Stellaris Dev Diary #369 - 4.0 Changes: Part 3

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

I love the idea of logistics but ships upkeep based on trade power is weird.
There is nothing unique in the new resource of trade value, if all that it does is replacing trade from energy

If trade represents your logistical capacity then it makes perfect sense. You’re taking your freighters and diverting them to replenish your fleets while they’re undocked. Ships should probably also have alloy upkeeps though, to represent what you’re using to upkeep the ships. Minerals and food in the case of ships which are made from those.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

There are a ton of places in the game where energy credits are used as currency for buying things, will those be transitioning to use trade value instead?

 

[Tilarium]

First thought on reading trade is becoming just a regular ol' resource was... not good. After reading and thinking about it, I'm in favor of it. I like that it'll be used to off-set local resources and give a reason to have planets produce a wider variety of resources. Adding a bit of fleet/ship upkeep with it is also a good idea, to simulate the logistics of keeping your ships supplied. I would even suggest having habitats (if not already planned and included with planets) and starbases require a little for upkeep as well, under the same principles.

The only thing I'm iffy on is the lose of trade routes. Right now they are the main reason to have patrol routes for your fleets and a main source of peace time experience for commanders. Will there be alternatives put into place for that? Will pirates still spawn and get generated now since they were controlled by trade routes not being patrolled well enough.

And on the subject of patrol routes. Will you guys FINALLY allow us to set custom patrol routes? I know we won't need to follow our trade routes anymore, but it would still be nice to control how the patrol routes go.

And new portraits!? I'm always down for new portraits. The only thing that is lacking right now, in my opinion, when it comes to portraits, is a way to set it so each portrait is only ever used once by randomly created empires (unless origins or other features require reusing portraits). Will something like that even be added? Preferably a toggle to allow certain portraits to be used more then once so we can pick and choose which ones can be repeated and which ones can't.

 

[Moonshadow101]

I'm a big fan of the notion that local deficits eat trade. I've always thought that there should be *some* benefit to having mining and alloy production on the same world. It just makes sense!

 

[Thorbimorbi]

• We have also added a crime floor to non-criminal branch office buildings on empires they have a trade agreement with, which means there will always be a minimum amount of crime on the branch office planet.

Nooo, crime is such a horrible mechanic, we need less of that, not more!

 

[328th]

I like a lot of these changes, but I'd prefer if Energy Credits storage continued to have a base maximum of 50,000. I always end up having more EC than anything else and that extra storage is incredibly nice to have in the early game.

 

[The Founder]

If trade represents your logistical capacity then it makes perfect sense. You’re taking your freighters and diverting them to replenish your fleets while they’re undocked. Ships should probably also have alloy upkeeps though, to represent what you’re using to upkeep the ships. Minerals and food in the case of ships which are made from those.

I fully expect the normal upkeep applies. The trade upkeep is added when they undock and increased in hostile territory. Simulating that it is harder to deliver the same upkeep resources.

I would even suggest having habitats (if not already planned and included with planets) and starbases require a little for upkeep as well, under the same principles.

They reworked habitats to be a singl "Planet" that spans the whole system, to ease the simulation load. Undoing that would kill the SimSpeed no matter how much they save on Pops.
I could see a flat cost per Orbital to penalize overexpansion. But not much else comes to mind.

The only thing I'm iffy on is the lose of trade routes. Right now they are the main reason to have patrol routes for your fleets and a main source of peace time experience for commanders. Will there be alternatives put into place for that? Will pirates still spawn and get generated now since they were controlled by trade routes not being patrolled well enough.

With the pathfinding need and counting pirates per system, they just cost way too much processing time.
And since a pirate spawn will completely cut it, you will always try to cut pirate spawns down to 0 anyway. So it only really adds busywork and micromanagement.

Nooo, crime is such a horrible mechanic, we need less of that, not more!

The maximum of 20 is still below where any events happen. So it will be crime, but not a problematic amount of crime.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Speaking of portraits I was just doing an aquatics only play and I noticed there is a distinct lack of diversity in the aquatics portraits this is extended to the other portraits. Would love to see a peniped and otter portrait and a proper penguin or albatross or other aquatic bird portrait and more portraits that are like fish inspired rather than mollusciud 2 electric boogaloo.

As to the trade system I'm not against the trade system changes as described the only issue I have is the clear nerfing of megacorps. I can understand limiting the number of trade-related buildings but there are a lot of other buildings that do stuff that aren't necessarily trade related in those business enclaves. Also using influence again as currency for building buildings seems to be against what the players have been complaining about on that front.

 

[KNakamura]

I mean, why penalize you once for going into a deficit when they can penalize you *twice*, right?

Clearly, it's an improvement over something you could ignore if you didn't want to deal with it by making it something *else* you have to generate, something *else* you have to track, and something *else* you have to care about.

Clearly.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Speaking of portraits I was just doing an aquatics only play and I noticed there is a distinct lack of diversity in the aquatics portraits this is extended to the other portraits. Would love to see a peniped and otter portrait and a proper penguin or albatross or other aquatic bird portrait and more portraits that are like fish inspired rather than mollusciud 2 electric boogaloo.

As to the trade system I'm not against the trade system changes as described the only issue I have is the clear nerfing of megacorps. I can understand limiting the number of trade-related buildings but there are a lot of other buildings that do stuff that aren't necessarily trade related in those business enclaves. Also using influence again as currency for building buildings seems to be against what the players have been complaining about on that front.

Using influence *for building stuff on other people's planets* doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to my mind. Kind of persuading the other empire to give you the space for this new extension to the trading quarter cum embassy you have.

 

[Turnil]

I would make a doomstack fleet weaker if you lack techs, civics, leader perks and other stuff.
So if you have a 1000 fleet stack your fleet would be 40% strength for example. But you can make this efficiency bigger by having a high level admiral for example.
The game would also remove the fleet caps (so all techs and civics that would increase your fleet sizes would now make them more efficient)

 

[Getty]

Numerous changes have been made to Criminal Syndicates:

• Criminal Empires can now establish commercial pacts. Having a commercial pact with a Criminal Empire will replace all criminal buildings with their "lawful" counterpart. As long as the commercial pact remains, criminal branch offices will not be removed from the planet.
• All Criminal branch office buildings have had their crime value set to 25 and give one Criminal Job alongside a regular Job.
• We have also added a crime floor to non-criminal branch office buildings on empires they have a trade agreement with, which means there will always be a minimum amount of crime on the branch office planet. Criminal branch offices are also up to 25% more profitable on high crime planets.

Dear god.... They finally did it.... Criminal Syndicates finally have trade agreements....

I thought I would never see the day.....

A little bit concerned the logistics/trade system will become somewhat janky (being unable to move fleets outside of border without massive costs) but it could also work.






Also, important question. Will the logistics cost of fleets being in our vassals / allies be the same as being in our own borders? Will there be a special "port access" vassal agreement category?

 

[Tilarium]

I would make a doomstack fleet weaker if you lack techs, civics, leader perks and other stuff.
So if you have a 1000 fleet stack your fleet would be 40% strength for example. But you can make this efficiency bigger by having a high level admiral for example.
The game would also remove the fleet caps (so all techs and civics that would increase your fleet sizes would now make them more efficient)

Interesting idea. So basically all fleets will have a scaling penalty based on it's size but having an admiral will have a penalty mitigation that increases by the admirals rank and I would say even traits while also having a tech or techs that also provide a base mitigation empire wide. That's a pretty neat idea and it does make sense. Without a strong and talented Admiral, larger fleets just can not function.

 

[Masked Ermine]

Using influence *for building stuff on other people's planets* doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to my mind. Kind of persuading the other empire to give you the space for this new extension to the trading quarter cum embassy you have.

Thematically yes I agree. However the complaint is one that influence is by and large something that gets used for lots of stuff and still as of now has limited means of increase in production. If they're going to use influence to build things and do everything else then they need to give us means to increase influence that isn't just cheese spamming vassals.

 

[Incompetent]

The changes to trade sound fascinating from an empire budget perspective, but a lot will depend on the actual maths.

- The changes are probably a nerf to the internal/galactic market. Trade is harder to produce in bulk than energy, and if you need to trade on the market to supply your colonies with resources, you'll pay two layers of taxes (market fee to import into your empire treasury, and then logistics fee to get the resources from the empire treasury to the colony). This is probably a good thing for the game overall, as "the market" has made resource management too easy.
- Presumably a colony-level trade deficit does not incur logistical upkeep, to avoid a death spiral. So trade is one resource you can produce wherever it is convenient, without worrying at all about local demand.
- Trade policies could be a lot weaker or stronger depending on exactly how the conversion works. Say you have a policy that turns trade into energy, and you have a colony that produces trade and consumes energy (but does not produce energy directly). Does the conversion happen locally, offsetting the local energy demand and hence reducing the logistical upkeep? Or does the trade get converted into energy at the empire level, and then you have to pay trade to ship that converted trade back to the colony as energy?
- For Gestalts, a lot will depend on the overall output efficiency of Maintenance Drones. If MDs keep their current amenity output but get a bit of trade on top, they might not be so painful to use overall.
- Buildings cost minerals, for the most part. Will it be cheaper or quicker to build things on a planet that runs a mineral surplus? Can trade influence build time (representing the logistical effort of getting the construction materials on-site)?
- It's clearly a nerf to Ecumenopolis, because there you generally have to ship in all the raw materials. Ecus probably need a bit of a nerf though, and this is a very thematic way to do it. (Also, it's quite possible Ecus will be effectively getting buffed by the whole rework of demographics.)
- Hopefully it will make sense for many colonies to be self-sufficient in food. Even more so, I'd expect any large machine colony to invest a bit into energy production. It's always felt strange to be playing a 4X game in which specialization is so heavily encouraged that the average colony can't even keep the lights on by itself.
- For most empires, the colony setups that imply a bulky logistical pipeline are CG/alloy worlds demanding minerals, and science/unity worlds demanding CGs (or whatever the Gestalt versions demand). I imagine that Gestalt science worlds will want to use districts to produce their own input while the building slots are filled with labs. For alloy worlds, whether you also mine locally will depend on the maths since it's districts vs districts. For CGs, it looks like it will get quite complicated to decide where and how to make them. On a pure CG world, you're paying the logistics tax twice: once to fuel the CG world, and then again to bring the CGs into every other colony.

 

[The Founder]

I would make a doomstack fleet weaker if you lack techs, civics, leader perks and other stuff.
So if you have a 1000 fleet stack your fleet would be 40% strength for example. But you can make this efficiency bigger by having a high level admiral for example.
The game would also remove the fleet caps (so all techs and civics that would increase your fleet sizes would now make them more efficient)

I would just split up my fleets into smaler subforces and set them to follow the main fleet.
As I understand it, it would cause annoying micro - rather then a fix to doomstacks.

 

[Perseus Veil]

I deeply dislike not having trade routes. They are a cool and universal sci-fi trope/element. I hope we'll get them back in the future, just upgraded and more interesting.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Trade routes were clunky and obtuse and I understand the reasoning for changing them, but the new implementation does seem to lose something in terms of making your empire feel alive. I also think trade doesn't belong with the other advanced resources because it's very different from them conceptually and gameplay-wise. Put it alongside either the basic resources or unity and research instead.

The logistics aspect of the change is a great idea though. The total lack of locality in resources and the resulting ultra-specialized planets has always felt unrealistic, so it's great to see something done about that. Will be great if it makes it so we'll want to have one or two agricultural and energy districts even on our mining worlds and so on. Adding ship upkeep to the equation dilutes the meaning of the trade resource though. At this point it kind of feels like the resource wants to be two different things: Measures of both financial trade and transportation logistics. Not sure about that one.

Also, if the change means no space pirates at all, that would be a major shame. Please keep pirates in some way. Don't forget piracy protection was also the main source of EXP for ships and admirals in peacetime, and having them patrol your empire was another thing that made it come alive a little.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

While related Trade is one thing Logistics is another, so I think that besides a Trade for resourse exchanges another separated resource for logistics would better.

A logistics resource could be produced like edict capacity with Efficient Bureaucracy civic and work as a cap consumed by planet deficit upkeep and ship upkeep.

Having capacity to spare could give bonuses to trade exchange while being over capacity could give resource production penalties and ship performance penalties.

Finally a situation or policy could give more penalties to one or the other at choice.​

 

[icedKakashi]

Hello everyone!

Today we’re going to take a glance at the Trade and Logistics changes coming in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, then check out some new portraits.

Trade and Logistics​

Trade as a Standard Resource​

The Trade system introduced in the Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ update was raised as an especially frequent point of confusion for many players. UX issues around disconnected trade stations combined with some quirks of being a modifier based system (like ignoring habitability) made some of it unintuitive. The system had a major impact on performance as well, so while examining Stellaris for optimizations, we decided that we wanted to revamp the system.

In 4.0, Trade will become a standard advanced resource, generally produced in the same way as before, but will follow all of the standard rules around resource-producing jobs. The Trade Routes system has been removed - any produced Trade will be immediately collected like any other normal resource.

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We’ve done some cleanup to the top bar while we were in there.​

Logistical Upkeep​

Hello, @Gruntsatwork here, with Eladrin’s UI wizardry done, I shall step in to reveal some of our trade secrets to you.

The majority of your trade upkeep will come from 2 sources in the new system.

First, local planetary deficits will carry a small trade upkeep, a fraction of the missing resources value on the galactic market. This represents the logistical effort required to commandeer freighters to supply a world that is not self-sufficient and therefore requires resources to be transported in from off-world. Mind you, this will occur in addition to normal deficits, if your entire empire is not capable of supplying those needs either.

In short, your planets will either satisfy their own local needs, or require trade to offset the logistics cost.

The second major trade upkeep will come from Fleets. Any fleets currently docked at one of your starbases have no trade upkeep.

Once your fleets start to move they will gain a small Trade Upkeep, representing the logistical efforts required to support them. This small upkeep will increase if your fleets are in hostile territory – that is territory owned by another empire you are at war with, as supplying them becomes so much more dangerous and space insurance coverage is no joke.

In the future, logistical upkeep could potentially be used to counter-act Doomstacking, for example by scaling upkeep with the number of ships in a fleet, dividing by the number of fleets, fleets per system etc, we have no concrete solution yet, but welcome your thoughts.

With these new sources of trade upkeep, it is of course important to mention that we will also introduce a new trade deficit. Like Unity, this will not create a Deficit Situation but a country modifier that persists until the deficit is dealt with. Running a trade deficit will reduce advanced resource production (alloys, consumer goods, unity, and research) and all ship weapons damage.

Stockpiling Trade and Using Trade in the Market​

Our intent is for Trade Policies to continue to exist going forward. Currently, we expect to have half of your net Trade income (after paying Logistical Upkeep) converted to other resources using your Trade Policy, plus any that might otherwise overflow your storage. Some of the current Trade Policies may be tweaked a bit. The rest will go into your resource stockpile as an advanced resource.

In addition, the galactic market has been adjusted so that its primary trading resource is Trade. As such, energy is now available on the market as a standard resource. The energy storage cap has been brought to the same level as minerals and food, while Trade’s storage cap has been set to 50.000 at the base level.

As we are in the middle of implementation, we are adjusting this as we receive internal feedback and will continue to do so when it is time for our open beta.

We will be keeping a close eye on the value of trade as a resource. If necessary, we’ll keep turning the dials to ensure it is an actually interesting resource to focus on.

For modders, the main market resource is set as a define and can be switched to something else.

Gestalt Empires and Trade​

Rejoice, friends of bugs and bolts, for you too will be able to enjoy the benefits of trade starting with 4.0.

As part of the Phoenix update, Gestalt empires will be able to collect trade like normal empires do, from both jobs and deposits.

In contrast to normal empires, Gestalt empires will rarely do so with Traders and Clerks, instead their most basic drones, maintenance drones for example, will create trade in addition to their normal resources and modifiers. In addition, they will also have access to Trade Policies, to enrich their common wallet.

Of course, with benefits come drawbacks, and so Gestalt Empires will also deal with the logistical upkeep for local planetary deficits and Fleets that are not docked and/or within hostile territory. The Galactic Market will of course also accept gestalt trade as its main resource.

In the future, we are also considering Megacorp Gestalt Empires, for your corporate drone needs, but whether we will have time to do that for 4.0 or later remains to be seen.

Corporate Branch Office Updates​

For Branch Offices, we have a plethora of improvements ready for your enjoyment, courtesy of our ever industrious Mr.Cosmogone.

Branch office buildings are now all limited to 1 per planet and now give more appropriate jobs to the host planet. They also increase local trade production based on those jobs and their corporate resource output is in turn increased by local trade.

Most Corporate Civics now also give bonuses to a specific branch office building, increasing its trade value bonus and receiving Merchant jobs on their Capital from it.

Numerous changes have been made to Criminal Syndicates:

• Criminal Empires can now establish commercial pacts. Having a commercial pact with a Criminal Empire will replace all criminal buildings with their "lawful" counterpart. As long as the commercial pact remains, criminal branch offices will not be removed from the planet.
• All Criminal branch office buildings have had their crime value set to 25 and give one Criminal Job alongside a regular Job.
• We have also added a crime floor to non-criminal branch office buildings on empires they have a trade agreement with, which means there will always be a minimum amount of crime on the branch office planet. Criminal branch offices are also up to 25% more profitable on high crime planets.

Balance-wise, these buildings are more impactful, so branch office buildings now cost influence, and branch offices now take up 5 empire size instead of 2.

Oh, and we have also allowed Megacorps to open branch offices on other Megacorps... The influence cost is doubled when built on a planet owned by another Megacorp.

Mammalian Portraits​

Thanks, Gruntsatwork. Now a message from Content Design Lead @CGInglis :

And now my deer friends, one mooo-re surprise for you! The Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update brings ten paws-itively stunning new Mammalian portraits to the base game!

View attachment 1250944
Glass of milk, standing in between extinction in the cold, and explosive radiating growth…


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Next Week​

Next week we’ll start talking about how Pops will change and might pull up the new Planet UI. Since the branch itself is still very full of placeholders, we’ll be using the design mockups while explaining the changes.

See you then!

This update is going to be so trash. Only tall empires like this game anymore cause it’s literally a tall only playstyle. Every update they force it on you. You people constantly screw this game up because you can’t just leave it alone and make a new Stellaris. Give console a choice to choose which version they want to play cause your updates are terrible. I can already say I’m going to hate everything about this. Make sure to cap more things too, you know the thing real life would never actually have? “What’s that military? You need 20 thousand ships? Nah. We’re gonna cap you at 9999 for no reason what so ever. Oh you can still afford anchorages and fortress worlds? Oh well, it’s capped forever. deal with it. It’s real life.”
“You want a wide empire with 100 planets? That’s not allowed. Here’s 11 leaders in total. Have fun”

This is crazy.