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Stellaris Dev Diary #33 - The Maiden Voyage

Hi everyone!

Well folks, here we are again, one week later… The development team has mostly weathered the release jitters and nerves are starting to calm down. The ship we worked so hard on for the last three years has been successfully launched and is currently on its maiden voyage. The crew seems mostly happy but some of the inspectors have raised concerns about mid-ship structural issues. As chief architect, I am not entirely surprised, but the reports will allow us to commence upgrades as soon as HMS Stellaris returns from its round-trip to Alpha Centauri. Alright, enough with the metaphor, let’s talk about our future plans for Stellaris!

First off, for those of you who are unfamiliar with our post-release policies, we will release a lot of expansions over the coming years. Each expansion will be accompanied by a major update (for Stellaris, these free updates will be named after famous science fiction authors) containing a whole bunch of completely free upgrades and improvements to the game in addition to regular bug fixes. As long as enough players keep buying paid content for the game, we promise to keep improving the game for everyone, almost like an MMO.

Now, before we begin the expansion cycle in earnest, we will spend the rest of May and June only focusing on bug fixes and free upgrades to the game. We carefully listen to all your feedback, which has already made us alter our priorities a bit. As a veteran designer of our complex historical games, I was anticipating a fair amount of criticism regarding the mid-game in Stellaris compared to that of our historical games, but I was more concerned with the depth of the economy than the relative lack of diplomatic options, for example. I also find much of the feedback on the Sector system interesting; the GUI and AI concerns will receive the highest priority. One area I was not at all surprised to get flak for is the lack of mid-game scripted content, however. We simply took too long getting all the early and late game stuff in, and neglected a whole category of events called “colony events”, which were supposed to be the bread and butter of the mid-game for the Science Ships.

We’ve been digesting and discussing your feedback and how to best go about improving the mid-game to make it more dynamic, both in the short and long run. Let’s start with our short term plans. When the game was released, we had already proceeded to fix a lot of issues. Together with some other pressing issues that have been reported, the plan is to release the 1.1 update - “Clarke” - near the end of May. We will try to cram as much as we can into this update, but the more fundamental stuff will have to wait until the next update (“Asimov”), which is scheduled for the end of June. The “Clarke” patch will mainly be a bug fix and GUI improvement update. Here are some of the highlights:

"CLARKE" HIGHLIGHTS
  • Fixes to the Ethic Divergence and Convergence issues. Currently, Pops tend to get more and more neutral (they lose Ethics, but rarely gain new ones.)
  • The End of Combat Summary. This screen looks bad and also doesn’t tell you what you need to know in order to revise your ship designs, etc.
  • Sector Management GUI: There are many issues with this, and we will try to get most of them fixed.
  • Diplomacy GUI issues. This includes the Diplomatic Pop-Ups when other empires contact you, but also more and better looking Notifications, and more informative tooltips on wars, etc.
  • AI improvements: Notably the Sector AI, but also plenty of other things. This kind of work is never "finished"...
  • Myriads of bug fixes and smaller GUI improvements.
  • Late game crises bugs. There were some nasty bugs in there, blocking certain subplots and various surprising developments.
  • EDIT: Remaining Performance Issues. We know about them; they might even be hotfixed before Clarke.
  • EDIT: Corvettes are too good.

Stellaris_new_Diplo_Notification_Mockup.png

New Diplomatic Notification. This is a mock-up, not an actual screenshot!

Stellaris_End_of_Combat_Mockup.png

New Fleet Combat Summary. This is a mock-up, not an actual screenshot!


After that, we’re moving on to the “Asimov” update, and this is when we can start making some major gameplay improvements to especially the mid-game. As you might have guessed, we plan to add some new diplomatic actions and treaties. Another thing that struck me during our discussions is that the normal lack of access to the space of other empires makes the game feel more constricted than intended. It limits your options since you can’t really interact much with the galaxy beyond the borders of your empire, and you only tend to concern yourself with your direct neighbors. This is bad for your Science Ships too, of course, since they might not be able to finish some of the grander “quests”. Compare the situation with Europa Universalis, where you usually have access to the oceans and can thus reach most of the world, or Crusader Kings, where you can even move through neutral territory with your armies. We also intend to add as much mid-game scripted content as we can. Thus, this is currently the plan for “Asimov”, but it’s not set in stone yet, so please bear with us if something gets pushed or altered:

"ASIMOV" HIGHLIGHTS (NOT SET IN STONE!)
  • Border Access Revision: Borders are now open to your ships by default, although empires can choose to Close their borders for another empire (lowering your relations, of course.)
  • Tributaries: New diplomatic status and corresponding war goals.
  • Joint Declarations of War: You can ask other empires to join you for a temporary alliance in a war against a specific target.
  • Defensive Pacts.
  • Harder to form and maintain proper Alliances.
  • More war goals: Humiliate, Open Borders, Make Tributary, etc.
  • Emancipation Faction. We had to cut this one at the last minute. Needs redesign.
  • Diplomatic Map Mode. Much requested!
  • Diplomatic Incidents: This is a whole class of new scripted events that causes more interaction with the other empires.
Past “Asimov”, I can’t give you any kind of specifics yet, but I am currently leaning towards honing in on the following general areas for the “Heinlein” update (these are not promises!):

CURRENT "HEINLEIN" INTENTIONS
  • Sector and Faction Politics: We are working on a design for this. I always wanted to make Factions more closely tied to Sectors, for example...
  • Federation and Alliance Politics: As a player, you need more ways of interacting with the other members, push your will through, and get elected, etc.
  • Giving Directions to Allies and Subject States.
  • Strategic Resource Overhaul: You should need these and search for them far and wide. They should be extremely important.
  • Battleship Class Weapons. Some Battleship front sections will be repurposed for an XL size weapon slot. There are currently four ship sizes but only three sizes to weapons, creating an imbalance. Also, Battleships should have fewer small weapon slots and have to rely on screens of smaller ships.
  • Fleet Combat Mechanics: Formations and/or more complex ship behavior is needed.
  • Mid-game scripted content: Guarded “treasures”, mid-game crises, colony events, etc.
  • Living Solar Systems: Little civilian ships moving around, etc.
Again, remember that we need to be somewhat flexible when things don't work out or when something else takes priority, so please take these later plans with a large grain of salt. As always, we also listen keenly to your feedback, so keep it coming!

Now, I am sure you are full of questions about the details, but hold your horses; it will all be explained in the coming dev diaries!
 
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First of all, despite a lot of criticism, I think the game is great. It is pretty much the game I always wanted to make. I'm onboard with most of the plan outline in the original post, but there's one thing that caught my eye and that is the open boarders thing. Forgive me if this has already been suggested but I think it should be done the following way:
  • Upon making contact with a new species, boarders are closed. Relations are new, and you don't want to be stepping on each others toes.
  • Once you get on a fairly good standing, you can sign a treaty to open boarders for non military ships only. Effectively, science ships gets to do their thing, and you can move along your construction and colony ships can get to where they need. In addition, possibly allow the construction of wormhole stations for civs that need it, or make it in a second stage treaty.
  • With further improved relations, allow the boarders to be open for military ships as well. Helpful for wars and etc. And in addition, allow to buy a period of time of open boarders in case of war in case you aren't that chummy with the other empire.
On the other end of the spectrum, I'm glad to see that a revision to strategic resources is coming. That felt very little fleshed out. The only really important one seems to be the Batharian one because of power, the rest feels very optional with minimum impact. They should make us think twice about where to settle next.
 
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  • EDIT: Remaining Performance Issues. We know about them; they might even be hotfixed before Clarke.
If you fix the game only using a single core of my CPU, lagging it to no end in mid-late game, then I'll be happy.


EDIT: Corvettes are too good.
Battleship Class Weapons
. Some Battleship front sections will be repurposed for an XL size weapon slot. There are currently four ship sizes but only three sizes to weapons, creating
One of the issue is AI empire spamming corvettes and destroyers. You can have XL weapon slot, but when the enemy fleet have less than 5battleships and dozen of corvettes and destroyers per fleet, it's pointless.
 
I would like to ask an honest question, no hate or anything. Why do you decide to release the game knowing of some of the issues with mid-game content and other things? Why not make the game the best you can with the resources you have? I understand there are oversights and mistakes when making a gaming title especially a whole knew concept but if you knew of some of these problems and development holes why not wait until they are fixed and/or content is implemented? @Doomdark

They could have probably worked on the game for another six months to add those ideas that they had, and someone could still ask the same kind of question saying "why doesn't this game have a more detailed economic model with economic trade treaties". Game developers, from tabletop to digital, have to make hard decisions on what content to include and what to leave out of any potential product. Three years is a very healthy development cycle, and the game already really outshines every other 4x game that I have played in over a decade (including Distant Worlds, which is a great game I played so much that they made me a beta tester on two expansions).

Stellaris is a great game, by any metric, and I am personally glad that they released it in it's current state! If you want you could just uninstall the game, wait a year, reinstall with updated content, and it will have the same effect.
 
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I would like to ask an honest question, no hate or anything. Why do you decide to release the game knowing of some of the issues with mid-game content and other things? Why not make the game the best you can with the resources you have? I understand there are oversights and mistakes when making a gaming title especially a whole knew concept but if you knew of some of these problems and development holes why not wait until they are fixed and/or content is implemented? @Doomdark

Although I do not work for PDX and I can only assume as to "why" they released it I would say it is for a multitude of reasons. First and fore most, There are some game breaking bugs but even so it is still in a playable and mostly enjoyable fashion. Second, they probably did some analysis and decided it would hurt their future sales or customer goodwill to release the game latter in a better state than release it now in a not perfect state. (Eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns in these things). Third, they had probably already exhausted the "resources they had" so they needed to sell copies of the game to get more "resources". And finally if you plan to support long term development of a product it is best to get it to your user base as soon as possible so their feedback can help you prioritize future work which this threads existence proves PDX is doing.
 
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I would like to ask an honest question, no hate or anything. Why do you decide to release the game knowing of some of the issues with mid-game content and other things? Why not make the game the best you can with the resources you have? I understand there are oversights and mistakes when making a gaming title especially a whole knew concept but if you knew of some of these problems and development holes why not wait until they are fixed and/or content is implemented? @Doomdark

They pretty much said themselves that they had to cut some corners for release, which I personally think is fair enough. It happens all the time in game development (and all sorts of other product releases too I'm sure) but at least Paradox plans to revisit said corners and give them some more work, which is more than a lot of other developers do. Don't mistake their relative transparency in communicating what goes on in the development process as ineptitude.
Sure, they could've post-phoned the Stellaris release a couple of months and crossed their fingers it wouldn't result in massive nerdrage or the "hypetrain" losing steam, but they didn't. I think it makes sense, the product is finished as-is and now that it's been released there's input from hundreds, if not thousands of fans, input that the developer team can look at for ways to improve the game in the future.
 
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I would reccomend only making civilan access default and also making colony ships count as military vessels. You don't want people sneaking around sniping of systems you thought were safe for later development.
 
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This is the second only game I have purchased from you guys , but the first that I really intended to play continually.

Have to say I am impressed and really happy I am in for the ride on this one!
 
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there should be significantly more contested space during the early game, systems that are overlapped by both star nations, before contact should be labeled as contested space and who gains ownership of the system is determined by diplomacy or conflict. additionally border flipping systems with another nations assets inside it with the use border world colonization or outposts should make this system conflicted as well with a heavy leaning toward active combat zone due to the aggressive nature of the expansion, though it could be settle diplomatically by forfeiting your aggressive claim to the system recovering some of your standing with the nation who you expanded against.
 
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I understand all your points, thanks for replying I just feel very bored at mid-game like there is just nothing that spices it up. When you say the game is complete and ready as is I have to disagree. The mid-game is so sparse that I and many others, (including many streamers and youtubers) constantly restart games to relive the start which is amazing and the best part of the game.
 
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The fact that only minerals and energy are needed atm is my pet peeve with the game. I find it shallow and not much of an economy.

Very happy with
  • Strategic Resource Overhaul: You should need these and search for them far and wide. They should be extremely important.
Nice going, looking forward to the changes.

<3 F.
 
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I would reccomend only making civilan access default and also making colony ships count as military vessels. You don't want people sneaking around sniping of systems you thought were safe for later development.

It makes sense to have open borders default though. Space is big, I doubt it'd be too difficult to sneak through controlled sectors without being discovered. And I'd argue that people sneaking around sniping systems is exactly what we want, to create some more dynamic to the game other than regular old blobbing.

An interesting mechanic might be that to enforce your closed borders in systems you'd need either Military Stations there (giving them a role other than snaring fleets and getting destroyed), or fleets patrolling it (which might help break up the Fleet of Doom tendency a bit). Another option could be to close borders by system, pretty much like how you assign sectors, simply adding or removing systems within your control to no-fly zones.
 
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"Harder to form and maintain proper Alliances"

Not sure about you guys, but currently, I´am unable to make an alliance with almost anyone that is not literally a clone of my Ethos...

A good explanation of what is "different war philosophy" (-20), could be good, specialy inside the game.

Anyway, good job so far, and as long as the game keeps improving, everyone is happy :)
 
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It makes sense to have open borders default though. Space is big, I doubt it'd be too difficult to sneak through controlled sectors without being discovered. And I'd argue that people sneaking around sniping systems is exactly what we want, to create some more dynamic to the game other than regular old blobbing.

An interesting mechanic might be that to enforce your closed borders in systems you'd need either Military Stations there (giving them a role other than snaring fleets and getting destroyed), or fleets patrolling it (which might help break up the Fleet of Doom tendency a bit). Another option could be to close borders by system, pretty much like how you assign sectors, simply adding or removing systems within your control to no-fly zones.


I like your idea here, but there should be some diplomatic "hit" for cruising into another empire with a war fleet.
 
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Great update, love Stellaris!! Keep up the wonderful work!
One future addition I'd like to see if it wasn't mentioned by anyone already,

Interspecies Mixing -
Policies that allow or forbid
- New races / Factions forming because of it
- Other factions reacting too or against your policies
- Stats that reflect based on parent species
 
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Although I do not work for PDX and I can only assume as to "why" they released it I would say it is for a multitude of reasons. First and fore most, There are some game breaking bugs but even so it is still in a playable and mostly enjoyable fashion. Second, they probably did some analysis and decided it would hurt their future sales or customer goodwill to release the game latter in a better state than release it now in a not perfect state. (Eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns in these things). Third, they had probably already exhausted the "resources they had" so they needed to sell copies of the game to get more "resources". And finally if you plan to support long term development of a product it is best to get it to your user base as soon as possible so their feedback can help you prioritize future work which this threads existence proves PDX is doing.

Honestly I suspect it really just comes down to their project funds allocation. The scoped the project with their budget over a timeline, determine the featureset they could achieve with said budget, and they got to the point where they likely need to start generating new revenue to keep the development going further.

We don't know if they were running in the red past their scoped allocation, or if they hit it directly, or if they decided to go under to push some of the project funds towards future improvements with additional revenue from sales.

In essence, game making is a business! And I don't fault Paradox for that. Managing expectations of thousands of people is always difficult. I remain optimistic things will turn out Stellar, but am a disappointed that from my own perspective things seem a bit bare. But again, I remain optimistic.


Smiles
 
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I am in a Saturday multiplayer with 32 participants and right at the start one of my neighboring empires sent his starting (3 corvette) fleet right into my home system, flew them right up to my space port and sat there for a bit.

So, what mechanic is at play here? I thought once you were that close, you'd be booted from this controlled area?
 
Sounds good! I'm glad that Paradox is listening to feedback from the fans and I'm looking forward to the future updates.
 
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I am in a Saturday multiplayer with 32 participants and right at the start one of my neighboring empires sent his starting (3 corvette) fleet right into my home system, flew them right up to my space port and sat there for a bit.

So, what mechanic is at play here? I thought once you were that close, you'd be booted from this controlled area?

Have you made first contact with them? If not, then they won't be booted.
 
Those are all excellent ideas, and I love the feedback and interaction of the developers with the public.

I am currently at the end of my first campaign, taking bloody revenge against the Fallen Empires of the galaxy for... well... existing, mainly and, although all that you mentioned are great additions that I would love to have right now, there is mainly only one flaw in the game from my point of view: the war score.

I hate having to fight a dozen of very little wars against another empire, even if I outmatch them 1000 to 1 in ships and Empire size, just because the objectives cost to much and I can't choose to just demand all their planets of just keep fighting after I complete the objectives set for the war.

Is there any intention from you guys to chance that?
 
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