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

[velles]

One thing I don't agree with that I've seen in this thread is the suggestion that they should get rid of planet governors. I couldn't disagree more. This has the potential to provide an excellent framework for a future internal politics update. Different types of governments have different governor types, be it appointed viceroys who you can choose but must pay upkeep for, or elected governors who are free but may have their own priorities, or even a feudal system with sector governors being "dukes" and planetary governors being "counts". So much potential.

Even if that's the idea it is still badly executed, because currently sector governor doesn't feel like a more important person than planetary governor (in fact it feels much less important than pre 3.8 sector governors). At least some traits should have sector-wide effect, otherwise it's just a nerf.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

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

Woah. Giving generals useful peacetime traits is a cool idea. I do disagree with what you said about giving them build speed bonuses (I feel like that should be the realm of governors), both stability bonuses and negatives to Crime are both really neat ideas.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Mormekil]

This is the first time I've felt strongly enough about something in a Stellaris update to actually post about it. I don't like the leader cap, it makes me feel like I can't actually interact with the leader system beyond just my council, which seems ridiculous in an empire of billions or trillions of citizens. 10 as an upper level for mid to late game is just absurdly low even if you're playing pretty tall. That's just not enough space to actually do much of anything meaningful outside of the actual council. It means planets and even sectors with no governor, it means no scientists assisting research, it means vast armies with no generals, and it means fleets with dozens of ships carrying tens of thousands of crew with...no admiral? Beyond the actual gameplay annoyances it's just jarring at a thematic level. In the update I loved especially the idea of having governor bonuses for individual planets but then immediately found out I...can't really take advantage of that. At all.

Someone here suggested that leaders beyond the cap should be just increasingly expensive, so I have to build infrastructure to support going over the cap but they still gain xp. Big fan of this idea. Makes thematic sense and creates a potentially expensive trade-off I can choose to interact with if I want to do more with leaders.

The leaders of opportunity trait is interesting but I share the concern that this creates a weird situation where I want xp bonuses for some of my leaders and I want to somehow switch off xp for others so they don't level up and start counting toward cap

I also wonder if there could be an added layer to the system where you can recruit inexperienced/apprentice/just-graduated-from-the-academy leaders who fill some roles. Like obviously I want my venerable governor overseeing the sector...but maybe some less experienced folks with appropriately much smaller bonuses who don't count toward the cap could be overseeing individual planets? They grow and gain experience for someday a big promotion. This could be then the pool you promote from later. Likewise with up-and-coming fleet officers and scientists who have yet to prove themselves. I actually think this is similar to the leaders of opportunity trait idea, but the key difference here is they would not count towards my cap until I'm ready to promote them (and have appropriately smaller benefits as the trade-off)

Would also like to see some sort of fleet combo mechanic where an admiral oversees several fleets at once (an "armada" perhaps?)

 

[Lenk]

Kind of thought of something. Why isn’t there a council position for central intelligence gathering, there is the edict, bureau of espionage. Could rework it where it adds a council spot for only the general could use. You would have a ‘Spymaster’ Around half the games I play I have to rely on intel gathering operations to see more of the galaxy because the Galactic Community either never forms or it forms so late into the game, I don’t even bother with it. Plus, it gives the general more use.

I do also think the first leader in each category shouldn’t count towards the capacity, but I think the capacity should not be expanded. Not every planet needs a governor nor does every fleet an admiral. (Would be kind of cool if admiral was more head of armada instead of individual fleet?) Both tall and wide empires a limited to the same constraints. If one was to get more leaders then the other, it would not be fair.

One thing I do like to see change though is when a leader gets either the Chosen one trait, or one of the covenants chosen traits, that leader should be marked as legendary. Leaders that get to level 8 should be marked as renowned. Pretty much just a graphical add-on, but figured it be neat to see our more leveled leaders be visually one step above the other leaders.

 

[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.

 

[clintonramos20]

When can we expect the hotfix for AI Capital designations will be?

 

[Enero]

Pls fix the fleet manager already

Stellaris - A fleet template gets ship quantity increased on getting reinforcements.

Description A fleet template gets ship quantity increased on getting reinforcements. Game Version 3.5.2 What version do you use? GoG What expansions do you have installed? (DID NOT ANSWER QUESTION) Do you have mods enabled? Yes Please...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Lazy Name]

One thought I had was that it might actually be interesting if Generals had the Pioneer class instead of Governors, and were useful in leading colonization efforts and clearing blockers. Generals would thematically be the leader class that works on the periphery of your empire, whether it be leading teams of colonists to conquer alien worlds or leading armies of soldiers to conquer alien colonies.

 

[Soranya]

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 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.

I really like the idea of one free leader per class.
Alternatively: Leader cap on a Class basis instead of an overall leader cap`?

 

[Soranya]

Even if that's the idea it is still badly executed, because currently sector governor doesn't feel like a more important person than planetary governor (in fact it feels much less important than pre 3.8 sector governors). At least some traits should have sector-wide effect, otherwise it's just a nerf.

I really do not like the per planet governors - too much micro, not visible enough, and you are right, they feel much less important then the Sector governors.
I dont have a good solution though.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

Any news on the constant pinging circles on the galaxy map?

On my Radar to be fixed

Petition to make Enfield the king of Paradox.

 

[Ikael]

I love to see that devs are responsive to the feedback regarding the leader cap, even if of course, they are taking a gradual, slow approach to it. Having a penchant for frequent balance tweaks is vital in any strategy game, imho.

That being said, my personal issues with it are:

- Some empire ruler positions are not worthy of being fulfilled if we are going to lose a good councilor or field leader in the process, and that feels very wrong. Perhaps some of them should be compatible with other roles (say, rulers of warrior cultures leading their fleets) or they might need to be buffed (imperial authority comes to mind).
- Paragons forcing you to fire other leaders in order to be recruited feel superbad (but it seems that it will be fixed asap!)
- Generals are still useless and nobody on their sane mind would expend their leader cap on them. Well, entire categories of leaders need to be fired on the spot depending on which stage of the game you are in. Perhaps a leader-type cap (maximum number of scientists, maximum number of generals, etc), instead of a global leader cap would solve this issue
- Leader traits need a balance pass like yesterday. Resource-giving traits and most traits related to governors are obvious candidates for reform. Also, feel not afraid of having some governor traits benefit entire sectors while others focus only on single planets. It is nice to have that type of leader variety even inside the same category
- Exploration can indeed get slow due to the leader cap, especially at the early game (even if my penchant for playing in non-humongous galaxies lessens it). Have you considered the possibility of unmanned "probe" units exploring along with science ships manned by leaders? That might work, I think (or perhaps, it might turn galaxy exploration into a way too fast process, I dunno, I'm brainstorming here)
- I have mixed feelings about the whole "fleet size depending on admiral level" stuff, but at least Galactic Force projection AP does not suck now
- Several civic unique council positions need to be looked at (Inwards perfectionists, for starters)
- Nope, empty governor slots or admiral slots do not annoy me in the slightest. I will never understand completionists.

As for the leader cap itself, I think that it is a sound idea, despite its implementation challenges. I enjoy the new leader system greatly, it is vastly superior to the old system of expendable, faceless bucket stats, and I think that a lot of the negative feedback feels a lot like the initial implementation of things like empire sprawl, leaders costing unity, or focusing the game on hyper lanes FTL only. All of them were changes met with massive negative feedback due to a combination of changing established meta + unbalanced implementation, yet in the end, they made the game way better in the long run.

 

[Eelectrica]

The other thing that needs to be fixed is fleets splitting just because the admiral gets elected or disappears or whatever.
It adds nothing except more micro, I configure my fleets, they should stay that way.

 

[Nevars]

Guess it was too much to expect you guys to actually address the leader cap being too low. If you’re forced to sacrifice civic, tech, and ascension tree perk choices to boost the cap regardless of empire type you’re playing, then it’s a universally broken system.

Well now everyone will know the pain of playing psionic locking you into either specific origin or specific civic, tradition, perk, etc.

 

[hart30]

The other thing that needs to be fixed is fleets splitting just because the admiral gets elected or disappears or whatever.
It adds nothing except more micro, I configure my fleets, they should stay that way.

The issue with this is potential admiral hopping. Fleet is max size, time to switch admiral to a smaller fleet, in order to get it to that max size too, and so on.

Then there is the issue that fleets over cap cannot be reinforced anymore - even while the amount of actual ships are under cap. At least it seemed this way when i lost my whole fleet and tried to rebuild by clicking reinforce. It didnt allow me to until i lowered the amount of ships to be under the new allowed cap. Makes the copy fleet template function pretty useless.
And there is the issue that the splitting increases the chances for a fleet filled up all but one ship, while having only space for a single corvette. But the ship it wants to build is a destroyer/cruiser/battleship. So u get a infinite clickable reinforce button, building shipd unable to join the fleet. I am not really sure about this as it contradicts what i said before, but single ships failing to reinforce allowing the button multiple times defenitely still happens.
Another reason i can imagine is these ships still being built while the fleet is MIA, or after an Admiral died.

 

[Stellaris-Micah]

Dear devs,

Could we please, pretty please have the ability to change the design of stations?
Too often have I been F'd in the ass because the automatic system decides it's a fantastic idea to put my entire space station using Autocannons, resulting in yes on paper the "strongest" station, but in reality, the station dies before it has a chance to shoot...

Thank you very much,

TEAser

 

[Calvax]

The issue with this is potential admiral hopping. Fleet is max size, time to switch admiral to a smaller fleet, in order to get it to that max size too, and so on.

An easy fix would be to stop fleet cap scaling with admirals. If the intent is for empires to have a smaller number of larger fleets then static fleet cap can be rebalanced. Sure it would still technically be possible to shuffle one fantastic admiral around but that's always been the case. If it's really a problem then a simple reassignment cooldown like envoys would work.

Dynamic fleet cap doesn't play nice with the fleet manager, is a hassle when fleets auto-split, and (this could just be personal preference) is very untidy. Fleets end up of random different sizes with odd complements of ships.

 

[Xerberous]

I like the Leader of Opportunity idea. I would suggest do add that they automatically stop leveling at level 3.

 

[jayparadoritox]

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.

Would the devs consider adding a scaling modifier to leader cap based on number of systems/sectors, sort of like starbase cap, but it advances much much much much much more slowly?

Tall empires could get strength buffs to their leaders at similar intervals, to reflect centralisation and easier governance?

 

[mial42]

Most of my main issues have already been mentioned a few times on the thread, but I'd like to request that the ship cost/upkeep reduction issue be fixed by just removing the leader/agenda sources of these things, added in the update, rather than fundamentally changing the way the modifiers work or giving them some arbitrary cap like -50%. These modifiers were fine (modulo some ruler micro) in 3.7, when they were rare and powerful (mostly coming from Supremacy and genocidal civics), but in line with the rest of the game.