arguement is already invalid because you based it on false foundation that wide is neuter, it's not and prob will never be.

 

[Redeemed Sinner]

Did you actually played previous version of game before admin cap? Or better yet do you actually playing the beta?

Wide is never neuter (well except in one specific patch that make vassal swarms so overpower that it blow literally all playstyle out of water, wide included) and even in this beta, wide is still better than tall so your arguement is already invalid because you based it on false foundation that wide is neuter, it's not and prob will never be.

So you're going to ignore any other point I've made because of that? No, I haven't played much prior to Admin Cap. But the themes of Stellaris are running an empire right? So it makes no sense to buy Scientists with unity, no sense that an empire can't manage its populations (whether through tech, government processes, etc.), and no sense to just straight up remove a form of admin cap. I haven't played the Beta, but have seen other people play it (mainly Aspec's video on it). This feels too much like overcompensation for things they didn't like rather than a genuine attempt to improve/balance the current system. I don't actually have many issues with the other changes, but these ones just reek of overcompensation to me.

If you're worried about balancing Tall and Wide play, what you shouldn't focus on isn't the Admin Cap, but a Wide empire's ability to make the use of resources. Either the penalties for Admin Cap need to be altered to reduce the overall effectiveness of Pops/Stations to balance out Talls focus on "Little is More" with Wides focus on "More is Better" while reducing one's ability to gain admin cap quickly. But you run into the issue of harming either playstyle to the point that no one enjoys it anymore. Honestly, I don't think you're going to get a "perfect" balance between the two ever.

Though if you have the experience...why did Admin Cap get put in the game in the first place? To balance Tall and Wide play would be my guess, but it never really worked that way when I played. Too easy to gain Admin Cap. Which is why I'm not too concerned with the change to Bureaucrats but am confused that they have no way to increase Admin Cap at all. I am much more into the role-playing aspects of Stellaris than actual game balance, which only really matters in multiplayer.

 

[grommile]

why did Admin Cap get put in the game in the first place?

Probably because people were freaking out over having red numbers they couldn't turn green, and Paradox decided to give them a way to make the red number shrink to zero, instead of just colouring the number white instead.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

One of these comes to life (sort of) in the 3.3 patch, as the Permanent Employment Megacorp civic.

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I just discovered that I Permanent Employment, Clone Origin, Budding, and Mechanist are ALL mutually exclusive.

While I get that you can only have one origin (I mean obv ), the inability to create any combos within the list makes me a sad panda. (Though I also get it cuz the reason I was gonna try it was to see how OP it would be).

 

[GrimgorIronhide]

This seems like it'll be a big boon for Spiritualist and Psionic empires. Focusing on Unity Production willl no longer be a handicap.

 

[Redeemed Sinner]

OK, so I'm kinda beginning understand why Admin Cap needed to be changed, but what if we a added a building that had a 3 stage upgrade like the capital building that added one job per tier that reduced administration usage of Pops on that specific planet by 25% per job.

That way we could at least reduce the effects of Pops on Admin Cap through a building that requires certain Pop thresholds in order to upgrade. Add that you can only build one per planet and could only have 1-2 of such a job on Habitats (and other habitable megastructures and Arcologies) and you could really find a middle ground between the prior system and the new one.



Another idea is making it so Governors reduce District and Building Admin cap by 1-5% per level on planets they govern.

With system Admin cap being reducable only through Civics, Government Type, Ascension Perks, and a new Megastructure.

With Techs maybe also being able to be used to grow your base Admin Cap but being extremely late Tech options and non-repeatable.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire.

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Citizen Service no longer provides +2 unity to soldier jobs. Instead it grants -25% war exhaustion and +2 starting level to your Admirals and Generals.

Regarding those two items, is there any hope that you would consider adding military "Administrator" jobs? Stellaris has many different ruler and administrator jobs, with several types of priests and plutocrats, but the concept of military administration still only exists in government type descriptions:

Citizen Stratocracy
This government is an advanced form of militaristic oligarchy, where the military has subsumed all aspects of civilian administration. All government offices are held by military officers.

 

[Kapi96]

Wow, technocracy going from a fantastic civic to an absolutely rubbish one in a single patch!

 

[Fulgrymm]

Wow, technocracy going from a fantastic civic to an absolutely rubbish one in a single patch!

So the story goes with anything deemed the slightest bit OP.

 

[Faron235]

Will there be more story sets for the game?

 

[MrReaper182]

I feel all of this is not really needed. What's needed is rebellions and other such ways to bring your empire down within, not ways to make the game easier. Give us rebellions with faction leaders like we had in Crusader kings 2 as that is really missing from this game.

 

[somerandofromreddit]

I feel that the big problem with Sprawl is that its penalties are directly what the Game wants them to be (a game mechanic to Slow down Tech and Research speed balance wise), instead of what they actually should be from an in game empire perspective (Your planets get less productive, and your Districts, Pops and Buildings cost more money because stuff gets lost in bureaucracy, which then in turn leads to the same effect that larger Empires get slowed down).

So here an Idea how to implement it without seeming just an arbitrary penalty:

While Sprawl stays an empire wide cause, its effects should not be some arbitrary cost-multiplyer applied globally, but should be the concrete effects of local corruption caused by your empire becoming so sprawling. So i suggest that each Planet/Colony gets a "Corruption-Counter" that counts from 0 to 100 depending on the sprawl (and maybe also stability and distance from capital and spy sabotage-missions, but mainly sprawl).

For each point “Corruption” the Colony's productivity would go down by 1% and its stability would go down by 0.2%. That simulates your pops stealing and embezzling more and more office supplies and stuff and your accounting and bureaucracy being unable to keep up, and simultaneously your pops getting unhappy with all that corruption. Which is a far better representation of what Sprawl means then an arbitrary cost multiplier.

You could then fight corruption locally somewhat, but even all anti-corrution-effects stacked would never mitigate all corruption, so it will always stay a burden on larger empires. You could fight it through:

• by Enforcers who would reduce x% of the corruption on the planet making the precinct not completely useless any more in the process. Lets say up to 30% total.
• by some planetary Decisions that reduce some percentage of corruption in exchange for some Unity upkeep. Lets say up to 10% total.
• The first couple planetary ascension lower a planet's corruption by some percentage. Lets say up to 30% total from the first 6 Ascensions.

The final effects of Sprawl like it is now and this new System are the same. Your Empire has to spend more of its economy to produce the resources to produce Tech & Unity, so it slows large Empires down.

But because the effects are local, somewhat mitigable (you could make a police planet with 3 precincts and pay Unity and ascend the planet), it is both more immersive and adds a new game mechanic to balance so it would be more fun. Do you accept that you loose 15% of a planets output to corruption or do you spend resources to build a precinct and spend 10 Unity/Month to reduce corruption down to 10%. On some planets this will be worth it, on others not. And it would buff the planetary Ascension as it would not only improve the planetary specialization but also reduces local corruption.