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Stellaris Dev Diary #42 - Heinlein patch (part 3)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This is the third part in a multi-part dev diary about the 'Heinlein' 1.3 patch that we are currently working on. This week's dev diary will be about more miscellaneous changes and improvements coming in the patch, currently planned for release sometime in October.

Federation/Alliance Merger
When Federations were given the ability to vote on invites and wars, alliances became a bit of an odd duck in the Stellaris diplomacy. A middle layer between the 'loose' diplomacy of defensive pacts and joint DOWs, they ended up as little more than a weak form of Federation that's usually swapped out the moment the latter becomes available. In Heinlein, we've decided to retire alliances altogether and have Federations be the only form of 'permanent' alliance. When you unlock the technology for Federations, you will immediately be able to invite another empire into a Federation with you, 4 empires no longer being necessary to start one. Once a Federation has been formed, the technology is not required to invite new members or to ask to join it.

Federation Association Status
Another issue we ran into with the changes to diplomacy in Asimov is that Alliances and Federations had trouble bringing in new members - since non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts and guarantees were no longer possible with outside powers, building trust is difficult and you have to mostly rely on large bribes to get new members to join, something that just didn't feel right. To address this, we're adding a new diplomatic option to Heinlein called 'Federation Association Status'. This works similarly to an invite to the Federation in that it can be offered and asked for with any member of the Federation, but must be approved via unanimous vote. A country that has Federation Association Status is not actually a part of the Federation, but has a non-aggression pact with all Federation members and will gain trust with them up to a maximum value of 100. Revoking association status can be done via majority vote, or on the part of the associate at any time they like.
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Planet Habitability Changes
The planet habitability wheel is a mechanic we were never quite happy with - it makes some degree of sense, but it's hard to keep track of how each planet relates to your homeworld type, and it ends up nonsensical in quite a few cases (Desert being perfectly fine for Tropical inhabitants, or Arid for Tundra, etc). We found that most players tend to intuitively divide planets into desert/arid tundra/arctic and ocean/tropical/continental, and so we decided to change the mechanic to fit player intuition. Instead of a wheel, planets are now divided into three climate groups (Dry, Wet and Cold) and two new planet types (Alpine and Savanna) were added so that each group has 3 planet types. Habitability for the climates now works as follows (numbers may be subject to change):
  • Habitability for your main planet type is 80% (as before)
  • Habitability for planets of your climate is 60%
  • Habitability for planets of other climates is 20%
As such, you no longer have to keep track of anything other than which climate your planet type has to know whether a particular type of world is suitable for your species.
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We also felt that the number of habitable planets in the galaxy was too large overall, but that we couldn't really decrease it so long as the player only had access to 1/7 of those types at start, which would now become 1/9. We also felt the colonization tech gating could be rather arbitrary, particularly if you had a species suited to a particular planet type but still couldn't colonize it due to lacking the tech. As such, we've done away with the tech gating on colonization, and instead instituted a 30% minimum habitability requirement to colonize a planet. You will also be unable to relocate pops to a planet if their habitability there would be under the 30% minimum. With this change we've also majorly slashed the number of habitable worlds in the galaxy, though if you prefer a galaxy lush with life you will be able to make it so through a new option outlined below. We are, of course, looking into and tweaking the effects that having less habitable worlds overall will have on empire borders.

More Galaxy Setup Options
There is an old gamer's adage that says 'more player choice is always better'. We do not actually agree with this, as adding unnecessary/uninteresting choices can just as well bog a game down as it can improve it, but in the case of galaxy setup in a game such as Stellaris, it is pretty much true. With that in mind, the following new galaxy setup options are planned to be included in Heinlein:
  • Maximum number of Fallen Empires (actually setting a fixed number is difficult due to the way they spawn and how it's affected by regular empires)
  • Chance of habitable worlds spawning
  • Whether to allow advanced empires to start near players
  • Whether to use empire clustering
  • Whether endgame crises should be allowed to appear

Sector Improvements
Since barely a day goes by without a new thread on the topic of sectors and enslavement, we would of course be remiss not to deal with this particular bugbear. We intend to spend a considerable amount of time on the sector AI for Heinlein, but I'm not going to go into specifics on bug fixing/AI improvements but rather on a series of new toggles that we intend to introduce to give the player more control over their sector. In addition to the current redevelopment/respect tile resource toggles, the following new toggles are planned for Heinlein:
  • Whether sector is allowed to enslave/emancipate
  • Whether sector is allowed to build spaceports and construction ships
  • Whether sector is allowed to build military stations (this will replace the military sector focus)
We're also discussing having a sector toggle for building and maintaining local defense fleets, but we don't think we'll have time for it in Heinlein.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about Fallen Empires, how they can awaken, and the War in Heaven.
 
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Stellaris needs to stop removing good but confusing basegame features that actually worked ok (embassies, alliances, habitability, ect) and focus more on adding more content, fixing mid-late game drag, improve ground combat, add in espionage, more events, and tweaking these core features to make them more playable.

Alliances have only been "removed" in name only it seems, all the functionality of an alliance is still in Heinlein... via defensive pacts, ad-hoc war invites, migration treaties, etc. But now with the formal structure of an alliance no longer existing you can have all of these things with multiple empires that hate each other, whereas previously you could only be in a single alliance.
 
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Pops under the habitability threshold will die off over time. Terraforming a planet in a way that kills the pops will basically be treated as purging.

Will this allow us to get rid of stone age primitives before colonizing the planet?
Will it be restricted by the Purge policy setting? What if someone migrates in while terraforming is in progress?
Speaking of terraforming, I suppose the new allowed transitions will be up/down (on that grid you posted) with 1st tech and left/right with 2nd. Correct?
Any changes to terraforming resources?
 
Pops under the habitability threshold will die off over time. Terraforming a planet in a way that kills the pops will basically be treated as purging.

To further increase the importance of habitability, has there ever been talk of having it affect base happiness as well as the happiness cap? It seems strange to me that unless you are stacking a lot of happiness bonusses, there is essentially no difference in happiness between 100% habitability, or 80 or 70%.
 
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Pops under the habitability threshold will die off over time. Terraforming a planet in a way that kills the pops will basically be treated as purging.

Big improvement over previous system of merely capping happiness (and decreasing growth speed iirc)

If pops are allowed to emigrate, and there is free space on habitable worlds, will they all move out to other planets? Or are they still restricted in how much can try to emigrate at the same time even if they are dying off?

How much can one raise habitability of planet (without actually terraforming) through researching technology and frontier clinics?
 
There is an old gamer's adage that says 'more player choice is always better'. We do not actually agree with this, as adding unnecessary/uninteresting choices can just as well bog a game down as it can improve it.

I don't really understand where you are coming from with this; are you saying that its not always better for more options or are you saying that a badly executed choice is worth no choice at all?

Seems more the latter than the former.

Overwise it's a decent update. I don't really like taking away stuff from the game with the merger, but it's been made obsolete with the joint DOWs and defensive pacts as said in the Dev diary.

I just find that the AI seems to be too easy to buy off, I can just give them a single liberated planet and they will agree 100% of the time. Is that just me or does it need tweaking?
 
Pops under the habitability threshold will die off over time. Terraforming a planet in a way that kills the pops will basically be treated as purging.
Ohh, my imagination is just running wild right now...

The xenophobic Terran Empire will finally be able to eradicate those primitive xenos without ever using any troops, and as a nice side-effect they might just get a habitable world (for themselves) out of the process!

And a science-focused pacifist nation can work towards bringing universal peace to the galaxy by stopping the more primitive xenophobic and militaristic ones from ever expanding anywhere...

Last but certainly not least, any empire with such a simple thing as terraforming equipment and the ability to repel any attacks on itself can easily turn into an endgame crisis, necroforming anything in its path of destruction, sweeping over the galaxy leaving behind nothing but lifeless worlds! They might just seem perfect for life of all kinds to flourish there, but the new "caretakers" would never allow anything even barely resembling life to develop there...

"Necroforming"... doesn't actually sound bad. I think I'll call terraforming-purges "necroforming" from now on ^^
 
I like how, underneath it's campy high space opera exterior, Stellaris is actually incredibly dark.
 
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why dry-wet-cold? it is more reasonable humidity and temperature 2 axis
We just had that discussion in this thread; perhaps you should read it :)
 
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Ohh, my imagination is just running wild right now...

The xenophobic Terran Empire will finally be able to eradicate those primitive xenos without ever using any troops, and as a nice side-effect they might just get a habitable world (for themselves) out of the process!

And a science-focused pacifist nation can work towards bringing universal peace to the galaxy by stopping the more primitive xenophobic and militaristic ones from ever expanding anywhere...

Last but certainly not least, any empire with such a simple thing as terraforming equipment and the ability to repel any attacks on itself can easily turn into an endgame crisis, necroforming anything in its path of destruction, sweeping over the galaxy leaving behind nothing but lifeless worlds! They might just seem perfect for life of all kinds to flourish there, but the new "caretakers" would never allow anything even barely resembling life to develop there...

"Necroforming"... doesn't actually sound bad. I think I'll call terraforming-purges "necroforming" from now on ^^

Reminds me of Spore, where the big bads of the space stage lived on barren planets and you could terraform it to kill them all off.

Also, Necroforming sounds like something out of 2000AD
 
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Hello. I'm sorry if I've been asking for this too much, but it's something I'd really want to see in the game.

Currently we are unable to rename our ground armies. We can rename their fleets, but when we land the armies the fleet name resets upon embarkation. I'd very much like it if it were so that we could permanently rename both ground armies and their fleets.

Thank you.
 
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3) You will be able to colonize tomb worlds from the start so long as you have something that can live there.

Other than robots and the Rad Roaches, I haven't seen anything that meets the new 30% requirement.
 
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War of Heaven.... Interesting...

Who are you and what do you want?

and Fallen Empires....

Clearly Babylon 5 reference(to me).


Removing Alliances:
Annoying but understandable. The Alliance would become a weakened form of a federation with no leader and no naval capacity loss under the new Federation Model. Not particullarily worth keeping as it would only serve to detract the number of Federations in game. Getting others to join your wars in an alliance should require a concession to the other nations, which is only possible if they vote on it, which might as well be a federation. If you want instead to lossen the alliance even more, all you need is a defensive pact and invite to wars.

Habitability Changes:
Great!
But how will this affect Teraformation?
My assumption is you can jump to any planet type in your class, or a different class in your line, but it is not clear.

How is the late game optimisation going? I want to play on a medium (or larger) sized galaxy till the end without resorting to leaving it to run while I have dinner...
 
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Because it has four neighboring planet types instead of three. Also, four of the types would only have two neighboring types.

One could solve this problem, if one had a 5 by 5 planet type matrix, but only the center 3 by 3 could by valid species preferences. Then all starting planet types would have their surrounding 3 by 3 matrix of somewhat compatible planets.
I would say choose a 3x3 and then your 'near' four would be the ones that share your wet/heat column/row and the others would be not. That way the percentiles would even out and continental wouldn't be 'best'.

-Crissa
 
You'll fix the enslave bug, awesome! Thats all I needed to know. I will see you guy's when this is released and then I can finely start playing as my Imperium of Man. In all honesty thou, to the guy's who made this game. It's fucking awesome. That one bug was all that ruined it for me. This patch looks like a freaking expansion pack in it's own (Don't get any greedy ideas now) and it's freaking amazing that you put that much work in it. All in all. Your awesome, keep up the good work.
 
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I like how, underneath it's campy high space opera exterior, Stellaris is actually incredibly dark.
Yep, and you don't even need to search for this darkness, it just jumps right into your face after just a few years of space travel (depends a little on your empire's ethoses though ;))

Reminds me of Spore, where the big bads of the space stage lived on barren planets and you could terraform it to kill them all off.

Also, Necroforming sounds like something out of 2000AD
If we could "terra"form planets into barren worlds, Necroforming would basically do the exact opposite:
Taking normal worlds with people and turning them into barren planets without people.

I honestly never heard of 2000AD, but after looking at the timeline from Wikipedia it sounds more like a zombification process than the procedure of exterminating entire ecosystems and replacing them with plain nothingness in terms of anything that could grow into intelligence. But as I said, I don't know 2000AD at all.
 
I honestly never heard of 2000AD, but after looking at the timeline from Wikipedia it sounds more like a zombification process than the procedure of exterminating entire ecosystems and replacing them with plain nothingness in terms of anything that could grow into intelligence. But as I said, I don't know 2000AD at all.

ah It's a comic book series starring stuff such as Judge Dredd, Tharg the Mighty and so on.
 
Could you guys please put in a button to randomize ship names (using the selected ship naming database) at some point? Exact same kind of thing as already exists for colony names, right down to the UI art.
 
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To further increase the importance of habitability, has there ever been talk of having it affect base happiness as well as the happiness cap? It seems strange to me that unless you are stacking a lot of happiness bonusses, there is essentially no difference in happiness between 100% habitability, or 80 or 70%.

There is - POP growth times. This is especially noticeable if you have a large number of food tiles being worked on your new colony, or multiple races with different habitability on one planet. Like food it becomes inconsequential once the planet is full, though.