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

[DurianKing]

Also, following your argument, I guess games like Chess are pretty boring too?

Chess is a great game! It would also be a huge loss if Stellaris was stripped down to that level. If you want to play chess, go play chess?

Holy mother of false binaries. There's loads of unpredictable aspects to the game, including what actions other Empires and players will take.

The examples they gave were all in galaxy generation, which I think is pretty telling. They came back with the example of the space storm, which is a good one and there should be way more stuff like that in Stellaris.

“Other players,” huh? I think one of the keys to this whole discussion is that the people who raise hell at every change are from the tiny but extremely vocal minority who play Stellaris as a competitive multiplayer game. From that perspective, yes I suppose a challenge that doesn’t come from another player would be pretty annoying.

 

[Thiend]

The examples they gave were all in galaxy generation, which I think is pretty telling.

You don't read posts because you can't make arguments based on what they actually say, which I think is pretty telling.

I gave a guiding principle, bad RNG just makes you weaker or stronger and good RNG requires you to adapt. It's not my problem if you refused to read that in favor of a strawman after glancing at the examples I provided of that principle. Please stop referring to my post or go actually read it.

 

[DurianKing]

You don't read posts because you can't make arguments based on what they actually say, which I think is pretty telling.

I gave a guiding principle, bad RNG just makes you weaker or stronger and good RNG requires you to adapt. It's not my problem if you refused to read that in favor of a strawman after glancing at the examples I provided of that principle. Please stop referring to my post or go actually read it.

I read the post and your examples were weak. You provided better ones in a subsequent post.

 

[mrt1212]

You don't read posts because you can't make arguments based on what they actually say, which I think is pretty telling.

I gave a guiding principle, bad RNG just makes you weaker or stronger and good RNG requires you to adapt. It's not my problem if you refused to read that in favor of a strawman after glancing at the examples I provided of that principle. Please stop referring to my post or go actually read it.

See, the thing that I get straight away with negatraits on leaders is that you're given a cost/benefit analysis you didn't ask for but consistently revisit with new leaders and that afflicted leader still potentially getting more traits that might offset the negative trait in some other way. The entire presentation of this cost/benefit analysis in histrionic fashion that it's a game-soaker, for a subsystem that is basically ignorable as 'bonus juice' you barely have to think about if you don't want to. So the histrionic presentation is doing the entire opposite in effect here - it's setting off alarms about perspective and engagement, where I can only imagine someone playing in completely unrobust and easily pantsed way getting stricken by it.

Like, per your statement, I would absolutely say that leader negatraits are Good RNG, because adapting to the negatrait itself in effect and then having your finger on the airlock trigger looking for better is there on your own time as a cost/benefit analysis. I mean, some of the negatraits are straight up laughable in negative effect dependent on timing, especially juxtaposed to the boosts, so my mind is just reeling and completely stupefied that this could throw anyone off their game.

But I accept it does since we're here right now jawboning about it.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

- Unless the penalties for not having "default" council positions are lessened, I don't think that anyone is going to change those.

An interesting take. I wonder what makes you think that?

As I argued in this post earlier in the thread, based on the available knowledge I expect many, perhaps most, veteran players to replace the Minister of State some time during a game regardless of whether they play conquest oriented or more diplomatically, as the penalty isn't significant to the former, and as for the latter, usually from some point in the mid-game they have so much diplomatic power that a -25% hit is irrelevant. Exactly when this happens will depend on whether it is a simple additive -25% modifier or whether it is multiplicative, but sooner or later diplomatic empires end up with more diplomatic power than they have any use for, and the job benefits, while valuable in the early game, have low value long-term unless you are in love with operational espionage.

Minister of Defense is somebody secure in his job in war builds and any other build that invests heavily in the fleet during the first few decades, but when playing a game where you diplomatically neutralize enemies in the early game and generally only go to war early on using your federation allies fleets to do the fighting and dying while a small fleet of your own takes point, dumping him early on in favour of some better economic/leader job that allows a scientist or official seems like a splendid idea.

Certainly I expect to be doing it on a regular basis, as I quite like making diplomatic and economic superpowers, and when by the 2230s or 2240s it is time to build up the fleet, one could switch back to having a minister of defense again - or, assuming the job one has in his place is valuable enough, eat the penalty and devote more jobs to soldiers to generate naval capacity on the basis of the stronger economy built during the early decades.

Head of Research, however... Now, THAT depends on just how great an axe the custodian team has taken to the techspeed traits. I expect a serious across the board nerf, but just how bad is it? With the current functionality where a highlevel scientist council ends up with 300-400% increased techspeed in all three disciplines with a strong 5 scientist council, giving up the Head Researcher in favour of another Scientist job with some more needed personal bonus than 2% techspeed/level + penalty might happen. But if techspeeds overall have been significantly nerfed, he's safe from being replaced by another scientist job.

And I just know that somewhere there's a trade build with 6 officials stacking council trade traits waiting to happen, unless they too are greatly nerfed.

And unless the admiral council traits have been nerfed significantly too, and perhaps even if they have, I could definitely see some warmongers confident in their builds deciding to swap in an all-admiral council on the eve of war after the initial fleet buildup. Sure, the loss of techspeed would hurt, but if it allowed him to start conquering earlier, faster, or more safely, it would be worth it.

Now, possibly I am being too optimistic about these scenarios, but on balance I would not be surprised if most strong builds ended up getting rid of one or two of the three original jobs at some point during the game despite the penalties.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Like, per your statement, I would absolutely say that leader negatraits are Good RNG, because adapting to the negatrait itself in effect and then having your finger on the airlock trigger looking for better is there on your own time as a cost/benefit analysis. I mean, some of the negatraits are straight up laughable in negative effect dependent on timing, especially juxtaposed to the boosts, so my mind is just reeling and completely stupefied that this could throw anyone off their game.

But I accept it does since we're here right now jawboning about it.

Possibly it comes down to balance on the negative traits that are never worth keeping the leader who gets them (and are therefore effectively the same as randomly killing that leader), but I feel like most negative traits don't require adapting to them so much as making a single cost-benefit analysis on whether the leader is still worth keeping and are then ignored for the rest of the game.

Like, drawing the -5 monthly alloys trait early in the game when that's still 20% or more of your monthly gain is absolutely a dealbreaker (and also crippling for AI empires since afaik they're unable to fire leaders).

On the other hand, lifespan reduction negative traits do kinda work because they can change your prioritization on grabbing lifespan-extension modifiers, something that frequently comes up when picking your next society tech, tradition tree, or trait option.

It might be worth doing a separate thread discussing which negative traits or modifiers give the player interesting choices, and which are either ignorable or crippling.

 

[mrt1212]

Possibly it comes down to balance on the negative traits that are never worth keeping the leader who gets them (and are therefore effectively the same as randomly killing that leader), but I feel like most negative traits don't require adapting to them so much as making a single cost-benefit analysis on whether the leader is still worth keeping and are then ignored for the rest of the game.

Like, drawing the -5 monthly alloys trait early in the game when that's still 20% or more of your monthly gain is absolutely a dealbreaker (and also crippling for AI empires since afaik they're unable to fire leaders).

On the other hand, lifespan reduction negative traits do kinda work because they can change your prioritization on grabbing lifespan-extension modifiers, something that frequently comes up when picking your next society tech, tradition tree, or trait option.

It might be worth doing a separate thread discussing which negative traits or modifiers give the player interesting choices, and which are either ignorable or crippling.

Thyre definitely not symmetric with one another, thats for sure, and whatever the player skunkworx teases out would probably be fine. Will hafta make inference after the update on Weds given all the other happenings with Leaders.

Edit one of the funniest things looking a current playthrough is how my Oligarch has Paranoia II which obviously stinks directly but is a relative blip in the Big Picture yet noticeable in research rate. I didnt choose them, I let the RNG do that too, lol. When I put the gun to my temple, I like to give the trigger 2 squeezes, see how many of those hollow tips my mind can catch. The blessing of Psionics you see.

More generally - rather have a tradition or planetary ascension for the Unity they need than rigging the vote for some bozo I barely care about.

 

[Thiend]

See, the thing that I get straight away with negatraits on leaders is that you're given a cost/benefit analysis you didn't ask for but consistently revisit with new leaders and that afflicted leader still potentially getting more traits that might offset the negative trait in some other way. The entire presentation of this cost/benefit analysis in histrionic fashion that it's a game-soaker, for a subsystem that is basically ignorable as 'bonus juice' you barely have to think about if you don't want to. So the histrionic presentation is doing the entire opposite in effect here - it's setting off alarms about perspective and engagement, where I can only imagine someone playing in completely unrobust and easily pantsed way getting stricken by it.

Like, per your statement, I would absolutely say that leader negatraits are Good RNG, because adapting to the negatrait itself in effect and then having your finger on the airlock trigger looking for better is there on your own time as a cost/benefit analysis. I mean, some of the negatraits are straight up laughable in negative effect dependent on timing, especially juxtaposed to the boosts, so my mind is just reeling and completely stupefied that this could throw anyone off their game.

But I accept it does since we're here right now jawboning about it.

I basically agree, I didn't actually mention negative leader traits... ever. If a leader is past about level 4, I just keep them when they develop them - the benefit of the leader's positive traits usually outweighs the negative ones + need to level a new leader on the council, and non-council negatives aren't severe enough usually. Plus if they develop council negatives but aren't on the council they just do nothing.

I'll have to see if that's true, if they made traits in general less strong but kept negatives the same that may change how I approach negative traits. But that might just be to go full negative trait reduction, anyway.

 

[Panzerslothen]

I've been trying to leave some comments to this DD since last Thursday, but one thing or another always gets in the way. So here are a quick few!

• This has been one of my favourite DD's of all time. Top five, easily.
• I'm so stoked to get to play this this weekend.
• This looks like it fixes pretty much all of the major criticisms the 3.8 Leader rework introduced. I hope - and expect, to some degree - Galactic Paragons will see much less flakk now, and get a bit more of the praise it deserves.
• I'm going to name my first Commander 'Mark Shepherd'. Yes, THAT song will be playing in my head for an hour afterwards.
• I'm happy with the Leader class names.
• I'm not so convinced Aptitude has been nerfed, per se. Just changed. It seems the focus of it now will be in the Traits, rather than in other ancillary aspects of Leaders. That'll be interesting to test out and compare.
• That Tabbed Outliner is very unexpected, but incredibly welcome. Everybody spare a thought for Orrie, who is going to have an absolute bear of a few days while UIOD gets updated and everybody yells 'UPDATE WHEN?' at him like they're the Seagulls from Finding Nemo or something.
• Really looking forward to seeing the change-log this afternoon.
• I like the Minister of State position and WILL be using it.
• That said, -25% debuffs to Fleet Power/Diplo Weight/Research speed from changing your main Ministers is incredibly punishing. I'll be modding that down to -10% or -15% if it's still -25% on release, I think.
• It was very nice to see entertaining up-and-comer Stellaris Streamer AlphaYangDelete getting a bit of love from the Dev Team in the most recent video. Very glad to see other creators feature besides just that one particular guy who seems to hog all the attention.
• 3.11 GET HYPE.

 

[DurianKing]

Like, drawing the -5 monthly alloys trait early in the game when that's still 20% or more of your monthly gain is absolutely a dealbreaker (and also crippling for AI empires since afaik they're unable to fire leaders).

But aren’t they phasing out these flat resource bonus/cost traits with this update? I seem to remember that from a previous DD. Generally good news all around, then?

I basically agree, I didn't actually mention negative leader traits... ever.

And yet this is the discussion we’re having, prompted by a post by @-Marauder- about how they nuke leaders who get negative traits. Reading helps, boss

 

[Zeta-0]

Is planet governner going to overwrite sector governner's effect, or take them both?

 

[-Marauder-]

Chess is a great game! It would also be a huge loss if Stellaris was stripped down to that level. If you want to play chess, go play chess?



The examples they gave were all in galaxy generation, which I think is pretty telling. They came back with the example of the space storm, which is a good one and there should be way more stuff like that in Stellaris.

“Other players,” huh? I think one of the keys to this whole discussion is that the people who raise hell at every change are from the tiny but extremely vocal minority who play Stellaris as a competitive multiplayer game. From that perspective, yes I suppose a challenge that doesn’t come from another player would be pretty annoying.

Chess served as an example that your argument that games "without" RNG aspect would be boring and so on. It's simply entirely untrue. Even if bad RNG gets cut down, there's plenty of RNG left in the game from fleet combat all the way to the shroud and co. The game also isn't static, as both the Ai and players keep making choices all throughout.

Also, it's nice to see that you simply declare "examples not valid" or outright cherry pick singular lines to respond to. So you can avoid responding to virtually anything people you disagree with are writing. Because you don't seem to have a good response.

You don't read posts because you can't make arguments based on what they actually say, which I think is pretty telling.

I gave a guiding principle, bad RNG just makes you weaker or stronger and good RNG requires you to adapt. It's not my problem if you refused to read that in favor of a strawman after glancing at the examples I provided of that principle. Please stop referring to my post or go actually read it.

I think he's actually reading them, then just never responds to ANY points made and even direct answers to his claims, because he does not have a proper response. This allows him to simply "wear down" the people he's arguing with who are actually wasting their time to give him proper responses and "declare victory" once they grow tired of this and move on.

I read the post and your examples were weak. You provided better ones in a subsequent post.

How do examples and points made matter when you don't bother ever even acknowledging much less responding to them anyway?

 

[Thiend]

And yet this is the discussion we’re having, prompted by a post by @-Marauder- about how they nuke leaders who get negative traits. Reading helps, boss

And yet that isn't the discussion I was having. Thank you for confirming that you weren't reading my posts. Please stop quoting me, referring to me, tagging me, misrepresenting me, or otherwise wasting my time unless you are commenting on, questioning, or otherwise interacting with something I have actually said.

 

[Ikael]

That might be a bit early to say. We'll still have to see what the Commissioner Veteran traits will look like. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the pioneer traits will end up on Commissioners instead of Industrialists.
That would mean you could use Commissioners as Governors for your energy and your mining planets while Industialists and Analysts take care of your core worlds.

Of course, as long as you can afford to shift to a zero-worker economy even a Pioneer / Protector hybrid will end up pretty useless, but I'm not sure that's really a problem. A pacifist might also find Admirals and Generals useless after all.

You are right, better wait and see, my judgment might have been too hasty. But even in that case, governor commanders don't look too appealing compared with the other two governor roles. I mean, Pioneers were some of the worst governor classes of the previous leader version as well. Not that it will make Commanders undesirable or anything, but I would like for leader subclasses to offer juicy choices. We'll see.

An interesting take. I wonder what makes you think that? * SNIP *

Now, that's an interesting analysis! And it also made me realize that I did not notice that you can duplicate council positions >.<

Taking that into account, now those penalties do make a lot of sense. I previously thought that the idea was to be able to swap standard council positions in order to introduce civic-specific ones, but it did not occur to me that you could duplicate certain positions.

This is probably something that you won't be doing in the early game, but as you say, there are lots of possibilities for killer combinations, both on late-game scenarios (say, once science does not matter anymore) or in certain builds (no need for diplomatic weight if you are a purifier).

This also makes me realize that some kind of lesser penalties for those or additional council spots could have been a fitting bonus for the statecraft Tradition Tree, but still, you made a good point here.

 

[LiZinckle]

I have read through the discussion around negative traits. I would recommend have an eye on gestalts in this case, to see how we could make negative traits more impactful.

If you have experience with XCOM 2, you might have recalled how crippling negative traits can be. But in legendary ironman, players play with these traits nonetheless most of the early game, instead of build an infirmary earlier and have these soldiers rest. And if they die, then dead are they and call that a day. The thing we are acceptable with the loss and crippling negative traits, is from the fact that we can get developed soldiers along playing, and while infirmary is inefficient and makes your soldiers decommissioned for 10 days, it could be acceotable for a veteran. But we do not yet to have equivalents in stellaris yet. Hired leader are nowhere as strong, and there is no way you can do with that trait once it pops, except a miracle event that removes it and gain a large sum of experience. The very fact that you can do nothing with that except dismissing hinders the design for more damaging negative traits, from the reply they know already it would be unpleasent.

Here we have an equivalent. Gestalt Nodes do not benefit from species traits that reduces negative traits, so they, unless combining -3 negatives traits and luckiness, will eventually develop some negative traits. And it is even more impactful than normal empires, whose traits can be something like consuming consumer goods that equally only around prodution of 1 or 2 pops: All of the negative traits are global effective. And chaning nodes are very costly. So we are actually playing with these till late game, for example 2270.

But there have been little complain over that, I think only me have voiced once for the gestalt nodes before culling is introduced. It could be because of gestalts being simplified in mechanics that fewer people are playing with it, but also, could be the presense of nodes culling and bisection, two agendas that helps remove the negative traits if needed. The two agendas, for the most of the time, are ineffective. Not only you are paying the opportunity cost of runing the agenda, paying a considerate amount of experience, but also their effects will eventually run out as the negative traits will be back. But they encourage players to actually consider whether or not to remove them right now, or play with them, or in emergency condition where the bisection is also cooling down, use culling.

Then let us have a look on non-gestalts. My example is, if I were to not piling -3 or -4 max negative traits, I would run around 2 or 3 more visinaries/researchers/strategists than needed as spare. When one of these rolled, for example bureaucratic, they will be replaced. It is up to the players themselves to judge if or not this is an interaction with negative traits.

'We are the consciousness. We endure.'

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Now, that's an interesting analysis! And it also made me realize that I did not notice that you can duplicate council positions >.<

Taking that into account, now those penalties do make a lot of sense. I previously thought that the idea was to be able to swap standard council positions in order to introduce civic-specific ones, but it did not occur to me that you could duplicate certain positions.

Err, I didn't write anything about duplicating council positions. Swapping starting council positions for civic & enclave council positions is the point of making it possible to replace them as far as I've understood.

It is just that stacking certain council leader types depending on game plan, assuming you have council jobs for them available, is currently so very, very, strong.

Hence the penalty for replacing them is probably thematically because you are eliminating some of the standard institutions of an organized state, and practically for balancing purposes due to the desirability of leader type stacking.

 

[Ikael]

Err, I didn't write anything about duplicating council positions. Swapping starting council positions for civic & enclave council positions is the point of making it possible to replace them as far as I've understood.

It is just that stacking certain council leader types depending on game plan, assuming you have council jobs for them available, is currently so very, very, strong.

Hence the penalty for replacing them is probably thematically because you are eliminating some of the standard institutions of an organized state, and practically for balancing purposes due to the desirability of leader type stacking.

That is far harder to pull off than I thought. I mean, you need to endure the malus of the lack of a councilor position, plus its inherent opportunity cost loss, and you also have to get very specific traits in order to compensate for it. It is a far more niche build than I thought. I mean, you could theoretically make it work, but it would be extremely rare, and hard to do it (even if I agree that on a thematical level, there ought to be penalties due to the fact that you are demolishing state institutions out of a whim).

 

[Thiend]

That is far harder to pull off than I thought. I mean, you need to endure the malus of the lack of a councilor position, plus its inherent opportunity cost loss, and you also have to get very specific traits in order to compensate for it. It is a far more niche build than I thought. I mean, you could theoretically make it work, but it would be extremely rare, and hard to do it (even if I agree that on a thematical level, there ought to be penalties due to the fact that you are demolishing state institutions out of a whim).

Who says they're institutions of YOUR state? That's one of my two problems with it. The other is just that it strikes me as false customization to say "you can adjust these at will, but if you do there are massive penalties for not using these specific council positions." Plus, due to the added one, it's literally worse than the current version. To create exactly the same council you use in the current version of the game will cost 25% of your diplomatic weight to get rid of that one.

 

[Zetesofos]

This is the single best suggestion for addressing admiral shortage I think I've seen. Specialized fleets could still have their own admiral, but being able to have a "grand admiral" who can boost an entire fleet-of-fleets makes a lot of sense, given the way Stellaris fleet limit works and the sizes that navies get to in the late game.

The one thing I'd add is: maybe make it so that a "grand admiral" needs to be on a flagship of some kind? That is, you only get this aura-like bonus if the command fleet has either a Titan or is a Juggernaut (yes, let us assign admirals to juggernauts already!). Admittedly that would probably need to be re-worked for people who don't have the relevant DLCs, but that's easy enough, lots of stuff (like Psionic techs) already works that way.

I mean, I don't think you'd NEED to have a flagship - as long as the bonus to other ships in the system are small, it shouldn't be too swingy - and if a second fleet also has an admiral, the bonuses don't STACK (you just take the higest).

That said, maybe there is an Aura for Titan's/Juggernauts that INCREASE the effectiveness of an Admiral's "System Bonuses" that makes them more appealing?

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

That is far harder to pull off than I thought. I mean, you need to endure the malus of the lack of a councilor position, plus its inherent opportunity cost loss, and you also have to get very specific traits in order to compensate for it. It is a far more niche build than I thought. I mean, you could theoretically make it work, but it would be extremely rare, and hard to do it (even if I agree that on a thematical level, there ought to be penalties due to the fact that you are demolishing state institutions out of a whim).

I simply don't understand your reasoning here. You will eventually have 3 civics, which means that between the original three departments of state and your civics, even if you don't have extra civics or enclave leaders, you'll eventually have 6 possibilities for the 5 non-ruler positions on the council.

Which means that even if you do nothing special at all, at some point you are going to ask yourself whether you are willing to trade off one of the standard council positions for one of your civics' council positions.

The point is not that you need something very special to compensate - the point is to trade away stuff that is of little value to your build in return for something that is of more value.

Take replacing the Minister of State, as the one who'll probably get the chop most often. You are trading:

Official council leader
2%/lvl increase relations - this is valuable in the early game, but much less so later on as treaties and trust dominate
2%/lvl harm relations - unless you have some interesting playstyle where you frequently harm relations, this is of little to no loss
2%/lvl first contact speed - highly valuable the first two decades or so, of less value later on, irrelevant eventually
2%/lvl operation speed - valuable for those who love espionage and of little value to everybody else

For:

LeaderType granted by civic/enclave's job
Job bonus granted by civic/enclave's job
-25% diplomatic power - this loss is mostly irrelevant to war builds, and eventually not a problem to trade off for diplomatic builds

How often is that going to be a good deal? Very, very, often after the early game unless the game introduces a new high-value mid- and late-game need for the First Contact skill.