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Stellaris Dev Diary #251 - All Roads Lead to Deneb IIb

Hello again!

Last week’s dev diary examined the Orbital Ring, Quantum Catapult, and Scholarium. Today we’re going to look at another construction that has a massive impact on the game, the Hyper Relay. After that we’ll look at some other changes coming in Cepheus and Overlord, and finish off with another origin that was revealed yesterday by Nivarias.

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

Hyper Relays​


Long ago, back in Dev Diary #243 we showed you some concept art of Hyper Relays, and told you they had greebles, and were game changing. Now it’s time to fully reveal them.

Hyper Relays are a rare Tier 2 technology that require the Hyperlane Breach Points technology and access to Rare Crystals to discover. Once you have observed a functional Hyper Relay in use by another empire, the technology will appear much more frequently, causing them to spread in a pleasing manner across the galaxy.

Hyper Relays technology

Hyper Relays can be built by your Construction Ships outside the gravity well of systems, just like Gateways. They’re useless on their own, but a chain of Hyper Relays built in adjacent systems dramatically speeds up travel, allowing you to jump from Relay to Relay after a short windup rather than having to travel across each system at sublight speed, as long as neither endpoint is controlled by a hostile empire.

Hyper Relay build button


Hyper Relay model

Once two Relays in adjacent systems have been linked, the hyperlane between those systems will become bolder, and ships traveling along them will show the route plotted in blue as they are using the bypass.

Hyper Relays can be built in your own space, or that of your subjects. For convenience, Relays can also be built directly from the Galaxy Map.

Galactic Map with Relays

If an Empire’s capital is attached to the Hyper Relay Network, additional effects can be projected through the network using several Network Edicts. These add strategic resource upkeep to your Hyper Relays and an effect on all of your colonies that are connected to your capital.

Networked Dominance
Networked Movement


Networked Amenities


Gestalts have a reflavored variant of Networked Amenities.

Specialist subjects each have a Network Effect available at Tier 1, which becomes active in the overlord’s Relay Network if a continuous chain connects their capitals.

Conjunction!


Bulwark Watch
Scholarium Tutelage
Prospectorium Supply

As one could imagine, an expansive Hyper Relay network makes travel much faster during the mid-game while you do not yet have a comprehensive Gateway system built, and since such travel is permitted in neutral empires that have open borders, navigating the galaxy and responding to distant threats is easier than ever before.

As a personal anecdote, after playing with these and the new subjugation mechanics internally, it was almost difficult to go back to 3.3 for the Dev Clash. Made me almost want to blow up the galaxy.

Selected Other Changes​


As with every update, there are a number of balance or quality of life changes and adjustments in Cepheus. Here’s a handful of interesting changes.
  • Successful Force Ideology wars with a corporate aggressor now result in the target (or created) empire having the Oligarchic authority and Merchant Guilds civic. This is also true for Status Quo resolutions of Establish Hegemony, Subjugation, and the Scion’s Bring into the Fold wargoals.
  • Corporate subjects can now open branch offices in subjects of their shared overlord, as long as their overlord is not also a MegaCorp.
  • AI Subjects of Player Empires now receive AI bonuses as if the difficulty level of the game were one level lower, rather than losing their bonuses entirely.
  • The Parliamentary System civic now allows factions to be generated much earlier in the game.
  • You can now nominate other empires to Custodianship, provided they meet the requirements.
  • The Unbidden can no longer spawn in pulsar systems (as the star will disable their Dimensional Portal's shields - Heavy Metal, Inc. sends its regards…)
  • Low Military Intel is now gained at 30 Intel instead of 40 and Medium Military Intel is now gained at 60 Intel instead of 70. The effects of Medium and High Military Intel have been swapped. Medium now allows you to view ship loadout. High now grants visibility of location of military fleets.
  • Gateways (and Hyper Relays) can now be built in vassal space.
  • The Grasp the Void Ascension Perk now grants increased draw weight for FTL travel techs.

Some improvements have been made to automated migration.

  • "Ideal" worlds such as ring worlds, gaia worlds, hive worlds and machine worlds now have a 50% higher score when pops are deciding where to automatically resettle to. So they are more likely to want to move to your newly-founded ring world, for instance. Capital world planet designations also have a +10% score, and freshly founded colonies have 25% from their designation.
  • Pops will now pick which planet to auto-migrate to based on which planet has the most free jobs, rather than the least. They also now take free housing into account better.
  • The Outliner will now differentiate between unemployed pops that are migrating and those that are not. A yellow briefcase will be shown for planets that have unemployed pops that are in the process of migrating to another planet. A red briefcase will be shown if your attention is required to resolve the unemployment. On the planet view, the tooltips will now show where the pops are most likely to move to, or explain why they are unable to move.

Unemployment in Outliner and Planet


Can't Migrate Tooltip #1
Can't Migrate Tooltip #2

We have eleven new achievements in Overlord. Here are the icons, I’m curious what people think they are.

Cheevos!

Anniversary Additions​


Some eagle-eyed readers have noticed some flags that aren’t possible in 3.3. You’re correct! The art team has added some new colors to the flag palette…

A rainbow of fruit flavors

…over seventy flag emblems…

banner emblems

…and forty-five new flag backgrounds.

banner backgrounds

These will all be part of the Cepheus update as part of the May anniversary celebrations.

Slingshot to the Stars​


Yeet the fleet!

Bordergore? Bordergore.

Those born under the Slingshot to the Stars find their desires to explore fulfilled by a nearby Quantum Catapult, which replaces one of their Guaranteed Habitable Worlds. Their eagerness to explore into the unknown reduces the distance penalty for building starbases in remote systems by 75%.

Next Week​


Next week the totally human programmer @Narkerns will take over for an update on AI and automation improvements coming in Cepheus, and I’ll add a little bit about a fourth Origin at the end.

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!

In the meantime, keep your eyes on our social media channels. There'll be an announcement later today.
1650371483491.png


And here it is...!
 
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I feel like the lazy solution is to take feudal society with slingshot and spam + release brand new colonies as vassals, allowed to expand at will (so you just use inf to build the initial outpost for each vassal, then dedicate the rest to expanding normally near yourself).

Sure they'll be weak, sure a few might get captured or wiped out, but if you're pumping them out fast enough, most of the galaxy will be your species before the other nations have really built up - particularly on big galaxies.

Also, if they're all colonial vassals they'll be too weak to rebel (doubly so with FS) and you can sling over to protect them then force return to base as you'll have no territory far from home for the ships to get stuck on (instead of going back to your core).

you need to jump the colony ship and costructio ship too ..

1. Will it allow you to get mega engineering early or will it have something like a special project to repair the mega structure?
i feel like this need to be quoted in this treath
You do not.

The QC related to the origin has its own build chain, with:
  • Ruined QC - Stage 0
  • QC (Need Mega-Engineering OR the origin) - Stage 1
  • Improved QC (Need Mega-Engineering) - Stage 2
Compared to the usual Quantum Catapult build chain (where you need Mega-Engineering and the Quantum Catapult tech for all of them), which is:
  • QC Site - Stage 0
  • QC - Stage 1
  • QC - Stage 2
  • QC - Stage 3
Fixing the origin QC from stage 0 to stage 1 is pretty cheap at about 2,500 alloys, but in turn takes about 10 years to complete, and you get the tech to use it when you do so.

the slingshot will only be lvl 1 (its a special lvl 1 , but still...), so you are probably in range for around 30-40(edit:maybe more, its a special lvl 1\2) jumps range at best .
 
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Do Hyper-Relays increase trade in systems that are connected to the capital via Hyper-Relay?

It would be great if, say, a hyper-relay'd link only counted as 0.5 steps from the point of view of trade collection and for the piracy suppression aura of defensive starbases, so you could effectively control a larger trade network with the same number of starbases.
 
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Wouldn't it be good if you could order your construction ships to build several Hyper Relays in succession by adding an option which allows you to order your ships to build relays along an entire route?
 
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The Outliner will now differentiate between unemployed pops that are migrating and those that are not. A yellow briefcase will be shown for planets that have unemployed pops that are in the process of migrating to another planet. A red briefcase will be shown if your attention is required to resolve the unemployment. On the planet view, the tooltips will now show where the pops are most likely to move to, or explain why they are unable to move.

Unemployment in Outliner and Planet


Can't Migrate Tooltip #1

Can't Migrate Tooltip #2

Could you also add an option to display the planetary designation icon alongside planet types?

planetary%20designations.png
 
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Hello! I am certainly exited about the new features, and will be without doubt buying the expansion (I only got nemesis an fedetaions from last 2 years).
The new vassals and the system is the most importent one (RP MP), but the relays are pretty good as well.
A few questions/suggestions:

Any trade/trade protection bonuses from active relay network?
Any governing ethics attraction from active relay network? (and having it actually mean something ingame, for example like having displeased and non-governing faction give negative unity?) (Also more unity from factions?)

Ruined/inactive relay (small) networks on map? (like 5 systems connected with ruined relays with the remnants origin) or (a something like 7 relays that just need to be actived generating the same way that sanctuary does? It just makes the game more interesting to add stuff like this)

Highway builders civic - gateways and relays cost a bit less, are a bit faster to build, and you can build them in any empire with open borders

Underground cities (maybe together with the new origin) (cost twice the resources, time and upkeep but negate ~30 of habitality penalties for only the 5 pops that live in each building/district ) (Yeah I know this one is unlikely)
 
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I have a question for the hyper relay vassal perks. Is it the overlord that benefits from it, the subject or both? Not exactly clear to me.
for what the UI say , it talk about the " Overlord relay network " . so i'm guessing all planets of the overlord in system that are in the relay network will receive those bonuses .
 
I feell like with the new Hyper Relay and the Quantum Catapult, we need some sort of nerf to Gateways. I get that they're the more advanced technology and the Relay gives Network bonuses, but right now there is nothing really keeping you from just placing a gateway everywhere, thereby making all other methods of travel pointless and maneuvering your fleet trivial.

Some stuff I could imagine:
- bigger fleets need significantly longer to prepare for a gateway jump, maybe also scaling with range - QC would be the faster but less precise alternative.
- a limit to the amount of gateways you can have, similar to station limit
- can't build gateways in a certain range around an existing gateway
 
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I feell like with the new Hyper Relay and the Quantum Catapult, we need some sort of nerf to Gateways. I get that they're the more advanced technology and the Relay gives Network bonuses, but right now there is nothing really keeping you from just placing a gateway everywhere, thereby making all other methods of travel pointless and maneuvering your fleet trivial.
Gateways are significantly more expensive than Hyper Relays, and the Quantum Catapult's purpose is to launch your fleets into distant systems that aren't necessarily owned by you.
 
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The flag additions are a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

The hyper relay appears to be a nice way to get that one idle science ship and send it all the way to the other side of the empire to complete that timed project. Nice. Hope it doesn’t make patrolling harder, though, since your corvettes will spend almost no time in each system now.
 
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So, will Hyper Relays give any benefit to trade routes at all (I might imagine reduced piracy and/or increase trade value of stations would be neat).

Also - (completely unrelated), what are people's thoughts on allowing commercial pacts requiring you to build trade routes from allied capitals to your own in order to gain the income? I think it'd make them much more strategic myself.
 
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The hyper relay appears to be a nice way to get that one idle science ship and send it all the way to the other side of the empire to complete that timed project. Nice. Hope it doesn’t make patrolling harder, though, since your corvettes will spend almost no time in each system now.
But the patrolling will be faster , so they will take way less time to make the transit . the less they stay in a system , the faster they will reach all systems . so i'm quite sure that this is not going to be a problem .
 
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In order to travel between 2 hyper relay points, do they need to connected by hyperlane? Or can they bypass the hyperlane?

Like the screenshot Strinall and Honno. Must they be connected by hyperlane in order to travel between them?
 
50% net influence discount for building starbases if I space them out? Damn that's stupid overpowered I'm in.
It will still be cheaper in total to claim in a line as a Slingshot empire when building outposts, as the discount only applies to the distance penalty they get. If you try to claim a system 2 jumps away from your borders it will be 2x the cost, but the 75% discount would instead make it 1.25x the cost.
 
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Hyper Relays can be built in your own space, or that of your subjects. For convenience, Relays can also be built directly from the Galaxy Map.


We need more things doable from the galaxy map, like access specific colonies from a drop down in the galaxy map
 
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