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

[Inny]

As a suggestion for relics Iggy, please consider adding can_be_stolen = yes|no to relics, and have steal_relic check for that. This will give more flexibility to them.

 

[Slaughter]

you might or might not know that just about the whole of Sweden takes the same time off during summer.

Sometimes I, and many others, forget that seeing the sun in an incredible for those people who live in Forsaken Frozen Wastelands Locations closer to the poles and they have to make the most of it.

 

[cosmeIII]

Maybe the dominance of alpha strikes could be corrected by adding a load-up time for XL weapons? That way they will not do a huge outburst of damage as soon as they enter combat.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Sometimes I, and many others, forget that seeing the sun in an incredible for those people who live in Forsaken Frozen Wastelands Locations closer to the poles and they have to make the most of it.

right now i know how that feels. brrrr

 

[Satori_Komeiji]

Well,Combat health regeneration now greatly buffed units that have high health.
Like star-eater.4% armor regen and 2% hull regen,make star eater able to eliminate fallen empire alone.With 'Devouring Swarm' and 'Engineer' trait,Total 5%+3% regen is possible.
Star-eaters also affected by armor repeatable techs.So,it's invincible against everything except 25x crisis.
Also,with enough star-eaters(about 10+?),25x crisis also can be defeated:video

 

[Bloodbat]

Factions, ethics and government authority types could use some love, too.

They could use a lot of love.

 

[Miranda996]

Well,Combat health regeneration now greatly buffed units that have high health.
Like star-eater.4% armor regen and 2% hull regen,make star eater able to eliminate fallen empire alone.With 'Devouring Swarm' and 'Engineer' trait,Total 5%+3% regen is possible.
Star-eaters also affected by armor repeatable techs.So,it's invincible against everything except 25x crisis.
Also,with enough star-eaters(about 10+?),25x crisis also can be defeated:video

The things your talking about are total nonesense in terms of multiplayer, or competitive play. By the time someone has titans or juggernauts, or if you take the crisis perk, and reach that point, the game is already over. We want a competitive multiplayer meta where many ways of using ships and designs are viable. Currently alpha striking your enemy is how you win in combat.

 

[Miranda996]

Maybe the dominance of alpha strikes could be corrected by adding a load-up time for XL weapons? That way they will not do a huge outburst of damage as soon as they enter combat.

Unfortunately, L slot weapons are as much a problem as XL. Neutron Launchers delete everything, and they have 130 base range. With the very standard +50% range that fleets get in the mid to late game, a 195 range reaches quite far. Furthermore combat is very very fast in this game. Needs to be addressed. Personally I like defensive slots but if you buff shields and armor and nerf damage output in an attempt to extend combat time, you will create situations where fleets never die, and the combat lasts forever. Combat rework is a more complex issue to address.

 

[tanny]

Does the code use incremental update? I am quite convinced that the incremental update to pops job calculation, if not already done, (only recalculating once new pops are added/removed/modified) would help a lot.

Also, whenever calculating the pop job weights/etc using traits, this trick of computation could be used.

Represent the pop traits as bits. A single 64-bits number could hold 64 traits presence or absence.
1) Let’s say that being thrifty, necrophage, etc... affect the weight, mask other bits (only 1 instruction).
2) Collision-free Hash the relevant bits.
3) Get the key to the precomputed values.
4) lookup the precomputed values.

 

[Satori_Komeiji]

The things your talking about are total nonesense in terms of multiplayer, or competitive play. By the time someone has titans or juggernauts, or if you take the crisis perk, and reach that point, the game is already over. We want a competitive multiplayer meta where many ways of using ships and designs are viable. Currently alpha striking your enemy is how you win in combat.

PvP isn't the only gamemode.Someone prefers 25x crisis,someone prefers 'become crisis' speedrun,And someone prefers role playing.
Alpha strikes are the main way against 25x(before 3.4).We don't want to see 10+ star-eaters fighting 25x for 10 minutes right?

 

[Satori_Komeiji]

Unfortunately, L slot weapons are as much a problem as XL. Neutron Launchers delete everything, and they have 130 base range. With the very standard +50% range that fleets get in the mid to late game, a 195 range reaches quite far. Furthermore combat is very very fast in this game. Needs to be addressed. Personally I like defensive slots but if you buff shields and armor and nerf damage output in an attempt to extend combat time, you will create situations where fleets never die, and the combat lasts forever. Combat rework is a more complex issue to address.

You can test that 28 BB versus 230 corvettes(1P2S).
carriers(1X 2H 2S 2P 1L) provide better result than regular battleships(1X 4L).
at least against corvettes,1X4L isn't the best build.

 

[Caeric]

On the topic of maybe unlocking mandatory APs through traditions like the Ecumenopolis, wouldn't giving Machine Worlds/ Hive Worlds be fair to do too given that they're the rough analogue for their respective gestalts?

To be fair, a terraforming themed tradition tree in general would be pretty cool, it's also something Mastery of Nature could portentially be baked into

 

[unmerged(197325)]

Factions, ethics and government authority types could use some love, too.

I think the changes these need are too extensive for nibbling along the edges with a few summertime experiments.

I sincerely believe an entire expansion focused on factions, internal politics, ethics, and government types would be a great use of resources.

War has improved a lot; federations, the galactic assembly, and vassals all have breathed new life into the international relations side of the game; espionage shows promise and added a much-needed new dimension to the game (though it needs to be refined and improved).

However, government types feel identical gameplay wise, I pretty much ignore factions in my games, and I see ethics as more a source of bonuses than anything guiding my gameplay or affecting my decisions. I've NEVER faced an internal rebellion in all my time playing Stellaris, and that just seems ridiculous.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I've NEVER faced an internal rebellion in all my time playing Stellaris, and that just seems ridiculous.

One significant part of that issue could be that it is too easy to get high Happiness, which in turn means high Stability.
It would be interesting to see how differently games would develop if normal Happiness was closer to 50 than 80+.

 

[Merch991]

One significant part of that issue could be that it is too easy to get high Happiness, which in turn means high Stability.
It would be interesting to see how differently games would develop if normal Happiness was closer to 50 than 80+.

Completely agree with you. High happiness/stability should be a prerogative of very expensive utopian societies.

 

[PlasticFacecrops]

I have been wanting to be able to become a perfect meld of biology and machinery for a while, too. I'm thinking something like J.C Denton or the Infinite Energy Androids from Dragonball Z.

The quick and dirty way to slightly expand that mechanic would be to simply allow people to pick two different tier 1 paths. You can be your thing, or a psychic cyborg, or a genhanced psyker, but of course you'll never get a tier 2 AP.
The benefit distribution between T1 and T2 might have to be rebalanced slightly.

I do think every ethics should have their own tree to promote your RolePlaying and gameplay you have chosen.

That might be a problem because ethics can change, but traditions can't.

On a related note, what if some (most?) tradition trees gave token ethics attraction modifiers when bought/completed? Something in the range of 10%-25%.

These are looking at how gating tradition trees behind various triggers might influence the game. There have been some ideas suggested about introducing tradition trees that are locked behind ascension perks or origins, and we're interested to see where these may lead.

I like being able to pick traditions at my own pace, without them being yet another dozen nodes in the web of interdependence.

I'd especially hate it if both some tradition trees required APs, and some APs required tradition trees.

Can we get a bit of an update to the anomaly system? i.e Maybe have it so that you can rescan systems once you obtain new sensor tech, discovering new anomalies. Mid to late game tends to lose a lot of flavor as everything is mostly discovered.

I actually feel like you're a little too inundated by anomalies early on. Maybe that's just me.

Either way, I agree that missing out on anomalies because you only get one roll is annoying and counterintuitive. My proposed system would be as follows:
Preroll anomalies at galaxy creation.
When a ship scans a planet, roll d100 and add any +survey bonus. If it finds the anomaly, you're done. If not, save the result of the roll (but not the modifier).
If another ship scans it later, don't roll. Instead, (temporarily) add the new ship's +survey bonus to the original d100 roll and check again.

It would be nice to be able to choose your precursor in addition to your crisis in the settings menu. Make it disable achievements if you feel it's too beneficial to allow players to do this.

I am of the unpopular opinion that precursor relics are too common / easy to get, so I'd like a "Precursor Pool" slider. Set it to 0 for none, set it to 1 and everyone in the galaxy will have to compete for the same precursor (and relic). Leave it on the default 'All' and it works the way it currently does. All nice and optional, of course.

Instead of nearly every resolution that comes to the floor passing, I'd like to see a higher proportion of resolutions reach the floor and fail.

Part of the reason for that is because they're voted on in order from most popular to least, no?

 

[Hayneken]

Accessibility Improvements

I'm short sighted and i'm having always problems with the scaling when using UI overhauls or reading the small vanilla fonts.. It always ends up in an awkward spot of taking too much screen and not being large enough.
As far as i remember the UI scaling is still in Experimental mode and i would like to suggest that you Finalized this and maybe be add more flexibility for UI mods.
Also it would be really awesome if i could change scaling on the fly without reloading the game.

Yes thisss please. Also font become blurry when upscaling.

 

[WindingArc]

I am of the unpopular opinion that precursor relics are too common / easy to get, so I'd like a "Precursor Pool" slider. Set it to 0 for none, set it to 1 and everyone in the galaxy will have to compete for the same precursor (and relic). Leave it on the default 'All' and it works the way it currently does. All nice and optional, of course.

That doesn't really affect singleplayer games since AI empires rarely if ever discover precursor homeworlds, but it's a good idea for multiplayer.

Part of the reason for that is because they're voted on in order from most popular to least, no?

Obviously, but the main reason is that popular resolutions take far too long to pass. There's never any question that resolutions like Buzzword Standardization and Pangalactic Recycling Initiatives will pass if they reach the Senate floor because they typically command near-unanimous support.

Rather than preventing controversial resolutions from passing by effectively filibustering them with long recesses, long Senate sessions, and long proposal cooldown timers, there should be a point in most games where the Senate stops passing most resolutions it debates because few remaining resolutions command majority support.

 

[AHertes]

Looking forward to what comes out of the work! Are there any plans to revise the ship weapon loadouts? I find the layout for destroyers and cruisers doesn't allow them to do anything well. For example, it is hard to balance energy and kinetic damage, and the lack of missiles on destroyers seems like a missed opportunity. The trade-off between the substantial loss of evasion for the slight increase in fire power between corvettes and destroyers also seems like it could use work.

On a different note, has the team considered allowing civilizations to start the game with one or two traditions unlocked? This would be great to reflect the historical development of the civilization. It could also give an opportunity to beef up the Peaceful Unification Origin a bit, maybe by giving an additional starting tradition.

Thanks for all the work the team does! Y'all have a great summer!

 

[Miranda996]

You can test that 28 BB versus 230 corvettes(1P2S).
carriers(1X 2H 2S 2P 1L) provide better result than regular battleships(1X 4L).
at least against corvettes,1X4L isn't the best build.

Okay, your testing 90% dodge corvettes late game vs battleships (Artillery). Battleships are more cost effective. 28 BBs cost less than 230 Corvettes. Every time a BB hits a Corvette, it will get destroyed, The Corvettes might destroy a few BBs, they disengage as the damage of the corvettes weapons is too low, and allows plenty of disengagement chance for the BBs. Furthermore, this has already been tested man. The games combat was solved ages ago. If you put 30% carriers into your BBs, so basically you build both, the corvettes get 0 kills and 100% of them are destroyed. Watch some videos man.