Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen

[Tseudonym]

My personal thing I want from Psionic ascension is a way to interact with the shroud on the map. The shroud could be a region of the galaxy, similar to the L cluster, where ships and planets go, or a more abstract realm where leaders and pops go on quests.

I think that being able to build megastructures in the afterlife, or confront the gods and win powerful boons from them would give the Psionic ascension something unique and powerful that isn't as dependent on RNG. The nature of the shroud could change based on the state of the galaxy, so it could be a very different place in a galaxy where the Galactic community safeguards justice, as opposed to a galaxy half destroyed by fanatic purifiers.

The other fantasy I think could be cool from a revamped Psionic ascension is super powered beings that can fight entire fleets. While Psionic avatars are already in the game, super heroes or godlike beings are a cool fantasy that could play well with narrative focused origins like under one rule and payback.

Shroud Storms already do this somewhat, but I like the idea of a region of the galaxy being permanently shrouded, with great rewards and great peril waiting for those brave enough to enter. It could even be the spawning ground for a midgame crisis.

 

[Ancillary]

Maybe it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: Any internal politics rework should also incorporate leaders.

 

[caffrn]

What about fleets in general. Are there any thoughts on this?

 

[hxu04]

I am interested in how the pop rework could be. While adopting Victoria system, but also keep the particular and flavor aspect of trait system, not ending up just a weak modifier that you put it on and forget about it.

 

[Helicopter200]

We're experimenting with a prototype right now. We'll have more information once we have something worth showing.

What this means? that game will run better???

 

[NilsFabian]

I love these ideas. Can't really say which one I love most, probably the Diplo thing. It's so annoying that when I am called into a war I have no chance of signing a separate peace treaty. Why do I have to stay in the war for 200 years, just because the Blorgs haven't managed to get to Epsilon Eridani yet. They declare war and I do the heavy lifting.

 

[Rahl81]

so many great ideas...but i don't see anyone talking about the REAL problem of stellaris to date...slowing down the game (unplayable on many pc) at an advanced stage....will you be able to do something? Why add, add content but without improving the game engine....it's like a ferrari with the engine of a 500.

 

[Vielmann]

Biological and Psionic Ascension
First things first, I strongly believe that remastering the remaining Ascension Paths is a top priority. The Machine Age dramatically improved Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascensions, and gave machine empires proper ascension choices, but left the others behind. Biological Ascension isn’t in a good state right now mechanically or as an overall experience. Psionic Ascension is better off as it is affected tangentially by most content releases, but is a bit too reliant on random events and luck. Both of these Ascension Paths will be revamped, though since they are very distinct from one another, I intend on having them focused on in two separate releases.

I always imagine shroud delving as exploring the shroud. Maybe add a "map" that you can explore and uncover each time you do a delve. And sometimes previously explored regions change and need to be explored anew. Very much a fan of this.

Warfare and War Resolution
At some point in the future, I’d like to see us revisit war and war resolution, and enable more of the scenarios that occur in the “Stellaris Cinematic Universe” of our trailers. When the Gamma Aliens attacked the UNE colony of Europa VII, the Commonwealth of Man did not wait patiently for an invitation to war before summoning the Apocalypse. Humanity was threatened, and they acted. More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed, and betrayal is not supported to my satisfaction. (Secret Fealty exists, but I don’t find it enough in its current state - other mechanics currently prevent them from seizing the chance for freedom at what would be the most opportune moments.)

This feels like the right direction.

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.

Pair nicely as in this would be in the same update I assume, not a replacement of bio ascension? Also maybe grow them on planets with farmers instead of on space stations? Could be an interesting playstyle variation.

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.

As with the warfare changes this has good vibes but I can't say if I like it until there is something more concrete.

Espionage
Espionage is a related system that isn’t satisfying its promise currently, as Mr. Cosmogone reminds me during every design meeting.

It’s difficult to keep track of spy networks, is generally of low impact, and has no real counterplay. But he’s got schemes.

I have expectations now!

Playable Nomads
Finding different ways of playing the game can be popular - landless adventuring in Crusader Kings III, for example, makes me wonder what we could do with nomadic fleets in Stellaris. The key questions there end up being “why are they nomadic”, and “how do they interact with more standard empires”. Origins could also be opportunities to “table flip” the normal economic or political models of Stellaris.

Cool, but there would need to be a pop growth rework I think

Pirates and Crime
Space Piracy is a popular fantasy - we touched on it a bit with the Treasure Hunters origin in Grand Archive, but they could mesh well with the Nomads idea mentioned earlier or even a factional political expansion. Crime and Deviancy aren’t terribly engaging systems at the moment either, and might benefit from wider examination.

Pirates are one of the things that could make the galaxy feel more alive. Right now it feels kinda desolate, even in you owned space. It is space, but even then.

Species Packs
When it comes to species, I could see us examining what kinds of life could arise on molten or frozen worlds, much like we did with Toxoids. Like Toxoids, they’d likely need some restrictions on what they can do with those worlds (as they’re 10x more abundant than normal habitable worlds), but they’d be interesting to explore. Players often ask for gaseous or energy creatures - the first are already represented to an extent by the Dathnak and the latter by the Unbidden. I feel that energy beings may go too far into fantasy “elementals”, so I’d like to stay away from them if possible. Expanding the existing species phenotypes could also potentially be interesting - Plantoids II, for example.

I don't like that there are restrictions on what they can do with those planets. This is kind of a recurring issue where the currernt pop growth and habitability mechanics fail. If Pop growth wasn't planet based you could colonize every single planet in your space, but there wouldn't be issues because you don't have any pops working on those planets. Also colony ships probably should have to fly to a planet to board them with pops and then to a colonizable planet so they don't spawn free pops.

Mechanically I'd like to see being able to colonize everything, but different planet types are very different in availability of districts and buildings (the current habitables would be the same type). Another interesting mechanic would be different species types have different job oppurtunities depending on the planet they are living on, like special researchers that are available for the current bios when they live on a molten world, but lava species would get regular researchers as an example.

Also exploring colonized planets could be more of a thing. On colonisation you unlock five districts or so and then you need to send expedtions to unlock more of the planet, maybe you find a digsite or some previously undiscovered pre-ftl species. Maybe your explorers come back with a disease or something. I think there are a lot of stories that can be told this way.

Scenarios
“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?

A system like this could allow for challenges or narratives that can be completed in a relatively short play session compared to a standard Stellaris campaign, or could otherwise completely change the pace or nature of the game. It could also be used to craft competitive experiences - at past PDXCons we’ve featured mods like Survival: Necroid Invasion or Ark of Ascension - I could see things like that fitting into the system.

Alternate game modes tend to be fairly binary though - they’re either not used very much, or they’re incredibly popular - not much in between. What kinds of things would you want to see in these sorts of game modes, if anything?

Could be pretty cool, not sure if I'd play these a lot though.

 

[JdeFalconr]

Whatever is done i only ask that care and attention is taken to make it integrate cleanly with the existing game and its systems. I've returned to the game after not playing for a few years and some of the recent additions (Grand Archive, breeding and capturing space fauna, cloaking ships, for example) feel bolted on roughly. To me they don't integrate as cleanly and holistically to all of the other systems in the game. Instead it's as if someone said "Wouldn't it be cool to do this one thing!" and a feature was bolted on to make it happen.

Whatever additions are made in my opinion should integrate smoothly and naturally into the game as a whole. As good of an idea they may be, if they can't fit smoothly then I think such ideas should be left on the drawing board.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

All the ideas sound good in theory. I hope each patch aimed at a specific mechanic is given the development time it needs to be better than what we have now, and I hope you brainstorm ideas and prototypes to get feedback before it is too locked-in to make any changes that may be suggested by the community.

Other things:

Reworked Trade:
I want trade between empires to be a more involved mechanic, with named trade goods you find, produce and consume like the old Ores/Gels that had unique and powerful effects (Gas/Motes/Crystal rare resources aren't actually rare, nor are they interesting to me as all empires use them in near equal amounts and things like the Ancient Refinery/dyson swarms around star anomalies cause massive overproduction of them without adding equally large resource sinks).
I want a reason to care about specific regions of space. I want empires to be gently encouraged to lean towards a specific build/ship design to make the most of the bonuses. (The specimen mechanic could work well for displaying/activating these mass-produced trade goods).
Also I still want an expansion planner for branch offices/habitat locations/megastructure sites as it's annoying micro currently (and for megastructures to stay in the megastructure tab so I can quickly view their locations, and to show how many I have and how many I can still build without having to try to build and having it silently cancel construction).

Improved Galactic Market:
I want a little graph of prices over time (buy low, sell high), with better UI for actually triggering automatic buying and selling (like keep a stockpile of 20k minerals and sell the rest if the price is above normal, buy up to 40k when prices are low, and buy the cheapest thing with my excess energy credits).
I want the numbers to settle at more stable equilibrium values instead of quickly snapping back to default values or hitting arbitrary min/max prices (and for the AI to consider the market when building and making trades).
I also want to embargo/blockade/undermine a specific empire to cut off access to the market (and to have a way to view their economy so I can actually see the results of my actions - or to help if they are struggling, perhaps even with some emergency resolution offering aid to them if I'm a friendly Rogue Servitor).

More Planet Buildings:
I want to see different buildings each game. We have different authority, ethics, civics, traditions and ascension perks but I have to use and research the same Labs/Commercial Zones/Refineries every single game. I would like more visual and mechanical differences between empires, and planet buildings are the main thing you interact with so it would be nice to have more sets of buildings to choose from (mechanical and cosmetic differences).
The Fallen Empire buildings added with cosmogenesis were great, but more than a little annoying to access, as I don't always want to be evil to get interesting buildings.
The Nanotech buildings weren't quite as well done in my opinion (miners give nanites which is good but had poor synergy with the high energy and nanite upkeep of the Nanotech Cauldron building, little annoyances. Nanite ascension was improved in patches after, but it could have been a little better).
If nothing else I think it'd be cool if some building art actually matched the city background art options.
Generally I want my empire to have more of the buildings and jobs that should define it. Mining Guilds having special deep core mines and more need/uses for mining jobs, Agrarian Idyll wanting more parks and green spaces, Functional Architecture having a cheap ugly housing building they can spam would be nice, that sort of thing, but more of it.

Crime:
I want it to be fun and thematic, with my ecumenopolis having different criminals to my backwater planets.
More trade-offs and reasons to allow some crime (perhaps they give building-free jobs relevant to the planet designation, but come with drawbacks).
More criminal job types - one job type for each of the Criminal holdings (I love the building art, flavour and theme just not the mechanics) so Criminal Heritage can add to and benefit from what already exists.
(and more holding slots or better balanced buildings... why would you ever build anything but the best building when you have so few slots?)

Piracy:
I think them spawning in the middle of owned systems to die and piracy being completely negated by a starbase are both silly. Give them some basic cloaking and have them spawn in neutral territory, gather their forces and launch raids on you as a military/defensive check like we used to have, or to go off on adventures, launch covert operations, actually smuggle goods or set up hidden bases... and tie piracy and crime together (so some jobs increase piracy, or aren't viable job options with high levels of piracy suppression)

Expeditions / Second Survey:
Something to sink resources into in the mid game when you're done surveying space and haven't found anything interesting this game.
Launch an expedition to find more anomalies, space deposits or planet deposits.
Launch an expedition to chart experimental hyperlanes when you're locked off from the rest of the galaxy and want to get out.
Or send leaders off when you just want to have some busywork tasks to quickly level leaders.
I think it could be a better way to survey a second time (spending big chunks of food/CG to survey planets, minerals/Alloys to survey asteroids, energy credits to prospect for trade goods, rare resources to do more dramatic things, minor artifacts to look for dig sites etc.)

 

[ALAKA1066]

More fluid rules around joining and leaving wars are needed - 100%.

Another related bugbear is needing to occupy nearly every planet to win wars (especially once you end up in a Total War) - if you've annilihated the enemy's fleets and captured their capital and one or two other planets they should agree to nearly anything

 

[Phuder123]

These are good ideas, But i have one concern: Performance. i know you guy improve it a lot in the recent patch (i can finally play until 2400 now),But with the sheer amount of content now and in the future,it will get worse (agian). So i hope you guy ,both the custodian team and the "paid dlc" team test performance heavily before release any new content. i purchase all the Dlc of stellaris whenever they are out,but sometimes i have to witness the "lag" crisis roam in my game in 2300 (Best example is the Overlord,and galatic paragon dlc). They both great,but both extremely unstable when release. Please don't make me regret my purchase decision like that ever agian. Thank you, and hope you have the best of luck when cooking new dlc

 

[verybad]

Map maker that lets us put "dragons" look, roads, tech discoveries, more dragons, orcs, friendly people that are not currently friend, enemy people that could be friends, discovery music that we get to sound when particular things are discovered, number things for dragons so they aren't all the same...Orc honor makers...

Let us be DMs for Stellaris.

 

[Wagner Joy Division]

Bionic ascension needs an urgent rework, followed by warfare.

 

[Akkadian]

So What Did I Miss?​

Hi Eladrin,

Very good point all around, I especially like the interest in biological matters (ascension, ships, hives....etc). You missed the biggest pain point in any stellaris game:

Late game!

Managing empires late game is quite a chore, especially fleets and combat. The AI can easily micromanage 30-40 fleets but we humans can't, at least not in a way that is enjoyable.

Please focus on reducing the tedium of late game because it's the main reason some of us stopped playing. For the rest, keep up the good work!

 

[guiskj]

Please prioritize the changes that are impactful all the time. My priority list would be:

1. Military rework
2. Espionage
3. Trade/Crime
4. Faction rework***
5. Ascension rework+++

*** Please don't get lost in creating a complete new social system. I don't want yet another Stellaris major shake up that tanks the economy and takes months if not years to get balanced. Extend the current system, don't reinvent it.

+++ My preference, but in reality this will happen much sooner.

Lastly, I have about one, or at best two, season passes left in me before I just simply move on from Stellaris. I imagine I am not alone here. So for me, either Season 9 contains a good portion of my priority list, or I'm done with Stellaris until all DLCs are finished and I can buy Season9-10-11+ all in one swoop for 75% discount.

This is not at all a rant, I really like Stellaris. It's just some feedback.

 

[Jaxck]

Great concepts! Some additional thoughts or ideas...

• Revisting factions should probably involve revisting how Sectors & Governorship works. At the moment, governorship is a top-down assignment by the player and there's little disincentive to shuffle governors on the regular to ensure optimum bonuses. It would be awesome if every faction had *a* leader, some of whom could be actual leaders in your pool but most of whom would be their own entity (a species-nationalist faction for example would likely not be led by someone in an Authoritarian government). This would give factions a specific face & advocate, as well as creating interesting scenarios where specific leader traits can be highly impactful in how an empire undergoes turmoil (the Partion of India for example was largely driven by the leadership of a surprisingly small number of people & organizations. That or the way the Soviet Union completely changed character depending on who was in charge of the party)
• Adding off the above example, having some kind of organized Belief system would be great. Not just religions, but instead an organized representation of a specific ideology & cultural identity (the difference between England & Scotland for example, despite both sharing identical ethics & the same government, are clearly distinct "beliefs" in terms of national identity). Something akin to the Ideoligeon system from Rimworld, where Ethics are general across multiple Beliefs, but each Belief is highly specific. The major planets in a given empire should all probably have their own distinct "Beliefs", in the same way New York & Boston are distinct from one another in ways that go beyond the economics.
• Playable Nomads sucks as a concept. Or rather, it sucks as a concept if the same tech tree & progression is kept. How about instead have playable Nomads be some ancient Fallen Empire that is instead rediscovering lost techs? Have progression be based off exploration more so than assigning enough Researchers. Aka give us playable Eldar not playable Firefly.
• Can we please have the ability to design custom Fallen Empires? This is an area of the game that feels very stale at the moment since there's such a finite number of empires and they have relatively little interactivity or behaviour. A Nomad start that works like the above suggestion would pair fantastic with a rework to Fallen Empires generally as a single Fallen Empire expansion.
• The biggest let down from the Toxoids expansion was not being able to actually colonize Toxic planets. The ability to at least make some kind of outpost with pops on it with other planetary types would be very interesting. I would highly recommend looking at the Real Space mod, it's the closest to DLC level that any mod pack has gotten and there's some really good ideas for how to handle a terraforming & colonization rework.
• We need more Species Traits. The concept of Plantoids II is fantastic, especially if it is accompanied with more traits. The custom species mechanics of Stellaris are why it has had the legs it has had, more of the customization options are always a good thing.
• Physics needs a rework. It tends to completely outstrip Engineering & Social in terms of collection, yet is by far the most useless science since it really only provides ship upgrades. Some shifting of Social techs into Physics would be great, as well as a general toning down of how much Physics research gets produced. That, or maybe give us a Tokamak building that lets us convert Physics research locally into Energy Credits.
• Biological assimilation, essentially taking a regular species and becoming some degree of Hive Mind, is something I've wanted to see for a while. Essentially a Genetics version of Synthetic ascension.

 

[oatagoata]

I really hope we can get some reworks for (in my opinion) underdeveloped civics. Environmentalist, Criminal heritage, Imperial cult and so on.
I've always loved the role playing aspects of Stellaris the most but I feel that certain civics don't sell the fantasy that they're supposed too.

Maybe this could be tied into the new factions/ culture system with civic based factions? Just something to think on.

 

[Butuzo]

What I would like much more than any one "scenario" would be easy-to-use scenario/map editor! So you could place systems and celestial objects, spawn empires, give them stuff, set simple event triggers like "khan awakens in 2250" and upload it in workshop without any code editing. Like you can in a lot of 4X games since... idk, Civilization 2?

 

[DimoStark]

I absolutely love the idea of Genetic Ascencion allowing us to create Bioships, i think that would give it some real uniqueness. The only issue i am seeing with that is the potential for it not be that great when playing a more pacifist or trade focused empire. Since at the moment I pretty much only for Nanite Ascension when playing as genocidal Empire, since otherwise I feel like all the extra ships you can get are being wasted. So i hope genetic also has something for more peaceful empires.

I honestly think Psionic Ascension needs a very small Push to make it really great, potentially waiting until you rework internal politics would be best. And then allow psionic empires to have unique interaction with how the empire is run internally. Allowing psionic empire to be a lot more internally united than non psionic empires.

Espionage and the Warfare system are in desperate need of a rework. However as far as warfare goes the most important thing for me is making the AI fight in a way that is actually fun to interact with. Very often the AI wages war in a very unsatisfying way, the biggest example being how the AI doesn't seem to value protecting its worlds.

One thing I am strongly against is scenarios, it feels like it's just not worth it. Don't get me wrong I would be excited to see it, however all of the resources that would need to be spent on it, would rather have them spent on making the base game better.