Stellaris Dev Diary #353 - Cosmic Storms Post-Release

[MantleMetalCat]

Maybe having a maximum devastation modifier that increases with the planetary capital, an edict, and some other source?

I don't know the lore behind nexus storms, but tying it to a mid game event, such as opening the L-Gate, killing the dimensional horror, ect. could be interesting.

Lastly, tying the storms to espionage somehow might be another way of integrating storms with the rest of the systems present.

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

 

[HFY]

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.

Yeah, agreed.

I'd suggest making the devastation effect reduced for any Leader in place, and then a special Leader type to make clean-up faster -- ideally a type that's under-powered right now (blocker clearing, terraforming, etc.) -- but the Devastation would not be totally avoided.

So you'll always get some Devastation, and you might want the RNG trait to clean it up faster (with more micro to move that guy around), but that's a smaller part compared to allocating a Leader as an emergency governor to help weather the storm -- and Devastation recovery is about more than just storms, so it has a place in the vanilla game as well.

Mitigation, not elimination, for the universal governor effect.

Maybe some bonus XP as overtime pay.

 

[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.

 

[ieishrifi]

I think the various storms should have some more effects on ships and space stations, to increase the situational tactical depth. Bonuses and maluses that would affect more ship properties and individual weapon types just like how currently some storms affect HP types. For example, a magnetic storm that would be lowering kinetic and missile accuracy, a radiant storm increasing general tracking while a gravity storm reduces it. Gravity storms should also be especially lethal to try to emergency FTL out of (like Nexus storms). Stardust storm increasing evasion, a Shroud storm seemingly randomly increasing or decreasing psionic modules' effectiveness etc. Some damage modifiers for certain weapon types as well.
Edit: Though adding more modifiers could end up with a cluttered storm description if they aren't dealt with another way.

I also believe that the negative storm effects should always persist at least in some weaker fashion and not be nullified completely. The game in my opinion should be an interplay of positive and negative effects, trade-offs. Ending up with only positive aspects of everything is a little boring to me.

 

[Minervo]

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

 

[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

 

[TSBasilisk]

What about a situation for a storm response? You dedicate a certain amount of resources and have to contend with events - supply ship lost in a vortex, corrupt officials redirecting supplies, etc. How well the situation goes determines how much devastation is removed. A very good response might even give a "batten down the hatches" buff that reduces devastation gain temporarily due to prep work.

 

[Silens]

Crazy idea here, but have you considered scaling the effects of a storm based on the total development of a planet? The less developed it is, the less devastation it gets, and vice versa.

Development means basically the % ratio of built vs max possible districts, the pop number, how many building slots are occupied, stuff like that. It would mean that the more developed a planet is, the more should be invested in storm prevention/deflection measures, while rural planets would just sit it out without much input.

Just to throw out a thought here that came to me.

 

[CaesarVincens]

What about a situation for a storm response? You dedicate a certain amount of resources and have to contend with events - supply ship lost in a vortex, corrupt officials redirecting supplies, etc. How well the situation goes determines how much devastation is removed. A very good response might even give a "batten down the hatches" buff that reduces devastation gain temporarily due to prep work.

I could see that, have an empire-wide situation when a storm is forecast to cover systems. The first stage would be prep with two or three approaches, then the second stage would be during the storm, and final stage recovery after.

I could see a give and take where more rigorous preparation provides more protection, but if a planet/colony is not affected by the storm, there is an "unnecessary preparation" debuff to happiness/stability. Along with the more basic spending to recover quickly kind of thing.

 

[cryptkeeper]

Is there any plan to bring the new precursors to the level of the old precursors, they don't have many of the additions that came with Archeotech. It seems odd thing to leave out considering this makes old precursors even the weaker ones more useful, as they have buildings and other tech advantages with them.

 

[Tseudonym]

I'd like to see galactic topography have a passive impact on attraction/repulsion. For example: class A stars inherently repel because storms have a hard time entering their stellar wind bubbles, or pulsars being natural storm attractors because their magnetic fields draw storms in.

 

[MarkDey]

Crazy idea here, but have you considered scaling the effects of a storm based on the total development of a planet? The less developed it is, the less devastation it gets, and vice versa.

Development means basically the % ratio of built vs max possible districts, the pop number, how many building slots are occupied, stuff like that. It would mean that the more developed a planet is, the more should be invested in storm prevention/deflection measures, while rural planets would just sit it out without much input.

Just to throw out a thought here that came to me.

Perhaps planetary size would work instead of development, similar to how planetary bombardment works.

 

[Ilab]

Will there be (or is there already) a way to keep a storm in place indifinitely. Would be fun to use storms as defenses.

There is, but it is bugged, there is already a bug report about it: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...on-perk-has-been-taken.1702811/#post-29875122
It has already been confirmed and added to the bug database.

 

[Ilab]

I've seen some criticism that there aren't many mechanics outside of the storms themselves that interact with the new mechanics.

I think it would be cool to be able to send construction ships to empires you have open borders with to help them recover in the aftermath of a storm (% aftermath modifier reduction) and you could get some approval and a rare chance for a favor in return. You could click on planets with the aftermath modifier (not your own) and something could be listed in the tooltip.

Another criticism was no interaction with the espionage system. There should be operations to attract and repel storms of a targets empire capital.

Thanks for collecting feedback!

This! So much this! I haven't thought about the construction ship thing, its genius! Also, let us make use of Officials in some ship, some envoy ship that you can use to increase 'goodwill', well that for another post. The espionage one is good too!

 

[Ilab]

Start simple, let it be just plain leaders, because that helps with earliest damage (which is the worst experience in the game for me right now).

The nice thing is that a player can move leaders around to respond to storms. If it's ANY leader, then you'll need to make a choice about putting off-build leaders as emergency Governors.

IMHO that's a lot more interesting than just re-rolling until I have exactly 3 anti-storm Governors.


EDIT - If we need a trait for a leader to be extra-relevant for storms, perhaps add Devastation repair +speed and building repair +speed to the trait which currently modifies blocker removal. That trait has no real use after the very early game, and Devastation is relevant for wars and events as well as storms.

I agree with this, and the blocker suggestion is cool, that trait feels really useless indeed. But there are some others too. Maybe give different effects to some underused traits, in your example recovery, in other cases added production during storms from soldiers for example simulating relief teams and such. Some cool ideas might come out of this.

 

[Ilab]

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.

Solid points, but then you might never roll that particular trait. Maybe if they get rolled into existing traits that are underused it will adress two issues at once (one making the underused trait see more use, and the other helping with storms).

 

[mrt1212]

The one hypothetical im kind of worried about at the moment thats developing in my current playthrough - what if youre at the head or tail of a starburst and are the only empire that has storm attraction while everyone else is repelling?

So far, in that playthrough at 2280, everyone but me has put up repulsion nearby and the last 2 storms have basically started near or come towards me.

Soooooo, if I create a storm is it just going to stay put and bounce off the repulsion boundary?

Will find out later tonight and Friday, but I started thinking it based on map position, taking the starting Civic, and after the first rounds of them, am the only one attracting them by the map readout. Will probably report in a standalone thread specifically about this since Im getting to the midgame good stuff while hitting my intetnal marks for 'this is gonna work out'

 

[Ilab]

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.

I also agree in this, storms (both in fleets and planets) should be mitigated but not negated. It removes the thrills, threat and counterplay of them. One idea that occurs to me is that there might be a building that costs a lot to maintain and build that caps devastation to a certain limit. That way protecting all your worlds is extremely expensive and likely not worth it, but you can ensure that certain critical planets are at least somewhat spared. Again, never reducing the impact of storms to 0.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

.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.

You could do an edict, that's only one click to apply to all your planets.

 

[Ilab]

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.

I like the part about "remove it for them" gives me some ideas. I don't know if this would be 'easy' to add sadly, but an interesting idea.