Stellaris Dev Diary #243 - 3.3 'Libra' is out, now what?

[cafemajor]

Hi everyone!

The Stellaris 3.3.1 “Libra” Custodian Update has been released, and once again it’s time to look back on the past and forward to the future.

The 3.3 update went through an Open Beta which we feel was a stunning success. With the aid of the community, the systems were significantly improved and a large number of bugs were found and squashed. Thank you again for your help!

The 3.3 Cycle​

A 3.3.2 release went up today to fix a few things that got found at the last minute, including localization issues in French, Portuguese, and Russian, as well as a potential crash some people have encountered.

Spoiler: 3.3.2 Changelog

• Fixed localization issues affecting articles in French, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese
• Fixes a crash that would occur when attempting to apply a species template to a species with a different amount of traits than what is in the template.
• Fixed species template application trait add/remove checks being inverted.

A 3.3.3 update is expected to follow in a few weeks to address additional issues.

New Players and the Tutorial​

Stellaris isn’t always the easiest game to get into. Don’t be alarmed if there are changes to the tutorial and early game experience. We’re going to be gathering data about different elements of the new player experience, trying out various things and seeing what works.

Onwards to 3.4​

Meanwhile, 3.4 is just around the corner. Currently planned for May, the Custodian side of the 3.4 update will continue to refine the balance around Unity and address some more of the feedback from the Open Beta and 3.3 release, as well as being the target for the planned release of the Situations system first described in Dev Diary 234. We’ll give Situations and our planned uses for them a complete Dev Diary in the near future.

Influence and Espionage​

With 3.3, Influence is the primary resource for external diplomacy, fast travel, and expanding living space.

One of the changes we’re planning for the May update is inspired by some of the feedback we received during the Unity Open Beta. We’re switching the initial costs for Espionage Operations to Influence rather than a massive pile of Energy Credits. Operation Upkeep will remain in Energy Credits. Exact values are subject to change.

View attachment 810826
Influence is purple. Espionage is purple. How can we argue with that?​

While making that change we also added a few improvements to the Subterfuge Tradition Tree.

A focus on Espionage can put some strain on your Envoy supply, so the Double Agents tradition will now provide one, in addition to increasing your Maximum Infiltration Level by 10.

View attachment 810825
The known and the nameless, familiar and faceless.​

Meanwhile, earlier in the tree we’ve decided to add some combat benefits to the tree to represent their enhanced ECM and ECCM capabilities. Empires focusing in Subterfuge now have an easier time locking on to enemy ships, as well as foiling the attempts of others to do the same to them.

View attachment 810824
Computer's locked. Getting a signal.

View attachment 810823
Go dead. Shut everything down and make like a hole in the void.​

As with the earlier changes, these numbers are also still subject to change and a deeper review of Espionage Operations is still planned in the future.

Idyllic Bloom Improvements​

A quality of life change being made to the Idyllic Bloom civic is also planned for 3.4 (coming in May).

Currently, Gaia Seeders can only be built on planets that match your planetary preference, which led to a play cycle where they had to terraform a planet before being able to utilize their special buildings.

Instead, we’re going to expand the valid planets of the Gaia Seeders as you gain terraforming technologies.

View attachment 810822
Much easier.

View attachment 810821
Okay, it’ll be much easier once we actually know how to do it.​

Gaia Seeders can be freely built on planets that match your homeworld type as before, but can also be built on other planets of the same general climate type (Dry, Wet, or Cold) once you have Terrestrial Sculpting.

Since the Maweer Caretakers come from a Tropical World (Wet), they need the Ecological Adaptation technology to upgrade the Gaia Seeders on this Alpine World (Cold).

Tomb Worlds can also be seeded once the Climate Restoration technology has been acquired.

The upkeep of the Gaia Seeders building is increased using the same tiers of terraforming difficulty as the building placement.

What Else is Coming?​

Regarding what the Crisis Expansion Team has been working on, they’re not quite ready to share that information quite yet. Soon™.

One of our agents did manage to sneak some of the wonderful work of the Concept Art Team out though...

View attachment 810820
It’s a thing, with greebles! And it’s game-changing.​

ANY of this coming to console?

 

[MonzUn]

Hello,I am a player of stellaris from CN.I m sorry that I m not good at English,so maybe there're some translation mistakes.


I have a problem with the intensity balance of the game.

FIRSTLY，At present, in the official version 3.2, the strength imbalance is very obvious. In particular, equality in the opening election, sharing weal and woe, as the only strong ideological trend of equality, can not get any strong bonus. Authoritarianism and equality should have their own strengths. Now authoritarianism is to press equality on the ground.


SECONFLY，in beta 3.3,it's a bad choice to change the way to get scientists.You can imagine that at first without scientists,it's just like eat steak without knife.Idealism takes off directly, and everything else becomes garbage... I don't want this kind of thing in the official version.

Last but not least,I hope you can change your algorithm. These days, most computers are multi-core, so dont'waste this computing power.

I'd appreciate it if you can accept my advice

Thanks for taking the time to figure out translations, I think I understood most of it

The change from credits to unity for scientists has generally seen as a positive, so that's unlikely to change.

As for your comments about paralellism, it's a myth that we don't use it.
See this dev diary (and enjoy the outdated Vicky 3 meme!)

Stellaris Dev Diary #181 : Threading and Loading Times

Hello everyone, this is The French Paradox speaking! On behalf of the whole Stellaris team, we hope you've had a good summer vacation, with current circumstances and all! We're all back to work, although not at the office yet. It is going to be...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[MonzUn]

ANY of this coming to console?

More or less everything we add to the PC version will come to the console version when Tantalus catches up to that point.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Changing operation startup cost to influence is thematically good, but it is an awful change for balance while operations range from "literally pointless" to "occasionally somewhat useful". You need to make them an actual part of strategy if you are going to make them now hamper normal conquest.

How would I make them more useful? Here's some easy, obvious ones:

1. Steal Technology: Remove the buff preventing doing it again soon (it's 30% in one tech, that's not exactly great).
2. Sabotage Starbase: Should be able to hit shipyards, and hit all modules/buildings that are within the starbase's role (so guns and defense stuff for Bastions), but success should lead to a buff on the target to prevent this kind of operation for a while.
3. Arm Privateers: Give them some nasty scaling by the target's navy and empire size.

 

[StellarXe]

Could you guys add a slider strength for mid game marauders/fallen empire strength too?

because current Ai if reach to mid game they always like to fight fallen empire marauders and destroyed them, almost rarely to see the heaven war happening.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

but it is an awful change for balance while operations range from "literally pointless" to "occasionally somewhat useful"

Oh, we know.

 

[Soranya]

Oh, we know.

So, the operations will become more useful?
Or just completely pointless as the cost outweigth the benefit?

 

[Alfray Stryke]

So, the operations will become more useful?
Or just completely pointless as the cost outweigth the benefit?

As has been mentioned, it's something we're still in discussions about internally.

Nice try - Spy!

For a more serious answer: Apart from what was shared here, we can't say much as there are multiple initiatives for how to improve Espionage being tossed around and for some of them we're still in an early discussion pahse for some of it. We would rather share thought out solutions and ideas rather than the brainstorming version that will only raise more questions than it answers

 

[cafemajor]

More or less everything we add to the PC version will come to the console version when Tantalus catches up to that point.

Ok thanks. Any timeline on that?

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

With Influence being a limited resource, I assume espionage operations will be buffed since they won't be spammable to the same degree, which was previously the concern. I don't think there's any need to worry about the change from energy credits to influence - it's a good move.

Although espionage operations are in fact already more useful than most people realize, particularly because of the unwritten effects that trigger when you use the right assets, which can be very powerful - the 10% research speed bonus from the Steal Technology backdoor, for instance. Extort Favors can also be extremely powerful when used in combination with the Declare Crisis resolution - you can force the entire galaxy to declare war against a snowballing rival empire, and thanks to stolen favors they'll be voting for it themselves!

 

[khazit66]

This looks like great news for the espionage system, as well as for Influence as a resource, which is currently in an unbalanced state. Hopefully Planetary Ascensions will get the glowup they need in the next update as well.

The tracking and evasion bonuses in the Subterfuge tree might also open for slightly more variation in the combat meta - Corvettes, which are already viable in the endgame, will be extremely deadly against Battleship spam when they have even more evasion, unless the Battleship owners have also taken the same tree. Hopefully that doesn't just end up making that tree mandatory in the meta. Maybe the tracking bonus should be removed in that case.

That new teased contraption is very interesting... it's probably a new structure, but I can't help seeing the potential for a transforming giant space robot, a sci-fi fantasy that Stellaris is sorely lacking in!

Wouldn't actually make corvettes any better. It's already trivially easy to get your corvette to maximum evasion in late game. Meanwhile carrier battleship already murder corvettes, the extra 10% tracking would be redundant.
And the bonus as a whole is still pale in comparison of other trees.

 

[MonzUn]

Ok thanks. Any timeline on that?

I wouldn't know. I work with the PC game

 

[StellarisFan1]

YOU need to upgrade espionage, it is very weak! Operations for influence points are a nerf, it's very sad!

 

[Workiwork]

i do not want to punch on anyone but is the critic on espionage right now not exactly why paradox (with Devs own words if i recall correctly) is always reluctant to add espionage into games?
option a) it is too weak to be useful and/or fun
option b) it is strong, but a player would not want to have it used against them
option C) only the player can use it, that will give additional advantages to the player.

that said, i am at least happy with not knowing everything about enemies borders and fleet composition. that Intel stuff is nice.

 

[Critical Ethics]

With Influence being a limited resource, I assume espionage operations will be buffed since they won't be spammable to the same degree, which was previously the concern.

While one empire won't be able to spam them you can still have a dozen empires spamming them on a single player.

option a) it is too weak to be useful and/or fun
option b) it is strong, but a player would not want to have it used against them
option C) only the player can use it, that will give additional advantages to the player.

This only applies to sabotage. You can have extremely effective espionage operations that don't fall under the above as long as they do not negatively impact the target. Increasing how much tech progress steal technology gets you or giving you control over what tech you steal would vastly improve the usefulness while having minimal impact on the player. Being targeted for a smuggling ring that's effectively an involuntary one-way trade pact would be only emotionally damaging.

Then there's the difference between sabotage as random debuffs vs sabotage as stories. A sabotage event that makes all my power plants blow up out of nowhere is just frustrating. An event series or archaeology style deal with a randomly generated James Bond style name which I can assign envoys to and name decisions like choosing to go loud for a greater victory at the cost of international scrutiny? Mmmm yes delicious.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Have you considered reworking the species rights system?

 

[Sarawen]

Does anyone.... remember the Synthetics?
I'm serious. Gestalt needs to remake.
especially the synthetics
Scientists are too expensive for synthetics.
and it seems they not so... unity
I hope gestalt is not a big brother
It should not be a copy of other countries
It needs a bit of special unity. For example, it depends on comfort,
Instead of having a few robots sitting in a building overloading their CPUs to think about the future
Most of the updates I think are interesting
But it doesn't seem to fit the synthetics.

 

[CometBliss]

I saw that idyllic bloom is getting some changes yay! Although I do find it weird how hiveminds can do that rather than making hive worlds they can make Gaia worlds. There is only two ways for gestalts to make Gaia worlds. The Boal artifact and world shaper for RS and Idyllic bloom for hives. Although I wish hives can corrupt the Boal artifact. Also using the Boal artifact doesn't cause any terraforming events is that intentional?

 

[Liggi]

I think Espionage is a genuinely difficult problem to solve. There's a balance to strike with:

- Meaningful and worth investing time and resources into
- Not mindblowingly irritating and frustrating when used against the player
- Actually fun, immersive and engaging

A small QoL feature I'd like to see is a way to repeat an operation automatically, or at least mark an operation to notify you when it is available to run again after a cooldown.

I think there's a bit more flexibility to make Espionage more effective now that it uses Influence, because it's a genuinely scarce resource (or, at least, it was). An empire would have to focus Espionage at the cost of claims, expansion, Galactic Community, pacts etc, which means that the tradeoff should be worth it.

I'd be less angry about my Industry getting sabotaged by the AI if I felt that it was genuinely costing in one sense for them to pull it off, and they'd focused on it.

I'd also like to see more potential for roleplay with it. There's a great base there with the Asset system, but at the moment, focusing on Espionage just doesn't feel fun enough. I think some sort of dovetailing with an Internal Politics rework, where you're influencing factions within other empires, or doing counterespionage, with Envoys as full leaders with interesting traits and so on, would be fantastic.

I really think there's an absolutely huge potential with the next DLC to tie a lot of mechanics together. The Unity rework, a rework of Influence, a rework of Factions / Internal Politics, Espionage and Leaders. A lot of the groundwork has already been laid for something incredibly interesting and fun, it's just a matter of tying all of these mechanics together in a way that feels immersive, meaningful and fun.

 

[bren77]

Purely from an enhancement perspective, as unity is now the resource for recruiting leaders you should be able to select which bonii you want.