Stellaris Dev Diary #353 - Cosmic Storms Post-Release

[Gruntsatwork]

Hi everyone,

Gruntsatwork here, putting on my writing hat for today only, while Eladrin is on sick leave. While Dev Diaries are the domain of the Game Directors, we wanted to keep in close contact shortly after a release.

The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion released 2 days ago and we have been collecting your feedback on our forums and every other form of social media we could find.

We will continue to do so over the next few days, working on fixes and improvements to Cosmic Storms, for example:

• Individualist Machines will get access to the Storm Touched trait so that they can use the Storm Devotion civic.
• Planetscapers will get a deposit on game start to clear for +1 Pop.

There are also a few balance considerations we are making that we figured would be nice to mention.

I’d like to get off Mr. Nexus Storm’s Wild Ride!​

We teased them before as being incredibly destructive and as it turns out, they are! What we didn’t intend was for them to appear as often and as early as they do. Their chance to appear is significantly smaller than most other storms.

Unfortunately, with the number of players we have, even a small chance means a sizable number of you are getting messed up and with no chance of defending yourself to boot.

We are planning to adjust Nexus Storms in the following way:

• No Nexus Storms in the early game (Mid-game and forward only).
• We will increase their speed of traversal, exact number pending, to make sure they remain destructive but that you can take action once they have passed. They will still bring you close to 100% devastation on any given planet but they won’t then sit on the planet and keep it at 100% forever.

“A Storm is a Trial. It is Change. It is Tribulation. It is the Dawning of a New Age and the End of Yours.”​

While we are quite happy with the effect of all the other storms, we are seeing your reports about some storms staying in the same space for most of their duration or in fact, long over their duration, stuck at 0 for years on end. Simply put, a storm shouldn’t stay in the same place for years. They are supposed to move on unless a player intervenes.

We are investigating this issue and hope to have a solution for you as soon as possible.

You call that a storm? That’s barely a stiff breeze!​

Some of you have called out the loss of impact storms experience once everyone has the storm protection techs in place. The original purpose of keeping those protections strong was relatively simple - to ensure that by the time you reach the end-game, you can continue with your strategies and plans.

It is one thing to lose a 15 minute campaign, it is another to lose a 30 hour campaign because your build just got invalidated.

We are looking into adjusting at the very least the ship protections, as we think there is some potential for smart plays if those protections weren’t quite as potent as they currently are.

Next Week​

Next week, Eladrin will be back, fingers crossed, to regale you with new information that mere Game Designers are not privy to.

See you then!

 

[Gruntsatwork]

Yes, we saw the aux-slot suggestions and now the one about core sectors. We will be discussing both of those and some other pure number changes and try and find a solution that offers interesting gameplay.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

It is very important to make planetary shields a second-level technology, not a third

Thats not unreasonable, we'll look into it.

How about all the feedback on the problems with the strategic resource changes? Seems like something that should be getting a quick fix.

Nailing that one down is not quite as easy as it seems, but we are looking into it as well and we will keep you all updated on the progress.

May I request a (system) Storm Caster Aura for Juggernauts if you have the Weather Control AP or the Zroni Tech, or both?

Thats....not impossible...and would be kinda sweet.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

Leaders compensate for storm damage.

That has actually quite a bit of potential, not sure if we'd want to be just plain leaders or maybe something more specialized, like a trait or added to a trait thats currently too weak. We'll investigate it.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

Early game the storm will in general cover most of your empire and your 1 governor will cover all your planets.
Also, if you consider the timing, most of your leaders will level up before the first storms start hitting the galaxy, so you would be perfectly set to pick a storm trait in anticipation. And why a trait? Because personally I like to pit players greed versus safety. You could just take a different trait and hope for the best. Or actually invest in storm repelling tech and buildings.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

As long as you keep the ability around to completely disable the storms in the game settings, I'm fine with whatever.

We will not remove that option. We want to have Storms in a state that people want to play with them, but the game settings are there for you in any case.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

The RNG and leader list are good points against my preference. Like i said before, we are discussing it, so me arguing here is not to say we're not doing. It's mostly me airing my initial thoughts and seeing if I can squeeze some more thoughts out of you ^^;

Something to be also clear about, I'm very wary of handing out any tool that completely removes devastation from storms for anyone thats not a stormrider. So those protections would likely decrease it but not to 0. Just so I'm clear about the end-goal here.

We will also investigate the devastation recovery as a modifier, that one could have nice thematic tie-ins into several existing features.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

Maybe some bonus XP as overtime pay.

Sorry, we are on an All-In contract But yeah, there's some interesting gameplay possibilities there, could maybe also tie in some of the council positions the storm-positive governments get.

Oh, also I did not check, but can you do anything with storms in the galactic council?

There are 2 lines of resolutions but we hear people that they lack impact.

Emergency Aid planetary decision, costs 1000 Minerals 1000 Energy and greatly speeds up rebuilding efforts (useful post storms and post war).
We let the government dump money into the issue just like real world

Having devastation cleanup linked to the storm relief center would make the building have much more thematic sense. The fact that it only has an effect while a storm is present and when it isn’t, it’s just 4 clerks is… not exactly the best. Though it does make more sense with the name of the upgraded building, being storm nullifier, though it is also a misnomer because it doesn’t actually nullify a storm

While I'm in general a fan of rampant corruption, I'm not sure if a planetary decision is the best choice, since its likely to trigger on several worlds at once, thats...a bunch of clicks that can get annoying (yes, yes I am aware that the game is mostly made of clicks but there's degrees of annoyance with clicks) But something in that direction of a marshal plan sounds promising. And a little bit of insurance fraud, as usual.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who can imagine the espionage aspects as well. Imagine a storm that cloaks not only your ships but also allows you to commit rogue attacks under their cover in enemy, or "friendly" territory - better hope they don't find out!

Also a topic of discussion internally, its definitely possible but I can' t make any promises.

 

[Gruntsatwork]

Also, please, PLEASE, adjust the pathfinding. Even with 100% storm protection, the ships are avoiding the storm making a 60 days trip into a 400+ days trip

Will poke code to look into it

I think the various storms should have some more effects on ships and space stations, to increase the situational tactical depth.

Those have been discussed a lot and in the end we agreed on the current iteration but as we gather more feedback than can of course change. It's a bit of a balancing act to keep it from becoming a bloated mess of information that scares new players while still engaging the grizzled veterans

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Does this mean that the tachyon itself can move backwards in time?

Yes. In the real world, if tachyons were to exist, they would likely travel backwards through time (if I’m remembering my university lectures correctly).