Stellaris Dev Diary #331 - Custodian Fixes in Eridanus

[fusei]

Every participant in a war now gets a truce with the others after it ends, even if they were on the same side

I have the vaguest of memories that having a truce prevents you from routing trade through another empire.
Is this a thing? If yes, it would be a bad idea to lose trade routes to having fought together in a war.

Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat
Former Satrapies of the Khan should no longer be informed twice when the new Horde forms.

Can you also take a look at that the global crisis flag is not removed, if the horde is completely defeated before the death of the Khan events completely resolve?
It messes with AI diplomacy and GC vote weights.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Difficulty should not be related to Technology Tier cost scaling, at all, period.

I strongly disagree with this.

Bumping the game difficulty slider and having the game pace (for both you and the AI) remain basically the same is a very desirable property.

It's effectively replacing one set of sliders being tied together (increasing the difficulty currently requires fiddling with the end game date and crisis sliders to keep the same relative pace, but it works imperfectly) with another set of slider being tied together, except that the fiddling is done for you, so it's much harder to shoot yourself in the foot as a new player or even an experienced player just choosing to increase/decrease the difficulty for different setups. And it actually works (instead of only sorta working), as all the fixed timers in the game can keep theirs same value relative to the full length of the game (instead of effectively taking twice as long if the game ends in half the time).

Also: Crisis Strength already uses this setup. If you play on Cadet/Civilian, the crisis difficulty slider does literally nothing (25x0=1x0=0), and on Ensign through GA, its effect scales with your difficulty (GA is 25x+150%=+3750% shields/armor/hp/damage, Ensign is 25x+90%=+2250% shields/armor/hp/damage). This ship has already sailed, and people seem to be quite happy with it.

You can want High scaling and Low difficulty. You can want Low scaling and High difficulty.

And with the current beta/3.11 setup, you get the latter, just not the former.
And with the proposed change (extreme always being the same regardless of difficulty, like no scaling is), you can do both of those: Extreme scaling at low difficulty and no scaling (beyond the inherent increase in tech costs per tier).

There is absolutely nothing inherently tied between difficulty and how big the difference between technology tier costs are. The scaling modifier is about game pace, not about difficulty.

There's one enormous thing that ties them together: the pace at which the AI progresses. At higher difficulties, the AI progresses faster, and it picks up more and more steam as the game goes on, as the high difficulty bonuses become more and more powerful as more and more of the economy shifts into specialist jobs.

Increasing the difficulty automatically speeds up the game pace, hence why it's natural to have the default tech setting rein that in.

It would be the same thing if the "Mid Game Year" and "End Game Year" were themselves, scaled by difficulty. That would be absurd, frustrating, and confusing.

They already are tied together, you just have to do it manually. If you bump the difficulty and don't move the end game/mid game years forward, the Khan spawns and instantly gets ganked, the Tempest is a joke, the crisis is barely noticeable, etc.

If tech cost and difficulty were not tied together, you'd have to do this manually as well (or, alternatively, since the whole point of this scaling is to avoid having to change the end game years, IIUC).

Sure, moving up the End Game date increases difficulty, but you have completely separate sliders for difficulty and end date because you can adjust both for different reasons, and it is simply cleaner and easier to understand when they are separate.

Moving the end game date forward makes the game harder for you, but it also makes it difficult for the AI. It changes the whole pace of the game, but not everything scales appropriately (KotTG quest, GC timers, federation experience, leader XP, leader lifespans, etc.).

Tech scaling does the same thing, but by changing only one thing (tech) and slowing it down to fit the game's intended pacing, it does what end/mid game time changes could not: keep every one of those non-scaling things appropriately paced.

And most importantly:
If you intend to play on maxed out scaling on low difficulty... why does it matter to you whether the middle/default setting Just Works™ for everyone else (especially new players)?

 

[NilsFabian]

The Enmity tradition tree allows you to use the second strike edict which does this!

You mean I have to "waste" one tree in order to backstab people? Okay now this change make sense, this tree hase now become more worth it.

 

[starchitect]

It's difficult to disagree with this more strongly.

Bumping the game difficulty slider and having the game pace (for both you and the AI) remain basically the same is a very desirable property.

It's effectively replacing one set of sliders being tied together (increasing the difficulty currently requires fiddling with the end game date and crisis sliders to keep the same relative pace, but it works imperfectly) with another set of slider being tied together, except that the fiddling is done for you, so it's much harder to shoot yourself in the foot as a new player or even an experienced player just choosing to increase/decrease the difficulty for different setups. And it actually works (instead of only sorta working), as all the fixed timers in the game can keep theirs same value relative to the full length of the game (instead of effectively taking twice as long if the game ends in half the time).

Also: Crisis Strength already uses this setup. If you play on Cadet/Civilian, the crisis difficulty slider does literally nothing (25x0=1x0=0), and on Ensign through GA, its effect scales with your difficulty (GA is 25x+150%=+3750% shields/armor/hp/damage, Ensign is 25x+90%=+2250% shields/armor/hp/damage). This ship has already sailed, and people seem to be quite happy with it.

And with the current beta/3.11 setup, you get the latter, just not the former.
And with the proposed change (extreme always being the same regardless of difficulty, like no scaling is), you can do both of those: Extreme scaling at low difficulty and no scaling (beyond the inherent increase in tech costs per tier).


There's one enormous thing that ties them together: the pace at which the AI progresses. At higher difficulties, the AI progresses faster, and it picks up more and more steam as the game goes on, as the high difficulty bonuses become more and more powerful as more and more of the economy shifts into specialist jobs.

Increasing the difficulty automatically speeds up the game pace, hence why it's natural to have the default tech setting rein that in.


They already are tied together, you just have to do it manually. If you bump the difficulty and don't move the end game/mid game years forward, the Khan spawns and instantly gets ganked, the Tempest is a joke, the crisis is barely noticeable, etc.

If tech cost and difficulty were not tied together, you'd have to do this manually as well (or, alternatively, since the whole point of this scaling is to avoid having to change the end game years, IIUC).

Moving the end game date forward makes the game harder for you, but it also makes it difficult for the AI. It changes the whole pace of the game, but not everything scales appropriately (KotTG quest, GC timers, federation experience, leader XP, leader lifespans, etc.).

Tech scaling does the same thing, but by changing only one thing (tech) and slowing it down to fit the game's intended pacing, it does what end/mid game time changes could not: keep every one of those non-scaling things appropriately paced.

And most importantly:
If you intend to play on maxed out scaling on low difficulty... why does it matter to you whether the middle/default setting Just Works™ for everyone else (especially new players)?

I am just generally opposed to sliders being tied together on principle, as when they are, it devalues the usefulness of both sliders, by making how they actually function more opaque. What you are arguing for is good defaults and presets- I would absolutely be in favor of various presets such as "Fast paced" which sets a high difficulty, low tech scaling, and early end date, or a "Long Game" preset that increases tech scaling and difficulty, picks a larger map size with fewer AIs so there is more territory to explore. These presets would themselves do a lot to teach players what all of the various sliders are really doing and what kind of feel they are meant to give.

The current approach attempts to be a middle ground, where unfortunately we have the worst of both systems. So many sliders have linked impacts that when you move one, you do not know what others you are changing. I have thousands of hours in the game and had no idea that changing difficulty multiplies the crisis scaling modifier as well- and I constantly read tooltips and dig into the defines of the game. If I did not know this, new players have no chance.

The goal of sliders should be functionality and clarity. The goal of presets should be feel and intent. Linked sliders make it so anything other than the default is incredibly unintuitive.

 

[Millbot]

Are pre-FTL robot uprising on the radar for custodians? Namely the nonsense where they end up taking over an FTL empire's entire system. It's really annoying and immersion breaking; especially, if you happened to have a colony in the system that got taken over an didn't treat robot like crap.

 

[HFY]

I am just generally opposed to sliders being tied together on principle, as when they are, it devalues the usefulness of both sliders, by making how they actually function more opaque. What you are arguing for is good defaults and presets- I would absolutely be in favor of various presets such as "Fast paced" which sets a high difficulty, low tech scaling, and early end date, or a "Long Game" preset that increases tech scaling and difficulty, picks a larger map size with fewer AIs so there is more territory to explore. These presets would themselves do a lot to teach players what all of the various sliders are really doing and what kind of feel they are meant to give.

The current approach attempts to be a middle ground, where unfortunately we have the worst of both systems. So many sliders have linked impacts that when you move one, you do not know what others you are changing. I have thousands of hours in the game and had no idea that changing difficulty multiplies the crisis scaling modifier as well- and I constantly read tooltips and dig into the defines of the game. If I did not know this, new players have no chance.

The goal of sliders should be functionality and clarity. The goal of presets should be feel and intent. Linked sliders make it so anything other than the default is incredibly unintuitive.

IMHO there should be two layers of sliders:

- Consolidated sliders which impact multiple things that are correlated, like Game Pace and Difficulty.

- Individual tweak sliders for experts who know the details of the correlations and want to make independent changes, like Midgame Date and Tradition Cost Exponent.

Ideally on different settings tabs so n00bs don't see the tweak sliders by default.

 

[Calvax]

I am just generally opposed to sliders being tied together on principle, as when they are, it devalues the usefulness of both sliders, by making how they actually function more opaque. What you are arguing for is good defaults and presets- I would absolutely be in favor of various presets such as "Fast paced" which sets a high difficulty, low tech scaling, and early end date, or a "Long Game" preset that increases tech scaling and difficulty, picks a larger map size with fewer AIs so there is more territory to explore. These presets would themselves do a lot to teach players what all of the various sliders are really doing and what kind of feel they are meant to give.

The current approach attempts to be a middle ground, where unfortunately we have the worst of both systems. So many sliders have linked impacts that when you move one, you do not know what others you are changing. I have thousands of hours in the game and had no idea that changing difficulty multiplies the crisis scaling modifier as well- and I constantly read tooltips and dig into the defines of the game. If I did not know this, new players have no chance.

The goal of sliders should be functionality and clarity. The goal of presets should be feel and intent. Linked sliders make it so anything other than the default is incredibly unintuitive.

Agreed with all of this. I've got 1000+ hours in the game and increasing slider complexity feels overwhelming and unsatisfying. Connecting two sliders together in an opaque way means it's even more likely that getting it slightly wrong will result in a less than stellar experience. I'm really surprised the devs kept this change and I've got no idea what the justification was for creating thirty odd combinations of tech curve progression. Nightmare.

 

[fourteenfour]

and all I have to say is , I am so glad I modded away empire size because instead of giving us complete control over technology and tradition costs there are still hidden mechanics which are better ignored than suffered. If you are going to keep in what in essence is a hack balance attempt and yes it is then at least provide a slider to let us determine its effects.

 

[Troyen]

Fear of the Dark Origin Empires that ended up in a Federation remain in the Federation after going to the dark side (choosing Fanatical Purifier) - it doesn't seem like that should be possible, especially considering they correctly drop out of the Gal Com.

I would imagine the genocidal opinion penalty eventually makes fed members kick them out. They do that already for Crisis Aspirants - it takes a bit of time but I've seen the AI eject BtC members well before they're forced to leave the GalCom. If they weren't getting kicked, maybe the federation was on President Decides rules and that AI happened to be leader at the time?

 

[Troyen]

The changes are all nice and fair however there seems to be no adjustment made to special project costs (e.g. Genetics/Synthetics pop adaption, space fauna projects [amoeba / crystaline life forms], events [dancing plague], etc), neither in the current beta nor mentioned in this or any of the last dev diaries (or did i miss them?).

Is this nerf intentend? With the overall reduction to research output, this is a heavy nerf to everything related to special projects. In my opinion and playthrough experience it isn't really neccessary and only let me ignore most of them, except the ascension special projects. And now those take forever.

Synthetic Ascension in particular I found was not in a good place in the beta. Fine, the pre-req techs are more expensive. But all lategame Engineering tech is also more expensive and highly valuable and it takes a long time to ascend your pops. I remember it taking me 104 months, which I could've used to research 2-3 technologies.

Not to mention you have to do it all again for any species modification, which is also expensive with the output nerf.

 

[Ludaire]

• Bio-Trophy buildings no longer provide Artisan Drone and Maintenance Drone jobs

Thank you so, so, so much. This will make playing rogue servitor significantly less tedious.

Is there any chance we could also get adjustments to the industrial and factory planetary designations for rogue servitors?

It's great having 2 fabricators at base, but I'd really like the industrial and factory designations to end up with the 1/1 and 0/2 spread that organic empires get. Right now, the designation has the the same modifier as it does for organics, so industrial world is just a worse forge world (2 fabricators per district at -10% upkeep), and factory worlds get half the desired job from districts (since -1 fabricator and +1 artisan drone equates to a 1/1 split between the two). It would be nice to properly specialize factory worlds, including ring worlds, as rogue servitors instead of ecumenopolises being the only way to do so.

 

[BlankLines]

Stability​

• Fixed crash when completing an Astral Rift if the exploring ship no longer exists
• Possibly fixed rare crash in galaxy map special project icon tooltip.
• Several Out of Sync fixes.

​

Thank you and your team for your efforts. However, I would like to ask if stability fixes can be released in the current official version 10.4 or test version 11, which is crucial for the online experience. I sincerely hope that you can consider giving us more time to find similar issues.

 

[Question]

Fleets of countries without ship_disengagement = yes (e.g. Horde) now correctly cannot use emergency retreat

Just wanted to confirm that you guys also prevented the disengage mechanic from working without ship_disengangement = yes? Because thats a seperate issue from emergency retreat. Its the auto disengage when hull HP falls below 50%.

Awakened Empires can now upgrade their starbases.

Do they now correctly build buildings to try and increase their alloy output, etc? As they currently do not build any buildings in 3.10.4.

Some other issues that arent mentioned in the dev diary :

Caravans constantly getting stuck trying to path to planets only accessible via a wormhole or other bypass : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...cause-they-cannot-path-to-the-target.1623293/

AI suicidng ships trying to use the lgate in Terminal Egress without checking for hostiles in it : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...trying-to-go-through-terminal-egress.1620859/

Forced open borders after a war lets you claim enemy systems via their own gateways : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...eways-to-remove-the-distance-penalty.1619714/

All hull/armor regen values are actually 1/100th their listed value : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-actually-1-100th-their-listed-value.1619468/

Crisis AI gets stuck after a while, idling a lot of fleets : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...le-and-stops-moving-fleets-or-armies.1616025/

GDF/Federation fleets use the wrong fleet cap in the fleet manager : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ad-of-the-special-naval-capacity-lim.1616042/

Modify species effects not updating the owner_species : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-do-not-correctly-update-the-species.1622292/

Shallash system cannot spawn due to a broken trigger : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tem-to-spawn-due-to-a-broken-trigger.1622941/

Defence armies from the capital building do not correctly change species after gene modding : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ly-update-species-after-gene-modding.1622290/

The ships upkeep modifier for defence platforms does not work due to being placed in the wrong spot : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...p_sizes-mainly-for-defence-platforms.1469565/

You can engage in diplomacy with preftls outside your own borders : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-system-this-is-clearly-not-intended.1620444/

shipclass_military_station_build_speed increases build speed by twice the listed value : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-the-actual-value-not-caused-by-mods.1615606/

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

[*]Ascension Theory is now a Tier 4 technology that requires at least 6 traditions trees to have been completed to be drawn

Let me ask the same question as two developer diaries back, when this was first mentioned.

Are you increasing Ascension Theory's weight significantly as well? Over and above moving it to @tier4weight1, @tier4weight2, or @tier4weight3?

The reason I ask is that with its current weight, the player will usually have to fish for it a long time at tier 5, researching many other T1-T5 techs thinning the pool after they are eligible for it due to its rareness, even if they have several additional research options. It is just THAT rare. Moving it to T4 with, presumably, one of the three T4 base weights and still being marked as a rare tech, will unless I've overlooked something at best increase its weight on a draw by 80% compared to current (@tier4weight1 vs @tier5weight2), which still makes it much rarer than anything but other rare T4 and T5 techs.

So moving it to tier 4 with the 6 tradition tree requirement will on its own only partially achieve the stated design goals for the change. While it will weaken the link between tech and ascension for empires that focus on tech, as they now have a new requirement, in practice it probably won't for empires that focus on unity.

Theoretically this change will make it available earlier for players that focus on unity, but in practice it seems unlikely to make much of a difference to normal gameplay since the player will arrive at T4 with a minimal chance of it cropping up on each draw and is extremely likely to qualify for T5 before drawing it unless the player pursues a strategy at T4 of not researching T4 techs in order to exhaust the pool of T1-T3s fishing for Ascension Theory without opening T5 and repeatables, which seems somewhat contrary to overall design intent.

I propose increasing the weight of Ascension Theory substantially for empires that focus on ascension, for instance something like this:

x2 if the player has 5 or more planetary ascensions
x2 if the player has 10 or more planetary ascensions
x3 if the player has 20 or more planetary ascensions
x5 if the player has 40 or more planetary ascensions
x2 if Harmony traditions completed
x2 if Holy Covenant tier 3
x5 if Ascensionist civic (or the corporate or gestalt version)
x5 if all 7 tradition trees completed


With this change Ascension Theory will remain a late T5-era tech for empires that focus on science due to their slow tradition gain, and a likely mid-T4 to early-T5 era tech for empires that focus on ascension, a tech theoretically available from early T4 that they can get their hands on faster once they qualify EITHER by focusing more on science to churn techs as fast as possible (like currently) OR by doubling down on playing ascensionist to make it more likely on each tech draw.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Oooo - details?

Unless otherwise stated, presumably the Chosen changes will be the changes from the Tech beta:

Note: Just like currently, the Composer of Strands' Ruler bonuses to leaders of lifespan and XP increase apply to all your leaders, not just the ruler.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

There are a few more currently in the works.

Is the missing Luminary bloodline on Luminary heirs Under One Rule one of them?

 

[Kranakhan]

The effect is not similar to the trigger. I do not understand why the trigger cannot also be used with the "first_contact" scope:

Effect
set_site_progress_locked - Locks or unlocks the progress of a site
set_site_progress_locked = yes/no
Supported Scopes: archaeological_site first_contact

Trigger
is_site_locked - Checks if an archaeological site has progression locked or not.
is_site_locked = yes/no
Supported Scopes: archaeological_site

 

[DaBombXXX]

I honestly do not understand a balance patch that's almost entirely nerfs to tech costs and researcher outputs. To me, that would only make it more prudent to make tech minmax builds because otherwise half the game features that are locked behind tech will take even longer to get. Midgame is already unbearable to me, increasing tech costs would only make it take longer.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I honestly do not understand a balance patch that's almost entirely nerfs to tech costs and researcher outputs. To me, that would only make it more prudent to make tech minmax builds because otherwise half the game features that are locked behind tech will take even longer to get. Midgame is already unbearable to me, increasing tech costs would only make it take longer.

The rate of tech progression had gone completely out of control, so it was time to rein it in. We've had an entire month of tech betas to test changes, first a test that was seriously overtuned to test concepts and a second milder version based on those experiences.

They went with the milder version, and the game is much the better for it. As a very rough estimate, the rate of tech progression has been set back to roughly where it was two years ago. I expect most players will appreciate the changes once they adapt to them.

As for the increased tech costs, they apply a lot more to the higher tiers than the lower tiers of tech. The changes don't significantly slow down reaching the mid-game, but the end-game. The increased costs also scale with difficulty level, so those playing on the lower difficulties are affected much less than those playing on higher difficulties.

Those who already played optimized tech builds will probably continue doing so, but rather than reach tier 5 around 2250 as was possible since 3.7, they'll now likely do so a decade or two later.

 

[CReaper210]

• Fixed newest achievements not working on MS Store

Thank you very, very much for this fix!
I know I'm probably one of only a few that cares about achievements, let alone on the Microsoft store, but I've been complaining about this for ages.

It didn't stop me from playing of course, but I have always really enjoyed going for all the unique goals with these and I've always been a huge achievement hunter on my Xbox.Microsoft account.