Stellaris Dev Diary #254 - 3.4.3 'Cepheus' Patch Released (Checksum 9d15)... What's Next?

[jmxd]

Could you elaborate what the automate stations feature means?

What i really want is these two options:

• Being able to command a construction ship to build an outpost and then continue to immediately build the mining and science stations in that system
• Being able to right click a system and command a construction ship to build all stations, instead of having to right-click twice to give two seperate commands for mining and science.

 

[Eladrin]

Could you elaborate what the automate stations feature means?

If you click the Automate Construction button, that Construction Ship will build the nearest mining or research station, then repeat until it runs out of possible mining or research stations to build. Then it'll sit there waiting patiently. If a new opportunity to build a mining or research station appears (for example, if you researched a technology that gave you access to a strategic resource, discovered a new deposit, or conquered or expanded into a system), it will go there and start building.

It does not build anything other than the basic mining or research stations.

 

[jmxd]

If you click the Automate Construction button, that Construction Ship will build the nearest mining or research station, then repeat until it runs out of possible mining or research stations to build. Then it'll sit there waiting patiently. If a new opportunity to build a mining or research station appears (for example, if you researched a technology that gave you access to a strategic resource, discovered a new deposit, or conquered or expanded into a system), it will go there and start building.

It does not build anything other than the basic mining or research stations.

That does sound nice, how does it work if you give a construction ship multiple commands to build outposts while to automation for the stations is turned on?

Does it first build all the outposts and then goes back for the stations? Or does it do outpost>stations>outpost>stations>outpost>stations?

The way it sounds right now it would probably be optimal to have two construction ships, one that is given the outposts commands and the other one following it with automation turned on.

 

[rubert]

I assume it works the same way as the automated science ships do now: ctrl+shift click adds the order to front of the queue (handy when science ship discovers special project so you can order it to finish it and then continue automatic exploring).

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Unfortunately there's far too many reports to ever maintain a "clean" sheet. We can only spend so much time on each issue and prioritise accordingly. There's no responses in the past day or so too, because I've given my team a break from trawling the forum and will revisit once a weekend has passed of play with 3.4.3 to see what issues rise to the top to be dealt with.

When you say "rise" to the top, how do they prioritize older bug reports to actually review?

Votes?
# of replies?
Most recent reply?
Only things with save games or other attachments?
Only reports based on the most recent version?

Like, someone could make a completely legit old bug report that is so thorough and correct that people just read it, nod their heads, and assume QA will eventually log it. Without voting/replying.

I wish you had more time and resources to handle bugs. Getting close to having a clean sheet would be wonderful, even if it's currently seen as impossible.

But bugfixing generally has been much better than before, especially with the custodians and more regular updates. I just hope, like pmchem says you don't mistakenly ignore valid reports with your current triage system. And I hope that after all these major bugs have been handled you can start on some less urgent bugs soon.

Also, yes they almost certainly disregard any bug from a past version of the game unless it's still there. You'll want to test old bugs on the latest versions and update your report / make a new one

I get that it's normal and even optimal use of limited developer time and helps avoid the re-introduction of old code with old bugs. But several older versions of the game are available to go back to for testing if the bug is hard to pin down and you have lots of useful old saves rather than hoping you get a new save and it gets upvoted and posted in the perfect format.
A highly upvoted issue doesn't vanish just because you've changed the version... unless you've actually changed the system involved.

Bugged saves being ignored when it's easy to load up the older version to find the problem code is mildly annoying to me. Bugs ignored for years because after each version it didn't rise to the top... and for QA to never have heard of the bugs... well it makes me annoyed at the triage process missing bugs. Especially ones I'd have considered urgent years ago, like those that render new features useless. Bugs like marauder raiding/pathfinding breaking with FTL inhibition, I've gotten used to the bug now and know I'll only ever get a raid if I don't build many starbases so the raid target isn't behind an FTL inhibitor.

But, while I may sound grumpy, I am still impressed with how many bugs were squashed this hotfix.

 

[wiederwahl]

This patch looks absolutely stunning! Hats off to you lot for the work you do!

Also during the dev Q&A a little while back, it was stated that overlords would be able to form a federation with their vassals:

As of the moment, I can't seem to form a federation with any sort of vassal, even if they have free diplomacy. Would we be able to see that feature in the future? And could we have an additional option in vassalage negotiations that that prevent our vassals from declaring wars (except maybe on rebels)?

 

[BJVICTUS]

Are there any plans to improve sectors by either allowing players to add/remove systems or just incorporating them into galaxy generation? Incorporating them into generation could make war claims more interesting.

 

[kaizen]

We also have some quality of life automation improvements planned for 3.4.4:

• Automated Exploration and Automated Research are now available from the start of the game rather than being tech-locked.
• Construction ships now have an Automated Construction mode, which will automatically build Research and Mining Stations over appropriate deposits. (It will not automatically build Observation Stations, Hyper Relays, or other constructions.)

Can you talk more about the decision to make this change? I know in the past there were concerns about pacing and allowing players to optimize out of a core part of the early game. I'm curious to know what led to this change?

For the record, I'm not opposed to the change, but I'm a bit on the fence. I found the old concerns valid enough to accept the system as it was. On the other hand, more player options always seem like a good thing.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Can you talk more about the decision to make this change? I know in the past there were concerns about pacing and allowing players to optimize out of a core part of the early game. I'm curious to know what led to this change?

For the record, I'm not opposed to the change, but I'm a bit on the fence. I found the old concerns valid enough to accept the system as it was. On the other hand, more player options always seem like a good thing.

Personally I am against this kind of automation in general. As an old-school RTS player I think part of the skill expression in a game like this is to be able to micromanage a lot of units.

However, putting science and construction ships on automate in the early game is without a doubt far less efficient than micromanaging them - any good player will survey in an efficient way to quickly find planets and chokepoints and grab the best systems first, and build stations very selectively on the better resource deposits since minerals are very limited for a long time early on. So I don't mind the QoL that much as long as it only helps really bad players get to the point of mediocrity.

 

[xor]

Can you talk more about the decision to make this change? I know in the past there were concerns about pacing and allowing players to optimize out of a core part of the early game. I'm curious to know what led to this change?

For the record, I'm not opposed to the change, but I'm a bit on the fence. I found the old concerns valid enough to accept the system as it was. On the other hand, more player options always seem like a good thing.

Well I 100% disagree with the science ship change, early game basically the only thing you have to do is move your science ships and also the discovery you do with them is an important part of the game. That are basically the reasons the Stellaris team stated in the past.

But I'm also 100% for the construction ship change, mainly because the bigger your empire gets and the more you get additional resources you get the more annoying and tedious it gets to find them in your empire and look for a construction ship and move it to over there.
I think that feature could have been locked behind the same tech as the auto science ship feature was (that was already early enough) but in general constructing basic stations is less interesting than moving your science ship (early game) so I guess it's ok.

 

[Riskke]

Can you guys look at which pops grows regarding traits and also planet designations? Is a mess at the moment and unfair to have -10% penalty for choosing pop (if your ethics allow it) to avoid slaves growing on a Research Station or Forge planet, one example below:

 

[jmxd]

I assume it works the same way as the automated science ships do now: ctrl+shift click adds the order to front of the queue (handy when science ship discovers special project so you can order it to finish it and then continue automatic exploring).

That is not the solution the the scenario im describing at all

 

[Gromit]

Can you guys look at which pops grows regarding traits and also planet designations? Is a mess at the moment and unfair to have -10% penalty for choosing pop (if your ethics allow it) to avoid slaves growing on a Research Station or Forge planet, one example below:

Do you have migration controls on for that particular species? I'm pretty sure that's supposed to stop them from appearing on planets or habitats they're not on.
Personally I just stop them from breeding and just sell them on the slave market. I know they made them expensive to stop people just buying loads of them cheap off the AI, but now they've made selling them hugely profitable.

 

[Ludaire]

Something I encountered that I'm not sure if it's a bug or not is that when I fought a Khan recently, he retreated multiple times. I think I beat him five or six times, and only one of those triggered the event. I never got the second event where he doesn't flee and dies. All the others ended in him escaping to emergency FTL. I don't remember this happening before 3.4, but I'm not sure if that's a bug or intended. I'll say that it also seemed to cause his fleet to disappear near the end, as I cleared out all but one or two of the Khan's systems and couldn't find his fleet anywhere (I'm honestly still unsure what's supposed to happen if a fleet retreats but there's no friendly starbases to retreat to).

If this is a bug, I can dig through my saves and try to find a repro. It's just been a while, so I figured I'd ask beforehand since it won't be trivial to find a repro save.

Also, great job on Cepheus, Overlord, and the hotfix.

 

[DevilAbigor]

• Void Dwellers now replace the 1 Politician (or Executive) job from Habitat Administration buildings with two Colonist jobs, which should increase their overall stability in the early game

So I though when I launched the game today I had a bug due to new update, but reading the notes it seems intentional.

I am not sure how, but this change that supposed to help stability instead plummets my stability down to 30% or less. Never Had issue with stability before, but now, I need to rush the upgrade for the habitat as I'm basically going towards revolt from the start

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Automated construction ships is a great start. Please bring back sector-controlled construction ships too.

The game used to have sector-controlled construction ships that built stations within that sector’s border using the stockpile.

My dream solution to station micro is:

- You can designate a construction ship as automatic and toggle between using your resources or the stockpile.
- Sectors build their own construction ships that use the stockpile and only construct within their borders.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Void Dwellers started with negative amenities on their two side habitats, but were also starting with way too much unity compared to other origins.

The change was primarily intended to help them deal with that early game amenity issue while having minimal effects on them long term (since they're going to upgrade that capital building ASAP anyway).

I think it's not a good change at fixing the actual problem here (low amenities and high unity from Politicians messing everything up)... I'd rather change Politian jobs extreme unity output back to low unity and high amenities to avoid this issue entirely. But if you're looking at balancing starting Unity and Politicians, are you working on Unity income for Machine empires as well at the same time?

Spoiler: Unity and machines

In the older versions:
Coordinators had the highest sprawl reduction per job, 180% of a Bureaucrat (so machines had less problems with empire sprawl)
Evaluators had high Unity outputs (and only priests had higher unity output) 133% of an Administrator/Culture worker.

Now they're merged into one unity job that's inherited the higher upkeep of the Coordinator job (400% old Evaluator costs to produce the same amount of unity) and the unchanged, now rather low unity output of the Evaluator job (now giving only 66% of an Politican when it used to give 133% of a default unity production job Ruler/Culture worker job).

Also,
Machines didn't get passive unity income like organics have with factions - this feels more than a little odd. Organics with several unruly factions pulling in different directions are somehow more unified than a singular gestalt intelligence.

And Sprawl reductions were added to: Civics, Traditions, Ascensions, Traits and Ethics... but Machines lack Ethics so they lag behind a little in low-sprawl builds, especially with the added sprawl from planets.

And Machines having 2 basic resources to deal with meant that the resource edicts were more powerful for them (effectively only needing 2/3 edict slots to boost all basic resource income... but now they can't even afford one of the edicts thanks to the fund system while organics get cheaper edicts and more unity to pay for them if they go above the edict fund cap). So the changes gave Machines less unity, more sprawl, less efficient jobs, more expensive edicts and lower basic resource income... they were strong but this still feels a bit mean. Especially when they don't even get half the fun origins like void dweller.

Obviously with any changes you have to be very careful not mess everything up, you don't want to buff Determined Exterminators, Driven Assimilators and Rogue Servitors at the same time... but I'd like normal Machine empires to have some of their old advantages back rather than being less efficient AND less unified than organics. Silly organics with their diverse minds and strange unruly fuding factions.

 

[Eladrin]

Can you talk more about the decision to make this change? I know in the past there were concerns about pacing and allowing players to optimize out of a core part of the early game. I'm curious to know what led to this change?

For the record, I'm not opposed to the change, but I'm a bit on the fence. I found the old concerns valid enough to accept the system as it was. On the other hand, more player options always seem like a good thing.

Since we've been working on improving things like planetary and sector automation, and a player can delegate critical tasks like ship designs, planetary districts and buildings to the AI, it felt odd that we wouldn't also let you delegate other tasks.

Manual exploration will very likely be more effective, but I felt that we should allow you to make the choice yourself.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Well now, that's a whole heap of bugs to remove from my list! Excellent work!

If you click the Automate Construction button, that Construction Ship will build the nearest mining or research station, then repeat until it runs out of possible mining or research stations to build. Then it'll sit there waiting patiently. If a new opportunity to build a mining or research station appears (for example, if you researched a technology that gave you access to a strategic resource, discovered a new deposit, or conquered or expanded into a system), it will go there and start building.

This sounds pretty good! Will you be able to tell the construction ship to park at a starbase with Crew Quarters without interrupting the auto-build?

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

If the issue with VDs is politicians, why not make a VD-exclusive alternative?

It’s a common sci-fi trope for spaceships and stations to be managed by all-powerful lead engineers. If you ever played Outer Worlds, the Groundbreaker was managed by their head of engineering. Why not something like that where politicians on VD habitats are replaced by lead engineers or overseers or something thematically similar to that?