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

[Starfire Breeze]

Thanks for fixing the longstanding problem with the Cloud federation project getting stuck - that had been broken for as long as I'd played.

Could we get more detail on what was changed for this line item, please? :

"* Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this."

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.

If memory serves, there's one small difference between the two values; a few things directly use the empire size and not the empire size effect, and in particular among those is Power Projection. That is to say, smaller empire size (even below 100) means more Power Projection which means (slightly) more Influence, particularly at the start of the game.

 

[Mcgan]

How exactly does it work?

Looks like the heir is generated as usual and then their age is reduced by a random number between 0 and 10:

# New heir appointed
leader_event = {
    id = action.504

    immediate = {
        # Set age to be younger than normal.
        set_variable_to_random_value = {
            which = heir_age_mod
            min = -10
            max = 0
            rounded = yes
        }
        add_age = heir_age_mod

 

[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.

I was thinking a bout vassalisation and I think will be better if weak threaten empire in first place will search protection by seeking independence guaranties then by joining federation and like last option by being vasalised.

 

[LayZboy]

Habitats should be limited like starbases, with more territory giving you more habs. The void dweller origin should increase this formula alot, or just give +1 hab-cap per star system owned.

 

[Starfire Breeze]

Habitats should be limited like starbases, with more territory giving you more habs. The void dweller origin should increase this formula alot, or just give +1 hab-cap per star system owned.

While I can't speak for the developers, the rationale for introducing habitats might be worth reviewing; the design intent that the developers outlined appears to specifically have been to provide more options to empires without large territories.

(It's also worth nothing that per the (old) dev diary, habitats previously did require an AP; that predates my experience with the game, however.)

 

[CReaper210]

One of the origin/balance changes that occurred awhile ago was removing precursor spawns prior to finishing the "On the Shoulders of Giants" origin and I keep wishing this change would be reverted with these balance updates. I don't even understand the purpose of this change.

I really, really believe that the developers should revert this or at least rework how this is handled because in the vast majority of my games, by time you finish all the archeological sites and wait for the final event to spawn, nearly the entire galaxy has been surveyed and it simply results in either no precursors OR if you happen to get one started, relying on buying a precursor discovery via minor artifacts over a long period of time.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Love it.
Thanks for all of your hard work!

 

[Getty]

Is the Khan stronger in Grand Admiral difficulty now?

 

[Archael90]

And (idk if this is already a thing but i doubt it) Idyllic Bloom empires could have ability to place their building on friendly worlds when signed some pacts or trade or something.
(And more, maybe ability to rent a terraforming abilities to creat gaia worlds with world shaper perk in exchange of some benefits)

 

[MrParadux]

I think the leader level cap is fine. If you consider raising it, please don't overdo it. We as players have to get used to just having a handful of leaders instead of a whole army.
For example with fleets or planets: If most of your fleets or planets don't have leaders, don't think of it as "Oh no, all of my fleets/planets are weak", but as "This fleet/planet is way better than the other ones and my elite one". It is just a different perspective.

 

[MadCatYeet]

I would love to see seperate leader caps in a future update. Protector veteran branch is currently useless other than some crime reductions and destiny traits. Marshall veteran branch is also useless the consul-general trait doesn't increase the cap of relations but the speed at which the relations are gained which is weak compared to it's already weak contenders which give miniscule loyalty or encryption and decryption which are irrelevant because most either don't use espionage or hoard assets to increase intel cap the destiny traits are good however I will at most get 1 lvl 8 general and generally none. Invader branch is just stats buffs and thats what they are supposed to be but this is the worst general branch because you lose a leader slot instead of building more armies. Thanks for reading the general part now on to admirals. Aggressor branch is just stat buffs but they actually matter but still since we no longer have access to those high fleet sizes for non-federation or GDF fleets their buffs apply to a little amount of ships compared to the whole of a late game navy. They mattered a lot more when their levels gave fleet cap and I want it back. The tactician branch is the same as aggressor branch but with a twist. The twist is while agressors give buffs for every fleet tacticians want mono-hull fleets which is good mid-game for the missile cruisers and the destiny trait which gives evasion is a natural progression to the late game but... The fleet size reduction just kills this trait in terms of branch power. If you are going to pick this just pick aggressor with master gunner instead. The strategist is a mandatory councilor and it's good. Military pioneer is a good trait and gale-speed is nice mid-game. Destiny traits for militarist and pacifist ethos are also good councilor traits so yeah worth a slot. now on to scientists. First things first if you can get sapient AI assistants the existance of custom AI assistants are just unnecessary and annoying. Now the analysts are nice but since they only apply to a single planet they are just worse governors or minor research boosts, you can use both but how tall is your empire? Explorers are a weird case where you can see good traits but these traits provide very little value. Just ignore tuner and slippery and we see the resource from survey traits which are promising but at the point where your leader gets these traits you will most likely have very little amount of unsurveyed systems left which makes them unusable especially the vibrant storyteller trait which is god tier on paper. Hovewer insightful is a very good trait if you preserve your anomalies until you finish expanding, xeno cataloger destiny trait for xenophobes is also very good because of the flat +2 influence. Now researchers are what you want you want 5 of these on your council. Maniacal/Hyper focus is very good inquisitive is very good until repeatables focus traits are good all the destiny traits are good especially the spiritualist and militarist ones which boost their respective playstyles. The expertise traits are just worst focus traits. Lastly the governors. Industrialist branch is very strong especially on ecumenopolis and ring worlds the focus traits and urbanist can save some rare resources which is nice. You want them on every world but can't because of leader cap so yeah. Pioneers are industrialists but for basic resources. You can use them if you think they are worth it. Their non-economy traits are bad other than geology consultant if you can save some blockers for the late-game similar to insightful. Visionary are very situational so I won't be making a comment on them they are generally worse than researchers though. Now about governors as a whole there is a destiny trait problem. The traits pioneer would want are on industrialist and vice versa it's a tragedy galvanizer trait as well a visionary trait thats supposed to be used on a populous planet. Only good ones are for spiritualists and pacifists. Only thing I would want would be the AI assistant thingy, the governor destiny traits fix and seperate leader caps to enable us to use different branches. Basically we have content in the game which is just bad to use. BTW fix the leader menu lag please. Thanks for reading this essay

 

[DeanTheDull]

Balance

• Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​

A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

Could I bother you to clarify what changed in terms of political power between strata and standards?

From the 3.8.4 Patch Release thread, you said-

I explain a little more in today's dev diary.

Since Unity generated by factions is indirectly based on political power, living standards like Shared Burdens or Utopian Abundance gave less Unity than things like Academic Priviledge. Now all of the living standards distribute an equivalent "share" of political power across the strata instead of having differing totals. (Except for Utopian Abundance, which has a "Political Power Budget" 25% higher than all the others.)

And I'm not clear on what the 'distribute an equivalent 'share' of political power across the strata instead of having differing totals' means, given that per the above Shard Burdens/Utopian Abundance are supposed to now be producing a higher end-total.

 

[Miuramir]

Habitats should be limited like starbases, with more territory giving you more habs. The void dweller origin should increase this formula alot, or just give +1 hab-cap per star system owned.

I don't think that they should be limited this way at all, but if they were to be: wouldn't exactly the opposite be what should happen? The less territory you have, the more important it is to intensively use what you do have. The places in real life with high-density, resource-expensive, buildings and elaborate construction to create usable space where there wasn't any are usually places (cities or countries) with a combination of wealth and severe restrictions on their "horizontal" sprawl for one reason or another. Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Tokyo, the Netherlands, etc.

What if the cost for a habitat was multiplied by the empire's sprawl factor as a starting point? "Tall" empires would not have much penalty, but "wide" empires would find them increasingly expensive.

 

[ObsessedWithAnts]

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​

A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

As a heavy egalitarian / shared burdens player this fix is heavily appreciated!

 

[scaper12123]

• The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.

Damn it, man. And I was THIS close to getting high enough relations with the spiritualist FE to finally slip through their borders to capture a chunk of my rival's territory.

 

[LystAP]

I don't think that they should be limited this way at all, but if they were to be: wouldn't exactly the opposite be what should happen? The less territory you have, the more important it is to intensively use what you do have. The places in real life with high-density, resource-expensive, buildings and elaborate construction to create usable space where there wasn't any are usually places (cities or countries) with a combination of wealth and severe restrictions on their "horizontal" sprawl for one reason or another. Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Tokyo, the Netherlands, etc.

What if the cost for a habitat was multiplied by the empire's sprawl factor as a starting point? "Tall" empires would not have much penalty, but "wide" empires would find them increasingly expensive.

If I recall, one of the primary reasons behind habitats was so boxed in players/empires can still expand/grow. If anything, the less territory you have, the more habitats you can build should be the way - if that was at all possible.

 

[Nithralder]

At the moment Habitats slow down the game making it unplayable towards the end game.

Since it is unlikely that Paradox would make engine optimizations (Would love it if Stellaris could use as many CPU cores as Ashes of Singularity)

The only other option would be to limit them.

One possible solution would be to create Habitat Capacity in a similar way to Starbase Capacity. This would allow Void Dwellers to be unchanged/have no limit while other empires would need to invest into having a larger habitat capacity.


Having Limited but stronger habitats (more building slots for example, guaranteed resource districts such as all habitats having the ability to get Energy/Minerals along with other unique district types) would improve performance in the late game tremendously without downright removing them.

 

[oreopirate]

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.

It's mostly the people who think that they are the most important players and customers, and that the bugs that bother them have to be fixed immediately, because they are important.

I've just taken to ignoring them and giving them a disagree. A dev diary is not the place to be plugging your pet peeve bug, and nothing will ever make them realize that they are not the most important customer, and that their desires for bugfixes are equal to my desire for content. Gotta loathe that "If it's unplayable for me, it is for everyone, because I say so, fix all the bugs now!" attitude.

 

[NEXUS12]

Thankyou for the patch, some nice updates in there.

Since 3.9 is being hinted at as a 'polishing' update, I'm going to shamelessly plug my ongoing thread:

Custodians: Stellaris QoL Shopping List

There have been some QoL features I have hoped would appear in the game since its inception. I am not a modder or a game dev so I don't know how difficult they would be to implement, however these are the things I would love to see added/fixed in...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Lots of QoL suggestions from the player base for you guys to stick your teeth into

 

[Cassilda]

I'm really happy that maybe habitats will get some kind of cap to their numbers like planets. While I understand they are necessary in multiplayer to levelling the game field for those players ending up "boxed" early by more powerful empires, in single player games I find the habitat spam not really fun or useful either.