Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen

[malakhglitch]

Biological and Psionic Ascension

Agreed as long as it doesn't swing the pendulum too far again.

Warfare and War Resolution

Yes please.

Biological Ships

We already have the crashed living ship anomaly in addition to the mutated space fauna, so there should be enough material to allow for this.

Factions and Politics

That sounds good. For machines it could be something like the Laws of Robotics vs the Zeroth Law. We also have a lore example; the Cybrex schism. Hives could have instincts or urges; propagation, absorption, symbiosis, etc.

Espionage

Oh thank God...

Playable Nomads

Was never much into the trope, but it can prove to be interesting to play a nomadic civilization

Pirates and Crime

Space piracy is pretty much an established trope as well as dystopian crime.

Species Packs

I do believe that a lot more could be done for the already released packs instead of just piling up new species packs.

Scenarios

We already have something like this to a lesser extent; the demands/requests of the FE. Expanding on those through sounds good.

 

[Xeridanus]

As long as I can play nomadic bioships, I'm happy.

 

[Idle America]

Sure you're not on the "no retreat" naval doctrine?

I don't have any naval doctrines available, since I never did Supremacy.

Lost less than half my ships in this battle, but the whole fleet, which was half my navy, was deleted. Apparently, there's a bug where if you don't manually order the retreat, they don't actually retreat at all and just die.

 

[Idle America]

“Scenarios” are another proposal that I’ve seen a number of times over the years - would it be interesting to have scripted game modes with custom rules, and events already in motion?

Just gonna leave this here...

 

[Farwanderer]

You know my suggestion for reworking colonization to be system-based rather than planet-based would quite nicely solve all of those potential problems with more species options,

Anyway, I'm excited for everything on this list. Scenarios are the only thing I was initially hesitant about, but then I realized that story-based origins already are essentially this, and I've liked most of those. Having them in a dedicated category, with the option for ones that affect multiple empires, would be kind of neat.

Ascensions are probably the thing I'm most excited about, and I do have a request/suggestion on that front: it would be really neat for materialists and/or robots to have a science-based path to Psionics and the Shroud. Lore-wise we know it's possible based Become the Crisis, I'd love to have a way to do it without ending the galaxy. Sort of a mirror to Cybernetic Creed.

 

[Arduunos]

Maybe I misread the last dev post, but I held off on talking about player fantasies because I thought this one would be a survey about that! My bad, I guess. Assuming that the headers are sort of like the leading questions from the last one, here are some thoughts from one player...

Biological and Psionic Ascension:

I don't think any players will mind them being in separate packs, as long as they both get the same care and attention that mechanical ascension gets. My big gripe with them as a player is that it's very hard to start out with a biological Ascension in mind, unless you go with the Shroudwalker origin. My one big worry is that, because Psionics is a very specific thing in Stellaris's Shroud lore, a Psionics revamp might lock out the possibility of exploring other kinds of psionic fantasies (like making a Jedi Empire or something like that). Genetics I'm just really excited to see how you differentiate it from Cybernetics. I'd love to get some cool Stellaris-specific lore for them the way you did with the new Machine Age crises. I feel like there's a lot of potential especially to weave together Hive Minds and Biological Ascension, but I wouldn't want to be beholden to that combination.

Warfare and War Resolution:

Fluidity and betrayal would not have been what I requested as a player, but now that you've mentioned it, I will miss having it! For me the biggest problem with Warfare is that Espionage, Diplomacy, and Trade are not valid ways to end it. It's always about having the biggest fleet and the best layout of chokepoints. That's fun for Martial Empires, but not particularly fun or interesting if you're trying to play another kind of Empire. It would be nice to be able to buy systems, negotiate truces, and sabotage your enemies as an alternative to fleet power.

Biological Ships:

This is cool and interesting, but I honestly wouldn't put it as a priority, personally. Though if you add Biological Ships, an extra city set to go with it would be extremely cool! I could see my Cybernetics Empires taking advantage of this in some way as an interesting player fantasy. Someone in another recent thread mentioned wanting a miniature version of a Hive Mind, and a Leader bound to their ship would be an interesting way to pull that off.

Factions and Politics and Gestalt Instincts:

Totally agree that it internal and external politics would have to be part of the same overhaul. As someone who used to love Hive Minds and now struggle to enjoy them, eventually having to deal with schisms and instincts in the Hive I think would bring back a lot of enjoyment for me. One thing I desperately want is to be able to pick the Ethics of my Hive Mind, and that would pair nicely with a Hive Mind capable of ethical drift like this brainstorm implies!

Espionage:

Putting a pin in your idea from Factions and Politics and putting it here - the one thing I really, really, really want to do with Espionage is use it to influence other Empires' ethics, factions and internal politics. That's the core Espionage fantasy, isn't it? Infiltration and propaganda? It's a bit weird that we can do that with pre-FTLs but not with other Empires. The other downside of Espionage right now is that you don't seem to really... get much... for how much time and Influence you put into operations. They just don't seem worth it, so I end up ignoring it, even though I think it's neat.

Playable Nomads and Piracy:

YES. My biggest request here would be to allow multiple of them at the same time. Only being able to have two Void Dwellers in a game together makes it hard to pull of any kind of galactic fantasy where scrappy space settlers are a common thing. If we get playable Nomads, could we also get some unique interactions between them and the game's existing Enclaves? Trade Empires especially would benefit from nomadic gameplay. In general, Trade Empires feel underdeveloped compared to other government types, so giving them a lot of unique features for nomadic gameplay (like building their own Enclaves) would really help with that. Ditto for Piracy. Giving Corporations their own unique gameplay around Piracy would make them a lot more appealing. I feel like these four themes (trade, piracy, nomadism, enclaves) bundle together well.

Species Packs:

When I think of scifi energy beings, I definitely do not think of fantasy elementals. I think of something like the Ancients from Stargate or the Medusans and holograms from Star Trek. Having the option to live on Molten Worlds or Barren Worlds sounds really awesome, but I would rather have those as a habitability feature for, say, Lithoids than get a molten/frozen species pack. The scifi fantasy for energy beings to me is more about noncorporeality, "pure energy" (electricity? photons? techy things like that), and transcendence! We already have an aspect of Elementals with Aquatics, Plantoids, and Lithoids.

Scenarios:

This one sounds neat, but as someone who likes to make sandbox galaxies, also makes me nervous. I'm not sure what's meaningfully different between this and just adding more Origins. One thing my friends and I talk about a lot is how much we want the ability to force-spawn our custom empires as Advanced, Fallen Empire, or pre-FTLs in addition to the already-existing options. What you describe instead sounds like it should cater to my playstyle but would, in practice, be pre-packaged Stellaris-specific starts instead. I would LOVE to be able to just have these options in the force-spawn toggle box. So: yes to being able to customize starting scenarios, no to them having limited customization in the way that Origins do.

What Did I Miss?:

Exploration! The game has lots of awesome content for exploration, but if you are playable a peaceful empire (say, tall traders or pacifistic Federation-builders) you are never going to expand wide enough to actually experience it. On the flipside, if you play warlike authoritarians, you get a bunch of archaeology sites and astral rifts that your space-conquerers probably do not care much about. I want to explore on my peaceful space explorers, but exploration sites are inaccessible to them and tall mechanics favor military entrenchment. This feels weird and backwards.

I'd love to have more trait picks, more civic slots, and more options in general for my preferred sandbox style of gameplay. Since 'Natural Design' came out, it inevitably eats up one of only two civic slots because the balance feels like it should be vanilla. Three civics feels like it needs to be available at start just to make interesting RP empires. And it's frustrating to not be able to replace Tradition Trees or Ascension Perks if you realize you picked the wrong one for your Empire. I know that there are mods for these, but I'd love to just have a tiny bit more customization.

There are a few player fantasies that Stellaris does not cater to (yet), but I'm not sure that those are very high priorities. I really want to play out a scenario where space is (mostly) barren except for archaeology sites and hints of Stellaris's ancient aliens until you encounter a Crisis scenario, but the habitable planet sliders just don't go down that far. Trade Empires also feel like they don't play meaningfully differently from other government types, but some of your proposed changes above (piracy! corporate espionage! nomadic trade fleets!) could help with that, I hope.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

Thinking about nomads.

What about hybrid nomads that work symbiotically with an allied empire?

In my mind, the moment you start running a planet's administration (even if you enslave the pops there) you stop being a nomad.
Thus I think these nomads present interesting unique opportunities for ground combat since they would not conquer planets to run them. A lot of "Unique" events could happen when they do ground combat that wouldn't hinder them as much as they would a regular empire (since they have less "clutter" of things for the player to do and less systems to interact with).

For example, you might run your nomads as a chapter of SPACE MARINES that doesn't govern any of their allied (traditional) empire's planets, the Imperium of Man. They still recruit from their worlds, and in time of war, they engage the enemy and conquer worlds in the imperium's name. And they increase their glory and fame every time they unload their troops on an enemy world and manage to kill their leaders in singular combat.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

I think scenarios would be fun, I'd be interested in a good scenario pack, but if you do something like that (or a scenario pack DLC) i want a good number of those and not just like "4 scenario pack". I want many scenarios if there's a pack!

Some are going to say "Noooo let the scenarios be made by modders" but I do like stuff that's made by actual devs and that won't break down with every update (or at least have a guarantee that it'll be repaired) or that will be discontinued when the modders get tired.

By all means give modders the ability to make scenarios but it's not mutually exclusive with official scenarios.

I know Scenarios can't exactly always be origins because the idea is to make a single empire be the entire focus and there's no need to balance around that, but perhaps origins have better replayability and you can give them to AI so there's that to keep in mind.

 

[Arduunos]

Reading through more posts, some stuff other people suggested that I 100% agree with:

It would be nice to be able to select all habitability (Toxic, Molten, Frozen, Barren, Tomb, etc.) at the homeworld design screen, instead of having it be locked behind specific origins or species types. Bonuses for these, maybe, but not locked behind them. I wish I could live on toxic planets without having to do the Toxic God origin or spend the Ascension Perk on it. I wish I could drop my Lithoids or Robots on a molten world. Ice worlds are already an option - maybe allow species with this homeworld type to have a slight bonus for frozen worlds? I like this way better than having it be a unique species type.

We really, really, really, really need more QoL passes for good guy Empires. The game mechanics force you to play martial no matter what, and the setting lore makes the fantasy of good guy psions feel... weird to impossible. Let's say you want to play Vulcans or Jedi with Psionics; the existing system makes them into Sith Lords worshiping eldritch horrors. Maybe you want to make a Na'vi ispired hivemind using Tree of Life? It's a bit tough to do fantasies of that nature. And forget playing the Federation of Planets negotiating with your neighbors instead of warring with them when every event in the game is solved with fleet power.

Trade Empires need a lot more love than they are currently getting. Nomadic gameplay and piracy are perfect for this!

I have no idea what kind of scifi you all are reading/watching if you don't have any scifi ideas for energy beings, honestly. This is such a staple of the science fiction genre that it's a bit strange you go right to the idea that they have to be elementals. Maybe the dev team should do some media research for ideas? Watch through a season of Star Trek or the Ancients plotline in Stargate. Give us photon constructs that eat energy credits, ball lightning that gets power from cosmic storms, glimmers of light that can only speak through psionic contact, ascended masters immune to other ascencion paths but empowered with unique traits. The possibilities are there.

Reiterating that scenarios will only be cool if they let us customize the Empires in question. The appeal of custom starting states goes away completely if it's just another story pack we have no actual control over. A simple expansion of the force-spawn toggle box would be ideal.

 

[Argun2012]

Really pleased to see this amount of ambition and ‘big picture’ thinking, and the areas mentioned by devs and players are all ones I’d go along with. For me

Politics & Factions

I hope the rework is based on ethics and government. If I’m a feudal realm, my internal politics should be based on fractious noble houses, if I’m a democracy it should be based around electoral parties, etc. Would really help make different empires feel more distinct

Espionage

My ‘player fantasy’ involves being the Dominion, so espionage is a bit of a damp squib at the moment, as I can’t infiltrate and replace key leaders of my rivals, and use them to start wars etc.

Trade

Never mind the level of micro and strength of trade, it’s just too abstract. Why does this random star system have 8 ‘trade value’? I’d be a lot more invested if it was because it had rare spices that were desired by other empires. And on other empires, it seems weird that trade is purely an internal system

Ground combat

Never gonna happen, I know, but ship combat gets so much eye candy, and us grunts on the ground have little bobbing circles to look at. Even replacing the circles with little species portraits/sprites would be something. Might also make planet class a bit more relevant if, for example, my aquatic species couldn’t fight effectively in deserts. Definitely don’t want a return of adding little modifiers onto individual armies though

 

[Archael90]

My blorg, the developers said that fauna is nothing more than funny pets back in the very first diary associated with them
They won't create anything super-powerful until it comes to real biological ships

Yeah... but there are: origin, civics, and entire tradition dedicated to them. If Fauna fleets are not suppoused to be vailable even with all this, then there is no point of its whole existance, so why bother with development time and resources to create all of this rather than put some minor buffs to already existing things, and spend this time to fix more bugs or at the very least for partying? Right now creating beastmaster/wild swarm civics, domestication tradition and primal calling origin was just a waste of time, all of them are useless on their own and at top of that - are useless combined, even if combined with cordyceptic drones, or other resurrection civics.
Yeah, fauna are just little, unimportant pets. But this means all those features are useless.

 

[Archael90]

If you do Biological Ships, I think you should also revisit the space fauna ship system. Sure fauna aren't quite the same, but if we're an empire that can grow and nurture our own ships to live on, we should be able to do the same for fauna. They should use a similar ship growth system (with perhaps fauna being a limited version of it) rather than two distinct systems managed completely independently from one another.

That's also my request for many of the other changes. As you work on reworking systems, see how they can be integrated with other mechanics in the game. I'd rather have five mechanical systems that can accomplish 20 different things than 20 systems that each do one individual thing because DLC kept them self-contained. I know you don't like stacking systems behind multiple layers of DLC, but between the bundles and now the expansion pass, mechanics that interact with the rest of the system or other DLC mechanics tend to make the game feel more cohesive. It's more clunky when they're isolated, like how the GDF ships are designed separately from regular ships which use a different designer than the federation ships.

Something else I don't see on your list is diplomacy. There is a lot of legacy AI diplomacy logic (especially in the galcom which is using resolution weights from 2.6) which feels very out of date. Nobody wants to vote for a focus crisis resolution even if they're currently being bombed by an awakened empire because they're too afraid to anger their attackers (-700% penalty), but everyone will happily vote for the first custodian to nominate themselves as long as any crisis exists. Everyone wants to dive down the mercenary resolution line, even empires that wouldn't really benefit from it. Every empire also wants to rival the first empire they meet for the influence bonus, even if ethics would suggest they should band together instead. The easiest way to influence an AI diplomatically is by rivaling their rivals to make them like you. Better AI diplomacy would help keep the game more varied and also more believable.

Also, can you please make envoys immortal (outside events) as a QoL change, or at least auto-replace them when they die? It's annoying to think your envoys are assigned only to find out you're not actually building infiltration/relations anymore because your envoy died from old age without any notification.

Agree.
Game mechanics should be unified, and DLCs should only expand their effects.
New stuff should be rare, expansion of existing ones should be more common. Otherwise it creates too much bugs, incompatibilities and unexpected behaviours.

 

[Mech_infect]

"
Biological Ships
While rearing and mutating space fauna was added to Stellaris in the Grand Archive story pack, I feel that it’s not the same fantasy as true bioships. These are vessels that your people grow and fly around in, or that have more symbiotic relationships with their pilots. I think those systems would probably pair nicely alongside Biological Ascension.
"

regarding bio ships and bio ascension

a very good and accurate implementation of this sci-fi trope would be a bio-megastructure, bio stations in space and bio EVERYTHING.

(a relatively new demonstration of this in media is the bio station in Guardians of the Galaxy 3)

 

[Archael90]

"
Biological Ships
While rearing and mutating space fauna was added to Stellaris in the Grand Archive story pack, I feel that it’s not the same fantasy as true bioships. These are vessels that your people grow and fly around in, or that have more symbiotic relationships with their pilots. I think those systems would probably pair nicely alongside Biological Ascension.
"

regarding bio ships and bio ascension

a very good and accurate implementation of this sci-fi trope would be a bio-megastructure, bio stations in space and bio EVERYTHING.

(a relatively new demonstration of this in media is the bio station in Guardians of the Galaxy 3)

Stellaris have that all in case of Prethoryn

 

[Mech_infect]

Stellaris have that all in case of Prethoryn

Well, not bad.

What about if the player can play it before the crisis, then with this crisis get unique interactions and with active participation unique improvements, genes, components, unique SOMETHING in general.

Tell me, what are the fundamental disadvantages here?

 

[M@ni@c]

Factions and Politics
If we were to do something along those lines, I’d also want to add some variant of factions to Gestalt empires - maybe Instincts for Hives that grow more dominant based on your behavior or Directives that compete for priority in Machine Intelligences.

The idea of Instincts and Directives seems like something that would be better presented by giving more powerful traits to the Council Nodes. No need for factions there. There has already been a trend towards making the gameplay of gestalt and non-gestalt empires more similar - think of the machine habitability change. I'm not sure it's a good trend.

 

[RoboticManiac]

I'm desperately craving an internal politics expansion. Factions and Politics would be great.

 

[Perimal]

Having read (or skimmed) through the previous posts I'll add my tuppence-worth.

1) STOP the power-creep.

2) STOP THE POWER CREEP.

3) Please bring the Ascensions back into broad balance - preferably by both upgrading the Organic (minly) and the Psionic Ascensions (slightly, but please keep the randomness of the Shroud) and also by nerfing the machine Ascensions so they are no longer the only way to go. Also the Synaptic Lathe is (morally speaking) an Abomination which should be really nerfed - how about my making it a trigger for all the Fallen Empires in the Galaxy to declare war on you, give -1000 opinion to all decent xenophile/spiritual Empires. i.e. treat it like a colossus.

4) I like the idea of revamped trade, but at he very least get caravaneers to route away from Marauders, Devouring Swarms etc. (perhaps give them a reduced change for crossing such territory - say halving for each system that needs to be crossed). It this means some Empires cannot be served then so be it.

5) Bring back the ability to scrap ships, but this time you get back only 30% of the material value (this could be increased by techs/leader skills). Obviously, if you don't knw what to do with them you cannot reclaim motes, gas, crystals, etc. Where there is tech to be discovered then you should either get just research points or, if lucky, a start at researching the tech(s). Obviously if you capture or buy a ship (Superclanker anyone) it will give you the option the scrap it for parts and/or tech; or to keep it in your fleet. It old ships have value then you can have an Espionage Operation to steal a ship from a neigbour. I suggest it it's limited to frigates, corvettes and science ships as stealing e.g. a Titan is implausible. Then attempting to Emergency FTL Jump home in an unfamiliar ship could leadd to interesting options, e.g. delivering the prize to the wrong Empire.

6) I was very dissappointed that the bug where pressing the update button on ship design removes all the A components has not been fixed. Not only does this cause A LOT of extra work for the player, but it greatly nerfs the AIs. but not the Fallen Empires and Crises. So much so, that AI fleets are useless in the endgame.

7) Lastly, a pet peeve of mine, which has had me questioning the parentage of the Devs on much more than on occassion. Once you get hyperlanes, wormholes or especially gates and you start a fleetwide upgrade all your fleets head towards your starbase with the most shipyards and create a log jam. This is even if you're at a 2 shipyard starbase your ships will head to the 3 shipyard starbase in your home system. Ignoring any Megashipyard or juggernaut in the same system. Yes, I've had fleets ignore the Megashipyard, and any other shipyards in a system to join the queue to refit at the starbase. At the very least, can we have the option for a fleet to refit at the "Nearest" starbase, or the "Best" starbase, with "Megashipyard" as a third option if available.

 

[Manasian]

Reviewing the habitability of different species will be good too, I always found it illogical to have only 20% habitability in planets of another class while our own planet also has this kind of climate. I would rather put 40-50% habitability for all other planets but it would be more difficult to increase the habitability too (techs would be more expensive, etc.)

 

[VIrus25rus]

Scenarios? Sounds cool. I actually wait for scenarios inspired by famous sci-fi universes. Like Dune, for example. A galaxy-wide human empire (galactic community) with lots of "vassals" trying to seize the power.

Actually the game needs more options for "game start". Like choosing what species to spawn, what "level of development" your empire has, which content to disable (f. e. you don't want "space animals" in your game), smth like that.

And speaking about scenarios. Stellaris has some cool origins that would be cool as game scenarios. F. e. "remnants" as an origin is just too poor on content. But what about a scenario where you are a "remnant" of a galaxy-wide human empire, trying to restore the former glory? And all the other empires are remnants like you, "pre-ftl empires" are of your race(they just weren't so lucky to restore technologies as fast as you), "stagnant empires" are forces of a fallen government/succeeded rebellion/just some colonies surviving the fall, all the ruins and megastructures you find by exploring the galaxy are of your fallen empire.
Well, maybe that sounds too much for a "scenario" and they are planned as something less ambitious, but i still hope for expanded customisation options.


And dunno if anybody already suggested, but logistics would be cool for economy expansion. By logistics i mean goods transportation from colony to colony and not directly to the "state storage", like it works now.