Stellaris Dev Diary #304 - 3.8.4 Released, What’s Next?

[pikasnoop]

Regarding empire size, it shouldn't provide any negative effects until it exceeds 100, so having a minimum of 50 makes no real difference from a minimum of 100.

Edict cost and ascension cost scale directly from empire size right? As ascension is unavailable, it would at least impact edict cost. Which for the record I think is fine.

 

[FleetingRain]

I attempted to math the changes to political power from living standards.
At first glance, it seems like Utopian Abundance will increase Unity from factions by +50% over Decent Conditions.
The Fanatic Egalitarian + Utopian Abundance combo seems to clock in at over 3 times the faction Unity under Stratified Economy.

Is this a correct interpretation?

Meanwhile, Spiritualist cries in a corner. Again.

 

[Rafss]

Meanwhile, Spiritualist cries in a corner. Again.

Well I think materialist was also nerfed so it is a bit more fair

 

[currylambchop]

I think there is a mechanical problem that pop growth is still bound to a per planet basis. This encourages habitat spam/vasall shenanigans. The game would be in my opinion much more healthy if you had an empire wide pop growth. It would discourage habitat spam as well as ignoring habitaility, just to get more breeding planets and resettle all pops.

I'd rather not have empire wide pop growth, but instead remove the base +3 growth on all planets and make all pop growth based on pops (like a true logistic curve).

Empire wide pop growth encourages vassal spam even more because the vassals would directly add extra growth. It is the same problem that the already-existing empire wide pop scaling has.

 

[Rooker75]

Unfortunately, regarding all three of these (habitats, diplomacy, leaders), there's nothing concrete we can discuss at the moment, but stay tuned for future dev diaries.

FYI, I modded diplomacy for my own game. It is now very difficult for one AI to demand subjugation of another and get a yes (-500 acceptance), and virtually impossible for one AI to agree to vassalize another peacefully (-2000 acceptance). My games since doing this are a lot more dynamic, there's a lot more interactions between AIs and between AIs and the player and nobody gets to snowball early based on leeching a massive number of resources from vassals.

There will still be a few stronger-than-normal overlords late game, but these will tend to be empires who conquered their neighbors and all their vassals are right next to them and this seems perfectly reasonable to me. Importantly, they don't snowball nearly as hard because this tends to happen in the mid-game instead of in the early game.

Most importantly (for me personally anyway), the late game rarely boils down to a small number of superoverlords who cause the game to stagnate and become mind numbingly boring. Far more of the AI remain independent, so there's more diplomacy, more interactions, more opportunities for temporary alliances and defense pacts, less tendency to just become boring. It's just simply a better game this way.

 

[BaiyueKunlan]

No, the designed-leaders(like ruler) portrait bug still not fix.

Stellaris - [3.8.3~3.9.X]Serious leader portrait bug happen when species trait changes

Description [3.8.3~3.9.X]Serious leader portrait bug happen when species trait changes Game Version 3.8.3~3.9.X What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? All Do you have mods enabled? No, non Mod reasons, even...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

This is a 3.8.3 bug and still haven't be fixed at all after new patch out.
Then now this is a 3.8.4 bug. Stop Ignoring It.

I am a 10-years long Paradox player and used to be a fan,
I do disappointed, but I can not say I am already get used to this.

after fixing the bugs then stop acting in these areas that you people not really prepared and understand. first make the game stable, balance, and even normal-playable. turn the tide from "one step forward then two step back" since 3.0.

 

[Pale Blue]

I'd rather not have empire wide pop growth, but instead remove the base +3 growth on all planets and make all pop growth based on pops (like a true logistic curve).

Empire wide pop growth encourages vassal spam even more because the vassals would directly add extra growth. It is the same problem that the already-existing empire wide pop scaling has.

Yes that is what I would hope for ideally. The pops themselves should inherently grant pop growth instead of the planets themselves.
I think the intention for the empire wide pop scaling is to limit snowballing of some empires. Maybe instead of limiting pop growth for larger empires the scaling of empire sprawl could be changed a bit. Both empire sprawl and pop scaling seem to try to do the same thing of trying to keep the game a bit more balanced between different empires and rubber and them a bit. Passive tech spread/tech cost reduction like in other pdx games could help too.

 

[Imp0815]

"In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game"
I don't know if this was ever honored enough but this is such a great Perk of all Paradox titles. Often i went out of a Coop* game only to hear the next day that my friend bought all DLC because he wanted to keep on playing in SP.
Thank you for staying true to this great and consumer friendly method!

In stark contrast we do not play Anno 1800 as one friend does not want to pay 100€+ to have all DLC he needs for the MP lobby. Se he does not even buy the base game.

*Coop as in PvE, as we did not had "real" coop since the last patches.

 

[ergie]

Not a word about a notification control for ai and another for the player? Now if you silence one type, you're not aware if you're offered it... Sad

 

[Telenil]

I'm raising an eyebrow at all these 'why haven't you solved the issue I care about?' posts. Put them together, and they practically ask the devs to rework all systems and fix all bugs.

This is a minor patch, greater overhauls will come during the summer, as said in the DD itself.

 

[Lenk]

For the Habitats, why not just have an optional option on galaxy generation similar to that of Xeno compatibility. Just have it where if the option is toggled off no one expect AI void dwellers can build habitats. Players can still build as many as they like but it just limits the AI so its not spammed everywhere?

 

[Calvax]

For the Habitats, why not just have an optional option on galaxy generation similar to that of Xeno compatibility. Just have it where if the option is toggled off no one expect AI void dwellers can build habitats. Players can still build as many as they like but it just limits the AI so its not spammed everywhere?

IMO we should only have sliders and options when it’s beneficial to the game and not a bandaid to cover mechanics problems. The xeno-compatibility checkbox is an example of that. The perk is a huge pain due to the fact the AI randomly modifies species and the species management system is poor. Rather than fix those underlying problems we’ve had a checkbox for years.

 

[NilsFabian]

Habitats and You​

A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Where is the problem. I always solve this issue with a Colossus, blowing up those Habitats.
Joking aside the habitats should be changed a bit. It feels weird that a colossus is needed to crack some hollow alloys in the same way it cracks a full planet.
At least give us the opportunity to clear a Habitat and dismantle it.

 

[velles]

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

It is a solution to microing, but sector governors still suck, why not make all (or at least few) governor traits sector-wide or something? Do governors really need to be just as useless as generals?

Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species

How exactly does it work? In 00_defines.txt there are these values and it doesn't seem like they are up to 10 years younger than regular leaders, because age of both leader types starts at 18:
LEADER_AGE_HEIR_MIN = 18 # Min age of generated heirs in dynastic governments
LEADER_AGE_HEIR_MAX = 26 # Max age of generated heirs in dynastic governments
LEADER_AGE_MIN = 18 # Min age of generated leaders (uses bell-curve)
LEADER_AGE_MAX = 45 # Max age of generated leaders (uses bell-curve)

Do heir generation still uses LEADER_AGE_HEIR_MIN and LEADER_AGE_HEIR_MAX or it is simply anything between LEADER_AGE_MIN and LEADER_AGE_MAX minus 10 years, while starting ruler's age is LEADER_AGE_MIN and LEADER_AGE_MAX + 15 years?

Still, that won't help with that weird "old ruler dies at the age of 130 and 110 year old heir assumes the throne while the new heir is super young" cycle, it will only slightly delay it.
Unironically probably the only way to deal with this problem is to introduce an actual dynasty, obviously not Crusader Kings deep level of interaction, but something to keep the track record (and maybe some few other options like grooming heirs into certain career path or using your siblings/issue for nepotism purposes and making them admirals or governors)

 

[Kamis51]

When the experiments are revealed depends on the experiments and the results. As a couple of examples, the combat changes and ascension path changes that were in 3.6 were both summer experiments from 2022, while the industrial districts added in 3.0 were from summer 2020.

Generally speaking, summer experiments are done in the period of late-June to early-August for those of us who are working during that period and have the time available/free of other higher priority tasks.



Currently Philosopher King behaves in the first case, though the second (granting a bonus positive trait while not getting the negative) would indeed be a nice buff - we'll discuss it.

Regarding empire size, it shouldn't provide any negative effects until it exceeds 100, so having a minimum of 50 makes no real difference from a minimum of 100.







I'm looking at some changes for AI diplomacy as part of my summer projects, but no promises on if they'll survive.

Likewise, leader cap (and other leader concerns that the community have raised that Eladrin covered in a previous dev diary) are part of on-going discussions internally.

Unfortunately, regarding all three of these (habitats, diplomacy, leaders), there's nothing concrete we can discuss at the moment, but stay tuned for future dev diaries.

thanks for info will wait for dev diaries

 

[cisiel]

Will this button ever work again?

 

[Skyfus]

Any news on when Under One Rule event chain is going to be finished in regards to the disabled code about coma outcome and such?

 

[Pancakelord]

I'd love to see the weapon preferences (buried in AI personalities) get much higher (scripted?) weights - AIs focussing hard in to disruptors or missiles, or artillery/destroyer combos would spice up wars quite a bit, rather than the basic DPS:energy cost ship designer formula they seem(maybe?) to follow.

I'm looking at some changes for AI diplomacy as part of my summer projects, but no promises on if they'll survive.

If I could wave a wand with diplomacy tweaks, it would be to make threat/fear a separate dimension to opinion.

• I think a lot of nuance is lost in tying a lot of ai logic to a single parameter (opinion) and a few bandaids (hard caps on if you can/can't do Diplo based on relative power).
• A vassal that hates you, but doesn't fear you should behave differently from one that hates and fears you, for example.
• Though to a degree perhaps this is more a UI issue - the current system can sometimes approximate it, but, well, it's pretty dry trying to figure out why an AIs relationship is the way it is with you, right now, with the diplomatic screen's tooltips as they currently stand, a single stat comprised of other things, with some explanatory text (they hate us because xyz rather than a list of modifiers) or a nested tooltip _might_ help?.

I know threat existed somewhere in the AI parameters in past versions of the game, but haven't looked lately - having threat as a meta property to influence vassalisation chance and AI aggression/willingness to "dogpile" in to wars of opportunity "might" be beneficial.

 

[BaiyueKunlan]

I'm raising an eyebrow at all these 'why haven't you solved the issue I care about?' posts. Put them together, and they practically ask the devs to rework all systems and fix all bugs.

This is a minor patch, greater overhauls will come during the summer, as said in the DD itself.

This bug is a fresh NEW conspicuous one created in 3.8.3 version. not bunches of old bugs, And also they noticed for a long time, but still don't care.

 

[Millbot]

Pop growth isn't the other thing that creates mechanical issues with habitats. There is also the fact sprawl probably makes the return on investment take longer than it ought to with habitats (they do use a ton of alloys, will always have less buildings slots and districts than your average natural world). So probably another thing worth straightening, but in a way that ensures that only void dwellers, and maybe knight focuses knights of the toxic god, will feel it's worth ignoring orbital rings.

Also wouldn't mind seeing a revisit of how branch offices interact with habitats. Feels kind of sucky that you only get a max of two branch buildings on them. Granted, I wouldn't mind seeing the devs revisit branch offices because it doesn't feel like that system is playing out the way the devs envisioned it would.

Anyways, outside of mechanics which would mostly impact how players build habitats. Like they should be worth building, but it shouldn't be "build all the habitats for max pop growth). The other big issue is how the AI handles them and it does feel like part of the issue with the AI, other than needing to be more strategic in how it builds them (like deposits that give it district should be priority for them over places with no deposits for the habitat to take advantage of), is that the AI is definitely using it as an influence sink it seems. Might be wroth considering a new influence sink. One idea I could think of, would maybe be let the AI spend a hefty sum of influence for minor artifacts, since that's something the AI probably can make use of and given that some anomalies and other events won't spawn for the AI, it might even be a good boost to offset those things. I mean, it might even be worth having as a thing that is available to even players, but it probably easier to keep it as a sink of last resort for the AI, than to try and balance as a sink of last resort for both. The trick of course, is making sure the AI still spends influence on other things, when they are worth doing before it starts to spend it on minor artifacts.

Also on the note of the AI not being smart with how it uses things. Wouldn't mind see a pass on how it decides to build hyperrealys. Getting unity from them, when you get the tech, more or less makes it less worse that the AI puts a relay in all it's systems, but it really should be able to look at some systems and conclude that a relay isn't a good use of alloys because the system isn't on a border. Doesn't have a colony. Doesn't have a gateway, wormhole or quantum catapult. Isn't loaded with resources or contain really rare ones, to maybe make a highway out to it worth while to keep it secure. Isn't a proverbial no mans land of low value systems, where you might want one rate purely for going on defense if something shows up there. It's just a low value system that is 1-2 jumps from the nearest hyperrelay, so not worth building a chain out to it.