Stellaris Dev Diary #294 - 3.8 ‘Gemini’ Coop Open Beta Release Notes

[SeekingEtermity]

"Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken."

I dunno about this one, I've seen plenty of complaints about the limited storage and now you're limiting it even more, and gating more storage behind an AP that most may not even take (a lot) is arguably even worse.

@Alfray Stryke
I have very rarely disagreed with a Stellaris decision as much as I do this one. This is purely, 100% absolutely nothing but anti-quality-of-life for the player. If you in fact have any justification for why players should contend with such a crippled storage capacity, please enlighten us, I beg of you!

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Resource storage capacities are in general anti-QoL, not to mention pointlessly immersion-breaking; space is vast, and an FTL-capable civilization is going to have no trouble whatsoever storing arbitrary amounts of material resources. The fact that I physically can't hold enough minerals to make an ecumenopolis unless I spend a pittance of minerals or alloys building a storage depot literally anywhere in the galaxy is just... do I really have to say it? That makes no sense. It's bad. It doesn't make the game better in any way. It doesn't meaningfully affect balance. It doesn't provide a useful way for a skilled player to outplay a poor one. It doesn't make the game more immersive. It doesn't slow down snowballing (or accelerate it, for that matter). It doesn't prevent exploits (indeed, it enables them, see below). It doesn't entice the player to put their eggs in one basket (in fact, since other empires almost never know where your resource storage is, it doesn't affect combat strategy at all).

It doesn't give the player agency at all! It's nothing but pointless busy work and a way to fill unused building slots!

What's more, it certainly doesn't conform to player expectations! Can anybody think of another space-based 4X that has resource limits like this? Or heck, any 4X at all? The only ones I'm aware of are due to integer overflows in really old, generally DOS-based games, an utter non-issue on modern 64-bit systems. Even non-4X games don't have this, in most cases; the closest thing I can think of to Stellaris that has resource storage caps is the Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander/Planetary Annihilation family of RTS games, which have a fundamentally different economy (and even then, the game won't stop you from building an entire battleship fleet with your starting resource capacity anyhow, you'll just need some income - any income at all - if you want it to ever finish, and positive net income if you want it to finish in the normal time... see the point about fundamentally different economy).

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But enough about game mechanics that suck, let's talk about Minor Artifact capacity. Minor artifacts are, per the game lore, pieces of ancient hardware or blueprints or whatnot, right? Whereas alloys are, like, modern military components, ammo, and other materiel. In most cases surely alloys are far more important to keep out of the wrong hands (their use is well known and they're widely adaptable to any military need)... so why can I store 7.5x as many of them as I can of Minor Artifacts at the game's start, and [NIGH-ARBITRARILY LARGE NUMBER] times as many by end-game?

Hypothetically speaking, if I designed a cruiser using the max number of Archaeotech components, it would cost... I think I see a way to 152 Minor Artifacts (80 for the defenses, 20 for bow weapons, 36 for core weapons, 16 for the stern weapons). If I have a nice mid-game fleet capacity of 80 and a Facility or Archaeostudies, I can't even order an entire fleet of these ships at once no matter how good my minor income capacity is or how long I've been stockpiling; that would take 3040 Minor Artifacts, and heaven forbid those last 40 exist somewhere in the same galactic empire with the other 3000! It's even worse for Corvettes; up to 24 for defense and and 28 for weapons makes for 52/ship, meaning building just one early-game navy of 40 corvettes costs more than the entire starting Minor Artifact allowed capacity. A late-game battleship fleet - 25 ships (a mere 200 fleet capacity, which isn't the limit even without APs!), each using 72 for defense and 46 bow + 64 core + 20 stern (202 total, for an admittedly questionable build) - would take more Minor Artifacts (5050) to build than the game will ever, under any circumstances, let one empire hold at any point in time.

WHY???

You might counter "But that's not how archaeotech components are meant to be used!" OK then, what is? They aren't actually much better than most other tier-3-tech components and also have poor synergy with a lot of baseline components; if you want to actually use them much at all you should use them heavily, maximize the quality of every point of naval capacity, and generally that means using them very heavily during the brief window where you have the tech and the components are straightforward upgrades. Besides, the need to pay upkeep means you might not keep a big navy in peacetime, and the thing where archaeotech components mostly aren't that amazing unless you have the AP (and sometimes not even then) means you probably don't use them until you get the AP at which point you'll retrofit your entire navy. An entire navy is going to consist of a lot more than just one fleet; even if you maybe only end up using 100-150 Minor Artifacts per hull, you're still going to need for more of them than you can hold at once to upgrade the entire navy!

But I'd argue that this counter is missing the point. It should not be possible to make these examples! It's absurd that one admiral's fleet can incorporate more Minor Artifacts into its member vessels than a galaxy-wide Kardeshev-type-II civilization can find room for in all its warehouses and orbital depots!

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Instead, this nonsense encourages complex and annoying micromanagement and exploits. Queue up a few slow-building ships (colonizers or something) and some maxed-out-on-Minor-Artifacts warship hulls as a way to store thousands of extra Minor Artifacts in a single shipyard's build queue, fully recoverable (via cancellations) so long as you remember to restart the colony ship at the start before anything finishes? Trade your excess Minor Artifact production to another empire to use their stockpile limit, buying them back in a lump sum when you actually need them?

I'm not saying this is the gameplay experience you want to give us, but it's sure what we're receiving! For what, though?

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Solved exploit where a base price would constantly reset the next day if you sold the minimum amount

You call this an "exploit" - and I suppose in a sense I see the argument, since it lets you sell 3000 food per month for full price, if you want to play the world's most terrible rhythm clicker game - but it's been the behavior for over three years now?! Through a ton of rounds of work on "fixing" the market? Through the existence of entire empire types rising to prominence on the basis of being able to do this and falling out again as balance changes were made? Through all the many versions when Farmers were so much more efficient than Technicians that generator districts were nigh-worthless? Through the many versions since where Technicians (or especially machine Tech-Drones) are so much more efficient than Miners that the only sane thing to do in the early game is build Generator districts and constantly buy as many minerals per month as the game will allow without screwing you over on price? Through the constant-to-this-day bug where market prices go haywire on loaded games, causing the buy/sell prices on internal market monthly orders to quietly snowball into disaster if you don't forget to disable them before saving/resuming?

After literal years of that, you've now decided that this specific behavior is an exploit and seek to fix it?

Wow. I'm not sure which is worse: the world where you thought the existing behavior was fine for 40 real-world months before deciding it was an exploit, or the world where you noticed it and only just now got around to fixing it. Either way, that's kind of depressing.

 

[Komrad Truck]

Great changes.

B-b-b-but what about the disengage fleet bug?

Fix dat PLEASE! MP enjoyers suffer immensily when fleets get wiped because of it, literally game-and-heart-breaking thing.


IMPORTANT INFO for QA: by the looks of it we managed to find the reason of the bug. If the last still fighting ship of the fleet gets killed, the bug happens.

 

[Rafss]

While we are at it, why don't we add Relic Capacity and return with Leader Capacity?
And give Mega-Engineering +1 Relic Capacity!!!

Wait wait, what if... Vassal Capacity?
Oh boy, I just solved another problem!! I am a master of good game design I know!

/s

 

[Keith_C]

I can get behind the concept of 'limited use' archeotech, but it should be vastly more powerful in that case. My thinking to make archeotechs more useful, while also tracking to the concept of 'limited use' is:

• No AP: Pretty much as things are now. You can fit components to existing ships, but they're expensive. I'd give most of the components a minor power bump though. I still like the idea of the Facility of Archeo Engineers giving Archeotechs a minor bump, so that might be a better way to handle that.

• AP: You can now build Fallen Empire fleets. You're limited in total effective fleet capacity of these hull types, in the same vein as the federation/GDF capacity limits, but this could potentially be expandable through other means - traditions maybe, or techs. These things are powerful...but eye-wateringly expensive. Expensive to build - in terms of both resources and time, and expensive to deploy; their upkeep when away from home should be staggering, and something to only be done under extreme circumstances.
  • When archeotech components are installed in these ships they should get a significant boost to their stats. You could even have the boost scale further in line with the percentage of the ship that's archeotech, culminating with an extra finisher bonus for a 100% archeotech ship.
  • You should also be able to retrofit any donated (Holy Guardians/Scion) or event ships (which, IMO, should have archeotech components).
  • Fallen empires should gain a modifier; they should see you a being closer to their level as a result of having mastered these ancient techs. Note I didn't say it had to be a positive modifier - this may make them more likely to Awaken and directly target you...
  • You can mine Relic worlds for more MA's. Again, a reward for the opportunity cost of not converting those back to a full-fat ecumenopolis. Or maybe have the Facility of Archeo Engineers increase its outputs on Relic worlds (might be simpler)

Basically, if you don't commit to archeotech, you can tinker with some interesting components with some situational capabilities you may find appealing, but they don't change much for you.

But if you do commit, you should have a military (yes, I think there should be archeotech armies) that even would give even a fallen empire pause. Remember, this costs an ascension perk; if I take this I might be giving up the ability to build a colossus, or the ability to build ringworlds - if I'm doing that I want something that feels on the same level of power.

 

[Commander Tobe]

While we are at it, why don't we add Relic Capacity and return with Leader Capacity?
And give Mega-Engineering +1 Relic Capacity!!!

Wait wait, what if... Vassal Capacity?
Oh boy, I just solved another problem!! I am a master of good game design I know!

I can't tell if this is sarcasm.

 

[Idle America]

My two usual requests:
1. Base template for Fallen Empires' slaves, so we can remove the nerve-stapling without the Genetic Ascension perk
2. Nuclear War should be an event chain, instead of the RNG just going "Oop, everyone's dead now" without warning. At least some warning of rising tensions. Really, almost anything would be better.

 

[Idle America]

• Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.

That's a nice touch, but I am wondering if you would consider allowing Venus to be terraformed with the Detox trait, and adding in a unique map for it as well (there are plenty floating about showing the prospective Aphrodite and Ishtar continents),

Last I checked, Venus can be terraformed. I would LOVE a unique map for it, though! I like to make Mars a military base and Venus a resort world, to fit with the "War and Beauty" themes.

 

[Cymsdale]

• Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.

Ugggh, I was on the fence about opting in to the beta because I didn't want to disrupt my current game. Now I wish I did, because I hit that Status Quo button in my current war and got such a weird result. It was hugely in my favor, but feels so cheese.

 

[Darkspysrival]

I'm glad to see that Sol is getting some unique textures, especially terraformed Mars. I hope you'll give Venus the same treatment eventually.

 

[Primarch Victus]

My two usual requests:
1. Base template for Fallen Empires' slaves, so we can remove the nerve-stapling without the Genetic Ascension perk
2. Nuclear War should be an event chain, instead of the RNG just going "Oop, everyone's dead now" without warning. At least some warning of rising tensions. Really, almost anything would be better.

The devs already fixed that problem with the pre-ftl civs always killing themselves in a nuclear war. But your idea sounds far better than their solution for the problem.

 

[Blackadder23]

That reminds me a bit of the espionage system. I think I'm starting to see a pattern here...

Prior to the espionage system being introduced, plenty of people predicted it would either be useless or annoying, because one or the other is pretty much always the case with espionage in 4X games. Personally, I'm glad they landed on "useless" rather than the alternative.

 

[Blackadder23]

The fact that I physically can't hold enough minerals to make an ecumenopolis unless I spend a pittance of minerals or alloys building a storage depot literally anywhere in the galaxy is just... do I really have to say it?

You just have to wait for the galactic market and/or get megastructures technology. Both of those increase your storage capability sufficiently.

That said, I agree that the limits on storage are pointless, and I would be just as happy to see them abolished.

 

[Millbot]

Prior to the espionage system being introduced, plenty of people predicted it would either be useless or annoying, because one or the other is pretty much always the case with espionage in 4X games. Personally, I'm glad they landed on "useless" rather than the alternative.

Yeah, if i had to choose between those two options. I'd rather go with useless.

That said, I still maintain they missed a huge opportunity to avoid that scenario. When they set things up so that we couldn't use espionage on marauders (including the Khan), fallen empires and end game crises. I'd even go as far as to say they probably could have found a way to open the system up for use against hostile spaceborne fauna, the gray tempest and leviathans. Also open it up for other AI run entities, that aren't normal empires, that players could play.

That would have opened the door to have introduce more powerful espionage options, that are fun to use, but not fun to play against and in a way where players wouldn't end up having to play against unfun mechanics.

 

[currylambchop]

So if Montu can be believed

Doubtful given his recent shenanigans tbh

 

[currylambchop]

Ugggh, I was on the fence about opting in to the beta because I didn't want to disrupt my current game. Now I wish I did, because I hit that Status Quo button in my current war and got such a weird result. It was hugely in my favor, but feels so cheese.

The beta isn't out yet

 

[Anemetius]

game is still full of bugs, fix this %^&$# game before you push new relese...

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Last I checked, Venus can be terraformed.

For some reason, not all versions of Venus have the Toxic Terraforming Candidate modifier.

Venus only has the modifier if you start with the Toxic God version of the Sol system or you start as the United Nations of Earth.

Venus does not have the modifier if you play as a custom empire starting the Sol system, start with the Void Dweller version of Sol, start as the Earth Custodianship, or in the primitive version of Sol spawns somewhere in the galaxy.

And for the sake of completeness, Venus also does not get the Toxic Terraforming Candidate modifier in the version of the UNE that spawns when the player selects or force-spawns the Commonwealth of Man.

 

[Cymsdale]

The beta isn't out yet

Oh good, so it's the devs' fault!

 

[Primarch Victus]

For some reason, not all versions of Venus have the Toxic Terraforming Candidate modifier.

Venus only has the modifier if you start with the Toxic God version of the Sol system or you start as the United Nations of Earth.

Venus does not have the modifier if you play as a custom empire starting the Sol system, start with the Void Dweller version of Sol, start as the Earth Custodianship, or in the primitive version of Sol spawns somewhere in the galaxy.

And for the sake of completeness, Venus also does not get the Toxic Terraforming Candidate modifier in the version of the UNE that spawns when the player selects or force-spawns the Commonwealth of Man.

Venus should be a terraforming candidate together with Mars for any empire starting on Sol -- not matter if it is customized or not. Even if the "terraforming" is just a few Bubblehabs floating high in Venus's atmosphere.