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Stellaris Dev Diary #275 - Bless Thy Soul

Hello everyone!

It’s been a busy few weeks here on the Stellaris team, and I wanted to thank the community for helping us out so much with the 3.6 Orion Open Beta.

There was significantly more activity than anticipated - during the month of October, over 100,000 players took part in the Orion Open Beta branch - and the volume of feedback we received was incredible. The 3.6 update should be much better thanks to your involvement.

We have a few more fixes that we’d like to get into the update (such as vassals colonizing Holy Worlds), after which it’ll go through the final testing, localization, and release process. As mentioned last week, we’ll be keeping the Open Beta branch available until the live release of 3.6 Orion so you can continue your games.

I’ll now pass you over to Mr.Cosmogone, who will provide a bit of enlightenment about one of the features that has been in the Open Beta, but hasn’t gotten a proper dev diary thus far. (Now, with non-placeholder art!)

Raising Spirits

Peace be upon you, children,

Mr.Cosmogone here, to tell you about the upcoming Spiritualist Federation. I had the chance to collaborate on this with the famous Caligula who had long yearned for a way to share his spiritual convictions with his allies.

Some of you may have already had a chance to play this as part of the ongoing Open Beta, they might not find anything new here, but for the rest of the faithfuls, let me introduce to the Holy Covenant:

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Spiritualist empires will find this new federation type to be quite aligned with their gamestyle, as it will provide them with a range of bonuses about unity, priests and the spiritualist faction.

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Their level two perks will help lay strong foundations for your church:

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While the third level will help you on your way towards ascension:

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At the fourth level, priests will start appearing left and right to carry the good word.

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The fifth and last level of the federation will be a consecration for its members:

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Like all federation types, the Holy Covenant comes with a unique succession challenge, the conclave, where the most pious are assured to be rewarded. Or perhaps the most generous. Money is the root of all sins after all, so you might as well give it away.

That’s it from me this week, and remember if you want to play all the cool things we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, go play the beta!

To opt-in to the Open Beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Betas tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.
 
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Losttruppen said:
Does anyone else have a hard time making Federations due to excessive AI vassalage?
Click to expand...

Sometimes you can get a friendly AI overlord to federate with.
 
I honestly feel that the job upkeep reduction should probably be capped at -90% or -95%.

As entertaining as it is, it's one thing to pay almost nothing in upkeep, it's another to produce thousands of alloys from thin air.

Also, Capital designations should add a -5% upkeep reduction from all jobs; smaller than upkeep reductions from other designations, but still giving players some upkeep reduction benefit from ascending the planet.
 
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Are there any special benefits or interactions if my Spiritualist empire goes Bio-Ascension instead of Psionics?

Sometimes I want to RP as bio-supremacist Spiritualists, and having a bit of support for that would be cool.
 
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HFY said:
Are there any special benefits or interactions if my Spiritualist empire goes Bio-Ascension instead of Psionics?

Sometimes I want to RP as bio-supremacist Spiritualists, and having a bit of support for that would be cool.
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I hope the malus for going Cybernetic was removed, or at least reduced; it made sense when Cybernetic ascension was a step towards Synthetic Evolution, but now it's downright weird how it's Cybernetic ascension that uniquely upsets the Spiritualist faction.
 
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Lorenerd11 said:
I honestly feel that the job upkeep reduction should probably be capped at -90% or -95%.

As entertaining as it is, it's one thing to pay almost nothing in upkeep, it's another to produce thousands of alloys from thin air.

Also, Capital designations should add a -5% upkeep reduction from all Jobs; smaller than upkeep reductions from other designation, but still giving players some upkeep reduction benefit from ascending the planet.
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Well, thats all the fun spiritualists have, and they cant just lvl10 all the planets, so at least thats fine. Id really wish some modifiers would stack multiplicatively, its kinda useless to form the end of the cycle for 100%resource gain, because how other bonuses are its just a small addition
 
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Lorenerd11 said:
Also, Capital designations should add a -5% upkeep reduction from all Jobs; smaller than upkeep reductions from other designation, but still giving players some upkeep reduction benefit from ascending the planet.
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Capital designations got +10% resources output buff at 3.3 patch. It's quite a strong designation, +10% resources from jobs, +10 amenities, +5 stability. I don't think additional upkeep reduction would be necessary.

At tier 10, with ascensionists+harmony+federation bonus, Empire capital designation gives +52.5% resources output, +52.5 amenities, +26.25 stability, +525% Governing ethics attraction, +52.5% Automatic Resettlement Destination Chance.
 
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So as someone who hasn't played the beta: why would a robot empire want to join? They're gestalt aren't they? And can't access the Shroud? I've seen some things that suggest the potential for spiritualist robots and maybe even entering the shroud (The Mender of Clay) but is this actually in the beta? Or...?
 
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Delinard. said:
Looks like a B or C tier federation, does not even compare to some other federations, the effects on 2nd and 3rd levels are always most important because they help you survive early game.
+10% unity output is okay but you are going to be making a lot of unity anyway with or without it.
The envoys generating more cohesion is useless since it's very easy to keep it at 100 anyway, the spiritualist attraction isn't that impactful when you have other things that can help promote spiritualists.
There is probably more important things to make your pops work then being culture workers of all things, but maybe it's different in 3.6
The voting strength is negligible when there are usually more useful galactic resolutions to pass in the beginning anyway.
The trade policy sounds interesting but it's at level 3, still it might be the only reason to use this federation if the numbers are good or you are just better off using the trade federation instead.
The Planetary Ascension buffs are nice but you are better off spending unity on traditions in the first century so it's hardly useful until late game.

Also we don't know what centralization the federation fleet needs, my guess is that it's like Galactic Union/Trade League, which isn't bad but it's not as good as Martial Alliance/Hegemony fed fleets.
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1. I think you're undervaluing the ethics attraction from the envoys. 90% of your population belonging to an extremely happy faction means both a ton of free unity and higher stability through happiness.

2. Planetary ascension is quite good, in this patch. +70% planetary ascension effects means you're reducing the sprawl from a planet by 8.5%, and getting e.g. a net 5.5% resources from jobs on the capital with each level. It's worth it to ascend your largest planets as soon as possible, especially if you have an ecumenopolis.

3. Though it doesn't come until later, the Zro edict is incredibly good. 15% resources from jobs for ~7 Zro per month (for size 1200) is insane (for psionic pops).
 
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Knotz said:
So as someone who hasn't played the beta: why would a robot empire want to join?
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Not everyone joins a federation voluntarily.

Sometimes they get subjugation'd in.
 
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Doesn't really fit into this diary, but can you please restore the sorting of planet buildings by type? It was extremely eye pleasing and made it easier to track how many of each type there were.
 
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After playing several games in the open beta I feel that this is a nice federation to add to the game. Not saying it's an S-Tier federation [or F-Tier either] but it's nice to have, it feels unique, and encourages me to play around with builds that I don't normally give the time of day to :)
 
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Lorenerd11 said:
I honestly feel that the job upkeep reduction should probably be capped at -90% or -95%.

As entertaining as it is, it's one thing to pay almost nothing in upkeep, it's another to produce thousands of alloys from thin air.

Also, Capital designations should add a -5% upkeep reduction from all Jobs; smaller than upkeep reductions from other designation, but still giving players some upkeep reduction benefit from ascending the planet.
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Do you mean they should be capped as a balance concern? It's pretty clear that the 20->100% reduction is not particularly strong (on par with getting 10%-15% base from the designation instead, depending on job and other bonuses). And it's only reduced to zero on Rellrait, with a Prospectorium governor, or with all the alloy resolutions passed. Otherwise the capital techs push it up above 0.

If you just mean you want it from an internal consistency perspective, you can achieve that by not stacking any of the above bonuses on a planet with 10 ascensions.

Agreed on capital designations, actually, but mostly because I want the stability to go away and be replaced by something else useful. A fully ascended capital has +26 stability, now, which means you'll be waaaay beyond the cap unless you're deliberately making your pops miserable. So that extra stability is wasted.
 
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Will the dev seriously consider the fact that for player to play functioning psionic aka psionic that's competitive with other paths will required at least 2 additional dlc aside from the utopia to get access to ascension paths in the first place.

I will just copy past my recent feedback (semi rant lol).

To be able to play psionic that competitive with other paths will first required overlord dlc for teacher of the shroud origin cuz without it, it is easier and faster to just synthetic ascend (not to mention the pay off is way way better than psionic too) and secondly, federation dlc for the holy covenant federation type (so that you can keep up a little bit on pops efficiency cuz what dev said about psionic will more than compensate lack of pop growth with pop efficiency is a lie, it's not enough).

And this isn't even make psionic batshit op or something, just make it decent and competitive with other ascension paths.

It is completely bonker that psionic required 3 dlc to functioning, I don't think there is literally any other serious build in Stellaris that required this much investment from player.

Is Stellaris now a pay to win game lol jk.

Seriously tho, the dev need to reflected on this problem and how to fix it.

I don't like the implications of seriously need to sunk a lot of money (3 dlc worth at least) just to make my favourite build functioning and this is one of the default build too, not like it's meme build or something.

And this is just talking about investment in term of money, there are other kind of investment from player part like the fact that we need to play like a walkthrough to just make psionic works, you literally must do these thing in this order, etc. Is really ridiculous.

Then the constant one step ahead and two step back from this ascension is really frustrating, the rng and old debuff is already make psionic nearly not worth it but when the dev decided to reworked ascension path and psionic got shot end of the stick to be the only one that got massive nerf (lot of psionic advantage got remove, brand new debuff, new buff that are mixed on top of already a lot of useless thing in psionic really make me contemplated whether there are conspiracy from the dev to make psionic as weak as possible or something) compare to other paths make it really infuriating
 
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Lorenerd11 said:
I hope the malus for going Cybernetic was removed, or at least reduced; it made sense when Cybernetic ascension was a step towards Synthetic Evolution, but now it's downright weird how it's Cybernetic ascension that uniquely upsets the Spiritualist faction.
Click to expand...

It's unfortunately still there, I wrote that in my feedback about AP reworks. I would really like The Flesh is Weak to be a more Ethic Neutral Ascension Path, just like Engineered Evolution.

I also found out that banning robots removes all robot assembly plants and you can't build new one, as it logically works like for the other empires, even though the Roboticists are now assembling Cyborgs, so robots wouldn't be there anyway. Edit: I decided to report it as a "bug".
 
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Nevars said:
To be able to play psionic that competitive with other paths will first required overlord dlc for teacher of the shroud origin cuz without it, it is easier and faster to just synthetic ascend (not to mention the pay off is way way better than psionic too) and secondly, federation dlc for the holy covenant federation type (so that you can keep up a little bit on pops efficiency cuz what dev said about psionic will more than compensate lack of pop growth with pop efficiency is a lie, it's not enough).
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Synthetic Ascending got quite a nerf in 3.6 beta 2nd version, now it is the slowest path since you have to learn Synthetics(tier 4) to get hands on it. You get zero advantages until you learn tier 4 engineering tech, and even then, you have to finish Synthetics tradition to get its full benefits.

Yeah, Synthetics pay off is still strong, but now it takes ages to get that pay off. (Cyborg - tier2, Psionics theory - tier3, Genetics - tier3, Synthetics - tier4)
 
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Wendigo514 said:
It's unfortunately still there, I wrote that in my feedback about AP reworks. I would really like The Flesh is Weak to be a more Ethic Neutral Ascension Path, just like Engineered Evolution.

I also found out that banning robots removes all robot assembly plants and you can't build new one, as it logically works like for the other empires, even though the Roboticists are now assembling Cyborgs, so robots wouldn't be there anyway.
Click to expand...
Even worse, when I became a Spiritualist Bulwark of another empire, my Assembly Standards policy got automatically set to Cybernetic Components and I didn't even have Cybernetic ascension so I couldn't access the policy to change it. Even after I set Robotic Workers back to Allowed, my Roboticists couldn't assemble anything anymore.

As I said in the Ascension Path feedback thread, I think Assembly Standards shouldn't even exist as a policy, The tradition should simply be called Cybernetic Components, and Roboticists should be able to assemble both since they can only assemble one at a time anyway.
 
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