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Stellaris Dev Diary #30 - Late Game Crises

Hi folks!

We’re getting close to release and there is not much left to talk about that we haven’t already covered. The only remaining major feature is, I believe, the “Late Game Crises” events, and I really don’t want to spoil them, so bear with me if I’m being slightly vague this time…

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Now, last week I talked about how large empires will have to worry about keeping all manner of political Factions in check. This is one of the ways we try to keep the game interesting and challenging past that crucial point when you often tend to lose interest in most strategy games and feel that you’ve already won. It’s not much fun to spend hours of your life mopping up the final resistance just so you’ll get to see that sweet acknowledgement saying “Victory!”. Another way to keep a game interesting is through random occurrences that can upset your plans even at a very late stage. This is where dangerous technologies and late game crises enter the picture.

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Some technologies are clearly marked as being “risky”, for example Robot Workers. Now, you might not always risk having your victory snatched out of your grasp, but in this case at least, you really are gambling with the fate of the galaxy. Just researching such a technology is safe; it’s the actual use of it that carries the danger. For example, the more sentient Robot Pops there are in the galaxy, the higher the risk is that they will come to deem organic life unfit to exist and rise up in a well-planned revolt. Unless crushed quickly and with overwhelming force, such a Machine Empire will quickly get out of hand and threaten all the remaining empires in the galaxy. Sentient robots will out-research and outproduce everyone. If the revolt is centered in a powerful rival empire, you’ll need to think carefully about when you want to intervene; a savvy player might time it just right and be able to mop up both the robots and the remnants of the rival empire. Leave it too long, however, and the robots will overwhelm you.

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The idea is that you will usually see one of the possible late game crises every time you play, but the chances increase the longer it takes you to win. However, it’s very rare to see more than one in the same game. The different threats vary in nature and behaviour, and can offer opportunities as well as posing an enormous danger to your survival. For example, it might be possible to reverse engineer some really unique technologies from these galactic threats, but the geography of the galaxy might also change in your favor…

That’s it for now my friends! Next week, we’ll change tack completely, and do a two-part, in-depth guide for modders.
 
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Darkath said:
Ah, yes. Prethoryn. The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. Haven't we dismissed that claim before?
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I must admit that I was literally reading all the comments hoping that someone would mention the Reapers or Mass Effect in one way or another hahaha. I am a tiny bit dissapointed that I had to scroll till page 7 though. ;p

On a serious notice, we have 'giant' alien creatures ingame like the space amoebes. Those could easily be replaced by giant AI's which fire molten metal at their enemies and make terrifiyng sounds so with the ingame options it is definitely possible to make reaper-like creatures. Wiz has also already mentioned reapers and the mass effect universe in the Blorg stream a few times so I wouldn't really be surprised if one of the late-game disasters is an invasion of giant sentient AI's. It would be pretty awesome if they would do something like this. Me and my friends are huge ME fans and fighting reaper-like creatures in what probably will be the best space-strategy out there would almost be a dream come true. I'm really looking forward to finding out what all the possible disasters are.
 
Crossing my fingers for a "Mule" endgame crisis (a la the Mule from Foundation) if psionics become too prevalent. A psychic leader that rebels and flips pops to its empire.
 
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Cheers for the DD Doomdark :D. Late game Crises sound tops, and while MoO had its Altairans that came back that were kind of along those lines, having a broader range of less predictable crises a great step forward in space game design. I look forward to battling it out with a sentient robot army :D.

Also, very much look forward to hearing about the mod tools for Stellaris. I personally plan to focus my efforts on HoI4, but I'd be very (very) surprised if I didn't play some Stellaris mods.
 
TheDungen said:
I mean stuff like a shields, I mean stuff like cloaking devices, I mean stuff like phasing, I mean stuff like making warp unstable around your borders (good luck reaching me with sublight speeds) stuff like retreating and letting your friends or preferably your enemies get slaughtered while you seek a technoloical solutution. I'm talking opening up a portal to another universe and leaving I'm talking folding space to remove yourself from the conflict. I'm talkign setting up a time dialation field around your planet so you can research a solution for a thousand years the day before they arrive at your homeworld. I'm talking using the same time dialation field to trap these beings in near stasis forever. I'm talking stuff like building big honking ships and leaving for another galaxy. Or freezing the most important members of your society at a hidden location and simply waiting until they leave. Or unleashign another crisis in their wake to delay them. If they are from outside the universe something like the necron pylons may work, if they are nids then perhaps the things they use in starcraft to control the swarm, or just a pheromone thing that keeps them away. Or move your people to space stations around a black hole and wait the enemy out, And all these solutions took me like 5 minutes to come up with. There are plenty more solutions that does not include firing a single shot.
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I think all solutions that involve blocking the invaders, isolating yourself or changing the invaders behavior assumes a technical superiority that may not be present. Solutions like getting patsies fight for you or unleashing a plague in their rear area don't seem particularly pacifistic. The leaving the neighborhood solution is I guess feasible, depending on whether you can outrun them, but it would be asking a lot to implement this. Would be cool if you could do this though.

Because fighting is far to often a go to solution for everything in games. Also there's a pacifict ethos while the true opposite is not present, some radical pacifists should never view war as a solution (dependign on their personality or what the player wants to roleplay), while even very warlike societies will not always view war as the only solution (Even the imperium of man, even the orks, make use of diplomacy from time to time)
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I think the true opposite would be the sort of implacably hostile intelligences that are invading the galaxy (they are a staple of SF). It would be nice if that sort of species was playable though.

And no I don't thing that a pacisfist empire needs to make an exception for self defnece that should be the players choice forcing him to do that or lose the game is removing player agency. A pacifist empire should have the option to be completly pacifist.
It should be a risky strategy you may lose before you manage your alternative solution, but it should be an option to take the chance.
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I don't think the designers are under an obligation to guarantee that you never have to compromise your morals to survive. If I was roleplaying a species that absolutely refused to defend themselves, and some sort of implacable threat arrived before they could achieve their goals, then I would consider it a victory from an RP perspective if they all eventually died rather than use a weapon. If I was roleplaying an implacably hostile race, that considered themselves at permanent war with everyone, then they are either going to see the limits of their philosophy when they run into a Fallen Empire, or they will die.
 
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EntropyAvatar said:
I think all solutions that involve blocking the invaders, isolating yourself or changing the invaders behavior assumes a technical superiority that may not be present. Solutions like getting patsies fight for you or unleashing a plague in their rear area don't seem particularly pacifistic. The leaving the neighborhood solution is I guess feasible, depending on whether you can outrun them, but it would be asking a lot to implement this. Would be cool if you could do this though.



I think the true opposite would be the sort of implacably hostile intelligences that are invading the galaxy (they are a staple of SF). It would be nice if that sort of species was playable though.



I don't think the designers are under an obligation to guarantee that you never have to compromise your morals to survive. If I was roleplaying a species that absolutely refused to defend themselves, and some sort of implacable threat arrived before they could achieve their goals, then I would consider it a victory from an RP perspective if they all eventually died rather than use a weapon. If I was roleplaying an implacably hostile race, that considered themselves at permanent war with everyone, then they are either going to see the limits of their philosophy when they run into a Fallen Empire, or they will die.
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Whatever they want to be achievable will be achieveable. And if the crisies just become another freaking empire to fight then I'll probably mod them out, seems like a wasted opportunity though. The fun is in the other solutions, even fighting should just be about holding the lines for a real solution to be deviced.
 
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Could someone explain the giant-eye-thingy reference (judging from the comments it seems to be a reference for SOMETHING). Sorry, I haven't read any of Lovecraft's works.


It looks too sp00ky, could I disable that particular end-game catastrophe (jk)?
 
I would much rather the dangerous technologies weren't flagged as such. While some of them would be fairly obvious to the player (sentient AI...) I imagine there would be a good number that aren't, which would make the game less predictable.
 
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HAK HAK HAK HAK HAK HAK HAK HAK HAK

but seriously im so glad to see the extragalactic invaders having the morbid organic atmosphere in homage to the tyranids/flood/etc
 
The_Meme_Man said:
Could someone explain the giant-eye-thingy reference (judging from the comments it seems to be a reference for SOMETHING). Sorry, I haven't read any of Lovecraft's works.


It looks too sp00ky, could I disable that particular end-game catastrophe (jk)?
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It doesn't really remind me of any specific Lovecraft creature, however for all you D&D scumbags it does look like a beholder.
 
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cool.
 
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It would be really cool to restart a new game, in a galaxy that has been completely ravaged by superior AI robots that cleaned out the galaxy and then essentially went to sleep for millennia out of boredom because perfection was achieved...

Possible Paradox Scenario?
 
Dunbal said:
Surely the point of mucking around is the mucking around itself. If you get frustrated because some "late game crisis" gets in the way of your mucking around then the problem is you. Clearly you weren't mucking around, you wanted to reach a certain set of goals.
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Maybe I should clarify. Yea, I think late game crisis is great and will bring some good fun and challenge as you try to deal with some great galactic horror. But some sometimes, I would just like to have the universe takes its course and see what kind empires are formed and how the world turns out without an sudden disaster just blobbing all over existing empires. Mianly hope you get a choice on when you want late game crisis during game setup.
 
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