Stellaris Dev Diary #291 - First Contact is Out, What’s Next?

[Faeelin]

I've covered this elsewhere by FC was by far the most bug free release we've done in a long while.

Bug A) I've already discussed elsewhere.
Bug B) I won't comment on as I don't know much about it.
Bug C) Payback did work, and I'm not aware of us having to do much to fix it up in the Hotfix beyond addressing some edge cases.

We test each of these Origins through and through. We got flow charts and everything!

Re C -

Stellaris - Even the Score/Payback bug

Description Even the Score/Payback bug Game Version v3.7.2 (e793) What version do you use? Paradox Launcher What expansions do you have installed? Do you have mods enabled? No Please explain your issue is in as much detail as...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Payback Achievement and Event Busted

So I started as a human empire with the payback origin. After I found MSI the debt collectors came, I told them to Pound Sand, and then MSI delared a subjugation war on me. It didn't let me chose payback as the war type so I chose subjugation...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Stellaris - (3.7.2, e793) Payback origin not finishing properly

Description (3.7.2, e793) Payback origin not finishing properly Game Version 3.7.2, e793 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? All except Toxiciods Do you have mods enabled? No Please explain your issue is in...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Stein14]

Well the second contact. USS Cerritos is already underway.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Here’s my proposal: dynamic terraforming, akin to archeological digs. Not only could terraforming time to more or less time, but you could also end up with a different climate than you’re expecting. Also, you can be tasked with different things. Planet too warm? Send a construction ship into orbit to build some orbital mirrors (bonus points, you get some power generation from some well positioned solar satellites). Planet too dry? Send that construction ship to mine the outer reaches of the solar system for some comets. Etc.

If you do everything just right, and get lucky, you might speed up progress dramatically, and maybe you even get a gaia world! Then again, you might just screw it up entirely and get a desert world, when you’re aquatic.

I was about to suggest energy beings for at least the third time, but I like this suggestion more.

 

[DominusNovus]

I was about to suggest energy beings for at least the third time, but I like this suggestion more.

Thanks! Also, it could play into other mechanics.

- Sublimating the ice caps, only to discover a precursor temple.
- Discovering extremophile sapient life
Etc

 

[Strager]

• The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.

This sounds like it should be made into an event instead of being removed.

 

[Faeelin]

I've covered this elsewhere by FC was by far the most bug free release we've done in a long while.

Bug A) I've already discussed elsewhere.
Bug B) I won't comment on as I don't know much about it.
Bug C) Payback did work, and I'm not aware of us having to do much to fix it up in the Hotfix beyond addressing some edge cases.

We test each of these Origins through and through. We got flow charts and everything!

Sometimes bugs are resolved by another fix listed in a patch but it's not always noted.

On B-

Stellaris - Zoonotic Plague event progress swapped

Description Zoonotic Plague event progress swapped Game Version 3.7 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Do you have mods enabled? No Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Stellaris - Plague wipes out primitives. One robot pop left on planet. [3.7.2][e793]

Description Plague wipes out primitives. One robot pop left on planet. [3.7.2][e793] Game Version Canis Minor What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Do you have mods enabled? Yes Please explain...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Zoonotic Plague

How exactly does any approach here matter, even if you try to help them most civs will die out long before the situation gets anywhere close to conclusion. The mortality rate seems way too high for anything but maybe an early space age civ to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[wiederwahl]

Always looking forward to new things, but please bring back the old Hive Mind name lists! The new ones are fine, but I loved the old ones and my main custom empire I used is now missing part of what made it special to me :c There's no reason why Hives can't have 4 name lists like pretty much everything else, is there?

I think detaching the name lists from the checksum would be a great way to address this - let us find or make our own namelist mods to use in games, since it doesn't affect gameplay mechanics either!

 

[amib]

Wasn't that fixed in 3.7.3? It's in the patch notes in the first post

huh, looks like it really was fixed. thank goodness

 

[rylasasin]

Some other things for 3.8:

1. Teach the AIs how to properly use the Clone Army, Doomsday, Void Dwellers, Shattered Ring Slingshot, and Teachers of the Shroud origins, and also rogue servitors.

• Clone Army AIs are completely clueless on what to do with their origin. They colonize the nearest planet, don't build any clone vats, get surprised pikachu-faced when their only pop dies, then repeat the process on the same planet over and over and over again until they pick descendant or they get a prim planet or they get a migration treaty.
• Doomsday AIs can't figure out 'Oh hey I should evac my pops before my world goes boom'. In fact, I don't think AIs know how to manually move their pops at all.
• Shattered Ring AIs don't seem to take advantage of the new mechanics. They still play it like the 3.4/3.5 version of it: very poorly.
• Despite the AI's propensity for spamming habitats late game, Void Dweller AIs cannot for the life of them figure out how to build habitats, and just end up camping around their home systems (unless like the aformentioned Clone Army origin they get lucky with prims or migration treaties).
• AIs don't seem to know or care how to use the provided Catapult.
• AIs with Teachers of the Shroud don't psionic rush (aka the one and only reason you'd ever use this origin.) They just piddle around with other techs and traditions and don't get around to psionic ascension until mid game.
• Rogue Servitors don't seem to make much use of biotrophies and biotrophy districts outside of their homeworld (unless they conquer or peacefully annex some alien's world).

2. Either fix or nix Xeno Compatibility. NO ONE uses it, and for good reason: it's a laggy mess of an ascension perk thanks to the hybrid system. Get rid of that in favor of something that keeps the original intent of it, but doesn't cause a lag nightmare.

Here's my propositions for it:

• 50% Xenophile attraction buff (100% for Fanatic Xenophobes)
• 50% Xenophobe attraction (100% for Fan Xenos)
• 10% Base immigration pull (20% for Fan Xenos)
• 2.5% Immigration pull per species on a world after the first. (3.75% for Fan Xenos)
• If there is more than one (biological) species on a world. Every time you grow a pop there is a 2.5% (3.75%) chance of producing a second pop of another species of one already on the planet. This chance increases by 2.5% (3.75%) per additional species. (This replaces the Hybrid system.)
• Researchers gain 0.2 (0.4) Society research per additional species present on the planet after the first.
• Non-Xenophobe pops gain 2.5% (3.75%) happiness and 1% (1.5%) resource output per additional species on the planet.
• Non-xenophobe pops on a planet with no additional species gain 25% happiness and -5% resource output. This penalty is doubled for xenophile pops.
• 50% pop growth reduction if a species is the only one on the planet.

Basically, it keeps the intent and makes it a boon for empires with a lot of species types in it, but nixes the hybrid system in favor of just producing an additional pop randomly.

I even made a Robot and Hive version:

Xeno Collection (machine version)

• Requirements: NOT Determined Exterminator or Driven Assimilator.
• Gain the Rogue Servitor civic trait if you do not already have it. Otherwise, gain 1 civic trait.
• Biotrophy sanctuaries and districts: +3 capacity per additional species.
• +5 Bio Trophy happiness per additional species.
• -10 Bio Trophy happiness if they are the only species present.
• Bio Trophies: 0.25 unity per additional species.
• Bio Trophies: 50% unity if they are the only species.
• Bio Trophy: 0.2% complex drone output per additional species.
• Bio Trophy: 0.5% complex drone output if they are the only species present.
• Calculator jobs gain 0.2 Society Research per Bio Trophy species.
• Every time a new pop is grown, gain +200 society research and +25 unity. This increases by +25 and +5 respectively per additional species present on the planet.
• Can enter into migration treaties with organic empires.
• Can demand/trade pop tribute from empires and subjects.
• Organic Empires that have a migration treaty with you gain the ability to produce an organic outpost building (1 per planet). This building offers 5 bio trophy jobs and 1 roboticist jobs (basically a buildable version of the overlord holding mixed in with a robot factory.)

Xeno Integration (hive version)

• Requirements: NOT Terravore or Devouring Swarm.
• Gain the Empath civic trait if you do not have it already. If you do, gain 1 civic trait. Cannot remove the Empath civic trait.
• Can enter into migration treaties into organic empires, including other hives.
• Non-hive empires that have migration treaties with you gain the ability to build one spawning pool. If you have the progenitor origin, they can build 1 offspring nest in their whole empire as well.
• Hive empires that enter into a migration treaty with you instead gain 1 spawning pool/offspring nest job per spawning nest/offspring nest.
• Pops from your empire that migrate to other empires lose the hive minded trait and gain the syncretics trait.
• Can assimilate other organic species into the hive even without the genetic/cybernetic path perk.
• Can no longer purge.
• Can demand/trade pop tribute from empires and subjects.
• 0.5+ spawning drone/offspring spawning drone job per additional species.
• 2.5+ pop growth/assembly per additional species.
• Brain Drone: 1+ Society research per additional species integrated into the hive mind.

And finally some minor QOL requests:

• The ability to manually assign certain pops and lock them to a certain job. If I make a robot for mining, I want it doing mining, not being taken up by some species that thinks it can do a better job but can't.
• The ability to lock/force/enable the pre-built empires for spawning just like the custom made ones.
• New Game Screen conveniences.
  • Minimum difficulty level if scaling is set to 'yes'. If set to a lower difficulty than ensign, the player bonuses will decrease as time goes on. That way you could have a game that starts on commodore and goes up to grand admiral by late game. Or starts on Civilian and goes up to Grand Admiral by mid game.
  • Bar to set the percentage of random empires vs premade empires. Yes you can specifically set all your custom empires to force spawn but that is not really a practical solution, especially if you want a certain few of those to always spawn.
• Stellaris Launcher: Switching mod playsets should also create/switch a new user_empire_designs_v3.4.txt and savegames folder to go with it.

 

[toegut]

really dislike this trend for the nested tooltip UI. They're finicky, you either have to wait for them to lock by themselves or murder your mouse's middle button to lock them in place. I guess if it's just for concepts it's ok since it will be useful only for new players, but don't copy Vicky 3 and bury necessary information within three-level deep nested tooltips.

 

[Dementor4]

One setting I really wanted to see is the ability of editing Origins to match our RP galaxy(ies) -- for example, by forming Federations (Common Ground) composed only by Aquatic species, Lithoids, Plantoids, etc. or by letting us to choose to what empire that Lost Colony belongs, intead of forcing some random generated empire down our throats.

You can pretty easily make your own "common ground" origin just by making another empire with your species and set it to always spawn. I do this when I play Clone Troopers.

 

[Troyen]

really dislike this trend for the nested tooltip UI. They're finicky, you either have to wait for them to lock by themselves or murder your mouse's middle button to lock them in place. I guess if it's just for concepts it's ok since it will be useful only for new players, but don't copy Vicky 3 and bury necessary information within three-level deep nested tooltips.

Both CK3 and Vic 3 let you configure the amount of time before the tooltip locks in place, you can just set that time to 0 or a fraction of a second.

They are finnicky when the rest of the UI doesn't take into account when you might want to use one. E.g. Vic 3 events have an icon indicating the option that will be automatically selected if you pick nothing yourself, but that icon has a different tooltip than the useful tooltip on the button itself. So if you want to access a nested tooltip within the event option's tooltip you have to mouse to a tiny 3px area between the auto-complete icon and the edge of the button, which is not a good experience.

I don't think off the top of my head Stellaris has many UI elements that will have a similar problem, but that is something I hope they keep an eye out for. Also, avoid useless tooltips whenever possible (where the tooltip just restates the element you moused over).

 

[Millbot]

If there is more than one (biological) species on a world. Every time you grow a pop there is a 2.5% (3.75%) chance of producing a second pop of another species of one already on the planet. This chance increases by 2.5% (3.75%) per additional species. (This replaces the Hybrid system.)

I like all the ideas for making xenocompatibility a workable perk, except this part. I get the idea, but I've played enough games to know that that can really get into an issue of feast or famine scenarios. Where a game ends up being absolutely broken in either crippling underpowered because you rarely get the bonus pops brocs or grossly OP because the bonus pop generations procs a ton.

Also see this setup being a pain if something breaks with the code because it'll be hard to tell if someone is just either getting poor or exceptional luck or if the code isn't doing what's it's suppose to do.

I'd argue the simple but boring X% pop growth per each species on the planet would be the way to go. Probably cap it at a maximum, so that people don't feel like they have to have one of each species in the galaxy on all their colonies for maximum pop growth. Not simple, easy tot rack if it's working and no risk of feast or famine scenarios that end up breaking the game.

Would love to keep the extra trait point and trait slot but it's probably not worth the effort needed to make it work in a way that doesn't make it a brain dead auto pick for every build that can access the perk, while also avoiding the current pitfall that ends up being a huge performance hit. Like I'm pretty sure that part of the idea with the current RNG generated pops was so that they wouldn't have min/maxers autogenerating a list of ideal templates that they gene mode stuff into for maximum resource production. I guess the current setup making the species tab inaccessible does prevent that, even if it isn't the intended goal for preventing it.

Anyways, I'm hoping the next patch is going to take a long look at federations and the overlord vassal system because both systems have some pretty major issues and I'd argue the overlord vassal system being too powerful, put a real damper on federations, which do have some issues that recent dlc has added. I'll throw out a brief list of federation issues and try to be as brief as I can be.

-Federations have too much of a time sink or too much of an opportunity cost if you go with one of the federation origins. Where being an overlord with vassal swarm is pretty easy get rolling and max out. One easy fix would be to have the ability to form federations unlocked once you complete first contact with another empire. Maybe rework the current tradition to make your envoys assigned to the federation more effective. Maybe diplomacy and dominion should be mutually exclusive traditions as well, with diplomacy be what a player takes if they want to get the most out of federations, while dominion is the go to tree if you want the most out of your vassal (I wouldn't lock specialization behind it though).

-Cohesion needs another pass, right now it's incredibly punishing. I know I've probably not the only player that will go along with some of the AI's really dumb votes because each hit to cohesion ends up being a sizable delay to leveling up your federation. So you get fun ring around votes where one members gives association to another empire and a few days latter, another member initiates a vote to remove that empire's association status because they don't like them. It's really stupid, but he keep clicking yes because going along with the annoyance is just annoying, but a failed vote is punishing.

-Overlords are able to actually help build their vassals up, while federation members can't really do anything to help a struggling member. At least not anything that is unique tot he federation because anyone can bail out a non-allied empire with either trades, closing borders or declaring war. Only overlords can build hyper relays and gateways in another empire and can set up holdings that can really help a weaker empire (I mean to a degree megacorps can somewhat do this but you have to be a megacorp and their builds aren't nearly as good for development of an empire as overlord holdings). Federations needs to be able to do the same with gateways and hyper relays, while having some sort of holding setup that is all about mutual assistance. One balance approach to this could be that vassals in the same federation as their overlord cannot get those federation benefits and their overlord has to develop them, while also maybe having overlords like that take a hit to the benefit they get from federation holding buildings. To the point that they either release their vassals, agree to a federation law that let's those vassals get federation holdings instead or just accept things as they are.

-The galactic empire and really the league of nonaligned worlds from war in heaven, just break things. Never did the galactic rebellion thing, so no idea if the federation from that has the same problems you get with the empire and the league of nonaligned worlds You get to take your specialized vassals into those at their current level and they can keep leveling up, unless they get destroyed by you, another empire or a crisis. The empire going up instantly destroys all the work and progress that went into any federations, where enough of their members end up in the empire. The other two kind of have the issue where the setup tries to force a bunch of empires into a federation that might not be setup for and puts people on the spot of possibly abandoning the federation they've worked so hard on. Also the loss of federation fleets hurts , if it was your empire that funded their construction.

When the empire gets founded, existing federations should be shifted into something new that retains the federation levels and a decent chunk of the perks at least. Maybe the emperor gets shifted to being honorary member in all the federations, where they don't get the benefit of the actual perks, whatever still exists of them, but perhaps access to the federation holdings of a federation of their choosing. Maybe federation fleets don't get disbanded but become a psuedo-mercenary enclave that players have to go through some hoops to use, with a reduction to the diplomatic weight they provide and not be employable by the emperor.

The other two probably should have a similar dynamic where they are they are a much larger organization that allows for the existence of federations within them, but with different features than the normal GALCOM and the Galactic Empire.

-I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that the federated origins really need some love because the downsides for taking them are pretty huge. Most challenging starts aren't nearly as bad as those two origins, which is bad when you consider those two origins are suppose to be challenging starts. At least if you play them as intended, I know there are ways to cheese them.

 

[Hawawaa]

I got a funny interaction, choose Fear the Dark. Set a trade deal with research enclave to boost your science. Become a Fanatic Purifiers. You can still continue the deal for science boost. I wonder if the other enclave deals would be exploitable.

 

[Nis Baggesen]

Here’s my proposal: dynamic terraforming, akin to archeological digs. Not only could terraforming time to more or less time, but you could also end up with a different climate than you’re expecting. Also, you can be tasked with different things. Planet too warm? Send a construction ship into orbit to build some orbital mirrors (bonus points, you get some power generation from some well positioned solar satellites). Planet too dry? Send that construction ship to mine the outer reaches of the solar system for some comets. Etc.

If you do everything just right, and get lucky, you might speed up progress dramatically, and maybe you even get a gaia world! Then again, you might just screw it up entirely and get a desert world, when you’re aquatic.

I've had a slightly similar thought, though I've always thought that doing it via Tile Blockers would make sense. When you start the process the environment is changed, but adds a lot of tile blockers that you need to fix to actually get a new working environment.

 

[LordBane80]

Anomaly found.
Anomaly found.
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Anomaly found.
Anomaly found.
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Anomaly found.
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Anomaly found.


Pretty please give us an option to turn off the popup spam!

 

[Starfire Breeze]

Some other things for 3.8:

1. Teach the AIs how to properly use the Clone Army, Doomsday, Void Dwellers, Shattered Ring Slingshot, and Teachers of the Shroud origins, and also rogue servitors.

• Clone Army AIs are completely clueless on what to do with their origin. They colonize the nearest planet, don't build any clone vats, get surprised pikachu-faced when their only pop dies, then repeat the process on the same planet over and over and over again until they pick descendant or they get a prim planet or they get a migration treaty.

I could be misremembering, but I think that Clone Army having problems is a regression in 3.7 and it used to work for the AI empires in 3.6.

• Doomsday AIs can't figure out 'Oh hey I should evac my pops before my world goes boom'. In fact, I don't think AIs know how to manually move their pops at all.

There's some script directives to try to resettle things for the AI for doomsday, but I seem to recall that they have had a bit of a history of every so often, being broken by various patches (before someone goes around to fixing them again when that happens).

 

[Extrym]

I hope and the next update will improve the galaxy creation menu how many times have I not ended up next to a fallen empire or marauders, also it should be implemented if we want to have all the leviathanes as they did with the crises.

 

[Imp0815]

So What’s Next?

Military/Combat Rework? ♥

 

[LordBane80]

Also, for first contact with aliens, a "Don't bother me till you can talk to them" box.
Stellaris really suffers from a spam of pointless popups. It makes the early game really suck to get through.

Pointless popup pauses game.
Click ok
Un-pause.
30 seconds later (on normal speed, not even fastest)
Pointless popup pauses game.
Click ok
Un-pause.
30 seconds later
Pointless popup pauses game.
(Screams at monitor: "GO THE **** AWAY I'M TRYING TO GIVE COMMANDS TO SHIPS")
Click ok
Un-pause game.
30 seconds later
And so on.

Expansion phase is over.. Thank god!

The rule for popups should be as follows:
If I don't have to even bother to read it, it shouldn't exist.