Stellaris Dev Diary #257 - Summer is Coming...

[Serenity84]

Well the entire point of choosing tradition trees is that it specialises your empire, and limits on how many helps reinforce the importance of the choice. More trees coupled with the cap of seven choices should increase distinction over time.

Agreed. I can see one or two more ascension slots, but they should never increase linearly with the number of trees. Right now the main choice with the tradition trees is the order you take them. Not really which ones you pick. Changing that should be one of the main design goals so you have to actually think about it a bit.

You can see how that plays by using a mod that adds lots of traditions, but only increasing the AP slots to 12 or 16 rather that one slot per tree, which is what seems to be standard.

 

[Tennou No Kamikaze]

That's all nice to read. ^^

 

[Eios]

On the topic of accessibility, I would really like an option to turn off or at least dial down smooth scrolling. It is a bit annoying when you have to deal with the sidebar overview or the edict menu, as the button icon you can drag to scroll is also too small to really click on it properly.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

Just my two cents: rebalancing Space Combat might be alot easier if you reintroduce repair costs for ships. It's way to easy to steam-roll everything with almost no material losses now, if you have this huge stack of battleships.

I also like the more strategic and realistic feel of spending ressources, other then just time, repairing wounded ships.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Agreed. I can see one or two more ascension slots, but they should never increase linearly the number of trees.

I would add one more tradition tree slot, personally.

Also, make tradition trees like Harmony a bit more viable, cause they seem kinda useless as they are now.

 

[Jman5]

Fleet Combat Balance​

Meanwhile, my planned experiments primarily have to do with fleet combat.

Things I’m looking forward to looking at include:

• Providing a late game role for Destroyers and Cruisers, and providing incentives for mixed fleets.
• Increasing the length of fleet combats, reducing the dominance of alpha strikes.
• Experimenting with existing counters, tracking, evasion, and accuracy mechanics.
  • This may also end up providing a role for smaller weapons.
• Improving ship behavior based on the roles assigned them by combat computers.
  • Yes, Carrier Battleship, I know you have a point defense laser and you're very proud of it. That doesn’t mean you should charge into melee to use it.

These are likely the experiments most ethereal in nature at this time and are unlikely to bear fruit in the short term.

If you never read it, I made a thread last year to let people bounce ideas around about improving destroyer and cruiser role in the game. I believe the speed bug we talked about at first has been fixed, but one idea I liked was to make destroyers and cruisers proportionally faster and cheaper to build/repair/maintain than battleships. Perhaps through a second tech. Basically make them the sort of rugged war-horse that you can pump out quickly in a war and throw into the fray while Battleships and Titans tend to be pre-war construction.

I also think the small, medium, large efficiency issue (particularly utility components) is making it harder for destroyers and cruisers to compete.

 

[Helicopter200]

New tradition trees? AWESOME

 

[Pancakelord]

If you have suggestions or accessibility problems that you face while playing Stellaris, please let us know.

@MonzUn Not an accessibility problem in the traditional sense, but some way to toggle on/off alerts, or otherwise consolidate/batch them on a per-monthly basis (e.g. all ship upgraded alerts fall under 1 pin with a nested tooltip) would probably go a long way in improving accessibility for people that either struggle with information overload in stellaris or have other impairments that this simply aggravates - we all know what it's like to have to deal with notifications spilling off the screen, after all.

• One suggestion I saw years ago was to turn the outliner in to 2 tabs. tab 1 is the outliner as it exists now, tab 2 shows a history log of alerts (e.g. fleet won battle 2 months ago) - though that would not be a small task to implement, I imagine.

I'd also like to plug a mod I've made that makes spotting occupied systems easier:

Steam Workshop::Clearer Occupied System Markers

steamcommunity.com

Pre border rework in 2.0, you would see occupied systems with stripy contestation lines - but since then the tiny 4 "pips" on an occupied system just arent very good. I'm not suggesting implementing what my mod does as it is a very simple DDS edit, and I'm sure a more fancy UX idea can be found, but I do think there is room for improvement with displaying how occupation is presented on the map...

I'd also like to higlight the state that map filters are in. Map filter functionality broadly falls in to

1. how the map's countries are shaded (e.g. flag colour, or gradient from red to green based on opinion)
2. sector borders (as a separate overlay)
3. map widgets (e.g. espionage icons in the espionage view).

I'd personally like to see

1. AI/Other nation's sectors also rendered on the map when I select sectors on/off. For 2 reasons:
   1. lore/world immersion (i get to see a bit about how other empires are composed internally - maybe gated behind some intel level) and
   2. it will be useful for espionage operations (admittedly modded ones) that can target specific AI sectors. Right now I can write up a espionage operation to (lets say) spread a plague in the UNE Alpha sector... but I (as a player) have no clue where the alpha sector is or what it's composed of. Being able to present foreign sectors on the map would be useful for this - and a few other things that I wont digress in to right now.
2. Re-do map filters, to Separate Widgets [#3 above] from map shading [#1 above] e.g. this would let me set the galaxy to show opinions, or diplomacy or whatever colour mode I like, whilst separately I can have the claim hexagons toggled on or off, and can have the espionage operation widgets toggled on and off. and so on.

Fleet Combat Balance​

Meanwhile, my planned experiments primarily have to do with fleet combat.

Things I’m looking forward to looking at include:

• Providing a late game role for Destroyers and Cruisers, and providing incentives for mixed fleets.

@Eladrin I feel like the biggest issue with destroyers and cruisers isn't the ships themselves, per se, rather it's that you have a single (naval) objective in wars: SMASH ENEMY.

1. You can either do this with having more/harder to hit targets than the enemy (corvettes - for a few reasons, mostly economic and evasion related - Neutron/L destroyers can be useful too, though it's more the stats behind the neutron launcher driving that).
2. or by outranging them (Battleships, Titans).
3. To a lesser degree ship loadouts are also progressive (e.g. carrier battleships > carrier crusiers) which doesnt help either. There is no Tier 2/Advanced destroyer, really... that's just a cruiser and so on.

Whilst I think most would welcome some additional mechanical depth that makes either viable (helping with #3) - like turning destroyers in to some kind of anti-enemy-tracking hacking ship or something, or turning cruisers in to a "poor man's battleship" - taking very little in upkeep, whilst making battleships more expensive/slower to repair etc [previously i'd use cruisers for their top speed - but with the addition of hyper relays, sublight speed is effectively a dead stat - joining interstellar/hyperspace speed [rip 2.0] as a dead stat too].

I think the bigger issue is with a lack of objectives in wars in Stellaris - I appreciate this is probably beyond what you want to look at over summer - but If my goal is SMASH ENEMY, i'll always select for the most efficient way to SMASH ENEMY.

• IF we could disable enemy mining stations to increase enemy war exhaustion or reduce their production output (as a random example) then fleets with smaller/cheaper/faster vessels might be valuable - or if we could minelay or "seed debuffs" in a system (as another random example - mines, hacking bouys etc) via destroyers that again might give them a purpose in defensive wars, or for holding on to your captured stuff before peace happens. But the current paradigm always seems to be SMASH ENEMY, MOP UP PLANETS.
• Spit balling here, but if some wars were given special objectives (e.g. you get faster warscore in humiliation wars if killing ship of X-class with a one size smaller class) this might be something that could be blended in to the usefulness of certain ships.

• Increasing the length of fleet combats, reducing the dominance of alpha strikes.
• Experimenting with existing counters, tracking, evasion, and accuracy mechanics.
  • This may also end up providing a role for smaller weapons.

With respect to alpha strikes - and strikecraft more specifically - I once got a fairly consistent bug/"feature" when modding strikecraft speeds, which led to them never returning to their bays at the end of combat.

• This had the unintended benefit of faster launch times when hostiles appeared. I dont know what is done on the back-end to make SC work (as far as I've figured out they're unowned entities so cant take in empire colours, hence the blue tails - wasted a weekend trying to mod in a shader lol)
• BUT it might help if carriers auto-launch SCs and have them "orbit" their fleets the moment a hostile fleet is detected in the system (e.g. arriving via bypass, hyperlane) - sort of an "orange alert" state. so that less time is wasted in spawning in strike wings - at least initially.

Edit: one last thing for counters and weapon-family stats, There is currently no way to specialise in to weapons from early on.

• As i'm sure you'll be aware, once upon a time we could pick weapon types at start, whilst that was with issues, it did lead to some empires building quite different fleets - that is something that doesn't happen any more.
• A way to double down on (say) energy stats (at the detriment of kinetic/missile/strikecraft) or shield (at the detriment of hull/armor/evasion - one or all) and specialise your forces would be very welcome. E
  • ither via techs/traditions/situations (military approaching you for a refresh of hardware) or .... a return of the old cut resources (e.g. orillium ore) that can be "fused" in to ships to give them over-weighted armor stats, whilst reducing shield stats - as a random idea.

• Improving ship behavior based on the roles assigned them by combat computers.
  • Yes, Carrier Battleship, I know you have a point defense laser and you're very proud of it. That doesn’t mean you should charge into melee to use it.

These are likely the experiments most ethereal in nature at this time and are unlikely to bear fruit in the short term.

With respect to ship behaviour I've found (through hacking the ship behaviours together) that carriers set to offensively flee, and defensively orbit, become nigh unkillable unless the enemy can catch - or out-range - them and, I cant reliably prove it as I only have the tweakergui tools to play with, but I feel like the way the game captures the centre of a fleet battle isn't properly being read by battle computers, I think this is often what leads to ships not keeping distance properly as the centre of the battle drifts and they never return to range (e.g. line ships that keep drifting forwards) I'll often notice (it's more exaggerated if you scale up system sizes) that ship positions will shift a bit when a 3rd or Nth fleet joins a battle, presumably they're re-assessing the "midpoint" between the mass of fleets.
... maybe ships need a reverse gear? lol.

 

[Calvax]

Will stations and defence platforms be looked at as part of military balance? At the moment the station can easily be sniped which kills all platforms. The recent buffs to both haven’t really addressed the problem. Perhaps stations shouldn’t be targeted until all the platforms are destroyed (like how the enigmatic fortress works).

 

[Ffc]

Everything is great!

I think Relic balance is really "needed".

About Ships :

Ships rework would be incredible! Ships are like 80% of wars (maybe even more), and could be so much better!

I add some minor ideas:

- Allow every event ships to be merged to fleets, it's so sad when you cannot.

- Add a button to "reequip" event ships, it would put modern equipments if some weapons you have are higher tier than what the ship currently have.
This is VERY important for early event ships that do not have Jump drive, so you basically have to delete them (very very sad )

- It would be nice if the automatic ship designer made coherent ships (like not having penetration weapons with Laser canons) , it would greatly help AI

 

[Marmelado]

If your story team (particularly Custodian team) also seeks something to do in the spare time, add some content for Pacifists, please. Currently the story quests for anomalies and events require the player, even the one playing as Fanatic Pacifist, just to murder the opposition. I would love to see more diplomatic and economic ways to resolve such situations.

Not every leviathan or space cloud or mining drone should be slaughtered by Fanatic Pacifists either.

Take a look at my suggestion here.

 

[Swarm lover]

Ok so heres my take on the achievement icons.

1) Fix a shattered world

2) Create a war ai that turns on you?

3) I get the reference but dont see what it could be, feel its related to galactic imperium

4) Have 1000 food income as lithoids?

5) I feel like its a situation where you eat some kind of overgrowth

6) Some ocean monster that you lure out with pops?

7) Situation where you roll the worst outcome

But i am super excited to hear about this especially the late game relics as they felt seriously underwhelming.

 

[Tetrino]

If we're still looking at other species packs can some budget - ANY budget - be put towards a true Machine shipset? Or even just something for the Become the Crisis ships? Pretty Please?

 

[Starfury]

More Achievements​

Our artists had so much fun with the Overlord achievements that they cornered us and demanded that we add some to the species packs.

These aren’t really experiments, but will go live once we figure out what they’ll do and implement them. Here are a few as previews.

View attachment 848022 View attachment 848020 View attachment 848023 View attachment 848016 View attachment 848014 View attachment 848015​

And then there's this one, which we've called The Darkest Timeline.

View attachment 848017​

I wholly support the "give me an icon, we'll figure out the rest later" approach to achievements

 

[RhoxOS]

And then there's this one, which we've called The Darkest Timeline.

View attachment 848017​

I just hope this is not an RNG-based one.


Is there any plan to add more relics? Like for defeating Kraken, or Priki-ti-ki?

 

[Jman5]

Speaking of fleet improvements, one thing I have always wanted to see from Stellaris combat was more thematic fleet compositions based on the Empire Type. For example, instead of a Devouring Swarm building a normal fleet, they build a swarm-fleet. Lots of corvettes backed up by carriers. Heavy on Hull and Regeneration items. A Machine empire on the other hand might prefer a high tech battleship fleet with lots of shields.

If you can make it obvious enough that people can notice the difference in how the combat feels, it would help give the various empires you encounter much more personality.

 

[Gilbert95]

Regarding fleets, I like mechanics that differentiate empires. I miss the choice at empire creation of picking between lasers, kinetic, or missiles.
I propose adding an empire creation choice between corvettes, destroyers, and carriers. Your starting fleet would be 4, 2 or 1 of these, respectively. You could eventually get the other hull types, but you would always be better in some way with your starting hull. No one starts with battleships and everyone has equal access to getting them.

 

[SS Boss]

We need more relics, the last one was added with Megacorp i guess ?

 

[Inny]

Nice!
I had some ideas about ships and fleets:
- Hard cap on hull regen. Make starbases matter more. (Also add a check to prevent it to be negative to counter overflows).
- Allow components and friendly auras to counter damage penetration (to hull/armor/shields). Give a bit of that to Fallen Empires, as they have fallen a little too far compared to the players.
Also, mod-wise:
- Allow the possibility to set an event-spawned fleet, or a given country's fleets, to be invulnerable unless the attacking country meets the requirements (a country flag, a technology researched, a special project completed...). This will open some interesting possibilitiess for events, crisis, etc.

 

[Skyhunteren]

How about a look at the levithan rewards?

Some of them are really weak at the moment. Especially if you travel outside your own territory to kill them, so you can’t claim their special system.

The main problem is that you can choose where their special planet bonus goes, so they often end up on worlds specialized for something else.