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

[Kainser]

Surprised to see no changes at all to the precursor system with two more added. I'm not one of the guys who wants it to be freely pickable but having an event popup before you get the initial precursor saying "We found 2/3/whatever different ruins here, should we focus on Cybrex/Zroni/whatever?" and then proceeding as normal would be a good improvement imo to reduce frustration (since you can pick the 'least bad' of your options) without ending up in a situation where some players pick the same precursor every game.

 

[Ajacoba]

Surprised to see no changes at all to the precursor system with two more added. I'm not one of the guys who wants it to be freely pickable but having an event popup before you get the initial precursor saying "We found 2/3/whatever different ruins here, should we focus on Cybrex/Zroni/whatever?" and then proceeding as normal would be a good improvement imo to reduce frustration (since you can pick the 'least bad' of your options) without ending up in a situation where some players pick the same precursor every game.

but there are no bad options :3

 

[Maethendias]

"Changes to Planetary Resource Deposits"

essentially making planets even more featureless

 

[Maethendias]

but there are no bad options :3

theres 2 precursors that are completly pointless to machines... just to name one expample

 

[Ajacoba]

theres 2 precursors that are completly pointless to machines... just to name one expample

even those have cool buildings and empire wide modifiers
even a mecha hivemind can enjoy the wonders of a gaia world or the defensive options of a zroni stormcaster

of course not all precursors can be as cool and awesome as the yuht with their ship upkeep reduction, bonus pop for new colonies and their terraforming decision for +20% habitability, but none of them are useless

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

I see the penal colony gives reduced political power for workers now.
Does that effect depend on ethics by any chance? Because I don't see egalitarian empires threatening their workers into compliance because they have a prison colony.

 

[Ajacoba]

I see the penal colony gives reduced political power for workers now.
Does that effect depend on ethics by any chance? Because I don't see egalitarian empires threatening their workers into compliance because they have a prison colony.

people in prison usually have limited freedom and mobility and are therefore unable to properly participate in a political party :3

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

people in prison usually have limited freedom and mobility and are therefore unable to properly participate in a political party :3

That's not how I interpreted the tooltip, but I guess the lack of indentation for the political power modifier might mean that it's not applied to other planets but the current planet instead, which supports your interpretation

 

[FiddleSticks96]

but there are no bad options :3

I don't know. The Yuht precursor is pretty bad. At least the First League gives you a size 25 relic world, which is a pretty nice reward.

I've also only seen the Baol exactly once and when I play machines, I roll the Zroni more often than any other precursor. It would be pretty nice if I had even a limited choice to pick one of three randomly rolled precursors at game start so I could experience content that I am never lucky enough to see.

 

[MarkDey]

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.)

I like this idea. Is it in a Suggestion so I can upvote it?

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

I like this idea. Is it in a Suggestion so I can upvote it?

I also wanted to upvote it so i searched for it but couldn't find it.
Considering the "Once upon a time, there was a suggestion" maybe it was deleted?
@Tannhäuser Cake if the Suggestion isn't there anymore a new one could be made?

 

[DelphineasSD]

Thought I had: Instead of Strategic Resources being tied to miners, you get a free Specialist job that refines the resources from Food/Energy/Minerals, thus not rendering the feature useless on Ecu worlds. Or maybe that only happens if you upgrade the planet.

 

[Ajacoba]

Thought I had: Instead of Strategic Resources being tied to miners, you get a free Specialist job that refines the resources from Food/Energy/Minerals, thus not rendering the feature useless on Ecu worlds. Or maybe that only happens if you upgrade the planet.

But you don't have the feature on an ecumenopolis? It gets removed upon restoration

 

[HFY]

Changes to Planetary Resource Deposits​

As part of the Custodian changes in 3.13 ‘Vela’, we’ve made some changes to how some planetary deposits for rare resources are handled.

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.

View attachment 1183105​

Additionally, we’ve buffed the Betharian Power Plant to increase the energy produced by Technician Jobs.

View attachment 1183107​

I like the Betharian improvement.

I like removing the single-job buildings.

But why force resources into Miners? What if I don't want Miners for some reason?

The gatherer jobs still exist for Habitats, I would assume, given how that's worked out very well.

Why not just create the gatherer jobs directly on planets, too?

 

[Getty]

I like the Betharian improvement.

I like removing the single-job buildings.

But why force resources into Miners? What if I don't want Miners for some reason?

The gatherer jobs still exist for Habitats, I would assume, given how that's worked out very well.

Why not just create the gatherer jobs directly on planets, too?

Whilst I think thats an interesting concept, what you are proposing is that we should get miners without any investment into building mines.....

Also, it can still be interesting. It increases the importance of mining district slots massively, which makes sense. Is it worth it to devote part of an excellent agriworld to the mines if it has a rare resource deposit? Your call.



Also, a world with MANY mining district slots and some rare resource features will become Arrakis, which is always nice since right now the only way to increase non-refinery rare resource production is through really gimmicky ascensions and % bonuses to rare resource gatherer output, through expanding your territory onto planets with a couple more rare resource deposits, through becoming a Prospectorium or through The Surveyor relic.

 

[GCaelann]

I see the penal colony gives reduced political power for workers now.
Does that effect depend on ethics by any chance? Because I don't see egalitarian empires threatening their workers into compliance because they have a prison colony.

I still think it's kind of funny that egalitarians (or at least fanatic ones) even have access to penal colonies in the first place as they are right now, because the flavor text surrounding them (and the artificial moral codes tech) seems pretty questionable for such a society. I mean, labor camps, really? How do you rationalize that?

On a more pragmatic note, I believe someone earlier suggested different kinds of penal colonies depending on ethics, and I think that'd be neat.

---

Regarding the changes to strategic resource deposits, I think tying them strictly to miners is a bad idea, as others have said. Not every world with these deposits is necessarily going to be a good mining world, even with the deposits adding to max districts, and the base production, even if we were to assume that bonuses to miner output will also extend to their strategic resource output (which I think they should), is just too low to make a difference on mineral-poor worlds.

Currently this isn't an issue as ultimately as long as you have leftover building slots, or are willing to forfeit some from your planet's otherwise specialization, almost every strategic resource deposit can be made useful regardless of the planet it spawned in.

One solution to this would be to follow Tannhäuser Cake's suggestion and tie each strategic resource to its own basic resource, which would definitely alleviate the issue, but it wouldn't prevent it completely, as you could still get many planets with the "wrong" combo of max basic resource districts versus strategic resource deposits.

Ensuring that the deposits only generate on worlds with good enough potential in the first place is a solution, but it's probably too complicated to justify implementing. Another option is to just increase the base production considerably, but then mineral-rich worlds are probably going to produce way too many strategic resources.

Having the deposits simply create extraction jobs outright with no relation to population would just give us the benefits while also freeing up building slots, which is probably not a good idea since it's just going to ultimately contribute to increasing power creep, even if only slightly.

IMHO the best solution is the idea mentioned earlier of keeping the extraction jobs, but turning them into an "x per number of pops" type of job, similarly to how certain other deposits work. This would circumvent the above issues entirely, even on smaller planets, as long as population and housing are properly managed, and the production adjusted for this new reality. In this scenario, Tannhäuser Cake's suggestion could still be applied for refinery jobs, as it just makes sense and would give another use for food and energy, but extraction jobs would simply extract the resources directly.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

I still think it's kind of funny that egalitarians (or at least fanatic ones) even have access to penal colonies in the first place as they are right now, because the flavor text surrounding them (and the artificial moral codes tech) seems pretty questionable for such a society. I mean, labor camps, really? How do you rationalize that?

I agree.
Penal colonies, in principle, make sense for an egalitarian empire, but that would more likely be planets where prisoners are shipped off to to do their own thing for the duration of their sentence while living in decent living conditions and receiving counseling. Sort of like many Scandinavian prisons, just on a planetary scale.

The flavor text sounds... more dystopian.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I like this idea. Is it in a Suggestion so I can upvote it?

I also wanted to upvote it so i searched for it but couldn't find it.
Considering the "Once upon a time, there was a suggestion" maybe it was deleted?
@Tannhäuser Cake if the Suggestion isn't there anymore a new one could be made?

Freshly baked suggestion thread

After doing a little searching, I discovered that the idea was posted in a brainstorming discussion thread on the topic of food economy, way back in 2022. The suggestion was also not quite the same as what I posted now, but I prefer the newer version over the older one. For those interested, other "food economy" suggestions included such ideas as:

• Armies, troop transports requiring food
• Colony ships using food
• Some army types costing food rather than minerals (clone armies, xenomorphs)
• Bioreactor edict: technicians produce +1 power, cost +2 food
• Genetic modification could cost food
• Space fauna interactions
• Terraforming could cost food, especially for barren or tomb worlds
• Habitats and ring worlds could cost food (for the organic parts)
• Using food for construction (using novel sci-fi materials such as wood)
• Using food for consumer goods
• Living standards affecting food consumption, and/or policy to control food consumption
• Species traits that affect pops' food/minerals/energy upkeep (or the effect could just be added to the existing traits; Wasteful pops would waste food and electricity too, not just consumer goods)
• Job upkeep for medical workers
• If researchers were split into different jobs, society/biology researchers could use food (while engineers use minerals, and physicists use energy)

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I still think it's kind of funny that egalitarians (or at least fanatic ones) even have access to penal colonies in the first place as they are right now, because the flavor text surrounding them (and the artificial moral codes tech) seems pretty questionable for such a society. I mean, labor camps, really? How do you rationalize that?

I agree.
Penal colonies, in principle, make sense for an egalitarian empire, but that would more likely be planets where prisoners are shipped off to to do their own thing for the duration of their sentence while living in decent living conditions and receiving counseling. Sort of like many Scandinavian prisons, just on a planetary scale.

The flavor text sounds... more dystopian.

On the one hand: they are not slaves, they are prisoners with jobs, repaying their debts to society.

On the other hand: their political power may be nullified, but IIRC workers still keep their assigned living standards (such as Utopian Abundance).

On the third hand: I like the idea of gating Penal Colony and Thrall World behind the Domination tradition tree, which Egalitarians may be less inclined to pick.

 

[mrt1212]

Freshly baked suggestion thread

After doing a little searching, I discovered that the idea was posted in a brainstorming discussion thread on the topic of food economy, way back in 2022. The suggestion was also not quite the same as what I posted now, but I prefer the newer version over the older one. For those interested, other "food economy" suggestions included such ideas as:

• Armies, troop transports requiring food
• Colony ships using food
• Some army types costing food rather than minerals (clone armies, xenomorphs)
• Bioreactor edict: technicials produce +1 power, cost +2 food
• Genetic modification could cost food
• Space fauna interactions
• Terraforming could cost food, especially for barren or tomb worlds
• Habitats and ring worlds could cost food (for the organic parts)
• Using food for construction (using novel sci-fi materials such as wood)
• Using food for consumer goods
• Living standards affecting food consumption, and/or policy to control food consumption
• Species traits that affect pops' food/minerals/energy upkeep (or the effect could just be added to the existing traits; Wasteful pops would waste food and electricity too, not just consumer goods)
• Job upkeep for medical workers
• If researchers were split into different jobs, society/biology researchers could use food (while engineers use minerals, and physicists use energy)

Food has to be renamed 'Biomass' just so we don't get discrepancy gripes from people who would dispute the transmutation potential of a Xenana.