Stellaris Dev Diary #354 - Stellaris 3.13.1 'Vela' Preliminary Release Notes

[Miuramir]

The shroud storm can transform black holes into stars. May I ask if this is just a game setting, or does Shroud Storm really have the ability to transform black holes back into stars?After all, this is truly unbelievable.

If you read the text when it pops up, it says that the storm has swapped out a system object for one from another reality. It's not turning planets molten or shrouded or black holes back into stars, it's swapping places with some alternate reality version where it never became a black hole.

 

[Troyen]

Can you go back to two DLC/year with Season 9? Both this year and last year the aggressive schedule has caused things to break at a faster clip than they can be fixed, and there's apparently not been enough time allocated to finish polishing up feature improvements that were being addressed (e.g. the ongoing ship component bugs or habitat orbital management). The AI quality in particular has also degraded from where it was several patches ago.

 

[Thiend]

Can you go back to two DLC/year with Season 9? Both this year and last year the aggressive schedule has caused things to break at a faster clip than they can be fixed, and there's apparently not been enough time allocated to finish polishing up feature improvements that were being addressed (e.g. the ongoing ship component bugs or habitat orbital management). The AI quality in particular has also degraded from where it was several patches ago.

The canary in the coal mine as far as I'm concerned was the AP having "create" replace "sustain" storm. There is, and I will say this as an absolute, no possible way for that to have happened except that they didn't have time to playtest it literally one single time.

This is probably also how the current way devastation builds up indefinitely (especially for storm-focused empires, but for anyone unlucky unless they're turned off) made it in. That's not a functional part of the gameplay, and it's also the core feature of this entire DLC. One playtest reveals that feature needs adjustment, just like one playtest would reveal that the AP did not work.

I'm not going to say they need to release DLC slower, but if they do continue this pace, they need to plan on playtesting it for both fun and functionality. Or a beta playtest (closed to prepurchasers or open, which might sell it to people who otherwise wouldn't buy it). Either way, this level of QA is... not disastrous yet, but it's not a good trend.

In the past, something releasing badly (Megacorps, Astral Planes, the leader rework, the science rework) has always had me thinking "eh, it'll be fine eventually" - and now they are, mostly. But it really does sound like we're already done with Cosmic Storms patches, and it's still in a state that would be pretty mediocre to have released in the first place in. That's not really encouraging trust to buy things like a season pass when at least one of the things on that list is fundamentally still broken and we're already past the support cycle dedicated to it. It makes me think Grand Archive might be the same, and it makes me think the two ascension paths left with no update from Machine Age might just be left as they are indefinitely... which is basically the point where I start modding more heavily instead of buying DLC.

This is not good.

 

[mrt1212]

I mean, you don't need to cap devastation

Most storms won't bring you to 100 anyways

Between planetary shields and the two origins (does the relief center also effect devastation?) you have enough counters to not hit 100% before the storm leaves and you're ticking down again

Relief center does not affect devastation, it basically increases basic resource worker output which functions like an 'If and Only If' compensation during storms that can potentially offset some devastation effect. It's the 3rd layer behind Repulsion to avoid a storm first, shield gen to mitigate devastation second, relief center to turn lemons into lemonade last. Note that it doesn't affect Trade Value so in our human hands (or I guess or human hands wearing a Void Dweller Lithoid MegaCorp outfit), it's not an obligatory thing to build, but much more situational to the actual settlement's worker demos.

 

[Mole204]

I do have questions.
"The Vela cycle"? There aren't supposed to be so many "updates" to a game. Niven, Herbert, Dick, etc. For one thing, they don't live up to the promise of the name. More importantly, why have so many patches pushed in? Stellaris is supposed to be a completed game, and throwing around intentional "cycle/eras" only creates chaos- and not the entertaining type of chaos. It means upset plans, bad math, yanked game mechanics, and various sabotaged game elements. There's nothing wrong with bugfixes and typo fixes, and Vela has a few listed, but that's not the same as committing to an intentional calendar of "cycles" changes to inflict upon the player's game structure.
If Paradox is, and has, (and likely has), committed to a campaign of disruption against the players, just WHY? Why don't you fix the late game slowdown caused by the population actions that nobody asked for? If you were adding good parts then everyone would be nodding along "Yes, that's immediately better." But instead Paradox's updates always come with destruction, game-math changes, and bugs, crashes, broken modpacks. Why do the "the cruelty is the point" forces inside Paradox hate the Stellaris gamer base, anyway?

 

[KNakamura]

I do have questions.
"The Vela cycle"? There aren't supposed to be so many "updates" to a game. Niven, Herbert, Dick, etc. For one thing, they don't live up to the promise of the name. More importantly, why have so many patches pushed in? Stellaris is supposed to be a completed game, and throwing around intentional "cycle/eras" only creates chaos- and not the entertaining type of chaos. It means upset plans, bad math, yanked game mechanics, and various sabotaged game elements. There's nothing wrong with bugfixes and typo fixes, and Vela has a few listed, but that's not the same as committing to an intentional calendar of "cycles" changes to inflict upon the player's game structure.
If Paradox is, and has, (and likely has), committed to a campaign of disruption against the players, just WHY? Why don't you fix the late game slowdown caused by the population actions that nobody asked for? If you were adding good parts then everyone would be nodding along "Yes, that's immediately better." But instead Paradox's updates always come with destruction, game-math changes, and bugs, crashes, broken modpacks. Why do the "the cruelty is the point" forces inside Paradox hate the Stellaris gamer base, anyway?

Stellaris is a living game, which means near constant updates. It is not a completed game. The rest of your post follows from that inaccurate assumption.

 

[HFY]

Stellaris is supposed to be a completed game

What makes you think that?

 

[mrt1212]

I do have questions.
"The Vela cycle"? There aren't supposed to be so many "updates" to a game. Niven, Herbert, Dick, etc. For one thing, they don't live up to the promise of the name. More importantly, why have so many patches pushed in? Stellaris is supposed to be a completed game, and throwing around intentional "cycle/eras" only creates chaos- and not the entertaining type of chaos. It means upset plans, bad math, yanked game mechanics, and various sabotaged game elements. There's nothing wrong with bugfixes and typo fixes, and Vela has a few listed, but that's not the same as committing to an intentional calendar of "cycles" changes to inflict upon the player's game structure.
If Paradox is, and has, (and likely has), committed to a campaign of disruption against the players, just WHY? Why don't you fix the late game slowdown caused by the population actions that nobody asked for? If you were adding good parts then everyone would be nodding along "Yes, that's immediately better." But instead Paradox's updates always come with destruction, game-math changes, and bugs, crashes, broken modpacks. Why do the "the cruelty is the point" forces inside Paradox hate the Stellaris gamer base, anyway?

This is the kind of post where I'd get fired as a Dev because I'd make an insufferable martyr trait and it'd have the Paradox Forum badge as the icon.

 

[Eladrin]

Can you go back to two DLC/year with Season 9? Both this year and last year the aggressive schedule has caused things to break at a faster clip than they can be fixed, and there's apparently not been enough time allocated to finish polishing up feature improvements that were being addressed (e.g. the ongoing ship component bugs or habitat orbital management). The AI quality in particular has also degraded from where it was several patches ago.

Any fixes that would have been in a standalone 3.13.2 will still be going into 3.14.1. (Including those fixed in the dedicated bugfix days between now and then.)

We've learned a lot from this year, and will definitely be arranging the schedule differently next year.

What is the new size?

Generally planets in Stellaris should have a base planet size between size 15-20, capping out at 25. In extremely limited instances we let them go up to 30.

The Metal and Arboreal World planets are now between size 18-22, the Previously Terraformed planet is size 18-25, and the Collided planet is now size 25-30. The planet modifiers on several of these add extra districts on top of this - the Arboreal World planet modifier has +8 max districts, for example, making it effectively 26-30, and the Collided Planet 29-34.

More importantly, why have so many patches pushed in?

For the last couple of years, we have stuck to a release cadence of one every quarter. Stellaris is a living game and the evolution of the game is part of our promise to the players. If you're on Steam, you can follow the instructions here to stay on a specific release if you prefer stability.

That said, my intention is to slow down a bit after this and concentrate most major gameplay changes in a single release during the year. (Caveat: If there's a release focusing on a mechanic, it's still going to change that mechanic.) For 2026, that's planned for the Q2 release, and I expect that we'll be replacing the normal Q1 release with an Open Beta instead.

Now, that's not to say that if a mechanic isn't working out that we wouldn't change it in, say, a Q4 release. It's a general intention rather than shackles.

 

[Eladrin]

Nothing about pathing through storms

Some save games where this is especially egregious would be really helpful. I've seen some screenshots that are clearly not behaving as expected, so I know it's happening.

Locally, I'm seeing my fleets pathing through storms, though they do tend to minimize the number of jumps in storm systems if possible.

Spoiler

The behavior is tied to a define, FLEET_PATHFINDING_COSMIC_STORM_WEIGHT, that currently adds 100 days to the "cost" per system that has a storm in it, but that shouldn't cause it to take a circuit around the galaxy instead of go through three systems. In my picture, if I sent the ships to Vurul it'll path around the storm, but if Baeeruta is the destination they cut across it.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Generally planets in Stellaris should have a base planet size between size 15-20, capping out at 25. In extremely limited instances we let them go up to 30.

The Metal and Arboreal World planets are now between size 18-22, the Previously Terraformed planet is size 18-25, and the Collided planet is now size 25-30. The planet modifiers on several of these add extra districts on top of this - the Arboreal World planet modifier has +8 max districts, for example, making it effectively 26-30, and the Collided Planet 29-34.

So they're more in line with the other planets then.

I suppose using Astrocreator Azaryn terraforming on a Deceptive Giant remains the only way of getting a size 50 world after all.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

So they're more in line with the other planets then.

I suppose using Astrocreator Azaryn terraforming on a Deceptive Giant remains the only way of getting a size 50 world after all.

I thought we fixed that bug - will make a note to investigate it during the next dedicated bugfix day.

 

[Ajacoba]

Never mention exploits to the devs >w<

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Never mention exploits to the devs >w<

On the contrary, tell us all the exploits you find!

 

[Lorenerd11]

Never mention exploits to the devs >w<

Truth be told I was getting a little annoyed with something like this only being available to non-gestalts.

Gestalts in general should be able to get paragons and destiny traits, it's not fair

 

[Ajacoba]

Truth be told I was getting a little annoyed with something like this only being available to non-gestalts.

Gestalts in general should be able to get paragons and destiny traits, it's not fair

There a few machine and astral rift guys who don't care if you're a hivemind

Grey and the Oracle for example

Also that cute blessed warform

I assume the guy stranded in an astral rift may join you too?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Yeah, but we should still be able to get destiny traits on some of our own leaders, and maybe some of the renowned and legendary paragons.

Why would Aturion contact xenophobic aliens but not fellow machines? Why wouldn't Astrocreator Azaryn contact a hive? Why can't gestalts assist and then recruit Skrand Sharpbeak, only try to seize the vessel and risk it becoming hostile?

And why wouldn't Rogue Servitors or Empath hives raise Kaides rather than deem him "not their responsibility"?

 

[Rafss]

Whoa I wasn't expecting such a huge nerf, the Collided Planet is almost 2 planets, I wouldn't mind leaving it at size 30-40 at least.

Seems the last bastion of big planets will be zeya, the Formless' Gaia World at azilash, size 40.

 

[HFY]

Why would Aturion contact xenophobic aliens but not fellow machines?

Xenophobe Xeno Paragons really bother me.

I get why someone needed that box checked, but if I'm playing a Xenophobe, then I'm not hiring Xenos to lead the empire.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Xenophobe Xeno Paragons really bother me.

I get why someone needed that box checked, but if I'm playing a Xenophobe, then I'm not hiring Xenos to lead the empire.

It feels weird in some other ways too. Aturion feels like they'd be a better fit for an authoritarian empire rather than a xenophobic one.

And for xenophobe paragons, it'd make the most sense for them to be non-councilor paragons. Gia'Zumon would actually be a fitting xenophobe paragon - a foreign warlord whose primary service to your empire is to destroy your enemies and bring you xeno slaves. Kept on the war front, not in your empire's council.

But then that would require even more paragon reshuffling, and I can see that being hard to do.