Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen

[Spododo]

As last time- I haven't actually played Stellaris for quite a while and also ultimately expect the game will probably be best if yous make content that seems cool to yous even if it's not what we all ask for.

But anyway:

1) These all sound cool to me.

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2) As for things you missed - I mentioned some of this last time when you asked about systems that would be good bases for expansions, but I'll say that stuff again for completeness and I do have more additions given this context.

Biological weirdness

IMO weird alien biology and psychology has a lot of currently-unrealized potential to provide Stellaris with cool content. I imagine this might fit in the same expansion as a biological ascension mod, but I'd like to see some of it available on species' natural forms. For example:

• How about species with dramatic sexual dimorphism like in elephant seals, such that the males and females have different species traits and very different portraits? Or with a life cycle alternating between two phases with different traits and portraits, like jellyfish? Or which metamorphose into a very different from near the end of their life, like cicadas?
• Stellaris technically has a species that eventually grows into huge networks of fungal hyphae far too big to move between planets. But currently this has absolutely no mechanical effect, and it really feels like it should have some pretty significant ones.
• How about coral-like species that can grow living buildings from their bodies? I've seen mods that let hive minds do this, but IMO there isn't much reason to tie this to the gestalt consciousness ethic beyond cliches.
• How about species which hybernates through winter, with different leaders available in the northern and southern summers? Or species which only breed in certain years, again like cicadas, so the population grows in occasional leaps?
• How about species that can integrate genes from entirely unrelated species like the Tyrannids in Warcraft or the Asari in Mass Effect?
• How about species that float in the atmosphere of gas giants or drift between asteroids feeding on strange asteroid-dwelling flora? I realize you covered some of why this would be complicated to implement, but it sounds like you're already thinking of doing it for gaseous species and if you do manage that I want to raise the possibility of letting solid species do those things as well.
• How about species naturally adept at espionage, whether through shapeshifting abilities or just natural talent? Admittedly I'm not sure how exactly you'd represent that mechanically.
• How about species where only a minority of individuals are sapient?
• How about species that totally lack the psychological attributes that make one or another of the ethics appealing, e.g. totally lacking a capacity to care for beings who don't look like them or conversely totally lacking a tendency to favor their own species over others?
• It already seems pretty plausible that the various sapient species in stellaris differ quite a bit size, but it would be nice to have some indication of what size to imagine everyone as.

Stuff about family and parenting

My thoughts here are, I think, significantly the result of my reading sci-fi authors who are more interested in family and childraising than is typical. I imagine a biological ascension expansion might also be the place to address some of this.

• A sci-fi technology I've seen quite a few people enthusiastic about is artificial wombs, so that women can have children without enduring all the suffering and risk associated with pregnancy. Stellaris already has this in the form of clone vats- but what if we want to play a society that uses artificial wombs without also doing Brave New World style state childraising?
• For that matter, if we do want to do Brave-New-World style state childraising, shouldn't we need to hire childcare workers to do it?
• We can enable or disable population controls, but normally in Stellaris you want more, not less population growth. What about policies about whether people can be forced to have children, either out of totalitarian belief that the state should decide who reproduces or out of patriarchal belief that females' reproduction should be controlled by males?
• Of course, all this seems like its impact should vary between species. There could be egg-laying species that don't get much benefit from artificial wombs, and species with strong reproductive drives that reproduce quickly but can't be forced to reproduce faster than they do by default, and species that need minimal parenting and so can be grown with neither parenting nor dystopian childcare workers.
• For more about family structures than fits in pop growth mechanics, there could also be a little Crusader Kings style politics around royal marriages and children in Imperial countries - with a lot of room for different species to produce different family structures, possibly in addition to a bit of cultural variation within species as in Crusader Kings.

Intel, as distinct from espionage

I agree that there's a lot of room to improve the espionage system, but I also think there's separately a lot of room to improve on Intel.

• How about events around cultural misunderstandings and uncovering secrets as we gain intel on other empires, e.g. stuff about a non-human Egalitarian empire encountering the concept of aristocracy for the first time? How about flavorful events triggering off of learning another empire's origin, e.g. if we discover an empire is from a ringworld and realize the ringworld's builders were contemporary with some other ancient mystery we're investigating and might have records about it?
• We already have some ability to conceal our technological, economic, and fleet power, and who our allies are, from other empires - except currently the AI makes decisions based on all that even when it's not supposed to know it.
• How about being able to conceal our policies and species rights so the AI won't judge us for them? For that matter, how about being able to see the AI's policies in case we want to judge the AI?
• How about being able to conceal our traits, so long as we don't let pops emmigrate? Necrophages in particular seem like they might want to do that.
• How about more ways to keep our secrets - e.g. secretiveness-themed civics and traditions that limit intel gain even by non-espionage methods?
• How about being able to conceal some of what's on our planets from empires that only have sensor on them and not also intel (concealing armies would probably be the most strategically relevant thing), e.g. by putting them underground or by disguising them.
• How about a civic that lets us actively give other empires false information about how our society works by maintaining an elaborate charade?

Diversity of starting technology

Currently when a civilization enters space, it has either the default set of technologies with perhaps a few changes based on origin, or the standard set minus four specific technologies. What if there were more room for this to vary? What if there could be countries that started without space mining tech, or without the logistical tech needed to maintain outposts outside the capital system? Without the technology to store food and energy long-term, or without having had the insights that let us figure out the 3D shape of the galaxy and our solar system's place in it? Without industrialized agriculture, or the printing press, or contraception, or antibiotics, or mass production? What if void dwellers could start without the tech to enter atmosphere without burning up, and hive minds could start without the concept of subterfuge?

Also, while the technologies Eager Explorers don't start with are impactful, I feel like inventing the scientific method and planetary government should do more than just unlock some buildings.

Creating Primitives

First Contact gave us most of what I'd wanted to see out of a primitives-focused expansion, but one thing I feel is missing there is a way to create primitives - that is, the common sci-fi trope of aliens who uplift species or seed planets with sapient life and then leave the resulting populations to their own devices, perhaps so as to study them. This obviously shouldn't be the default way for countries to behave but I think it would make sense as a tradition or an ascension perk.

A few other things It would be nice to have primitives wise:

• paleolithic primitives
• primitive versions of the various origins that are currently still ftl-only

Civilizational collapse

I didn't mention this last time because I was thinking of it as a potential new system rather than a potential way of expanding on an old one, but- we see ruins of old civilizations around the galaxy. But when an existing civilization is destroyed, currently it just disappears. What if, when a civilization lost its planets and colony ships, its outposts and fleets desperately tried to find some way to support themselves, either by finding another patron or by piracy or by crash landing on habitable planets and trying to survive there? What if they left behind ruined stations for other empires to scrap or reverse-engineer? What if depending on demographics and politics rebellions could sometimes end up killing enough of the literate and relevantly trained population to losing that technology got lost until a now-dead alphabet could be decoded?

Subjects

How about some way to regulate our subjects' policies like Fallen Empires do? How about having "Gestalt Consciousness that's legally a citizen, resident, or slave" as a set of subject types?

Leaders and Heroes

I see the appeal of having Hive Minds' having autonomous drones as "hero characters". But to it seems a bit weird to me for those autonomous drones to be leading the rest of the hive - shouldn't the hive mind on a planet be controlling the individual drones there and not the other way around? Shouldn't being autonomous mean a drone is less connected to every other drone on the planet? One way to solve this, I think, could be to have leaders be only a subset of hero characters rather than all of them.

Separately - I think I'd enjoy if leader ethics mattered more, and if which leaders had which council positions mattered more - What if leaders got more expensive if used in ways contrary to their ethics, e.g. by having a spiritualist commander fight a spiritualist enemy, a xenophile commander carry out armageddon bombardment, a xenophobe scientist treat anomalous alien fauna more kindly than is necessary, or a spiritualist scientist lead research into robotic workers?

The galactic core

I don't have a strong opinion on what should be done with the galactic core, but just leaving it empty feels like something's missing.

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3) Some more thoughts on the ideas you've listed here (basides "that would be cool", which I would say of all of these):

Factions and Politics

This all sounds good. Some other things I might hope to see in a politics-and-culture expansion:

• Countries not just acquiring political and cultural divisions over time but potentially having some from the start. E.g. what if part of your homeworld's population is unhappy about unification?
• Leaders participating in factions in ways beyond being backed by them in elections
• Traditions that populations will continue to practive even if conquered or integrated
• Impacts from pop ethics such as xenophobe pops making xeno pops less happy, or free xeno pops making xenophobes less happy, or pacifist pops refusing to become soldiers
• Discontented factions engaging in faction-appropriate acts of rebellion like Prosperity sabotaging warships or Xenoist smuggling slaves out of the country (although maybe this would make more sense as part of a crime expansion instead?)

Espionage

I've seen a whole lot of good-sounding ideas for stuff that could be added to the espionage system. I assume you have too and have a better idea than me of what actually works. I figure for now I'll just list the things I've thought of that I don't remember anyone else saying:

• Maybe spy networks could be able to ally with discontented factions?
• Maybe there's room for event-generated spy operations like data on some specific anomaly in the other empire to progress an event chain?
• Maybe there's room to interfere with primitives in another empire's space?

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, I just thought about pitching in about the galactic core since it tickled my brain (or maybe that's just the slug...).
After playing some of the great Old Repucblic mod, where many kinds of routes first need to be discovered or are created by events, I thought that the core and/or the outmost regions could be an alternative or an add on to the L-cluster. Maybe even a full kind of map of "colliding galaxies" where the two halves of the map can't be crossed (easily) until midgame, allowing powerful rivals (maybe even with their own senate) could fester and grow - then either requiring a political solution for integration or a kind of midgame intergalactic war (without FEs, yet).
Alternatively, it might allow for a colonization race that is more akin to EU4 with semi-indepedent colonies, since for reason X, the regions are hard to reach, routes are unstable or communication is lacking and thus governing a bureacratic nightmare, allowing them to be fully integrated only after some time and technological progress.
Of course, the L-cluster provides something similar, but feels rather small and often it is a very short race of opening the gates followed by someone immediately blocking access (plus the mini-crisis that may pop up). I'd just like to reinvigorate that "Space is biiiig and full of horrifying wonders" feeling once more around the midgame mark...

Edit: This doesn't mean that the overall galaxy size needs to increase (since performance already can be tricky as I've read a lot and I'd agree); but just that I'd like some more variety for existing mechanics such as the L-cluster and take others, such as some of the more exotic galaxy shapes, to the extreme.

 

[ruhrbaron]

i forgot my most important wish for the next big update. customizable shortcuts. it's soooooo annoying and time consuming that many windows have no short cuts whatsoever. id be ideal if i could navigate through pop up windows and interact with them purely from the keyboard. we need the equivalent of vim motions for Stellaris. please. it's so much mouse moving on ultra wide monitors

 

[Promin]

I would also like to say a thing about resource counting... I don't really like only one thing in Stellaris: totally accurate measurement of resources. Sometimes the income may look like 438.12982734937 for example, and it is torturous to look at (it is a totally accurate ugly number!). But sometimes it brings you satisfaction to look at beautiful numbers (like integers at least). You may try to round numbers to the hundredths or something... To make the numbers less absurd... I fear no man... But all these long irrational numbers... They make me nervous...
I would be grateful if You listen to this comment (and to the previous too)...

 

[Shadowdance]

One thing I would really like to see is a TTRPG based on Stellaris -- perhaps you could make a collaboration with your friends at Fria Ligan? The "Cinematic Universe" sounds like a great foundation for something like that!

I have once played a one-off scenario very loosely based on an early version of Stellaris, but it would be interesting to see an official take.

 

[Aendolin]

when leaders retire/die we're not told where they were working

This annoys me so much

 

[Onimorphus]

Many interesting ideas to potentially explore!

"Biological and Psionic Ascension"
Yes, simply yes. Machine Age being a show of what can be done in that front, so just looking forward to what would be cooked up for these. \o/
Very curious on what ideas could be explored if splitting the paths into some variants though, Biological going for either even higher genetic mastery (with some improvements on genemoding mechanics) or living organic infrastructure, while Psionic going for a focus on the shroud and its entities, or a more 'applied' use of the psionic powers (like the psy shield and computers tech for ships)?

"Warfare and War Resolution"
Improving on the potential interactions with other empires is always a plus, and making wars less static and formulaic would be a boon just by itself really.

"Biological Ships"
This is also one I really look forward too, I can only hope it's still kept somewhat separated from the biological ascension...
Bio-ships, Bio-ascension and the tamed space fauna should interact, and potentially boost, each other, but it would be nice to be able to do some of the expected thematic stuff, like having bioships at start with a hive mind (even if 'hive minds' shouldn't automatically imply 'organic tech empire'), or some more wacky stuff, like going cyborg ascension with bioships, turning them into some biomechanically integrated messes, or a machine empire with bioships, because if the squishy meat people can fly around in metal boxes, why can't the walking metal boxes fly around in squishy flesh blobs!

"Factions and Politics"
The lack of both almost any internal conflict, and 'peaceful' (in the 'not straight-up war' sense) means of interacting with other empires, is the main reason of the typical mid game lull, when the borders start to settle down, the galaxy get more filled up, exploration slows down, and the games goes into 'speed-up and wait' mode until either a big event, mid-crisis or some war pops-up.
So considering both the 'internal politics' aspect along a overall idea for a 'culture' system seems to be a fitting approach, like just bringing back the very old (like v1.3 old I think) idea of rebellious factions could make the planning for wars, and the aftermaths, much more interesting, from preparing forces, both troops and propagandists, to hold just conquered territories, to spreading your empire cultural influence into lands you plan to assimilate, making their future conquest easier, or leading a sector to straight secede from the enemy empire, to supporting your own rebels on a territory you lost as a way to deal with a defeated war and preparation for a come back.
A 'culture' system could also be a interesting tool to improving relations with other empires, maybe changing their views to align with yours the longer you keep mutual agreements with them (and at the risk of the reversal happening, your pop shifting towards their views).
Another potential interesting use is to explore how your own empire evolves over time, radical changes from new technologies, traditions or ascension perks could need time to culturally 'spread' though your lands, taking longer to affect distant frontier worlds, and some factions outright fighting against certain changes, gaining strength in worlds further from the seats of power.

"Espionage"
Yeah, the current system really feels lacking in bite, and meaningful play and counterplay, but whatever may come to be a new system for internal politics, culture, piracy or crime, the espionage system should for sure be integrated with it.

"Playable Nomads"
I seriously wonder how this would work mechanically, I idea itself is really cool and has lots of potential, from a militaristic mercenary empire up for hire, to a machine empire of terraforming bots improving planets, to then a terravore hivemind literally eating worlds and moving on.
But this would for sure require some development on how borders and resource collection work (maybe even opening back the possibility of some sort of 'shared' systems, like from before the starbase and star system control changes?).

"Pirates and Crime"
A proper piracy and crime system would also mesh really well with improvements to internal empire affairs and the espionage systems, could lead to some very interesting 'underworld' mechanics biding piracy and planet crime together, both a potential problem for the player to solve, or a tool to exploit for their own gains, or against the opposition.

"Species Packs"
Those are always a welcome addition, and expanding on old pack additions (or even the base game species classes) could be interesting.
(I'd just rather see additions that are not locked to certain species classes specifically, just for thematic reasons, plantoids/fungoids have some things restricted to then that I'd be fine being restricted to the AI generated empires, but left unlocked for the player to use freely).

"Scenarios"
A 'general' use case I see, depending on how flexible the scenarios generation could be, is to greatly improving the start game setup options.
Being able to add more elaborated conditions for the game to start on could be really fun, stuff like having a huge, but very crippled mid-tech 'neutral' empire to scavenge from (like a galaxy wide light version of the Imperial Fiefdom origin), or a galaxy totally overrun by pirates, or having the fallen empires start at war and very quickly 'dragging' all nascent fledging empires into tier conflict.
Less a 'scripted objective driven situation', and more a 'general different starting condition'.

"So What Did I Miss?"
A random idea I think could be interesting to explore would be having some 'neutral' civilizations that are very advanced technologically, but choose to simply remain in their home system, instead of expanding, for some reason.
In a way it's similar to how enclaves work, but while enclaves are mostly 'additions' to a system in this context, being a single station in them, and there being a couple of them from the same 'group' spread around, these would be more akin to 'minor empires', that have very much fully developed and improved their home systems (maybe to the degree of having some partial mega-structure), but are only present in that one system.
That idea is very blatantly inspired on the city-states from the Civilization series more recent entries, but still feels like something that could fit into the game structure, as a not-hostile mirror to the marauder empires, and a potentially much more interactive entity, but lower level, if compared the fallen empires.

 

[great lakes]

point to note - as of last I looked, precontact hostiles aren't in a good place. this was a while ago, but when I tried the starbase wouldn't disable, so my troops can't land. if the war system can handle it, this could be fixed.

 

[DanielPrates]

From the DD:

"Factions and Politics
Governments in Stellaris may hold a grudge against you for centuries for your atrocities but pops and factions are very quick to forgive and forget. There are no revanchist or irredentist factions that make trouble when borders change, nor variety within the factions themselves. I’d also like to see factions have their own tenets and goals and different ways that you can deal with them. There have been a lot of calls for an “internal politics” expansion, but I think that it would really be politics and culture in general, affecting both your empires and those around you.

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. They’d have to feel different from individualistic factions, however. Among individualistic factions, I could see the tenets of an Egalitarian faction from a Shared Burdens empire being very different from the Egalitarian faction in a non-Worker Coop MegaCorp, and these tenets might also be used to define the beliefs of your Spiritualist factions. I’d certainly want to explore spreading my factions into other empires."

Ah crap... again this game will flirt with greatness but just avoid it altogether.

 

[Huskermax5]

One thing since Vision I’ve thought more about is a large overhaul of how ship components end up working. This could easily be combined with bioships or war revamp.

If you stretch it you can stretch to internal simulations where different factions enable and disable certain options.

But about that rework:

For the sake of example I’m going to be using destroyers status quo for descriptions. TLDR is you can have pickets middle or 2small front with a middle 1A or 2 small 2A slot on the back.

My proposal would be to merge it all into a pool. For simplicity assume each A slot is worth 2.5 and it’s a 1X=2L=4M=8S. A destroyer would therefore have a maximum of 9 “points” it can use. (You can easily scale the multipler to avoid decimal places if so desired).

(Hangars are I guess 3? Picket are equilivent to small? Not sure)

A player is then able to use any combination of slots they choose that can fit on the hull. If someone wants a speedy as hell corvette they can slap on 2 afterburners but then it’s lightly armored and it would play the role of trade patrol route et cetera.

A centerpiece of this rework would be ship classes do not have a constant slot points so it can be adjusted using technology. This could be combined with seperate some non slot weapons like sensors give an effect to slot points. Beyond having better lasers this can give an impression of better miniaturization etc.


This also enables each empire to have different design philosophy. Federation and Romulan designs are starkly different despite both humanoids. While not quite that as hull shape is the same (I ideally hope it isn’t) it is a good step. There can also be systems where having too much of one weapons gives a stark drawback. Ie if over 50% of slot points are X slot such as an X slot cruiser you can get a big malus to hull Points to reflect different philosophy. You can also have doctrines have an impact here.

Being somewhat on the edge of crazy you can completely remove hull research ie destroyers-juggernaut/titan and instead have it all locked behind research that gives hull point and the look of the hull is dependent on ship slot points used. This can be used to better give some linear progression so it’s less of a sudden spike as you can halve the increase. This would also lock auras behind tech seperate from hull points. I’m imagining Auras and Juggernaut repair capabilities are specific slots under this system are not part of the base system of reactor sensor hyperdrive.
Acknowledgement of drawbacks: Balancing could be an issue but there is already a weight given by the status quo where you trade between ie 2 small and 1 medium slot. Edge cases would be a bit more difficult

Also ship models could be a big pain so something might have to be done where only 50% of slot points could be A slot etc.

***This allows the player to stylize ships how they want and to do unique builds that caters to both RP enjoyers and meta minmaxers that gives ships more depth and allows for it to be tied into other systems in a more tangled thus better manner***


If performance is a concern AI could remain having different “blueprints” that it can choose from but I do not thing a lot of time is spent on the calculations of ship design.


PS: speaking about factions for democracies especially but also oligarchicies there should be a system where you need 50% of the pop political power to retain control or you could get unity Malus but if you have a rainbow coalition you can get boni aka stability.

PPS: please do a politics aptitude tradition rework. They are close to unusable outside of a few niche builds that are only good for bizzare RP.

 

[Huskermax5]

Interesting times ahead!

The nomads do sound interesting, maybe they simply move because their economy is way too demanding and wasteful, allowing them to quickly earn resources at first but as they deplete the best spots, planets and asteroids yield less and less, forcing them to move on? My main question though would be: What if the AI starts hating you all around the galaxy because you forgot that one Voidworm fleet had been set to infect-mode – where do you go?


Other things that I find missing are basically two: A kind of internal (midgame?) crisis or crisis-like state instead of the current external ones, that can hit major empires to prevent the formation of too few to big power blobs and a way to wage wars more successfully from a defensive position.

The first I think could be interesting in general, as most problems, including the crisis, boil down to “throw more ships at it!” or, sometimes, for the midgame crisis, “hunker down and wait/ignore”, especially if the Khan is on the other end of the galaxy. So in my opinion, an internal power struggle that requires fleet power only as the very last (and suboptimal) resort might be interesting. A hivemind becoming too great to process and keep every stray thought in line, individualistic empires threatened by their most discontent factions banding together and threatening to tear the empire apart (could be into a number of satellite vassals, a kind of hegemony or just splintering into two halves) or simple infighting of space monarchs/oligarchs/warlords. In short, a brewing “big unrest” that is not simply one or two planets splitting off, but a good chunk of your people and staff threatening to leave. Solutions could be manifold through event chains or the situation mechanic – remove the leaders and thus loose characters from your pool, reform your government, taking on traits you may or may not want, dismantle them from within (like an espionage against yourself, potentially external rivals could make this situation worse or be the actual power behind the revolts) or, if all else fails and/or you like to see it all burn, go for a civil war.

Given the impact of such an event (whether it would be before or after the midgame crisis), it might be best as a kind of toggleable internal crisis. For me, it would be great because I nearly never finish a game since around the midgame, it feels like I’m just waiting for the crisis or that I’m dragging my feet, because the next galactic war would be too big and tedious to run. And just upping the AI boni doesn’t feel great to me, I’d rather than like to focus on the political simulation at that point.



Second thing would be the military equivalent of the kilostructures. After all, a Dyson sphere is just a misaligned death laser. Some kind of solar-tillery could help weaken pesky space stations or demoralize (if not outright devastate) an enemy’s fringe planets near the border, helping to rack up warscore. This would also give quantum catapults an additional use, as an effective way to counter this kind of artillery before it can charge and fire.

Alpha-shields as a kind of full-upgraded world-ring station could act as stoppers to bombardment and landing troops – at least until the battery runs out, those stratosphere chargers are too slow to keep up after all, so you can buy a few months at best. But hey, at least this gives your less developed worlds a chance to actually wait for your fleet or a peace offer instead of just being overrun, I’m sure the manufacturer isn’t overselling this expensive piece of equipment!

Trap/slow enemies for a few precious weeks with modified snares, whittle them down by focusing ambient debuffs through resonance amplifiers into damaging auras/local storms. Basically, turn some of those interesting but hard-to-see modules from stations into structures of their own – clear military targets providing clear advantages for their owner (possibly rigged to explode when captured, depending on policy).

At last, propaganda to increase an enemy’s warscore could either be done via a kind of deep-space broadcasting structure and/or an espionage mission (but tbh, espionage needs a rework anyway, given the lack of fine-tuning targets and often dubious impacts so maybe a structure is the way to go). Inflate the power of your fleet, the impact of your victories and the unjust ways of your enemies to weaken their resolve (or rally the galactic community to your side, to pressure hiveminds and the like indirectly), except for the fully unhinged devourers etc. of course.

If the current fleet system is to be reworked, adding some more depth and ways to fight off a stronger force could be interesting. Of course ideally, this would also include some kind of semi-automatization of fleets (like “capture/defend this sector”) to keep the micro from overspilling, but I’m sure you can do it!



Minor things from the top of my hat I’d love to see and experience:

Rebel scum instead of just pirates as mini foes, may or may not have a secret base to uproot. May simply be a byproduct of low happiness, your form of government or maybe a nice little event chain after forming the galactic empire

Turning your own fleets or mercenaries into false-flag operation rebels could also be an interesting point adding to this, maybe as a civic or a tradition as an alternative to all out warfare

Diplomatic mechanics to break up or merge existing federations and other treaties, maybe a kind of espionage action triggering a situation for the other side that needs to be resolved

Coming back to internal politics once more: Actual clans/houses/duchy factions within your empire that build their own holdings (either costing a building slot or acting like a branch office), siphoning a few of your jobs and naval capacity to build their own fleets, patrolling “their” part of space to add more to the “competing oligarchs / space CK/ space orc-clans” feeling. Maybe as an origin or civic introducing ~3 feuding factions, that will come together under your rule like merc-fleets in times of defensive wars / total wars / and crisis, but otherwise need persuasion to actually follow your interests, be it political favors, bribes or outright threat. I enjoyed the various factions from Cybernetic Creed, but would like to see them in a more active form instead of mostly text based choices.





At last: Thanks for the great work and continued support of the game!

I do echo and especially the part of civic and origin. Having a civic be required for an origin would be fascinating

 

[p0990]

You have a really good point about it being politics and culture instead of it just being internal politics, but either way it's at the top of my wishlist. There's a lot of existing gameplay mechanics that could be fleshed out for this. For example, leaders could interact with each other like they do in crusader kings, espionage could be used to influence factions or elections in other empires, or to break up federations, factions could be more proactive about forcing ethics changes or sector independence, high crime worlds could break off to form criminal megacorps, and so on. And a culture mechanic could add flavor to all of that although i don't know how it would fit in with traditons and ascension perks that last the rest of the game and don't take your civ's ethics or civics into account.

I've been wanting scenarios/bookmarks for a long time. I play humans a lot and want to be able to overcome more established aliens and find my place in the galaxy and generating a galaxy with a lot of advanced starts doesn't let me do that. They just snowball all game and I can never catch up.

 

[SebastianOrf3]

My suggestion for what future Species Packs could look like.

Why not add new Species Packs referring to current Ethics such as Military or Spiritual. Where new races would have the appearance, clothing, style of these Ethics. There could also be new Civics, Origins, Cities, Ships or diplomacy screens. A new element that could be added could be new clothing for existing races where we could choose a theme. Do we want to play the default or maybe a new one - military.

Military - New races of Warriors, Pirates or Honorary Warriors. You could add aggressive-looking races or those that have natural body parts for attacking like horns or fangs. These new races could hold or have various weapons strapped to their backs, from pistols to swords.

Pacifist - Here there could be peaceful-looking races or cute ones. Maybe ones that would resemble hippies or farmers.

Spiritualist - That is, various priests where, for example, we can find similarly dressed races in already released SP's. Cities or ships that look like temples. Maybe also add a religious race that surrounds itself with various smaller animals. Or add ones that look like hermits or missionaries.

Materialist - Scientists, traders or races that wear clothes rich in crystals or various accessories, having tattoos and paintings on their bodies or cyber implants.

Authoritarian - New races could have clothes that distinguish rulers, nobles from ordinary people or slaves. And in the city there could be large and beautiful palaces around simple and poor houses.

Egalitarian - Here, new cities or clothes could be in two faiths. Uniform - everything looks the same. And individualistic where each outfit or building is different, in a completely different style showing the individuality of the person.

Hive Mind - There are a few races missing that fit this government, such as bees, ants, termites. In fact, there could be some unusual ones like Hive Minds Birds, Lizards or People.

 

[Uburian]

All in all, I think that you cover most of the possible paths the game could follow to evolve in a sensible manner, but there are yet some bits I would like to discuss.

Biological and Psionic Ascension

Yes, alongside the much needed pop system rework this should be the priority. Now only will it allow for the current version of the game to feel more complete, but It will also lie the foundation for many of the other changes the game needs.

However, I also think that, for this strategy to be truly effective, the game requires one very important change: Utopia, or at the very least the original Ascension paths it introduced, should become a Vanilla part of the game.

I understand that from a corporate standpoint you might not be inclined or even allowed to do this, but at this point those ascensions and their mythos have become such an essential part of the game's core that, specially after the Genetic and Psionic Expansions are released, not doing so would severely limit the game's evolution potential by virtue of curtaining any additions related to them to the ownership of either Utopia or any of the other ascension specific expansions.

This is not unprecedented, as the Traditions system also started as a Utopia specific feature, and if it had remained so the game would have never grown as much as it has.

If I had to make a guess I would say that you are likely already well aware of this matter. Time will tell what you decide to do in the end.

Warfare and War Resolution

Yes, aside from pops, culture and internal politics (and to a lesser extent research), this is the part of the game that needs to be redesigned the most.

As I said in The Vision, the current warfare and combat system Works (barely), but it scales very poorly into the late game, is too reminiscent of WW2 era warfare (although, to be honest, this is widespread in science fiction), does a poor job representing the grand part of grand strategy, gives too much importance to fleets and fleet stacking, is too symmetrical, and ends up becoming the main (or even only) meaningful part of a play-trough past 2400.

There is a lot that can be done to make this better, from reworking warfare as a whole to a system more reminiscent of complementary warfare (or more preferably, space warfare as depicted in hard military science fiction), to refining diplomacy and economy further (specially in regards to logistics).

I will further comment on this topic as its consideration and development continues.

Biological Ships

Not much to say here aside from this being something I really want to see represented in the game. I just hope that you consider that Biological-Living ships don't necessary have to be unnerving monstrosities, but that they can also be magnificent and beautiful.

Factions and Politics

I'm glad to see that you agree that a rework and expansion of these features would necessitate a considerable expansion of the (currently very lacking) cultural aspects of the game, and that culture is something that should not only affect specific empires but the galaxy as a whole.

These are the aspects of the game that, if properly reworked and expanded, could make it grow the most, even more so than warfare, as they could affect both empire management and influence expansion.

Even then, there is little point in discussing them until the pop-system rework is completed.

Espionage

This is definitely something the game needs reworked and expanded. The current system feels as impactful as an umbrella in a hurricane.

Playable Nomads

If well implemented, Nomads could add a lot of variety to the game. They would pair really well with certain civics such as Barbaric despoilers and scavengers.

However, in order of priorities, I consider that there are other aspects of the game that should be tackled first, but they could an excellent centerpiece for a Story Pack.

Pirates and Crime

Same as above, although the Piracy and Crime mechanics on themselves should likely be reworked alongside the internal politics and culture rework.

Playable pirates could pair really well with nomads.

Species Packs

There are still many venues of science fiction that could be explored with Species Packs, but I argue that they should not be limited to exploring different phenotypes only, but also embrace the representation of culture systems on themselves (More like Necroids and less like Plantoids, for instance). This could really come into play once the pop-system rework and culture expansion is completed.

Scenarios

An interesting topic indeed, but one that should be treated with much care, as never should the development of scenarios produce content that only exists in a vacuum, or that comes at the cost of developing less content for the core game.

As others have said, the best course of action would be to use these resources to develop Scenario Creating Tools, which would allow the community and developers alike to create new stories for the game for years to come, instead of only providing a set number of scenarios that run out eventually.

So What Did I Miss?​

Arguably, Space Geography, Planetary diversity and Terraforming could also be expanded into more meaningful systems.

In the case of Space Geography specifically, I think that the game could really benefit from the implementation of interconnected and unclaimable Wild-Space regions that could work like "international waters", separating and interconnecting different regions of the galaxy while creating natural borders between empires. Such systems could also provide a constant stream of research anomalies and exploration opportunities trough the entire game.



-----------------------

That's it for now. Hopefully this was of help.

Fly safe.

 

[Northernwwater]

Above all things I would like to see the Espionage game improved. It has potential, but as stated it falls short in many ways especially in not having a significant impact on game play.

 

[Northernwwater]

It would also be nice to be able to spy on the FE under certain circumstances.

 

[Ranamar]

It sounds like you already have a solid set of ideas simmering for a bio ascension expansion!

My one ask is for a way to access the Erudite leader trait in a lightweight way. The other ascensions give all your pops access to the leader bonus as part of their development, and especially give all your existing leaders access to it automatically. Meanwhile, the genetic ascension requires you to add in a rather expensive (4 points!)and specialized (research bonus) mod across all pops which have provided a leader (or do fewer and hope you get lucky) just to get the kind of leader bonuses that the other ascensions get just for working your way through the ascension path. Furthermore, once you get past the existing leaders part, the erudite trait is a pretty hefty mechanical punishment for not restricting most pop types away from being eligible for leadership at all. Specializing pops is cool, but I wish the mechanical penalty for trying to play bio ascension with an egalitarian ethos was smaller. (If it's not gone altogether, that's fine: one or maybe even two points is something I'd put up with, but four is just too much.) The genetic ascension needs to use its extra gene-modding points to make up for the fact that it's the only ascension that doesn't have a pop output bonus in the tradition, which makes sense, but an empire can't do that if it's spending its gene-modding points on matching the leadership trait that all the other ascensions get, instead.

(I'd also love to have a gonzo pop lag recombination genetics option in the style of xeno-compatibility, which is currently better served by the psionic ascension with Composer of Strands, but that's a different issue and not nearly as pressing.)

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

With nomads, they have so many different origin stories it's ridiculous!

-Your species is/was being chased away by hostile attackers and you are the last remnant (Battlestar Galactica)
-Your planet blew up and you decided that you were not going to go down with it. Your civ now lives on ships. (same as void dwellers without habitats)
-You've always been scavengers. That's the way it is and the way it's always been. Your story is lost to time.
-You rose above planet-dwellers a long time ago. Your culture is led by a group of warlords that protect/lead/exploit the denizens of gravity wells.
-Many, many others

I think the first thing I'd want with this is for regular player empires to be able to become nomads at some point (maybe when they lose the game or something else happens?) in their history, having their "Origin" bonuses altered and transformed into new origin + nomad origin bonuses.

That way, you can account for many more origin stories than just "You start as a nomad, and being a nomad is your whole origin story".

I'm thinking thay one of the Nomad Origins could be the same Doomsday origin we have now but with an added option to become nomads if no planet has been colonized and the empire actively pursues abandoning their home planet on ships capable of sustaining large populations.

 

[secretagentguy]

Megacorp enhancements please!!! We really need a branch planner similar to the expansion planner & more automation if possible.

Overall I like all the ideas you outlined and would like to see enhanced automation options where possible that make the game less tedious. I don't want to take anything away from the people that like micromanaging, but I want automation systems that are configurable that handle the tedious work for me so I can do the fun things. The planet automation is exactly what I would like to see more of. You don't have to use it if you don't want to but it works great when you do and its extremely customizable.

Thanks so much for the continued investment in this great game.

 

[StellarisPlayer]

On war: Agreed that war needs a lot of work. I think some of this work could tie in to an upgrade for diplomacy.

The first thing is definitely making it possible for people to leave wars if they aren't one of the two primary belligerents. This is needed because sometimes the AI drags out wars forever, yes, but also because it opens up new uses for diplomacy. Pushing for a separate peace with empires that joined a war against you allows the player to use the strength of their diplomacy to address military issues, or to bribe them to leave the war with resources or other benefits. Turning the tables on invaders by getting their allies to withdraw and whittling down the forces against you can be really satisfying in Civ games, for example. Diplo-focused empires should find it easier to sue for peace, giving them a distinct strength compared to military empires.

One of the things that could accompany this is one-sided research pacts, trade agreements, intel-sharing, reparations, etc. "Back out of this war against me and I'll give your researchers access to my databanks for 10/20 years," so that the other empire gets the benefits of a research agreement without having to provide their own data. More customization in trade would be good in general, with a more research-minded empire giving research in exchange for a mutual defense agreement from an empire with stronger fleets or a trade agreement from someone with a stronger economy, for example, but it would be very helpful in wars.

A few more war types would be good, too. If my neighbor is being invaded, offering to help them out in exchange for a hefty sum of alloys or their promise to support the next resolution I have in the galactic community would be great. "War to defend [Empire name]," which automatically ends if the original war ends, etc. Wars to force empires into your federation or out of another one, wars to fulfill a demand like opening their borders to you.

Also, being able to make those demands in the first place would be a good boost to the diplomacy options. "Open your borders, or else" would be a useful threat to the AI, while getting a message demanding tribute from regular empires like the marauders do would be a good warning to players that their neighbor has reached a certain level of dominance and that they need to react accordingly - either by giving the tribute, or by getting ready for a fight at some point down the line if they say no.

I know the galactic community isn't in the original list, but being able to make resolutions based on situations in the galaxy would be a good counterpart to the stock resolution lines. Denouncing another empire for invading you or a neighbor, demanding that they release a vassal or return conquered territory, something that reflects the events of the game instead of +10% and -10% that.

 

[Promin]

I like Biological Ascension very much but I can see it's the least developed way... And I have to mention that Hive Minds have less ways to ascend... How about adding them more features from bio ascension? And maybe an oportunity of psionic one? In that way (bio) the biological ships can be made (I'm not saying that it's exclusive for Hive Mind, this idea just needs development)... I don't know how but there are many variations to do it, just think about it. And when I said "more features" I was thinking about something like an extra bio ascension option for Hives, just like the Machines have (maybe simple organics will also have a choice from 2-3 options and Hive Mind will have an extra one) and/or some extra bonuses from this ascension. Just think: Hive Mind is functioning because of the evolutionary connection between some organic creatures and now they have an opportunity to boost and direct the evolution. Doesn't it mean that they have an opportunity to improve this connection = improve the whole Hive? I think it is possible, just need to be presented properly. As for psi-Hive, they could improve the connection (and not only that) with help of the Shroud, allowing them to know everything about other empires and whatever you'll want (it can probably make some half-individual units but it's a minor side effect for the whole Hive, other half is still mutually beneficial). Since we touched on Psionic Ascension I think that non-Hive organics should get additional bonuses for this one (because we have three Ascension paths and three forms of existence, and since the biggest bonuses of one path were given to only one form the others should do the same, it's simple logic). I don't even know what features they should get (but it can be built on what you can with psi powers and what I said before about Hive Mind psi-units)... I guess that psi-path should also depend on Ethics (because different ethics have different views about the mind)...
Speaking of Ethics, I think it's reasonable to slightly rework some of them. Pacifists, for example: they can't declare wars, even on objective threats of existence (like Devouring Swarms (I remember one of my early games when I played as a pacifist empire, I've met a Swarm early, I tried to declare a war while they are weak but couldn't, since I wasn't ready for a war (why do pacifists need a fleet, I've never been so wrong) I couldn't stand a chance. I also realised that you can't claim any territories that weren't yours. Since then I've never played as a pacifist)). So what do they get for this critical disability? +5 Stabilty and -15% Empire size (very bad parameter: in practice unpreventable with pretty strong penalties, even such "bonuses" as above help insignificantly. Something needs to be done about this...)? Never suffered much from these parameteres, thank you. Egalitarian is a diversity for a game because of the Election mechanic but who needs this if you can have one eternal leader, forever-being in the parliament (also I don't like the description: "any society where any individual can get anything that he deserves only by his hard work is unfair and counterproductive"? From my point it is the fairest and most productive society ever (allusion that everybody saying "freedom for everyone" is a hypocrite?)! I would believe if it looked like "where some individuals can rise to any position without working but because they were born from a rich man, have many riches by themselves or just friends with someone from above" or "the best society is the society where everyone have eqal rights, responsibilities and possibilities to get what they deserve (will they take it or not is the question)". Until then Fanatic one's is better with conveying the main idea.)? Materialist is technically one of the best ethics because the technology level is the basis of all else and this ethic allows you to run far away from others so everyone will be much weaker than you (at least on lower difficulties). Spiritualist is probably a good replacement (diversity and maybe rp) for Materialists but I can't say because I haven't played them yet. Xenophiles have diplomacy bonuses, but it’s as if you can do without these (also trade value, piracy and all this stuff look like useless, never worried about it and didn't have any big problems) and also it's a tiny problem if you want to play rp and enslave some aliens that you just conquered. Like them but can go without them. Xenophobe is a pretty good rp ethic but bonuses not as useful as others have and decreased opinion is bad, can steal part of the game, so you choose it when you need it. Authoritarian has +influence which is really useful especially in the beginning when you need to expand fast and it's still useful later, it allows you to touch some maybe not as good as you imagine but interesting things and mechanics and it's also a good rp element, once again (btw I remembered that the Galactic Imperium shifts you towards this ethic and nothing can shift you towards the others unless it's done manually and intentionally). Last but not least Militarist is very useful: - Claim cost and + Fire rate makes you stronger in wars and gives you more systems with less cost.
At last I will say about Diplomatic Stances (maybe other policies are also not as good but it's situation is worse than others): it's half useless because it can be changed only once in a decade and you're actually still expanding till mid-game so you'll feel need to change it only late in the game and only several times per session. So it's a bit pointless...
I hope that it's finally all I wanted to share and I won't have to write there again because I'm already writing the third reply to this diary (and this one took me 2 days to finish, English is not my mother tongue), but since I have the inspiration I have to...