Stellaris Dev Diary #302 - Leaders and 3.8.3 Balance Changes

[Alfray Stryke]

Does anyone know what this note refers to:
"The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one."

Yes, there are those that know what this refers to.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Praise the Machine God!


(source)

Thanks for the new desktop wallpaper

 

[Enfield_PDX]

Unfortunately it appears they are under the belief that a non scaling cap is as equally balanced for a 200 star galaxy as a 1000 star one, which is obviously an impossibility. One of those settings has to be wrong. Unless they think player empires will remain the same size regardless of galaxy size, which again is demonstrably untrue.

We're not under that belief. They aren't equally balanced.

However we balance around the default Galaxy Gen settings. Most folks aren't running 1000 stars for their games.

Having seperate scaling etc for different Galaxy settings introduces a lot of overhead that I'm not sure is justifiable right now. This may change.

I can't see it here or in the 3.8.2 hotfix, is the Plight of the Beta Universe Situation still lingering?

Fairly certain that is fixed in 3.8.3 but I'll doublecheck

 

[Alfray Stryke]

So about the admirals no longer giving command limit based on level, does that mean it scales with traits instead, or do admirals just not give fleet command limit anymore? Because that latter option is going to hurt.

I don’t think any of the existing traits that affected command limit were changed.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

Huh, what about the bug(s?) that prevents the "Plight of the Beta Universe" chain from completing? Can that be fixed in the next patch?

I spent a decent amount of time making sure that got assigned out to be fixed, not every fix makes it into the changelog. I'll double check.

Good news!

 

[Enfield_PDX]

So... the people who like to play in a big sandbox instead of a balanced competitive environment are seen as a lower priority? Just trying to understand the thinking here. The "meaningful choices" of leader caps leading to empires in 1000 stars looking comically empty is acceptable or even desirable if it balances well?

That's verging on a bad faith interpretation there, not a great start.

I keep tabs on the competitive community as they can be a source of good information and we want to enable their style of play where possible,
But they are a percentage of a percentage when it comes number of players, even more so than those that play on larger galaxy sizes. So we're not doing it for them.

The larger galaxy sizes, while an option, are simply not the optimal Default way to play. Both for performance and balance but most critically *pacing*
Getting something that works across all Galaxy sizes is very difficult. We generally get pretty close as things stand without having to optimise for each different option.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

Can you explain what you mean by optimal?

Sure.

From a Performance point of view it's simple, less Empires, less planets, less systems to navigate through = more betterer tick speed.

For Gameplay, you don't have the same level of access to resources you do on larger galaxies, You have Fewer planets, there's more key "Space Terrain" as you can't just expand in the other direction. You hit the Mid and Late game points at a more consistent time in terms of tech, resources etc. It's just a lot harder to snowball.

The one objection, though, is this: galaxy size is the very first setting the player is presented with. It's the big one, the most important one from which a number of others get their default values and min/max ranges.

Oh ain't that the truth. This is part of a slew of things we're looking to improve. But a very astute observation!
Galgen screen hasn't really been touched beyond adding more options since release. This should change.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

I don't think it's in bad faith to state that you don't seem to care how these changes impact people that play on 1000 stars. If it's so non-optimal just take it (the option to play on 1000 stars) out then... it seems clear that you don't want us playing that way anymore.

I think your focusing on the word Optimal too much. Maybe I should have said "Default", Medium is our starting point or baseline.

I do care and we are very much invested in the popular setups being enjoyable. We just have to do so with an eye to where we place our efforts.

 

[Enfield_PDX]

"I do care and we are very much invested in the popular setups being enjoyable. We just have to do so with an eye to where we place our efforts."

I Was trying to come off as professional buuuut to summarise.

We have limited time, limited resources and make calls all the time about where to spend it. I want everyone to have a good time when they boot up this game, it pays my bills sure but it also makes me happy.

It's unfortunate you feel that we aren't listening or doing anything. But..we are? It just takes time.

I could cuss a bit but I'm not sure we're technically allowed to swear on the forums. To be less corpo.

What is the "intended" galaxy size? 600?

Whatever it is when you hit default, I am completely blanking on what that is and don't have the HDD space to install and check Stellaris on my home PC

 

[Brodosaurus]

A bit late, I guess, but.

Thank God somebody finally closed that loophole in my Mercenary contracts! Now I won't have to worry about my admirals invoking their "Permanent Paid Leave" clause the moment a fight starts!

(To be clear, do admirals still keep their existing traits when they become part of an enclave, or is that all rerolled? It would be nice to have that little bit of control.)

The admiral which is added to the fleet is a different admiral than the one used to generate the enclave
But they will keep their traits if they acquire any during their contract.
The admiral which is used to create it becomes its "ruler", you can't hire this one.

I hope this issue won't resurrect itself back again

"Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens"

Does this refer to overall pop happiness, choices in events, something else entirely or multiple of aforementioned?

Choices and outcomes of some events. To give some more insight:
Before, when you had a rebel situation, and rebels gave their "demands" it was pretty harsh even if you were a benevolent ruler overall.
Now, if you were benevolent, they will ask for a way less (bordering on almost nothing, but asking for nothing would be too funny, so if there are no egalitarians to demand anything then they might disband, or will ask for just tiny adjustments to the empire if you were good to them - try getting rid of your egalitarians now and see what happens, although it might be hard). This might also lead to getting rid of the story related negative trait (depending on previous choices).

 

[Brodosaurus]

Does this include events tied to if your ruler takes the 'status quo' approach to power? I don't think that pathway has many events compared with if you seized power.

There are more events there, but they are more related to this point:

• Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.

Mainly related to the ending part of the Origin.

 

[Brodosaurus]

Would you maybe give us some spoilers?

There are especially two things i really would like to know:
1) Is the Luminary unbound from it's home world (golden throne) if we take one of the ascension path endings?
2) Will the Luminary get a third destiny trait, tailored to the ascension path we took?

1. There are other options, based on ascension 2. yes. Although the whole ending-chain was changed a bit

 

[Alfray Stryke]

there are also problems with the world cracker, the planet is not destroyed, it remains intact, to see it destroyed you need to save and load the save, then everything falls into place. did you fix that too?

That should be covered by

The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class