Stellaris Dev Diary #337 - Individualistic Machines and Machine Gameplay Updates

[Incompetent]

At the start? Or at the end? I play on default habitables, so games usually end with 100 or 200 colonies (though past a certain point, 90% of those are breeders for the ecus/ring worlds).

At that point it's surely better to have many of the breeder colonies owned by someone else, so they aren't suffering from your increased growth costs and you aren't paying all the sprawl. Or are you including colonies owned by subjects?

If you go for Virtuality ascension, you don't need breeder colonies, so we can cut that down to 10-20. Then the ascension grants more districts per colony and more jobs per district, which could mean let's say 2x capacity per colony. So I suppose it is just about plausible you could replicate the economic power of your current late-game empire with the new ascension. However, it would be one of the latest transitions of any ascension, since you'd want to already have Ringworlds online before you start it (without Ringworlds I feel like fitting in enough Researchers would be a major struggle, even with the high sprawl efficiency), and being able to 10x ascend every colony is also a big deal if you're going this tall.

 

[Foromar]

Which still makes robots better and different than biologicals

Also it's hardly an issue to nerf overperformers who even in the hands of the oh so infamous AI can reliably become strong powerhouses

First three planets are actually better for organics now, as they get 80% on their climate.
Also „overperformers“? Really? Feel free to nerf Assimilators, or servitors, but base ME‘s are already bad.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

At that point it's surely better to have many of the breeder colonies owned by someone else, so they aren't suffering from your increased growth costs and you aren't paying all the sprawl. Or are you including colonies owned by subjects?

It is objectively better to have vassals hold them instead. But I tend not to actually do it: vassals completely break several core balance mechanics (and give the player difficulty bonuses, defeating the whole point) so they usually feel like cheating.

If you go for Virtuality ascension, you don't need breeder colonies, so we can cut that down to 10-20. Then the ascension grants more districts per colony and more jobs per district, which could mean let's say 2x capacity per colony. So I suppose it is just about plausible you could replicate the economic power of your current late-game empire with the new ascension. However, it would be one of the latest transitions of any ascension, since you'd want to already have Ringworlds online before you start it (without Ringworlds I feel like fitting in enough Researchers would be a major struggle, even with the high sprawl efficiency), and being able to 10x ascend every colony is also a big deal if you're going this tall.

10-20 colonies is past the point where you'd be better off with some other ascension, though.

Let's say it does a hive-ish thing and gives you 50% more pops per district (and building).

Some napkin math with guesses:

20 colonies will be burning 3 energy per pop, and your technicians will be taking -75% (guestimate, 20 energy), so 15% of your pops are just tech drones. Each colony has the capital and 9 evaluators (around 50 spare amenities), so past the first 50 drones you'll need 1/5 doing maintenance (call it 10%, total). So you've got 20 planets with (100?) pops each, only 75% of which represent a normal economy, with -75% output.

Say normally you get +100% to all jobs. And without virtual, you'd have 1/3 as many pops and pops per colony, but you can cover all their amenities with just the capital and evaluators.

Virtual has 1500 normal economy pops with a 25% bonus (1875 pops, but weaker because it's menial heavy). No ascension has 666 normal economy pops with 100% (1333 pops of output, but complex drone heavy). Current Synths has 120% bonus (~1400 pops of output). And virtual has double the empire size (and again is menial drone heavy).

Synths will also eventually fill up to fill the rest of the slots, until you get to half as many pops per colony.

A miner with 220% (8*2.2=17.2) supports roughly 1.11 fabricator (14*1.1=15.4). But with only 125% (10), it's 0.64. So the bonus to Synths is even bigger than the above suggests because they'll be more complex heavy. At least, until Virtual gets everything ascended (which, with double empire size, might be a while).

Virtual sounds like it could go beyond the minimum colonies it tries to lock you in to (as in, you won't die if you extend to 30+ colonies), but you shouldn't. You'd be better off with another ascension.

 

[Gilbert95]

At that point it's surely better to have many of the breeder colonies owned by someone else, so they aren't suffering from your increased growth costs and you aren't paying all the sprawl. Or are you including colonies owned by subjects?

How do breeder colonies work if owned by someone else? In other words, how do you get pops from your vassals to your ECUs and ringworld?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

How do breeder colonies work if owned by someone else? In other words, how do you get pops from your vassals to your ECUs and ringworld?

You integrate and re-release them after 40 years or so, using the influence they gave you with their Ministry of Truth in the mean time.

Or you just release them and accept not getting more pops, and take the reduced empire size/research taxes instead.

 

[Ajacoba]

First three planets are actually better for organics now, as they get 80% on their climate.
Also „overperformers“? Really? Feel free to nerf Assimilators, or servitors, but base ME‘s are already bad.

First two planets, since your capital should be at 100% anyways

 

[Incompetent]

It is objectively better to have vassals hold them instead. But I tend not to actually do it: vassals completely break several core balance mechanics (and give the player difficulty bonuses, defeating the whole point) so they usually feel like cheating.

Yeah, vassal stuff is still overpowered, and the way you get extra resources from taxes due to "difficulty" modifier definitely feels like a cheat. Releasing those colonies entirely and just farming the pops with Nihilistic Acquisition is still cheesy, but then the pop growth rules themselves are very artificial, so I don't know what a "legitimate" solution is here.

10-20 colonies is past the point where you'd be better off with some other ascension, though.

I mean you could plausibly have 5-7 ish colonies with the same overall economic power as a non-Virtual empire that has 10-20 productive colonies. A lot depends on the numbers of course, but surely Virtuality has to offer much more of a capacity increase per colony than what Hive Minds get (if it's +50% districts and +50% jobs per district, that's already more than double the total capacity). Rogue Servitors are probably best placed to take advantage if they can make really huge colonies.

 

[Ajacoba]

It doesn't really matter how many planets you have before ascension as long as you have a stockpile of resources and are willing to abandon most of your (now) useless colonies

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I mean you could plausibly have 5-7 ish colonies with the same overall economic power as a non-Virtual empire that has 10-20 productive colonies. A lot depends on the numbers of course, but surely Virtuality has to offer much more of a capacity increase per colony than what Hive Minds get (if it's +50% districts and +50% jobs per district, that's already more than double the total capacity). Rogue Servitors are probably best placed to take advantage if they can make really huge colonies.

This is the point, though. Virtuality with 20 colonies is silly; you should instead stay with 5-7.

But then you're swapping from "Virtuality lets you cut those 100-200 colonies to 10-20 productive ones" to "Virtuality lets 5-7 colonies compete with another ascensions 10-20". Both are true, but it doesn't let it compete with another ascension's 100-200.

Also: once you get to this point in the game, all things become irrelevant compared to the question of how much you're willing (or not) to exploit vassals.

And all this is wild guesswork based on "more districts" and "more jobs per district".

It sounds quite good. It will undoubtedly be a research powerhouse. I just don't think it's going to be busted and invalidate all other paths (unless they go with something truly absurd, like doubling districts and doubling jobs, so that 7 colonies gives the same as 28).

 

[Abdulijubjub]

First three planets are actually better for organics now, as they get 80% on their climate.
Also „overperformers“? Really? Feel free to nerf Assimilators, or servitors, but base ME‘s are already bad.

The 2nd and 3rd planet (not including the first) are worse for machines by 5%. But 2/9 planets you find will be be better by 15%, and the rest will be better by 30% (though this last one gets eroded down to 5% as you pick up habitability techs, if it's just minimum habitability).

And tombs get 50%. That makes the occasional tomb world you find only 10% worse than what organic empires would get for near-matches (tropical worlds for continental preference at 60%, for instance).

 

[Paspinall]

Well I'm glad they understand the needs of "meat" folks, wasn't sure considering they can't theorise about psionics (no dimensional fleet ) at the moment, figured they weren't programmed for stuff they can't use themselves lol, looking forward to playing so many new empire builds

 

[Devanor]

Yeah, it was unclear.

• You gain additional districts, as well as extra jobs from districts

Man, and here I was looking forward to additional districts from districts

On a serious note, what happens to Organic empires that go for Synthetic Ascension? Will they also choose from Virtual, Nano etc, or will they not get to choose but have other bonuses to make up for it?

 

[Ikael]

I never understood why machines have Perfect habitability. Maybe perfectly designed to specific environment, but generał build perfectly designed for every climat? That was always bad from both mechanics, it was too op, and realism that shallow some immersion.

Habitability is a thing for squishy organics, the perfection of metal does not need to care about things like illnesses or fertility rates (or at least, that was how I personally interpretated low habitability penalties regarding higher consumer goods & amenities consumption and penalties to growth).

Not to mention that it was the only empire with such characteristics (colonize anywhere from the start of the game, at the price of higher sprawl), setting it quite apart from organic hiveminds. With this latest update machine gestalts are going to become extremely weak too, I fear.

 

[Caeric]

That's a nice niche for a Research & Development focused megacorp civic (a twist on technocracy just like Cooperative twists Shared Burden).
To reinforce what Abdulijubjub explained, The Virtual Focus policy is one where focusing on one aspect penalizes the others a bit (the three aspects being unity, research and governance). It has nothing to do with Trade policy.
What bugs me is what is happening to physical jobs that make minerals and such, why does these get instantly filled (presumably)? What’s the lore? Are the pops playing Minecraft?

I bet the pops are just managing drones who do the physical labor.

 

[cryptkeeper]

Since no one has ever picked that civic due to it having day one bugs around it that have never been fixed I don't think it matters

however, since lithoid don't get extra minerals from it why should machines get extra energy from it.

The difference is lithoids can use the minerals for food, thematically it makes no sense for robots to hand out food or minerals to feed its people. Now do I think lithiods should just get minerals sure. Last time I used the civic it worked just fine.

 

[Ajacoba]

I mean, if you want energy then just use the default trade policy

or what? do you want to get 0.5 energy plus 0.2 energy per point of trade value? XD

 

[cryptkeeper]

I mean, if you want energy then just use the default trade policy

or what? do you want to get 0.5 energy plus 0.2 energy per point of trade value? XD

we could have individual robots and lithiods get 0.5 energy, 0.2 minerals, 0.2 consumer goods, which would fit more thematically. But you could make it 0.7 energy and 0.2 minerals.

 

[Ajacoba]

Well, consumer goods are given by yet another trade policy

And unless you're running genociders or go REALLY out of your way to never have any xenos food would still have some uses

 

[SeraphAscending]

The instant-fill of Virtual is insanely game breaking. Normal empire are limited by pops (due to the way pop growth works), so if you remove that limit you get an economy that vastly surpass everything else. The only way this can be balanced is by never allowing Virtual to work with more than a few planets (which is why Paradox is saying stuff like "planet-limited playstyle" and "Virtual Machines may seek a “Tall” playstyle"). Also, uh, unlimited pop with lots of planets would produce tons of lag.

In short, they cannot allow Wide Virtual to exist.

With the numbers they gave (each planet add -0.1 energy per pop and -25% resources), this is already the case. Wide isn't viable. You get less output between 7 to 30 planets than with 5 planets (dramatically lower output around 10 planets), and while your collective planets output get higher after 30 planets, that's where the extra upkeep comes in to murder your economy.

But this only work if :

• Trade is affected by the Virtual bonus. Otherwise you could power through the upkeep with trade.
• The bonus is multiplicative with other bonus. Otherwise the penalty for having tons of planets get diluted by the various bonus you get over the course of a game.
• You cannot create vassals. Otherwise you can cut your empire into little chunks and ignore the penalty entirely.
• You cannot sell pops. Obviously, you have an infinite supply of them.

It also means that yes, we know the optimal number of planets is going to be 5 (with anything from 3 to 7 being "close enough"). It doesn't matter what are the other mechanics, this is practically set in stone because the alternatives are completely bonkers.

It might actually be an interesting challenge run to convert the whole galaxy into your server mega-cluster.
The more you progress the harder it gets. Would probably be difficult even on Cadet difficulty if you get 0.1 energy upkeep per pop per planet and are locked with -75% output.

 

[Swarm lover]

Might be just me but i feel like the fact that virtual ascended empires immediately get hit with debuffs kind of seems to hit it big time. Feel like maybe have a "network capacity" of 5 planets before the debuffs start to hit, heck if you think that makes them too op double the debuff, so three worlds over the capacity and you lost the 150% bonus already and do not give means to increase the network beyond that (or in a highly limited way). But overall really excited for this, would have prefered a bigger change to the ships from the nanites ascension but i can understand why.