Stellaris Dev Diary #272 - The Pact is Signed and Spoken

[Nazarius40000]

In all honesty, I think the best (but also the hardest) path would be for the team to just make their own Entities from scratch: one for each ethic. The Eater could stay for Militarists, the Whispers could stay for Materialists, I could see the Composer and the Instrument being for Pacifists and Egalitarians respectively with minor rewrites, but we should also get an Entity of order for Authoritarians, an Entity of pride for Xenophobes, and an Entity of "love" for Xenophiles. "Love" in quotes because WHAT WAS SHALL BE - erm, I mean, what love means to an unfathomable being beyond mortal understanding would have a very different idea of love than us, meaning even non-villainous Entities could still be every bit as eldritch as the others.

That way the 40k cosplay crowd is happy, the game gets to keep its treasure trove of references, and Psionics get more ways to play. But again, that'd be quite a bit of extra work. Both Stellaris teams have been on fire for the past year with all the passion and quality they've poured into the game, but they only have so many hours and resources to devote to much higher priorities. I really hope Hive Minds and Megacorps will be getting the Custodian Team treatment soon, for instance.

Why prescribe every creature if you can give the tools to create your own religion, as in Crusader Kings III? Players will be able to create for themselves who they want, while also being able to name their deity the way they want. In addition, the moderators are activated right there.


And in general, if the developers make a religion editor in the future, it will be just very great, since adding not just new mechanics to stellaris itself, but also new content from which it will be possible to build on in order to further develop stellaris.

 

[Eladrin]

But someone claimed that the -15 Stability doesn't just lower your stability, but hard caps it at 85.

This is incorrect. It's just a stability modifier.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I would like some gameplay benefits for rejecting the entities and venturing into the psionic realm alone. It would make sense, especially for Fanatic Xenophobes.

How about:
Every time you reject a covenant the Shroud coooldown is reduced by 90%, you get 250 influence and 24 months worth of unity.

 

[tanny]

Finally, the emperor has a text-to-speech device!

Thank you for the likes!

On a more serious note, my hunch suggests that whisperer of the void is underwhelming. You likely do not lack influence in the late game. The research speed is counteracted by the negative stability, and you aren’t playing materialist.

 

[Draelian]

Thank you for the likes!

On a more serious note, my hunch suggests that whisperer of the void is underwhelming. You likely do not lack influence in the late game. The research speed is counteracted by the negative stability, and you aren’t playing materialist.

I don't want to get ultra specific, but actually, there is a way to be a fanatic materialistic to be psionic in 50-55 years, play Knights of toxic god.

if you focus your efforts on progressing the quest to the 50th year of departure, you will get an event, one of the options will give you psionic theory regardless of your ethics; another way is to work a bit on the origin of shroud, so if we get down to numbers and meta-builds, there are ways.

 

[_WaterLemon]

Nice

 

[Swarm lover]

I do have a question for devs, with the expansion of covenants will the entities react to a crisis empire making the engine successfully? Like giving their follower empires buffs to try and avert the disaster. Or them showing up to a uncovenanted psionic empire offering their power temporarly no strings attached out of desperation.

 

[Azar]

Its kind of interesting. So far I have avoided covenants like a plague. Im still not sure if the reward is worth the prize, but its kinda nice to have these things hardcoded to not rely on RNG so much.

And I assume that End Of The Cycle is not a covenant that you can encounter when first contacting shroud..

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Okay, trying to be constructive and suggest alternatives.

Not redoing the chosen traits for now (though the Instruments admiral trait does still have an outdated disengagement chance in it)

Numbers are probably off a but focus is to provide a fitting nature of bonuses
(Referring to this thread for the random events)

	Composer of Strands	Eater of Worlds	Instrument of Desire	Whisperers in the Void
Rank -1 (Your patron let you in but you have yet to confirm your covenant)	+10% Pop Growth Speed +10 years leader lifespan - You can not genemod any species	+25% Army Damage +10% Ship Damage -10 stability when not at war	+20% Trade value +10% slave output +10% Pop & Leader Upkeep -10% happiness for slaves -5% worker happiness	+0,5 Monthly Influence +10% Infiltration speed and Operation speed +100% political power for all pops +50% crime
Rank 0: Telepath Output	+2% Pop growth speed	+5 Naval Cap	+7 Amenities	+3 Research
Rank 1:Telepath Output (20)	+5% Pop growth speed from psi	+12 Naval Cap from psi	+15 Amenities from psi	+6 Research
Rank 1: Empire Unique Building	Sanctum of the Composer: +3 Telepath jobs +10% Habitability -10% Pop upkeep -10% pop growth scaling	Sanctum of the Eater +3 Telepath jobs +25% Sublight Speed +20% Fleet Force Disparity Bonus	Sanctum of the Instrument +3 Telepath jobs +10% Ruler Empire Happiness +10% Resources from Jobs	Sanctum of the Whisperers +3 Telepath jobs +1 Envoy +15% Research Speed
Rank 2: Empire Modifier (50)	+20% Pop Growth Speed +20 years leader lifespan + Priests generate +1 habitability -You can not genemod any species x2	+50% Army Damage +20% Ship Damage + Priests generate +1 naval cap -20 stability when not at war	+40% Trade value +20% slave output + Priests generate +1 trade +20% Pop & Leader Upkeep -20% happiness for slaves -10% worker happiness	+1 Monthly Influence +20% Infiltration speed and Operation speed + Priests generate +3x1 research +200% political power for all pops +100% crime
Rank 3: Chosen One (90)	See Chosen table below
Rank 4: Ship Component (150)	AUX: +0,1 Hull regen +0,15 Armor Regen	AUX: +20% additional ship damage based on target size +5 Chance to Hit	AUX: -25% FTL charge time -33% emergency FTL damage -10% Ship upkeep	AUX: +1sensor range +10% shield and armor penetration
Random events	-Can devolve species into presapients -Often mutates a species, can add almost any trait in the game doing that. For species that have less that +4 value in positive traits, keeps going until the total value is +4 or higher for the first time -Can mutate a leader, adding additional traits, also having access to almost all leader traits, adding one at random. Has a small chance to kill the leader provising you with a powerful ship or army in its stead (maybe when the random trait roll rolls a trait already present).	-Can mark an admiral or general with a special trait that removes all disengagement and adds +30% fire rate or +50% morale & collateral damage -Can still take a bite of a world -When successfully invading a planet has a low chance to claim it, turning it into a shrouded world but giving you a big reward based on population and planet ascension -Can cause rebellious planets in your empire or any empire you are at war with rebel immediately, turning any successful rebellion into Purifiers that target empires without an Eater covenant first.	-Can increase crime on a planet by 100% for a year -Can increase amenity, housing or sprawl needs on a planet by 50% for 2 years -Can set one species to decadent lifesstyle (with the 10 year cooldown) -Can give you a Prospectorium or Scholarium cache -Can add substance abuser trait to leaders	-Can make your leaders paranoid -Can randomly spawn an asset in any empire you have an enjoy at (in either role) -Can cause empire wide -50% governement ethics attraction or planetary -200% and +100% ethics shift chance -Can instantly demote any planets rulers and lock the job for 3 months, with the affected pops unable to take up a ruler job for 5 years.

 

[Soranya]

Has something changed with Exploration?
Othweise Anomaly iscovery chance is pretty worthless by the time you get to this stage.

As I understand it you can not find anomalies in prviously owned(?) Systems. So usually by midgame beside a few outlieres there is nothing left to uncover, even if you destroy a Empire and have to sruvey their former systems.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

Overall, the changes look great.


The incompatibility between psionic and cybernetic pops is sad though. One of my favourite parts of playing Driven Assimilator was specifically targeting the spiritualist Fallen Empire for assimilation, to get my mass produced neural implants on a direct line to God for cool bonuses. I don't think it was really hurting balance or anything to have this available as a roleplay option. Now as DA you probably want to avoid assimilating psionics as you'll be actively making the pops worse

 

[-Marauder-]

This is incorrect. It's just a stability modifier.

Good, good. Still a horrible modifier that takes out a huge chunk of production across the board. But at least you can in theory fix it. Thanks for taking the time to correct this, folks on Discord and co claimed it worked similar to the habitability modifer from Noxious.

 

[Soranya]

So no Psionic Borgs for me then?
I am sad ;(

Will the "End of the Cycle" get a buff so that it is still as "uber" compared to the rest modificator wise? As it is kind of a one off exceptional thing i'd really like this.


Regarding Balanc/Combat changes - how about letting a permanent open beta run with the newest experimental changes/balance runs to evaluate them before they go live.
With a permanent open Beta branch you could gather probably much more data then with the spurt open beta style currently used.

 

[Soranya]

New posts are fine for new feedback IMO

How about archiving the pre patch thread and making a new one (with the old one referenced in the first post).
This way people dont get confused that much.

 

[-Marauder-]

Okay, trying to be constructive and suggest alternatives.

Not redoing the chosen traits for now (though the Instruments admiral trait does still have an outdated disengagement chance in it)

Numbers are probably off a but focus is to provide a fitting nature of bonuses

Not trying to be mean, but while this tunes down Whisperers downside. It's actually straight up worse in terms of Influence. And the "infiltration speed" should go entirely. Same for the bonuses to Encryption/Decryption and 10 Intel they offer.

As of right now, there's absolutely no benefit to anything concerning espionage. As espionage itself is fairly pointless and all this does is slightly speed something up in the background.

 

[currylambchop]

- It doesn't simply give you -15 stability. It gives you -15 max stability. I.e it also caps you at 85 stability. If this is true. It's a 9% production decrease to EVERYTHING. 9% less alloys, 9% less unity, 9% less science. This is a huge efficiency nerf.

That's simply not true... point it out where exactly does it say that whisperers caps max stability from a source that isn't hearsay

EDIT:

Spoiler: literal proof that it doesnt cap stability

- Paying 300% upkeep for your fleet while not at war is HUGE. I have a game right now where in 2390 I'm paying roughly 3k alloys and 15k energy for my fleet. Now tripple this in terms of upkeep, then slap the hit for being over cap on top of it. You're telling me paying 45k energy is "not a big deal"?

Just declare war then... if the penalty can be removed by a simple action then it's mostly a non factor. If your build didn't support lots of war, then either adapt or dont pick eater of worlds... pick instrument of desire for your minmaxing purposes

- Many people including some of the Devs appear to be seeing Psi pops as more efficient. They're NOT. They're actually on a per pop basis less productive quite quickly than Synths or Robots with the right traits/techs.

Synths were ALWAYS a problem but that's not Psi's fault. it is Synth's fault. Maybe you should ask for synth to be nerfed rightfully. It's not like cybernetic and biological have more efficient pops than Psi, in fact they have less. mathematical proof:
bio researcher has 20% output bonus, psi pop has 20% BASE and another 10% from the psionic trait
bio pop has 15% alloys, psi pop has 20% BASE from telepath

Many of them clearly don't really know the math behind all of this, or do not care about it. Which makes a discussion about production and other values moot.

You can't maths out stellaris because there are so many variables (in maths called degrees of freedom) but if you want to try:

Psi pop growth= 4.6 assembly (robot assembly complex) (+30% growth from composer)
Psi output: +20% from telepaths, (+20% from instrument OR 5% from composer)
Psi military: (15% fire rate and 10% weapons range!!! with eater of worlds OR 15% evasion from whisperer), psi admiral (more damage than Synt

Psi extra bonus:
20% unity output iirc and also 10% science output on all psionic pops
random shroud bonus
ship components that are the strongest in the game

now compare that with synth (available way later than psi, probably in 2230 at the least while I got psi in 2210 fully completed with teachers of shroud)
Synth pop growth: 8.05 pop growth
Synth output: +20% from the synth tech and tradition (the leader trait was changed)
Synth military: none to speak of

Synth extra bonus:
+33% base technicians output

So all in all, with the most mediocre covenant (whisperer), you still have near-equal output, and greater in the 2most important resource, unity and science. though you are outcompeted in pop growth you can still get it way earlier than synth (though Bio can be rushed almost as fast with overtuned).

- Psi has atrocious growth, yes it can grow robots and absolutely piss off it's major factions and cause an inevitable Ai rebellion down the road.

Now you argue 'oh no, -5% happiness on an easy to please faction is definitely gonna completely exclude me from using robots!' but really, it isn't particularly worth it to gimp yourself for that reason alone. as long as a faction is above 50 happiness you have almost no downsides, and the -5% is easily outweighed just by being psionic. Besides, you could easily set robots to servitude so they could work as trader, then you won't have to worry about the ai rebellion (literally just complete special project and it goes away at the cost of a few years science in the late game where it matters least).

a bit of research for 10 years late in the game) and the robots not being buffed by telepath.

Eater of Worlds will randomly eat a leader, targeting the highest one. Say goodbye to that max level Admiral with Dragonslayer.
It keeps the whole mechanic where it eats pops, giving you -20/-40 happiness, for 3600 days.
'can now eat part of a planet (size > 12, only once per planet, no capital), creating a blocker (-2 districts, -5 stability, +6 phy/soc research)' Really hope you don't like stability, or districts on your planets.

Leaders randomly die, so really, that point is effectively the same as taking overtuned, where your leaders die every few years. And noone is saying overtuned is weak because of the leaders dying fast, and they die way faster than once every 20 years (eater of worlds event frequency).

However, there are further downsides to this. The random events still exist. Which means you get slapped with more punishing events. Your pops might out of nowhere suddenly require 0.75 alloy or unity upkeep for example.

note that these are for the most powerful covenant by far i.e. instrument of desire, so it's sort of a fair trade. all the other covenants got off better in the new random events (eater no longer eats a whole planet, whisperer no longer spawns an almost guaranteed rebellion, composer almost unchanged)

 

[currylambchop]

+6 Research

would personally buff these to have more research so that it leans in to the research theme, and remove some of the random spy stuff

 

[FleetingRain]

Okay, trying to be constructive and suggest alternatives.

Not redoing the chosen traits for now (though the Instruments admiral trait does still have an outdated disengagement chance in it)

Numbers are probably off a but focus is to provide a fitting nature of bonuses
(Referring to this thread for the random events)

	Composer of Strands	Eater of Worlds	Instrument of Desire	Whisperers in the Void
Rank -1 (Your patron let you in but you have yet to confirm your covenant)	+10% Pop Growth Speed +10 years leader lifespan - You can not genemod any species	+25% Army Damage +10% Ship Damage -10 stability when not at war	+20% Trade value +10% slave output +10% Pop & Leader Upkeep -10% happiness for slaves -5% worker happiness	+0,5 Monthly Influence +10% Infiltration speed and Operation speed +100% political power for all pops +50% crime
Rank 0: Telepath Output	+2% Pop growth speed	+5 Naval Cap	+7 Amenities	+3 Research
Rank 1:Telepath Output (20)	+5% Pop growth speed from psi	+12 Naval Cap from psi	+15 Amenities from psi	+6 Research
Rank 1: Empire Unique Building	Sanctum of the Composer: +3 Telepath jobs +10% Habitability -10% Pop upkeep -10% pop growth scaling	Sanctum of the Eater +3 Telepath jobs +25% Sublight Speed +20% Fleet Force Disparity Bonus	Sanctum of the Instrument +3 Telepath jobs +10% Ruler Empire Happiness +10% Resources from Jobs	Sanctum of the Whisperers +3 Telepath jobs +1 Envoy +15% Research Speed
Rank 2: Empire Modifier (50)	+20% Pop Growth Speed +20 years leader lifespan + Priests generate +1 habitability -You can not genemod any species x2	+50% Army Damage +20% Ship Damage + Priests generate +1 naval cap -20 stability when not at war	+40% Trade value +20% slave output + Priests generate +1 trade +20% Pop & Leader Upkeep -20% happiness for slaves -10% worker happiness	+1 Monthly Influence +20% Infiltration speed and Operation speed + Priests generate +3x1 research +200% political power for all pops +100% crime
Rank 3: Chosen One (90)	See Chosen table below
Rank 4: Ship Component (150)	AUX: +0,1 Hull regen +0,15 Armor Regen	AUX: +20% additional ship damage based on target size +5 Chance to Hit	AUX: -25% FTL charge time -33% emergency FTL damage -10% Ship upkeep	AUX: +1sensor range +10% shield and armor penetration
Random events	-Can devolve species into presapients -Often mutates a species, can add almost any trait in the game doing that. For species that have less that +4 value in positive traits, keeps going until the total value is +4 or higher for the first time -Can mutate a leader, adding additional traits, also having access to almost all leader traits, adding one at random. Has a small chance to kill the leader provising you with a powerful ship or army in its stead (maybe when the random trait roll rolls a trait already present).	-Can mark an admiral or general with a special trait that removes all disengagement and adds +30% fire rate or +50% morale & collateral damage -Can still take a bite of a world -When successfully invading a planet has a low chance to claim it, turning it into a shrouded world but giving you a big reward based on population and planet ascension -Can cause rebellious planets in your empire or any empire you are at war with rebel immediately, turning any successful rebellion into Purifiers that target empires without an Eater covenant first.	-Can increase crime on a planet by 100% for a year -Can increase amenity, housing or sprawl needs on a planet by 50% for 2 years -Can set one species to decadent lifesstyle (with the 10 year cooldown) -Can give you a Prospectorium or Scholarium cache -Can add substance abuser trait to leaders	-Can make your leaders paranoid -Can randomly spawn an asset in any empire you have an enjoy at (in either role) -Can cause empire wide -50% governement ethics attraction or planetary -200% and +100% ethics shift chance -Can instantly demote any planets rulers and lock the job for 3 months, with the affected pops unable to take up a ruler job for 5 years.

Man, this look MUCH better than what we have now.

 

[Lorenerd11]

+50% Army Damage
+20% Ship Damage
-20 stability when not at war

This is much better than increased ship upkeep. Increased ship upkeep always forces you to downsize your navy, which is the opposite of what empires with the Eater of Worlds covenant should do.

-You can not genemod any species x2

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean tho

+ Priests generate +1 habitability/naval cap/trade/research

Habitability is useless on any planet where the species already has ideal habitability, I'd replace it with pop growth.

+1 Trade Value is laughably low, a single clerk produces 4.

Also, not all Psionic empires are Spiritualist, and not all of them will use Priests.

 

[dulahan]

I really stand by thinking some form of Psionic traits. That would be a good way to add pacts too, extra powerful traits. While those going alone could mod in other psi traits perhaps as they grow more enlightened, but avoid pacts.