Stellaris Dev Diary #264 - Damn the Consequences

[juanigas]

i think the new traits are a fantastic idea, and i would like an expansion of them for the cyborg in a patch of the machines dlc. i would like to have a civilization of Phyrexians. and show the Nurgle worshippers that Yawmmont is the only god.

i also love the rework of the relics especially the satrapies, i will finally be able to make my space persian empire authentically persian.

 

[Strangedane]

I'm bummed that relentless industrialists require materialism, but I guess it's a small price to pay for progress.

 

[Sir Roderick]

I'm bummed that relentless industrialists require materialism, but I guess it's a small price to pay for progress.

They must have materialism, here's the proof:

Edit:

Ethics - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Fanatic Materialist

• Although it hurts, we must grow up and put aside our outdated notions of morality. There is no 'divine spark' granting special value to a living mind. No object has any intrinsic value apart from what we choose to grant it. Let us embrace the freedom of certitude, and achieve maximum efficiency in all things!

 

[GnoSIS]

They must have materialism, here's the proof:

View attachment 877555

View attachment 877556


Edit:

Ethics - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Fanatic Materialist

• Although it hurts, we must grow up and put aside our outdated notions of morality. There is no 'divine spark' granting special value to a living mind. No object has any intrinsic value apart from what we choose to grant it. Let us embrace the freedom of certitude, and achieve maximum efficiency in all things!

And thus, the big fight to impose rules and regulate capitalism starts - because decent air and life quality shouldn't be subject to the "Game". That is, as long as all nations and all empires follow the same rules - which is impossible - even for our small and insignificant planet, let alone a galaxy.

 

[metatoaster]

Finally we'll get to celebrate toxicity in all its forms.

Spoiler

Not that I care, I'm waiting for the core mechanics of the game to be fixed, but I do find the theme hilarious.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Finally we'll get to celebrate toxicity in all its forms.

Spoiler

Not that I care, I'm waiting for the core mechanics of the game to be fixed, but I do find the theme hilarious.

Which core mechanics do you feel are broken?

 

[Sir Roderick]

Which core mechanics do you feel are broken?

Vassals influence costs are too high for contract changes and even asking for vassalization costs influence, AI don't ask enough to get vassalized.

You can't get rid of pops of your own species that get undesiderable traits like cyborg which boosts materialist ethics attraction without having to release them as vassals and then use a neutron colossus after declaring war on them.

Also getting Erudite and Psionic or Cyborg blocks leaders from getting both traits to work.

There needs to be more ways to put subspecies of main species on slavery or residence, even if it costs an ascension perk.

 

[Beenhere]

You can't get rid of pops of your own species that get undesiderable traits like cyborg which boosts materialist ethics attraction without having to release them as vassals and then use a neutron colossus after declaring war on them.

...

There needs to be more ways to put subspecies of main species on slavery or residence, even if it costs an ascension perk.

Just in general tying founding species to empire leads to a few gameplay problems, despite seeing why that was necessary.

 

[FleetingRain]

Which core mechanics do you feel are broken?

Species modification is a blight upon the game.

Yes, I'm overdramatic.

 

[metatoaster]

Which core mechanics do you feel are broken?

Well how to put this... I feel that in some ways Stellaris is a reverse Civilization.

When I play Civ, especially Civ IV, I can't help but to marvel at the balance of its mechanics, and how every single decision is meaningful. Of course, the game doesn't have much theme-wise so it's harder to get into a narrative, but the core is incredibly tight.

When I play Stellaris, the narrative bits are amazing (at least the first time I stumble upon an event) but the day-to-day management of the empire quickly becomes a discouraging chore, both because it's tedious and because a lot of the systems feel like someone had a cool idea but gave up on polishing the last and most important 10%. The UI usually doesn't help.

Case in point, these core mechanics are most definitely broken:

1. You've got those cool production modifiers for races, but you're doomed to watch your pops use them inefficiently because the auto-assigment regularly fails at its job (I've reported bugs and suggested solutions). For someone used to tight Civ or other 4X mechanics where every resource counts, this is pure torture.
2. Growing your territory in most 4X is organic and fun. In Stellaris, it feels like you're racing for chokepoints, then going to war to clear unwanted blobbing behind your lines, and then you "win" but get forced into nonsensical mandatory open borders which the AI takes advantage of to blob again behind your chokepoint... rinse and repeat.

In addition, I can't decide whether the following qualify as broken core 4X mechanics, but they sure discourage me from playing:

1. The UI to deal with events is designed for spectacle, not fast repeated play. 99% of the time, I couldn't care less what the planet/asteroid an event happened on looks like, I wanna see where it's located in my empire and whether I have the free constructor nearby that the event is requesting. So I have no clue why events insist on (a) zooming on things in planet view (b) obstructing said view by centering the event dialogue. But I do know that switching to galaxy map and shoving the dialogue aside every single time makes Stellaris a pain to play.
2. You can't even see all key strategic info about a planet on a single screen. The special mines you can build on some planets are especially unfunny. You only know that you can build them if you scroll through the separate list of planetary features or scroll through the list of available buildings. If you don't have the resources or prerequisites now, too bad, come back and scroll again on every planet to make sure you didn't miss any.
3. Systems and planets lack characteristics that would encourage you to specialize them. Usually they just vary in % habitability and planet size and they have a little bit more of a type of district. Which means that I usually start by building a mix of things, but changing specialization is a serious pain and can heavily penalize you if you get distracted by something else in the middle of changing things. If find that the planetary anomalies and planetary bonuses per race in Endless Space 2 and how you manage them are a lot more elegant in that regard, even though that game doesn't match the depth of Stellaris.
4. Building a district or clearing a blocker doesn't feel usually very impactful, it's a very incremental change. But they're prerequisites for the next step, so you waste a lot of time waiting for the blocker to clear to build a district and waiting for the district to be finished to build a building, forgetting what you were doing at that colony multiple times while other stuff distracts you.
5. I'm not convinced that the district/building duality even has a reason to exist, it feels like bloat.
6. Hostile first contact is just awkward. You can kill their outposts, but they insta-respawn. If they start a colony, you can't do anything about it. At least Endless Space 2 lets you blockade and starve colonies you're neutral with or invest resources to slow their growth, and overall handles cold war much better. It feels like we should be able to mess a lot more with empires we don't like without outright going to war, especially during first contact but also in frontier areas that are far from their sphere of influence... it's easy for a constructor ship to disappear "accidentally".
7. Nothing of interest happens outside your borders after the map has been filled out. I love how the game has consequences in the form of events based on your decision to embrace gene modification and similar stuff. But as far as other civilizations are concerned, after first contact there's next to nothing in terms of narrative content. It devolves into very basic 4X diplomacy and espionage, which clashes majorly with the tone of the early game. It's like meeting the Klingons and other races in Star Trek but then just alternating between war and peace with them based on a score instead of learning about their complex culture and getting into delicate diplomatic situations. I've never played very far past mid-game, and besides the broken core mechanics this is the main reason.
8. Over-reliance on a massive AI attack to spice things up. This is especially true if you use the Distant Stars DLC to add the extra events and space monsters to make space feel more lived-in. My group of rather casual players which was otherwise doing well against AI factions got its multiplayer game wrecked twice by a rather early appearance of the Grey Tempest which beelined for our homeworlds, and never got the urge to play again since. There's no slider to balance that DLC's crisis strength, either.
9. The Space UN is incredibly boring, repetitive and destroys the feeling of discovery.
10. Vassalization in its newest form feels weird but I haven't played enough to figure out if it's broken or just obscure.

Not every core mechanic is broken BTW, I feel like research, war, traditions, edicts, ascension perks and exploration for instance have varying degrees of quality, but are serviceable. Also, I have to point out that the way Stellaris adds content to past DLC and cross-DLC content is great. The game is brimming with potential and I still have hope for it, which is why I'm here typing this stuff instead of playing something else.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Just in general tying founding species to empire leads to a few gameplay problems, despite seeing why that was necessary.

On launch it was possible to purge your main species.

Since then some restrictions have been applied to what you can inflict on species, especially for gestalts, that make managing pops quite cumbersome.
But the latter been an issue since Utopia.

 

[Sir Roderick]

On launch it was possible to purge your main species.

Since then some restrictions have been applied to what you can inflict on species, especially for gestalts, that make managing pops quite cumbersome.
But the latter been an issue since Utopia.

Yes I remember it and then Wiz said something about it that had a counter argument that nobody said.

 

[Sir Roderick]

Anyway, getting to have slavery or even just residence on subspecies, or maybe letting nerve-stapled pops do specialists jobs would help.

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

I never understood why our founder-species is so specially treated. I would love to be able to purge refugee UNE humans as the Commonwealth of Man (if they love xenos so much they should not be surprised to be treated like some), or restrict my species from generating admirals and generals because I have another species purposefully incorporated to do all "war-stuff" in my fanatic pacifist empire.
Or maybe I am playing the opposite, a race of warriors that leaves science and government to another species...

But I guess that is a topic that should be discussed in it's own thread.

 

[ashbery76]

It's a bit odd we have species and then these and necroids that seem more like a theme.

 

[Orphalesion]

It's a bit odd we have species and then these and necroids that seem more like a theme.

The Aquatics are a theme too; they draw inspirations all sorts of different animal groups; fish, marine mammals, cephalopods, cnidarians, amphibians, crustaceans, wild mixtures of all of them..some that can only be called "aquatic things" imo...
Their only uniting aspect they have is that they are fashioned after animals that live in water, which is a theme.

Plus themes allow for a lot more variety and more potential new packs in the future.

 

[Arithmetician]

Come to think of it, Relentless Industrialists would be pretty good for roleplaying Space Sauron/Mordor, especially if paired with Masterful Crafters. Ethics would probably be something like Authoritarian/Militarist/Materialist, and one could use the Orc portrait as a main species. Since Mordor (and Isengard, which basically because Saruman’s attempt to mimic/surpass Mordor’s industry and ‘progress’) are industrialized hellscapes because of how badly they have ruined their environments in pursuit of that ‘progress’. And then they bring such devastation to any lands/worlds that they conquer (such as the Scouring of the Shire). And tomb worlds work very nicely there for the flavor.

 

[Orphalesion]

The Space UN is incredibly boring, repetitive and destroys the feeling of discovery

Discovery in general, no matter whether the galactic community gets formed early or not can be a surprisingly short pleasure in Stellaris, considering how much of the content is built around it. Depending on the galaxy size and the number of empires you can get boxed in pretty quickly, and then it's about conquering space others have explored for you.
It's for that very reason that I play on the largest galaxy size with no more than 5 A. I. empires (+ 1-2 FEs of cours)

 

[metatoaster]

Discovery in general, no matter whether the galactic community gets formed early or not can be a surprisingly short pleasure in Stellaris, considering how much of the content is built around it. Depending on the galaxy size and the number of empires you can get boxed in pretty quickly, and then it's about conquering space others have explored for you.
It's for that very reason that I play on the largest galaxy size with no more than 5 A. I. empires (+ 1-2 FEs of cours)

Thanks for the tip.
Besides the base mechanics, I hope the next big step for Stellaris can be to extend the feeling of discovery past the initial map-filling phase:

• Smaller federations or peace conferences progressively coalescing together like they did on earth, instead of the dumb "instant space UN".
• Exploration of the wonders contained in other empires. They can tell you of the Precursors they found about, brag about having discovered a megastructure and make your diplomats visit it, and even engage in joint exploration and research if they're really friendly. Discovering their biology, culture, architecture and perhaps mysterious powers like latent psionic would also be fertile ground for interesting events.
• Don't close access to all dig sites and anomalies in other territories. Some military or business-oriented races might not care much about their history but could let you dig around on their planets because you're laughably weak and harmless and occasionally come up with some weapon they can use, or because they see an opportunity to make you pay for the priviledge. It could be an interesting playstyle and roleplaying approach for the player as well. Also, each race could have its own specific sites others can't even see on the map, such as psionics finding psionic dig sites where other races see strictly nothing.
• Keep more mid to late-game mysteries inside conquered territories besides leviathans. For instance you could have level 20 anomalies that pretty much requires joint research with one or two other races to decypher in a timely manner. Or anomalies or dig sites you don't even realize exist until you have the appropriate tech.
• Events centered about cultural and diplomatic interactions with AI races after first contact. I think those should be reserved for AI players, as it would let the event take over part of the AI behavior for a while. This would allow for instance to cause a war or destroy infrastructure on a planet (or the planet itself) in case of cultural misunderstandings, or them taking action such as investing massive resources into spying on you, something you can't really enforce upon humans.

@Alfray Stryke ^Complementary ideas to my last post. Stuff that if it existed might've made me play until late game despite the basic game mechanics being unsatisfying.