Stellaris Dev Diary #363 - A Journey of Exploration

[Zagreb 887]

I'm really happy to see that you plan on reworking the trade system. The impact on performance is really a pain!

 

[PK_AZ]

I'm thinking we stay as close to our current model as possible and break them apart by species, faction, ethics, and strata.

...strata? Not job, but strata?

I think pop traits should stay, removing them would be net negative to me. I don't mind if pops are conglomerated like is being suggested but each species should still have defining traits. It one of the reasons the nanotech ascension confuses me, no pop trait to define them as nanomachines. Pop traits really help the roleplay aspect of stellaris I love so much.

I think any form of 'pops conglomeration' will take species into consideration. I.e. you wouldn't have 14 Worker POPs, but rather 8 Human Worker POPs and 6 Blorg Worker POPs.
Problem is actually different. Lets say you have 14 Workers, out of them, 8 humans with +10% to Energy Production, and 6 whatevers with +10% to minerals production. Lets say you have 8 Jobs in generator districts, and 6 jobs in mining districts. How much energy and how much minerals do you produce?

"We’re not likely to go as deep in the simulation as Victoria does,"

Honestly - why not do it deep?

Because such system will replicate Megacorp 'deed' of hijacking the game. In "Galaxy is ancient and full of wonders", there is no mention of calculating whether POP has enough wood, clothes and vodka to be happy.

 

[Ikael]

Tons of super interesting things in this DD, as well in the comments:

- Having read about the Vic 3 pop system, I believe it does indeed sound intriguing. There are, however, many things that still worry me about it, mainly the disappearances of jobs, which are some of the most defining things about space cultures (you can't have a warrior culture without duelists!), and what it would become of planet development and generally talking, the representation of differences between a core world VS a fringe colony. Still, all of that is highly speculative.

- I guess we won't see fleet changes in the short term. As I said before, it is not as if the system is terrible (it is in its probably most balanced state that it has ever been), but warfare (not just combat) is one of the game's weakest links for sure.

- Even as a psionic fan, I would totally understand if the first ascension to get a glow-up would be bio ascension, which is right now the most barebones one. I would also like to add that it would also be a quite good time to update bio-ascension adjacent things like the gene modding interface or the terribly irrelevant species traits.

- I would love to have a trading system centered around establishing actual visible trade routes between different empires, but seeing how the current trade route system is already too taxing for performance, I guess it won't go in that direction. Trade Value would probably be used as a currency to purchase resources on the galactic market or to simulate logistics.

- And the next DD is gonna be juicy as well for sure. The game is great for RP, but I do miss lots of non-murderous fantasies in Stellaris.

This year brought the Expansion Subscription option to make it easier to get into Stellaris, and The Machine Age and 3.12 began the process of elevating the Ascension Paths to new heights. The positive reaction to The Machine Age and the success of the Season 08 Expansion Pass strongly affected our plans for 2025, and made us also reflect upon questions like “what is a Crisis anyway", “what is ‘winning’”, and “can we remaster two very different Ascension Paths in a single year”.

Is that a future victory condition implementation? Oh my goodness. HELL. YES (note: The old "Become the crisis" path or just going through "The end of the Cycle" already felt pretty much like "winning" the game, albeit in a twisted way).

 

[bitmapmedivh]

Tons of super interesting things in this DD, as well in the comments:

- Having read about the Vic 3 pop system, I believe it does indeed sound intriguing. There are, however, many things that still worry me about it, mainly the disappearances of jobs, which are some of the most defining things about space cultures (you can't have a warrior culture without duelists!), and what it would become of planet development and generally talking, the representation of differences between a core world VS a fringe colony. Still, all of that is highly speculative.

Um, jobs are at the very core of the Victoria 3 POP system, they certainly aren't going anywhere I can almost guarantee you that.

 

[Mech_infect]

Because such system will replicate Megacorp 'deed' of hijacking the game. In "Galaxy is ancient and full of wonders", there is no mention of calculating whether POP has enough wood, clothes and vodka to be happy.

I meant social depth in the context of sociology.

However, several different goods at least for role-playing would not hurt. (Maybe I want to play for an evil megacorporation that wants to hook the galaxy on its "painkiller". It is clear that it is a very abstract fantasy, but in order to give role-playing to some sci-fi moments, sometimes you need to add something boring to the picture at the level of "goods on the galactic market")

 

[PK_AZ]

Um, jobs are at the very core of the Victoria 3 POP system, they certainly aren't going anywhere I can almost guarantee you that.

Totally different system.
In Stellaris, building generate Job slots, and when such slot is filled with POP, this slot produce goods according to Job specs.
In Victoria, building has slots for POPs of different Professions, and when building is filled with POPs, this building produce goods according to building specs.

End result is that while in Stellaris there are many, many different Jobs (I counted 25 'standard' ones, and I probably forgot about elites), in Victoria there are only 15 Professions at all, but much more buildings.

And that actually do matter, because
1. Professions are also base for ethics attraction
2. one way to optimize game may be to break relation between POP and concrete building (or Job), instead allowing all buildings to 'borrow workforce' from one combined POP (one per species and profession, of course). It seems Project Caesar will go that way.

I personally doubt Jobs will be removed, or flavored ones will be reduced, but I kinda see where @Ikael worries come from.

 

[Anry de Kornelle]

there is another ai bug that needs to be fixed: when you capture a system with a planet, the ai sends ground troops into orbit around the planet without stopping and puts them into orbit around the planet where the fleet kills them instead of leaving them on the planet

 

[small tree]

Excuse me Are the mysterious ships that used Phase Disruptors to melt the metal on the surface of the metal planet following the bombardment the ones depicted here? (Attached image)
Thank you for your answer

 

[Gilbert95]

Excuse me Are the mysterious ships that used Phase Disruptors to melt the metal on the surface of the metal planet following the bombardment the ones depicted here? (Attached image)
Thank you for your answerView attachment 1220755

First, you are asking a question unrelated to the topic of the post, which is probably why you are being ignored. However, I will attempt to answer it.

You are asking a lore question, not a game mechanics question. The key thing about Stellaris lore is that it is intentionally vague in many places to allow players to interpret it in a way that works for their role play. This ship is gained as a result of an anomaly and the melted metal planet is an archeology site. There is no overt link between these and you can have one without the other. But if it works for what you imagine is going on in your game, go ahead and consider it that they are linked.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Am I the only one worried about the trade changes? I quite liked how it wasn't technically a resource so you could do interesting things with it that wouldn't work for, say, energy credits. Trade policies were also really interesting to me, particularly mutual aid (for in game and out of game reasons, seriously please let shared burdens get it too I'm begging you).

 

[LogicMage]

If my Gestalts might be able to use the new 'trade' system then by all means chuck it out. I'd also like to see all megastructures use the same system that Arc Furnaces and Dyson Swarms use. Including being able to scrap ruined megastructures and build a new one in their place.

 

[joe876]

My suggestions for trade:

Trade routes connect planets, with the planets in a sector connecting to the sector capital, and sector capitals connecting to the empire capital. Planets need to be connected to the trade network to have access to the empire's resources, otherwise they can only access what they themselves produce, like a simplified version of Victoria 3's market access (and, incidentally, also like your "supply lines" suggestion). Commercial Pacts require a trade route between the empires' capitals, which prevents forming pacts with empires you have no access to. Sometimes, planets can have a Trade Commodity that gives some sort of bonus to all connected planets in the trade network. Commercial Pacts allow other empires to take advantage of part of the Commodity's effect. Trade Commodities can represent a variety of goods, from trade goods (i.e. a mining planet discovers a cache of gemstones that have no industrial value, but are quite pretty) to tangible cultural aspects (i.e. a cultural exchange happens and now the other empire wants to wear your blue jeans and listen to your rock music).

Also, I think pop groups are an excellent idea.

Considering the specimens system, i could see something like that, with a planet maybe once developed enough having a "tradeable" good that isnt singular item like a specimen but a product it produces constantly, say a food world make something like the " empire / planet name wine" or "empire / planet name cheese" and these count as better goods in a trade deal, kinda like a trade deal but better, like it gives food and happiness. Another one could be " dark matter crystals" that counts as energy and research.

 

[Ikael]

Um, jobs are at the very core of the Victoria 3 POP system, they certainly aren't going anywhere I can almost guarantee you that.

Thanks for the information, it puts me more at ease. I become a bit tad worried because Eladrin mentioned separate pops by strata, rather than jobs per se. I guess the system will need to be adapted to Stellaris and probably iterated upon, but I would much rather see pops divided on a "species/faction / job" basis, than a "species/ethics / faction / strata" one.

Am I the only one worried about the trade changes? I quite liked how it wasn't technically a resource so you could do interesting things with it that wouldn't work for, say, energy credits. Trade policies were also really interesting to me, particularly mutual aid (for in game and out of game reasons, seriously please let shared burdens get it too I'm begging you).

I am not worried about seeing trade collection and piracy going the way of the Dodo (in fact, I would celebrate it). And I frankly don't care for the whole galactic market / internal market stuff. But I would like for the new system to keep the good aspects of the current trade system, mainly, trade policies and the possibility of doing trade builds (aka, empires that relies on trade in order to get their resources). The more different viable economies we have in the game, the better.

 

[Thiend]

I waited a few days to really assess Decentralized Research before I said anything. My knee-jerk reaction was just "why? It allows you to actually play with artifact stuff to a reasonable degree."

And it does do that, but shouldn't be required for that. I think I agree with removing that specifically, I assume it was a bug to begin with, but I also still think MA need to be way more accessible (I have since they were added).

So I'm in agreement with removing the income from that edict, but I also think the stored cap needs to be doubled, and size-1 deposits of them need to be far more common, AND a lot of the components need to be reduced in cost - all of these simultaneously would leave them still much less than spammable, but they shouldn't be completely unusable either.

 

[Getty]

I completely agree. One of the fun parts of V3 is the fact that you can continuously increase your pops standard of living upwards rather than having it work as a % like happiness. It would really improve the fantasy if my civilisation with near-FE technology had a massive difference in living standards compared to a recent FTL empire that can't be matched with a few +happiness % modifiers

Maybe then we should make "Standard of Living" and "Happiness" different pop stats? Instead of the latter being a pop stat and the former being essentially a pop subcategory.

With Standard of Living affecting species lifespan, happiness. obviously generally requiring greater upkeep but also giving some direct job output and government ethos attraction bonuses.

Whilst Stability has similar effects to what is current, with some general overhaul of rebellion mechanics.

 

[Jekson20level]

I read the comments and answers and realized that the new population system could be absolutely identical for the players in the first iteration. You can group the population by species/ethics/faction/job and keep the same jobs. In a late game with a lot of populations on planets and a lot of specialized worlds, this will give a performance boost.

Already in the second iteration, it is possible to transform the workplace from a place where one pop works to a place where millions work (or any number greater than 1). And at the same time, change the population growth from one random to the growth of each population. (Finally, a dream will come true - to displace everyone with the fertile trait).

In the third iteration, you can get away from the concept of 1 current workplace = X new one. For example, the mining district gives 2× (900 miners and 100 clerks), the planetary administration gives 200 politicians and 100 clerks, and the planetary capital gives 1000 politicians and 500 clerks. This is a matter of balance and economics.

 

[Critical Ethics]

...strata? Not job, but strata?


I think any form of 'pops conglomeration' will take species into consideration. I.e. you wouldn't have 14 Worker POPs, but rather 8 Human Worker POPs and 6 Blorg Worker POPs.
Problem is actually different. Lets say you have 14 Workers, out of them, 8 humans with +10% to Energy Production, and 6 whatevers with +10% to minerals production. Lets say you have 8 Jobs in generator districts, and 6 jobs in mining districts. How much energy and how much minerals do you produce?

That's very easy. 110% energy 110% Minerals.

If you have 8 mines and 6 plants it's a little harder. MinOf(job.size, popswithtrait.size)/job.size gets you the average bonus for each job. So 110% energy, 107.5% minerals.

Where it gets messiest is when you have a mix of boosts on one pop type or boosts that apply to multiple jobs, and also varying quantities of boosts. A fairly naive implementation would be:

On meaningful pop change or job change {
   While (planetpops.assigned < planetpops.size and planetjobs.assigned < planetjobs.size) { 
      Call "find 'best' job+pop pair for planet"
      X = MinOf(bestjob.size - bestjob.assigned, bestpop.size - bestpop.assigned)
      bestjob.assigned += X
      planetjobs.assigned += X
      bestpop.assigned += X
      planetpops.assigned += X
      bestjob.totalpopbonus += (X*bestpop.jobbonus)
   }
   for each job {
      job.avgpopbonus = job.totalpopbonus/job.assigned
   }
}
------------
JobOutputCalc () {
   job.planetoutput = job.assigned * job.output * (1 + job.avgpopbonus + job.otherbonuses)
}

This horrible pseudocode is not a good way to do it (edit: mostly deliberately because this way is easier to read) but it's at worst about as efficient as trying to do the same on a one job one pop pairing.

(Edit: it also doesn't include pseudocode for showing what each pop grouping is producing because that would take ages to type and would also be unreadable in pseudocode but I promise there's a bunch of ways to do it)

 

[diagrapher]

I like the idea of supply lines for resources.

If you do that, might I suggest that not only physical resources need supply lines, at least at low tech levels? It seems to me like, if a supply line system is being built anyway, supply lines for unity and research might make sense as a way for representing a need for FTL communications infrastructure; currently Stellaris mostly seems to assume everyone has near-unlimited cheap FTL comms. And while that's pretty common in space opera it's far from universal; some settings have FTL comms only possible via courier, for example.

I realize that deciding where to put the end points of research and unity supply lines might be a whole other problem you don't want to deal with.

 

[TSBasilisk]

I like the idea of supply lines for resources.

If you do that, might I suggest that not only physical resources need supply lines, at least at low tech levels? It seems to me like, if a supply line system is being built anyway, supply lines for unity and research might make sense as a way for representing a need for FTL communications infrastructure; currently Stellaris mostly seems to assume everyone has near-unlimited cheap FTL comms. And while that's pretty common in space opera it's far from universal; some settings have FTL comms only possible via courier, for example.

I realize that deciding where to put the end points of research and unity supply lines might be a whole other problem you don't want to deal with.

You could maybe bring back an aspect of the capital building limit. A T1 capital limits the ability of scientists/culture reps to share the results with the wider empire. This limits how much they can benefit from empire-wide perks, reducing the planetary production. T2 and T3 buildings offer greater access to the empire and more access to the perks. You could also have a planetary decision to boost access prior to those unlocks in exchange for increased upkeep.

 

[Gilbert95]

That's very easy. 110% energy 110% Minerals.

If you have 8 mines and 6 plants it's a little harder. MinOf(job.size, popswithtrait.size)/job.size gets you the average bonus for each job. So 110% energy, 107.5% minerals.

Where it gets messiest is when you have a mix of boosts on one pop type or boosts that apply to multiple jobs, and also varying quantities of boosts. A fairly naive implementation would be:

On meaningful pop change or job change {
   While (planetpops.assigned < planetpops.size and planetjobs.assigned < planetjobs.size) {
      Call "find 'best' job+pop pair for planet"
      X = MinOf(bestjob.size - bestjob.assigned, bestpop.size - bestpop.assigned)
      bestjob.assigned += X
      planetjobs.assigned += X
      bestpop.assigned += X
      planetpops.assigned += X
      bestjob.totalpopbonus += (X*bestpop.jobbonus)
   }
   for each job {
      job.avgpopbonus = job.totalpopbonus/job.assigned
   }
}
------------
JobOutputCalc () {
   job.planetoutput = job.assigned * job.output * (1 + job.avgpopbonus + job.otherbonuses)
}

This horrible pseudocode is not a good way to do it (edit: mostly deliberately because this way is easier to read) but it's at worst about as efficient as trying to do the same on a one job one pop pairing.

(Edit: it also doesn't include pseudocode for showing what each pop grouping is producing because that would take ages to type and would also be unreadable in pseudocode but I promise there's a bunch of ways to do it)

A big challenge here is the UI. How will players understand what is going on? When a player is contemplating building new jobs from districts or buildings, how can they have an idea of what will happen? Or if they are thinking of (for example) opening a migration treaty that will add a new pop type to the work force.

The current system does have its drawbacks, but a one-to-one correspondence between pops and jobs is relatively easy to understand.