Stellaris Dev Diary #325 - 3.10.3 "Pyxis" Released [d2aa] + Further Beta Plans

[Dr Pippy]

I would argue they could just make a second beta branch with literally double or more the empire size penalty scaling and few if any other changes. We can try both and see what works better. Or three, also have one with exactly the current planned beta + increases size penalty.

Alternative proposal: add a slider for empire size penalty.

I personally don't care for that mechanic and would turn it right off the second I had the opportunity. Other people clearly feel very differently and want it to be stronger. More sliders seems like a good way to let everyone play the game they want to play.

 

[Zetesofos]

@Eladrin Have you considered increasing the empire size effect on tech costs instead of slowing down research production equally much for everyone? I feel like the game has an excellent tool available to reign in empire that are making crazy research, while not hurting empires that are lagging behind in tech.

Issue is empire size is dependant on...empire size. Before they can change that tech modifier, they need to find the desired equilibrium for a 'default' empire, regardless of size. So, it makes sense to start with a global nerf, and then build up from there. It's a month long Beta, so lots of time to assess.

 

[XCodes]

This is true. It's pretty easy to get to much higher levels of Naval Capacity these days.

Naval cap by itself isn't a problem, though. With reduced upkeep modifiers you can pretty easily field 10x your naval cap without serious reprocussions.

If there was economic competition with anchorages then I think that would make investment in fleet cap a real decision.

 

[Harvey_James]

in b4 next patch nerfing anchorages and nav cap research techs

 

[Thiend]

Alternative proposal: add a slider for empire size penalty.

I personally don't care for that mechanic and would turn it right off the second I had the opportunity. Other people clearly feel very differently and want it to be stronger. More sliders seems like a good way to let everyone play the game they want to play.

That's pretty much just the best option, yeah. I'd love a lot more sliders than we have. Currently empire size is utterly meaningless if you aren't specifically going for planetary ascension, so I'd like the option to turn it up, but there's no actual reason that has to be universal.

Other candidates for sliders:
Fallen empire strength
Awakened empire strength boost
Enclave strength
Separate tech and tradition sliders
Galactic Community cooldown
Planet quality separated from planet frequency, quality being size and deposits (and an artificial planet quality slider, EG higher quality = larger artificial worlds/more districts from orbitals)
Anomaly frequency
Primitives and presapients separate sliders
Leader capacity
Leader xp requirements
Orbital deposit yields
Federation xp rate
"Do subjects contribute to sprawl" checkbox and slider
Precursor on/off, can or can't be duplicates, can or can't be selected checkboxes

 

[Harvey_James]

anomaly skills that give only 10/15% chance of discovering one.. like why so damn low % ,,,,

 

[Millbot]

Going to second the suggestion mad earlier, about how the devs should look into the idea of more diminishing returns, that scale in a way where the first few modifiers you get in an area are really good, but as you stuck more and more of them, they become less valuable. Never to the point where they are worthless, but to the point where people can't get the overwhelming runaway snowball effects.

One that would end up being healthier for the game long term in that it would preempt some of the power creep. It would also make it so that things that are suppose to be choices, will more readily be choices. Currently, right now, if someone wanted to so tech rush in game, it's essentially a no brainer to stuck all the research boosts one can get hold of because it takes a fair while before current diminishing returns, where they do exist, hit a point that an empire would be better off boosting some other aspect of their empire's power, that isn't research speed. This is to say, if I pick technology ascendancy and have the intelligent species trait, while also having one or two councilors with research speed increasing traits, that should make the research speed boost from the discover tradition tree less appealing to me. Yes, it'll give me faster research, but I'd get more bang for my buck going down another tree. Also a slightly different setup might mean that technology ascendancy seems less appealing because I did go down the discovery tree and have enough other research boosts, that I end up wanting to grab a different perk.

You can't quite completely kill the meta, but you can make it a little less obvious, while also being less dominant in all circumstances, thus letting players have room to make more choices, that won't instantly put them at a huge disadvantage because of the meta.

Anyways, this also seems like an interesting way to boost the value of the espionage system. Getting intel on more advance empires means potentially being able to catch up with them on tech or at least not fall too far behind.

I will say, my only major concern with this is that if these techs can easily get buried by bad RNG. Might be worth considering the idea of having an event trigger, after an empire researches enough techs in a tier, where the breakthrough tech is no longer something that might be randomly drown after completing research on a technology, but instead become a permanent option that is always available for research. This would also ensure that any builds that have their research options limited, won't be overly punished for it either. Like I could easily see this bodying a Fear of the Dark origin empire pretty badly, if that empires has poor luck getting the tech to increase their tech options back up to three and RNG forces them to have to research a bunch of tech they really don't want, until the odds hit a point where they actually will draw the breakthrough tech, instead of another tech, they don't want.

Will also be interested to see what the plans are for repeatables. Will there be repeatable breakthrough techs that cycle in so that we still have the tech rubberbanding or is that where a tech focused empire can hit a point where they startto pull further and further ahead of everyone else?

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

That's a very fair point. The part I didn't spell out explicitly is that for any increase in the effect of empire size to be meaningful it would have to be paired with the elimination of empire size reduction effects from the game or at the very least a severe limitation of the availability of such effects, much like they're doing with ship cost reduction. Actually just doing that without increasing the size penalty would likely already have a significant effect.

I fail to see how a return to the "science is king" days can be considered an improvement, and that is what you'll get if you remove the player's ability to impact the rate of research gain by eliminating or severely limiting the ability to affect the rate by civics, traditions, and unity investment in empire size reduction.

 

[Troyen]

I'll also note that it's a pretty bad idea to balance any game around the experience of the ~1% of players that are active in the forums. I'd certainly be open to contrary evidence, but I feel strongly that complaints about the tech tree going by too quickly are not even a little bit representative of the average player.

In this one regard, I do think "you finish research too fast" is shared outside the forums. Of the friends and co-workers I know who have picked up the game in the past couple of years, none of them are on the forums, and they all have asked me on their first campaign what they're supposed to be doing in the 2400s. To a new player with no DLC (who may not even know the crisis exists), the game kinda looks done by the early endgame because even with building slowly and inefficiently, you've gotten your empire established and are starting to run out of new techs. And then there's still a hundred more years to play.

That, is an absolutely insane change. The people celebrating this don't seem to realize just how insane this is in terms of tech cost increase alongside removing bonuses and increasing costs. This is even more heavy handed and extreme than the early leader changes and restrictions.

If nothing else, the costs need to go up between tiers more than the simple doubling today. Between production bonuses and the speed at which you can exponentially scale up once you start expansion/conquest, the tier 3-5 techs in today's game are way too cheap and completed way too fast. This means a lot of the midgame techs are ignored, especially in engineering, because the next better tech is just around the corner.

Having an exponential cost increase allows those mid-game techs to actually matter.

It is entirely possible that combined with the other changes (like the nerf to researcher output) that they've overshot too far, but that's what the beta will uncover.

If the developers want the game to last that long, they need to put way more effort into solving endgame lag because the game past 2400 is pretty much unplayable unless you have a top of the line gaming rig. The lategame is also the least interesting part of Stellaris, by that point all that's left is usually mop-up work conquering the rest of the weaker empires and fighting the crisis.

By nerfing the speed which you gain tech, you're also slowing the growth of the galaxy down. All those economic buffs and building upgrades will come later, meaning your 2400 beta economy (and the economy of every AI empire) should be smaller. This should translate to smaller fleets as well.

 

[Harvey_James]

each tier should add a research multiplier... since we have 5 tiers why not use 1-5 X research cost?

 

[blahmaster6k]

By nerfing the speed which you gain tech, you're also slowing the growth of the galaxy down. All those economic buffs and building upgrades will come later, meaning your 2400 beta economy (and the economy of every AI empire) should be smaller. This should translate to smaller fleets as well.

Pop growth and alloy output haven't changed except insofar as slowing down timing on refining techs. Fleets will be the same size as before, they'll just have worse weapons and/or be smaller ships, and later on will just have fewer or no repeatable bonuses.

Instead of having 100 battleships, I'll have 200 cruisers, 400 destroyers, or 800 corvettes.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Pop growth and alloy output haven't changed except insofar as slowing down timing on refining techs. Fleets will be the same size as before, they'll just have worse weapons and/or be smaller ships, and later on will just have fewer or no repeatable bonuses.

Instead of having 100 battleships, I'll have 200 cruisers, 400 destroyers, or 800 corvettes.

Shifting bonuses from output to throughput could be done for other resources as well. It would even be kind of odd if the other resources remained unchanged for more than one patch version of the game, after such a change to research. Shifting bonuses from output to throughput is a huge undertaking for the game's economic balance, however, and it may be best if it is done piecemeal.

 

[Enailios]

Except you're not talking about "the audience", you're talking about a tiny top percentile of the games player base. Many of the people celebrating this change on the forum barely play beyond the mid game, including the devs.

But there’s sliders? More sliders than ever actually since they’re breaking up trads and tech. The floor is still there for the 99%. These changes only open up the game for everyone because with said sliders, you can still have the GA no scaling all crisis 25m doomstacks or have the crisis’ fleet be 25k and still be hard for the top percentile? OR vicey versey have the 25m doomstacks for the bottom percentile be ezpz or so on and so forth. I dunno but these changes just seems amazing all around, but then again, we’ll just have to wait and see

 

[Thiend]

Shifting bonuses from output to throughput could be done for other resources as well. It would even be kind of odd if the other resources remained unchanged for more than one patch version of the game, after such a change to research. Shifting bonuses from output to throughput is a huge undertaking for the game's economic balance, however, and it may be best if it is done piecemeal.

It's worth noting that, compared to other specialist jobs, research is the only one without a throughput-boost building (nanoplants etc) and also the one with by far the most output-from-tech free buffs. They may not require changes, as they already use the exact same overall system as tech will in this beta.

The difference is that they will have it with the building declaring it because they are districts, and research will have it inherently because the base job source is already a building and not a district. But in effect, it's exactly the same - all upgrades to science output will be throughput, all but a small amount of other specialist output will be throughput - its just that other specialists already work that way, and science jobs will only now be the same. It may also make "spam science everywhere" inherently less attractive because places with bad habitability will now have that same increased input for less of an increase in output.

 

[Troyen]

Pop growth and alloy output haven't changed except insofar as slowing down timing on refining techs. Fleets will be the same size as before, they'll just have worse weapons and/or be smaller ships, and later on will just have fewer or no repeatable bonuses.

Instead of having 100 battleships, I'll have 200 cruisers, 400 destroyers, or 800 corvettes.

By slowing down tech, aren't you slowing the speed of:

- Production-enhancing technologies (better energy/minerals/food/CG/alloy output).
- Strategic resource mining/refining
- Starbase upgrades and modules (like naval fleet academy, hydroponic farms, and +1 starbase tech)
- Ship type and weapon unlocks (as you noted)
- Naval capacity and fleet command limit techs
- Tier 2 and tier 3 buildings
- Other special colony buildings (anything granted by tech), colonial administration, etc.
- Techs that grant building slots
- Habitats, orbital rings, and related space techs
- Megastructures

Cumulatively, that seems like it would result in smaller economic growth which translates to smaller fleet sizes, even discounting that fleets are going to be more expensive with the removal of ship upkeep and build cost multipliers. I think you're way underestimating the scope of the changes here.

 

[Harvey_James]

recently i reduced the tech/tradition modifier down to 1.5x with the addition of more techs it already felt like the game had slowed down a bit for me.. curious whether i should reduce it 1.25 research or leave it and see how much effect it has.. main boon for me is the traditions being unlocked will enable me too complete it much faster and ascend planets more which is great for playing tall pharmacorp with the new civic corporate protectorate and not having too research the 20% at start of game isnt so bad either..

 

[blahmaster6k]

By slowing down tech, aren't you slowing the speed of:

Compared to tier 3 and above tech, tier 1 and 2 techs are only slowed down a little. Tier 1 techs are 67% more expensive when taking into account the reduced researcher output, tier 2 techs are 116% more expensive (216% of the original cost).

...You know, I was going to make a point that most of the techs you listed are tier 1 and 2 techs and those didn't go up in cost by all that much, but never mind. The math makes even those ridiculously more expensive when you account for the double dipping nerf. I dislike these tech changes even more now.

However, most ship output economy is tied to the alloy and mining upgrades, which aren't that many techs. In all likelihood those same techs will still get researched only slightly later, and it will be other tier 1 and 2 techs getting skipped in the same time frame. Basically, ship economy techs will be slightly slower but a lot of extra techs players would have previously just won't get researched at all. The only gatekeeping techs I can see will be getting six tier 1 physics techs to unlock tier 2, getting the physics tier 2 breakthrough tech, and rolling volatile motes tech. The first alloy plant upgrade is a tier 1 tech itself, so the only real bottleneck is getting access to motes. So alloy output for the first 25 years will probably be only slightly slower than before, but in the period between 2225-2270 it will slow down quite a bit depending on how long it takes people to find the tier 2 alloy plant and orbital rings, which are both tier 3 techs.

I do agree that it will be a lot slower to ramp up in fleet size, but I don't think it's going to be in large part because of the tech changes. Just the ship cost changes alone will probably almost cut in half the numbers of ships flying around.

But then again, that won't do all that much for lag when the biggest sources of lag to my knowledge are pops, not ships.

 

[guiskj]

I'm all for the proposed changes. Numbers will get tweaked during Beta, so I don't want to worry too much right now.

However, if the pop growth rework is anything to go by, no matter what the Devs do, there will be a group of players that don't like the new tech costs. To that end, I'd like to suggest that you provide a galaxy setting to let us adjust it, just like you did with the pop growth formula.

 

[captainbeastfeast]

This is a GREAT change but I think you need to also balance out HOW tech progression works, with a greater emphasis on archaeology sites, rifts and even unity (which currently has no effect on societal research at all. Also it seems likely that these changes could encourage a more aggressive style of play and so exterminator empires may be more tempting to play, especially if they get to keep any of their ship building reduction modifiers and later on top tier tech from being a tier 5 crisis empire.

My proposals:
- Make archaeology sites work the same, but increase many of the science and economy bonuses provided. Either a 50, 75 or 100% increase depending on empire size and whether or not you have an archaeological research centre. smaller empires = bigger bonuses relative to their current science output. These could unlock multiple new techs instantly rather than provide stored research.

- Make rifts stages complete almost instantly in contrast to much slower archaeology sites. Finishing a rift and all events should take no more than a few months and be balanced towards more of a risk/reward type situation. (Do I risk my best scientist or send the newbie and hope he doesn't get changed into chaos spawn?) Also make the rift sphere technology a bit faster to research or add an agenda to cause this tech to appear earlier on via the event. Increase the frequency of rifts opening a bit as well, this doesn't happen often enough imo.

- Make unity output a positive modifier on society research. The more unity output you have relative to your current empire size, the better. This would give smaller empires a societal edge over larger ones and encourage taller rather than wider (and more aggressive) gameplay. It would work similarly to the fleet power influence modifier in that it would be influenced by empire size in relation to the statistic. This change might mean a rebalancing of spiritual empires and unity generation specialist empires..


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**Edit*** unrelated but also please can you fix the AI stability colony management. In lots of games lately it makes no effort at all to manage stability and gets constant civil wars. This is painful to watch, especially if they are your vassal or in your federation. If it can't be fixed give AI vassals and federations a sizeable stability boost.

 

[cerberus189]

Reduced Output of Researcher Jobs:

• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
• All other researchers, such as Necromancers, have been left alone for now
• 
  The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.

so i have a few questions i am guessing the new equation for tech cost makes it more expensive but will this mean that empire sprawl will have a larger effects on tech cost, making tall more competitive with wide.

The second question i have is do the tech cost changes currently not effect knights? reason i ask is that my main problem with that origin atm is its slow build up compared to just going full on tech over the 100-year period but if normal researchers are being nerfed, it would help with a lot of the more varied builds and allow for more play styles.

over all i will wait to see how this plays out but i have hopes that this will help balance the unity-tech disparity that has existed for a long time and the tall vs wide problem