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Stellaris Dev Diary #250 - Elevating Civilization

Greetings!

Last week’s dev diary went through the new Enclaves in Overlord, the Bulwark, some more Holdings, and the Imperial Fiefdom Origin. This week we’re going to look at two constructions, the Scholarium, Specialist Holdings and a summary of the origin revealed by Nivarias earlier this week.

As with all previews, numbers, text, and so on are not quite final and are still subject to change.

Orbital Rings​


Orbital Rings are a Tier 3 Voidcraft Engineering technology requiring Starholds, Galactic Administration, and Ceramo-Metal Infrastructure. Like Habitats, they do not require Mega-Engineering.

They are treated as a variant of Starbases, and while system control is still primarily determined by the actual Starbase of the system, the planets they surround cannot be invaded until the Orbital Ring has been disabled.

Orbital Ring

Orbital Ring

Initially your Orbital Ring will have two module slots and no building slots. As you gain additional Starbase technologies (Star Fortress and Citadel) and improve the planet’s capital building you can upgrade the Orbital Ring through two additional tiers, adding one module and building slot at each tier.

Starbase screen for Orbital Ring

Most of the Orbital Ring modules are similar to Starbase modules. Defensive modules trade piracy protection for extra hull and armor, and the Habitation Module is a Ring specific module that adds a district slot to the planet below.

Habitation Module
Orbital Shipyard
Orbital Anchorage
Planetary Defense Guns
Planetary Defense Batteries
Planetary Defense Hangars

Systems with multiple habitable planets can become an exceptionally thorny obstacle if you build multiple defensive orbital rings supporting a bastion starbase at the center.

Having a large conveniently placed ring around your planet provides an opportunity to enhance the planet with some interesting buildings. These stack with similar planetside buildings.

Low Gravity Mega-Refiners
Stratospheric Ionization Elements
Climate Optimization Stations
The Giga-Mall

Synaptic Relays
Orbital Maintenance Drops

Orbital Filing System
Orbital Logistics Systems

Alloy Processing Facilities

Many standard starbase buildings can also be placed on an Orbital Ring - though some are now limited to one per system.

Orbital Rings fill the same “orbital slot” as habitats, so you’ll have to decide which of the two you want over your worlds, and they can only be built around colonized habitable planets.

Quantum Catapult​


There comes a time in every overlord’s reign when a faraway crisis suddenly requires your attention. Things are going on halfway across the galaxy, a rival in the way has closed borders to you, and the Galactic Community is debating something about Tiyanki. Again.

A true galactic overlord has to be able to project their power at will, and doesn’t let these little things stop them from enacting their plans.

Quantum Catapult Tech

Built around Neutron Stars or Pulsars, Quantum Catapults can hurl fleets across incredible distances of space, but these megastructures have accuracy issues over long distances.

Quantum Catapult


Quantum Catapult Fleet Order

The maximum range of a Quantum Catapult is significantly longer than jump drive range but there’s a risk the fleet may not land exactly where they intended. The further the launch, the wider the scatter radius.

Higher tiers of the Quantum Catapult are both more accurate and have longer maximum range, with a well-placed fully-constructed Catapult able to threaten virtually anywhere, even in a huge galaxy.

After selecting a desired target system, a short windup later your fleet will arrive somewhere in a nearby system, without any lingering jump debuffs... But there is a chance, especially on spiral maps, that this “nearby” system is quite a few jumps away from your intended destination when traveling the hyperlanes.

Using the Quantum Catapult
There’s no clear route to this system, but the Catapult doesn’t care.

Quantum Catapults also have a passive effect that reduces MIA time for your missing fleets, which comes in useful when moving reinforcements to the front line, using experimental subspace on your science ships, or if your launched fleet lands in a system with Closed Borders.

The Scholarium​


The Scholarium is the last of the Specialists coming in Overlord. Dedicated to the advancement of science, the Scholarium relies on their overlord to defend them from enemies.

The State of Saathuma are our Scholarium minions, bringing us the secrets of the universe in exchange for our benevolent protection.

Scholarium

As with the other specialist empires, the penalties and benefits both grow as they tier up.

Scholarium Specialization Tier 1
Scholarium Specialization Tier 2
Scholarium Specialization Tier 3

Where the Prospectorium could discover valuable deposits in their space, the Scholarium instead finds opportunities to learn.

Scholarium Sensors

Scholarium Discovery I
Scholarium Discovery II
Scholarium Discovery III

The advisor perk, as you likely expected, improves your overlord’s scientific research.
Scholarium Advisory

And like the others, they have a Hyper Relay Network effect at Tier 1.
Part of Scholarium Tutelage

Next week? Yeah, why not, let's show it next week.

At Tier 2, the Scholarium also gains a set of special traits for their leaders, and the ability to trade their Scientists to their overlord.

Scholarium Traits
Scholarium Scientists

Finally, at Tier 3 the Scholarium gains an advanced variant of the Science Ship, the Arctrellis. Like the Prospectorium’s Bulwark's Battlewright, it provides an aura in combat, but this time the scientists aboard the ship can cripple opposing ships piloted by AI - whether they be machine intelligences, sapient combat computers, or the Contingency.

Scholarium Arctrellis

It should be noted that as a Scholarium, the military penalties make it difficult to free yourself from under your overlord’s control. You may need some powerful friends to help you out.

Specialist Holdings​


Each of the Specialist empires has a unique holding that their overlord can build on their worlds.

Prospectoria can host the Offworld Foundry, which converts subject minerals into alloys for the overlord.

Offworld Foundry Holding

Bulwarks can have the Vigil Command, which grants additional Defense Platforms to their overlord. As the Bulwark increases in tier, these values increase.

Vigil Command Holding

Scholarium worlds can build the Ministry of Science. Surrounding their planet with additional Science Ships increases the effect of the building.

Ministry of Science Holding

One extra holding we’ll show this week is for the Tree of Life origin. It lets you share your blessings with your subjects, improving both the habitability and food production of your subject’s world, though a fair bit will be consumed by the sapling itself.

Tree of Life Sapling Holding
Overlord Arborist Job

Galactic Community​


It seemed natural that with such a large focus on subjugation, the Galactic Community would want to regulate things in different ways. Two more minor resolution lines are coming, in the new Suzerains and Sovereignty category.

Suzerains and Sovereignty Category

The Intergalactic Directives line of resolutions protects the rights of subjects and encourages the preservation and release of weaker societies.

Regulated Growth
Ensured Sovereignty
A Voice for All

You can’t take the sky from me.

Bureaucratic Surveillance, on the other hand, focuses more on the rights of the overlords, requiring a short leash on their subjects and encouraging the use of holdings. Resolutions in this line can only be proposed by empires that are overlords of another empire.

Administrative Insight
Borderless Authority
Personal Oversight

Borderless Authority and Personal Oversight force extra holdings into subject contracts, but since the total limit remains 4 the highest Holding Limit terms become redundant.

Teachers of the Shroud​


Teachers of the Shroud

With the Teachers of the Shroud origin, your civilization was identified as a civilization of interest long ago by the Shroudwalkers, and they carefully guided you as their visions instructed. Your species begins with the Latent Psionics trait and in contact with the Shroudwalker coven.

Your civilization is treated as if it already has the Mind over Matter Ascension Perk, meaning Transcendence is not far away. (And you cannot pursue Synthetic or Biological Ascension.)

Next Week​


Next week we’ll take a ride on the Hyper Relay Network, finally see those three Specialist perks, look at some other balance changes and additions coming in Cepheus and Overlord, and reveal another Origin.

Video versions of these dev diaries are available at the Stellaris Official YouTube Channel. Subscribe so you don’t miss them, and wishlist Overlord if you haven’t already!
 
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Doesn't really feel balanced and make would feudal society useless, since you would end up taking the perk anyway. Besides, we can't avoid losing federation cohesion so it wouldn't be too bad to not be able to avoid divided patronage for certain empire types.

Yes that's why I suggested a sinergy (like they did with some other civics/vassalsperks/traditions)

If you think about it, it make sense that a "feudal space society" would be more loyal based on the number of vassals, if they had a "shared destiny" of be under theyr holy overlord.

It is just too strong that a civ give the same effect of an AP without be locked or exclusive of other civ or origin.
 
It is intentional that there is not a research boosting orbital ring building. @rubert pretty much nails the reason why:





Any structure that is travel related or can provide living space costs influence. Since the habitation modules increase the number of districts on the planet, we decided to go with influence for the rings as a whole. (We could have made them Unity to build and then put an Influence cost on the module, but decided against it to be consistent with outposts.) ...and @Alfray Stryke beat me to the response. You're on vacation, stop working.

Thank you very much. Someone else in the thread pointed out that science ships also already provide an orbital solution to boosting research via "Assist Research" [much cheaper than an orbital ring too] and is the only source of such a boost. So while science from orbital rings is missing, "Assist Research" kind of fill that void.
 
I feel like a lot of the bonuses which seem on the surface designed to benefit tall play (planetary ascension, now these ring buildings) seem to focus hard on making more specialized planets, which is easier to do when you have a lot of planets - surely tall is more aligned to having planets do more things? Most notably, in that the capital world designation gives +10% -> +35% jobs resource output, a generic bonus.

Are there plans to add more generic bonuses with a view to improving the gameplay of empires with only their 3 guaranteed worlds?

On another note, I feel like adding +4 districts to a planet with a maxed out ring sounds kinda lackluster, while also mainly seeming to reward spamming them out on lots of worlds; would it be worth making the district-addition module give +2? (Adding the influence cost here would make sense in this case IMO, similar to the influence cost of upgrading habitats).
 
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I feel like a lot of the bonuses which seem on the surface designed to benefit tall play (planetary ascension, now these ring buildings) seem to focus hard on making more specialized planets, which is easier to do when you have a lot of planets - surely tall is more aligned to having planets do more things?
Yeah, right now you definitely benefit more from settling multiple worlds, just with a handful of larger ones, and regularly resettling from secondary worlds to primary worlds.

Pop growth being independently produced on each individual planet rather than an-empire wide value divided between the colonies certainly doesn't help, nor does the number of building slots being always limited to 12 regardless of planet size.
 
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how.. it is different ?

A X% for an anomaly to be a terraforming candidate is less than X% of the galaxy being terraformable, because not all planets in the galaxy have anomalies, and the potential for anomaly to be a terraforming candidate is in competition for all the other candidates that it could be instead.

The chance for any planet to be terraformable is the chance for an anomaly, period, and then the chance for that anomaly to be the subset of terraforming anomalies. If the chance for an anomaly is 10%, then even if the chance for being a terraforming candidate is also 10%, you're looking at a 10% x 10% = 1% chance of any planet being terraformable. And this is on the high end.

Where this comes into issue with the mechanics is how fast 'pot' of anomalies is composed (terraforming is rare compared to other options), and how fast the galaxy fills up. Depending on settings, you can realistically scan and fill up the galaxy before you've 'emptied the bucket' of anomalies to have terraforming be a regular option, meaning they never have a chance to be spawned before there's no more anomaly chances to roll.
 
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A X% for an anomaly to be a terraforming candidate is less than X% of the galaxy being terraformable, because not all planets in the galaxy have anomalies, and the potential for anomaly to be a terraforming candidate is in competition for all the other candidates that it could be instead.

The chance for any planet to be terraformable is the chance for an anomaly, period, and then the chance for that anomaly to be the subset of terraforming anomalies. If the chance for an anomaly is 10%, then even if the chance for being a terraforming candidate is also 10%, you're looking at a 10% x 10% = 1% chance of any planet being terraformable. And this is on the high end.

Where this comes into issue with the mechanics is how fast 'pot' of anomalies is composed (terraforming is rare compared to other options), and how fast the galaxy fills up. Depending on settings, you can realistically scan and fill up the galaxy before you've 'emptied the bucket' of anomalies to have terraforming be a regular option, meaning they never have a chance to be spawned before there's no more anomaly chances to roll.
and... thats define how many of them will end up as terraforming candidate ...
what do you mean "not all planets in the galaxy have anomalies", thats a chance they get when a scientific ship survey them ( yours, or the AI ... and the AI have much less player-events)

the end result is always that if you are lucky(like, best case scenario) in a run , you get around 2 terraforming candidate in your first 10-20 systems . worst case 0 .

in a galaxy with 1000 stars , how many non-habitable planetoid there are ? around 5000 ? with evry system having around 5 planetoids?

if only 0.3% of them is terraforming candidate , there will be 15 terraforming candidate in the whole galaxy . the chance of those being in your first 10-20 system around 1-2% chance for evry system.



so, the end result is that you even get less chance for run to actualy have a terraforming candidate near you .

the only solution would be to force them to spawn , like the garantee habitable worlds.


but i want to argue , that you actualy get alot of " terraforming candidate" in the form of habitable worlds with low habitability . so , you actualy find them quite often , you simply don't want to considerate that terraforming an habitable planet is the exact same meccanic that is terraforming a " candidate" .

the more i think about it , the more the desire for more "candidate" make less and less sense to me .

i would much more appreciate a mini-rework for the terraforming meccanic itself, more than more habitable planets "masked" as non-habitable.
 
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Terraforming candidates should really be pre-generated rather that tied to an anomaly.
I don't disagree, as such, but I don't think the team should worry too much about making fixes to support a system that ultimately isn't pulling its weight. Rather (because the Custodians have the scope for bigger reworks like this) they should make terraforming better and then smooth out any bumps that still remain.
 
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and... thats define how many of them will end up as terraforming candidate ...
what do you mean "not all planets in the galaxy have anomalies", thats a chance they get when a scientific ship survey them ( yours, or the AI ... and the AI have much less player-events)

Precisely what it means: not all planets will have anomalies. It's entirely normal to have entire systems not spawn anomalies. When this happens, exactly 0 systems will have terraforming candidates.

the end result is always that if you are lucky(like, best case scenario) in a run , you get around 2 terraforming candidate in your first 10-20 systems . worst case 0 .

in a galaxy with 1000 stars , how many non-habitable planetoid there are ? around 5000 ? with evry system having around 5 planetoids?

if only 0.3% of them is terraforming candidate , there will be 15 terraforming candidate in the whole galaxy . the chance of those being in your first 10-20 system around 1-2% chance for evry system.

And this would be the problem, yes- especially when you start going onto smaller galaxies, with fewer systems,, and and a greater share of the galaxy claimed by other powers. Only 15 terraforming candidates in a huge galaxy might as well not exist.
 
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Only 15 terraforming candidates in a huge galaxy might as well not exist.
mhh... so you want more of them .

the fact is that while they are bettter than adding straight habitable planets , they are still habitable planets hidden behind a tech and a energy cost. and they are way better than habitats .

i don't know if having more of them would breach game balance ( i mean, evryone would have access to those planets at some point ) or more the game performance , not in the mean of slowing it down ( since the number of pops will slow down your growth anyway)

mhh... realy there is no reason in particolar to be against having a flag on generation of the galaxy , but what you realy want is an increase in terraforming candidate that can be achive by increasing the chance of the anomaly that alow it .





something strange ... did they change the anomaly chance in some patch ? ... you talk about " other anomaly " clugging up this anomaly, but ... eeeh...i should realy look for the code shouldn't i ? ... anyway , in 2018 , the anomaly.2575 (?) had a 0.5 chance to trigger on all barren\cold barren planets , the problem ? it is locked behind the tech "climate restoration" . thats why you can't realy find it early game if you don' take the tech .
edit: made a mistake like an idiot there , its the different text flavor that is behind the tech, not the event. 0.5 chance is correct .

but something tells me they changed that .
 
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Where is the next origin reveal, Paradox? You said there would be an Origin reveal. You promised.
 
Where is the next origin reveal, Paradox? You said there would be an Origin reveal. You promised.
First look at the Imperial Fiefdom: 05.04.22 17:05 GMT+2
First look at the Teachers of the Shroud: 12.04.22 17:00 GMT+2

it is not 17:00 yet, so let's wait a bit before we start to torch the forum down, right ?
 
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First look at the Imperial Fiefdom: 05.04.22 17:05 GMT+2
First look at the Teachers of the Shroud: 12.04.22 17:00 GMT+2

it is not 17:00 yet, so let's wait a bit before we start to torch the forum down, right ?

No. It's 17:00 where I live, and I REFUSE to entertain timezones! :D
 
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Honestly, on terraforming candidates. There is a need to change how they spawn. As a byproduct of all other anomalies being found, is a really bad system because you get this weird setup where all the terraforming candidates end up on the fringes of someone's border.

A better approach would be to have them be generated on game creation, independent of anomalies. Honestly, if they ever gave us an option to do a second pass survey of systems we're already surveyed, terraforming candidates would be a good option for anomalies that could be found in this way. They should still be generated on game start, just that most of them can't be found until that second pass. Regardless of what is done, this would be a good way to spread out terraforming candidates and make terraforming technologies more useful. Also more consistency between games on terraforming candidates despite differences in galaxy size, empire numbers or how many empires bother with map the starts and other anomaly chance modifiers.

Obviously, there is a need for filler anomalies, but I'd rather that be something that doesn't give quite the benefit that creating a new world does. I mean you could have a rare chance of getting deposits or it's just caches of resources found. This can be done in a way that doesn't step on the toes of specialist vassals as well. High chance out deposits and have the caches be larger. Hell, can even do stuff like throw in derelict stations and ships. Maybe an anomaly leads to an abandoned construction or science ship or you find a station that either is a mining/research station that can be restored if you own the system or a really rare chance at finding a derelict starbase that needs half the resources (alloys & influence) & time to restore. Granted, I do think we see this for some of the filler anomalies already, but filler anomalies really shouldn't be terraforming candidates.
 
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Going with the Mass Relays theme:
Regarding the Quantum Catapult, wouldn't it be a neat addition, if the jump had pinpoint accuracy as long as the target system has a Quantum Catapult itself or if the target system is a Pulsar/Neutron Star?
Just as an idea!
 
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After researching Psionic Theory (which is a guaranteed research option for them), Telepathy can show up as a random society tech.


I try not to spoil stories so you can experience them, but these DDs are also pretty long and Nivarias is doing videos on them already.


They'll quickly run out of places for their discoveries if stuck in one system.


Yes, you must be in orbit of the catapult to yeet the fleet.


Iggy sent me this while giggling madly.

View attachment 829347

Should be able to hold off attackers until help can arrive via the relay network.


Possibly. Feedback is appreciated.

All numbers and previews are still subject to change.
Impressive! Enormous defensive values on the pick Iggy sent you.
A question about how the planetary rings operate:
Do the orbital planetary defences acquire and engage a 'flipped' starbase or space structures(mining bases or research posts)?
EG:
If the system is attacked and the starbase knocked out and taken by the attacker the other space structures and system control flips.
As stated in the DD this does not apply to orbital plates and their platforms. So strategically, can I trust these systems to retake themselves, or do I need to dispatch a fleet to reestablish control?
 
View attachment 829140

This is your main challenge to overcome.

Each subject beyond the first appends -1 monthly loyalty to all subjects. Having a lot of subjects becomes messy fast.
If you're thinking "Ah, those pesky scientists couldn't possibly rebel against me." Well, that's what we made Allegiance Wars for.

That said, Feudal Society, Franchising, and Shared Destiny all ignore this penalty, so do with that what you will. ;)



Yes, as long as you can get them to agree to the specialization change in Agreement negotiations.
The subject will need to undergo the specialization process again for the new specialization.



Apologies if I was unclear - I meant unique to the subject empire (I've updated my previous answer).
As far as the Scholaria question, have you considered making the Holding bonus contingent on the actual research output of the subject? Like, instead of “+3% research speed”, it could be “overlord receives+3% of research from tribute”. That way, you can’t have a thousand one planet scholaria that are all useless and doesn’t even produce that much research anyway