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

[MadCow94]

Personally, I would like to see:

Leaders below Veteran level don't count towards leader cap.

Only council members and sector governors can attain veteran level. Everyone else stops accumulating XP when they could otherwise hit veteran.

This would give the RP of "promotion from planetary governor to sector governor" and promotion from a science-ship scientist to Head of Research.

Sub-vet leaders would still cost unity upkeep and scaling acquisition costs.

 

[Mrakvampire]

Just give us 2 new techs that each grant +1 leader capacity.
First, that should be somewhat realistically researchable by 2240s (default speed).
Second, that should be somewhat realistically researchable by 2350s (default speed).

Also, increase by +50% unity cost per point that exceeds leader cap, and reduce by -50% (half) experience penalty.
That's all tweaking we need, really.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Also, increase by +50% unity cost per point that exceeds leader cap, and reduce by -50% (half) experience penalty.
That's all tweaking we need, really.

If I understand correctly, you're proposing that the unity cost be converted to something like starbase scaling (which has a flat +25% increase per starbase past the cap), and that the experience penalty be reduced to half its current value (so that you don't hit 0 until triple the cap)? Or are you proposing that the latter be exponential decay (50%, then 25%, then 12.5%), or drop all the way to no XP gained at all after only 2 leader beyond the cap?

(Side note: fleet and current leader scaling is a penalty equal to (X-n)/n, where n is the current cap, and starbase is (X-n)/4. They're not that much different).

 

[blahmaster6k]

i find you get offered too many useless traits on leaders.. councillor traits are offered so often to non councillor members.. you get offered the resource skills later in game when there useless.. we need a broader selection of skills and maybeup the amount we get offered by default maybe have a relevance weighted system i have also seen some OP ship cost/build time combo's that simply shouldnt be possible that needs fixing

Agree, a lot of times you just get offered the choice between two terrible traits and have to pick one of them, and it never feels good. If it's early enough in a leader's career, when you get a choice between a +food and a +minerals trait it sometimes feels like a better idea to just fire the leader and replace them with someone who hopefully won't get a bad trait on their first level.

Likewise, the correct solution to "how many generals do I want?" is always zero.

The only time I've used a general this patch is when I was contacted by a renowned general with a -20% empire size council trait 20 years into the game. It's sad.

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.

I don't really see the problem with this. By the point in the game when empires are researching repeatable techs, they are at the stage where they are building megastructures, ecumenopolis, defeating fallen empires, and conquering most of the galaxy. Even if a repeatable tech would effectively remove the leader cap, I don't think that removing it that late in the game is any more overpowered than having effectively infinite energy credits, minerals, and alloys, which is what happens when you have dyson spheres and ecumenopolis.

And as far as society repeatables are concerned, I think that the +% monthly unity repeatable would still be stronger as it lets you run more and more unity ambitions simultaneously the later the game goes. For the most part unity ambitions are way more impactful to your empire than a few extra leaders.

Furthermore, that late in the game a few extra leaders are likely to not make much of a statistical difference. If you got to repeatables and are building megastructures, your economy is probably solved by that point. The leaders you started the game with are probably close to the max level and immortal due to either an ascension path or the +leader lifespan repeatable, and the bonuses given by a few extra low level leaders 100+ years into the game aren't going to make a huge difference. The only extra leaders you're probably hiring that late would be governors for newly conquered planets, and new level 1 admirals for the extra fleets you're building to keep up with your conquest. Your 13th galaxy conquering fleet having an extra 15% fire rate is not going to break the game balance.

- Paragons forcing you to fire other leaders in order to be recruited feel superbad (but it seems that it will be fixed asap!)

I'd hold your enthusiasm on this one, they said they're only changing it for the four legendary paragons but not the renowned paragons who are 99% of the ones you will find in a typical game. In three or four runs since the patch I have yet to see a single legendary paragon.

 

[-Marauder-]

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.

True, just outright remove it and send it back to where it came from. Onto the graveyard of past Stellaris mistakes. There was no reason to play necromancer and resurrect it to begin with. Hell, if you guys are so intent on keeping it around slowly walking it back. Then increase the starting number, and add scaling to the different leader types.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

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.

I wanted to point to this. Towards late game, this becomes mandatory. I thought pdx devs generally wanted there to be choice in how we play. At some point, it seems dev conversations started to outweigh balance over fun. While the content teams are knocking it out of the park lately, the game designers are disappointing me with this new direction prioritizing balance over everything else.

 

[Velaroz]

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.

I'd say we could still use a few more +leader cap techs than exist atm, and if a "repeatable" were to be added, it could be a hard-capped repeatable like the Command Limit repeatable which itself stops at 5.

How many could a Leader Cap repeatable stop at? It could stop at 2 or 3. But I kind of agree with lots of people--this needs a repeatable.

I'd also say we could do for a hull% repeatable, like how we have armor% and shield% repeatables.

 

[Soranya]

I'd say we could still use a few more +leader cap techs than exist atm, and if a "repeatable" were to be added, it could be a hard-capped repeatable like the Command Limit repeatable which itself stops at 5.

How many could a Leader Cap repeatable stop at? It could stop at 2 or 3. But I kind of agree with lots of people--this needs a repeatable.

I'd also say we could do for a hull% repeatable, like how we have armor% and shield% repeatables.

They should fiy the imbalance between Hull/Amor/Shields for Mega ships too. (Colossi, Dreadnoughts etc.)

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

The PDX Devs suggested that a balance patch would be coming out towards the end of the month. To clarify, is that closer to the 23rd/25th next week (Tuesday/Thursday next week), or is that closer to the 30th (Tuesday the week after next).

I understand that, obviously, things might not be finalized and the situation may be evolving. But I was thinking it would make a lot of sense to start my next full campaign after the patch is in place, so I was kind of trying to make a mental footnote for myself when that would be.

 

[Soranya]

I'd wager 29th.

 

[Tardek]

Hi all!

Galactic Paragons and the first hotfix have been released on all PC platforms, and we're working on a balance and bugfixing patch that we're currently targeting for the end of the month. Please keep on providing your thoughts and feedback.

Based on the feedback you've all provided thus far, we are creating a plan for fixes and improvements. While it's possible that we may release a stability hotfix before the balance patch, it will not include any design changes.

Cooperative Mode and Out of Syncs

The 3.8.2 hotfix took care of a number of out of sync issues, but there are more to hunt down. The programming team is focusing heavily on clearing these up, so every bit of information we can get is helpful.

If you're running into frequent out of sync issues, you can help us out a lot by having the host add these startup parameters to their game:

-randomlog -randomlog_stack=5 -randomlog_frames=3​

Then, if you run into an Out of Sync, please post in the Bug Report forum and give us the Host's OOS logs as well as at least one of the clients that the popup mentioned. (OOS logs can be found in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\oos near your save games.) Any details you can provide about what you were doing at the time is also helpful.

This setting has some performance implications (which is why it's not on by default), but if you're running into OOSes reliably, it can really help us track them down.

Tell Us More About the Balance Patch

Here are a few selected notes.

Spoiler: A few of the things planned for 3.8.x

Balance

• Legendary leaders no longer count towards Leader Capacity.
• Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your Leader Capacity.
• Added the Leader of Opportunity trait, leaders that have this trait do not count towards Leader Capacity while under Level 4.
  • Assigned some event spawned leaders the Leader of Opportunity trait.
• Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels.
  • Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level.
• Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
• Leaders can no longer start the game with traits that produce resources. This should stop machine leaders from keeping a bonsai tree garden as a hobby.

AI

• AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld

Performance

• Leader view performance optimizations

There will, of course, be more.

Next Week

Our next dev diary will be Thursday, May 25th, when we'll be going over a more complete list of the preliminary patch notes.

See you then!

I realy like the balacing changes.

But i am really sad about the scientist explorer traits with "Resource Deposit Discovery Chance upon Surveying Planet."

On higher difficulities, most time you dont have use for this skills, Becaise when you reach them the ai and you scanned up to 100% of the galaxy. I normal play with at least +100% leader xp....

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Also, preventing the specific scenario you talk about is easy. You already have a script check for whether the empire uses food. You can very easily filter traits out from empires that can't use their output.

Check how that scripted trigger works again:

country_uses_food = {
    if = {
        limit = {
            # Check if we have an uninitialized economy, then return true to be safe because we don't know
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = food
                value = 0
            }
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = minerals
                value = 0
            }
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = energy
                value = 0
            }
        }
    }
    else = {
        resource_expenses_compare = {
            resource = food
            value > 0
        }
    }
}

This explicitly will not work for your starting leaders, because it checks if you use food by checking if you paid any food upkeep last month. If your empire hasn't existed long enough to have paid any upkeep yet, it won't help you.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Check how that scripted trigger works again:

country_uses_food = {
    if = {
        limit = {
            # Check if we have an uninitialized economy, then return true to be safe because we don't know
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = food
                value = 0
            }
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = minerals
                value = 0
            }
            resource_expenses_compare = {
                resource = energy
                value = 0
            }
        }
    }
    else = {
        resource_expenses_compare = {
            resource = food
            value > 0
        }
    }
}

This explicitly will not work for your starting leaders, because it checks if you use food by checking if you paid any food upkeep last month. If your empire hasn't existed long enough to have paid any upkeep yet, it won't help you.

Yup, the problem was (and what I fixed) was that before the game starts, due to first clause, which states "Check if we have an uninitialized economy, then return true to be safe because we don't know", the scripted trigger returns true even if you're playing a regular machine empire. This means that your starting leaders could have a trait that adds food production when it is meaningless to you, so I updated the trigger for the trait to

    leader_potential_add = {
        has_global_flag = game_started
        owner = { country_uses_food = yes }
    }

The other resource generating traits also have the "has game started" check, but as soon as a leader levels up (or a new leader appears in the pool) they'll qualify for the traits.

 

[Sherry Fox]

Another thing regarding leader caps. Whose fever idea was it to attach it to ethics, without changing any other traits to compensate? Authoritarian got nerfed, so did xenophobe. Pretty substantially

 

[Mcgan]

Yup, the problem was (and what I fixed) was that before the game starts, due to first clause, which states "Check if we have an uninitialized economy, then return true to be safe because we don't know", the scripted trigger returns true even if you're playing a regular machine empire. This means that your starting leaders could have a trait that adds food production when it is meaningless to you, so I updated the trigger for the trait to

    leader_potential_add = {
        has_global_flag = game_started
        owner = { country_uses_food = yes }
    }

The other resource generating traits also have the "has game started" check, but as soon as a leader levels up (or a new leader appears in the pool) they'll qualify for the traits.

Oh. Since it was mentioned as an incoming fix in this DD, I thought that wasn't enough somehow. Because that's already what we've got right now in 3.8.2:

leader_trait_homesteader = {

    leader_potential_add = {
        has_global_flag = game_started
        owner = { country_uses_food = yes }
    }

So the problem is already solved then?
To be fair, it does say "A few of the things planned for 3.8.x", so 3.8.2 fits. It's just a bit misleading in this context.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Oh. Since it was mentioned as an incoming fix in this DD, I thought that wasn't enough somehow. Because that's already what we've got right now in 3.8.2:

leader_trait_homesteader = {

    leader_potential_add = {
        has_global_flag = game_started
        owner = { country_uses_food = yes }
    }

So the problem is already solved then?
To be fair, it does say "A few of the things planned for 3.8.x", so 3.8.2 fits. It's just a bit misleading in this context.

I thought that was scheduled for 3.8.3 not 3.8.2, my bad!

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I thought that was scheduled for 3.8.3 not 3.8.2, my bad!

This is good news. You don't have to apologize for Christmas coming early.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Yup, the problem was (and what I fixed) was that before the game starts, due to first clause, which states "Check if we have an uninitialized economy, then return true to be safe because we don't know", the scripted trigger returns true even if you're playing a regular machine empire. This means that your starting leaders could have a trait that adds food production when it is meaningless to you, so I updated the trigger for the trait to

    leader_potential_add = {
        has_global_flag = game_started
        owner = { country_uses_food = yes }
    }

The other resource generating traits also have the "has game started" check, but as soon as a leader levels up (or a new leader appears in the pool) they'll qualify for the traits.

Note that this fix will only work for empires created at the beginning of the game. Players who e.g. opt to take control of an AI uprising may still see them on their starting leaders. Maybe a has_initialized_economy = yes trigger could be used to cover that case?

 

[Starfire Breeze]

Note that this fix will only work for empires created at the beginning of the game. Players who e.g. opt to take control of an AI uprising may still see them on their starting leaders. Maybe a has_initialized_economy = yes trigger could be used to cover that case?

Or released vassals, etc.. It would seem best to steer clear of global "game started" state for that reason, as there are a large number of cases that create a country after the game has started.

In other words, in order for such a fix to be correct, it must examine per-empire/country state and not global state.

 

[permeakra]

@Eladrin Espionage needs rebalance.
The obvious problems are
1. Sabotage is weak to the point of uselessness, especially when we are talking about sabotaging starbases (this particular operation is damn worthless)
2. Sentry Arrays makes late-game intel-gathering pretty useless. Something should be done about it.
3. Influence cost of espionage is too high and pretty damn requires an aspiring spook to luck into hiring Kai-Sha reasonably early and hope they live long enough.

In my personal opinion, espionage and some other things could be made much more engaging by giving them a row in 'holdings' planetary tab, but oh well, baby steps.


*Personally, I believe influence should be removed entirely and something new designed from scratch. As it is, the mechanic is mostly an inconvinience to keep in mind and not an interesting problem to solve.