Stellaris Dev Diary #289 - Hide and Seek

[Lenk]

Honestly kind of loving the new civics, my game group is already talking about a RP campaign from this. Thank ya for this.

Though I have to say; I think making them permanent locked from being removed later for other civics such as aristocratic elite for rolaplay kind of puts hamper on things. If they give you a trait such as Stargazer then yeah it should be locked, however why not set it where they can only be taken at game start and if chosen to remove them later you cannot re-add them? Since societies change over time.

 

[Incompetent]

How does detection work with occupied starbases? If they don't provide detection to the occupier, it will be basically impossible to hunt down cloaked fleets in enemy territory (although if you occupy all their starbases, there's only so many frigate ambushes they can do before they lose their navy to attrition). If they do provide detection though, the defender still has the old gambit of "invisibility at the cost of blindness", i.e. they never build any detection arrays, so their ships won't be revealed if the enemy occupies their starbases.

Enigmatic Engineering giving +2 cloaking strength is cool, but in a way it would be even more thematic if the AP meant that occupiers could not use your starbases (i.e. the starbase stays disabled until liberated), because they simply can't make sense of how the starbase works. That would give you a pretty big advantage if you want to use guerilla tactics defensively.

 

[MadCow94]

At least I can hope the patch notes remove the Checksum from Achievements, Victoria style.

I pre-ordered for the primitives anyway.

 

[DeanTheDull]

6 detector buildings with the dark matter building buff is +8 detector

there is also also an Insight tech to buff listening posts to give the same buff. not sure if they stack for +10 or don't for +8

This doesn't answer the question of how often/when will you actually need to beat +8 detector, because by the time someone can get +8 detector- the dark matter tech era- they could also have taken any number of game-winning setups to have already won... and even if they don't, +8 detector doesn't mean anything if you can conquer the detector before the enemy fleet can engage, because the darkmatter era is also the era where starbases melt. If you are anywhere near parity with the AI, by the time they have detectors you can have jump drives, and just jump in and wipe the detector starbase, rendering it's role obsolete..

 

[Ajacoba]

Can you identify star bases before conquering them?

Edit: also you can't get to them before the war starts because then you would need to be able to get past their detection in the first place, in which case you wouldn't need to take them out anyways

 

[Foxosaur]

As solely PvE/Roleplay, this is great, thank you.

Looks like the Nebula Dust Cloud makes Nebulas much more strategic at least for military forces.

Will the Auto-Best fleet designs be updated to include cloaking modules or is this going to be something the player must specifically look to add in a customised fleet?

 

[Ajacoba]

As solely PvE/Roleplay, this is great, thank you.

Looks like the Nebula Dust Cloud makes Nebulas much more strategic at least for military forces.

Will the Auto-Best fleet designs be updated to include cloaking modules or is this going to be something the player must specifically look to add in a customised fleet?

there are specific stealth roles for the different ship classes, except titans and battleships, those have to be designed from scratch (it was on the latest livestream)
no clue if the fully automatic designing uses it though, I'm surprised people even use that function, lol

 

[Foxosaur]

there are specific stealth roles for the different ship classes, except titans and battleships, those have to be designed from scratch (it was on the latest livestream)
no clue if the fully automatic designing uses it though, I'm surprised people even use that function, lol

Yip, I'm totally a minority I think in that, from everyone I've talked too . I think AI fleet compositions are stronger too, I have a much harder time in 1v1 fleet battles as of the last couple of months. Maybe Auto-build is really lagging behind now compared to the AI?

 

[lilsaihah]

This doesn't answer the question of how often/when will you actually need to beat +8 detector, because by the time someone can get +8 detector- the dark matter tech era- they could also have taken any number of game-winning setups to have already won... and even if they don't, +8 detector doesn't mean anything if you can conquer the detector before the enemy fleet can engage, because the darkmatter era is also the era where starbases melt. If you are anywhere near parity with the AI, by the time they have detectors you can have jump drives, and just jump in and wipe the detector starbase, rendering it's role obsolete..

1. you have to reach just as hard as they do to actually get to Dark Matter cloaking or Dark Matter detectors.
2. build a hyper relay. your fleet can enter the system just as quickly as they can from an adjacent system without needing to activate jump drives. build defense platforms around the station itself to soak titan hits; they don't even need weapons on them, as they're literally just there to take hits.
3. build another detector.

like there's stuff you can do if another empire does it to you.
if the concern's really just about playing against AI empires... just don't use cloaking in SP games?

 

[Maethendias]

"A staple of sci-fi that has long been missing from Stellaris is the ability to have fleets and stations capable of being cloaked and hiding from enemy sensors"

imo, its a stupid staple, and usually makes no sense considering how difficult it acutally is to hide stuff in space, and how sensors actually work usually


hell all you need to do is get some infrared and there is nothing you can hide in space
ESPECIALLY a ship

 

[Calvax]

"A staple of sci-fi that has long been missing from Stellaris is the ability to have fleets and stations capable of being cloaked and hiding from enemy sensors"

imo, its a stupid staple, and usually makes no sense considering how difficult it acutally is to hide stuff in space, and how sensors actually work usually


hell all you need to do is get some infrared and there is nothing you can hide in space
ESPECIALLY a ship

In hard science fiction sure, but Stellaris has never been that and neither have the franchises it’s drawing from (namely Star Trek). Waste heat and hidden emissions can be handwaved as being radiated across multiple layers of subspace or something.

 

[Maethendias]

In hard science fiction sure, but Stellaris has never been that and neither have the franchises it’s drawing from (namely Star Trek). Waste heat and hidden emissions can be handwaved as being radiated across multiple layers of subspace or something.

true
but then again, handwave too much and the science in science fiction becomes magic, and at that point its fantasy
not to mention when it gets to the point of it actively creating misconseptions

 

[Calvax]

true
but then again, handwave too much and the science in science fiction becomes magic, and at that point its fantasy

I'm inclined to disagree. There's plenty of magic in the various classics of science fiction. Dune has psychic spice eaters, Known space has luck as gene, the Culture series has the grid etc.

Science fiction has always featured implausible, unrealistic, and often downright impossible tropes. It's a broad genre that, as a whole, has never been about presenting realistic science. It's more about presenting the feel of a materialistic universe rather than a supernatural one.

 

[Muellhaufen]

true
but then again, handwave too much and the science in science fiction becomes magic, and at that point its fantasy
not to mention when it gets to the point of it actively creating misconseptions

You're not wrong, but this would be a bizarre hill to die on considering Stellaris already has so many fantasy elements: Leviathans (how is it possible for being to evolve in/for space?), Psionics (literal space magic), Shields (manipulating EM fields to shield something is basically the same stuff as cloaking anyway), hell, FTL travel itself is firmly in the realm of "sci-fi magic".

EDIT: to clarify that shields = EM field control, it is part of the "Field Manipulation" tech category.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Nah. I just choose diplomacy and leave Nemesis unpurchased.

Similarly, I just choose "not cloaking" and leave the new DLC unpurchased.

I would prefer an L-gate like option of, shut off the bits of DLC I think are stupid, and keep the bits of DLC I might find fun.....rather than having to swallow the poison with the sugar....

 

[DeanTheDull]

1. you have to reach just as hard as they do to actually get to Dark Matter cloaking or Dark Matter detectors.

You seem to misunderstand the argument- before you get to the Dark Matter claoking, you can- and should- already have been snowballing so hard that you've functionally won the game, negating the relevance of end-game tech. This is the same general argument as to why Pacifist's amazing late-game bonuses at scale (stability, size decrease, happiness) don't matter in a competitive sense- they aren't worth the opportunity cost of winning earlier.

2. build a hyper relay. your fleet can enter the system just as quickly as they can from an adjacent system without needing to activate jump drives. build defense platforms around the station itself to soak titan hits; they don't even need weapons on them, as they're literally just there to take hits.

Again- by the time this is possible, as an attacker or a defender, you could invest the resources into something else to help you win earlier.

3. build another detector.

When would you need to if you've already won the game by choosing strategies earlier to mature than cloaking?

like there's stuff you can do if another empire does it to you.
if the concern's really just about playing against AI empires... just don't use cloaking in SP games?

It's the antithesis of a concern- apathy due to irrelevance.

In general games, especially competitive MP games which are generally decided within decades of the initial opening truce expiring, the economic snowballing that should be occuring long before dark matter is relevant renders any technology enabled by darkmatter functionally irrelevant.

 

[Ajacoba]

You seem to misunderstand the argument- before you get to the Dark Matter claoking, you can- and should- already have been snowballing so hard that you've functionally won the game, negating the relevance of end-game tech. This is the same general argument as to why Pacifist's amazing late-game bonuses at scale (stability, size decrease, happiness) don't matter in a competitive sense- they aren't worth the opportunity cost of winning earlier.




Again- by the time this is possible, as an attacker or a defender, you could invest the resources into something else to help you win earlier.




When would you need to if you've already won the game by choosing strategies earlier to mature than cloaking?



It's the antithesis of a concern- apathy due to irrelevance.

In general games, especially competitive MP games which are generally decided within decades of the initial opening truce expiring, the economic snowballing that should be occuring long before dark matter is relevant renders any technology enabled by darkmatter functionally irrelevant.

If you speedrun that much won't you have already snowballed and won way before you get to stack stealth high enough to be actually useful? Meaning stealth can be ignored, won't change the "speedrun meta" (lol) and will just be a roleplay thing for people who actually play the game "properly"?

 

[kwheeler]

PS: Envoys rule. Always wanting to have more envoys is akin to always wanting to have more Tradition slots: good game design makes for hard, interesting player choices!

This. Exactly this.

Having a limited number of envoys makes player choices matter. If you can spam envoys AND spies, it's just another resource to spend.

If you have to pick, it starts to shape the game so each game plays differently. Do I save those envoys for making friends with neighbors and building a federation, focusing on alliances? Or do I use them to throw my weight around the Galactic Council and make a move to become Emperor or weaken by enemies by passing Galactic laws that hinder them? Or do I focus on spying and maximizing intel, so I can see all the cloaked fleets of one particular enemy?

For me, that increases re-playability of Stellaris. If I use my envoys one way in one game, I have one type of experience. If I use them differently in a different game, I have a different type of experience.

I know some players posting here are irritated by espionage, but for me at least, this is a feature, not a bug.

 

[Muellhaufen]

PS: Envoys rule. Always wanting to have more envoys is akin to always wanting to have more Tradition slots: good game design makes for hard, interesting player choices!

I'll never disagree with the statement that the way envoys are used is good. It forces you to make those choices.

BUT, I will say of all the leader classes, they are massively dull. Even Generals (arguably a waste of Unity half the time) are presented better than envoys who receive no characterisation at all. Envoys should have traits, be recruitable at the cost of unity, be potential empire rulers, etc. IMO

 

[DeanTheDull]

If you speedrun that much won't you have already snowballed and won way before you get to stack stealth high enough to be actually useful? Meaning stealth can be ignored, won't change the "speedrun meta" (lol) and will just be a roleplay thing for people who actually play the game "properly"?

That's the point, yes, though I'd say that framing it as 'speedrunning' is framing the point as a pejorative.

The framing question was 'when are you ever going to be in a situation where you need to beat +8 cloaking detection?', which itself was in the context of the nominal advantage of cloaked destroyers over cloaked cruisers. The number of situations where you need to beat +8 cloaking detection are going to be when it actually matters, not when the result is the same whether you're detected or not. The entire cloaking detection is moot if you can win regardless of being detected, or if you can cap the starbase before a reinforcing fleet come in to catch your fleet before it re-cloaks and slips away, etc.

The argument isn't that you can't use it for roleplaying. The argument is against claiming that the roleplay option is a strategic advantage. It can be simultaneously true that Destroyers are best suited at avoiding max-level detection, AND that avoiding max-level detection is utterly meaningless in a strategic competitive sense.

Some bonuses are not worth chasing after.