Stellaris Dev Diary #369 - 4.0 Changes: Part 3

[V01ds33r]

Will these changes affect the Galactic Market nomination? It seems very unpredictable now. Will these changes make competition more transparent and understandable?

Edit: also how pirates will spawn now? How piracy system will work without trade routes?

 

[KNakamura]

The old system? Build an unbroken spine of starbases along your empire so that trade never gets disrupted by pirates, or micro manage patrol fleets (lowering fighting fleet ship count) to every distant starbase to stop piracy? And then needing to go to trade view to reset your starbases after battles as they do not automatically send trade to home.

... I never did either of those two things. I just generally built starbases every 3~7 jumps are so as trade hubs/fighter patrols. Worked almost every time. Sometimes I'd honestly just wait for pirates to spawn and put a node there if I was unsure. Simple.

 

[Ajacoba]

why in the world would you waste starbase capacity on covering entire trade routes? you barely have any in the first place

just send a a fleet over every time pirates spawn (or build some platforms if it repeatedly happens in the same system, even a basic outpost can field a few)

I did make fleets for patrolling though, but those are hardly a weight on my total capacity, most pirates are weak af, so you only need a few thousand strength in most cases

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

Interesting development to say the least. Implies that Living Standards should be getting a 2nd look in the coming days given that Trade is generated from each Pop on the Colony according to their listed living standard. May even result in Living Standards becoming a tax as opposed to a current source of income depending on how much you were willing to pamper/shower your citizens with CG's. Seems to imply that Soldier jobs will now have an upkeep and given that TV is now an advanced resource, should imply that Naval Capacity is, by association, an Advanced resource too. That means Soldier jobs should be upgraded to Specialists and hence be subject to Egalitarian + Meritocracy buffs. Probably won't happen given that Authoritarian doesn't work now with them as Worker strata jobs but eh one can dream no? Maybe they'll have a new Pop Trait that produces more Naval Capacity like Thrifty does for Trade? Honestly kind of surprised Strong and Very Strong doesn't do this and would justify their cost.

Clerks suddenly become a bit more important as their meager Trade Value suddenly adds up. Masterful Crafters really has a ton of impact now for Artisan jobs and Traders/Merchants aren't complete crap for non-Trade Empires. Still won't make me take Mercantile Tradition though.

 

[MadCow94]

Can robots have slavery types when they are in servitude? I want my robots to be domestic servants, not indentured servants!

 

[Ramidel]

lose some to piracy

laughs in tall megacorp build

also laughs in wide gateway build

 

[Panzerslothen]

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...​

I really like this new Trade system. Simple yet nuanced, effective without being broken, and quite diverse. Finally, Clerks will no longer suffer from defamation as useless and irrelevant! Whoopiee! Justice for Clerks at long last!

I'm particularly glad as I've pitched changes to Trade before myself. I think your proposals are even better.

Comments:
I really like the effect this will have on Planets, as the choice between slightly diversifying the production on each vs investing more into your Trade elsewhere. It also makes Trade something you will want to plan for and protect, rather than simply whacking onto your far-flung and low habitability worlds as 'something for them to do'. I'm imagining an Empire which looks to solve its problems first and foremost by throwing money at a particular challenge, maybe 'buying' Influence if/as it can.

IMHO it better demonstrates the benefits of economic strength. I'm excited to try a Trade build under this system, and I like that in theory an Empire with strong Trade should be able to buy what else it needs from the market with that economic power. This makes me really quite keen to play 'Space 1980s', or 'Space British East India Company'!

Questions:
What will the rates be for Trade upkeeps based on local planetary shortages? Will these be mod-ifiable? It would be cool if they were, so that we could add (for example) Leader Traits or Buildings which reduced the scale of in-system, on-planet resource shortages.

Have you considered giving any reductions to a Planet's local resource shortages if we have another planet with a surplus of those goods in the system, without consuming Trade (or consuming it at a discount)? Building on Abdulijubjub's comment, I would like both a local production AND a Trade based production strategy to be equally viable overall (perhaps with certain benefits and drawbacks in specific case-by-case situations).

What is happening to Piracy? I would still like for some degree of Piracy to remain in the game (it's good target practice for my fleets, and something to do). Maybe make them a new 'randomly spawning at Galaxy generation' enemy type?

Suggestions:
I do think you'll need to look quite carefully at Trade policies. Some other/additional considerations might be a slider for the rate at which leftover Trade is converted to other resources (so that we as players can set it at something like 10%, 25%, 50% or 75%, maybe); or perhaps steep discounts on the market rate for particular commodities (e.g., if you take the 'Trade into CGs' tradition and policy, you have an extremely low market add-on when setting up trades for CGs). I don't quite know. Would probably benefit from some options testing.

It would be really cool if you could add a specific type of Market standing trade/offer, in which we automatically sell any excesss resources of a specified type we are over producing (eg excess Food, say, where you're over your cap and producing a net +100).

ASpec in particular has been very upset about this change, because it costs him his 'Galactic Silk Road' dreams. In the fullness of time, I would really really like a new kind of Civilian Ship, some kind of Merchant Ship or Support Ship, which could lower the Trade costs of fleets in its sector, OR which I could send on distant Trade missions across the galaxy, returning laden with a booty of beautiful Trade value the further across the map it got. These could represent your semi-official state Merchant Navies or resupply vessels, like the Royal Fleet Auxiliary IRL.

Burning trade for planet deficits sounds like a significant change to the economic model: depending on the cost of that, it might be more efficient to generate upkeep resources in-place, rather than fully specialize worlds.

I for one am all for it. I've longed for a 'generic', non-specialised designation for a long time, and have even called for it. Specialization will still be an option, even a viable option, but this change significantly enables (and even encourages to a degree) other considerations. It's fantastic.

 

[judicator070]

I like the idea of trade being made into a standard resource and that it now represents logistics. However, I'd like to suggest creating a new icon for logistics instead of using the existing jewelry icon, which I think has too much attachment to the old trade system when it represented a trade value for expensive items like fancy jewelry being transported back to the capital. It's confusing to me to be using terms like "trade value" and "trade upkeep" when it now only really just represents "logistics". Maybe instead create a new logistics icon like a set of cargo boxes at the top of the screen next to the other resources in place of the existing jewelry icon.

After some more thought, I want to add onto my previous comments. I still like the idea of any collected trade value being made into a standard resource, but now I'm questioning the idea of it being directly tied to representing logistics too. I'm agreeing with others that trade value should be separated from logistics capabilities. I think I'd rather see logistics as something similar to housing, in which it's not a stockpile number, but rather a number set by having buildings and districts that provide logistics capabilities. And Logistics would be an empire modifier for fleet logistics, and a planetary modifier for handling local resource deficits.

 

[BrokenSky]

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.

View attachment 1250943
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.

I'm happy to see some support for logisitical systems in principle, but I can't help but feel like this really misses out one of the main points of having a logisitics system - that being raiding and asymetric warfare.

The old trade system -in principle- allowed you to send a small fleet of ships to disrupt the enemy supply lines; obviously this was mostly worthless because it only affected one resource, didn't affect fleets or starbases and you couldn't see the trade routes to intercept them anyway, but the idea was there.

What I'd like to see in this new system is some kind of on-map supply system which allows for smaller, weaker countries to run hit-and-run raids to weaken a larger fleet or a country's economy through supply. Now obviously that would need to be in some abstracted sense, both for performance reasons and for gameplay.

One option - potentially unlocked by having all ships having stealth components - would be for fleets to go into some kind of 'raiding stance' while cloaked, becoming stationary but projecting an area of influence which increased enemy ship upkeep further while within range, and likewise increasing the trade upkeep of Planets and Starbases inside the area of effect, while also providing trade value to the raider based on the increase in cost. Having better stealth might increase the area of effect and/or effectiveness (meaning corvettes would be better than battleships), while anti-stealth mechanics (such as suitably equiped starbases) might protect regions from raiding or highlight the position of the raiding fleet?

 

[Meneye]

Trade covering for local deficits makes sense, it's an exchange between planets and pops based on supply and demand. It makes less sense with ships. The energy and alloy upkeep already simulates maintenence well, and it's odd to think that ships could participate in these "transactions" in a similar way that planets do.

 

[-Marauder-]

Wow, this sounds... terrible.

This is basically just adding ANOTHER thing for players especially new players to keep an eye on. This by no means makes stuff less complex, it actually makes it more complex and further penalizes players. This change seems to mind boggingly backwards and to likely achieve the opposite of the stated goal I can't wrap my head around it, at all.

It's just another "Consumer Goods" situation. And from how the new trade and trade policies is described also a hefty nerf to any trade focused Empire on top of that. If that one falls out too bad, you'd be wiping out an entire already not that strong play style while adding another mechanic for people to keep an eye on at all times on top of that.

We used to have non autark planets when the game released, remember non empire wide food? Why do you guys keep implementing changes such as the original reintroduced leader cap that revert things back to how they were when they were abandoned for a reason?

 

[Adahn42069]

I like the Trade changes. A few thoughts/questions sprung to mind though:

1. Will Zombie pops get another look at? Currently their only niche is producing trade without pop upkeep, which isn't really worth a civic slot anyway, but with trade moving to a resource this will suffer from the -25% resource debuff which makes zombies bad for pop efficiency. I like the idea of the civic, I'd like a reason to use it.
2. Will space fauna fleets require trade upkeep? They are self sufficient organisms in space after all. Not needing trade upkeep would give them something of a niche for trade-strapped empires, as they are generally a lot worse than conventional ships.
3. Will clerks still be hybrid jobs producing trade & amenities now that they don't need something like that to distinguish them from technicians? Trade planets having too many wasted amenities and clerks being significantly (more) inefficient for Oppresive Autocracy builds, especially with trade being more important for all empires, would not be as good as the job having pure trade output in my opinion.
4. Branch offices giving 5 empire sprawl is punishing in the late game where stacked APs. ascension and other sprawl reductions mean competing empires can get less sprawl than this for populated planets or large numbers of pops which should outproduce them - maybe giving the corporate authority reduced branch office sprawl (~-2.5%?) per ruler level would balance this somewhat as the game progresses.

 

[NEXUS12]

Do your tweaks to the topbar include listing species in alphabetical or numerical order? It's been a bugbear of mine pretty much since release. Glad trade is being revamped though

 

[SS Boss]

I dont like the removal of trade routes. While I agree that right now its just an useless feature that no one will miss, the potential of trade routes is too big to just remove them. Also, trade routes (and piracy) is a giant piece of inspiration for a lot of gameplay styles (like how much fun is being a trader empire with basically no palpable trade going on with other empires ?) and I dont think the new system will cover these styles in the same way. I understand the need to reduce the lag with calculations (and trade routes done the right way probably do the inverse), but still...

Also, I hate with all my forces that the making-resources-out-of-tin-air galactic market still exists. Actually I hate any of such markets in any strategy game. They are just gamey, eternal open doors for mEtA gaming that just cheapens a lot of other game systems (sometimes being the factor around balance/ buffs/debuff of actual interesting mechanics while being such an awful, boring mechanic itself). They cheapen the strategies around the scarcity of resources (since you can just dump something you have a surplus to get things you shouldn’t have access), they cheapen the need to make trade deals and diplomacy overall to have access to scarce resources, etc.

Any market of such nature should only exist as like a “Black Market”, where piracy removes a % of the REAL resources circulating in regions with high piracy and sell them. If piracy is ended across the galaxy, so are the black markets. Simulating “private” trade should be done first by simulating the private sector, so you can track the origin of every resource being sold and interact with it. If the game can’t/shouldn’t handle that, so don’t do it at all and make all trade be empire to empire.

Also, speaking of piracy, how it will work within the new system ? If it still exists, of course.

 

[MindGizmoWizard]

Damn, I'm gonna continue using the mod that deactivates Criminal Syndicates entirely, nothing else in the game makes you have to rework your planets to add police and the hassle feels really bad
(plus, eww police)

 

[cryptkeeper]

Damn, I'm gonna continue using the mod that deactivates Criminal Syndicates entirely, nothing else in the game makes you have to rework your planets to add police and the hassle feels really bad
(plus, eww police)

just play a Oppressive Autocracy build that make enforcers into unity building machines. Also it is really easy to just go to war, just to get rid of their holdings, and just generally bully them. Also have a strong righteous governor can get rid of any crime too.

 

[LionInHeat]

Could there be a mechanic to account for blockages of planets during wartime by implementing additional malus trade cost on planets whose systems are under hostile control? It might be even better if planets relying on that planet's excess resources got a trade cost malus proportional to that planet's contribution to the empire stockpile

 

[Objulen]

Are there any ideas how the Juggernaut will factor into these changes? It's basically meant as a mobile Starbase, so it should provide the same benefits in your home territory, and at least help mitigate the penalties in enemy territory.

 

[Torkel]

The trade system worked fine IMO, but I do see the points made and that other's experience wasn't the same.
My hope was for a system that had the surpluses and deficits balanced between planets, systems, fleets, etc by way of flows of all resources that would show as trade ships of various kinds going between planets, outposts, stations, systems. i.e. not just show in a special map mode, but in the regular view. Showing it all having a life beyond orders given by the player.
But I do see how that would end up being a CPU resource hog, and the new system does sound like a workable abstraction that has interesting merits.

 

[Ajacoba]

I like the Trade changes. A few thoughts/questions sprung to mind though:

1. Will Zombie pops get another look at? Currently their only niche is producing trade without pop upkeep, which isn't really worth a civic slot anyway, but with trade moving to a resource this will suffer from the -25% resource debuff which makes zombies bad for pop efficiency. I like the idea of the civic, I'd like a reason to use it.
2. Will space fauna fleets require trade upkeep? They are self sufficient organisms in space after all. Not needing trade upkeep would give them something of a niche for trade-strapped empires, as they are generally a lot worse than conventional ships.
3. Will clerks still be hybrid jobs producing trade & amenities now that they don't need something like that to distinguish them from technicians? Trade planets having too many wasted amenities and clerks being significantly (more) inefficient for Oppresive Autocracy builds, especially with trade being more important for all empires, would not be as good as the job having pure trade output in my opinion.
4. Branch offices giving 5 empire sprawl is punishing in the late game where stacked APs. ascension and other sprawl reductions mean competing empires can get less sprawl than this for populated planets or large numbers of pops which should outproduce them - maybe giving the corporate authority reduced branch office sprawl (~-2.5%?) per ruler level would balance this somewhat as the game progresses.

isn't the zombie niche being biological robots that aren't offensive to psykers or other forms of spiritualists?

also how is space fauna self-sufficient when their entire upkeep mechanic is about them staing in feeding grounds to stay cheap? the moment you leave said feeding grounds your logistics team would need to bring the food to them just like they need to supply your regular fleets

also clerks producing amenities is cool af, that way you don't need to burn as many consumer goods on holo theaters, just like priests are better than bureaucrats - and clerks have that fancy planet wide trade value multiplication, not to mention that trade value is inherently superior to energy because it can be turned into resources besides energy and isn't reliant on planetary features since it's included in the uncapped city districts :3