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

[pikasnoop]

Related to the FE requesting a scientist from a astral rift, some caravaneers requested a science ship, took it from a rift and ejected the leader. I also cannot continue the rift. Would you like a bug report? The only Save I can provide is years later (ironman).

 

[pikasnoop]

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

View attachment 1189984

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.

100 days is fine early game, but you can go immensely far in 100 during late game. Especially if hyper relays are involved.

 

[Ajacoba]

100 days is fine early game, but you can go immensely far in 100 during late game. Especially if hyper relays are involved.

It's 100 days plus the time they would need to get through that system though

 

[M@ni@c]

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

Shouldn't this behavior be decided per storm type instead of as general define? While I may not want my ships to path through a Nexus Storm, I do want them to intentionally path through an Electric Storm.

On a similar topic, ship pathing currently does not take into account local effects such as ship speed reduction from a nebula. Would be nice if this was addressed in a more general pathing update.

 

[pikasnoop]

It's 100 days plus the time they would need to get through that system though

Point still stands. I checked a new game and my current game. New game needed on average 60 days per system, current game 14.

Meaning that late game, pathfinding would prefer 9 hyperlanes (9*14=126) over two lanes if the middle lane has a storm in it (100+14*2=128). Now imagine if the fleet is in system 4 and a storm moves into system 8.

Edit: early game fleets would not even go 2 extra lanes: 2*70+100=240, while 4*70=280.

 

[athalusgc]

I have a crew that I regularly play multiplayer with 2-3 times a week, the same guys every time. One of us was very excited to play storm rider, but all 3 of our games since this DLC came out have had storms stuck at 0 days, and seemingly they stay in his empire and never leave. We've had to resort to stopping our multiplayer, loading the save and console command killing the 0-day storm. Toggling attraction/repulsion edicts sometimes causes the storm to disappear if it's at 0 days, but it's hit or miss. We're considering turning off storms until this is fixed as there's seemingly no counterplay other than going a storm-repulsion empire. Please consider adding some kind of master-kill switch that terminates a storm at 0 days no matter what other conditions are present, if the intent truly is for them to dissipate at 0 days remaining.

 

[Methone]

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.

Or just get rid of the paragons entirely. Their stupid, nonsensical backstories where they pop into existence from empires and orders that don't exist, with accomplishments that never occurred.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

In my last game, my ships refused to enter storm systems regardless of how much longer it took to go around. I even had a fleet choose to path a route that would have taken over 1,200 days to complete when pathing through the storm would have taken less than 300 days. It wasn't even a danger to the fleet, since I had already researched all storm related techs for a normal empire. This wasn't the only incident, but it was the most egregious one. I resorted to queing orders for my ships to move to each individual system just to get them to move through a storm.

Come to think of it, I am not even sure if the ship damage effects of storms even work. I had ships sitting inside storms without taking any shield, armor, or hull damage even when I didn't have any storm techs researched yet.

 

[GCaelann]

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

I really hope you're kidding because it's such a convoluted process to get it done either via Azaryn or Wormy that it honestly deserves having a cheevo for accomplishing the feat.

 

[Ajacoba]

Or just get rid of the paragons entirely. Their stupid, nonsensical backstories where they pop into existence from empires and orders that don't exist, with accomplishments that never occurred.

just because you haven't met them doesn't mean they aren't real
and some of them are from destroyed factions, are just pirates or are from enclaves

 

[Rafss]

Or just get rid of the paragons entirely. Their stupid, nonsensical backstories where they pop into existence from empires and orders that don't exist, with accomplishments that never occurred.

 

[HFY]

View attachment 1190264

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Okay but regarding storms, I'm taking back a few of the nice things that I said recently, because I played an empire with different flag colors:

My eyes are old and imperfect. Don't make me squint at the screen to see if a system has a storm. Please make the storms visible even on lighter-colored backgrounds.


Also, show the storm info in the hover-text for the system:

Most of that information is worthless to me. I don't care if you decided to call it a "mining system", that has no game effect. The influence intensity is not entirely worthless but it's very low-value compared to whether a storm is in the system right now.

(Spoiler: a storm is in that system right now.)

Executive Summary:
- Storm icons should have more space allocated to the storm type, and less to the border shape.
- Storm icons should be higher contrast -- yellow on black, or red on white, but not red on black.
- The galactic map should show storm icons on affected systems instead of an animation which is potentially difficult to see.

Fewer galactic map animations might also speed up late-game play, but it's not that slow for me, so I dunno.

 

[Methone]

just because you haven't met them doesn't mean they aren't real
and some of them are from destroyed factions, are just pirates or are from enclaves

Then where are those enclaves? Where's that pacifist-woman's sisterhood? Where are the enemies who destroyed that militarist-captain's noble house? What are the crimes we 'totally know about' that authoritarian-spymaster did? The answer is nowhere and nothing, because it's poorly written and shouldn't have been done.

 

[Methone]

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.

Aye aye, capn! Just posted one into Bug Reports. It seems to be related to queuing; in the picture attached I have a Construction Ship (red circle) queued to first build an Outpost (Green Circle) and then move to build an Observation Post (Blue Circle).

 

[Ajacoba]

Then where are those enclaves? Where's that pacifist-woman's sisterhood? Where are the enemies who destroyed that militarist-captain's noble house? What are the crimes we 'totally know about' that authoritarian-spymaster did? The answer is nowhere and nothing, because it's poorly written and shouldn't have been done.

All empires constantly have piracy and spy activities going on behind the screens
The enclave of the tinkerers is pretty much guaranteed to spawn in most runs

And the enemies that destroyed the noble can just leave and hide among the other pirates, their fleet doesn't need a real presence on the map

And the other guys can just be from unexplored areas of the galaxy, from star systems that aren't directly linked to the main map (like Dacha for example) or from areas too small and insignificant to be recorded

You just lack imagination, the devs don't have to dictate the lore of your universe to you in a game with suspension of disbelief and the expressed purpose of coming up with your explanations and motivations

Between stuff like emergency jumps and experimental jumps there's enough low tech options for traveling without hyper lanes

And stuff from outside of known space has always existed, like the pirates who took hostages and need saving, or the enemies of the guys living inside a gas planet, the merchant selling you your own scouting vessel in that silly quest where your empire realizes "wait, we send capsules with highly certified knowledge into space, maybe we should reclaim those" and to a degree the quest with the religious fanatics who found a shipyard and started building their own fleets for a rebellion

Anomalies in general are also just things you got lucky enough to find, technically speaking all anomalies you fail to roll still exist within the game, your scientists just never noticed the signs on their scanning reports

There's also cases like the vultaum where your empire type gives you contradicting secrets - normal empires are neutral, machine hives conclude that it's demonstrable nonsense and fanatic materialists conclude that the simulation theory is demonstrable truth - or the question if robots have souls, if you're playing spiritualists the answer is a strict no, if you play anyone else it's a philosophical question you can just answer with yes the moment a buggy robot asks it, meanwhile the shaper of clay would probably also say yes

There are countless things in space that can fly under the radar of your empire because we manage it on such a high and extensive level that most of those smaller events in the paragon backstories aren't worth being recorded - just like science vessels and fleets are crewed by a faceless group of nobodies who aren't worthy being mentioned until one of them gets highlighted in an event

 

[Methone]

All empires constantly have piracy and spy activities going on behind the screens
The enclave of the tinkerers is pretty much guaranteed to spawn in most runs

And the enemies that destroyed the noble can just leave and hide among the other pirates, their fleet doesn't need a real presence on the map

And the other guys can just be from unexplored areas of the galaxy, from star systems that aren't directly linked to the main map (like Dacha for example) or from areas too small and insignificant to be recorded

You just lack imagination, the devs don't have to dictate the lore of your universe to you in a game with suspension of disbelief and the expressed purpose of coming up with your explanations and motivations

Between stuff like emergency jumps and experimental jumps there's enough low tech options for traveling without hyper lanes

And stuff from outside of known space has always existed, like the pirates who took hostages and need saving, or the enemies of the guys living inside a gas planet, the merchant selling you your own scouting vessel in that silly quest where your empire realizes "wait, we send capsules with highly certified knowledge into space, maybe we should reclaim those" and to a degree the quest with the religious fanatics who found a shipyard and started building their own fleets for a rebellion

Anomalies in general are also just things you got lucky enough to find, technically speaking all anomalies you fail to roll still exist within the game, your scientists just never noticed the signs on their scanning reports

There's also cases like the vultaum where your empire type gives you contradicting secrets - normal empires are neutral, machine hives conclude that it's demonstrable nonsense and fanatic materialists conclude that the simulation theory is demonstrable truth - or the question if robots have souls, if you're playing spiritualists the answer is a strict no, if you play anyone else it's a philosophical question you can just answer with yes the moment a buggy robot asks it, meanwhile the shaper of clay would probably also say yes

There are countless things in space that can fly under the radar of your empire because we manage it on such a high and extensive level that most of those smaller events in the paragon backstories aren't worth being recorded - just like science vessels and fleets are crewed by a faceless group of nobodies who aren't worthy being mentioned until one of them gets highlighted in an event

I guess I could refute this. But you wouldn't listen if I did, would you? You seem the type, Mr. "Oh they ALL just so HAPPEN to be from the outside spaces".

Edit: Nevermind it's an entire DLC billed about our leaders, but the 'big feature' is these rando leaders who show up out of thin air.

 

[Rafss]

I guess I could refute this. But you wouldn't listen if I did, would you? You seem the type, Mr. "Oh they ALL just so HAPPEN to be from the outside spaces".

Edit: Nevermind it's an entire DLC billed about our leaders, but the 'big feature' is these rando leaders who show up out of thin air.

I guess that is why Paragons is not about internal politics, the brightest minds could not come from your filthy ranks even if you were a hundred fifty years old erudite necrophages on a cosmogenesis technocracy who beaten a transgalactic crisis and explored extradimensional planes while having an Amoeba as national pet; no there is not a drop of brilliance on your people.

 

[Lorenerd11]

I guess that is why Paragons is not about internal politics, the brightest minds could not come from your filthy ranks even if you were a hundred fifty years old erudite necrophages on a cosmogenesis technocracy who beaten a transgalactic crisis and explored extradimensional planes while having an Amoeba as national pet; no there is not a drop of brilliance on your people.

I mean, the problem with that is that you'd need to design "unique leader" portraits for every single species portrait, a feat I suspect Paradox does not quite have the resources for. That or just use generic species portraits, in which case it just looks underwhelming.

Could there be more random "brilliant leader" events? Maybe. But there's a limit to how much you could do with that, too.

 

[Ajacoba]

I guess that is why Paragons is not about internal politics, the brightest minds could not come from your filthy ranks even if you were a hundred fifty years old erudite necrophages on a cosmogenesis technocracy who beaten a transgalactic crisis and explored extradimensional planes while having an Amoeba as national pet; no there is not a drop of brilliance on your people.

Isn't that what the high level unique traits are for?

 

[Revengeance_oov]

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.

This is supremely disappointing. With all the janky stuff introduced by Cosmic Storms (pathing issues, out of control devastation, terrible AI handling, overloaded tech tree, horrendously bugged and/or useless Precursors), the monstrously large planets were the only attraction (though I could see dropping them to 30 and 40, respectively). Going forward I'm liable to just deactivate Cosmic Storms, and regret buying the Season Pass.