Stellaris Dev Diary #352 - Stellaris 3.13 'Vela' Improvements and Preliminary Release Notes

[wisecat]

Will the Cosmic Storms affect space fauna?
Will they affect tame space fauna (Dragons from "Here Be Dragons" origin, Ether Hatchling, Tame Space Amoeba)?

 

[RhysTheT00n]

While it may make more sense, we figured it would feel too limited when you might want to use things like Xenomorph or other special armies (which we can assume undergo special training on your thrall worlds training alongside your Battle Thralls).

Edit: @Gruntsatwork points out this sounds like a movie plot.

I assume Gestalt Machines can't use Thrall Worlds? Having a 250% damage boost to Cybrex Warforms sounds hilarious. Especially coupled with The Library buff and as much repeatable tech rushing The Reapers could ask for

 

[FiddleSticks96]

@Eladrin Do the changes to planetary strategic resources deposits apply to habitats as well?

 

[Halfedead_Harry]

Like changes for penal worlds, but will there be changes for crime calculation? Right now any multiplicative bonuses are pointless, since they are applied after enforcers. Would be nice to have other way round, so the penal world could acctualy lower need of enforcers on other worlds.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Penal Colonies & Thrall Worlds​

Much like how Resort Worlds were updated earlier this year, we have taken the time to revisit both Penal Colonies and Thrall worlds.

Penal Colonies now both reduce crime across your empire while giving access to unique Prison Industrial Districts. These allow you to employ worker strata pops to produce alloys and consumer goods.

Thrall Worlds on the other hand have taken inspiration from the countless examples across science fiction of elite battle thrall armies and give access to the Battle Thrall District. Armies trained on a Thrall World will start with additional XP and Battle Thrall jobs will increase the damage your armies do.

Wait, Battle Tralls give +5% assault army damage each? And you can have multiple Thrall-Worlds? Isn't that a little much?

Or are Thrall-Worlds restricted like the other special colony types and you can have only one per empire?

Also, can you shift the industrial jobs on penal industrial districts?

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

We do not have plans to decrease the general power level of the features of The Machine Age.

I'll take this as a suggestion that buffs to Genetic and Psionic are coming rather than nerfs to the other ascensions. Hopefully in the next patch.

 

[Nyrael]

No balance changes to the overpowered features from the previous DLC is disappointing. I guess Genetic and Psionic ascensions will be unusable for at least one more DLC interval.

Unless ones exclusively plays competitive multiplayer, I don't see how they are in any way unusable.
Anyway, it would be a waste if they did some number changes instead of having these two be a focus on a future DLC, and the devs did state that good reception of Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension overhauls justifies the other two Ascensions getting similar overhauls (they also warned that they are unlikely to come together as they are thematically way too different than Synthetic and Cybernetic are).

 

[Calvax]

Love the changes to unique worlds! Have the technologies been adjusted? In my experience thrall and penal worlds get researched very late into the game meaning there's little time to benefit, and no free worlds to set up as either.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Unless ones exclusively plays competitive multiplayer, I don't see how they are in any way unusable.
Anyway, it would be a waste if they did some number changes instead of having these two be a focus on a future DLC, and the devs did state that good reception of Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension overhauls justifies the other two Ascensions getting similar overhauls (they also warned that they are unlikely to come together as they are thematically way too different than Synthetic and Cybernetic are).

I do only play multiplayer. Not competitive, but it still just feels bad to pick objectively worse options than my friends.

Number changes aren't a waste, what's a waste is having those two ascensions be so much worse for a long time instead of just doing some quick number changes as a stopgap until they get proper expansions. Things gets rather samey when all the good options are robotics-related.

 

[Ajacoba]

Will the Cosmic Storms affect space fauna?
Will they affect tame space fauna (Dragons from "Here Be Dragons" origin, Ether Hatchling, Tame Space Amoeba)?

Why wouldn't they? They're ships

 

[Navar]

Thoughts on adding Thrall or Penal habitat designations? I'd love a Prison habitat myself, or even a Resort habitat!

 

[DamnedLackOfTropicalFruit]

The penal metallurgist has a base consumption of 3 minerals and a base output of 1.5 alloys.

Is it just me, or does this seem counter to the theme?

The basic tradeoff is that the job has half as much throughput, in exchange for benefitting from worker/slave modifiers. This means it's an extremely uphill battle for this to outperform normal metallurgists from a pop-efficiency perspective, but doable.

But the way it outperforms normal metallurgists is by being more mineral-efficient - a normal metallurgist has anywhere between 100% to 33% more base (multiplicative) output depending on your level of forge building, so unless you have absurdly high slave output modifiers compared to metallurgist output modifiers, making your alloys on a non-penal world will result in more alloys, at the cost of using more minerals.

But if I have high worker/slave output modifiers, that necessarily means I have extremely efficient miners who can produce tons of minerals, and I am therefore uniquely interested in a job that is mineral wasteful but produces more alloys.

It all just feels backwards - it would be better thematically and better fit the slaver playstyle if penal industrial worlds had the potential for higher raw output, at the expense of being less mineral efficient, not the other way around.

 

[aadf97799c]

does those feature disappear after terraforming into machine or hive world

if not no one will need to build strategic resource building again

 

[aadf97799c]

will gestalt ever get some fancy special planet like resort and penal

maybe spawning planet for hive mind

 

[guiskj]

I love all the changes, but the lack for a fix to the ship issues explained in this thread is a massive disappointment.

 

[Aargh]

Is it safe to assume the Refinery World designation now also increases the amount of rare resources that miners produce?

 

[Lorenerd11]

We do not have plans to decrease the general power level of the features of The Machine Age.

Personally I somewhat agree with the criticism voiced here that synthetic ascension getting modularity traits, seemingly as an afterthought while for machine empires it's a core focus, feels weird both thematically and mechanically.

And it tips the scales a bit too heavily in favor of the physical ascension path, leaving the virtual one in the dust (modularity traits are much stronger compared to the virtual focus policy).

I would definitely not mind seeing that revisited somehow, perhaps with physical and virtual authorities both getting somewhat different bonuses instead of just borrowing from machine ascensions.

 

[Keith_C]

I love all the changes, but the lack for a fix to the ship issues explained in this thread is a massive disappointment.

Ditto. I love Stellaris, but I haven't played in months because I find the ship behaviour so off-putting. The thread details my problems with it all perfectly.

 

[A_Dane]

So, I really love the changes to thrall world and Penal colony, but will the techs be made more common? I can't remember the last time i saw either of the required techs..

 

[JacketReturns]

@Eladrin or really any other PDX script dev, How does the 'mod_name_affix' and generate_random_name = yes effects work?

Does it functionally revert Random species names to be on Species class, or with that affix, instead of Species namelist?


In the current version of the game when creating an empire it breaks the simplicity of just going down the list to create an empire, since you need to skip naming the species (which I like doing randomly), click a namelist, then move back.


Importantly for me, It also breaks ensuring modded species using their proper name when generated randomly!

It's is minor issue for non-modded games (just a re-ordering issue if you don't want to revert it), but if I want Kitsune or any modded species based of a specific creature/character, I have to disable their ability to randomly generate which makes me really sad.

I mentioned it to LadyDzra, but didn't see a direct reversion in the prelimenary patch notes!

Please explain the above if you can, and possibly even revert the species name change made in 3.12.

Thank you!