Stellaris Dev Diary #331 - Custodian Fixes in Eridanus

[Eladrin]

What exactly does Bio-Trophy do?
It shouldn't be nerfed like this

Bio-Trophies continue to provide Unity and Complex Drone Production as before. The extra drone jobs were removed from the Organic Sanctuaries.

Since Bio-Trophies enhance the output of Complex Drones, having Complex Drones directly attached to their housing building meant that Rogue Servitor empires inevitably ended up with far too many Artisan Drone jobs. When reviewing this, we decided it better overall to remove the extra jobs, and require Rogue Servitors to build an Industrial District to handle the Consumer Goods requirements of the Bio-Trophies.

Please, please, remove "Difficulty Adjusted" from the Technology cost curve, and simply make it a Technology Tier Scaling Curve.

We're happy with the current behavior of the slider. @Abdulijubjub pretty much got my thoughts on it in this reply.

Players that play on Civilian difficulty - lower than the default Ensign - tend not to adjust too many of the other sliders, and we have several galaxy setting sliders that already have interconnections.

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.

I agree completely with this. That said, the galaxy settings tab is one of the most painful ones to work with, but revamping it is one of my personal crusades for the year.

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

Currently it is a rare tier4weight2. We'll watch it a little bit and consider making additional changes to it, as I concede that there may be an issue here, and some of the multipliers you suggest may be good to add.

 

[pthooie]

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.

When I tested it, they did build normal buildings according to the same rules as normal AI empires. They don't build the special Fallen Empire buildings and we've decided that they should, but not for 3.11.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Currently it is a rare tier4weight2. We'll watch it a little bit and consider making additional changes to it, as I concede that there may be an issue here, and some of the multipliers you suggest may be good to add.

Thanks. Let's see how it plays out in practice, then.

Based on my interpretation of your stated goals in #329 I'm pretty sure you'll end up making additional changes as unless my extrapolations are very wrong, tier4weight2 with no other changes will just mean that the vast majority of players will still get it at T5, just a bit earlier for people who reach T5 with 6 tradition trees completed and a lot later for people who reach T5 without.

And, of course, a lucky few focusing on unity who get it at T4 through extreme luck while playing normally, and a determined few focusing on unity who get it at T4 by not taking enough T4s to qualify for T5 until after much thinning of the pool they find the grail of ascension.

But perhaps my extrapolations are wrong or I misinterpreted your design intent. It has been known to happen.

 

[starchitect]

We're happy with the current behavior of the slider. @Abdulijubjub pretty much got my thoughts on it in this reply.

Players that play on Civilian difficulty - lower than the default Ensign - tend not to adjust too many of the other sliders, and we have several galaxy setting sliders that already have interconnections.

That is incredibly disappointing. I will reserve hope that one day a revamp of the settings screen will allow for better decoupling of sliders, but for now, I am forced to give the AI the unfun extreme bonuses of Grand Admiral in order to pace technology at the scale I find most natural. How else am I supposed to max tech scaling if I want to play on a more relaxed setting like Admiral or Captain?

This Reply to that post is a succinct rebuttal to the linked slider argument. I am usually pretty onboard with the decisions you and the team go with, but this one is just indefensible. Linking technology cost scaling to difficulty is confusing to players new and old, it prevents entirely certain desirable setting combinations, and frankly just feels like you do not trust players to be able to figure out for themselves how they want to play the game.

 

[Question]

When I tested it, they did build normal buildings according to the same rules as normal AI empires. They don't build the special Fallen Empire buildings and we've decided that they should, but not for 3.11.

Thats strange, but when i tested it on vanilla, the awakened FE went 10 years without building any buildings : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...upgrade-starbases-their-ai-is-broken.1619466/ (see the save game in this thread).

That said i do see AEs building buildings sometimes...but very rarely and not consistently. And they don't build nearly enough industrial districts to jump start their alloy production to become a threat.

 

[Calvax]

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/

This one's been in the game so long. I wonder what the problem is to fix it. It's certainly annoying to have to spam click ships across shipyards to reinforce the two.

 

[aadf97799c]

will the energy production of bio reactor on farmer get the technician 20 percent tech bonus

otherwise they wouldn't be that good

 

[Starfury]

will the energy production of bio reactor on farmer get the technician 20 percent tech bonus

otherwise they wouldn't be that good

Energy production from the bio reactor is increased by the following modifiers:

• resources from jobs
• resources from workers
• resources from slaves (if applicable)
• resources from farmers (if that even exists)
• energy from jobs

The energy production doesn't benefit from these modifiers:

• food from farmers (it's not food)
• energy from technicians (it's not a technician)
• resources from technicians (same)

Effectively it means you'll miss out on the 3 +20% technologies and you won't benefit from the energy grid, etc.

Depending on your market fee, the reactor should be somewhat competitive with selling on the internal market - without being capped at ~40 per month

 

[secretagentguy]

@Alfray Stryke
Can you guys look at the behavior of trading information: contacts in the Beta? I got to the 2270's and still haven't met any trader enclaves, it was probably 2265 before I met the Shroud Teachers. In the case of the trader enclave, I can see the empires territory they are in, and I traded information: contacts with them which they accepted and still didn't get any first contact events OR the traders listed in my empire list. It seems like Enclave's should be a lot easier to meet than they currently are based on the benefits they can provide to your gameplay.

 

[Takfloyd]

Thanks. Let's see how it plays out in practice, then.

Based on my interpretation of your stated goals in #329 I'm pretty sure you'll end up making additional changes as unless my extrapolations are very wrong, tier4weight2 with no other changes will just mean that the vast majority of players will still get it at T5, just a bit earlier for people who reach T5 with 6 tradition trees completed and a lot later for people who reach T5 without.

And, of course, a lucky few focusing on unity who get it at T4 through extreme luck while playing normally, and a determined few focusing on unity who get it at T4 by not taking enough T4s to qualify for T5 until after much thinning of the pool they find the grail of ascension.

But perhaps my extrapolations are wrong or I misinterpreted your design intent. It has been known to happen.

I think Ascension Theory SHOULD be an endgame tech for most players. Your suggestion of adding some draw multipliers for Unity-focused builds is good, but it should still be a rare tech you get pretty late. Ignoring technology completely should punish you, it's important to have interconnected dependencies between different game systems. And a Unity-focused build currently gets through all the Tradition Trees way too fast, so Ascension Theory serves like an important brake so you can't unlock the full Unity endgame in the early game.

 

[ruhrbaron]

Ive always manually reduced artisan drone job priority but I can see how an AI wouldnt do that optimization. sounds good to me, thanks devs

 

[HFY]

Currently it is a rare tier4weight2. We'll watch it a little bit and consider making additional changes to it, as I concede that there may be an issue here, and some of the multipliers you suggest may be good to add.

Easy fix might be to have it tier5 and rare-weight, but then also force-unlock it when you get your 6th AP.

So everyone has it on time, or earlier if they're particularly focused on rare techs of that type.

 

[Takfloyd]

Easy fix might be to have it tier5 and rare-weight, but then also force-unlock it when you get your 6th AP.

So everyone has it on time, or earlier if they're particularly focused on rare techs of that type.

That's not a fix, because it means you can ignore research and still get it.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Bio-Trophies continue to provide Unity and Complex Drone Production as before. The extra drone jobs were removed from the Organic Sanctuaries.

Since Bio-Trophies enhance the output of Complex Drones, having Complex Drones directly attached to their housing building meant that Rogue Servitor empires inevitably ended up with far too many Artisan Drone jobs. When reviewing this, we decided it better overall to remove the extra jobs, and require Rogue Servitors to build an Industrial District to handle the Consumer Goods requirements of the Bio-Trophies.

Thank you for this.

Having to manually go through every Rogue Servitor world to turn off artisan jobs was a pain.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I think Ascension Theory SHOULD be an endgame tech for most players. Your suggestion of adding some draw multipliers for Unity-focused builds is good, but it should still be a rare tech you get pretty late. Ignoring technology completely should punish you, it's important to have interconnected dependencies between different game systems. And a Unity-focused build currently gets through all the Tradition Trees way too fast, so Ascension Theory serves like an important brake so you can't unlock the full Unity endgame in the early game.

Getting a tech at T4 while "ignoring technology" is hardly getting it in the early game, I should think.

Also, your idea that a unity-focused build goes through the tradition trees way too fast is unsupported by the design. Since 3.3 planetary ascension as the primary unity consumer supported by unity ambitions has been designed as the unity-endgame with traditions being the unity early- and mid-game for builds that focus on unity, and the problem with Ascension Theory since 3.3 is exactly that the tie to end-game tech is too strong, enforcing strong unity play to be subservient to strong tech play to gain full benefits of the unity end-game.

This has been an annoyance since 3.3 but not a big problem since tech progression was incredibly rapid and increasing with speed almost every release, so most players who played strong unity builds combined that with playing strong tech builds, by taking advantage of planetary ascension being able to be used to increase the strength of the tech component of a build when used wisely, but the tech betas slowing down reaching Ascension Theory by decades turned it into a problem that needed addressing.

May I refer you to the developer diary #329, which I referred to and which introduced this change to Ascension theory, specifically saying that:

One new change we’ll be making based on some of the data we’ve collected is that we’re moving Ascension Theory to Tier 4 from Tier 5, but it will only be available to empires that have completed at least six tradition trees. As Unity and Research are intended to be “opposing” resources to a degree, we did not want the capstone of Ascension based gameplay to be so strongly tied to the later game tech tree.

So my comment is given in the context of the developer team intending for it to be available at T4, though certainly not guaranteed, under certain circumstances, to whit, having completed 6 tradition trees.

What I point out is that as far as I can extrapolate by and large the tech will still only be available at T5, though acquired earlier at T5 on average for those who have completed six traditions than it would currently, and the only cases where anybody is likely to get it significantly faster than currently is for those getting it at T4 by using the abnormal gameplay of deliberately trying not to advance to T5 by selectively recruiting too few T4 techs to advance while cleaning out lower level techs rather than increasing the pool of techs it is competing with by all T5 and repeatable techs, which is the sort of counterintuitive gameplay that should not be incentivized.

 

[TranscendentalDragon]

the only cases where anybody is likely to get it significantly faster than currently is for those getting it at T4 by using the abnormal gameplay of deliberately trying not to advance to T5 by selectively recruiting too few T4 techs to advance while cleaning out lower level techs rather than increasing the pool of techs it is competing with by all T5 and repeatable techs, which is the sort of counterintuitive gameplay that should not be incentivized.

While I agree with the rest of your comment, it makes certain amount of sense to, if you're waiting for certain tech, pick cheaper tech to quickly "reroll" your tech choices, to the point that some players, myself included, were doing it intuitively (though, admittedly, sometimes to our detriment...).

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

While I agree with the rest of your comment, it makes certain amount of sense to, if you're waiting for certain tech, pick cheaper tech to quickly "reroll" your tech choices, to the point that some players, myself included, were doing it intuitively (though, admittedly, sometimes to our detriment...).

I expect many, perhaps most, players do that when looking for specific techs, but do so while still picking more expensive techs that are highly valuable to them at the moment, or are valuable to them but rare so they pick them anyway rather than risking having to wait many years, perhaps one or more decades, for them to show up again, rather than skipping on them entirely.

I am talking about taking this to the logical extreme, where you deliberately don't research T4 techs because no matter how beneficial they are to you, you want to stave off reaching T5 techs and repeated techs simply because this would increase the pool of available techs to pick.

For a tech that will usually start with around 0.2% or 0.3% chance of being picked when it first becomes available, playing like this - delaying researching enough T4 techs to gain access to T5 after you reach T4 by one or more decades - seems abnormal and counterintuitive gameplay to me, and yet, that is certainly how I intend to play strong unity builds in 3.11 because it is rationally better than remaining capped at 5 planetary ascensions for longer while unity stacks up and cannot be sensibly used except invested in ascending planets that are not worth ascending, and which if you ascend anyway will impede your ascension of the planets worth ascending once you finally get Ascension Theory, both due to the unity spent rather than stockpiled and because of the greater cost of ascending the worthwhile planets as the costs being based on total number of ascensions done.

 

[Geodynamis]

Any fixes for gestalt nodes disappearing when you change civics?

 

[mrt1212]

Getting a tech at T4 while "ignoring technology" is hardly getting it in the early game, I should think.

Also, your idea that a unity-focused build goes through the tradition trees way too fast is unsupported by the design. Since 3.3 planetary ascension as the primary unity consumer supported by unity ambitions has been designed as the unity-endgame with traditions being the unity early- and mid-game for builds that focus on unity, and the problem with Ascension Theory since 3.3 is exactly that the tie to end-game tech is too strong, enforcing strong unity play to be subservient to strong tech play to gain full benefits of the unity end-game.

This has been an annoyance since 3.3 but not a big problem since tech progression was incredibly rapid and increasing with speed almost every release, so most players who played strong unity builds combined that with playing strong tech builds, by taking advantage of planetary ascension being able to be used to increase the strength of the tech component of a build when used wisely, but the tech betas slowing down reaching Ascension Theory by decades turned it into a problem that needed addressing.

May I refer you to the developer diary #329, which I referred to and which introduced this change to Ascension theory, specifically saying that:

One new change we’ll be making based on some of the data we’ve collected is that we’re moving Ascension Theory to Tier 4 from Tier 5, but it will only be available to empires that have completed at least six tradition trees. As Unity and Research are intended to be “opposing” resources to a degree, we did not want the capstone of Ascension based gameplay to be so strongly tied to the later game tech tree.

So my comment is given in the context of the developer team intending for it to be available at T4, though certainly not guaranteed, under certain circumstances, to whit, having completed 6 tradition trees.

What I point out is that as far as I can extrapolate by and large the tech will still only be available at T5, though acquired earlier at T5 on average for those who have completed six traditions than it would currently, and the only cases where anybody is likely to get it significantly faster than currently is for those getting it at T4 by using the abnormal gameplay of deliberately trying not to advance to T5 by selectively recruiting too few T4 techs to advance while cleaning out lower level techs rather than increasing the pool of techs it is competing with by all T5 and repeatable techs, which is the sort of counterintuitive gameplay that should not be incentivized.

In the base version over several updates and patches now

As someone who just keeps pace on tech and doesn't try to get ahead...and stacks up Unity like fish throwing themselves onto my boat...

I will often enough sit decades fully traditioned out at like 2369 and then accumulate 3 million plus unity before I get Ascension Theory available to research.

It's nuts in one way and just annoying in another, but since it's towards the tail end and I'm usually wrapping things up or bracing for Crisis, it's not losing games or making them out of reach. Spending the rest of the game drawing down millions in Unity a couple thousand a month with full Ambitions until 2500 if I take it the distance is the usual rejoinder to that scenario.

 

[Sharizcobar]

Can someone explain the goal of these changes?

Because the only conclusion I can draw is that someone wanted Spiritualist MegaCorps to be bad at generating Unity.

Spiritualist MegaCorps now have 2 buildings that give primarily TV jobs and 0 buildings that give primarily unity jobs.

We haven’t seen the new Prosperity Preacher job yet. I imagine it’s somewhere between Manager and Priest. I don’t think it’s going to be like a Numistic Priest. So they’ll have a Unity job that benefits from more Unity like priests, and incidental trade value like Managers.