Stellaris Dev Diary #289 - Hide and Seek

[Wise Strategist]

It would be a nice, if in a future update after first contact, Cold War diplomatic status was added, and Barbaric Despoiler and Criminal Syndicates empires could both disguise their ships as pirates and lunch cloak raiding fleets at their neighbors territories, making them a much greater threat.

 

[Peepijeep]

Eager Explorers and the other new civic seem to be pretty weak
-10 pop is extreme, and the bonus of the civic is....not that useful

 

[Flanelman]

As starbases as static defenses are pretty much useless in the current Stellaris build except in the very early phases, now they seem even less relevant beside as an instrument to force enemy ship to decloak, but to cover at least a bit of a wide empire, you'll even lose useful naval capacity.
And while I understand the logic to "give a little more fight" to the underdogs against the great powers, there is something preventing any war against the IA to become an endless whack-a-mole game to chase countless small flotillas doing guerrilla actions in your space?

Why would you chase them when whatever goal you push is going to give you back any territory they take?

 

[PDS_Iggy]

What model will the new starbase modules use? I’m assuming new assets weren’t in the budget for such a minor thing

We used the Science module which I think hasn't been used for a long time but artists have been making them for all the new species packs @Alfray Stryke correct me if I am wrong.

I have a big question!

In fact, there are planets in the game that you can attack immediately: primitives. Can we raiding primitives on territory of another empire?
Like: declare war, take a system and broke primitives.

No you still need to have them within your border.

 

[Karmin96]

-10 pop is extreme

But you can use preplanned growth...

 

[Tilarium]

I know I am not the only one waiting to see what the modders can do. I figured right from the first origin reveal that we would have some pre-ftl mechanics put in, and this just confirms it now! I can see lots of civics and origins being built off of the backs of the mechanics these civics bring and it is glorious!

 

[Me_]

Will the Fallen Empires have and use some advanced cloaking technology?

Is there a Leviathan that is somehow tied to cloaking?

 

[sigismundus]

here you can see a massive space battle of cloaked ships

 

[Bergest]

Can cloaked fleets use the Quantum Catapult or will that decloak them? Would be pretty cool to be able to catapult your wolfpacks into the heart of the enemy empire, position them and then wreak havoc...

 

[Vaiken]

Woah, cloaking seems awesome. It even involves the Subterfuge tradition, which sells it more. Just wish that Espionage in general were better. It costs much and several of the Operations are worthless. Ain't no need for a single favor, a small decrease in opinion, or a tiny 2k pirate fleet in 2360.

But yeah, overall looking forward to this DLC. So much story focus, and the mechanics of Cloaking and the Archeotechs are fascinating.

 

[lilsaihah]

I predicted almost all of this over a week ago. The only thing we didn't have were the stages on cloaking for hulls. Which is why I couched Destroyers vs Battleships. Piercing weapons will be the weapon de jour though. Missiles are dead with these changes.

Oh I see, you were basing it on a crystal ball rather than a spreadsheet or a forum post.
I dunno dude, your whole thesis sounds like it will fall apart when you can shred the strategy by just building a detector. Like just put down a missile turret dude.

 

[st360]

If the new update wont come with any new music, would it be possible to at least get the epic trailer music track?

Surely there is an old sound file of it without actor voices somewhere in Paradox offices. Its sooooo good!

 

[Cassilda]

Why would you chase them when whatever goal you push is going to give you back any territory they take?

Some kind of wars allows immediate transfer of systems and other times the enemy claims space you own, so unless if possible to finalize a full victory, enemy might retain portion of your space if not "cleaned up" before the white pace is signed.
Beside that, I also find that it's not even easy to just order a fleet to just chase the enemy, as it happens that a player fleet often "loses tracking" or just does a bad pathfinding.
While overall I like the idea of introducing equalizing elements in the game, I just hope they don't become micromanagement intensive.

 

[Fjolsvid]

While this is all cool, it is a bit annoying that we are pushed to play psionics if we want the best level stuff
Space magic is a bit too magic.

It would be really nice if the devs re-considered and allowed some measure of psionics to be used naturally. And importantly, to add counter-psionics stuff

 

[DeanTheDull]

Thoughts on cloaking:

This will probably favor players over AI for getting great opening battles, but I expect some serious gnashing of teeth for later-game stealth fleets just knocking out starbases and not being detectable. We'll need to get a sense of whatever measures enable detection.


It sounds like cloaking will very much be more of a mid-game thing as a way for fleet-ambushes. While it depends on how early you can draw the first tech- and if it's not a guaranteed tech option from observation posts then necrophages have no real chance of a necrophage cloak-strategy- the fact that Destroyer-cloaks are in the 12k range means that you'll be maybe cloaking destroyers when you're in the range of starting battleships. Depending on how the modules stack, I'm not sure how it will ever justify the destroyers.

Since only starbases can detect ships, that will make chokepoint starbases more important than before to keep the AI from just sneaking fleets into your area. Hopefully bulwarks have a role here, and sensor range can go through to other systems for a decloak in the gateway range, or else a lot more starbases will need to be on sentry duty. That would mean more fortress worlds to compensate for the naval capacity.

Tactic-wise, this definitely validates the argument for ambush fleet tactics as opening maneuvers. Have a cloaked fleet in your own starbase in terrain, have it speced with armor, and try and make the space terrain work for you. Ambushes in Pulsar systems sound like they could be killer, if the pulsar doesn't negate stealth.






For the new civics-

Obviously the pop loss is going to be a huge setback. These will not, in almost any circumstance, be powergame builds. They will synergize in general with envoy/federation/vassal-game builds that let you leverage diplomacy while having partners defend you.

The most interest part of them is the jump-drive. By the sounds of it this won't actually necessarily be better than just directly flying the hyperlanes- I'd expect a longer debuff period and you have a mighty short range- but there could be some interesting plays here of selectively claiming only key terrain and letting the AI build past the habitable worlds and waste their alloys/influence on low-value systems. This is already a thing you can do with with Slignshot, and might be worth doubling down.

Notably, all four varients have different strategic focus points.

Non-gestalts are pretty weak, and really have one major niche.

Eager Explorers- the non-megacorp 'normal' empire build- is absolutely for a Discovery opener in a build that starts in a federation. This one will be all about finding all the anomalies and digsites as you map the stars, and claiming them for future development. That's pretty much it's niche, though, and of the four is the least interesting to me. Obvious starts are your Federation origins, the vassal-starts, and/or maybe Knights of the Toxic God. Obvious civic complement is anything giving envoys, or which enables your desired federation.

Privatized Exploration- the megacorp equivalent- is more interesting to me, because it lets you start with Tier 2 starbases already. This matters because this allows an early draw of Habitats, which are a significant power spike for Megacorp trade builds. Megacorp is already the go-to to side-step your population shortfall- you don't need as many pops for basic resources when your branch office economy covers that- but as an opener starholds are more than a match for early fleets, while the starhold trade collection range of 5 systems in a trade build means you can side-step the early-game trade build chokepoint of collection range chains.


Gestalts are still bad, but a bit better in power terms than the non-gestalt equivalents. This is because Gestalts could already leverage the catalytic-Unyielding combo of having a starbase economy add functional pops and enable strong alloy production in the early game, and using energy to cover upkeep/buy necessary minerals/fund science.

Stargazers- the Hive version- is interesting in its early-game exploration synergy. Sensor range in the early game is deceptively good for helping you explore, find the interesting stuff, and avoid more dangerous things. This is probably the best 'find your 10 closest worlds, build starbases over them, and colonize' setup to make use of the starbase synergy, given the influence savings on distant claims, and doing this would let you leverage the Proginitor Hive vassal-spin off for micro-vassal spam. The jump drive + sensor range is probably your fastest exploration build. The trait's not bad either, since hive habitability is a general issue and if stacked with Extremely Adaptive + the Adaptive tradition you could have +40 habitability, which is actually pretty significant for hive builds who can't count on other biome pops.

Exploration protocols- the Machine equivalent- just seems.... eh. As discussed last week, early-game conquest of primtiives is still the dominant option, so having slightly better outposts is still not a power equvialence. Unity from first contacts is nice, but directly proportional in value to how much it scales off your own unity economy, and how many other empires there are.


Of all of these, Stargazers seems by far the most useful in the early game, letting you explore faster and more safely, only worry about claiming the most useful worlds, spin-off vassals as a proginitor hive, and set up a stronger early-game growth on bad colonies.

 

[Flanelman]

Oh I see, you were basing it on a crystal ball rather than a spreadsheet or a forum post.
I dunno dude, your whole thesis sounds like it will fall apart when you can shred the strategy by just building a detector. Like just put down a missile turret dude.

What detector? The AI sucks at building starbases, it's doubtful this is going to be stacked high, if at all, and an uncloaked corvette screen, as has been the case for years, solves every "problem" here. Corvettes have been ablative armor for years.

 

[Anonim97]

Also seeing as there is growing number of Auxiliary Components (now with Cloak, earlier with Armor/Shield Hardener and Marks of Shroud), have you thought about getting a second look on these components to maybe rework some older ones or change the number of A slots per hull or are you happy with it?

 

[Flanelman]

Some kind of wars allows immediate transfer of systems and other times the enemy claims space you own, so unless if possible to finalize a full victory, enemy might retain portion of your space if not "cleaned up" before the white pace is signed.
Beside that, I also find that it's not even easy to just order a fleet to just chase the enemy, as it happens that a player fleet often "loses tracking" or just does a bad pathfinding.
While overall I like the idea of introducing equalizing elements in the game, I just hope they don't become micromanagement intensive.

Why would you let a white peace be signed? Why don't you have a corvette response fleet to clean up whatever territory you want?

 

[JackHazardous]

.


No you still need to have them within your border.

Follow up question, can we raid primitives without invading them? Nihilistic aquisition style?

 

[GreoIum]

Since cloaked ships are able to move through empires with closed borders, are they also able to use gateways, hyper relays, or wormholes within empires with closed borders? Thematically I think wormholes makes sense, although I think the others maybe not since they can’t be used during wars?