Stellaris Dev Diary #322 - 3.10.0 “Pyxis” Custodian Features

[FluffyVanguard]

Do I understand correctly, that a single Official can do the work of up to ten Envoys? That sounds a bit insane. Is there now a limit to how many leaders can be assigned to galcom and federations?

I am looking forward to letting my imperial heir be my representative to the galactic community. Any chance that the Chosen traits of psi ascension have some special effects for this purpose?

 

[Kim the Mindcaster]

I think leaderless science ship as red flag is a bad idea, I usually had a bunch of them in distant parts of the galaxy just in case of some urgent event

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Fleet Capacity = Command Limit?

Yes

Does Warrior Culture or Distinguished Admiralty provide the starting level bonus to Commanders?

Distinguished Admiralty, yes

How does the game determine whether a Commander gets an Admiral or General portrait (clothes)?

It should depend on their assignment.

Will anything be done about Talented not providing actually talented leaders, just ones that would be less flawed if they lived long enough to reach a level high enough?

Will bring this up when we next discuss species traits.

How long will Warrior Culture societies tolerate being led by craven rulers who hide behind desks instead of leading in battle?
(i.e. is there any chance of rulers holding field positions, under some circumstances and conditions, in a future patch? Such as letting rulers govern the capital sector, letting Warrior Culture empires be led in battle by their warrior king, or letting the Chosen One do as they please?)

Having Warrior Culture gives 20% to the election weight of Commanders in democracies.

Do I understand correctly, that a single Official can do the work of up to ten Envoys? That sounds a bit insane. Is there now a limit to how many leaders can be assigned to galcom and federations?

Yes they can count as up to 10 envoys, but you can only assign a single official to the GalCom or your Federation.

 

[Znikii]

It could be fun if Commanders could also serve as Governors on military/Fortress worlds, buffing soldier jobs and defence armies for example....

 

[Softmonster]

Are you considering showing the required DLCs for installed mod content in the additional content browser?

Edit: Can you browse mod content?

 

[stargazersatnight]

Since envoys are gone, couldn't we just hire 50 leaders to send to gal com to blow out our diplomatic weight? They won't level up sure, but who cares if you can have 50.

 

[CMDR Exorcist]

You had me at outliner tabs...

 

[Calvax]

Since envoys are gone, couldn't we just hire 50 leaders to send to gal com to blow out our diplomatic weight? They won't level up sure, but who cares if you can have 50.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you will only be able to assign one leader to the galcom.

 

[Starfury]

Since envoys are gone, couldn't we just hire 50 leaders to send to gal com to blow out our diplomatic weight? They won't level up sure, but who cares if you can have 50.

Envoys aren't gone, and you can only assign one official to federation / galcom.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Will bring this up when we next discuss species traits.

The trait Resilient could be made more relevant if it received the "-1 Leader Maximum Negative Traits" modifier, instead of Talented having it. It seems like a decent fit, at least for the name.

(A case can also be made that Resilient should increase Army Health, rather than Defense Army Damage. It would then be relevant for militarily successful empires as well, and not just for the ones that get invaded. Though a bonus to Army Morale could also work, and that may align better with getting less negative leader traits.)

 

[King Harkinian]

Wasn't feedback taken about the names of the various leader classes? Several of them are still very non-descript or misleading. I would expect an "Analyst" to work on Anomalies for example, not be a governor. I think no one liked the "Officials" leader category either - it sounds like middle management. "Politicians" would be the obvious better choice, with the Politician jobs being renamed Officials instead.

The actual gameplay changes sound great though, it will be a relief to be rid of the oddly restrictive and cumbersome Paragons leader system.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

Thought... I don't know about the balance, but for flavor reasons, perhaps Citizen Service should be tweaked to remove penalties from assigning military leaders as governors. A result of a culture of putting military leaders in civic positions.

 

[Letharion]

Espionage changes are still ongoing internally.

I appreciate that. There are a lot of good suggestions all over this forum.

Having a missing researcher provided a major penalty to research in that field pre-Galactic Paragons. We mostly started by fixing that, then decided to apply it to the others once we made them able to be swapped out.

I expect that many empires will strongly consider swapping one or two of them out for other councilors. We wanted it to be flexible, but to be a carefully considered decision rather than an obvious one.

I think the penalties are a bit too harsh:

For owners of Galactic Paragons, we’ve made the Minister of Defense, Head of Research and new Minister of State council positions no longer mandatory. Instead, when you choose to Reorganize the Council, these positions will be removed and can be reselected, much like Civic and Enclave Council Positions. However, each of these positions will have their own penalties if they are not present and staffed.

• Minister of Defense: -25% Naval Capacity
• Minister of State: -25% Diplomatic Weight
• Head of Research: -25% Research Speed

Especially as there are civic leader positions which actually represent equivalents to ministerial positions, like the Senior Science Director in regard to the Head of Research, the High Diplomat in regard to the Minister of State or Commander of the Watch in regard to the Minister of Defense. Please consider to refrain from the penalties or reduce them, as long as the council includes a least one equivalent leader position. Otherwise other leader positions will only be selected if their bonuses are as good as the ministerial ons PLUS the penalty. And I think, this limits the player far too much.

Which civic leader position actually represents an equivalent to a ministerial position would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. As a bandaid I would propose, that positions, which can only be filled by the exact same type of leader, could be seen as equivalents.

 

[Navar]

These changes sounds fantastic and I cannot wait to get my hands on them!

 

[HoIo]

I don't like the change to Aptitude and the Killing Blow Nerf to Heroic past.

I gave up one Tradition and one Civic slot for good leaders. All those changes are a gutt punch to players going for Leader Focused Builds. Like Psychological Profiling only providing -25% leader upkeep? Like... seriously?

Rest of the changes are great but the one regarding the general leaders are harsh. I now have no reason to take Heroci Past and Aptitude now.

 

[Me_]

What is the maximum number of council members?

 

[goldennick94]

Very excited for all these changes. Super excited with the leader reworked. It just seems a lot more streamlined and everything just seems like it belongs in more appropriate places. Plus, the new veteran classes are pretty straightforward and less situational compared to before.
Especially excited about the tabbed outliner. The tabs are going to really help late-game management.

I think shipyards/starbases might belong better to structures though, given that
1) they are space structures,
2) shipyards/starbases can take up almost as much space in the outliner as planets and sectors can so the first tab is gonna be really heavy compared to the other tabs,
3) it can give another way to access planets (orbital rings and then jump into planet view) in another tab instead of having them both in the same tab,
and 4) structures is kind of small comparatively if it's just the megastructures so there's theoretically plenty of space for it there.

 

[Millbot]

Lots of awesome stuff here. Like that the vassal spam is getting the kibosh. Something that might be interesting to consider to further reign in the excesses of overlords, would be to allow vassals the option to resort to tax evasion. Upon being made a subject, an empire could have a new edict open up. Said edicts cost to implement and maintain, could be based upon how loyal they are and how much they trust their overlord. So an empire at max disloyalty and minimum trust could start the edict for free and pay nothing to keep it going. Also disloyalty would factor into how much they get to cheat on taxes, so a subject at max loyalty would get very little out of edict, but a subject that is completely disloyal might be able to avoid most, if not all their taxes. This would force overlords to have care about the loyalty and trust of their subjects and could be a good way to make ditching minister of state sting for aggressive military builds that like to be overlords.

Going to second concerns that ditching minister of state might be too much of a no brainer for aggressive military builds. Maybe minister of state could be a factor in how quickly an empire can process a newly conquered colony into a productive colony. Also if we ever get a rework too warfare, namely settling wars, could be another good spot to look into. Empires without a minister of state, might have a harder time getting what they want and avoid getting hoodwinked by the empires that do bother with diplomacy.

Not sure how good generals will be, I think there is a chance they stay relevant. If not, feels like that will come down to the strength of starbases and that there are too many ships, the latter of which is already int he crosshairs for a fix. Still going to plug the idea of capital starbases, where I capital starbase should be the best starbase in the empire and as a result should be beefier on it's firepower, which might make generals more useful. Maybe the cleanest implementation for it is to give it more firepower and hull points when it has the designation, increase defense platform cap and maybe add in a new type of starbase platform that only exists for capital starbases, which get destroyed if it ceases being the capital starbase. Those new platforms could boost the bases utility outside of defense matters.

Still worried that both explorers and academics will hit a point too soon into the game where they are irrelevant. Still going to plug the idea that the easier fix is to allow resurveying of systems in order to find stuff that the first pass missed. That should keep enough of a trickle of stuff to make them worth keeping, even if someone opts out of the new DLC. Other option, is if we get to remove negative traits down the line, maybe retraining could be an option. You run out of stuff to explore, so you send your explorer scientist to retraining, at the loss of a some exp (in the form of levels), you get them transitioned to a class that has use. So still worth doing over just firing them for a new recruit, but also having the opportunity cost that they lost levels and thus won't have as many bonuses, even if you can reroll them into the ideal analyst or statistician. If you really want to go for fun, could even open the option to let them pursue a whole new career path as an admiral or diplomat. Though probably exclude paragons from being able to do such rerolls.

As for espionage, still think we should be able to use it against fallen empires, the Unbidden and the other two factions that come with them if they stick around longer enough, the Contingency, the Prethoryn Scourge, the Gray Tempest, Marauders. I'd even add in the enclaves and leviathans. Would be a way to make the system compelling sooner than latter, while you still hammer out how to make it more relevant when used between regular empires, but not be god awful to play against.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

The example up there is at double the cap, not 1 over.

Relevant question: Is the 47% XP penalty the penalty for DOUBLE the cap or FOR BEING 4 OVER THE CAP.

In other words, if we invest in increasing the leader cap for a category from 3 to 6, are we going to be punished as heavily for having 10 as somebody who didn't invest in that category at all would be for having 7, or is this going to be more a 3.8 scenario where the punishment is relative to the cap rather than absolute.

 

[Letharion]

Not sure how good generals will be, I think there is a chance they stay relevant. If not, feels like that will come down to the strength of starbases and that there are too many ships, the latter of which is already int he crosshairs for a fix. Still going to plug the idea of capital starbases, where I capital starbase should be the best starbase in the empire and as a result should be beefier on it's firepower, which might make generals more useful. Maybe the cleanest implementation for it is to give it more firepower and hull points when it has the designation, increase defense platform cap and maybe add in a new type of starbase platform that only exists for capital starbases, which get destroyed if it ceases being the capital starbase. Those new platforms could boost the bases utility outside of defense matters.

I would like, if commanders could be assigned to sufficient upgraded starbases to strengthen defense.