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Hello everyone!

Today we aim to shed some light on the upcoming changes for the 1.2 “Asimov” update.

Border Rework
Something we did not like with how Stellaris played out towards the mid-game previous to 1.2, was how that the player tended to get locked in and blocked from exploring or gaining access to the rest of the galaxy.

In the upcoming update we aim to correct that issue by reworking how border access works. By default, everyone will have open border access to other empires’ borders. An empire may close its border through a diplomatic action, and access is denied to your rivals by default.

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We hope that this will make the game feel less constrained towards the mid-game.

Another valuable addition is that when you give your ships or fleet a Return order, but they cannot find a valid path home, you may set them as “Missing in Action”. While ships are missing in action, they will be invisible to you and reappear within your borders within a certain amount of time.

Expansion Cost
To reduce exploits of the open borders, we have chosen to introduce an Influence cost to colonizing planets or building Frontier Outposts. This cost will be based on the range to your closest owned system.

expansion cost.jpg


Embassies & Trust
A significant change in 1.2 is the removal of embassies and the passive opinion increase they provided. In the “Asimov” update, players will have to gain trust by cooperating with the AI. Trust is gained over time by having some sort of treaty with the AI.

Diplomatic Changes
A number of diplomatic statuses that were previously available through trade have now been changed into being Diplomatic Actions available through the diplomacy screen. We felt that some of these actions did not really feel in place, and that they were too hidden, in the trade interface.

diplomacy screen.jpg


We have changed how cooperating with the AI happens. It is no longer as easy to enter into an Alliance with the AI, and you have to start off by gaining their Trust through research agreements, guarantee independence, non-aggression pacts and defensive pacts.

Defensive Pacts are a new diplomatic action that allows two empires to be called into wars if any of them should get attacked.

Joint War Declarations
Another new diplomatic feature is the possibility to invite other empires to your wars. The AI will not join your wars if their Attitude towards you is not at least neutral and they have something they also want from the target.

invite attackers.jpg


All things combined we hope that these changes will make the mid-game feel less static and will open up more possibilities for interesting situations to occur.

Join us again next week for more details about the upcoming 1.2 "Asimov" update!
 
Are some AI personalities more prone to close down borders than others? E.G. a bunch of xenophobic isolationists would probably not let anyone except for allies in, while federation builders would only close down their borders if you are a dangerous warmonger.

Also, is there a war demand to force-open borders?
 
I'll just wait and see, it's a bit vague so far.

Not sure how these changes are supposed to improve diplomacy. Basically instead of sending embassies we'll have to buy trust with unilateral pledges of non-agression and so forth, because unfriendly AI will be unwilling to reciprocate any kind of trade until they're cordial. I don't see how that changes anything, we'll still have to wait until an arbitrary number goes up before we can do anything with diplomacy.

I'm not too enthusiastic about the open borders by default thing either, especially if there is a diplo penalty hit to closing borders. I'd much prefer an AI more willing to open borders to civilian and military ships in exchange for a non-agression pledge, unless they have serious reasons to distrust you or are your enemies. I'd also like to have the option to bully or get bullied into letting ships pass: "either you let me through peacefully, or I go through anyway and carve a path in the ruins on your fleets and stations" kind of thing, a way to make someone open borders under threat of war instead of actually having to declare war like it is now if you want to go through an empire to the other side but aren't concerned by that empire itself.

And please add a checkbox on fleets, "follow that fleet or don't", like in EU IV. I'm tired of the allied fleets sitting on my home system when they declare a war I'm not interested in, instead of having them actually fight their goddamn war. If you're declaring a war to someone on your borders on the other side of the galaxy, go bloody fight them instead of coming all the way to my own fleet and sit on it while everybody is locked in an unending state of war. That checkbox could double as an indication to the AI of how much you're willing to fight that war and let it adjust its demands accordingly on the enemy.
 
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So, why would you choose anything other than unrestricted, apart from ethos limitations? What advantage do you get from choosing liberation or outlawed?
Right now there is a mystery -20 to relations for different war philosophy. This solves/explains that. So pacifist federation builders can band together more easily against nasty aggressors. I also envision everyone will be just more naturally trusting if you are not perceived as an expansionist threat.
 
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You should get only bonuses for being a pacifist. You are the perfect ally to have, willing to back up their friends but highly unlikely to start shit that brings people into a war. Sure militaristic empires might view them as weak but they should recognize its a good deal too.
 
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Will mid/late game lag from horrendous sector AI and other factors be fixed?

Will I have the option to tell my fleets to IGNORE science and mining outposts?

Will I have the ability to grow my fleet in late game beyond the minuscule 1000 cap?

Will I be able to take planets faster than 4-5 planets at a time, twiddle my thumbs for a decade, and then rinse/repeat?

Cuz all that crap is keeping me me from playing this game any more.
 
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Right now there is a mystery -20 to relations for different war philosophy. This solves/explains that. So pacifist federation builders can band together more easily against nasty aggressors. I also envision everyone will be just more naturally trusting if you are not perceived as an expansionist threat.

Obviously I haven't had a go on Asimov yet, so I don't know the deets but right now I'm not seeing that as too big a disadvantage given that we have defensive pacts and the option to invite other empires you join you in a war.

Right now, the game has limited gameplay beyond the early game, outside of starting wars and taring shit up. I don't see how simply making doing the only interesting thing more restricted is going to help.

Maybe later, when the game has more developed mid-game content, internal politics and peacetime gameplay it'll be something worthwhile. Until then, I'm not feelin' it.

Happy to be proven wrong, natch.
 
Will I have the ability to grow my fleet in late game beyond the minuscule 1000 cap?

The 1000 cap is a soft cap, not a hard cap. On my current game my 'full strength' puts my fleet size at roughly 1500. You just need to have the spare mineral and energy income to support the penalty to ship upkeep.

I will admit, though, that as you keep expanding your territory and having to expand your fleets to keep up, this means that eventually the linear growth in income from captured territory will be eclipsed by the exponential growth in ship maintenance costs required to defend that territory, though I can't help but wonder if this was intended to be the case. A way to limit how big an Empire can grow before you have to start claiming vassals in order to expand without leaving vast swaths of territory defenseless.
 
I very much like the fact that voting to expel people from alliances will be introduced. I posted some thoughts about that around the release of the game and I am thrilled that the developpers are adding this idea to the game. Trust is also a welcome addition from EUIV. It should however not entirely replace opinion, but I believe it will be okay.

I would like it if we could forbid specific type of ships from moving in our territory (colony, specifically), but I accept the current project and the way they decided to limit colonization by influence. However, as others, I think there sould now be more base influence.
 
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Speaking of scrolling things... war goals. Oh dear space-lord above. Trying to scroll through available war goals against an alliance or federation is just a nightmare. I'm really hoping Asimov comes with a heaping pile of relevant UI improvements. If you could somehow use a combination of the galaxy/system maps and the Declare War panel to assign goals... mmmph. That'd be so nice. Right now I can barely find a single planet I want ceded or liberated, and then once I manually drag it over, the darn list resets itself.

You think the War Goals panel needs a fix? Have you tried the Create New Fleet panel? Not only it resets with every selection, also if you click too fast, it dissapears...
 
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I'd be happy if the Asimov patch had a single patch note.

  • Sectors actually work now.
for me it would be:
- sectors being controlled by AI is now optional

due to recent experiences, I would also like to see:
- starports are no longer worth warscore
- colonies and starports appear on the galactic map under the system icons
 
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I see one exploit with open borders:

people can send construction ships to the enemy and build defense structures near the space ports and declare war. Thats nearly a GG if all spaceports get killed (except maybe the one where the doom stack is)
 
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Devs just don't seem to actually have played the game they created.

If they had, they would have seen the number of things that need to be fixed. They fix things that don't need a fix or fix "bugs" which are a minor thing. Anyways, i'm off to galciv iii, see ya.
 
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for me it would be:
- sectors being controlled by AI is now optional

due to recent experiences, I would also like to see:
- starports are no longer worth warscore
- colonies and starports appear on the galactic map under the system icons

No to making them optional. But if they're going to have them in the game, then the shouldn't make them a black hole of no-gameplayness and UI frustration.

Anyone who played Moo3 remember these motherfuckers?

loaddevplans.png


or these from Dragon Age?

latest


Put those in for sectors, have the AI actually pay attention to them, and I'll actually want to put my planets in sectors rather than putting off expanding past 5 planets because it means dealing with bloody sectors.
 
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In my opinion and knowledge, this is intentional. I have really strong CPU and 16GB of ram, there is no chance at all they could be the issue.

The "lag" is related to engine not processing some frames and just hanging, dont know why or what is causing that.

I just started playing my first 1000 star game after installing the clarke update and I am at 2450+ without any stuttering so far, what do you consider a strong CPU? I would consider mine fairly weak I suppose, I have an I5-2500k at 4.4GHZ and 16 gigs of ram @ 2400.
 
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So, I admit, this DOES worry me a bit. It sounds in theory like a great idea, but...

For clarity: does this mean more AI empires will be open to Research Agreements BEFORE Alliances? As of now, several have a hard limit and refuse to make many treaties (research in particular) without a pre-existing Alliance.

Also: will the effects of existing treaties on Trust be increased, to make this practical?

Finally, will we be getting ANY increased clarity on the "differing war philosophy" modifier? It's a real obstacle, and it's currently extremely difficult to find what the negotiating partner objects to! Embassies are currently one of the main ways to work around this - but if we could, say, just ASK (or get details on) what the problem actually is, it would be a much better solution.

I thought this referred to pacifist versus militarist, was I wrong?
 
Put those in for sectors, have the AI actually pay attention to them, and I'll actually want to put my planets in sectors rather than putting off expanding past 5 planets because it means dealing with bloody sectors.
yes, maybe there is an ideal version of sectors where we have a complex and detailed interface allowing us to dictate at a macro level every aspect of their development without having to be directly involved in it, and maybe the sector AI will actually do what we tell them and not make horrendously bad decisions for us with no way to do anything about it. maybe.

but until they build that elaborate and complex system, a simple checkbox that says "AI Controlled?" will do just fine and will solve a host of problems instantly with very little work required.
 
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