Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen

[Marmelado]

I appreciate yet another invitation to provide feedback. A lot of things I am about to write, I've already mentioned in previous threads, but they are worth repeating and expanding upon. Hopefully it would help the game. Here are my top-3 requested features (but there are a lot more):

Don't make scenarios in studio, better give players tools to make their own scenarios

I've been advocating for a proper static map editor in Stellaris for years. It is one of my top personal requests for the game. Could it be that you finally consider adding something of that nature? If so, it would be amazing! However, let's make it clear: I am not talking about pre-defined scenarios that you make in a studio:

Don't waste your time making custom niche scenarios yourselves. Give the players tools to make their own scenarios and share those with others.

Pre-defined scenarios that you could make in studio may end up being of high quality but they won't sell well. It would be a one-time ride, a niche that only some would appreciate and others won't. It would sell poorly and you would end up wasting your resources. On the other hand, a proper map editor is something that could appeal to a huge number of people. Ranging from people meticulously defining a 1000-star Galaxy fitting their vision to people making quick and funny memes.

To clarify: a map editor is not just about moving stars, planets and hyperlanes around. It is about pre-determining pretty much everything:

1. Placement of space resources, anomalies, leviathans, wormhole pairings, regular gates and L-gates, ruined megastructures, enclaves, unique systems;
2. Spawning nations (that you made in main menu) in the exact coordinates you want and give those nations as many systems and planets as you want;
3. Scripting behavior of those AI nations: personalities, goals, diplomatic relations and such.

Here is the general thread and the suggestion addressing the problem.

Aliens should feel alien, creating multi-species nations should be hard and rewarding

You've touched on how in Stellaris governments react to the game's events, but population at large does not. That's definitely something you should address, but there is also another angle to the problem: all species feel the same and none of them matter.

A cornerstone of most cosmic opera sci-fi stories is the question of co-existence with alien life. Whether it is a story about competitive struggle or about learning to live in peace with other species, the most important thing is that aliens are inherently different from humans. Fighting them or befriending them, whatever the case, humans have to accept that they are dealing with something different and adjust to a greater universe. But that's just not the case in Stellaris.

There is no difference between humans and intelligent avian species named Yubers. Or between humans and strong toxoids named Mahians. Or between Yubers or Mahians. All three are just the same biomass. If suddenly a glitch in Stellaris code would replace all humans in UNE with Yuber aliens, the game would continue exactly as before. As a player you would likely not even notice at first. That's how disconnected the state management is from species that constitute the state. In Stellaris the state (ethics, origins, civics) matter, but species do not matter in the least.

On the one hand, mechanically, traits are irrelevant past few decades in the early game. Even if there is a species with garbage traits, the game incentivizes you to integrate them regardless. Even with a -10% penalty, a workforce is a workforce.

More importantly, however, is that it limits the roleplay aspect of the game. You sign a migration treaty and aliens now live in your borders? Neither humans, nor aliens care. Integration is seamless. Conquered a bunch of aliens? Same indifference. Alien cultural separatism or desire for autonomy or at least some recognition? Does not exist. Because species have neither culture nor identity. They are just a biomass.

Here is the general thread and the suggestion addressing the problem.

Revamped Pacifist gameplay (maybe Custodian team could look into this)

Playing as a Pacifist in Stellaris is often a bizarre experience. Especially if you play and stay a Fanatic Pacifist. Because even though Pacifism stayed as one of the eight core ethics of the game for more than eight years, it still clashes with the rest of the game.

On the one hand, there are mechanical problems with the ethic. Mainly, Pacifists can't expand as fast as non-Pacifists, let alone Militarists. They are also in a much weaker position in case of hostile early contact. Both are crucial factors for how the game would go. Speed of expansion is one of the most precious abstract resources in the game. If you can't absorb more people into your nation fast, or at least get more planets to grow people yourself, you are crippled. And while Pacifist bonuses feel very strong on paper, they are irrelevant in practice. You need to survive to get past 100 size for -30% size from population to matter. If you can't attack a neighbor who can attack you (and he has better fire rate, naval capacity and war exhaustion), your bonus would not save you. For AI starting as Fanatic Pacifist is almost always a death sentence.

On the other hand, the game is just not tailored for Pacifist gameplay. Almost every single event in the game procedes like: enter the system - find hostiles (system guardians, leviathans, anomaly/event fleets) - they don't want to negotiate - you kill them - claim system. There are no truly Pacifist ways to deal with any of that. If you play as Fanatic Pacifist, the game expects you to behave as murderous and trigger-happy as a fanatic purifier.

Here is the general thread and the suggestion addressing the problem.

 

[Purussaurus]

It would be cool to have more life on the planets and environmental implications.

A scenario I would like to play: Against the Swarm
- The galaxy begins with only two empires in FTL stage, the player and a devouring swarm empire that has already consumed a large portion of the galaxy.
- The player's challenge is to join forces with the remaining pre-FTL civilizations, whether through alliances, assimilation, or conquest. The ability to communicate, enlighten, and invade pre-FTL planets outside the border may be necessary.

 

[Zaacplot300]

As I am both bored this dreary Thanksgiving day and very interested in the ideas brought up in this dev diary I'll be reacting to all of them in this post

Biological and Psionic Ascension

While I don't hate how these two are already per se, they could definitely use an update like how cybernetic and synthetic ascension were handled. I personally think it would be pretty cool to explore how a materialistic species reacts to and explores the development of strange psionic powers. Something else though is that I think biological ascension should get a free ascension trait added like how the other three get one. Maybe make erudite free or whip up something entirely new. More for the AI than anything else since without resorting to mods they are incompetent at modding pops.

Warfare and War Resolution

I'd love more options for joining and leaving wars. Especially to try and pull out of some pointless forever war my AI allies might have dragged me into on more than one occasion.

Biological Ships

I personally don't have any strong feelings for or against organic ships (kind of similar viewpoint towards space fauna ships) but it would be a cool option to have on the table for those who want them.

Factions, Politics, and Espionage

The thing these three have in common is they have a high chance of being annoying, tedious features to deal with in my opinion, or they suffer from the espionage problem of being completely irrelevant. People talk about wanting to assassinate rulers or incite rebellions in other empires but just as many point out how aggravating it would be to be on the receiving end of such things. Now this is a strategy game where sometimes awful things happen to you but I think here it will be especially important to try and find a balance between the two. What that balance should be, I have no clue unfortunately

Playable Nomads

I'd be very curious to see how this would work, especially since last time I heard the engine made doing so extremely difficult if not impossible

Pirates and Crime

I hade both pirates and crime. The former since it makes trade routes even more tedious, the later because its irrelevant to a half-decent player and an oftentimes insurmountable obstacle to the AI. Given that they are big parts of certain beloved sci-fi franchises they probably do deserve a rework instead of getting axed.

Species Packs

I missed species packs tbh, especially after they became more than just art packs. Aquatics was one of my favorite DLCs so if you had equivalents in mind for molten or ice aliens I'd definitely be interested in checking those

Scenarios

I feel like this would be awesome to try out. Here's a couple ideas I had for possible scenarios

* Standard Cycle: default
* Late Arrivals: start the game in an already developed galaxy. Most empires have already expanded and the galaxy probably resembles Standard at 2275-2300, aka mid-game. Challenge is going to be carving your own place in a galaxy with already strong powers, as opposed to the more symmetrical start that already exists
* Barren Garden: very very low number of habitable planets, higher number of terraforming candidates, some of which have modifiers that hint at the natural or less than natural causes that made them barren. Idea is to delay a good portion of the expansion until after terrestrial sculpting and climate restoration is researched
* New Objective, Survive: the idea from the dev diary. The crisis is already around in some capacity and it will be a threat much earlier than it normally would. Thankfully you have the help of one of the local fallen empires who totally aren't the aloof and/or eccentric weirdos they usually are.

Very curious to see what everyone else has in mind

 

[Ikarrus]

I was only blathering on about a vague idea of "culture" and I did not expect it to actually be one of your notes! This is very exciting for me, as anything to make pops less interchangeable for me is welcome!

 

[Idle America]

Can anyone tell me if this patch fixes entire fleets being wiped out after a single loss?

 

[Lude_has_come]

Thoughts about a potential culture mechanic:

-I think it is necessary to differentiate between species and culture. A species can have multiple cultures, but multiple species cannot share a culture without, for example, unlocking a specific tech or tradition.

-A culture would want its own empire, unless maybe the empire it is in has some multicultural characteristics (a tech, tradition, civic or origin. Imagine a space equivalent of an Ottoman Empire culture wise, so pretty diverse and good at integration). Would be linked to happiness mechanic and potential post war pacification process.

-Could link culture to other mechanics, like maybe the faction a pop tends to be part of (space prussians would tend to be militaristic for example). Maybe make some cultures prefer some gov types and civics over others.

I think the first two are a must. Not sure about last one but it could be nice too if implemented well.

 

[Lude_has_come]

Can anyone tell me if this patch fixes entire fleets being wiped out after a single loss?

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

 

[Little Tee]

Biological and Psionic Ascension
I love Machine Age and I love all these ideas on Bio/Psi ascension. I have two opinions that I consider strong enough to express here:

Bioships should be part of a Hive Expansion similar to Machine Age. If you have to link Bio ascension to something ship related, then the Vivarium seems like a more logical choice to me. We can breed better people. Why not better space fauna? I get that you probably don't want to make too much of any DLC rely too much on any other, but depending on how far down the line all this comes (if ever), then maybe consider merging a couple if they are old enough?

Whatever you end up doing, please try as hard as you can to not fall into the trap of 'new thing must be meta' for sales purposes. Stellaris isn't a MMO and this is why I don't play MMOs anymore.

Warfare and War Resolution
Yes. Improve both. Even something as simple as asking for/offering to help during a war - maybe making this the one and only time the AI will ever give you star systems through dimplomacy. Through Mercs and Dimensional fleets the galaxy as a whole can already potentially 'summon' almost as many ships as the galaxy can collectively build, so why not allow fleet loaning between non subject/ovelord empires - for a fee....

So yea, those are just two ideas. There's hundreds more around the forums, most of which are pretty good.

Biological Ships
See above. Hive Ascension Expansion thingy. Bioships would be an extension of the Hive Mind and perhaps wouldn't use leaders. Instead, the fleet itself would possess the traits. IDK.


Factions and Politics
Yes. Make Factions much more engaging than happy = more unity, sad = less unity. Don't get me wrong, it's 'fine' as is, but if you're looking to improve something that will make the game more interesting, then this is a candidate for sure.

Espionage
Agree with your assessment. In ST: BOTF as Romulans or Cardassians you could rip the other empires apart with espionage. I admit it will need very careful balance, lots of counterplay, and many, many, many hours of playtesting, but if you pull it off, it will be well worth it.

Playable Nomads
Sounds cool. I'd like to see this idea develop.

Pirates and Crime
Pirates just suck in their current state. But there were enough comments about this mechanic in The Vision.

Crime... Currently it's build a building, research a tech, and maybe enact a decision and hope it goes down. It's badly implemented, and either impossible or too easy to deal with. There's no middle ground, and no real 'mechanics' to speak of that makes either fun.

Criminal Heritage stacks far too much crime. If they hit you early on, it can sometimes mean game over, especially if you have the wrong neighbours - something that Stellaris seems programmed to give you. I'd love it if my random empire neighbours actually felt like random empires instead of randomly opposite to my build. Devs have denied this. Be honest. It's a thing. Make it not a thing. But I digress...

Moreover, the only way to (really) get rid of the criminal branch offices is to eliminate the Criminal Empire from the game, since more often than not, a not very long time at all after your war to remove their branch offices, if you don't find (or know?) another Megacorp, they'll just put them all back within a decade or two making the war pointless and the mechanic far more annoying than it will ever be fun since the counter that exists doesn't actually work. It's (kinda?) fine if they're your neighbours, but not so cool if they're on the other side of the galaxy and the only way to get to them is to declare war on the three or four empires with closed borders in between. So... like espionage, this needs counterplay. Also... the AI hasn't the first clue what to do with either crime or stability issues, so having an empire literally spewing out stuff that the other AI doesn't know how to deal with is... well... silly at best. The galaxy needs to respond to Criminal Heritage empires the same way they end up responding to Genocidals around mid game. By collecively hating and eliminating them. Either that, or make the whole mechanic just deeper and more engaging. This is my 'why', the how is your job.



Species Packs
I'm all for more portraits, city styles, ship sets, flags, and just about anything that allows for greater visual customisation of empires. 100%. More here is better. And that's before we get into Archetype traits. or Fungoid/Plantoid traits, and other gameplay elements linked to a given portrait set.

I'll say here, though, what I said on the Steam post for the same patchnotes:

Plantoids II... Like, no. Just don't go that route. That's clear and obvious barrel scraping to fill out and justify the price of a season pass if ever I saw it. I could be wrong, but can't see most the playerbase not feeling the same if the art is anything like the really obviously rushed and/or lazy art for the Cybernetic portraits. I mean... was the Quality Control staff on vacation? You can't seriously be happy with them. The perspectives are off when compared to other portraits, they all look weirdly misproportioned, and some of the stances are hilarious - have you actually seen how silly the Cyber Humans look? And let's not even get into the 'Expectation vs Reality' of the new Elves....

So no. Plantoids II in the same style? No thanks. If this becomes the plan, please don't, and instead spend dev and art time elsewhere and in turn, I'll give you my money.

More Species packs? Yes.
Filler for DLC? No.

Scenarios
This could be interesting. Gal Civ did this. It was fun for a bit, I guess. I personally prefer sandbox in my 4X but I wouldn't complain if this was a DLC that had little or no effect on what we currently have, but that introduced a new way to play.


I don't know. Whatever you end up doing over the course of however long remains of Stellaris' life, I really only ask that 'Meta' is as little of a thing as you can make it, and that whatever new DLC is released never ends up 'becoming the game'.

 

[Rokosbasikisk]

Hello! I know most of this would probably be extremely difficult to implement but I have several ideas that I think would be interesting, keep in mind that I'm terrible at explaining things.

A) Denser maps, a lot of this would just be a side effect of optimizing more, but one thing I find really interesting to think about is that because the galaxy is so large and dense with stars it would be entirely possible to have entirely separate sets of galactic powers exiting simultaneously and never encounter each other. This could lead to interesting situations where the space claimed by a polity doesn't really match where they control (because there's too much there to effectively explore), this would then result in events like "Oh, we found this other empire in our territory, and they'd like us to stop transmitting our obnoxious music through their space.", or perhaps a kilo structure designed to send SETI signals to suspicious looking stars in our space.

B) Expanded ship design, I think it would be really cool if ships were divided into paradigms (and sub-paradigms) rather than species type, an example of this would be a "Linear" paradigm, which consists of starships composed of stacked sections in font of an engine like most realistic interstellar designs people are looking at today, or perhaps something like "Asteroid starships" where your empire just bolts engines and guns onto asteroids. Sub-paradigms would be something like "colossal" where your ship is just bigger (and therefore better). Furthermore it might be interesting to bring out more FTL methods as well (or the absence thereof), you could probably get rally creative with this, imagine you have a lightspeed drive that somehow converts your starships completely into light, slower than hyperspace but possibly more versatile and easier to unlock. And I think it would be really cool if this was almost a cultural thing rather than technological, where it's almost a tradition of your empire to build colossal linear starships with Trans-light-engines (the hypothetical FTL method from earlier), though I have no idea how this might be implemented (ship civics?).

C) Shared ownership, I think it would be great if there was some way to share star systems or even planets with other empires (this could be a gesture of peace or a point of contention), it would be extremely interesting in situations where you are perhaps ruling a rather loose hegemony where yo don't really control your whole homeworld, or perhaps you evolved in a system alongside another species, and you fought a whole pre-ftl was against them in space. Or perhaps you have conflict of ownership where two separate empires claim a region and refuse to acknowledge each other resulting in an awkward set of shared systems. This could also make having a star base in a system less about claiming it and more about enforcing that claim.

D) Regions, please name regions of space (attached to a set of stars rather than a little name denoting a vague area) and add region map modes, it's much cooler to say
"I'm colonizing the Draconis cluster" than "I'm colonizing that bit over there".

F) Nomads, Could be very interesting, because it implies that their might be industry held within starships, and I would just like to point out that this would very much fit in with the paradigm system I mentioned earlier by having a "shipboard communities" paradigm you could make each ship a mini-colony with differing levels of housing, districts, and building slots per ship. Alternatively, it could be interesting to merge these aspects of ships into a collective fleet amalgam, which would act as the colony screen for an entire fleet, these fleets may then begin to form their own factions, and complain about being divided or merged with other fleets. This could then be further expanded upon in the internal politics improvements.

G) Internal Politics, The main idea I have for this would be to include various movements alongside the previously established ethic based factions this could be an independence movement for a recently conquered or neglected world, or a population seeking to enforce their ideals on the rest of the empire. It would also be interesting to have additional systems for certain forms of government, for instance perhaps the UNE is instead represented as a mostly powerless overlord with a bunch of unruly vassals that it must tame, or maybe late-ish game you star having issues with a particular state wanting leave the UNE and take all it's colonies with it. this could also escalate what would be minor inter-facton disputes to armed civil wars between subjects (who may or may not be more powerful than the UNE). the main government types I could see functioning uniquely would be feudal empires, federal/confederate unions, khanate type governments (that split when the ruler dies), and and nomadic councils.

H) Ascension related origins, I know this kind of subverts the entire point of ascensions, but it would be unique if we could for instance, play as a species of psionic wizards who think technology is a fad, and instead go about discovering new enchantments for their flying space castles. Or it could be very interesting to play as a species that took selective breeding way too far and have gotten to the point that they can rapidly evolve a species to serve as a starship, or an improved laser battery. Though I realize this might be unfeasible due to necessitating alternate tech trees for specific origins.

I also agree with a lot of other commenters about soft-power, and prikki-ti annexation problems. I liked all the ideas you mentioned in the post.

 

[Little Tee]

Plantoids II... Like, no. Just don't go that route. That's clear and obvious barrel scraping to fill out and justify the price of a season pass if ever I saw it. I could be wrong, but can't see most the playerbase not feeling the same if the art is anything like the really obviously rushed and/or lazy art for the Cybernetic portraits. I mean... was the Quality Control staff on vacation? You can't seriously be happy with them. The perspectives are off when compared to other portraits, they all look weirdly misproportioned, and some of the stances are hilarious - have you actually seen how silly the Cyber Humans look? And let's not even get into the 'Expectation vs Reality' of the new Elves....

I'd like to clarify this part of my post above.

If you mean additional visuals to make all the portraits more in line with the current direction the artistic style is going, then I mean what I said.

If, on the other hand, you mean cool new mechanics for a given species class, with the possible expansion on species archetypes (Lithoid, Machine, etc) to give Humanoids, or Plantoids, or whatever, their own archetype traits or some other cool stuff, then go right ahead. Just draw any new portriats better than the Cybernetics...

I will keep beating this drum.

 

[LystAP]

Why adding energy beings is considered too fantasy like we have unbidden already and how about Drej from titan AE or Vorlons from Babylon 5?

I am reminded that you can get Formless pops. Which are energy beings.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Guess I can probably officially bury any hope we get anything like the old habitats back.

Y'all asked about our sacred cows regarding pops and war and whatnot a few weeks ago. I've been slowly realizing one of mine'd already been slaughtered.

Other than that I just need to echo a few others fervent hope that bio ascension isn't tied to bio ships. I genuinely do not care about bio ships and just want my favorite ascension to deliver on the promise of engineering its pops better and maybe get some events and authorities to represent how that affects society.

 

[Dr_Gentech]

I am extremely excited about the biological ships & playable nomads ideas (perhaps... playable nomads in biological ships? Machines that use biological ships for a good old inversion?), I've always loved those concepts and would love to grab them whenever they show up.

Something else I really liked was the faction/politics rework, that sounds incredible. Playing as a communist space polity would be way more engaging if I could spread the ideology & foster revolutions without just wardeccing everyone, and playing Space American Empire would be way more thematic if I could conduct coups on enemy empires. Fully endorse a faction/politics rework!

I also love the idea of changing the pop & trade systems to be more performant. I am not attached to either of those systems & they're a big part of performance issues.

One thing I didn't see mentioned that I'd love to see worked on is fleet sizes. Fleet sizes end up absolutely ridiculous by late game, with thousands of battleships & attendant lag. I would love to see fleet sizes decreased by a flat x7 or x8, so that a galaxy beating endgame fleet is hundreds of battleships, not thousands. This would also make individual ships more important & memorable, making ship names & veterancy levels relevant features in the game. Implementation is a thing of developers & not players, but I honestly wouldn't mind if it was just "Every ship in the game is 8x the previous required naval cap & cost, then 8x larger base health & damage to stay balanced against non-naval cap enemies like crises". With pops & fleet sizes reined in I think we could see some really serious improvements to late game performance.

 

[goldennick94]

Biological Ascension

- Used to be the traits focused ascension path. With The Machine Age and prior ascension updates, Cybernetics and Synthetics became just better versions of that. e.g. Modularity is superior Biological traits such as immortal leaders and better numbers. Cybernetics lets you have the freedom of customization of pops that Biological has.​

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- I think Biological needs to look more outward. The galaxy is full of life. Not always very smart or advanced life, but it is full of it. I liked The Grand Archive and how it combed through all the old content and gave it a second look while adding new content.​

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I think there is some real potential to have “Biological Opportunities” from all that content give Biological Ascension some things to work with. For example, that titanic creature on that planet? Why don't we use it's DNA?​

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Pre-sapients and pre-FTLs could also present some opportunities for biological ascension to get some ideas. I think it could also hook into space fauna as well and give them extra biological modifications not available to non-Biological empires.​

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- Advanced government forms are a very solid mechanic. I think giving Biologicals a path between “seeking biological perfection” and “mad-scientist no limits on experimentation” paths would be very interesting.​

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The seeking biological perfection path could be seeking to bring out the best in biological life with what qualifies as “best” being left up to empire interpretation. I’m sure individualist biological entities might not like what a hive mind considers “best”. Or a democratic versus an imperial biological ascended empire. In fact this could be used to justify who gets the lion’s share of biological modification technology and resources in such an empire.​

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Meanwhile the mad science route could be all about trying to push boundaries (Overtuned empires would like this path more than the other). Such boundary pushing could be the “high-risk high-reward” approach to the safer more stable approach of the “biological perfection” route. More chance of negative traits and negative outcomes.​

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- Reactive portraits could feature into those 2 advanced government paths. e.g. For the first path, the portraits become progressively more sculpted and beautiful. The second path has more appendages and looks more "monstrous".​

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- Bio-ships are separate from space fauna and can feature amazingly here. The key issue here is how to differentiate space fauna from bio-ships and what unique advantages does a biological empire have here. Alternatively, can make this the Biological ascension path's new "headline feature".​

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Psionic Ascension

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- Having traits that emphasize abilities and forces. For example, telekinesis, precognition or enhanced mind probing. Instead of modifying your pops directly with species modification, allow buildings and events to passively give pops those traits.​

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- Personally I like the randomness of the ascension path as it makes it kind of unique and justifies giving it a relatively high power level. I think it would be interesting if you could use Zro to “manipulate the dice” towards your favor.​

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I feel somewhat inspired from playing Warhammer 40k and the Aeldari and I like their approach of having a pool of pre-set dice that you can substitute in before dice rolls. In Stellaris terms, I think it would be neat to use Zro to essentially get precognitions of favorable outcomes and to store them like charges. When you get to a shroud event, you get the choice to use a number of charges to essentially get your favorable outcome. This would scale in proportion to how significant the event is. Regular shroud boons would cost say 1 charge and the chosen one would cost a lot (maybe 5 or 10). This also has the benefit of making Zro more valuable (and closer to on par with the other advanced resources such as Living Metal and Nanites).​

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Making a charge has a cooldown timer so you can’t make them quickly and you have to be deliberate and strategic on when you do use your charges. Perhaps you could buy some of these from the shroudwalker enclave. Maybe you get caught in a war and having that ship fire rate up would be incredibly advantageous for example and so you spend a charge on that. The key is to not make them so common that effectively the random chance might not as well exist but not so rare that it's hard to really get the outcomes you want the most.​

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- Shroudwalker enclave needs more unique mechanics with psionically ascended empires. For the most part, they treat them the same as everyone else and that's really boring. The place where it shows the most is the Teachers of the Shroud origin which besides the diplomatic call at the beginning of the game and some crystals and a beacon, they have absolutely no other unique interactions with your empire. It feels really detached from the narrative of them having taught your empire.​

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- In terms of advanced government forms, I could see it being interesting to adjust how tightly coupled Psionics is with Spiritualism. For example, splitting it into 1) turning psionics power as a religious aspect of your government and 2) a spiritually neutral or aspiritual psionic path (for example Materialist Psionics would prefer this). Particularly in regards to the first part, I can see a religious advanced imperial government type really lean hard into the event that turns your chosen one as a divine figure (or perhaps it would even grant its own unique imperial advanced government form that’s even more played up than the regular religious one).​

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- I think one of the key appealing fantasies of Psionics is how often they crop up in sci-fi media and the different forms they take. I think to differentiate Psionics from the other paths, make unique psionic civics that represents different aspects of these. For example, an enlightened psionic civic. Or a civic that emphasizes the combination of psionics and technology. (Strike craft powered by psions? Sensors and detectors with telepathic enhancements?)​

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It could even feature upgraded psionic variants of current civics such as storm worshippers being psionically empowered by cosmic storms. Or a death cult using psionic reanimation and empowering.​

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Warfare and War Resolution:

- In regards to betrayal, a mechanic I could see being really interesting is using the trade system and espionage to negotiate empires to switch sides. e.g. A mercenary empire betrays their former ally for the other side because they paid better. Obviously betrayal should get you a big negative opinion modifier.​

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- In regards to fluidity, let multiple wars with a single common participant be able to be combined. Also, let drop-ins and outs for a negative opinion modifier with all allied forces.​

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- Federations should keep the rigidity and not be as fluid to let members drop-in and drop-out unless approved as a federation law. Part of the point of a federation is the ratified formal unified defense. Martial Alliances probably should just have this disabled as it absolutely goes against the whole point and philosophy of that federation type.​

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As an alternative to the above, it may be interesting to make it so it's restricted by lower centralization. i.e. A very high centralized federation isn't allowed to let members drop in and out of wars because the federation's control over that decision making is too strong.​

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- Likewise, overlord/subject offense and defense relationships should be preserved as that's kind of the point of the vassalage contract. However, subjects should have the opportunity to betray their overlord with some assistance (secret fealty) or espionage sabotage. It should be harder than a normal betrayal given the power dynamics of the relationship however.​

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- How divvying up the “spoils” of war and conquest is a little messy from a UX standpoint. When I’m winning a war, it’s not always clear what the borders are going to look like. I think something like a potential border viewer would be really nice to have so that you know what you’re getting before settling a war looks like.​

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Biological Ships:

- I think more biological weapons in general is an underfulfilled sci-fi fantasy in Stellaris. We have the pox bombardment as an example and I think being able to put components on ships that modify bombardment damage aspects (e.g. weapons that are more effective at killing pops) would be a potential vector to explore on bio-ships.​

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For example, bio-weapons that fire acid that melts through armor. Or bio-electric energy weapons. Parasitic weapons that cause negative effects (such as energy leeches that slow ship speeds, evasion and weapon fire-rates) or have on-death effects (spawn parasitic projectiles that hit nearby enemy ships) or auras would be interesting.​

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- While on the topic, having some “geneva convention” type of galactic community resolutions restricting the use or building of planetary biological warfare and weapons of mass destruction (i.e. colossi) could open up gameplay opportunities.​

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- Potentially introducing a new resource as bio-mass or bio-matter and making conversions through it (primarily food) may be interesting. I could also see lithoids converting minerals into it being potentially interesting. The old catalytic civics may be reworked so that bio-matter can be converted into alloys and strategic resources.​

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Potentially making it separate from normal planet-based production may also be interesting. For example, having bio-ships with components designed to convert food into bio-matter may be interesting.​

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Playable Nomads:

- I think there are a lot of nomad-adjacent or similar empires in Stellaris currently. For example, Enclaves, the Caravaneers, and the Marauders. I think making these adjacent empire sub-types of Nomadic would be an excellent starting point to defining a Nomadic empires and mechanics in Stellaris. Using Caravaneers as an example, if the caravaneers base is destroyed, they can remake it.​

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To start with, I think Nomadic should be an authority type. (This would also open up interesting interactions with ascension paths and their advanced government types).​

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If we look at the nomad-adjacent and event spawned nomad entities, I have worked out a list of some potential mechanics. For the sake of convenience, I will refer to both the nomadic adjacent and event spawn nomads as entities in this list:​

• All entities physically exist in a relatively small space. 0-3 controlled systems.
• Some entities can coexist within the space of another empire. e.g. Enclaves and non-hostile event nomads.
• Some entities have a home base or multiple stations: e.g. Marauders, Pirates, Enclaves, and Caravaneers. These home bases can be constructed or reconstructed in some cases (i.e. Mercenary Encalves and Caravaneers). This seems like a potentially good place to integrate habitats into. However, considerations must be made on how Void Dwellers origin factors into this. (Potentially, Void Dweller might unlock an ability to make home bases for a Nomadic empire where they could otherwise not have one).
• Almost all entities place some degree of emphasis on their ships or travel. e.g. Event Nomads, Caravaneers, Pirates, Marauders, Shroudwalker pilgrims and Mercenary Enclaves. Mostly this is for war but sometimes this is for other uses such as trading, exploration and business.
• All entities have unique and special relationships with normal empires. Most of the time this is diplomatic but in the case of Marauders and piracy, it may be hostile raiding and stealing resources.
• No entities live planetside. Pops belonging to these entities, however, may move to planets belonging to other empires e.g. Caravaneers.

In regards to civics, this also helps easily fill out some potential options. For example, there's traders, wanderers, pirates and marauders, seers, archivists, artists, salvagers and mercenaries which has a lot of overlap with existing civics to draw for inspiration.​

- Empires that have their last planet destroyed should be given the option to convert into Nomadic. This gives players another chance to continue their game with their empire, has organic storytelling benefits and also makes it so eradicating an empire that still has massive fleets and territory because their only planet is gone doesn't instantly just blink out of existence. It helps preserve inertia of their existence on current gameplay.​

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If we look at the Marauders, a similar instance happens when the marauder clan is wiped out and the hired mercenaries enact vengeance raids on the empire that wiped them out.​

- Nomadic empires could have additional civilian ships types act as empire resource gathering ships. These ships could represent the "pops and planets" of your empire. (instead of planets and pops, they have ships that represent virtual amounts of pop with their traits). This could also allow things such as ships harvesting basic resources in planet orbit (with resource production based on maximum potential districts. This still makes larger planets useful for them).​

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In terms of modeling, we could reuse the military ships and have their sections represent different slots for resource gathering. Larger ships would be capable of more advanced resource gathering/generation. Traits could allow ships to perform better at relevant tasks. (i.e. Agrarian and Strong would increase orbital ship harvesting and hydroponics).​

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Espionage:

- One issue that I noticed recently is the feedback is bad. For example, I did the consume star situation once and never knew if it worked or not. For most of the sabotage and provocation events, there are a lot of operations with low amounts of feedback. A lot of it is fire and forget which is not really good if you’re invested in the results and want to see a tangible outcome for it.​

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Pirates and Crime:

- I think there's a lot more potential that could be done with criminal strata pops. I think that there's potential in the idea of creating criminal jobs that have larger effects than just taking away trade value. This could give some more mechanics to criminal heritage empires.​

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In addition, special events could fire depending on which of these criminal jobs had active pops.​

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e.g. A pirate job increases the chances that pirate fleets spawn. The pirate free haven criminal heritage holding creates 1 pirate job on its host planet. Thus building these increases the chances of pirate raids on an empire.​

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or A smuggler job increases the chances that crime events or population issues events occur. The smuggler's port criminal heritage holding creates 1 smuggler job on its host planet. The Smuggler Activity planet modifier from high crime can also generate 1 smuggler job.​

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Similar mechanics can be applied to deviant pops in gestalts but with more gestalt focused mechanics. I also think deviant drones is relatively unexplored territory with gestalts in terms of unique mechanics. Currently, it feels like crime but for gestalts too. I'd like to see things like rogue drones undermining the encryption of the gestalt empire for example.​

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Species Packs:

- I know energy beings sound too fantasy-esque but hear me out. What if, bio-energy beings? For example, on Earth there are bio-electric creatures such as electric eels and catfish. These beings can release up to hundreds of volts of electricity. Now what if there were biological pops that evolved to have organs that utilize astral or extra-dimensional energy? These very energetic species could give quite a few unique traits to Biological Ascension! From a visual standpoint, they could be biological for the most part but glowing with lots of energy. I think this would keep it just within plausibility for Stellaris while also making other traits such as Strong still make sense since they're still biological enough.​

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- As for gaseous beings, maybe using animals like pufferfish, frogs, African twig snakes, siamangs, hooded seals and various birds with inflatable pouches and organs could be interesting. Might be hard to do literal sentient clouds or gaseous forms since it's not really biological.​

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However, might be interesting to create a new archetype of gaseous beings that have their own traits. Could be a little weird with them piloting ships on the other hand. This one is kind of a tough one for plausibility reasons. Of course if you're willing to handwave that one off, could be really unique mechanically.​

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- I’d like to see more planetary colonization packs like Aquatics. I think there's room for dry and cold planets to shine.​

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Scenarios:

- Should be very moddable. Might make sense to allow drop-in custom rules? Have something akin to a scenario creator in the game.​

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- Rules that emulate “traditional” game types like king of the hill. e.g. An ancient planet with an advanced ancient technology vault that claims dominion over the galaxy. If you want to make it super lore friendly, it’s a certain crisis’s device that you’re trying to decipher and activate.​

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- Custom crisis rules.​

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- Macros of console commands. I think this one would probably be the most helpful. I set up a multiplayer game once where all the players were psionic empires that were all part of a psionic empire that had split into different “aspects” based on which Shroud entity they followed. The fifth one was an AI empire that had pursued the End of the Cycle and became the “crisis” empire that had to be fought.​

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If I could create a macro for all those console commands, I'd honestly do that format again.​

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- I think this approach really lets the community leverage it. People can post their scenario setups to import and export so that other people can try it out. It also would be less involved and challenging to set up and create than modding so that more people can try and make scenarios.​

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Other Unexplored Fantasies:

- More time and dimensional manipulation. True time control is difficult to implement within Stellaris, but the smaller effects already implemented such as speeding up time have been pretty neat. If possible, I think an ascension perk and researchable techs that lets you do more of these at will would be really cool.​

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- Derelicting ships. There’s no way in Stellaris to kill ship crews without destroying the entire ship outside of exceptional circumstances such as boarding hooks and events (like the cultist one). Having this could also allow ship combat biological weapons such as ones that inject toxins inside enemy ships to be mechanically feasible. This could also open up ship reclamation gameplay or additional economic income sources with war. I could also see the Scrappers enclave and Scavengers civic sending out expedition fleets to grab derelict ships and return them to their scrapyards being cool.​

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- Neutral and contested zones. This used to be a sort-of mechanic in Stellaris retired due to bugs and issues. I would like to see this return in some format because it's conceptually cool. Star Trek Infinite had a really cool thing with their neutral zone mechanics.​

 

[smile444]

Federation. They need a rework.

I mentionned it in Dev Diary 361:

I would like a rework of the federation system. As it stands it is kind of underwhelming both as a tool for roleplay and as a way for small empires to band together against bigger ones. An idea that i saw that i like is that instead of fixed perks determined by the federation type it should work like the leader system where each level you get a choice between different perks chosen randomly based on both federation type and what the federation had experienced. Federation shouldn't need the diplomacy tradition to be made, instead it should be a technolgy that is weighted by having alliances with other empires, that picking the diplomacy tradition give a boost to obtain. The diplomacy tradition should instead be buffed, helping both maintaining control of a federation while reaping more advantages from being part of one. There should also be more levels, and if a galactic emperor is choosen there should be an option to leave the galactic empire to keep your federation.

Also, i feel like Materialist should have the option to become psionics and go through the psionic ascention path. It makes no sense for them to not be able to access it when the shroud and psionic powers are observable phenomenon in the stellaris galaxy. It might however be a different take on psionics, based on their own wiew of the shroud, it's denizens and psychic presences (souls). Maybe by exploring the relationship between biology and psionic energy, creating organs that reinforce psionic power or use psionic energies in their functionnement? Or allow pops to reincarnate in cloned bodies. Or do things that are considered blasphemy by spiritualists like exploit souls, enslave or hunt shroud entities, steal the powers of gods or make your own artificial shroud god, built fom an ascended psionic biological supercomputer, similar to what the Baol had .

For war, it would be interesting if instead of a defensive pact, we could make an offensive pact, working together against an empire that threaten us both.

i think reworking internal politics should see to buff egalitarian ethos a bit

Egalitarian democracies tend to be a little weak rn, using parlimentary system and trading it away once it is no longer useful being the best use of that kind of ethos and civics, it could be a good way to buff them by making it so unhappy-pops do cause some kind of opportunity cost, even if stability is high or they are slaves. Plus conqueror empires struggling to integrate conquered planets sounds like a much more interesting way to prevent wide snowballing than the current system of empire sprawl. The impact of empire sprawl is as is way to small to be of any impact. Other people made some calculations and found out that it only start to become an issue at insane numbers like 1000 pops in the empire.

i forgot to add to my post that probably wasn't said: I really, really dislike the fact that megacorp is a governement type. Or at least megacorp mechanics of branch offices is tied to some sort of oligarchy. Maybe this should be part of a trade rework since a lot of people pointed that the current trade system is something that they at best ignore, but there should be a tradition, federation bonus, or ascention perk that allows normal empires to build branch offices. I am really disappointed that i cannot make a democratic or dictatorial trading empire.
Something i'd REALLY like to see changed are democracy mechanics. As it is, it is by far the weakest goverment type, and mandate are very boring. I would like make a mandate some kind of situation, with various ways to solve it rather than just building 4 station. It would also be a good thing if leader level increased the chances for a given leader to be elected as the ruler.

It would be nice If a given ruler have several mandates that have to be activated rather than being automatically launched, with new ones being able to manifest based on what happens in a game. I.E if a war happen then a new mandate would be created that is basically the "Win the war" mandate.

Each completed mandate would increase the leader's popularity.

Not all mandate would be equal and some could be mutually exclusive for exemple if you are not confident you can win the war there could be a "survive the war" mandate that could be launched.

Democratically elected rulers could have preference for different mandates, and a mandate for which a given ruler have a prefference would have bonuses to help complete the mandate faster.

It would make me feel the need to please voters much, much more. And make mandates generally good given which is important because as a tradeoff we get a lack of control

I would buff habitats just a tad. I understand that they cannot be as good as regular planets for balance reasons. But it would be nice if they had a niche use that could be exploited to great efficiency. Maybe allow them to act as starbases? With orbital increasing the amount of modules and buildings? I am not saying allowing to build production-enhancing buildings like orbital rings do, but at least the standard starbase stuff. It would make habitats very valuable militarily, as they could act as starbases or anchorages. Or even as trade hubs

Also can you, finally, make starbase weapons loadout customizable? I'm tired of letting the dumb IA build my fortresses for me.

 

[blub445]

the most important thing for me is performacne, not able to play this game because of late game lag is destroying all the fun i had with this game. would be nice if you do something about pop lag, fleet lag and some ui elemnts lag quit a lot for me.

 

[Venefcus]

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 agree with a lot of what was said except this part about energy beings being “too” fantasy. Being outright opposed to a very popular trope in a sand-box/role playing strategy game seems like a huge missed opportunity. Lots of opportunity for role playing as very different life forms than we currently have, some I would personally love to see.

That said mentions about updates to organic ascensions and espionage are huge potential wins in my book. Also yay meat ships!

 

[BoltLaser]

“Expanding the existing species phenotypes could also potentially be interesting - Plantoids II, for example.“

My two cents is that I’d like a “Zoological” pack that focuses on all the base game phenotypes, before we get plantoids II. There’s no hollow bones/flight trait for avians! Maybe some traits that slightly boost the general habitabilities, like “thick fur” or “cold blood”. A shell based trait for mollusks.

 

[Thiend]

I agree with a lot of what was said except this part about energy beings being “too” fantasy. Being outright opposed to a very popular trope in a sand-box/role playing strategy game seems like a huge missed opportunity. Lots of opportunity for role playing as very different life forms than we currently have, some I would personally love to see.

That said mentions about updates to organic ascensions and espionage are huge potential wins in my book. Also yay meat ships!

On the one hand, I personally prefer fantasy settings to sci-fi most of the time.

On the other hand, keeping them firmly separated does leave open the possibility of making something Stellaris-like that is focused into a fantasy setting.

 

[tyzxc]

If you are going to renew internal politics, you could make the initial authorities (type of Government + Ethics + civics, example: Direct Democracy) influence the game and its mechanics.

for example:

-Representative Democracy: it would have a special menu for a chamber of representatives from each planet (with the predominant ethics of their planet), who would vote on the decisions and the new presidents.

-Direct Democracy (Democracy + Materialist): all decisions and elections are by popular vote.

-Theocratic Republic (Democracy + Spiritualist) the president would have to maintain two aspects "popularity" and his "divine mandate" (that is, reputation on whether his actions are in accordance) and if he does not maintain one or the other he ends up with consequences.

-Military Commissariat (Democracy + Militarist): it would be based on regulated democracy where the army would maintain constant monitoring of the government, and if you get to have little instability they will make a coup d'état.

-Moral democracy (Democracy + Pasificism): basically each faction has a representative.

-Rational council (Democracy + Technocracy): basically each secretary (commander, scientific leader, etc.) assigns you missions which you will use some leaders by assigning them to the mission (functioning like the investigation of cracks or excavations) and solving a problem or getting some bonus.

-Communal parity (Democracy + Shared burdens): it would be based on the fact that each planet has its own communes that every few years meet for a great assembly and discuss various issues.

-Clan assembly (Democracy + Warrior culture): basically each planet would have a clan and each clan according to its strength will have more weight than the others, for example to determine the strength every few years there will be a Tournament between clans to determine the strength of a clan. -Citizen Republic (Democracy + Citizen Service): only the populations with military service would vote, in addition to being composed of a military council.

-Bandit Commune (Democracy + Barbarian Looters): there would be a dark council where there would be several leaders who expect that what they request is fulfilled and if they do not do so there would be consequences such as rebellions and mutinies in the fleet.

-Purity Assembly (Democracy + Purifying Fanatics): to keep the population united, they seek to blame internal and external enemies by leading to several missions to fulfill the mission of eliminating these enemies in a limited time.

(Now more own)

Feudal monarchy: there would be several feudal vassals that could be seen in a part of the interface, and they would have to be kept loyal to avoid a civil war and to pay their taxes