Stellaris Dev Diary #380 - Defenders in the Stars

[Imp0815]

You can't say that you "wouldn’t recommend splitting a supply system into states, but rather applying it universally — to make it easier for players, automation, and the AI" as an argument in one post and then say that whether or not the supply system is split into states is irrelevant in another.

You can't argue that what happens in transition is pointless when the point is that either answer is flawed.

You can't port in systems from completely different games with completely different maps and completely different gameplay loops and then call it just a combat rework - HoI 4 doesn't even have an exploration mechanic.

I mean, you absolutely can do all those things, I'm not your mum, but it's not how discussing stuff works. A discussion is two or more people actively engaging with each other's points. Yeah it's absolutely fine to dismiss stuff like individual civics or specific origins as "that's up to the devs to work out", but when people are discussing the actual core mechanics of your concept, the actual part you think will solve all the problems and things cannot be solved without, then for it to count as a discussion you have to actually read, parse, internalise, and engage with those arguments even if they bring you to conclusions you don't like (assuming the other person is actually engaging, there's no point in putting the effort into arguing in good faith with someone who's not (not a dig at you right now, just putting that important qualifier in there on general principles)).

So yeah, I've pointed out numerous, very detailed issues with applying persistent system ship limits to Stellaris without ripping out the game map and associated concepts and completely starting over with everything those chain down to. If you want to argue against them, fire away. If you want to argue it would still be worth doing to avoid the nightmare scenario of only applying combat limits in combat, sure. Lord knows I'm more favourable than most to large scale sweeping changes, but you're awful optimistic about player acceptance of such a thing, and vastly underestimating how much of the game it would impact. More importantly if we were starting from scratch anyway then there's potentially solutions other than hard, persistent system limits (SotS SotS SotS) and describing starting completely over like that as adding system limits to Stellaris is like describing a stew as adding boiled potatoes to a sandwich.

You see, I haven’t quite found the right words for it yet, but it’s starting to look like we both have completely different perspectives on what it means to implement or rework systems — what’s needed and what’s feasible for Stellaris overall.

I understand the point that reworking combat and fleet progression would be a major overhaul, since the whole game truly revolves around it. There isn’t really a clear metric for progress beyond seeing increasing fleet power over the span of the game. So yes, if you touch doomstacks, you’re forced to rewrite big parts of the game — but that says more about the issue than about the feasibility.

So maybe there isn’t any argument left — because I think the game is really starting to overstay its welcome with flavor DLCs for over two years now, while the fundamentals remain the same boring loop. Either the game changes, or it burns out — and we truly need to set our hopes (and money) on a successor.

I get the point that the changes I see as necessary are big ones — but I believe they’re needed to reach a place where all these new flavors actually make sense, and aren’t just smoke and mirrors.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

The game is absolutely not designed for that though

Starbase capacity is way too limited to defend such wide borders and citadels are too expensive in construction cost and upkeep to put them in several dozen systems

As someone who normally plays with maximum hyperlane density, I want to argue some things.

1. If your empire is relatively small / tall, it can still be relatively easy to cover all of your border systems.
2. If your empire connects to the center or periphery of the galaxy, that can cut your frontline systems by up to 50%.
3. If your empire is near the gap between galaxy arms, that usually has a similar effect (though with a few bottleneck connections here and there).
4. There are plenty naturally occurring obstacles that can be used to reduce the exposed border size even further; leviathans, marauders, fallen empires.
5. Any gaps left, in case of a war, can be handled by mobile defenses. Especially after acquiring gateways or jump drives.
6. It is not logical to fortify the entire border to begin with, unless you are playing a genocidal exterminator at war with everyone else.
   1. In that case, your borders would be constantly expanding in all directions, beyond those systems that would get fortified and thereby rendering those fortifications pointless shortly after they are built, so it only makes sense to fortify systems with L-gates and wormholes.
   2. Normal empires will have both friends and enemies (and some despicable neutrals), and not all non-friends are very aggressive to begin with. China only built the great wall at the border with (historical) Mongolia, not with the rest of their neighbours. If you make friends or even allies of your other neighbours, this will greatly further reduce your border exposure to hostile empires and limit the need for fortifications (your friends are your extended walls / buffers).
   3. Deterrence through military strength can also substantially limit the ability of hostile neighbours to threaten you and warrant static defenses. Neighbours with pathetic strength do not necessitate such investments, as they will not declare war in the first place.
7. While it does require that the player pays attention to the evolving geopolitical map (conquests and bad alliances can create new exposure points), I personally find the game to be more fun and engaging when I can't choose to become complacent behind excessively overfortified permanent bottlenecks. When I need to counter developments that threaten my current balance, and use diplomacy to tilt the landscape more in my favour / make sure that not all of my neighbours hate my guts.
8. The age of exploration also lasts longer, since the other empires need to expand more (not just into a handful of bottleneck systems) before you get finally closed off from exploring the rest of the galaxy.

I used to play with bottleneck-rich maps, but I have found the transition to maximum hyperlane density to not be anywhere near as dramatic as it first seemed like it would be, and also much much more enjoyable. Now I can't imagine switching back, because I would lose too much of the things I have found myself to enjoy with maximum hyperlane density (or,when I feel like getting more bottlenecks, the second highest density option). And it is still perfectly possible to play peaceful turtle style.

The above is, obviously, just my personal subjective experience. And it is mostly from size 300 or 400 galaxies (I modded in a size 300 option because 200 is too small while 400 is too slow). Gameplay on the biggest galaxy sizes may give a substantially different experience - though I am hoping to be able to switch up 1 or 2 galaxy sizes and find out for myself, after the upcoming performance improvements in 4.0.

 

[Critical Ethics]

As someone who normally plays with maximum hyperlane density, I want to argue some things.

1. If your empire is relatively small / tall, it can still be relatively easy to cover all of your border systems.
2. If your empire connects to the center or periphery of the galaxy, that can cut your frontline systems by up to 50%.
3. If your empire is near the gap between galaxy arms, that usually has a similar effect (though with a few bottleneck connections here and there).
4. There are plenty naturally occurring obstacles that can be used to reduce the exposed border size even further; leviathans, marauders, fallen empires.
5. Any gaps left, in case of a war, can be handled by mobile defenses. Especially after acquiring gateways or jump drives.
6. It is not logical to fortify the entire border to begin with, unless you are playing a genocidal exterminator at war with everyone else.
   1. In that case, your borders would be constantly expanding in all directions, beyond those systems that would get fortified and thereby rendering those fortifications pointless shortly after they are built, so it only makes sense to fortify systems with L-gates and wormholes.
   2. Normal empires will have both friends and enemies (and some despicable neutrals), and not all non-friends are very aggressive to begin with. China only built the great wall at the border with (historical) Mongolia, not with the rest of their neighbours. If you make friends or even allies of your other neighbours, this will greatly further reduce your border exposure to hostile empires and limit the need for fortifications (your friends are your extended walls / buffers).
   3. Deterrence through military strength can also substantially limit the ability of hostile neighbours to threaten you and warrant static defenses. Neighbours with pathetic strength do not necessitate such investments, as they will not declare war in the first place.
7. While it does require that the player pays attention to the evolving geopolitical map (conquests and bad alliances can create new exposure points), I personally find the game to be more fun and engaging when I can't choose to become complacent behind excessively overfortified permanent bottlenecks. When I need to counter developments that threaten my current balance, and use diplomacy to tilt the landscape more in my favour / make sure that not all of my neighbours hate my guts.
8. The age of exploration also lasts longer, since the other empires need to expand more (not just into a handful of bottleneck systems) before you get finally closed off from exploring the rest of the galaxy.

I used to play with bottleneck-rich maps, but I have found the transition to maximum hyperlane density to not be anywhere near as dramatic as it first seemed like it would be, and also much much more enjoyable. Now I can't imagine switching back, because I would lose too much of the things I have found myself to enjoy with maximum hyperlane density (or,when I feel like getting more bottlenecks, the second highest density option). And it is still perfectly possible to play peaceful turtle style.

The above is, obviously, just my personal subjective experience. And it is mostly from size 300 or 400 galaxies (I modded in a size 300 option because 200 is too small while 400 is too slow). Gameplay on the biggest galaxy sizes may give a substantially different experience - though I am hoping to be able to switch up 1 or 2 galaxy sizes and find out for myself, after the upcoming performance improvements in 4.0.

Something I was thinking about was the idea of two tiers of hyperlanes. Have the current standard hyperlane pattern that functions same as it does by default but also a larger, more connected network of much slower but still traversable lanes. Then you could do some fun stuff like certain star or nebula types only ever having one kind of connection or the other, fast lanes, space storms shutting down all of one type of lane or converting lanes for their duration, "chasms" of slow lanes, and so on.

 

[Imp0815]

Something I was thinking about was the idea of two tiers of hyperlanes. Have the current standard hyperlane pattern that functions same as it does by default but also a larger, more connected network of much slower but still traversable lanes. Then you could do some fun stuff like certain star or nebula types only ever having one kind of connection or the other, fast lanes, space storms shutting down all of one type of lane or converting lanes for their duration, "chasms" of slow lanes, and so on.

Just a spitball, but:

This could be a cool feature and an interesting way to limit fleet movement from system to system — dictating how many ships can reach where.
Like small, medium, and large lanes that accommodate different amounts of ships or ship sizes — manipulatable by building hyper relays in systems.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Honestly, just keep the doomstack system around and teach players the advantages of flanking, ambushing and other silly tactics that encourage them to use catapults, jump drives or, at the very least, more than one ship design (so that their artillery X slot ships don't get rofl-stomped by torpedo defense platforms directly at the hyperlane)

Part of the problem with doomstacks is that currently they're a local maxima strategy. Hit fleet with bigger fleet = they lose many ships you lose few ships. Hit fleet with even bigger fleet = they lose many ships you lose almost no ships. Hit fleet with fleet about same size fleet = lose a bunch of ships, maybe lose fight. Hit fleet with slightly smaller fleet = lose fight, lose many ships. Playing smarty pants hit and run tactics may be the global maxima strategy but there's no intuitive path for a player to get there once they start down the doomstack route. They'll do worse by straying from the old tried and true well before they start doing better by getting good at fancy play.

That's why local maxima strategies are bad game design. It discourages players from branching out and leads to stagnation around easy to fall into, hard to fall out of gameplay styles. Part of teaching people to not doomstack is to reduce the effectiveness of doomstacking so they're not punished for experimenting. And if the players are roaming around with giant stacks then the AI needs to roam around with giant stacks and you need to boost static defences so they're worth building and you just end up in an arms race of bigger and better.

Which is why I like boosted in-combat logistics costs for a stacked side as part of the anti-doomstack measures. Medium fleet vs medium fleet means more lost ships, but giant fleet vs medium fleet = the same amount of resources in trade gone into the ether. This brings down the height of the doomstack local maxima, reducing the amount of get good required to see yourself getting more good, and also results in situations where going full doomstack risks sending you into an immediate recession so you're forced to experiment or withdraw. These combined push and pull players to at least try splitting their ships into sizes proportional to what the AI is natively fielding, and hey if I'm running three different fleets anyway I might as well send this one off to attack the undefended flank...

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Something I was thinking about was the idea of two tiers of hyperlanes. Have the current standard hyperlane pattern that functions same as it does by default but also a larger, more connected network of much slower but still traversable lanes. Then you could do some fun stuff like certain star or nebula types only ever having one kind of connection or the other, fast lanes, space storms shutting down all of one type of lane or converting lanes for their duration, "chasms" of slow lanes, and so on.

Just a spitball, but:

This could be a cool feature and an interesting way to limit fleet movement from system to system — dictating how many ships can reach where.
Like small, medium, and large lanes that accommodate different amounts of ships or ship sizes — manipulatable by building hyper relays in systems.

I think I suggested something similar in the recent hyperlane creation thread.

Basically, the galaxy would technically be generated with maximum hyperlane density, but a (setting-dependent) number of these hyperlanes could start out as non-navigable (or otherwise restrictive in navigation). They could, however, be upgraded to a better condition; this could then be a new way to escape being locked in, by paying a sufficient price (Energy?) to create a navigable bypass.

This could be used to effectively divide the galaxy into initial "continents" of navigable space, where different "continents" also would not need to be created equal; some could be dense with pre-FTL societies but devoid of post-FTL empires, while Fallen Empires could effectively be created as separate "continents" (which they would be in full control of).

The precursor homeworlds could also exist from the beginning, but only become accessible once sufficient clues have been gained to "unlock" them.

There could also be some midgame crisis that involves a period of hyperlane degradation.

Cosmic storms could degrade or enhance hyperlanes they pass.

Some space fauna could be skilled at "boring" through sealed hyperlanes, opening them up for travel.

 

[Gorehuchi]

In the DSC stream last week Stephen said that the appearance of the DSC "should be related to your shipset", however I believe this is not the case.
Below are screenshots from twitch and youtube showing the DSC with the "Aquatic" shipset and the "Machine" shipset. Compared to the art shown in this diary I believe they are identical, with only the lighting to differentiate them.

Can we get confirmation of this? Are their textures still in development or will they look the same no matter what empire you are?
If the later, then it appears that this is following the convention from the machine age where the two structures introduced there also had only one texture map each. The difference here though is that these are much larger military structures, which are going to be seen up close in combat, and the fact that they are all glistening white is disappointing. My fear is that they will stand out like a sore thumb, especially if the empire is using the arthropoid, necroid, or imperial shipsets.

I would like to make it clear that I think the design is awesome and the team is delivering a lot with this DLC, but personally the shipset variations make a huge visual impact in my opinion and will be sorely missed if absent.

 

[ThirdCultureEcologist]

So I seem to recall there being some game rules against multiple wormholes being in the same system, or even wormholes and the wormhole-adjacent Shroud tunnel (since you're not allowed to build the Shroud Beacon in a system with a wormhole).

With that in mind... what happens if you find Keides as a Starlit Citadel empire? Part of his plot line involves creating a new wormhole between your capital system and his original home system. Will that work if your capital already has a wormhole from your origin?

 

[Imp0815]

I think I suggested something similar in the recent hyperlane creation thread.

Basically, the galaxy would technically be generated with maximum hyperlane density, but a (setting-dependent) number of these hyperlanes could start out as non-navigable (or otherwise restrictive in navigation). They could, however, be upgraded to a better condition; this could then be a new way to escape being locked in, by paying a sufficient price (Energy?) to create a navigable bypass.

This could be used to effectively divide the galaxy into initial "continents" of navigable space, where different "continents" also would not need to be created equal; some could be dense with pre-FTL societies but devoid of post-FTL empires, while Fallen Empires could effectively be created as separate "continents" (which they would be in full control of).

The precursor homeworlds could also exist from the beginning, but only become accessible once sufficient clues have been gained to "unlock" them.

There could also be some midgame crisis that involves a period of hyperlane degradation.

Cosmic storms could degrade or enhance hyperlanes they pass.

Some space fauna could be skilled at "boring" through sealed hyperlanes, opening them up for travel.

Star Trek had an episode where there was a corridor of space where warp travel was prohibited due to environmental impact or something.

Andromeda had their Slipstream travel, which was basically about navigating difficult and dangerous tunnels to get from A to B.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes had a geographic divide between the Alliance and the Empire — a narrow region of space where faster-than-light travel was only possible, making it a major chokepoint for the wars that followed.

Hyperlanes are already cool, but I think their potential can be expanded to recreate missing sci-fi tropes and introduce meaningful gameplay features.
In addition, this could be a completely new compromise solution to the question of how to limit doomstacks and reduce their overall usefulness.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Just a spitball, but:

This could be a cool feature and an interesting way to limit fleet movement from system to system — dictating how many ships can reach where.
Like small, medium, and large lanes that accommodate different amounts of ships or ship sizes — manipulatable by building hyper relays in systems.

If you mean limiting the number that can be in the system then there's all the same problems as before.

If you mean a limit on how many ships can enter or leave a system at once by specific routes that leads to a whole other pile of micromanagement headaches. It can work in a turn based system but not RTWP.