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Stellaris Dev Diary #302 - Leaders and 3.8.3 Balance Changes

Hello again!

We’ve been working on a balance and bugfixing update, which should hopefully be coming to you early next week. Today I’ll be going over some of the things that will be in it, as well as go into why we’ve prioritized certain fixes over others.

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#################### VERSION 3.8.3 Patch ######################​

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Improvements

  • It is now possible to rename council positions by clicking on council position name in the council view.
  • Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.
  • Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens.
  • Added a checkbox to toggle automatic expansion of a sector in the sector editor
  • Made the three different "Terraforming Candidate Discovered" events turn into messages if you have already found one before.
  • The pre-sapients that worship the Beholder now have the Psionic trait.
  • The Beholder's Psi-Inoculation process is now a pair of decisions to toggle it on and off, instead of a decision to be enacted for each pop you want to become psionic.
  • The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one.
  • Imperial Heirs will now be more likely to adopt the class of the current ruler if you have the Philosopher King civic.
  • Imperial heirs will now have their chosen class weighted by civics and traditions that give bonuses to specific leader classes.
  • Added the Reorganize Council agenda, which allows reselection of unlocked council positions without the need to reform the government.
  • Beholder now has a recruitment event, and Azaryn's recruitment event has a couple more options
  • Added a checkbox in the army tab of the planet view to control if a planet is used via the sector army builder or not
  • Added scroll wheel speed settings
  • Leaders in the leader pool that start with a negative trait, now correctly gets one less additional negative trait during their lifespan.
  • For players without Galactic Paragons, leaders will more often get traits that match if they're assigned as councilors or not.
  • Increased the age span of new leaders, but weighted towards the middle. Initial Leaders will now also be roughly the same age as pool leaders.
  • The edict fund is now shown in the council view.
  • Imperial empires can now crown a Chosen One to be the Divine Sovereign if the Chosen One is the current ruler or heir.

Balance

  • Legendary leaders do not count towards Leader Capacity.
  • The Eager trait now has an additional effect: these leaders will not contribute towards Leader Capacity until they reach level 4. Assigned some event spawned leaders the Eager (II) trait.
  • Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your leader cap.
  • XP Penalties for going over leader capacity have been reduced. The LEADER_CAPACITY_XP_SCALE define has been added for modders to be able to easily adjust this number.
  • Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
  • Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
  • Researching Galactic Administration now removes the cooldown for government reform, this was previously only done if you obtained it via Statecraft traditions.
  • Rebalanced many traditions and ascension Perks.
    • Opener for Aptitude traditions now gives +1 trait, moved from the Finisher. This is retroactively applied to leaders that have been hired or are in your leader pool.
    • The Empire Needs You now gives -25% Leader Hire Cost instead of +1 Leader Capacity.
    • Specialist Training now gives +25% Leader XP Gain.
    • Psychological Profiling now gives -25% Leader Upkeep Cost in addition to -1 Max Negative Traits.
    • Healthcare Program now gives +20 Leader Lifespan instead of +10 Leader Lifespan.
    • Aptitude Finisher now gives +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Trait Pick options instead of +1 trait.
    • Science Division now gives -10% Scientist Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Scientist XP Gain.
    • Polytechnic Education now gives +10% Leader XP gain instead of +20%.
    • Colonial Viceroys now gives -10% Governor Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Governor XP Gain.
    • War Games now gives -10% Admiral Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Admiral XP Gain.
    • Mind and Body now gives +10 Leader Lifespan instead of +20 Leader Lifespan.
    • Finisher effect for Statecraft now grants Galactic Administration as a research option with 25% progress instead of giving the tech for tree.
    • Resistance is Frugal now also gives -10% General Cost and Upkeep.
    • Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.
    • Transcendent Learning Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity, +1 Leader Pool Size and +33% Leader XP gain.
    • 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)
  • Guardian trait maximum effect is now +33% Defense Platform Damage and Hull Points.
  • Frontier Spirit trait maximum effects changed to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +50% Colonization Speed and +1 starting pop for colonies.
  • Cyborg generals now increase planetary combat width.
  • Reduced passive experience gain by 30% for Progenitor Hive leaders from level 1-6 and 50% for Progenitor Hive leaders between 7-10.
  • Gray Eminence destiny trait now reduces the effects of empire size, instead of reducing empire size directly. Updated Aturion Efficiency to match Gray Eminence.
  • Now imperial rulers do not lose imperial heir trait, so they don't become worse when they take over the country.
  • Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.
  • Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
  • Now criminals are also unhappy when under oppressive autocracy civic
  • Kai-Sha's "Expanded Contact Network" event will now upgrade her Shady Contacts trait if she already has it. And gives intel on other empires if it has already been maxed out.
  • Replaced -20% Empire Size reduction for Aturion Efficiency trait with -10% Empire Size Penalty.
  • Leader traits that have base resource production now produce the market equivalent of 8 energy/month for tier 1 and 32 energy/month for tier 2.
  • Aggressor admiral sub-class now gives +7.5% weapon damage.
  • Artillerist II trait now gives +7.5% tracking.
  • Fortifier trait now scales between -5% Starbase upgrade cost and -5% Defense platform cost at tier 1 to -10% Starbase upgrade cost, -10% Defense platform cost, +5% Starbase hullpoints and +5% Defense platform hullpoints at tier 3.
  • Armada Logistician trait ship upkeep maximum reduction is now -10%.
  • Military Pioneer trait maximum effects are now +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Guerilla Tactician now gives a flat 10 Evasion instead of a +50% Evasion multiplier.
  • Architect of War now gives -10% Military Ship Cost.
  • Charisma trait now has a maximum Edict Upkeep reduction of -10%
  • Removed -5% Military Ship Cost from the Strategist sub-class
  • Geological Consultant trait maximum effect reduced to 9 months of unity per blocker removed.
  • Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Agrarian Upbringing trait now checks for country_uses_food = yes instead of being biological.
  • Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Frontier Spirit maximum effects reduced to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +45% Colonization Speed.
  • Architectural Sense maximum effects reduced to -10% Buildings and Districts Cost, -5% Buildings and District Upkeep, +25% Planetary Build Speed.
  • Experimenter trait now gives a maxium of 2×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  • Explorer trait maximum effects reduced to -10% Science Ship Cost and +25% Anomaly Research Speed.
  • Expansionist maximum effects reduced to -10% Outpost Alloy and Influence Cost.
  • Great Researcher trait now gives 5×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  • Taskmaster trait XP reduced from 600 to 500. In return it now has soldiers produce 2/2/2 Energy/Minerals/Food (for countries that use food) or 3/3 Energy/Minerals (for countries that don't)

Bugfixes

  • Under One Rule now changes to Imperial Authority when transitioning to Galactic Emperor or Psionic Sovereign.
  • Intellectual Espionage trait now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
  • Fixed an issue where the Expanded Hive Warren would get deleted if there was no remaining unupgraded Hive Warrens on the planet
  • Updated all researcher jobs to check for Academic Recruiter.
  • Increased the army upkeep from Disorder II trait.
  • Chainbreaker trait now requires Egalitarian ethics.
  • Honored Warmaster trait now requires Xenophile ethics.
  • Commented out cut prospecting decision.
  • Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.
  • Taskmaster trait no longer gives an undocumented +5% Building Speed per soldier job.
  • Now you can't terraform with Azaryn without launching her special ability.
  • The Death of a Great Leader event should no longer fire when you send a leader off to the Keepers of Knowledge.
  • Cloaked Ships will no longer block starbases from being rebuilt.
  • Moved gestalt nodes further apart from each other in the council view so that trait picking doesn't get blocked when they have a lot of traits.
  • The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class
  • Fixed an issue where traits given via event options would not correctly display triggered effects
  • The ambience sound effect played in the council view is now properly affected by the ambience volume slider
  • Fixed an issue where leaders that changed empires would retain their council position in their old empire
  • Fixed a bug where modding the species appearance would not apply to the ruler
  • The Scholarium Investigator leader trait now gives +25% Assist Research Efficiency instead of failing to give 10% Research Speed as a non-council trait.
  • Fixed a COOP bug where it was possible for several players to unlock council positions at the same time resulting in duplicates
  • If there is a wormhole in the capital system, then the Keides wormhole will spawn in a random neighboring system 1-2 jumps away
  • Cordyceptic Stargazers now correctly spawn with an amoeba fleet again.
  • Fixed Eager Explorer empires spawning with an extra scientist.
  • Slaves are now properly set under dystopian living standard
  • Any Gestalt empire generated after game start (e.g. from machine uprising) should now correctly get their Gestalt council nodes.
  • Hyperdrive technologies no longer show duplicated icons.
  • Fixed issues where starbase modifiers would apply to defensive platforms when they shouldn't
  • Fixed an issue where pre FTL empires spawned from the necrophage origin would spawn in orbit of their planet
  • Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
  • Zroni Relic will now add 1 level to the leader, but won't choose trait on random it will be up to player to chose the trait.
  • Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
  • Fixed a bug where some traits would not properly localize their names when their modifiers are part of tooltips
  • Fixed a bug where the Insightful trait tooltip would duplicate headers for its effects
  • Fixed an issue where it was not possible to unassign envoys from their current task
  • Fixed Resilient trait to properly adjust for synths. Did the same for destiny trait which was giving leader life span
  • Crusader Spirit Opinion Modifier: Now it gives -80 opinion towards everyone of different ethic and +20 to the same ethic empires
  • Fixed issues with the fleet manager where the buttons to increase and decrease the number of ships would not work correctly when using shift or ctrl modifiers
  • Rogue Scientist event chain shouldn't trigger for Governors assigned as Head of Science.
  • Updated some trigger loc from "No of ..." to "Number of ..." to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
  • Fixed Tooltip for Paranoid Leader Trait
  • Fixed title case for anomaly.3141 "The Depths of Alien Life"
  • The event that allows you to pick a Chosen One no longer says "three individuals" are capable of absorbing such power and proceeds to list four names.
  • Events that give the Chosen traits now check that the leader in question is psionic.
  • Fixed an issue where you could reinforce a fleet when the template was not filled with the correct ships even though the fleet was filled on command limit
  • Fixed the spawn chance modifier of the anomaly The Orb, as it could not spawn before.
  • Beholder planetfall error message now states that an empty building slot is required.
  • Fixed icon for brainslug species trait again.
  • You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
  • Fallen empire capital planets should now have the correct planetary designation.
  • You can no longer create subjects from sectors if the primary species would be an infertile clone army species.
  • Marauder admirals can no longer serve on the council or be manually fired.
  • Fixed some edges where a ruler could be chosen by a shroud entity but not awarded the trait.
  • Added scripted loc for GetDefenseForceOrArmada and GetGDFOrArmada
  • Updated Cybernetic Advantage agenda so it doesn't display placeholder art.
  • Regular empires no longer have machine or hive-mind leaders in their external leader pools and vice versa.
  • Cloned Organs/Self-Preservation Protocols now correctly has the same effects as Mind and Body.
  • Fixed incorrect modifiers on the adoption effect of Synthetic traditions.
  • Fixed MP lobby chat messages and scroll bar spilling outside the chat box.
  • Fixed most tooltips in the game browser not working.
  • Fixed Plantoids Species Pack DLC not showing up in MP lobby DLC list
  • Fixed misalignment of the DLC icons in the multiplayer lobby
  • Fixed icon lists sometimes becoming vertical when they should be horizontal
  • Fixed coop presence icons not always showing their tooltip.
  • The Interstellar Recruitment Office tooltip now specifies why you can't build it if you already have one in your empire.
  • The sentinels archaeology site will now put Azaryn back on her own ship when she returns.
  • Fixed a bug where some mercenary fleets would not have an admiral assigned to them
  • Mercenary Admirals now get Mercenary Warrior Trait and 2 admiral traits to represent their level
  • Mercenary Enclaves should no longer steal their admirals which they just rented out

AI

  • AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
  • Fixed an issue where AI would be unable to build any buildings if they desired to build the Ancient Refinery but did not have access to any minor artifacts

Stability and Performance

  • Fixed a number of Out of Sync errors.
  • Increased performance in the leader view
  • Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a scientist was elected ruler while performing science ship orders
  • Fixed a rare, but persistent crash when an empire was destroyed
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes happen if there were issues opening or writing log files
  • Fixed crash in MP lobby when you confirm disbanding a coop group if the player list changed while the confirmation popup was open.
  • Disabled tooltips in the loading screen to avoid crashes related to focus loss.

UI

  • Re-enabled tooltips while the game has no focus as hiding them caused issues for screen readers.
  • Added tooltips for the join/leave coop empire button in the MP lobby when you can't click it.
  • Added a tooltip for the coop checkbox in the MP lobby when you can't change it due to being ready.
  • Use different titles for the multiplayer and coop game browsers.
  • The multiplayer game browser now has a column that shows whether a game allows coop.
  • Fixed an issue where the active agendas list would sometimes duplicate elements
  • Added a new version of the main coop presence view to the topbar for resolutions with width >= 1600
  • Auto-confirm disbanding a coop group in the MP lobby if all other players leave the group.
  • Modifiers that affect leader experience gain will now be indented under a "Experience Gain Rate:" header
  • Added confirmation prompt when selecting a country during hotjoining
  • Lysator Syng's hire tooltip now shows that hiring him will give you 3 pirate ships as well.
  • Show decimals for power projection breakdown in naval cap tooltip

Modding

  • Added set_random_$CLASS$_background_effect script effects, to assign a random background class to a leader. $CLASS$ can be replaced with admiral, general, governor, or scientist.
  • Added support for custom_tooltip_with_modifiers for council positions.
  • Updated documentation for council positions to include new script support. See 01_test_councilor.txt for an example of a council position not linked to civics.
  • Added script effect "unlock_council_selection = yes" to force validation of council positions and allow the player to reselect their council positions.
  • Fixed the ethics OverLappingElementsBox not reloading properly
  • Fixed the spacing parameter not working for vertical OverlappingElementBoxTypes
  • Added new "empire_size_add" modifier, which flatly increases or decreases the Empire size.
  • Council position unlock screen will now show council positions which are available by scope check but don't require any civics
  • Added console command "debug_trait_weights", which enables logging of some of the trait random roll weights.
  • Added military_power_multiplier to weapon components, which allows manual adjustment of combat power assessment for intangibles that are otherwise difficult to automate.
  • Use 2 decimals for army upkeep in army view

Leaders, Level Caps, and Balance​

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Leader Caps that were reintroduced with the 3.8 update. We feel that they are a necessary piece of the balance puzzle, as leaders are generally far more powerful than they were before, and we explicitly wanted empires to have fewer, more important leaders.

The leaders you recruit are intended to be seen as exceptional individuals within your empire, and the planets and fleets that do not possess an Admiral or Governor were not intended to be “unled” - but the rank and file administrators that led them were not as important as the ones represented by visible, portraited characters.

I agree with the comments that it’s unsatisfying to have empty space where there should be some representation of non-exceptional leaders. We’re still exploring solutions to this, whether it be envoy-style “level 0 leaders”, class-specific leader limits, authority based institutions being present in areas without exceptional leaders, a different system altogether, or a combination of some or all of the above. (Not so secretly, I’m also interested in exploring the idea of upgrading Envoys into full leaders at some point in the future, so adjustments will have to be made to the system regardless. Currently I lean towards a combination of some of the above, but some of the changes I want to make are bigger than fit into post-release support.)


Renaming the Syndication Agency Officer to the Crime Minister.

You’ll also be able to rename Council positions.

We also concur that the caps are a bit on the tight side. As noted in the patch notes, we’re making some changes to loosen them a bit, but we feel that we have to tread carefully for balance reasons. We’ve reduced the rate at which leaders reach -100% XP for being over cap, and added an XP scalar in Defines for easy modder access.

We’re also merging the “Leader of Opportunity” mechanic we discussed last week into the Eager leader trait - leaders with this trait will not count against the Leader Cap for their first few levels. We originally intended for Leader of Opportunity to be used exclusively with event leaders, but the discussions that followed showed that people were looking forward to seeing leaders with the effect in the Leader Pool, and we agreed that it would be interesting to see.

The Crime Minister has the Eagerness trait.

Traits are also now nouns to ease localization into gendered languages.

Regarding early game exploration - while we are happy with the exploration phase of the game being longer than before, it’s a bit slower than we’d like. We’re going to let military fleets with an assigned Admiral explore hyperlanes, which also has the benefit of resolving an edge case when you’re at war and have an enemy system hidden away in a nebula. They won’t be able to survey planets or explore wormholes like a crewed Science ship, but this should provide more freedom to find hyperlane choke points during your initial steps to the stars. The change which gave Admirals increased command limit as they gained levels has also been removed - as many of you have pointed out, it didn’t feel great to have your fleets split on leader death.

We need a Science Ship with a Scientist or a Military Fleet led by an Admiral to explore a system we have no intel on.

In the longer term, we’re considering giving Generals more “things to do” - as some of you have pointed out, it could be interesting to let a General step in when newly conquered planets need to be pacified, perhaps acting as an interim martial law governor for freshly “liberated” sectors. #nopromises

We’re generally happy with how Gestalt Nodes have worked out - they have several major advantages over regular Empires due to these immortal specialist nodes, but also some differences that become more pronounced as the game goes on. In a future release (likely 3.9), we’re considering allowing them to “cull” a node and grow a new one as an agenda, as some Council traits are valuable in the first parts of the game but far less useful later on.

A great many leader traits have had a balance pass, described in the patch notes above. As the systems evolve, expect more motion there. We expect that we’ll be making further adjustments and improvements to all of these systems in upcoming Custodian updates.

Prioritization of Bugs and Balance​

Naturally, there must be some prioritization done when it comes to bugs and balance. At the top of the pile are things that prevent you from playing - crashes, out of syncs, and the like.

Issues that involved displayed text are often high priority as well - as Stellaris is available in ten different languages and translators need time to do their jobs, we have limited windows in which to make any changes that require localization. 3.8.1 and 3.8.3, for instance, are localized releases, while 3.8.2 and the future 3.8.4 are not. Sometimes we’ll plan ahead and slip some “emergency loc” into a localized release even if we haven’t had a chance to actually address the bug itself, but that’s relatively rare.

Bugs deemed Exploits are usually rated very low in our general triage - if an AI is unlikely to abuse a bug against you, but you can choose to use it or not, it tends to be lower priority than things that are more disruptive to general gameplay.

Script Improvements for Councilors​

Some improvements to the scriptability of council positions we were working have also been added into 3.8.3.

Firstly, we've added the Reorganize Council agenda which will allow empires to reselect their council positions without needing to reform the government.

Of more interest for modders, support for council positions made possible by non-civic sources, such as country flags, ascension perks and other such triggers have been improved.
We've attached the documentation below

# Councilor Documentation
#
# councilor_name_key = {
# possible = { } Country scope triggers to evaluate if the council position is allowed.
# leader_class = { } Which leader classes can have this council position. Currently only used for the Recruit new Leader buttons. Default = none.
# is_leader_possible = { } Leader scope triggers to evaluate if a leader can be assigned to this position.
# conditional_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown for the requirements of the council position.
# civic = civic_imperial_cult Civic that is required for this council position. Also used by UI. Default = none.
# custom_unlock_title = "LOC_KEY" Custom text shown instead of "UNLOCK_COUNCIL_POSITION_TOOLTIP for council positions without a civic"
# modifier = { } Country Modifier, that is multiplied by assigned Leader's level.
# custom_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown instead of the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position.
# custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown in addition to the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position.
# icon = "GFX_icon_name" Icon used for the council position, if a civic is not specified.
# required = yes/no Is this position forced to be on the council. Default = no
# }

Script:
# councilor_expert_programmer = {
# leader_class = { scientist }
# possible = {
# has_country_flag = expert_programmer
# }
# is_leader_possible = {
# leader_class = scientist
# }
# modifier = {
# planet_researchers_physics_research_produces_add = 1
# }
# custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers"
# icon = "GFX_icon_councilor_research"
# custom_unlock_title = "councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title"
# conditional_tooltip = "councilor_expert_programmer_conditional"
# }

Loc:
# councilor_expert_programmer: "Expert Programmer"
# councilor_expert_programmer_female: "$councilor_expert_programmer$"
# councilor_expert_programmer_desc: "An $TITLE$ is to thank for the new script support for Council Positions."
# councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers: "This is an example of a custom tooltip with modifiers for a Council Position."
# councilor_expert_programmer_conditional: "This is an example of a conditional tooltip for a Council Positon."
# councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title: "§HCouncil Position from Console Commands§!"

Out of Syncs​

I mentioned this last week, but since we’re very interested in improving multiplayer stability… 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.

3.8.3 resolves a number of Out of Sync issues, but ideally I’d like the 3.8.4 update to be in a state where we can remove the beta tag from the Cooperative game mode.

That's it for this week folks, see you next week!
 
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Added scroll wheel speed settings
[...]
Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
I could kiss you!

Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
[...]
Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
So what you're saying is as long as I can stack at least nine colonies and/or habitats within the same system I'll still be able to print ships for free?

Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
At last my special eyes will be freed from this affliction!
 
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So what you're saying is as long as I can stack at least nine colonies and/or habitats within the same system I'll still be able to print ships for free?
You only need 3 colonies, at most, 2, reasonably, and potentially 0 governors at all if you stack Military Pioneer admirals. -20% from the agenda, -10% from Supremacy, and -5% from the relevant production tech puts you at -35% without doing anything with leaders at all. From there, it's -10% for each level 2 military pioneer empire wide, -10% from (potentially) Architect of War, and -20% from each perfect governor (-10% from Shipwright, -10% from Retired Fleet officer).

So you need some combination of 55% from leaders, and there are 4 different traits (including the one Destiny trait) which give 10% each, in various forms, to get you there.
 
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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.
 
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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.
Oh hey, I had no idea. Thanks for the clarification.
 
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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.
This includes accounting for if a Luminary is made an immortal machine or a Chosen One? I recall the posts where the Luminary keeps dying despite being made essentially immortal by the game's in-game lore standards.
 
Hello again!

We’ve been working on a balance and bugfixing update, which should hopefully be coming to you early next week. Today I’ll be going over some of the things that will be in it, as well as go into why we’ve prioritized certain fixes over others.

############################################################​

#################### VERSION 3.8.3 Patch ######################​

############################################################​



Improvements

  • It is now possible to rename council positions by clicking on council position name in the council view.
  • Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.
  • Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens.
  • Added a checkbox to toggle automatic expansion of a sector in the sector editor
  • Made the three different "Terraforming Candidate Discovered" events turn into messages if you have already found one before.
  • The pre-sapients that worship the Beholder now have the Psionic trait.
  • The Beholder's Psi-Inoculation process is now a pair of decisions to toggle it on and off, instead of a decision to be enacted for each pop you want to become psionic.
  • The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one.
  • Imperial Heirs will now be more likely to adopt the class of the current ruler if you have the Philosopher King civic.
  • Imperial heirs will now have their chosen class weighted by civics and traditions that give bonuses to specific leader classes.
  • Added the Reorganize Council agenda, which allows reselection of unlocked council positions without the need to reform the government.
  • Beholder now has a recruitment event, and Azaryn's recruitment event has a couple more options
  • Added a checkbox in the army tab of the planet view to control if a planet is used via the sector army builder or not
  • Added scroll wheel speed settings
  • Leaders in the leader pool that start with a negative trait, now correctly gets one less additional negative trait during their lifespan.
  • For players without Galactic Paragons, leaders will more often get traits that match if they're assigned as councilors or not.
  • Increased the age span of new leaders, but weighted towards the middle. Initial Leaders will now also be roughly the same age as pool leaders.
  • The edict fund is now shown in the council view.
  • Imperial empires can now crown a Chosen One to be the Divine Sovereign if the Chosen One is the current ruler or heir.

Balance

  • Legendary leaders do not count towards Leader Capacity.
  • The Eager trait now has an additional effect: these leaders will not contribute towards Leader Capacity until they reach level 4. Assigned some event spawned leaders the Eager (II) trait.
  • Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your leader cap.
  • XP Penalties for going over leader capacity have been reduced. The LEADER_CAPACITY_XP_SCALE define has been added for modders to be able to easily adjust this number.
  • Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
  • Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
  • Researching Galactic Administration now removes the cooldown for government reform, this was previously only done if you obtained it via Statecraft traditions.
  • Rebalanced many traditions and ascension Perks.
    • Opener for Aptitude traditions now gives +1 trait, moved from the Finisher. This is retroactively applied to leaders that have been hired or are in your leader pool.
    • The Empire Needs You now gives -25% Leader Hire Cost instead of +1 Leader Capacity.
    • Specialist Training now gives +25% Leader XP Gain.
    • Psychological Profiling now gives -25% Leader Upkeep Cost in addition to -1 Max Negative Traits.
    • Healthcare Program now gives +20 Leader Lifespan instead of +10 Leader Lifespan.
    • Aptitude Finisher now gives +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Trait Pick options instead of +1 trait.
    • Science Division now gives -10% Scientist Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Scientist XP Gain.
    • Polytechnic Education now gives +10% Leader XP gain instead of +20%.
    • Colonial Viceroys now gives -10% Governor Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Governor XP Gain.
    • War Games now gives -10% Admiral Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Admiral XP Gain.
    • Mind and Body now gives +10 Leader Lifespan instead of +20 Leader Lifespan.
    • Finisher effect for Statecraft now grants Galactic Administration as a research option with 25% progress instead of giving the tech for tree.
    • Resistance is Frugal now also gives -10% General Cost and Upkeep.
    • Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.
    • Transcendent Learning Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity, +1 Leader Pool Size and +33% Leader XP gain.
    • 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)
  • Guardian trait maximum effect is now +33% Defense Platform Damage and Hull Points.
  • Frontier Spirit trait maximum effects changed to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +50% Colonization Speed and +1 starting pop for colonies.
  • Cyborg generals now increase planetary combat width.
  • Reduced passive experience gain by 30% for Progenitor Hive leaders from level 1-6 and 50% for Progenitor Hive leaders between 7-10.
  • Gray Eminence destiny trait now reduces the effects of empire size, instead of reducing empire size directly. Updated Aturion Efficiency to match Gray Eminence.
  • Now imperial rulers do not lose imperial heir trait, so they don't become worse when they take over the country.
  • Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.
  • Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
  • Now criminals are also unhappy when under oppressive autocracy civic
  • Kai-Sha's "Expanded Contact Network" event will now upgrade her Shady Contacts trait if she already has it. And gives intel on other empires if it has already been maxed out.
  • Replaced -20% Empire Size reduction for Aturion Efficiency trait with -10% Empire Size Penalty.
  • Leader traits that have base resource production now produce the market equivalent of 8 energy/month for tier 1 and 32 energy/month for tier 2.
  • Aggressor admiral sub-class now gives +7.5% weapon damage.
  • Artillerist II trait now gives +7.5% tracking.
  • Fortifier trait now scales between -5% Starbase upgrade cost and -5% Defense platform cost at tier 1 to -10% Starbase upgrade cost, -10% Defense platform cost, +5% Starbase hullpoints and +5% Defense platform hullpoints at tier 3.
  • Armada Logistician trait ship upkeep maximum reduction is now -10%.
  • Military Pioneer trait maximum effects are now +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Guerilla Tactician now gives a flat 10 Evasion instead of a +50% Evasion multiplier.
  • Architect of War now gives -10% Military Ship Cost.
  • Charisma trait now has a maximum Edict Upkeep reduction of -10%
  • Removed -5% Military Ship Cost from the Strategist sub-class
  • Geological Consultant trait maximum effect reduced to 9 months of unity per blocker removed.
  • Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Agrarian Upbringing trait now checks for country_uses_food = yes instead of being biological.
  • Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  • Frontier Spirit maximum effects reduced to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +45% Colonization Speed.
  • Architectural Sense maximum effects reduced to -10% Buildings and Districts Cost, -5% Buildings and District Upkeep, +25% Planetary Build Speed.
  • Experimenter trait now gives a maxium of 2×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  • Explorer trait maximum effects reduced to -10% Science Ship Cost and +25% Anomaly Research Speed.
  • Expansionist maximum effects reduced to -10% Outpost Alloy and Influence Cost.
  • Great Researcher trait now gives 5×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  • Taskmaster trait XP reduced from 600 to 500. In return it now has soldiers produce 2/2/2 Energy/Minerals/Food (for countries that use food) or 3/3 Energy/Minerals (for countries that don't)

Bugfixes

  • Under One Rule now changes to Imperial Authority when transitioning to Galactic Emperor or Psionic Sovereign.
  • Intellectual Espionage trait now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
  • Fixed an issue where the Expanded Hive Warren would get deleted if there was no remaining unupgraded Hive Warrens on the planet
  • Updated all researcher jobs to check for Academic Recruiter.
  • Increased the army upkeep from Disorder II trait.
  • Chainbreaker trait now requires Egalitarian ethics.
  • Honored Warmaster trait now requires Xenophile ethics.
  • Commented out cut prospecting decision.
  • Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.
  • Taskmaster trait no longer gives an undocumented +5% Building Speed per soldier job.
  • Now you can't terraform with Azaryn without launching her special ability.
  • The Death of a Great Leader event should no longer fire when you send a leader off to the Keepers of Knowledge.
  • Cloaked Ships will no longer block starbases from being rebuilt.
  • Moved gestalt nodes further apart from each other in the council view so that trait picking doesn't get blocked when they have a lot of traits.
  • The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class
  • Fixed an issue where traits given via event options would not correctly display triggered effects
  • The ambience sound effect played in the council view is now properly affected by the ambience volume slider
  • Fixed an issue where leaders that changed empires would retain their council position in their old empire
  • Fixed a bug where modding the species appearance would not apply to the ruler
  • The Scholarium Investigator leader trait now gives +25% Assist Research Efficiency instead of failing to give 10% Research Speed as a non-council trait.
  • Fixed a COOP bug where it was possible for several players to unlock council positions at the same time resulting in duplicates
  • If there is a wormhole in the capital system, then the Keides wormhole will spawn in a random neighboring system 1-2 jumps away
  • Cordyceptic Stargazers now correctly spawn with an amoeba fleet again.
  • Fixed Eager Explorer empires spawning with an extra scientist.
  • Slaves are now properly set under dystopian living standard
  • Any Gestalt empire generated after game start (e.g. from machine uprising) should now correctly get their Gestalt council nodes.
  • Hyperdrive technologies no longer show duplicated icons.
  • Fixed issues where starbase modifiers would apply to defensive platforms when they shouldn't
  • Fixed an issue where pre FTL empires spawned from the necrophage origin would spawn in orbit of their planet
  • Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
  • Zroni Relic will now add 1 level to the leader, but won't choose trait on random it will be up to player to chose the trait.
  • Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
  • Fixed a bug where some traits would not properly localize their names when their modifiers are part of tooltips
  • Fixed a bug where the Insightful trait tooltip would duplicate headers for its effects
  • Fixed an issue where it was not possible to unassign envoys from their current task
  • Fixed Resilient trait to properly adjust for synths. Did the same for destiny trait which was giving leader life span
  • Crusader Spirit Opinion Modifier: Now it gives -80 opinion towards everyone of different ethic and +20 to the same ethic empires
  • Fixed issues with the fleet manager where the buttons to increase and decrease the number of ships would not work correctly when using shift or ctrl modifiers
  • Rogue Scientist event chain shouldn't trigger for Governors assigned as Head of Science.
  • Updated some trigger loc from "No of ..." to "Number of ..." to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
  • Fixed Tooltip for Paranoid Leader Trait
  • Fixed title case for anomaly.3141 "The Depths of Alien Life"
  • The event that allows you to pick a Chosen One no longer says "three individuals" are capable of absorbing such power and proceeds to list four names.
  • Events that give the Chosen traits now check that the leader in question is psionic.
  • Fixed an issue where you could reinforce a fleet when the template was not filled with the correct ships even though the fleet was filled on command limit
  • Fixed the spawn chance modifier of the anomaly The Orb, as it could not spawn before.
  • Beholder planetfall error message now states that an empty building slot is required.
  • Fixed icon for brainslug species trait again.
  • You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
  • Fallen empire capital planets should now have the correct planetary designation.
  • You can no longer create subjects from sectors if the primary species would be an infertile clone army species.
  • Marauder admirals can no longer serve on the council or be manually fired.
  • Fixed some edges where a ruler could be chosen by a shroud entity but not awarded the trait.
  • Added scripted loc for GetDefenseForceOrArmada and GetGDFOrArmada
  • Updated Cybernetic Advantage agenda so it doesn't display placeholder art.
  • Regular empires no longer have machine or hive-mind leaders in their external leader pools and vice versa.
  • Cloned Organs/Self-Preservation Protocols now correctly has the same effects as Mind and Body.
  • Fixed incorrect modifiers on the adoption effect of Synthetic traditions.
  • Fixed MP lobby chat messages and scroll bar spilling outside the chat box.
  • Fixed most tooltips in the game browser not working.
  • Fixed Plantoids Species Pack DLC not showing up in MP lobby DLC list
  • Fixed misalignment of the DLC icons in the multiplayer lobby
  • Fixed icon lists sometimes becoming vertical when they should be horizontal
  • Fixed coop presence icons not always showing their tooltip.
  • The Interstellar Recruitment Office tooltip now specifies why you can't build it if you already have one in your empire.
  • The sentinels archaeology site will now put Azaryn back on her own ship when she returns.
  • Fixed a bug where some mercenary fleets would not have an admiral assigned to them
  • Mercenary Admirals now get Mercenary Warrior Trait and 2 admiral traits to represent their level
  • Mercenary Enclaves should no longer steal their admirals which they just rented out

AI

  • AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
  • Fixed an issue where AI would be unable to build any buildings if they desired to build the Ancient Refinery but did not have access to any minor artifacts

Stability and Performance

  • Fixed a number of Out of Sync errors.
  • Increased performance in the leader view
  • Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a scientist was elected ruler while performing science ship orders
  • Fixed a rare, but persistent crash when an empire was destroyed
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes happen if there were issues opening or writing log files
  • Fixed crash in MP lobby when you confirm disbanding a coop group if the player list changed while the confirmation popup was open.
  • Disabled tooltips in the loading screen to avoid crashes related to focus loss.

UI

  • Re-enabled tooltips while the game has no focus as hiding them caused issues for screen readers.
  • Added tooltips for the join/leave coop empire button in the MP lobby when you can't click it.
  • Added a tooltip for the coop checkbox in the MP lobby when you can't change it due to being ready.
  • Use different titles for the multiplayer and coop game browsers.
  • The multiplayer game browser now has a column that shows whether a game allows coop.
  • Fixed an issue where the active agendas list would sometimes duplicate elements
  • Added a new version of the main coop presence view to the topbar for resolutions with width >= 1600
  • Auto-confirm disbanding a coop group in the MP lobby if all other players leave the group.
  • Modifiers that affect leader experience gain will now be indented under a "Experience Gain Rate:" header
  • Added confirmation prompt when selecting a country during hotjoining
  • Lysator Syng's hire tooltip now shows that hiring him will give you 3 pirate ships as well.
  • Show decimals for power projection breakdown in naval cap tooltip

Modding

  • Added set_random_$CLASS$_background_effect script effects, to assign a random background class to a leader. $CLASS$ can be replaced with admiral, general, governor, or scientist.
  • Added support for custom_tooltip_with_modifiers for council positions.
  • Updated documentation for council positions to include new script support. See 01_test_councilor.txt for an example of a council position not linked to civics.
  • Added script effect "unlock_council_selection = yes" to force validation of council positions and allow the player to reselect their council positions.
  • Fixed the ethics OverLappingElementsBox not reloading properly
  • Fixed the spacing parameter not working for vertical OverlappingElementBoxTypes
  • Added new "empire_size_add" modifier, which flatly increases or decreases the Empire size.
  • Council position unlock screen will now show council positions which are available by scope check but don't require any civics
  • Added console command "debug_trait_weights", which enables logging of some of the trait random roll weights.
  • Added military_power_multiplier to weapon components, which allows manual adjustment of combat power assessment for intangibles that are otherwise difficult to automate.
  • Use 2 decimals for army upkeep in army view

Leaders, Level Caps, and Balance​

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Leader Caps that were reintroduced with the 3.8 update. We feel that they are a necessary piece of the balance puzzle, as leaders are generally far more powerful than they were before, and we explicitly wanted empires to have fewer, more important leaders.

The leaders you recruit are intended to be seen as exceptional individuals within your empire, and the planets and fleets that do not possess an Admiral or Governor were not intended to be “unled” - but the rank and file administrators that led them were not as important as the ones represented by visible, portraited characters.

I agree with the comments that it’s unsatisfying to have empty space where there should be some representation of non-exceptional leaders. We’re still exploring solutions to this, whether it be envoy-style “level 0 leaders”, class-specific leader limits, authority based institutions being present in areas without exceptional leaders, a different system altogether, or a combination of some or all of the above. (Not so secretly, I’m also interested in exploring the idea of upgrading Envoys into full leaders at some point in the future, so adjustments will have to be made to the system regardless. Currently I lean towards a combination of some of the above, but some of the changes I want to make are bigger than fit into post-release support.)


View attachment 987523
You’ll also be able to rename Council positions.

We also concur that the caps are a bit on the tight side. As noted in the patch notes, we’re making some changes to loosen them a bit, but we feel that we have to tread carefully for balance reasons. We’ve reduced the rate at which leaders reach -100% XP for being over cap, and added an XP scalar in Defines for easy modder access.

We’re also merging the “Leader of Opportunity” mechanic we discussed last week into the Eager leader trait - leaders with this trait will not count against the Leader Cap for their first few levels. We originally intended for Leader of Opportunity to be used exclusively with event leaders, but the discussions that followed showed that people were looking forward to seeing leaders with the effect in the Leader Pool, and we agreed that it would be interesting to see.

View attachment 987524
Traits are also now nouns to ease localization into gendered languages.

Regarding early game exploration - while we are happy with the exploration phase of the game being longer than before, it’s a bit slower than we’d like. We’re going to let military fleets with an assigned Admiral explore hyperlanes, which also has the benefit of resolving an edge case when you’re at war and have an enemy system hidden away in a nebula. They won’t be able to survey planets or explore wormholes like a crewed Science ship, but this should provide more freedom to find hyperlane choke points during your initial steps to the stars. The change which gave Admirals increased command limit as they gained levels has also been removed - as many of you have pointed out, it didn’t feel great to have your fleets split on leader death.


In the longer term, we’re considering giving Generals more “things to do” - as some of you have pointed out, it could be interesting to let a General step in when newly conquered planets need to be pacified, perhaps acting as an interim martial law governor for freshly “liberated” sectors. #nopromises

We’re generally happy with how Gestalt Nodes have worked out - they have several major advantages over regular Empires due to these immortal specialist nodes, but also some differences that become more pronounced as the game goes on. In a future release (likely 3.9), we’re considering allowing them to “cull” a node and grow a new one as an agenda, as some Council traits are valuable in the first parts of the game but far less useful later on.

A great many leader traits have had a balance pass, described in the patch notes above. As the systems evolve, expect more motion there. We expect that we’ll be making further adjustments and improvements to all of these systems in upcoming Custodian updates.

Prioritization of Bugs and Balance​

Naturally, there must be some prioritization done when it comes to bugs and balance. At the top of the pile are things that prevent you from playing - crashes, out of syncs, and the like.

Issues that involved displayed text are often high priority as well - as Stellaris is available in ten different languages and translators need time to do their jobs, we have limited windows in which to make any changes that require localization. 3.8.1 and 3.8.3, for instance, are localized releases, while 3.8.2 and the future 3.8.4 are not. Sometimes we’ll plan ahead and slip some “emergency loc” into a localized release even if we haven’t had a chance to actually address the bug itself, but that’s relatively rare.

Bugs deemed Exploits are usually rated very low in our general triage - if an AI is unlikely to abuse a bug against you, but you can choose to use it or not, it tends to be lower priority than things that are more disruptive to general gameplay.

Script Improvements for Councilors​

Some improvements to the scriptability of council positions we were working have also been added into 3.8.3.

Firstly, we've added the Reorganize Council agenda which will allow empires to reselect their council positions without needing to reform the government.

Of more interest for modders, support for council positions made possible by non-civic sources, such as country flags, ascension perks and other such triggers have been improved.
We've attached the documentation below

# Councilor Documentation
#
# councilor_name_key = {
# possible = { } Country scope triggers to evaluate if the council position is allowed.
# leader_class = { } Which leader classes can have this council position. Currently only used for the Recruit new Leader buttons. Default = none.
# is_leader_possible = { } Leader scope triggers to evaluate if a leader can be assigned to this position.
# conditional_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown for the requirements of the council position.
# civic = civic_imperial_cult Civic that is required for this council position. Also used by UI. Default = none.
# custom_unlock_title = "LOC_KEY" Custom text shown instead of "UNLOCK_COUNCIL_POSITION_TOOLTIP for council positions without a civic"
# modifier = { } Country Modifier, that is multiplied by assigned Leader's level.
# custom_tooltip = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown instead of the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position.
# custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "LOC_KEY" Custom tooltip text shown in addition to the auto-generated modifier tooltip text of the council position.
# icon = "GFX_icon_name" Icon used for the council position, if a civic is not specified.
# required = yes/no Is this position forced to be on the council. Default = no
# }

Script:
# councilor_expert_programmer = {
# leader_class = { scientist }
# possible = {
# has_country_flag = expert_programmer
# }
# is_leader_possible = {
# leader_class = scientist
# }
# modifier = {
# planet_researchers_physics_research_produces_add = 1
# }
# custom_tooltip_with_modifiers = "councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers"
# icon = "GFX_icon_councilor_research"
# custom_unlock_title = "councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title"
# conditional_tooltip = "councilor_expert_programmer_conditional"
# }

Loc:
# councilor_expert_programmer: "Expert Programmer"
# councilor_expert_programmer_female: "$councilor_expert_programmer$"
# councilor_expert_programmer_desc: "An $TITLE$ is to thank for the new script support for Council Positions."
# councilor_expert_programmer_modifiers: "This is an example of a custom tooltip with modifiers for a Council Position."
# councilor_expert_programmer_conditional: "This is an example of a conditional tooltip for a Council Positon."
# councilor_expert_programmer_unlock_title: "§HCouncil Position from Console Commands§!"

Out of Syncs​

I mentioned this last week, but since we’re very interested in improving multiplayer stability… 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.

3.8.3 resolves a number of Out of Sync issues, but ideally I’d like the 3.8.4 update to be in a state where we can remove the beta tag from the Cooperative game mode.

That's it for this week folks, see you next week!
So on the new Eager trait: what stops a feudal society from hiring as many eager governors as they have access to, only leveling them each to level 3 before they just let them sit and produce unity (and -6 empire size, and whatever raw resources production traits they happened upon)? If they don't contribute to the cap there is zero limitation on how many you can hire.
 
Hi. Is this bug-fixing and tweaking the reason that Paragons does not appear to be for sale on the Microsoft Store for XBox here in Australia? All other content except that and First Contact appear to be present. Thanks.
 
In your defence and Abdul agrees in a previous post I can't quote right now (gin in one hand) - I think most people genuinely play on the biggest galaxy their PC can handle, at least going by the forum anyway. I think its natural that players would have an allure to the "biggest sandpit" they can play in, a lot of the time.
I don't think that's a good assumption. Everyone I know that plays the game does indeed use the default 600. Not because they can't handle more but because of how larger galaxies impact the pace of the game and shift more emphasis on the less-interesting (imo) lategame. I used to play on larger settings until I got tired of how much longer it made Wars in Heaven or Crisis Wars, for example. 600 stars makes for a decent pace for both SP and MP where you don't have to get too much into repetitive expansion and system management in the early/mid and endless total war conquest later on.

(I don't use many of the other defaults though, e.g. I play and host 2275/2350/2450.)
 
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What do you think about leader XP gain rate (or XP required for level-up) slider in game settings? Especially since a lot of XP modifiers were nerfed.

Leaders are an important part of the progress, but if other variables, such as tech/trad cost or pop growth, can be adjusted in settings, the leader progression remains static and designed only for really long games.
 
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"The change which gave Admirals increased command limit as they gained levels has also been removed - as many of you have pointed out, it didn’t feel great to have your fleets split on leader death."

I would be interested what the intended goal of this design was in the first place?
Was it just a quick idea to make admirals matter even more or was there a solution down the line regarding stacked fleets?
Neither, exactly. This is actually a case of the designers doing the right thing, albeit with unfortunate side effects.

Specifically, admirals (like all leaders) are much scarcer now, because of the leader cap. So the idea was, instead of having two fleets with old-school meh admirals, you'd have one fleet with a new Paragons-style admiral. Obviously, that requires increasing the fleet cap... and it's a good goal to have! It sucks that now most fleets don't have real admirals!

Their mistake was not looking at the purpose of the feature and finding a new way to achieve it. Instead of making fleet sizes scale with leader level, they should have just increased them across the board (by probably 50-100%). So on day 1 you have a fleet cap of 30 or 40, when you research Destroyers your cap goes to 45 or 60, when you research the techs that currently give +20 fleet cap each, they instead gives +30 or +40... straightforward, logical, dead simple to implement, and preserves the reasons for both the fleet cap existing in the first place and increasing with 3.8!

The fleet cap exists in the first place because there used to be a harder leader limit than now, which they got rid of because it sucked. The fleet cap, combined with a poorly-documented DPS bonus that smaller fleets get against larger ones, and eventually the presence of titan auras, served as a balancing factor where a small empire could field a fully-staffed high-quality navy while a larger empire with enormous piles of mineral income - alloys didn't exist yet - would have a greater quantity of individually inferior ships (plus some fully-led ones; it was still better to go big in nearly all cases).

It is not, and never was, in any way related to doomstacks. Doomstacking was and is still trivial and completely unaffected by fleet cap; just assign all of your fleets to follow the slowest one (until they accidentally broke fleet following between systems in 3.8 and didn't even address it for a while, somehow). 10 fleets all following the slowest one is exactly equivalent in terms of strategic maneuvering and number of ships in the battle to stuffing all of those ships into a single 10-times-as-large fleet. In fact, all else being equal, smaller fleets are better because you can't retreat only part of a big fleet (e.g. pull your torpedo ships out after killing all their large vessels, or your battleships out if the enemy is torpedo-heavy) but you can if you put each type of ship into its own fleet. The ability to further specialize those fleets via admirals - at least, until you run out of leader capacity - is icing on the cake.
 
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No, it's worse because those who are fully committed to exploiting this mechanic (aka, just using it) now have a huge advantage over those that don't want to do that.

If I have a single Shipwright/Retired Naval Officer governor on my shipyard, a Military Pioneer on the council, the relevant tech, Supremacy, and the agenda, I would have formerly had -80%. My tryhard neighbor who stacked a second governor (or was genocidal) would have had -90%. 2x as many ships. I could match them by adding another -10%.

Now I have -65%. The Devouring Swarm still has -90% (3.5x as many ships), my tryhard neighbor has -85% (2.3x as many ships), though if he appoints another Strategist to the council, that also becomes -90% (3.5x).

The problem isn't that it's hard to "exploit" (using the traits as intended is enough to hit 90). The problem is that it's still trivial to reach -90% if you tailor your empire toward it with admiral positions (3 military pioneers, the tech, supremacy, and the agenda is -65% without a governor at all, -75% if you go up to Architect of War). But for everyone else, it's now extremely hard to compete without radically altering their empire or exploiting.

Having 3 admirals on the council instead of 1 isn't supposed to triple the number of ships you can build. Nor, presumably, would playing a DS/DE. But currently, it does.

If everyone runs up against the cap, everyone is equal. If the default is floating around -40% to -50%, then all other multipliers are doubled (or more) in actual effect on the number of ships you can build. Just Supremacy and the agenda puts you at -30%. There just shouldn't be this many stacking modifiers floating around. -90% ship build cost should not be a thing.
I do think that the blatantly exploitable designs with a lot of the modifiers are (or should be)... embarassing to the development team, to say the least, and it raises eyebrows that *so many* of those issues that shipped that way. Armchair analyzing for a moment, it seems to me that a lot of strategy game design is in the numbers and one would hope that the developers are keeping a particularly keen eye & have sharpened their pencils when it comes to "mathing out" all of the implications of modifier-like design changes. I won't claim that that's my own personal particular idea of the most interesting afternoon project etc., or that it is necessarily *easy* work on behalf of the development team to do the due dilligence to get that right, though; but then again, I make no claims to be a game designer.

(As an aside: Worth nothing that the AI empires have for a long time had horrible modifier mayhem for many releases on high difficulty settings.)

But, I do think that the point of view that these are not necessarily higher priority than a lot of the other issues is not without merit. The reason I say that is that the player can, for issues that the AI empires are not exploiting (unlike the pre-existing horrible modifier problems with DAAM and genocidals, for example!), decline to exploit the issue.

And yes, there is still multiplayer, but Stellaris is certainly very different from, say, Starcraft, in that - in my own experience, with the very few multiplayer games that I have played in - it is something that takes a long and ongoing commitment of time. With something like Starcraft, a game might last an hour and one might be playing with people one may never play with again, and it may or may not be a competitive game. With something like Stellaris, none of my multiplayer games (and again, there haven't been many) have come remotely close to finishing in a single sitting; anyone I'm going to be playing multiplayer with is going to be someone that I can schedule repeated follow-ups with to finish the game, etc.. And in that sort of context, I'm unlikely to be playing a game with random people I *don't* have some pre-existing contact with... and anyone who goes into a game with this level of time investment for everyone and goes to willfully massively exploit problems for their own unfair advantage is, shall I say, likely to find themselves disinvited to future games.

From that point of view, I think it is *somewhat* reasonable to prioritize other issues first, as much as it pains me to say so for anything described as "exploit".

Now, if an "exploit" is instead interpreted something as an RCE that poses a risk to a customer's security etc. - of course it would not at all be acceptable to deprioritize those, but my read of much of the use of exploit in the dev diary was with respect to in-game advantage (only), and not that sort of concern.


But I tend to feel, personally, that it is at the least not a very good look to have the sheer volume of clear design errors that there were able to manage to slip through this time; that probably shouldn't have happened. Nor should have major usability regressions like the follow fleet breakage bug managed to make it out to the final build - in my view, while armchair analyzing.

And it is still not good for those sorts of issues to be there for other reasons, too; players may legitimately not know what is or is not an "exploit" and might come to expect that behavior in the future. Especially for a patch with the documentation/discoverability angle being as outright poor as it was for this one - for example, most of the leader traits are *still* undocumented, and *still* have no in-game documentation as to their requirements to appear or their existence, and *still* don't even have any representation on the wiki at all - gems like "Master Shipright" being locked to Militaristic ethic for a scientist, how is any reasonable player supposed to learn *that*?


In either case, despite my grumping about the (many) problems with this patch aside, and at the risk of waxing briefly off-topic, there was a lot of good done too, and I do want to say that I appreciate that work to the developers involved, and to encourage future such improvements and contributions. The army manager and the reinforce flag are enormous QoL improvements in my games - thank you to whomever was involved in building that feature (even if I think the tooltips should show the army info in the army manager when you are looking at the listbox for which things to build). And the science ship automation expansion is also useful (especially for stuff like the "hunt down all the creatures on habitable planets to study" special project chain) - thank you to whomever worked on that. Mouse scroll speed configurability has been *direly* needed for as long as I have used Stellaris - I'm very much looking forward to that in 3.8.3...
 
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I've been with this game for 7 years, and active on this forum ever since. I've played this game regularly over all this time. You guys have managed something no other change, no other dlc, nothing so far has. You've put me off the game in it's entirety.

Does this mean you're going away to play and discuss other things, or do you intend to stick around on a game you're put off of entirely?
 
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I checked but have yet to find answers to these concerning questions:

1. Will the traits of same type/name still be stack-able? E.g. 2 spark of genius, retired admiral?

2. What would be the exact amount of the empire effect reduction rate? Personally I hope it is 20%, because mater bureaucrats, which have 10% in addicion to edict related stuff, exists.

Did any revered presiding speaker, executor, high inquisitor, god emperor, ..., mastermind find out the answer?
 
2. What would be the exact amount of the empire effect reduction rate? Personally I hope it is 20%, because mater bureaucrats, which have 10% in addicion to edict related stuff, exists.
Aturion Efficiency is stated to be -10%. So Gray Eminence and Aturion Efficiency will just be Master Bureaucrat, except with a happiness penalty and governing ethics attraction bonus instead of edict fund and leader upkeep reduction.
 
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Aturion Efficiency is stated to be -10%. So Gray Eminence and Aturion Efficiency will just be Master Bureaucrat, except with a happiness penalty and governing ethics attraction bonus instead of edict fund and leader upkeep reduction.
Thank you.

Yikes. Although they did say something like they change it so it is alined with Aturion Efficiency, it would cripple the trait too much, from a level that can be built around to a worse master bureaucrat. I would miss the meta (personal) of non-vassal based economy of these days...
 
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What're the thoughts on turning the Prethoryn Queen leader into a Renowned/Legendary leader sometime down the line?

Would it be possible to hide a gestalt ruler from the leader list like the councilor nodes are? I can understand them taking up a leader slot, but as they're presented at the moment it's as if at some point we were going to be able to assign them to a job. Maybe make the Gestalt ethic reduce leader cap by 1, and in return the Ruler is otherwise not counted as a leader in the same way nodes aren't?
 
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You could possibly allow a "leadership committee" to fill one of the spots, powered by envoys; the more envoys you invest, the higher the leader level. This could be an alternative use for envoys for empires that don't have a galactic community thing going on.
 
No, it's worse because those who are fully committed to exploiting this mechanic (aka, just using it) now have a huge advantage over those that don't want to do that.

If I have a single Shipwright/Retired Naval Officer governor on my shipyard, a Military Pioneer on the council, the relevant tech, Supremacy, and the agenda, I would have formerly had -80%. My tryhard neighbor who stacked a second governor (or was genocidal) would have had -90%. 2x as many ships. I could match them by adding another -10%.

Now I have -65%. The Devouring Swarm still has -90% (3.5x as many ships), my tryhard neighbor has -85% (2.3x as many ships), though if he appoints another Strategist to the council, that also becomes -90% (3.5x).

The problem isn't that it's hard to "exploit" (using the traits as intended is enough to hit 90). The problem is that it's still trivial to reach -90% if you tailor your empire toward it with admiral positions (3 military pioneers, the tech, supremacy, and the agenda is -65% without a governor at all, -75% if you go up to Architect of War). But for everyone else, it's now extremely hard to compete without radically altering their empire or exploiting.

Having 3 admirals on the council instead of 1 isn't supposed to triple the number of ships you can build. Nor, presumably, would playing a DS/DE. But currently, it does.

If everyone runs up against the cap, everyone is equal. If the default is floating around -40% to -50%, then all other multipliers are doubled (or more) in actual effect on the number of ships you can build. Just Supremacy and the agenda puts you at -30%. There just shouldn't be this many stacking modifiers floating around. -90% ship build cost should not be a thing.
It made me consider how a RTS games deal with this problem. Their solutions are:

1. Limit in productivity. Each individual unit can be cheap for a robust economy, but players always need to build multiple of them at a time, so that they can overwhelm their opponent or avoid overwhelmed. An extreme example being Osman Turkey in AOE4 which have a choice to produce units free, but takes a great longer time. In a binding state, it is always tricking for player how they invest: to production sturctures (aka shipyard in Stellaris), or pay to get more unit so that they see the return more quickly.

2. Anti-stacking. Units have diminishing returns as opponent counter with AOE damage, kiting long range units, entrenchmemnt or their combination.

3. Relatively comparable stats. A zealot is roughly the price and strength of 4 zerglings.

Pinned together with stellaris, we can easily get why stellaris is different in war philosophy.

1. Ships are expensive for the majority of the game, so the production is mostly out of question. There is even the Mega shipyard, which exploits the -90% stacking to fullest, make dilution with production elsewhere like how Osman is balanced hard to achieve. Rock-paper-scissor is only a recent addition to the game;

2. There is no aoe damage or collision that hinders doomstacking. Once achieved first victory, the casulty is minimal. The only effective way to even make casulties is engaging end game crisis...

3. A 10% cost purifier ship is far stonger than 35% cost normal empire ship. It was not balanced around this factor, obviously.

Bonus: Stellaris is largely non competitive based. Diplomacy is a thing though.

In short, the modifier stacking is inappropriate for stellaris. Ships are bulit too fast for the most of the game. If it have to exist, I would suggest try reducing ship and starbase combat strength and cost by a lot, 95% for example, or proportionally slow the production by a lot, which I can hardly see it coming.
 
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A reminder that people who post on game forums are not representative of a games player base. Even if a majority if people in this thread play 1000 star galaxy doesn't mean us the average.
That includes you and the people in favour of the change. "People I disagree with don't represent the player base because they post on the forum" is a two edged sword. Especially when posting on the forum yourself
You'll notice in the patch notes that the penalty for going over the cap has been reduced. You can now go 125% over the cap before reaching 0 XP. Combine that with a few other ways to get upkeep free leaders, and I hope you'll find that the leader cap is less a hindrance than it was in the past.
Someone else did the math. That increase is a virtual non increase. It's lipservice in terms of changing anything. The base cap remains the same, the issues remain the same. You guys are still balancing entirely around a smaller galaxy, and early game.
Does this mean you're going away to play and discuss other things, or do you intend to stick around on a game you're put off of entirely?
Why, so the CK II/III players who never posted on this forum before can keep hyping this change, despite quite a few of them not even owning the game. Who are funnily also the ones to downvote folks here?
 
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