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

[cerberus189]

This change alone will make a huge difference in stretching back the timescale!

Tier 1: 2000 -> 2500
Tier 2: 4000 -> 6500
Tier 3: 8000 -> 17500
Tier 4: 16000 -> 48500
Tier 5: 32000 -> 137500

it seems aswell it will make empire sprawl more effective in balancing the tall wide meta as that +30% tech cost will be very big now

 

[captainbeastfeast]

why won't you let me penetrate other players rifts paradox?

 

[juanigas]

I would like to see stronger ships but fewer ships in a fleet. that way the ships would have more individual importance and the game performance could be improved by not having a thousand ships to show.
I also really like what star trek infinity does with the crew that is having a pool of officers that each ship uses for its crew.
I also think that adding a logistics system similar to hoi4 could greatly improve the multiplayer experience.

 

[Skarm Ghelmaad]

I don't like these changes. They seem to be against the spirit of fun and the power fantasy that Stellaris provides.

The ship build costs weren't even a problem unless you actually minmaxed towards them. I can understand nerfing them, but removing almost all sources of them is just unfun.

The research throughput is a decent change, and probably the right direction. Hopefully something like that could be applied to ship build cost. rather than just removing all sources of it.

They are simply awful. They could have made them into a choice (which, in theory, they would have easier time doing than modder...they would have just to add a few extra settings for the setup of the game and add a penalty based on the setting!) instead of shooting the game in the leg and generating the need of an unnecessary mod to bring things back as they were!

 

[Skarm Ghelmaad]

So if everything from "tier 1" gets researched and you have been holding off from getting a Breakthrough Technology to unlock more techs, what choices will show up on research window other then the said Breakthrough Tech?

Seems so...kind of debatable idea as a mod (personally it is not a mod I'd have downloaded) and absolutely awful as change in the vanilla game!

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

The new tier 4 and 5 costs seem like huge overcorrections, especially with all the other changes, but I guess that's what a beta's for.

 

[captainbeastfeast]

They are simply awful. They could have made them into a choice (which, in theory, they would have easier time doing than modder...they would have just to add a few extra settings for the setup of the game and add a penalty based on the setting!) instead of shooting the game in the leg and generating the need of an unnecessary mod to bring things back as they were!

Your choice of colours and sense of balance is simply awful

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Your choice of colours and sense of balance is simply awful

He's read too many Stellaris event texts. Now he can only write by color-coding the parts he thinks are important. The consequences are dire.

 

[cerberus189]

The new tier 4 and 5 costs seem like huge overcorrections, especially with all the other changes, but I guess that's what a beta's for.

agreed i think nerfing both output and increasing cost might be a step to far especially since empire sprawl will have a bigger effect since the % increase will be a lot higher. this will hopefully add some more balance between tall and wide

 

[Ludaire]

While you're looking at research and technologies, is there any chance we'll see some rebalancing of the relative number of techs and their costs between different trees? Right now it feels rather lopsided. Engineering seems to have way more techs to research while also having the fewest ways to generate engineering research specifically. Meanwhile, I always run out of non-repeatables in physics years or even decades before I see my first repeatable in either of the other two. And this is often in files where I'm trying to favor engineering.

 

[-Marauder-]

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.

Far less efficient researchers, with far fewer upgrades, with far higher cost. Who meet far more expensive techs, remember they then also scale with Empire size. This change is like taking a chainsaw to an operation that needs a scalpel and hacking away madly without any thought to the consequences. And the usual suspects are celebrating it because they're not doing the math behind it, and aren't really going to be affected by it anyway as they never play games beyond early mid game.

All to "reign in" the top few sub 0, percentile of the player base, ignoring the impact this will have on everyone else. The Leadership changes had obvious problems and were pushed through regardless and we still haven't fixed that despite now approaching in many ways the status we had prior to the change again in terms of leader numbers.

This is the same all over again, but oh so much worse.

 

[NotAYakk]

Base tech costs:

1000 vs 1000
2000 vs 2500 (+25%)
4000 vs 6500 (+60%)
8000 vs 17500 (+120%)
16000 vs 48500 (+200%)
32000 vs 137500 (+350%)
64000 vs 396500 (+500%)

That should slow down snowballing.

Science is also 25% slower. And the +20%x3 techs are gone? Or maybe they are the gateway ones? Assuming they stay and also boost CG...

2.5 CG per scientist meant 1 support per researcher, roughly. This fell in base game to under 0.5 as miners and factory worker efficiency skyrocketed.

30% stable 20% planet 20% leader 60% tech 40% pop is 3.7x output. So 1.5 pops made 15 tech, or 10 tech per pop (in all 3 colours).

If you get +150% output and input, plus 100% output, on top of 3 for 2 CG, it is now 10 tech for 5 CG. Now late game CG is like 30 CG for 15 minerals, and 30 minerals per miner, so this only costs about a pop.

But we are down to 5 tech per pop (including support pops) instead of 10.

With pre-repeatable tier tech costing 4x as much, this is 8x slower tech speeds: instead of a tech every 6 months, one every 4 years. Much better!

...

Hive minds skip CG. Early game each CG requires 1/4 of a miner and 1/6th of a factory worker, plus .5 food/amenities support, for about a pop per CG, and minerals are half that: late game, 1/30th of a factory worker and 1/60th of a miner, plus 1/120th of a pop of support; about 1/16th of a pop.

Miners produce 30ish minerals, plus 0.1 of a pop to support, for 1/27th of a pop per mineral.

So the ratio stays similar.

 

[blahmaster6k]

instead of a tech every 6 months, one every 4 years. Much better!

More like much worse. This is an extreme overcorrection. Tech cost needed to be slowed down, but I would have reduced research speed by 30-50%, not made 800% tech cost the default.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Here's some food for thought. If 1x tech cost in the beta is 8x the research cost compared to before, players who like the old research times won't even be able to use the slider to get it back, because even the lowest setting on the slider (0.25x tech cost) will be twice as slow as the current 1x tech cost.

As someone that enjoys 0.75x tech cost with early mid and endgame years because condensing the game into fewer real-life hours and avoiding endgame lag is just more fun, I won't even be able to play the game nearly the same way as before. The sliders won't help me. I think a lot of people might even quit Stellaris altogether if it becomes that bad.

 

[Dr Pippy]

The new tier 4 and 5 costs seem like huge overcorrections, especially with all the other changes, but I guess that's what a beta's for.

Overall effect looks like ~4-6x slower progress through the tech tree, which means I'd be hitting repeatables around 2800-3100 with default settings and normal gameplay.

While I appreciate the point that the beta will allow any proposed changes to be tested and balanced, what is being suggested here is so far removed from anything that I would enjoy playing that even the proposal is rather concerning.

 

[Dragatus]

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 eliminating or severely limiting the ability to affect the rate by civics, traditions, and unity investment in empire size reduction.

Fair point again. I didn't think about that because I'm still mentally in the "science is king" era myself, though I've read on the forums that's no longer the case (in your posts actually). So I didn't think of all those other factors as alternatives to increasing research production, but as methods to circumvent the game's anti-snowballing mechanic.

My general concern still is that the empire size effects are largely toothless because of how much they can be reduced. More broadly though I think the issue is how beneficial negative modifies stack to produce increasing returns on investment.

A good example of how that was circumvented in the game is how we have Build Speed instead of Build Time Reduction. If Size Reduction of all flavors was given that sort of treatment, I think that would solve all issues I have with it.

 

[Dragatus]

Overall effect looks like ~4-6x slower progress through the tech tree, which means I'd be hitting repeatables around 2800-3100 with default settings and normal gameplay.

While I appreciate the point that the beta will allow any proposed changes to be tested and balanced, what is being suggested here is so far removed from anything that I would enjoy playing that even the proposal is rather concerning.

0.5x tech speed to the rescue? But yeah, this will be quite the "shock therapy".

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Overall effect looks like ~4-6x slower progress through the tech tree, which means I'd be hitting repeatables around 2800-3100 with default settings and normal gameplay.

While I appreciate the point that the beta will allow any proposed changes to be tested and balanced, what is being suggested here is so far removed from anything that I would enjoy playing that even the proposal is rather concerning.

We seem to be getting a more beta-y beta than what we're used to.

Past betas were typically bugfixes + mostly complete features that weren't ready for a full release whereas this one seems to be more on the experimental side.

And with any luck, they read this feedback and preemptively lower these new values before the beta actually starts. Changing tech costs is trivially easy, so much so that it would probably take Eladrin longer to submit a request for the change than it would take someone on his team to make the change.

 

[Thiend]

Far less efficient researchers, with far fewer upgrades, with far higher cost. Who meet far more expensive techs, remember they then also scale with Empire size. This change is like taking a chainsaw to an operation that needs a scalpel and hacking away madly without any thought to the consequences. And the usual suspects are celebrating it because they're not doing the math behind it, and aren't really going to be affected by it anyway as they never play games beyond early mid game.

All to "reign in" the top few sub 0, percentile of the player base, ignoring the impact this will have on everyone else. The Leadership changes had obvious problems and were pushed through regardless and we still haven't fixed that despite now approaching in many ways the status we had prior to the change again in terms of leader numbers.

This is the same all over again, but oh so much worse.

I've been in repeatables by 2300 while playing in ways that are objectively suboptimal to reduce micromanagement (or in the case of my habitual displacement when I need to conquer territory, literally just to reduce UI bloat and lose hundreds of pops in the process). I've been in repeatables while owning three systems with no vassals because I wanted to see if a powerleveled Explorer at level 10 would create any real value exploring dozens of systems I locked behind chokepoints, the only systems I explored or claimed (sort of, but you'll do better just making yourself someone's prospectorium for a few decades). I've even been in repeatables after going AFK for an hour with autoresearch on by accident around the time I finished my third tradition tree because I missed the pause key. I've sat there contemplating how repeatables, obviously intended as "tech is over, here's something to do with your output," are being researched in a couple months each when such things as hydroponics took multiple years.

I am not a minmaxer. I assume I'm not secretly the best Stellaris player ever who is in the top percentile while literally not paying attention for half the game. I spend most of my games with no vassals because it annoys me that they make it too easy, no AI trade exploits because I'd rather produce the resources myself, purging all pops I conquer because despite explaining to people that keeping pops and making them citizens is universally superior it seems wrong for my empire "theme." I enslave pops any time I'm xenophobic or authoritarian, often livestock, despite literally explaining yesterday on this forum that livestock (and slavery) is a strict downgrade 100% of the time in every possible scenario that can't be described "you won the game why are you still playing." I almost always leave living standards on default. I once dismantled a chunk of my empire so I could isolate the "self-modified" pops and release them as a vassal, make them independent, wait ten years, and blow them to hell with a planet cracker. I had a neutron purge available but I forgot to swap it and decided while it was firing that I also didn't care, despite that planet now being a size 30 ecumenepolis. I also forgot to resettle the other 200 pops before I released the vassal. The self-modified event makes me irrationally furious and furiously irrational. It had no meaningful impact on my ability to spam repeatables despite having been where I produced all of my CG because the repeatables I already had let me turn a mining world into a new CG world.

We'll see about this exact implementation, it could be going too far or it could be just right (I severely doubt it isn't far enough), but making research slower is a long time coming. The way I play, a combination of sheer disregard for what I know to be best so thoroughly I explain it to others and deliberate self-sabotage, I am the test case. I should not be seeing repeatables in 2280, or frankly until at least 2375, and yet I do. Constantly.

As far as leaders, the new system is way better than the old system because it no longer consists of "put a leader in every possible slot, then forget they exist until they die. Repeat." Would still enjoy a choice at empire creation to revert leaders to not requiring player attention or being a significant factor, as detailed in other posts and threads by me. Not the point, just felt I should address it as part of your comment.

 

[cerberus189]

Fair point again. I didn't think about that because I'm still mentally in the "science is king" era myself, though I've read on the forums that's no longer the case (in your posts actually). So I didn't think of all those other factors as alternatives to increasing research production, but as methods to circumvent the game's anti-snowballing mechanic.

My general concern still is that the empire size effects are largely toothless because of how much they can be reduced. More broadly though I think the issue is how beneficial negative modifies stack to produce increasing returns on investment.

A good example of how that was circumvented in the game is how we have Build Speed instead of Build Time Reduction. If Size Reduction of all flavors was given that sort of treatment, I think that would solve all issues I have with it.

i think empire sprawl now will have more of a bite to it if u play wide and get plus +15% research cost before it was not much but now that can be tens of thousands of tech
Below, i will show the old vs. new base then the old vs new cost with 15% increase from empire
1000 vs 1000 1150 vs 1150 with 15%
2000 vs 2500 2300 vs 2875 with 15%
4000 vs 6500 4600 vs 7475 with 15%
8000 vs 17500 9200 vs 20125 with 15%
16000 vs 48500 18400 vs 55775 with 15%
32000 vs 137500 36800 vs 158125 with 15%

as u can see that 15% from empire sprawl is a hell of a lot now so wide players that used to ignore the sprawl will now pay at tier 3 nearly 1000 more for a tech and at tier 6 it goes up to 12000 more, which is a lot more tech to need