Stellaris Dev Diary #353 - Cosmic Storms Post-Release

[Ilab]

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.

I just want to point out that Planetary Shields already reduce the effects of storms.

 

[HFY]

One more quick thought about different Sector Governor types:

- Commander might give Soldiers some bonus to Devastation recovery.
- Official might give Bureaucrats & Priests that same bonus.
- Scientist might give ... totally a surprise, wait for it ... that same bonus to Researchers.

That gives a bit of an edge to a Commander because they alone create the job which they buff. Note that this also gives a buff to the various storm protection buildings if you drop in a Scientist Governor because they're all about spreading Researchers around. Officials are the default Governor so they get nothing special, except some synergy with Byzantine civic or Spiritualist ethic.

This post is only about the speed of cleaning up Devastation after a storm, not for preventing it or reducing the pain during the storm.



Additional small clean-up buffs for various Civics:

- Zombie Clerks might help clean up Devastation if you're a Permanent Employment MC.
- Regular non-zombie Clerks might help clean up Devastation if you're running Merchant Guilds.
- Farmers do it for Agrarian Idyll.
- Miners help under Mining Guilds.
- Priests chip in for Exalted Priesthood.
- Bureaucrats benefit Byzantine (doubles down for a sector governor Official).
- Slaves for Slaver Guilds (what, a use for slaves?!) -- yes this might make them absurdly robust, which is good because they suck at everything else right now.
- Nobles might feel some obligee under Aristocratic Elite.
- etc.

Not really willing to fight for any of those though.

 

[Ilab]

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.

A nice idea, making use of the situations systems seems like a great addition to me.

 

[FibreglassSam]

Hey Devs,

Great DLC, I've had so much fun navigating the storm environment. Possibly my favourite DLC based on first impressions (machine age was very good, but spoiled a bit by power creep)

A few things that could do with swift changes:

Ships will path-find across the galaxy to avoid stormy sectors.
This seems to be working as intended, but does not work well with gameplay, resulting in having to shift click every stormy system you want your ship to travel through and ships redirecting a previously determined route without player knowledge if a storm moves. Let the player decide to avoid or follow a storm, don't do it for them.

Bug: Galactic Weather Control.
There is already a bug report, but this is one of the core features.

Prison/Penal colonies are later game then ecumenopolis.
This makes no narrative sense or gameplay sense, particularly with the new functionality of prison worlds putting them at the losing end of a direct competition with the ecu.

Choice of Storm
I've seen this requested quite a bit and think it's too strong to be able to choose your storm too reliably, but being able to tip the odds decently in our favour would help us to feel like the true storm summoners we're supposed to become. There is A LOT of tech opportunity-cost to building around the storms, with many techs being flavourless negative effect reductions that are necessary to take as storm chasers, but anti-fun when your enemy gets ahold of them. It feels like all that investment should be rewarded with something powerful and more empowering to the player experience.

All in all, I've found this DLC to be the most fun, but I also can't really finish my game properly until the first two points are addressed, so looking forward to seeing what tweaks you make.

Thank you for your continuing work on the game!

 

[FibreglassSam]

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.

Devastation should be 'devastating'. I'm not sure I can agree that we should have tools to deal with the devastation, given that the other storm negatives can be mitigated at the top of the tech tree.

I wonder if we just need to get more clever as players, build in storm down-time as stormchasers, or play with paired attraction and repulsion to push/pull the storms around, spreading the devastation around.

Either way, I'm not sure I buy the leader-based solution, as the sector mechanics make this blanket fix for all devastation. Perhaps a one per empire planetary edict, so we have to choose which planet we are recovering, one at a time?

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

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

Thats not unreasonable, we'll look into it.

Related, almost shameless plug:
Planetary Shield Generators should give worlds visible planetary shields

 

[Jay Sherman]

mostly me airing my initial thoughts and seeing if I can squeeze some more thoughts out of you ^^;

Love this! <3

 

[Jay Sherman]

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.

We need a way of massively enacting planetary decisions anyway (instead of looping 30 planets clicking Distribute Luxury Goods)

 

[Thiend]

I just want to point out that Planetary Shields already reduce the effects of storms.

Do they reduce devastation gain? Other effects giving storm protection have no impact on that, such as from Planetscapers.

I'm also more referring to capped devastation gain. So shields would make it impossible for it to go above 50% devastation, or a hypothetical leader trait reducing it further with level.

Reducing the amount it can increase to rather than the rate at which it increases makes it possible to have a gradient of success states other than "devastation at 0% and "above 0%". It could, for instance, be generally possible to cap it at 50% - which is economically ruinous to any jobs not massively boosted by the storm, will result in massive stability issues from housing and amenity issues, and disables FTL inhibitors. Lower caps than that, rendering it less destructive to the rest of your economy, could be limited to civics/origins/APs.

 

[Olterin]

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 problem here is that not everyone can pick leader traits, thus in a sense making Galactic Storms  somewhat dependent on also having Galactic Paragons.

Furthermore, it could be made to require a local governor, a sector governor being insufficient.

 

[BrokenSky]

Related, almost shameless plug:
Planetary Shield Generators should give worlds visible planetary shields

There is a mod which does this.

It single-handedly makes me want to actually use them.

 

[SemirDahak]

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.

What about an agenda? Really quick one, like a 1/4 of standard duration, but with some associated mineral/energy cost proportional to empire size

 

[Idle America]

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

*Screams in Unbidden*

 

[Aybara978NE]

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.

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


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.


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

Edit: I see @SemirDahak beat me to this suggestion

What about a council agenda, instead of a planetary decision?

 

[A2ch0n]

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

The use of science ships for espionage (in this case creating storms) is quite cool. But i would still prefer real espionage ships (at best enabled by an fitting AP or civic) to do the job with a far wider variety of operations. And speaking of espionage: Can you give at least a small hint about the loooong ago promised espionage rework?

I know it's somewhere on the custodian list. I really would love to hear at least a small life sign from it. And i guess there is no one better to ask than a custodian team member like you, right?

 

[Calvax]

Prison/Penal colonies are later game then ecumenopolis.
This makes no narrative sense or gameplay sense, particularly with the new functionality of prison worlds putting them at the losing end of a direct competition with the ecu.

I really hope this one gets changed. It’s bizzare that our empires figure out how to build megastructures before figuring out how to put some prisons on a planet.

 

[Ajacoba]

I mean, habitats aren't exactly peak of engineering

They're tiny, they're expensive and they're an awful place to live in

 

[Imp0815]

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.

If fleets weren't an "all-eggs-in-one-basket" mechanic, it would not have this impact, and storms could be more interesting in shaping a frontline. Just sayin'.

 

[LiZinckle]

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.

We already have a sheltering trait which currently only reduces orbital bombardment. I would not say it is useless, because in some cases it nuts, but would love to see it shines a bit brighter.

 

[Ilab]

Do they reduce devastation gain? Other effects giving storm protection have no impact on that, such as from Planetscapers.

I'm also more referring to capped devastation gain. So shields would make it impossible for it to go above 50% devastation, or a hypothetical leader trait reducing it further with level.

Reducing the amount it can increase to rather than the rate at which it increases makes it possible to have a gradient of success states other than "devastation at 0% and "above 0%". It could, for instance, be generally possible to cap it at 50% - which is economically ruinous to any jobs not massively boosted by the storm, will result in massive stability issues from housing and amenity issues, and disables FTL inhibitors. Lower caps than that, rendering it less destructive to the rest of your economy, could be limited to civics/origins/APs.

They reduce gain afik. Agree with you on the rest, it has already been proposed also, guess we will have to wait and see if something is done about it.