Stellaris Dev Diary #350 - Storms and their Aftermath

[Ajacoba]

Am I the only one who has "precious" building slots to spare?

The only planets that I have fully decked out are science, unity, fortress and food worlds and I'm not gonna instantly game over from swapping out one of those buildings

Especially not swapping out 6 or less scientists for 2 scientists, lmao

 

[mrt1212]

The main problems I am seeing are the following combination

1) RNG
2) Situational status effects

I know game devs the world over seem in love with it, but RNG stuff is (almost) never good in strategy games because as a player, you just can't plan around it, which is the entire point of a strategy game. You can build your empire around being the storm guys and then just not get any storms come your way. You ignore storms when building your empire and then never get storms. Frustrating. This is why I have an instant allergic reaction to any and all RNG mechanics. I think the only good one I've seen is Stallaris' tech system and that's semi-random at most.

Meanwhile, some of these storms have the potential to absolutely fuck your empire if the hit certain places, and not in a fun way. 1+ consumer goods usage on a highly populated world or -30% mineral production on a mining world could wreck absolute havoc. And since minerals are mainly a support resource (you use them to make the two main resources, alloys and tech), having a surplus of them is nice to have at most while having a deficit of them can be crippling.

Also I get wanting to do the star trek thing but some narrative tropes just don't work in games where you, the player, are not a character in the world. If they really want to channel Star Trek at least let us send out science ships to technobabble them away or something, at least it's not using up a building slot or hoping you have the right technologies and at least it's not passive.

Counterpoint: RNG is the only thing that keeps computer strategy games from being economic optimization homework, and every conversation about RNG throwing off plans reveals how much a playerbase cohort thinks agency and control with a singular plan in hand is the essence of strategy. And yeah, I am absolutely dinging people for complaining about RNG fucking up their strategy games because they had a singular plan with no fallback and are stuck, like, omg this is working me up so bad at my desk right now, how people think they're playing a strategy game and being completely undone by not engaging with it in any strategic sense.

I swear to Zarqlan, y'all sound like a bunch of cooks who have a singular meal in mind and don't know the first thing about substitutions and audibles if you have a rotten bulb of garlic in your grocery bag and consider a meal completely unavailable to make if that happens.

 

[Ajacoba]

The entire damn game is non-stop rng, adding more to it won't change anything

 

[indalecio248]

I think if you keep around a storm relief center for 100 years after your first terrible storm just in case it happens again, that's either you RPing a buncha shook xenos living in fear of the next one, or rejecting that tactical building slot play is at all compelling or what the point of these buildings are. And fair enough if it doesn't seem compelling or seems especially onerous as the game goes on, cause I can see it for those 50 planet empires on a spiral arm completely in the way but...it doesn't seem that onerous for the plucky tall empire that has to make 6 swaps for 10 years and then are left alone for another 50-100 by storms in general.

Storm relief center shouldn't be a building. Its giving too little benefit for taking up an entire building slot, that will only come into play very rarely.

Instead, what I propose it be a planetary modifier. Similar to the 'Mastery of Nature' decision. You pay 'x' amount of resources and/or influence, add in building time, and it gives a planetary modifier. Now, when storms come around, you have some protection from them without wasting a building slot.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Counterpoint: RNG is the only thing that keeps computer strategy games from being economic optimization homework, and every conversation about RNG throwing off plans reveals how much a playerbase cohort thinks agency and control with a singular plan in hand is the essence of strategy. And yeah, I am absolutely dinging people for complaining about RNG fucking up their strategy games because they had a singular plan with no fallback and are stuck, like, omg this is working me up so bad at my desk right now, how people think they're playing a strategy game and being completely undone by not engaging with it in any strategic sense.

I swear to Zarqlan, y'all sound like a bunch of cooks who have a singular meal in mind and don't know the first thing about substitutions and audibles if you have a rotten bulb of garlic in your grocery bag and consider a meal completely unavailable to make if that happens.

It not bad because it messes up strategy, lol. It's bad because it doesn't lead to interesting decisions. There's a difference between something unexpected happening because you miscalculated something or failed to predict an outcome of your decisions (like a crisis spawning at the earliest point it could have and you didn't build your fleet up early enough, an being attacked by an alliance of empires you didn't foresee, being pulled into a war with a fallen empire early because you allied with an empire hellbent on colonising holy worlds etc) and just 'at some point in the run some of your planets may get bonuses to some resources and maluses to others so if they have those resources it will be a big deal for a random amount of time, or they may not, and if you research these technologies and build this building then you can shield yourself from the maluses'.

 

[Tim_Ward]

The anti-storm buildings would be better as star base buildings IMO, that way you can set up barriers to keep them away from your planets.

 

[mrt1212]

It not bad because it messes up strategy, lol. It's bad because it doesn't lead to interesting decisions. There's a difference between something unexpected happening because you miscalculated something or failed to predict an outcome of your decisions (like a crisis spawning at the earliest point it could have and you didn't build your fleet up early enough, an being attacked by an alliance of empires you didn't foresee, being pulled into a war with a fallen empire early because you allied with an empire hellbent on colonising holy worlds etc) and just 'at some point in the run some of your planets may get bonuses to some resources and maluses to others so if they have those resources it will be a big deal for a random amount of time, or they may not, and if you research these technologies and build this building then you can shield yourself from the maluses'.

I think we're going to be more aware of storms and have 100% more options on what to do about them, than our Defensive Pact Partners pissing off an FE with war consequences that are the first and only signal they pissed off the FE. So you drop that dud once its resolved, because we as humans remember that the AI that pisses off an AI rarely ever takes a hint about it. Just pointing out how 'awareness of potential' with experience is our advantage and what should be stepping in over time to deal with supposed 'unexpected things'.

If we only ever got one run with Stellaris or a thousand runs where we didn't remember anything, I get it. If this is a game where we have entirely symmetric pieces foisted against one another in an RNG-less space ala Go, I get it, and it'd be really weird to introduce a Rainbow stone that does something wacky simply to keep Go players on their toes for the sake of livening up one of the known best and most elegant strategy games of all time. If Stellaris was entirely composed of and sold to a playerbase that thinks they're getting a Narrative Writer Without Limits and gets something well short of it with wildcard baboons as some permanent Narrative Fixture, I even get it then.

 

[dulahan]

The entire damn game is non-stop rng, adding more to it won't change anything

But the entire game isn't RNGs that can inflict crippling penalties out of nowhere to ruin an otherwise good game. This might have changed that,.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

The existing hyperspace storm is being removed. We really didn't like how it played, since it was pure negatives randomly scattered across half the galaxy.

Is it being removed completely, or only if you have this DLC so you get the new storms to replace it with?

I'm starting to wonder how much of my Storm Cluster modjam mod I'm going to need to rewrite to keep it functional. Or if I'll need to make it require the Cosmic Storms DLC.

 

[Ajacoba]

But the entire game isn't RNGs that can inflict crippling penalties out of nowhere to ruin an otherwise good game. This might have changed that,.

It's the same game that can have the khan spawn right next to you, that can cut off your start position behind a leviathan, marauders or a fallen empire or that simply can start off your pacifists next to a hegemony or a ravenous swarm

Just like in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress Stellaris should be approached with a losing is fun attitude because sometimes you do literally nothing wrong only for the unbidden, the scourge or the contingency to spawn in the middle of your empire - or your best ally decides to become the crisis and you get pulled into the total war on their side, what's your mistake then? Not being stronger than the entire galaxy? Engaging with the diplomacy system at all? Having friends?

 

[mrt1212]

It's the same game that can have the khan spawn right next to you, that can cut off your start position behind a leviathan, marauders or a fallen empire or that simply can start off your pacifists next to a hegemony or a ravenous swarm

Just like in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress Stellaris should be approached with a losing is fun attitude because sometimes you do literally nothing wrong only for the unbidden, the scourge or the contingency to spawn in the middle of your empire - or your best ally decides to become the crisis and you get pulled into the total war on their side, what's your mistake then? Not being stronger than the entire galaxy? Engaging with the diplomacy system at all? Having friends?

One of my favorite genres of game is the Roguelike where your tools are motley and often not your choice at all, there's a lot of BS just thrown at you, you're supposed to lose more often than you win, and the validation of experience is how the runs go in losing, and the payoff of all the stars aligning with the knowledge of what to do if/when they do align, to finally get over the hump of the levels of mooks and bosses at the end of them. Super compelling gameplay to me where the question is 'how do you make the best of a situation with what you got' versus 'how well did you execute a vision with self selected tools'.

But those games present themselves as such (and are built around not eating 40 hours of play for a run to get gibbed by rat with a howitzer), the playerbase who loves them loves them for that reason, and it's very rare for someone to accidentally pick them up and then rage about RNG in them in a social space and stick with the game when they're told they're missing the entire point and would probably enjoy a more Narratively inclined RPG instead, not this masochistic fiesta of killing the Big Bad with a can opener and a lotta moxie.

 

[Gredd18]

It's the same game that can have the khan spawn right next to you, that can cut off your start position behind a leviathan, marauders or a fallen empire or that simply can start off your pacifists next to a hegemony or a ravenous swarm

Just like in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress Stellaris should be approached with a losing is fun attitude because sometimes you do literally nothing wrong only for the unbidden, the scourge or the contingency to spawn in the middle of your empire - or your best ally decides to become the crisis and you get pulled into the total war on their side, what's your mistake then? Not being stronger than the entire galaxy? Engaging with the diplomacy system at all? Having friends?

You can plan for pretty much all of that, and what you can't plan for - spawning next to a hegemony/genocidal - you can restart early enough that it's not painful. What is painful is getting your tall empire slapped with a particle storm just before a guy next door declares war on you, because now your fleets are useless because they're either stuck at 20% hull and the only counterplay to this is "Don't get unlucky".

That's pretty much the whole issue here. "Don't get unlucky" is the primary strategy you can employ. Sure, you can build storm repulsors and such, but if everyone builds them, I imagine it'll just be zero sum game where they do functionally nothing, and that's right back to luck. We've not even seen what Nexus Storms are like, but if they live up to the "Absolute worst storm" thing, I really don't look forward to watching my empire crumble because of bad RNG weather.

 

[kidwiz0101]

First let me say I cannot wait to try out this expansion.

That said, for the weather map mode I think it would be better to have multiple potential paths of the storm with arrows of varying thickness to indicate the likelihood of each path. You could then research technology to get better and better forecasts. Having a predetermined path makes the storms feel one dimensional, it would be amazing to see a storm take a path no one was expecting. (Is it thinking??)

I understand there are already players who opposed to having to think more so maybe this would be better implemented as a mod.

 

[Minisalt]

You can plan for pretty much all of that, and what you can't plan for - spawning next to a hegemony/genocidal - you can restart early enough that it's not painful. What is painful is getting your tall empire slapped with a particle storm just before a guy next door declares war on you, because now your fleets are useless because they're either stuck at 20% hull and the only counterplay to this is "Don't get unlucky".

That's pretty much the whole issue here. "Don't get unlucky" is the primary strategy you can employ. Sure, you can build storm repulsors and such, but if everyone builds them, I imagine it'll just be zero sum game where they do functionally nothing, and that's right back to luck. We've not even seen what Nexus Storms are like, but if they live up to the "Absolute worst storm" thing, I really don't look forward to watching my empire crumble because of bad RNG weather.

I don't think its going to be a zero sum game. In a small galaxy where every system has planets or starbases? Sure. Outside of a small environment with specific conditions for the entire galaxy, I don't see it feasible to have every system have storm repulsors. There will be systems that dont have any planets or starbases and the storms can path through those gaps.

 

[mrt1212]

You can plan for pretty much all of that, and what you can't plan for - spawning next to a hegemony/genocidal - you can restart early enough that it's not painful. What is painful is getting your tall empire slapped with a particle storm just before a guy next door declares war on you, because now your fleets are useless because they're either stuck at 20% hull and the only counterplay to this is "Don't get unlucky".

That's pretty much the whole issue here. "Don't get unlucky" is the primary strategy you can employ. Sure, you can build storm repulsors and such, but if everyone builds them, I imagine it'll just be zero sum game where they do functionally nothing, and that's right back to luck. We've not even seen what Nexus Storms are like, but if they live up to the "Absolute worst storm" thing, I really don't look forward to watching my empire crumble because of bad RNG weather.

Diplomacy Tradition might actually be respected now? Wow, this DLC keeps getting better and better for the meta impact.

For real though, we're going to stumble through best practices on what to do for weeks with this DLC and it's not some great tragedy that you might have to adjust entire approaches to the game because of it, unless you're very specifically beholden to the way you do things as the way to do things, or are hung up telling a specific story that doesn't involve begging with envoys against a Hegemon or building out a team to put up a fight against them.

And at least in my runs, Genocidal direct neighbors kick my ass 90% of the time just because of settings effect but are otherwise cans of corn if they start anywhere else. Maybe that could use a look at status quo without storms before presenting as a bugaboo about storms.

 

[indalecio248]

I don't think its going to be a zero sum game. In a small galaxy where every system has planets or starbases? Sure.

I typically play on small galaxies(~200 stars), so yes, this would impact me and everyone else who plays like this.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

 

[mrt1212]

Storm relief center shouldn't be a building. Its giving too little benefit for taking up an entire building slot, that will only come into play very rarely.

Instead, what I propose it be a planetary modifier. Similar to the 'Mastery of Nature' decision. You pay 'x' amount of resources and/or influence, add in building time, and it gives a planetary modifier. Now, when storms come around, you have some protection from them without wasting a building slot.

I don't particularly care if they give us 4 or 40 ways to weather storms but y'all are losing your minds about having to temporarily do something in this game because of supposed building slot value. Even the question of 'what are you retrofitting out to weather the storm' has strategic implications and adjustments you'll make to compensate and yet nobody to this point has even noticed that might be interesting to answer in general and specific, hung up on their status quo plans and how they play not being compatible in the least with this meta.

 

[Huskermax5]

New precursor???? Hype now we only need another crisis and a bit more internal politics (flavor events) before all S tier wants are present

 

[one4crisis]

It looks well. But the storm will make sth bad. I don't want the data in this DLC too large.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Is it just me, or does the tooltip for Gravity Storm imply that non-Gestalt empires use drones?

Will other DLCs add storms later on? Like a Nanite Storm outcome from opening the L Cluster, an Astral Storm from a rift or a Debris Storm from Ancient Relics, I see a lot of potential all around.

Vluurrr seeeeeks......

There needs to be some interaction with Void Clouds, to make more use of their Effluvial Offspring ability. This could involve Gravity Storms, Stardust Storms, or a "Void Storm". Below are some ideas for the latter, but they could also be adapted for either of the two former storms.

• Void Storms could use black hole systems as destinations and origins.
  • The likelihood of a black hole system being the chosen destination or origin could depend on its number of black holes. This would make The Great Wound be involved in a disproportionate number of Void Storms.
• Void Storms could make Void Clouds within the effect radius become migratory.
  • The migration could be random, but weighted towards the current eye of the Void Storm.
  • Void Clouds that drop out of the radius could migrate to the nearest black hole system and occupy it (i.e. becoming non-migratory after reaching it).
  • VLUUR could also be inclined to follow the Void Storm.
• Void Storms could spawn additional Void Clouds in nearby black hole systems, perhaps including the destination and origin systems.
  • The number of Void Clouds spawned could depend on the distance to the eye of the Void Storm, as well as the number of black holes in the system.
  • Void Storms could mature nearby Effluvial Offspring to "adult" Void Clouds.
• Void Storms could grant regeneration and other bonuses to nearby Void Clouds and Effluvial Offspring (and VLUUR).
• Void Storms could boost Physics Research and Dark Matter production.
• Void Storms could have a spawn probability/frequency that depends on the number of black holes in the galaxy.
  • If newly formed black holes had a substantially greater probability of generating Void Storms, it would add more gravity to the final choices of The Broken Gates and the Horizon Signal, as well as the use of Star-Eaters.
  • The last case could be taken even further, by making Aetherophasic Engine systems valid (and likely or even guaranteed) destinations for Void Storms. As more stars are collapsed, Void Storms become much more frequent - and get more black hole systems to pass by and spawn Void Clouds in, on their way towards the Aetherophasic Engine. Properly balanced, this could be a rubberband mechanic for Galactic Nemesis empires.
    • (If Void Clouds ruin an Aetherophasic Engine, the star could presumably get blown up and turn into a black hole. Perhaps this could also convert the Void Storm into a new VLUUR.)
• Further possibility: Void Clouds ruining a Matter Decompressor could spawn a new VLUUR, creating a naturally implied connection between VLUUR and any Ruined Matter Decompressor found in the galaxy.
• Further possibility: VLUUR could be surrounded by a permanent Void Storm, which could have interesting effects depending on the design choices above.
  • This would give Void Clouds a means of migration in the absence of the DLC (assuming that this special type of Void Storm would not require).
  • VLUUR would basically be a sort-of-sentient Void Storm.
  • If VLUUR remains gentle by design, VLUUR could even be coded to prefer moving to unowned systems, reflecting an awareness of the destruction it causes and a desire to avoid causing harm. This would imply that what "VLUUR seeks" is a place where VLUUR will not harm anyone. Too bad that the expanding sentients fail to understand this and build outposts everywhere, leaving VLUUR with no safe place to go and ultimately forcing the good and decent folks of the galaxy to put it down for their own protection.
  • VLUUR could still be (strongly) attracted to any nearby Void Storm. VLUUR may be a sort-of-sentient Void Storm, but VLUUR would still have urges.
  • (VLUUR could also be strongly attracted to Aetherophasic Engines, perhaps believing that a Void Storm is trapped inside and desiring to liberate it.)