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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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I found that to be very clear.
4 is the normal negotiable maximum. The resolution adds +1/+2 max holdings baseline so it reduces the maximum negotiable ones by -1/-2 respectively. Essentially it just gives overlord a higher minimum amount of holdings. They can't be denied as much anymore as it is not up for negotiation.
Ah ok, thought it was working the other way and banning 4 or 3. Good to know.
 
The 2.0 ftl re-design was because of how it affected the balance of the entire game. In current Stellaris, the era of megastructures is effectively the point where the Dev's have written off meaningful balance considerations- either you've won by the point you can employ them, or you can't, but it's no longer intended to be a matched playing field.

Early-game geography already stopped being a meaningful point of jump drives, but jump drives are tech locked into the later game. This doesn't render geography meaningless, it means geography is what shapes the strategy of the early game that wins the game come the late game, where options for travel start limited and open up, rather than all being available at the start.
I didn't said that I want to go back to vanilla.

And I agree that some sort of "geography" is needed in strategy games.

I'm simply pointing out that for all intent and purposes, distance is the main obstacle in space, both real space and (good at least) science fiction one. Coincidentally distance is also the metric our brain understands intuitively.

My feeling is just that the Inflation of offensive teleports, already by mid game makes defensive assets only situationally useful (and by extension the upcoming defensive vassals too), they render the map difficult to read (especially in combination with closed border neighbors, you have to keep an eye to their worms and gates as well) and the overall warfare experience tedious.

I would like some movement mechanic that at least affects fleets in a "region of space". So that yes, they teleport in somehow, they do what they want to the systems there, but then they don't leave that region for the next one until some sort of siege or whatever. Be it early, mid or lategame.
 
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Gotta say, as someone who mains Void Dwellers, I was really looking forward to the rings. It's disappointing to see that they not only don't synergize much, but they actually exclude eachother.
It would be interesting if the orbital ring nullified the planetary debuffs for species with the void dwellers trait – no buffs or debuffs, just like on ringworlds.
 
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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
I hope the final naming of higher Orbital Ring tiers will be better than "Tier 2" :p
 
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I appreciate the work being done, but Stellaris doesn't really seem to have deficit of micro, especially in planetary building, and these new things make things worse.
 
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Orbital Rings fill the same “orbital slot” as habitats, so you’ll have to decide which of the two you want over your worlds

maybe ad a warning when you build an orbital habit or ring on your world so people know that there can only be one.
 
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Does the Teachers of the Shroud origin bring alongside any changes to the shroud itself and will the Shroudwalker coven also comment on Shroud related events such as gaining certain psionic tech or chosen one event perhaps?
 
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It was actually explicitly said the rings can only be built around colonized habitable planets.
nooo... i kinda stopped readying after the " which of the two you want over your worlds " .. SIGH... they are useless then . i mean , empower planets efficency without using pops. but kinda situational for evrything else.
 
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If I build a Tree of Life Sapling holding on a subject's planet, and then later integrate said subject, does that planet get the Tree of Life Sapling planetary feature, or will I have to plant a new one like normal?
 
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the modules have literally been done by alpha mod for years that way
and the planetary ring and sling have literally been done by gigastrut engineering for years too....

and yet no shout out or anything

(also, only 1 district for that hab module? thats typical vanilla stellaris "meh")

also wtf is the point of the sling in the first place... when you consider how stellaris border "mechanics" work
 
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Last nitpick ... I kind of feel like orbital rings ought to be called "[PlanetName] Orbital" rather than "PlanetName Station".

Agreed. On the subject of names any one else feel the orbital mall and logistics module should swap names? When I hear "mall" I don't think "office workers in the financial industry", I think "shops selling consumer goods". Likewise logistics doesn't really conjur to mind shopping, even though it's an important part it feels more relevant to trade in the abstract (thus fit for clerks).
 
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Is this like the last expansion to stellaris or something and you guys are going out on a swansong? It seems so much beefier than the last DLCs we've had that thought crossed my mind.
 
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Do Planet Rings means that "Colored borders" (striped ) returns? If other Empire capture a Star Base but not planet with Planet Rings, it still be yours (Planet)? Or in this system enemy must capture Star Base and all Planet Rings to capture system otherwise it still will your system?
 
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Is this like the last expansion to stellaris or something and you guys are going out on a swansong? It seems so much beefier than the last DLCs we've had that thought crossed my mind.
I mean in Q&As they have repeatedly said that there is still a lot they want to do with Stellaris, i would be surprised if this was the last DLC.

Do Planet Rings means that "Colored borders" (striped ) returns? If other Empire capture a Star Base but not planet with Planet Rings, it still be yours (Planet)? Or in this system enemy must capture Star Base and all Planet Rings to capture system otherwise it still will your system?
There is still an inhabitable, colonized planet there that needs to be conquered. As long as that one isn't conquered to, you won't get the system on a white peace.
 
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Overall thoughts on the Dev Diary


The Scholarium looks to be rather strong, and arguably the strongest special-vassal to be. While we want to see what the exact tributary ratios are, I expect this will be the dominant vassal type to start as in the Imperial Feifdom origin, especially if a MegaCorp who can build early branch offices on the Overlord/other vassals. While that military penalty is steep for direct rebellion, it'd be a shame if some rich, technologically advanced megacorp able to afford tons on high-quality mercenaries and able to play diplomatic games was intending to break away...


In the overall balance of alliances, the priority of special vassals seems pretty clear- Prospectorium to cover all your base resource needs to enable the Overlord to swap to a 100% specialist economy ASAP to build their industrial/science/unity generation, Scholarium to pay the science subsidy for the Prospectoriums and to expand your own science growth, and Bullwarks as a distant third with late-game crisis/war in heaven metagaming in mind. And in all honesty, just getting more prospectorium/scholarium to create an overwhelming offense seems more optimal, unless next week's balancing comes with exceptional defense synergies.


The Prospectorium being the first/most desirable vassal type you want is furthered by the new orbital rings. The most economically significant of these are the ones that improve your specialist outputs at the cost of increased resource upkeep- resources that the Prospectorium subsidizes both through the building upkeep, but also boosting your alloy generation potential to afford these more and sooner.



A balance concern for the rings is the Anchorage building. Unlike a lot of the other mechanics in Overlord, this is a potentially significant enabler of 'wide' play by getting pop-free expansions to fleet capacity that favors offense over defense play. Currently the starbase-anchorages are limited by their relative scarcity, and you need Soldier jobs (or a Megacorp building) to boost output further. The pop-economy of 3.3 limits the viability of this. Here, the ability to trade 50 influence and excess alloys for a fleet capacity upgrade is concerning, given how much more valuable offense is than defense.



The Quantum Catapult seems interesting, but also potentially too strong. The ability to bypass defenses- and defeat defenses in detail- is a large part of what makes anchorages more powerful than defense buildings in the first place. At a very minimum, I'd recommend a FTL jammer mechanic/upgrade that prevents fleets from directly landing in/targetting such systems, with upgrades from the Bulwark, so that a Catapult can't just deep strike the enemy's capital area, occupy the key planets, and win the war in the time it'd take a fleet to just sail from one galactic front to the other.
I think there will be two ways to go for Imperial Fiefdom. One, go scholarium and tech rush to the late game. Two, go bulwark and edit your subject contract so your overlord joins your wars, then use your gifted destroyer fleet + overlord to conquer as much as you can. Both sound pretty interesting.

While the orbital ring is best for alloys by far, the base resource buildings give +2, the same value as the +1CG (and without extra upkeep and more scaling bonuses to that output). So it’s just as much for basic resource production I’d say.

The orbital ring will also be better for tall empires, since one planet with 100 pops needs only single ring/building, while 10 planets with 10 pops need 10. The extra alloys and influence you save can then be spent on more habitats. While orbital rings do use the same “slot” as habitats, there is literally no bonus to having a habitat over an inhabited world. So just build them on other planets instead.
 
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nooo... i kinda stopped readying after the " which of the two you want over your worlds " .. SIGH... they are useless then . i mean , empower planets efficency without using pops. but kinda situational for evrything else.

What? Rings are great as described- they're much better economic and military enablers than habitats for the cost, and directly synergize with the power projection you want in the new Overlord vassal format and in the 3.3 sprawl meta. A habitat's base 10 sprawl is a 1% increase to all science costs and 2% for traditions, but Rings are economic efficiency boosts for a fraction of the influence, alloys, and science penalties.

On modules alone, anchorages are functionally a Soldier pop who doesn't require the upkeep, while the buildings are a second level of building specialization maximizer that makes gravity worlds even better than habitats than they already were. Being able to stack both a planet-side alloy-production buildings and the ring alloy-booster, with the increased mineral upkeeps being offset by Prospectoriums and tributaries both gained and kept in line via fleet capacity, is a far better investment than habitats, which you'd rather be building elsewhere other than over a habitable world in the first place.
 
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