Stellaris Dev Diary #301 - Galactic Paragons is out, what's next?

[Kalenicus]

I'd rather avoid a repeatable tech to raise leader cap, since it'd effectively remove the cap from the game completely and be the most powerful Society repeatable by a mile.

Perhaps a repeatable with a cap, like the Fleet Command Limit repeatable tech?

 

[Kalenicus]

Are we going to see a fix/update of the Zroni relic since it doesn’t work with the leader rework?

 

[Hansatron]

The -2 flat bonus for governors is underwhelming. I don't see any reason now to pick up the Aptitude traditions. I expected something like -2% per governor or -0.5% per governor lvl up to -10% or -20%, whatever makes sense. The flat -2 is useless.

It’s basically deleting the value of that tradition, sure, but it was overpowered. It’s not like admirals gave you +2% naval cap.

The real value in aptitude is probably supposed to be its agenda, and I guess +1 leader starting trait.

All flat leader xp gains like the +2000 are affected by any % boosts, and you can get a lot of those. It’s not that hard to get level 10 leaders this way just by running it when you can. Really handy for gestalts that can’t change their nodes or assign them to field duty.

In any case, it’s a free level up for all your leaders in most cases (until you get close to max level) which is a really good agenda when you compound all the council traits and such.

Definitely a tree that only really makes sense early and best paired with eg Transcendent Learning.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Are we going to see a fix/update of the Zroni relic since it doesn’t work with the leader rework?

Please make a bug report about this on the current version.

 

[Soranya]

I suppose as we approach the Swedish summer holiday we will see bug fixes and the balance patch and then, hopefully, the big experiments they plan to try out to see if they improve the game. Wonder what it will be this year (please be the faction overhaul).

Species management please.

 

[Soranya]

I'd rather avoid a repeatable tech to raise leader cap, since it'd effectively remove the cap from the game completely and be the most powerful Society repeatable by a mile.

if something like this comes make it unlikely to show up AND limit it to 5 max or so...

 

[CocoCincinnati]

"Added the Leader of Opportunity trait, leaders that have this trait do not count towards Leader Capacity while under Level 4."

I actually really like this idea. Would allow us to have plenty of "lower level" leaders to fill all of those empty slots, would even allow us to have a general leading our army. How great would that be.

It would need to be a trait that only pops up at level 1 because people are going to hate seeing it pop up at level 7....completely wasted trait at that point.

Also, it would be nice if the trait somehow stopped XP gain at level 4....otherwise it's going to create an ever increasing descent into mirco-madness as players have to go find that one level 5 governor that's putting them over the cap every few years to fire and re-hire.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

You see, it's also important to note why they dislike the leader cap.

Reasons players have mentioned include, but are not limited to:
Do they want to build 15 science ships and explore half the galaxy in the first 20 years?
Are they upset that they lose so much XP for being over the leader cap?
Are they upset because they lose so much unity to leaders?
Are they mad because they can't specialise their research as easily as they previously could?
Are they feeling like their empire is empty because of the black boxes on their planets/fleets, where there used to be a shiny character?

Each of these issues have/can have different solutions. The devs have been going over player feedback that we've been receiving and discussing it at length on the best possible approaches for figuring out which solution(s) to use.

You're missing the biggest issue: the selection pressure of a low cap forces entire classes out of existence. I.e. no generals unless you have a council position, fire the starting admiral for more scientists, fire all the scientists after exploration is done for more admirals or governors, etc.

I understand that forcing hard choices between leader classes/veteran classes was intentional. But "never hire a general" isn't really a choice. And "fire all the Kirk/Picard analogues to really rub it in that the exploration phase is over" was presumably not part of that goal.

As I understand it, that's why people are asking for e.g. 1 free slot per type. It's a restricted version of just raising the cap, but it would mean there would be no opportunity cost to actually keeping e.g. Kai-Sha or Jynn, if you find them.

Among other things, "here's a renowned paragon. They're worse than useless because they take up a slot, so just ignore them" is a terrible result of a system that's supposed to make leaders feel impactful.

Imagine if Bubbles increased all your fleet upkeep by 16% unless you vivisected her on first contact.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Imagine if Bubbles increased all your fleet upkeep by 16% unless you vivisected her on first contact.

I love reading people's suggestions and comments, tbh. Even when stuff is burning.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like if the penalty for going over the leader cap was 8% instead of 16%, and didn't scale as aggressively you might feel a little differently?

Then you could still have your 12 leaders, level them up at a fairly respectable pace, and not feel like you're riding a bike and your chain just broke.

Edit: I realize I didn't get to the point I was trying to make, in that raising the cap is just one solution to rectify the situation. But it's not the only one, and it might not be the best one for the game long-term.

 

[Hundar]

I really cannot understand why the dev team didnt consider, as done before in similar occasions, an open beta to try these massive and controversial to say the least changes and gather feedback. Most if not all of the problems could have been avoided or limited in their damage. This is objectively a rushed product, even if i didnt buy this dlc i cannot even play the game since the free update effectively broke it. This is a management failure.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

I don't think the leader cap needs to be raised dramatically. The "fewer leaders" design philosophy is good in principle, and I think people will get used to having fewer leaders pretty quickly, and the change especially improves early game exploration. Science ship spam was never satisfying - it didn't give any of the exploration time to breathe. A constant stream of anomaly detected followed later by a constant stream of anomaly event popups makes you not care about the individual events at all.

The problem is in the execution, not the concept. It's in the fact that the cap forces you to avoid Generals, for example. Generals should have obviously been removed/merged with Admirals for this patch so that the 4th category could go to Envoys. That would have made all the leader categories useful and made for more interesting choices.

But it's too late for regrets on that now, so instead you probably need to make the first leader of each category not count towards the cap, so that you can at least have one General. Lots of people have made that suggestion.

Or, you could make Councilors not count towards the cap. That would mean that an empire with militarist civics will also have more generals, which is thematically good. Alternatively, ethics and/or civics could provide free leader slots directly.

 

[Gilbert95]

I'd rather avoid a repeatable tech to raise leader cap, since it'd effectively remove the cap from the game completely and be the most powerful Society repeatable by a mile.

Maybe as a Unity Amnition? Increasing 2 or 3 seeme in line with what you can get with those.

 

[xeleth12]

You see, it's also important to note why they dislike the leader cap.

Reasons players have mentioned include, but are not limited to:
Do they want to build 15 science ships and explore half the galaxy in the first 20 years?
Are they upset that they lose so much XP for being over the leader cap?
Are they upset because they lose so much unity to leaders?
Are they mad because they can't specialise their research as easily as they previously could?
Are they feeling like their empire is empty because of the black boxes on their planets/fleets, where there used to be a shiny character?

Each of these issues have/can have different solutions. The devs have been going over player feedback that we've been receiving and discussing it at length on the best possible approaches for figuring out which solution(s) to use.

I'm sorry if I wont regurgitate what everyone already talked about regarding this cap but you're missing a few issues here. I'll do my best to express some of what I mean in English so you get the general idea.
Otherwise I'd just redirect you to dedicated thread we have going on. Treasure trove, really. ( [ Only 6 leaders? ] I think is the name. Many players did a much better job than I ever will in going over those aspects. (Sincerely sorry for doing so, just don't want to write a mess; I already got enough cognitive issues atm)

All share the same cap which created a pletora of issues. There's a reason why SCIENCE REIGNS SUPREEEEME at the moment. Many, many uses for them.
Generals have been turned almost useless now, taking up a very precious slot...
Governors is a bit... odd to say the least. Sector+planet but we're very limited and most of our sectors will be empty in regards of governance.

Many have mentioned the "RP aspect" of it all which has taken a massive hit because of this.
Personal opinion on this (just my personal tastes really): I don't feel like a sector should be empty of governance. BUT, making it so we got to think were we prioritze governance is pretty good, building towards having a governor on each sector as an objective, and not necessarily an easy one to do for expantionists, could be interesting. I'd totally be up for that.

- A different cap for different leader types (might be complicated to do so, I don't know, not a game designer) could be much, much better and woud allow for quite different playstyles depending on the empires while keeping the meaningful choices and, well, meaningful leaders (which in itself is a good approach but not with how limiting it turned out to be).
Different empires would specialize differently and have more leaders of certain types. Might be a nightmare to impliment, I really don't know.

Some went over the idea of making "envoy-like leaders" but, I'm not a fan of the idea and apparently, tough to impliment.

Also: Exploring the galaxy in a few years with 15 scientists? Well, that's if you play in the smaller sizes. Many have described how with numbers around 15 they don't explore the galaxy fully in the early or even mid game. In 20 years that's an exaggeration of course but I got your drift.
I got to admit I usually had around 6 scientists for exploration; I like big expansion, in all my strategy games, but I do it with much planning so never in a "gotta go fast" mood; I was surprised by how many people use tons of scientists.
And I play on larger sizes because, as a Sci-fi and space opera lover, I don't like tiny galaxies. (I ain't exactly a "good player" either, I play those games mostly to chill and love the "build your empire how you like" idea).
But yeah, I agree on most points/criticism regarding the "fleet of 20 scientists just for exploration" strategy. To a degree of course.
- This can be adressed, to not have a swarm of science guys, but with a cap including -all- leaders is not the way to do it imo. (Many mentioned the idea of science ships exploring on their own, to cite only one; I don't have strong feelings over any of those ideas, neutral if I may say)

This actually showed something else: with bigger galaxies, overall, the cap is limitting the game itself quite a bit. Let it be for sectors, or the many, many uses for scientists.



The other issues you mentioned, yeah, absolutely, part of the feedback and negative aspects for sure. Rightly so.

The general idea of fewer leaders isn't bad, I agree with it, making them "more meaningful" but... that's just too limiting, bad execution in its implimentation.
Councilors not counting towards it might be a good idea too, aswell as the very popular idea of a "free slot" at start of every types. So that you can at least have one of each. Could be a start.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I love reading people's suggestions and comments, tbh. Even when stuff is burning.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like if the penalty for going over the leader cap was 8% instead of 16%, and didn't scale as aggressively you might feel a little differently?

Then you could still have your 12 leaders, level them up at a fairly respectable pace, and not feel like you're riding a bike and your chain just broke.

The percentage would have to be quite small, because the benefits of keeping a general around are mostly cosmetic unless you're literally in the middle of snowballing across the galaxy.

That said, I'm actually not really concerned about the unity, rather the XP penalty. I (and probably a lot of other people) are probably willing to pay lots of resources to keep the cool shiny around, and unity on leader upkeep is a much smaller percentage of the economy than fleet upkeep, past the early game, so you can afford some slack. But leader XP is irreplaceable.

I suppose that really makes it addressable with the unity vs. XP penalty thing.

As I see it, the core of the problem is that the value of various leader classes at different stages of the game are so unequal as to make some massively net negative to keep around, even if they're high level, because of the opportunity cost.

Making them perfectly balanced is obviously impossible (and not even really desirable), but they should be close enough that e.g. a lucky find or a different setup may change your decision making.

You can achieve that by trying to balance them a little closer to make the weak ones stronger (which I think generals deserve), but also by reducing the opportunity cost of the bad pick. That can come either in the form of something like per-class caps (so that the opportunity cost of a particular general is just another general, instead of a scientist) or just making the cap *much* softer in general.

 

[Pancakelord]

There's a couple of bonuses scattered about:

Give +1 (2) leader cap to (fanatic) pacifism, I want to see the mental gymnastics from the meta videos on YouTube, arising from that lol.

Are they feeling like their empire is empty because of the black boxes on their planets/fleets, where there used to be a shiny character?

I'd put myself in this camp. You can still beat the game (easily) by ignoring the cap, and spamming the rank up agenda to get level 3-4 leaders, and they're as strong or stronger (with luck) than 1-3.7 leaders.

But the lack of a little alien staring back at me as I wipe it's fleet out, in the battle screen, just makes me feel a little hollow. It feels too impersonal for a DLC all about the, well, personnel of your empire.

• In some ways it's a bit like the shift from pops being very visible on tiles, to the way they're presented in collapsed menus in the current jobs system.
• Before leaders were ubiquitous, now they're not in your face so much. I feel their absence.

The many empty portraits are as visually conspicuous as the paragons with all their custom art, In my opinion. Filling them with even just stat-less envoy analogues would go a long way imo.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Otherwise I'd just redirect you to dedicated thread we have going on. Treasure trove, really. ( [ Only 6 leaders? ] I think is the name. Many players did a much better job than I ever will in going over those aspects. (Sincerely sorry for doing so, just don't want to write a mess; I already got enough cognitive issues atm)

Where do you think (some) of my list of issues came from? just because we don't respond to a thing, doesn't mean we didn't read that thing.

Generals have been turned almost useless now, taking up a very precious slot...

The percentage would have to be quite small, because the benefits of keeping a general around are mostly cosmetic unless you're literally in the middle of snowballing across the galaxy.

Yeah, I hear you both on this one. Arguably, Generals are situationally useful now if you hire them when you go to war (and get one of the shiny ones that gives you resources per district, or the slaver one) and fire them when the war ends. They were also useless before the rework. But making generals actually useful is probably (maybe? I dunno? #notadev) something that's beyond the scope of what we can do in a post-launch support patch.

Exploring the galaxy in a few years with 15 scientists?

I'm sorry, I was being facetious here. I know you can't survey the galaxy with 15 scientists in 20 years. Moreover, I also know that you can't claim half the systems you survey if you have that many scientists, but I digress.

That said, I'm actually not really concerned about the unity, rather the XP penalty.

Yep

I'd put myself in this camp. You can still beat the game (easily) by ignoring the cap, and spamming the rank up agenda to get level 3-4 leaders, and they're as strong or stronger (with luck) than 1-3.7 leaders.

I agree. I suffer from a "black box, must do thing, can't do thing because other thing goes red, black box must do thing.." when I'm playing.



Thank you to the three of you for taking the time to write walls of text at me. Community feedback is gold in our business, and we're lucky to have such a fantastic community, that we can come out and interact with you folks like this and not get "GAME BROKE, WHEN FIX" spammed at us.

 

[Pancakelord]

and not get "GAME BROKE, WHEN FIX" spammed at us.

Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint you now...

 

[Rafss]

Special Project Translate Player Mural completed!
[MrFreake gained 300xp]

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Yeah, I hear you both on this one. Arguably, Generals are situationally useful now if you hire them when you go to war (and get one of the shiny ones that gives you resources per district, or the slaver one) and fire them when the war ends. They were also useless before the rework. But making generals actually useful is probably (maybe? I dunno? #notadev) something that's beyond the scope of what we can do in a post-launch support patch.

On that topic: one of the things that I had been hoping for from this patch was that generals would get a useful defender class, with meaningful peace time effects for being parked on a planet, like increased stability, massively reduced crime, increased build speed (ex. US Army Corps of Engineers), etc.

There is a defender class, but its effects are... less than useful enough to warrant keeping it around. The best possible peace time general gives you -25 crime (basically, 1 enforcer pop without the stability) and +1 energy/+2 minerals per soldier (aka maybe +.2 pops of output per soldier, since you're missing the modifiers workers get). So you're giving up one of your slots for less than 1 pop of output, and if they get to 8, you might get another ~5 workers worth of resources from a fully stacked fortress world. By the time you have level 8 leaders, you'll never notice the difference of employing this general vs. not.

They don't have to just be situationally useful. It's just that they need useful traits and base effect on peace time planets, to do something outside of conquest.

Ex. -100 crime/deviancy for maxing out that veteran trait (instead of -25) would make them save you a full building slot and at least 4 pops, which could be crucial on an ecumenopolis (though not worth it in pop terms alone). +1 stability per level would make them amazing for gestalts, or useful for non-gestalts to quell rebellions. +100% build speed for maxing out a (new) trait could make you want to move them around to build up any new worlds, and you may keep them around for the QoL even if they're not really worth it (by the numbers, if you played theoretically perfectly). Enormous governing ethics attraction boosts. Lessening the penalties for martial law. Etc.

I think you could really just make them stronger, and it would make them useful. It's just that right now they're competing with e.g. a governor giving +16-20% resources from jobs to 200-1000 pops. The -25 crime traits are just missing the mark by several orders of magnitude.

It would make sense to me for there to be a "martial law/internal stability" class to compete with "I will steal your stuff when I invade you". It would even be useful offensively: invade, and assign the martial law guy to keep it from rebelling. But right now we have a "+2 DP, -15 crime" class, and it is (predictably) useless. Having a class entirely focused around waiting to get invaded is unbelievably niche.

 

[Tindalosihound]

I'd rather avoid a repeatable tech to raise leader cap, since it'd effectively remove the cap from the game completely and be the most powerful Society repeatable by a mile.

On the other hand what are the chances for an Ambition that gives you +1 while active?