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

[Tannhäuser Cake]

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

Plans to increase the general power level of biological and psionic ascensions confirmed!

• Battle Thralls should inherit most of the modifiers for Soldier jobs.

I hope this does not cover the Citizen Service bonus, since slave soldiers are the opposite of what Citizen Service represents.


Some questions:

1. Have the devs considered the possibility of having the Domination tradition tree enable Penal Colony and Thrall World?
   Or at least have the Domination tradition tree grant these technologies, if they have not yet been discovered?
2. Any chance that cosmic weather will affect Void Clouds?
   (Space weather, space clouds...)
3. Any news on a potential notifier for when another Planetary Ascension is affordable?

 

[Methone]

but I'm chalking that up to the rest of the field being GA No-Scaling DAAM-On and usually in Federation/Overlord configs - small window of time with a higher threshold to clear on it being a cakewalk for the AE.

They shouldn't CARE. They're belligerent precursor empires who like the smell of their own farts.

 

[MadCow94]

@Eladrin I don't see in the notes, will gestalt machine empires start spawning again?

Since Machine Age only individual machines spawn.

 

[Darlf]

changes in rare resource extraction are ok but, we need to get options for changes in extraction, even without a forge it is not difficult to satisfy your economy with minerals from space, now extracting negligible amounts of special resources extracting huge amounts of useless (in such large amounts) minerals for 1/3 of the empires. 1 job giving 3 crystals and 1 job giving a little minerals and 0.20 crystals, too often it will be just a waste of labor. However, if you do it like it is with bio reactors, i.e. a building processing part of the production from work into something else and a few more rare resources, then it could actually be cool, you can add a planetary decision to this that changes the % of resource extraction even more at the expense of other resources, generally do it so that the player has several options depending on the type of empire to minimize mineral extraction and increase the extraction of rare resources, of course it is best to design it so that empires that most likely do not need minerals from planets have the most options, such as astro drones or origin with a forge, or plant processors for alloys.

 

[Ramidel]

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.

It sounds like Salusa Secundus. Create a penal (or in this case slave) colony on a hell world with low habitability, then raise elite death commandos from that population.

The Sardaukar await your command, Emperor.

 

[zellwarlord]

The deposits that previously gave access to Crystal Mines, Gas Extraction Wells and Mote Harvesting Traps buildings, now instead increase the number of mining districts available on the planet and, after researching the technology to extract the relevant resource, add a small amount of resource production to miners on that planet.

Despite all the raves for freeing up building space this seems an odd choice that quite a few play styles won't really have natural use of. Might have worked better if the deposits gave jobs directly but all deposits were behind a blocker. Catalytic processing I'd imagine has a work around. Is there a new use for all the extra minerals we now have to mine to get rare resources? As it's already a bloated easy to produce resource without using mining districts (even more so since the introduction of Arc Furnaces.)

 

[Ajacoba]

I don't get why people keep bringing up refineries

Aren't the rare resource deposits entirely different from refining?

One mines what's actually there and the other transforms obscene amounts of minerals into the strategic resources from scratch

Although there's one interaction with that, I guess, because we will most likely have more minerals and less strategic resources we can take all the excess minerals and refine them into strategic resources, might even have to build a dedicated refinery world

 

[Rafss]

Alfray confirmed that Habitat deposits will keep providing direct Extraction jobs.

Now I do wonder two things:

-How exactly the Relic World specific deposit for strategic resources will work: will it provide jobs or provide Miner Output?
-After Ecumenopolis encasing, if the feature does stay, will it provide jobs? Ecumenopolis cannot have miners.

Hopefully this was thought through so we don't have a new bug by Tuesday (like the deposit becoming useless under Ecumenopolis for example).

 

[Ajacoba]

Alfray confirmed that Habitat deposits will keep providing direct Extraction jobs.

Now I do wonder two things:

-How exactly the Relic World specific deposit for strategic resources will work: will it provide jobs or provide Miner Output?
-After Ecumenopolis encasing, if the feature does stay, will it provide jobs? Ecumenopolis cannot have miners.

Hopefully this was thought through so we don't have a new bug by Tuesday.

Ecumenopoli also don't have the extractor feature

Which is why I never upgrade them, it's just not worth it to lose something that's producing a decent chunk of strategic resources and get something that consumes a decent chunk of strategic resources, imo

 

[MadCow94]

Most mods that handled this did it by just adding the jobs directly from the deposits. (Shameless plug). This does seem like an odd way of handling it considering the meta of "mining districts past the early game are bad".

 

[Ajacoba]

Most mods that handled this did it by just adding the jobs directly from the deposits. (Shameless plug). This does seem like an odd way of handling it considering the meta of "mining districts past the early game are bad".

1. The devs handle it like that too when they feel like it, as can be seen with the "1 job per x pop" planet features or the relic world tower

2. The devs regularly say they want to kill all meta

3. How the hell are you fueling your ever growing economy of alloys and consumer goods without at least some mining worlds? Space may be generous, but it's not that generous

 

[MadCow94]

3. How the hell are you fueling your ever growing economy of alloys and consumer goods without at least some mining worlds? Space may be generous, but it's not that generous

Love the arc furnaces and they will love you back. Hundreds of times over.

 

[MadCow94]

Also, level 4 leader icon is still bronze when it should be silver (not at level 5) so it matches trait progression.

 

[Uhlume]

On the one hand I quite like this change to Strategic Resource extraction, on the other, it means that extraction buildings on planets specialised in a different direction won't exist anymore, which makes the source less useful on worlds that aren't great mining worlds already...

 

[Gilten]

This change to the Penal Colonies & Thrall Worlds look fantastic!
It would even better if the Prison, Prison Industrial and Slave Domicile District had their own artwork.
Still, thank you for this gameplay evolution.

 

[Tilarium]

Not gonna lie here, I'm not to crazy about the changes to motes, dust and crystal depsots. I prefer keeping them as unique buildings to harvest them. Maybe it would have been better to add this as an extra bonus while keeping the harvesting buildings. I've gotten those deposits in the past on worlds I don't want to use as mining worlds, but with this change, I'd have to make at least 5 mining jobs on the planet just to get 1 deposit of the resource in question.

 

[Imp0815]

Right now I have most of the Custodian team working on some bigger things that I'll go into after Grand Archive releases.

Should i get my hopes up or down for anything military related?

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Considering Bubbling Swamp description an Agriculture district seems more fitting than a mining one.
Also only +1 features were shown, do the +2 like Dust Desert give more districts and more than 0.2 resource?

Once upon a time, there was a suggestion that the three different types of refinery jobs should use different raw materials for different strategic resources. Minerals for crystals, food for gasses, and energy for volatile motes. It would reduce the over-reliance on minerals and give a new use for food and energy credits.

It would be consistent if a similar distinction was also made for the extraction of the resources. This would not contradict the descriptions of the strategic resources (see the link above), and could also make sense for the deposit feature descriptions.

The three strategic resources' corresponding technologies should then also be distributed evenly across the three technology areas, matching the technologies that increase production of resources that can be refined into strategic resources. For volatile motes, this is already the case as those technologies are in Physics, together with the technologies that boost energy production. The same goes for rare crystals, currently in Engineering together with the mineral production boosters. Only exotic gases would need to be relocated, from Engineering to the technology tree where the food production boosters are located - i.e. Society (Biology).

(Moving those two technologies from Engineering to Society would also slightly improve the content balance of the tech trees.)


Edit:
link to new suggestion thread

 

[Kilkakon]

Can't say I agree with the resource deposit change. It makes strategic resources more bland and encourages only bothering with them on mining worlds, as the amount of resources you'll get with a modicum of mining districts will be miniscule. What was wrong with having interesting buildings? That's sort of the point of strategic resources... And having to make meaningful choices rather than copy/pasting the same build order everywhere.

That being said, I do love the changes to the thrall and penal worlds. Would there be any chance for some unique art for the new urban districts for those two? ^^

 

[Ikael]

Given Penal Colonies is a rare T3 society tech with an additional 0.25x modifier if you don't have a curator/statecraft scientist on your council, this unlocks at a pretty similar time to a Ecumonopolis (gated behind a very common T3 engineering tech, plus an AP and 10 year construction time).

Aye, that might need a bit of a rework. Either turn it into a regular tech instead of rare or make it a bit more accessible (lower tech tier, unlocked by traditions like Domination, whatever works). The same goes for thrall worlds. I feel they need to come online a bit earlier than Ecus.

It is probably a major rework of something, maybe pop growth mechanics, or starbase templating, or genemodding/species management, who knows, but I am quite excited for it, it is certainly big.

New combat! Politics! Space cultures! Traits & Genemodding! The tiles make a glorious comeback!! I dunno what will be, but I can only hope it is huge! I mean, the pace of updates and even minor balances has slowed down, and that makes me a sad humanoid.