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Stellaris Dev Diary #309 - OK, Bloomer

Hi everyone, long thyme no see.

This week we’re continuing our exploration of the improvements the Custodian Team is making to Species Packs in the upcoming Stellaris 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Update, as well as some of the other stuff we’ve been up to.

Too much reading for a Thursday? Watch the video Dev Diary instead!​

First up are some improvements to the Environmentalists civic.

Environmentalists​

Although the initial version of the Ranger Lodge and the Ranger jobs for the Environment civic were good, we felt that they could be improved upon.

Changes this civic has seen are:

  • The number of Ranger jobs provided by the Lodge now scales with the number of Natural Blockers on the planet.
  • Environmentalist empires can now choose to expand their Nature Preserves, increasing the number of Blockers (and thus Ranger jobs) on the planet.

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You should give the Nature Preserves as mushroom as possible.​

  • In addition to producing Unity for Environmentalists, each Natural Blocker on the planet (with the exception of Nature Preserves), now gives Ranger jobs a small amount of production of basic resources

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Invasive Species Trait​

Gardeners everywhere know the threat of invasive species.

Now you too can have a Plantoid or Fungoid species that grows like weeds.

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The root of the problem.​

Invasive species get +5% habitability and + 5% pop growth speed for each negative trait they possess, and can only select negative or botanical traits.

Will you use them to propagate yourselves across the galaxy, or make that xenophile regret signing that migration pact?

Or perhaps they can hitch a ride to nearby planets using the…

Fruitful Partnership Origin​

Many plants spread their seeds far and wide through animal dispersal.

Plantoid and Fungoid civilizations now have that option as well.

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This origin is so wholesome it’s a little sappy.​

Empires with the Fruitful Partnership origin will begin the game in contact with the Tiyanki, and Starseed Gardens already built on their home Orchard Station.

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Space fauna that visit the system are lured to the station, where they partake in the provided fruits, and carry your seed pods with them as they travel the galaxy.

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Where are they going to take them…?​

When passing near a habitable world, the seed pods can find a home…

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…All clover the galaxy!

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And by completing a special project, new life can bloom - wherever it is they brought the seeds.

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It was mint to be.

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Having your seeds carried away by space fauna can allow colonization of planets far from your home system, but you can also be a little more direct about seeding an enemy planet.

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Dropping some sick beets.​

While these seed blockers are primarily just a nuisance to your opponent, if you end up taking the planet and clearing them yourself, you’ll be able to turn them into pops, similar to how Lithoid blockers work.

Human Plantoids​

The Lithoid Theians from last week came from a close encounter with Earth eons ago, our new Plantoids actually start on Earth and explore the possibility of “what if humans were plants”. Naturally, empires that branched out from Earth like the Commonwealth of Man will share your leafy heritage. (Their reputation pre-seeds them.)

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Say aloe to my little friend.​

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Now, on to some other things coming in 3.9, and no more terrible plant jokes.

Enclave Leaders​

During the development of Galactic Paragons and First Contact, we wanted to revisit some of the older interactions with the various Enclaves scattered around the Galaxy, but never found the time, namely:
  • Hiring a Scientist from the Curators
  • Hiring a Governor from the Trader Enclaves
  • Hiring a Teacher from the Shroudwalkers
  • Hiring a Salvage Overseer from the Salvagers

As the development of the 3.8 hotfix patches wound down, we were able to get some additional code support for Empire Councilors and got to work.

Coming in the 3.9 update, each of these decisions will grant recruitment of a Level 5 Scientist or Governor, each with their own unique trait (and for owners of Galactic Paragons, a unique Council Position that only they can be appointed to).

This leader recruitment replaces the existing Shroudwalker Teacher planetary modifier and Salvage Overseer empire modifier and improves upon the leaders recruited from the Curators and Trader Enclaves.

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The Governors from the other Trader Enclaves provide bonuses to Rare Crystals or Volatile Motes instead.​


However, just because you’ve recruited these Renowned Leaders from Enclaves, don’t expect them to sit by idly if you attack their former home.

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UI Modding Change​


The main change that we want to highlight here is:
  • NInterface has been moved from commom/defines/00_defines.txt to unchecked_defines/interface.txt. This means that any mods that alter defines listed under NInterface will no longer block achievements or Ironman.

Interim Leader XP Updates​

As mentioned in Dev Diary #307, we were looking at some adjustments to the over-cap formulas to reduce their negative effects until the greater rework is ready.

Rather than a linear progression that abruptly hits -100% XP, we’ve replaced the current XP scaling for leaders with a formula that follows a curve.

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XP curves for being over capacity (at the base of 6 leaders)​

Next Week​

Humanoids and Necroids will be next week’s primary topic. Alfray will give an update on how Habitats have been going, and what’s this I hear about an Open Beta?

See you then!

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The rest should be clear next week.

Sorry about all of the puns in this one.
 
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Eladrin said:
Assuming nobody's already there, you'll colonize the planet and then get a free outpost for having a colony in a system that doesn't have an outpost.
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Dumb question: What would the influence cost look like here? Usually, it's not worth reaching far away without significant influence cost reduction (from stargazer, slingshot, xenophobe, etc.) because it costs the same amount of influence to claim every system along the way. If this is a way around the distance tax, it's much more appealing than if it isn't.
 
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Eladrin said:
Governors can still be put on the Sector Capital, and do apply level based effects to any planets in the entire sector that do not have a planetary governor. They'll show up as a little hologram next to the place the planetary governor would go.
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Their level effects do, but not their traits. Unless that's changing with the rework?

Ex. My governors in 3.7 were buffing 5-6 research planets (or 4 ring world segments) with +30% research from jobs (Erudite, Brain Slug, Intellectual) plus the 20% resources for all jobs. Now a similar governor gives +40% research from jobs (plus another 10-15% resources from specialists from Efficient Staffing and the Industrialist class), but only to a single planet, and only the level scaling portion applies to the sector. So instead of getting 50% to e.g. 6 planets (300%), we're getting 70% to a single planet and 20% to 5 (170%). That's roughly half the effect.

If you were playing Void Dwellers, it can be even worse, with 1/5 to 1/10 the effect from governors. Even with the habitat changes that address this somewhat, a sector with 10 systems will have 10 habitats, and only one will be impacted by traits.

That's why it's a nerf. Individual governors became weaker with the patch, sometimes half as powerful as they were before. And they have a much lower effect on the empire as a whole because of their limited number, but that's just the whole rework, not unique to governors.

The nerf is especially frustrating for all the ascension traits: psychics used to get +10% unity to the entire sector, which was quite nice because every planet would have telepaths, politicians, and culture workers, which are your most powerful unity producers. But now that it's only one planet, it's easily 1/6 to 1/8 of the impact it had before. And Synths basically don't get a bonus, because you shouldn't be making random generator/mining worlds your sector capitals and putting governors on them (when you could be buffing 100 pops on an ecumenopolis instead of 20 technicians).
 
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Eladrin said:
The short answer is that removing the leader cap would require significantly reducing their power level. The changes that came alongside Galactic Paragons significantly increased their strength, on the assumption that you would not have as many of them. We also believe that there's benefit in having a much lower number of exceptional leaders - choices need to be made instead of just having endless numbers of effectively nameless scientists and admirals.
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Completely agree with this take, I loved the **soft** cap.
 
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Eladrin said:
Governors can still be put on the Sector Capital, and do apply level based effects to any planets in the entire sector that do not have a planetary governor. They'll show up as a little hologram next to the place the planetary governor would go.
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It would be great if a least some of their traits would also apply to any planets in the entire sector to make governors more worttwhile outside the council and reduce the felt need for a higher number of them.
 
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Letharion said:
It would be great if a least some of their traits would also apply to any planets in the entire sector to make governors more worttwhile outside the council and reduce the felt need for a higher number of them.
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This would make some of the trashy filler traits somewhat more useful if things like Terraforming, habitability, or various blocker related traits, that with Paragon are completely useless pure filler, atleast have some use.

Then again, the recent trait and effect changes in Paragons are WEIRD, and just scream "nobody tested these". Like Exploration Scientists for example being a trap choice, as either assist or research options are almost always superior options, if only because you can still get carefree or other traits by RNG. Governors being Nerfed to being general tier leaders, and generals getting a buff in turn, but only if you pic very specific route. (and even then you only ever need 1).

Kidnapper Generals however are fun, but take Forever to get running, but once they do, they are absolutely hilarious.

Admirals are like only one that work at the cost of having way more RNG for traits they get,
 
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It's good to see Environmentalist being made more unique and flavorful. Does Environmentalist now also make it so that your planet starts with some natural blockers suited to its type rather than the usual Industrial Wasteland blockers? It would make Rangers more useful on the homeworld and be more appropriate for an environmentally conscious civilization. Similarly, does the Fruitful Partnership origin replace the default Sprawling Slums/Collapsed Burrow pop blockers with the same seed blocker created by its bombardment?

As an aside, it might be nice if Environmentalists could use terraforming in some capacity without going against their own bonuses, possibly being able to terraform planets at least to Gaia worlds while preserving natural blockers, or even being able to create new natural blockers through terraforming.
 
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This is good, I'm curious to see what the next major expansion will be, as well as what future species packs are planned.

To be honest I'm hoping for another Necroids like expansion. The portraits were decent, but the Ship Set and the Origin were by far the best parts of the expansion. For Toxoids it was the Origin, by far, I didn't really like and don't often use the Portraits, and never use the Ship Set, although everyone's preferences are different for sure.

I'm hoping for a Ship Set like the Asari from Mass Effect, with more improvements made to it to bring it to the level of the Lithoids and Toxoids Ship Sets.
 
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just curious - are those cute little birds in these new portraits on a separate layer in the portrait files? modding them onto other plantoid portraits would just be the cutest thing!
 
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Abdulijubjub said:
I think it's a closer analogue for Calamitous Birth, which is probably why it's an origin. Plus, this way, they don't have to make 3 different versions for regular, megacorp, and hive.
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Genius. I'm convinced now.
(For real. The interwebs make it sound sarcastic when you say "You're right and I see it now," but for real. You're right and I see it now.)
 
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SirBlackAxe said:
Playing with max wormholes and force-spawning only Fruitful Partnership empires sounds like an excellent recipe for chaos.
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Obviously it doesn't work for the AI empires (and it's really rather unfortunate that the only way a player would discover this would be to find the forum posts about it as there's no in-game text to say that the AI handling for these civics is totally broken), but Slingshot to the Stars + Eager Explorers gets you a good chunk of the way to that today, at least for the player empire.

That's certainly an interesting combination to play around with, too; contact most of the galaxy in a max-size galaxy in the first 10-20 years, outposts in every far-flung nook, etc.. Who needs those boring conventional hyperdrives, anyway?

SirBlackAxe said:
With enclaves being looked at, any chance of letting the AI use them?
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Definitely agree that it would be great to get the AIs using the enclaves. They're effectively (yet another) power boost only for the player that doubtlessly contributes to the AI being less competitive in the later parts of the game, where a player is always going to have the beneficial enclave bonuses up, but no AI empire ever will.

I'd expect most of those ought to be trivial enough to enable given how, at least at higher difficulties, the AI has such enormous economy bonuses anyway, one could likely get by with a "buy enclave services if there's spare ECs and EC flow is healthily positive" policy.

Similarly, it would be great to get the AI empires to use the Shroud. Epecially given the heavy bias to psionic ascension that the AI weights are presently configured, it's a source of disappointment that the AI empires effectively never use a good chunk of the stuff psionics offer.

(That, to be fair, would probably require a bit more tweaking: in particular, Eater of Worlds needs special handling. For fun, I tried giving EoW covenant to a fanatic purifier AI empire in one game; while it worked out for a little while, the AI empire got itself running thousands in the red for ECs once it finished wiping out an empire and entered peacetime, and said AI promptly scrapped almost all of its ships, and then proceeded to have big problems when everyone declared war on it.)
 
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Any chance this new plantoid portrait could become a forum avatar?
 
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