Stellaris Dev Diary #39 - Back in Action

[Cybrex]

Great to have you back and working on the game guys! Please would you kindly take a loot at this thread?
Think about changing the Precursor Chains a little bit

 

[Summin Cool]

Welcome back!

Whens the next Stream?

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wiz, and welcome back . It's winter here though, so I've got plenty of excuses to stay inside (although atm I'm having a HoI binge, but I'll play Stellaris again soon enough ).

Looking forward to everything you and the team have planned . If you get a chance, would be nice to have optional, pausable message settings introduced. Easily the most fiddly and frustrating thing while playing the game in terms of moment-to-moment UI and information management. I'm not sure why they didn't make the cut (although, given they didn't make the cut in HoI4 for launch either (and are more of an issue there, because of the greater level of tactical detail) I suspect it's some kind of policy to move away from them*, rather than because you or another team member were abused by some particularly nasty message settings in the past ).

* If it is a policy, it's kind of inconsistent with the general approach to UI user-friendliness. I felt Stellaris and HoI4 both gave with one hand (great leaps forward in some areas) and took with another (hey, surely you don't really need to know when the Allies are launching D-Day**?) Sorry for the HoI example, but I've definitely had similar feelings in Stellaris, when I've scrolled across the map to see something had happened that I kind of wanted to know about when it start, not when it had finished - I just can't remember a specific detail off the top of my head.

**

Spoiler

There is an "invasion warning" alert, but no actual alert when the invasion starts, and given as Germany you can have an almost constant invasion warning alert in many situations, it's not actually that informative - explanation in before some smart-alec says "hey, but there is an invasion alert"

 

[Nasarog]

First of all, glad to have you back. Over the past month I have been actively looking through the workshop as well and found quite a few mods that add new aspects to the game while imho not straying too far from the feeling of the vanilla gameplay. I enjoy quite a few of those so I decided to do a short list of mods I think will enhance Stellaris and could be added to the base game either through patches or DLC.


Let’s start with the “simple” things, quality of life improvements:

There are a few small mods that should really make it into the base game imho and could save everyone a bit of hassle while also improving immersion a bit in some cases.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701739734 "Color coded pop status icons": Self-explanatory, really. Just a great help overall.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693310104 "Planetary Rally Points": Same.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688576380 "Complete Colors": Everything that increases our options and is easy to implement is a must-have for me. It also solves the problem that sometimes borders aren’t clear enough due to empires with the same primary color bordering each other.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708752579 "A Fine Selection of Quality Mapmodes, Probably": More mapmodes are always useful for a variety of reasons. I especially like the ethos mapmode.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725151626 “Plentiful Mapmodes”: Not that plentiful yet, but being able to check which type of FTL travel they use saves a lot of time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=684509976 “Remove stranded foreign stations”: Another small, self-explanatory thing that helps out immensely. It seems to be an often requested feature as well if we are going by the download numbers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701434781 “Hidden Hyperlanes” : I know Rikard mentioned on Twitter that not hiding hyperlanes was a conscious decision on the dev team’s part, but I’d appreciate the option to start a game in a fashion that is similar to this. I’d be overjoyed if this could be some sort of optional setting. Maybe there can be a special technology that reveals hyperlanes outside of your explored space for this optional start alone.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687226658 "No Clustered Starts": Another possible additional starting option, the less clustered start mixes things up a bit both in SP and MP and I would welcome such an addition.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=682691478 "Cybrxkhan's Assortment of Namelists for Stellaris": I like the existing name lists, but let’s face it: There are not enough of them. Of course, adding namelists from other IPs is not an option but there is really no sound argument against adding some more human namelists to enhance roleplaying (Space China, here I come!) as well as community-created ones. Especially if there are as well crafted as this one, for example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703759718 “Name List German Empire”
One of the many nice lists that serve as a good starting point imho.

You may argue that those are compatible anyway, but I’d like to see randomly AI empires use them regardless. I can understand if this is not high-priority, though.


Moving on, here are some small to middle sized mods which enhance only a single aspect of the game – but this in an imho natural way that feels very in line with vanilla gameplay. I will start with the smaller ones and work my way up:


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=712991814 "Special Systems": Exploring and the early game are the strong sides of Stellaris atm and this mod enhances both in a great way by providing both interesting, yet dangerous modifiers that affect combat and exploration. The technologies to combat said dangers are also great for immersion imho.


I will expand this post later today, but for now allow me to thank you once again for your continued updates of this game. I am very interested in the new patch!

Awesome post. Thank you for those links.

 

[Alexander555]

Good day Stellaris dev. team and Game Director!

I`d like to add some feedback after good playing of Stellaris that might seem really interesting to you and game fans!

Why the only winning condition(s) is war? No matter which ethics you choose in the beginning, no matter if a player wants to win peacefully, no matter that the people of our Human Civilization, including Sweden, Europe and USA is moving to real Peace world over – in Stellaris you should anyway go to war to win???

You are just reflecting the current unstable period of terror acts and conflicts or also see to the future? You are relying on players who love only war or also the ones that sincerely wish to use their strategic abilities to win peacefully? With no need of comparison but just think that in Master of Orion 2, developed 20 years ago, a player could develop empire and really win peacefully without a single war through universe elections and etc.

Together with that making a game you influence the minds of thousands of people, especially young ones, who can unconsciously use you war-style model of behavior in their real feeling of themselves and real life. Ask yourself - do you want to Spread the feelings and ways of conflict or ways of real Peace among people? That matters a lot, what do you feel about that?

Please get me right, of course you are game developer and publisher, making money and following your dev.experience, BUT only if you consider the changing trends in peoples mind and wishes you`ll have future.

Feel in your heart if is it right or not to include real conditions to win peacefully in Stellaris and if it is – implement it! The game is still in development and there are other things demanding attention, but this is I believe the most important!

Thank you!

Alexander

 

[thirawin]

Still waiting impatiently for colony events, something that should have been in the game at release....

 

[Bertie87]

This dev diary takes price from "Skybox" as the most non-informative and useless diary entry ever.

 

[cKnoor]

Welcome back!

Whens the next Stream?

We're back on Thursday, 15:00 CEST

 

[AKicebear]

Some feedback relevant to the original and current Heinlein plans:

• Factions stability - factions are a complete joke in my experience. They cause limited impact and are trivial to pay off. In my mind every artificial limit in the game should instead be limited by a stronger faction system. Scrap the war score and make anti-war factions, or factious cultures across new planets, an incentive to be more modest in your claimed spoils of war. Scrap the sector limit system, but make it so that rebellious planet or system factions start to proliferate if they aren't allow their own quasi-autonomy within a sector. Control large empires not by tech-retardation, but by highly divided politics due to factions which reduce tax collection (because they will rebel otherwise, not from a random corruption loss) and increase revolts in furthest systems. I think this would also completely fill out the middle and late game, given that is when factions would start to accrue meaningful power. The game becomes a grand balance between pursuing your galactic ambitions and keeping the 'domestic' situation from spiralling out of control. And yes, there should be 'death' spirals due to factions - I want to be at risk of being reduced down to a paltry system or two from a great republic as all factions rebel at once - if I neglect them enough. Can't say enough about how much Stellaris so far under-delivered on factions. Reduce the inevitable resource surplus in the end game by making factions increasingly demand they pay less and less taxes as they itch for independence.
• Colonization tedium - is too cumbersome given the scale of galaxy targeted (hundreds of systems). I should be able to click on a planet and select a list of viable space stations/race/factions from my empire to build a fleet and send them in. Or, use a colonization manager similar to the one in Distant Worlds. The current implementation is a silly click-fest to match the right space station, race, faction, etc with a target planet.
• Space ship spam - I think the beautiful battles mod is a bandaid on a larger problem. Space ships are far too cheap in this game, and thus too expendable. It should be a real struggle to produce any type of ship, and even harder to support them. A fleet of a dozen or so battlecruisers should be a massive investment. I think making each ship more precious would help solve how lame battles look in the late game, but more importantly make me actually care more about ship design and whether I win or lose each engagement. Perhaps it would also help with late game lag - I experience it heavily, but almost exclusively when large fleets start to clash.
• Events - not as critical to me, assuming factions are resolved. Still, it would be great if there was more variety of events. I think there should be a contest for fan submitted events to heavily populate the vanilla game, and that the team should work on making procedural events. I know sometimes procedural can be very bland, but in some cases it works great and creates a great narrative - see RimWorld or (I've read) Dwarf Fortress.
• Optimization - I'm not hopeful this will be fixed, but it nonetheless is a huge disappointment so far. I wish another developer would come along with a polished/charismatic/fun 4X/GS that is also highly optimized to scare everyone else into taking this seriously. What probably needs to happen is from day 1 - determining what the max CPU/GPU usage of the median user is, and then designing the end game complexity around that and working *backwards* towards the 'first turn'. Clearly not what anyone does...

 

[yourworstnightm]

Good day Stellaris dev. team and Game Director!

I`d like to add some feedback after good playing of Stellaris that might seem really interesting to you and game fans!

Why the only winning condition(s) is war? No matter which ethics you choose in the beginning, no matter if a player wants to win peacefully, no matter that the people of our Human Civilization, including Sweden, Europe and USA is moving to real Peace world over – in Stellaris you should anyway go to war to win???

You are just reflecting the current unstable period of terror acts and conflicts or also see to the future? You are relying on players who love only war or also the ones that sincerely wish to use their strategic abilities to win peacefully? With no need of comparison but just think that in Master of Orion 2, developed 20 years ago, a player could develop empire and really win peacefully without a single war through universe elections and etc.

Together with that making a game you influence the minds of thousands of people, especially young ones, who can unconsciously use you war-style model of behavior in their real feeling of themselves and real life. Ask yourself - do you want to Spread the feelings and ways of conflict or ways of real Peace among people? That matters a lot, what do you feel about that?

Please get me right, of course you are game developer and publisher, making money and following your dev.experience, BUT only if you consider the changing trends in peoples mind and wishes you`ll have future.

Feel in your heart if is it right or not to include real conditions to win peacefully in Stellaris and if it is – implement it! The game is still in development and there are other things demanding attention, but this is I believe the most important!

Thank you!

Alexander

I still hold up MoO2 as something no one has been able to outdo.

 

[indika_tates]

Something I miss is a search tool where you can find pritimives, planets, systems, anomalies, debries. Everything you see in the main window but in a sorted way. Later on the interface is a complete mess.

 

[LordPavel]

@ Krebsig
You can add this two :

Increased Research Window Size
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681894160

Reduce Aura Graphics
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=686768193&searchtext=

Good chooce to focus on the bug fix. Thx Prdx.

 

[Arizal]

Since I thought the DDs were coming back next week, I am happy to have one this week. I hope we will have more information on Heinlein next week.

Otherwise, hurray for Rally Points (stated in another thread)!

 

[Raph]

Just to be clear, this does not mean we don't have plans beyond Heinlein - we absolutely do. Besides more patches (1.4 will be called 'Banks'), we also have plans for lots of content to expand and build on the game. I just can't talk about it yet.

YAY BANKS! I'll take the liberty to quote a post I made a while back proposing a Banks expansion:

Stellaris got me to re-read the Culture books again and there's a lot of good stuff in there for a future expansion. It'd focus mainly on the late game. Some ideas, feel free to add your own:

BANKS EXPANSION

Major features:
- New victory type: Sublimation.
Would require some super-advanced techs, being Tier 9 (see below), having high happiness everywhere. Also would need you to "fulfill" your ethos in various ways depending on what it is, to go along with the idea that your civilization is done with the material universe. (For those unfamiliar with the series, you might compare this to the Transcendence victory type in SMAC/SMAX.)

- Artificial habitats for your POPs:
Worldships (inspired by GSVs). These would be late game only. You'd have a ship type a tier or more above Battleships in size, which along with weapons modules would include modules similar to spaceport modules, plus habitat modules. Each hab module would give space for X POPs (maybe 2 each?) and allow you to place normal buildings on them, excluding minerals. You should also be allowed to put science and/or construction modules on them if you wish. Through spaceport modules, you'd be able to produce smaller ships with them, and they'd be able to modify themselves. All this to mirror how GSVs in the culture can have different specializations, and change roles in times of war or peace.

Habitats (inspired by orbitals). These would be artificial "worlds" built by a construction ship. They'd work similar to worldships, using the spaceport interface as a base, allowing you to build habitation modules along with the usual spaceport modules. They'd allow POPs to live there and produce all normal resources except minerals.

- Civilization tier rankings.
Every civ would be ranked and placed in tiers from 1 (pre-sentient) to 10 (Fallen Empire). Higher ranks would give you some new options and also affect your relations with lower tier civs (affected by ethos). You'd have to be rank X to uplift/enlighten/infiltrate pre-space civs; at higher tiers, you might similarily influence lower tier FTL-civs to more closely resemble your own in ethos and government and might even absorb them (diplo-vassalize) into your own.

Minor features:
- More flavour events for infiltration and enlightenment. There should be a bunch of event chains that'd give you mini space opera stories akin to those in the books
- New government where AI Minds control stuff
- More options for "post scarcity" economy: new buildings for higher tier civs, along with artificial habs etc, so that you have more stuff to do when you have all the resources you need, apart from just building warships and blasting people (this also works well with the new victory type)
- Wargoals and diplomatic ways to influence the ethos and government of other civs
- Spiritualist societies can construct an artificial heaven/hell
- A small chance to find shell worlds. These are big and have big production bonuses to simulate the added living space but also lots of tile blockers and negative happiness modifiers unless a hefty sum of RP is spent to make them safe
- New leader type: Agent. You send these to oversee infiltrations and meddling with other civs. Tie-in with possible future espionage system (if that's already in prior to this expansion, add more options and fluff for infiltration, enlightenment)

 

[WhiteWeasel]

Throwing my feedback into the ring, I really think terraforming needs some help, and made a thread brainstorming some ideas. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ideas-to-make-terraforming-worthwhile.960157/

A second thing that's more QoL is for items in the ship designer, can we have only the top tier item showing in the list? And being able to see the older models of that item by right clicking on it? As the fitting system gets cluttered with a list of items mid to late game, and is even worse with mods.

 

[Apollo1784]

Is optimization for late game going to be addressed?

 

[[Q]uik]

Well that's, disappointing...
So this patch might not bring me back then, depending on what the "scope" is..

 

[CharlieFox]

Are there any plans to tweak the modified combat so that science ships that jump into a system with any hostiles can actually escape again? Because if not, I don't really see myself playing Stellaris again; the early game was already the least fun part without a total inability to explore before I manage to get my military built up.

It is not completely game breaking for me but I hope they fix it as it can get annoying

 

[heliostellar]

This dev diary takes price from "Skybox" as the most non-informative and useless diary entry ever.

Speak for yourself. I've been patiently waiting for when they'd be back working on patches.

 

[Spyhawk]

This dev diary takes price from "Skybox" as the most non-informative and useless diary entry ever.

At least the Skybox diary had some pretty screenshots...

I sincerely expected more for the dev diary that was supposed to be about future Stellaris development. A entire month wait for "Hi, we have some plan, ok thx bye cu next week!"...