Stellaris Dev Diary #353 - Cosmic Storms Post-Release

[Dsingis]

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

 

[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.

 

[Ajacoba]

Meanwhile I'm gonna keep storms on maximum

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Rafss]

I remember when people naively worried about the early game genocidal neighbour, little they knew about the genocidal storm.

 

[redvictorx4]

Could we get a espionage operation that interacts with the target his storm attraction or one that sabotages their storm defences.
Espionage could use some ui love too, maybe auto repeat when avaible and stuff, but that is probably asking for to much eh xd

 

[guiskj]

Just invite @HFY to your next closed beta, please

 

[Easterlyocean]

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.

Can we get an opposite option? Bad weather mode! Constant storms, all game!

 

[HFY]

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.

The interplay and feeling that I'm hoping for is something mid-game where a storm hits unexpectedly and I'm looking through my leader list for someone to take off their optimal project and throw into being an emergency Governor.

That's also greed vs. risk, because leaving the Leader where it was designed and built to thrive would be optimal.


If I have to pre-pick a specific anti-storm trait, then I'm just going to park a specific number of them on a few key worlds and not worry about moving Leaders around in the mid-to-late-game.


Moving leaders around in response to the emergency is the interplay that I was hoping to see. Pre-planned trait builds works strongly against that.

 

[Rafss]

Usually people optimize their leaders cap usage by assigning all Officials to governors, all Scientists to science ships, and all Commanders to fleets, with eventual commanders on conquered worlds and an official to diplomacy. But never scientists to governors (specially after Paradox made survey slower).
So I suggest giving Scientists a base storm protection as governors, or a trait like Astrometeorologist that buffs protection but also research speed and chance for related Techs when on council, and maybe even protects fleets in the same sector/system or increases chances of positive storm outcomes.

 

[Ajacoba]

Usually people optimize their leaders cap usage by assigning all Officials to governors, all Scientists to science ships, and all Commanders to fleets, with eventual commanders on conquered worlds and an official to diplomacy. But never scientists to governors (specially after Paradox made survey slower).
So I suggest giving Scientists a base storm protection as governors, or a trait like Astrometeorologist that buffs protection but also research speed and chance for related Techs when on council, and maybe even protects fleets in the same sector/system or increases chances of positive storm outcomes.

I mean, most of the time I don't use my scientists at all and let them die of old age because they're kinda useless once everything is explored and you have hit borders everywhere

Also given how sectors work you only really need a single leader to cover your entire empire anyways, even if you do need a scientist early on it won't actually limit your expansion

 

[Thiend]

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.

I like this in theory, but I should point out you're actually pitting a player's RNG versus safety. If its a trait, they may not be able to choose it.

Considering how much of the storm mechanics assume a storm-focused empire actually does want a storm around indefinitely (and in the same place) I think any version of this needs ways for such an empire to entirely negate the devastation. The AP makes it possible to have storms stay in one place, the special buildings not all empires get all cause storm attraction (making them stay in one place), the starbase building to attract costs alloy and the one to repel costs crystal so you can't build it early... this entire system assumes players building around storms want them to stick around forever, and that's not entirely useless in this current version, but even 25% devastation is basically crippling.

I would suggest if going with a leader system that it should either be on a veteran class (not up as fast, guaranteed availability), inherent to governors generally, or add a special way to guarantee a leader starts with such a trait. In all cases, it should be scaled so that either with the trait or with some minimum level plus the trait it removes or mitigates the devastation gain (for instance, by reducing the effects of devastation by 20% per leader level, so it would still tick up as normal but with reduced effect and none at level 5).

Making it leader-focused actually works nicely with the origin reducing lifespan but increasing xp gain, so it's a thematic win to do it that way.

 

[Krein81]

Meanwhile I'm gonna keep storms on maximum

What could possibly go wrong?

I put slider's to mid and game is balanced for me.

 

[StellarisPlayer]

Has anyone else had trouble joining multiplayer games since the release of Vela? Last night we had eight or nine people who have played together frequently in the past playing the unmodded game, all Steam users, trying to start a new game and more than half of us got stuck behind the 'Connecting' screen and were unable to get into the game creation lobby.

 

[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.

 

[Ajacoba]

Good, there should be some risk

Just negating all the drawbacks and only farming the planet modifiers and relief buffs would be pretty dumb

 

[Rafss]

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

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

 

[Birri]

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.

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

 

[p8tro]

Have some feedback after playing stormchaser origin with civics and going full "stormborne"

Happened to roll adAkaria, really loved the writing and was completely immersed through the whole chain, it was really well written.

I think there should be some psionic ascension specific interaction with the outcome (I understand that Zroni already has something of the sort for that precursor, but I think tying a little ascension nudge to all of the precursors in general could be nice, thinking something like Baol and Genetic... etc) It would've been neat to have possibly been able to acquire the relic ability without the "evil" decision to secure the relic, given what we learned about the connection between psionic beings and storms

I really liked the pve aspect of dealing with the negatives and trying to harness the positives of the storms, but through it all I didnt really see the positives of the civics outside of possibly helping me get a few of the storm related techs earlier, we leads me to think that not only could the civics be slightly buffed, but the corresponding storm technologies need to feel more beneficial as well.

I pretty much had constant storms on my planets for the early to mid game and didn't really feel like it benefitted me differently going all in on storm attraction than if I had played a regular game and just dealt with the same.

Also, when dealing with the stormchaser origin:

There wasn't any fulfilling reward to completing the storm frenzy situation, it almost just seemed like a tutorial in what I should do, with no outcome other than just completing the situation, even unleashing a nexus storm in the middle of my empire that sat there for 40 years. The nexus storm was pretty fun in the way that it was pretty much as close as you can get to a non-fighting crisis, but again, the outcome of the whole situation was unfulfilling and I just thought to myself "Why did I bother?" I tanked my whole game progress essentially for 30 years just to get a "Wow that was wild!" afterwards

I'd really like to see a way to possibly "tech" into certain storm types, gaining more benefits from some but losing benefits from other. It would also be really neat to be able to "drag" an already formed storm a certain way, either getting rid of unwanted storms, or bringing in beneficial ones, and as always I'm sure certain empires wouldn't be fond depending on the outcome, or maybe they could ask and plead you to remove a storm for them?

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!

Overall I think there is a lot of potential with the expansion and it does make me excited to think about it.

 

[Thiend]

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.

All sounds good to me. I have no objections to the devastation with mitigation not going to 0 generally, just make sure it doesn't eventually go to 100 either!

It staying at something like 25% (the remainder being perhaps possible to remove for Stormriders) would be about right to make it a tradeoff. The combination of housing, amenity and production reductions mean even 25% devastation is actually extremely strong, 50% is about where it's just not possible to gain much from it.

Perhaps planetary shields, per a previous suggestion, could take it down to 50% on their own. The trait for Stormrider governors (importantly, all classes, since storms can buff specialists you don't want it to only do this for Commanders) could then bring the devastation ceiling down by 10% per level, so with a level 5 Stormrider governor and a planetary shield or a level 10 stormrider governor and no shield, 0% devastation from storms.

Tying it to the Stormrider leader traits both means they wouldn't have to suffer RNG to get it and that nobody else could get it, except by managing to recruit one of their leaders. I actually specifically prefer only Stormriders being able to fully remove it too, so that rather than a regular level-up trait is ideal.

 

[Ajacoba]

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

Wouldn't that be kinda lame?

"oh boy, a storm hit, good thing I have the relief centers - okay, now that it's gone I can return all of the relief money"