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

[Zenicetus]

sectors if removed would make the game so much better heck there are mods on the workshop that do just that

Well, isn't that the ideal situation then? Paradox can continue improving how sectors work, and meanwhile if you don't like what they're doing, just mod them out. Best of both worlds.

I use one of the sector cap adjustment mods, not because I hate sectors (although they need lots of work!), but because I hate the idea of an arbitrary cap on core systems. It feels gamey and immersion-breaking. As it happens, I do often follow the original design of managing only 5-7 core systems, but at least I'm the one making the decision about when to split off sectors and not some arbitrary cap.

So, yay for mods! Use them to adjust for your preferred gameplay.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

But in the current patch alliances are pretty much redundant because of defensive pacts and joint war declarations. All alliances do is compromise your diplomacy with everyone (no more non-aggression pacts or defensive pacts) and block you from starting wars on your own

Then tweak them. I never joined Federations after the first game because they completely limited my sovereignty. Alliances didn't until the new diplomacy changes made it difficult to create them unless you are a pacifist.

The addition of defensive pacts really threw a wrench into things.

 

[Darkath]

Of course they aren't a perfect fit, that's why they'd only have 60% habitability. Also, you seem to have misunderstood. The 60% habitability isn't either just for planets matching your temperature or just for planets matching your humidity, it's for both. So a desert homeworld for example would give you 80% habitability on desert worlds, 60% on dry worlds, 60% on hot worlds and 20% on worlds that are neither hot nor dry.

That would mean you have 80% on 1 planet type, 60% on 4 planet types and 20 % on 4 planet types, as opposed to 80% on 1 planet type 60% on 2 planet types and 20% on 6 planet types in the Dev Diary, if the majority of planets are hospitable to your species, there's litlle point in having so many planet types.

 

[Thimeaux]

@Wiz
Some questions.

Can the influence cost for colonies please be removed? there is this one game i cannot expand anymore because i only have about 100 influence left and i am afraid some of my leaders are going to drop dead. I personally think that before the update where they added the influence cost for colonies there were plenty of things to spend influence on, i am now too afraid to colonise in case some of my leaders die and i feel rediculously restrained. another solution for this could be more ways to gain influence.

Also, and this has been on my mind for some time now, with Heinlein, are older saves going to be invalid? because with the changes to habitability and strategic rescources, along with some other things, i cannot imagine how old saves are going to hold up.

A third question, how do you guys over at paradox keep being so amazing?

That was it, have fun working at paradox and thus knowing all the stuff about Heinlein already. (I am totally not jealous or anything.) STELLARIS RULES!

Edit: another question, can the two new negative traits (fleeting and deviant) get thier own icons? Right now they are just (not even the right tint of) red versions of thier posisive counterparts. I suggest something like a cat or a goat for deviant and something like a mouse or a housefly for fleeting.

 

[Drexl]

Uhhh... I hate federations.

I still want the ability to declare war with an ally (and split things up) without giving up my nation sovereignty.

A federation is basically one member take all and you are FORCED to join a war where you get absolutely nothing writhing in return until you are president again.

Yes that's how I feel. I prefer alliances over federations. They should be tweaked a bit, but giving up sovereignty is not something I want to do.

 

[Reaperdamo]

still think Federations need work - they dont count towards victory conditions on the most basic level as far as i can tell - that needs to change. There is alot more you could do with federations a la roleplay and it needs more work.

And anyone who plays space games will tell you that sometimes they spend us much time at galaxy creation as they do playing it so more options are like catnip to space geeks - just look at DWU options!

More victory conditions please - especially tied to ethics would be nice.

Thanks,

 

[Werthrf]

i hate them soo much because they DO NOTHING for the game they need to be completely reworked and improved upon greatly i have played through the game twice and started multiple games that i couldn't be bothered continuing for one reason or another

sectors if removed would make the game so much better heck there are mods on the workshop that do just that

I think the best way will be removing sectors mechanic and adding a button for autobuilding on every planet. Well, amount of resources they can use must be restricted somehow. Probably idea behind sectors was to make kinda political struggle against metropoly but it is not working at all now.

 

[Summin Cool]

Alright, I've given the dev diary a proper look and I honestly think the oncoming and current system for colonizing planets are too simple. It feels as if planets are too samey and all that matters is the type and size.

What I think should happen the system I thought up in my other post. Where a scale is made with 0-150 "Wetness" Or "Humidity" and 0-150 Temperature with RNG deciding where the planet lies.

80 - (((Temperature - Species optimal)^2 + (Wetness - Species optimal)^2)^0.5)/1.5 = Habitability

Is the equation I think you should use, The rules that need a change in order for this is work better and make planets feel more unique is that productivity and research scales with happiness, ie you get a scaling buff starting from 50% happiness giving perhaps something like +2% Research, Minerals and Energy per 10% Happiness above 50%.

Then here is the trick, hide wetness and temperature behind a details popup or something and just display the Habitability in relation to a species and in addition display the type of the planet based on the wetness and Temperature. This makes it both simple to see how nice the planet is while keeping details if needed such as for Terraforming. I`ll come to that later.

That way planets are a bit more different from another and thus feel a bit more unique rather than the same, and thus a bit more dynamic and hopefully interesting.

In regards to Terraforming. How about the ability to set the wetness and temperature as an advanced option. Then give a simple option of setting it to the optimal for a species. Just calculate the time based on how far you need to shift the planet on the scale!

EDIT: In addition for fair play I reckon that the Home planet types should be restricted to 50 - 100 in the scale. You could give the equation a bit of tweaking and so on.


What are people's thoughts on this?

 

[NHunter_rus]

Didn't Wiz say that they don't want anything overly complicated, whether for colonization or otherwise?
Your formula includes square roots and whatnot - that, I'm sure, doesn't fit into Paradox's vision of "simple enough" formula. And the fact that you want to hide details somewhere (on the pop details) only makes your idea worse in that regard.

That said, while something like that will not make it into the default game (mods - maybe), it is something that is rather interesting...

 

[Werthrf]

80 - (((Temperature - Species optimal)^2 + (Wetness - Species optimal)^2)^0.5)/1.5 = Habitability


What are people's thoughts on this?

Dont know if it is important but this number can be negative

 

[VoodooDog]

Dry / Wet / Cold ?!

a planet can be cold and dry, can it?

 

[Summin Cool]

Dont know if it is important but this number can be negative

I don't think it really matters that much as you can set <0 to 0.

In addition for fair play I reckon that the Home planet types should be restricted to 50 - 100 in the scale. You could give the equation a bit of tweaking and so on.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I don't think it really matters that much as you can set <0 to 0.

In addition for fair play I reckon that the Home planet types should be restricted to 50 - 100 in the scale. You could give the equation a bit of tweaking and so on.

Your idea, whilst interesting, makes the colonisation rules and habitability non-transparent. People might want to know *why* a particular world has a different habitability rating to another of the same "class" - especially new players - and why a given planet with a habitability of (for example) 44% takes a different time to terraform compared to another planet of the same class with the same habitability.

Simple is (usually) better in a case like this, unless there's something major to be gained.

 

[Darkath]

Your idea, whilst interesting, makes the colonisation rules and habitability non-transparent. People might want to know *why* a particular world has a different habitability rating to another of the same "class" - especially new players - and why a given planet with a habitability of (for example) 44% takes a different time to terraform compared to another planet of the same class with the same habitability.

Simple is (usually) better in a case like this, unless there's something major to be gained.

The issue here is that the new planet types will reduce player choices. From 7 types of planet 5 base habitability factors, we'll get 9 planet types but only 4 base habitability, and an habitability threshold which cuts off the last one.

Ergo, Simple is not better in this case, you're removing player choices with an unnecessary simplification. While at first i was interested by new planet classification and types, the more i think of it, the less i understand why this change was warranted, especially since it actually removes options and choices from the player.

Was planet habitability particularly hard to understand before ? I don't think so, and either way you had the interface to clearly communicate you what planet was good and what planets were not.

Having some sort of randomness in planet climate, and several factors affecting preferences, could add more options and choices for the player to ponder, rather than a quasi-binary choice as it will be in heinlein.

You don't even need an obscure and complex formula to decide on hability, just modifiers as usual in PDS games :

From 0 to 100 with different factors adding reasons to like or dislike the planet. You could have as many factors included as you like and be transparent for the player.

Planet Gamma, Tropical Planet, habitability 65%
+20 Oxygen in atmosphere (species is breathing oxygen)
+10 Mineral rich (species is born engineers)
+20 Wet climate (species prefers wet planet)
+10 Temperate climate (species prefers hot planets)
+20 Teeming flora (all species enjoy planets rich in life)
- 5 Dangerous Wildlife
- 10 Acid Rains


Wouldn't be much hard than keeping track of which vassals dislike you the most in CK2

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

The issue here is that the new planet types will reduce player choices. From 7 types of planet 5 base habitability factors, we'll get 9 planet types but only 4 base habitability, and an habitability threshold which cuts off the last one.

I don't fully understand what you're saying here. What do you mean by "base habitability factors"?

Ergo, Simple is not better in this case, you're removing player choices with an unnecessary simplification. While at first i was interested by new planet classification and types, the more i think of it, the less i understand why this change was warranted, especially since it actually removes options and choices from the player.

Was planet habitability particularly hard to understand before ? I don't think so, and either way you had the interface to clearly communicate you what planet was good and what planets were not.

It's not the difficulty of understanding it in the previous system that's the problem. The problem was that some of the planetary adjacencies don't make sense, and that the colonisation techs block expansion arbitrarily if they won't come up in the order you need them.

Having some sort of randomness in planet climate, and several factors affecting preferences, could add more options and choices for the player to ponder, rather than a quasi-binary choice as it will be in heinlein.

You don't even need an obscure and complex formula to decide on hability, just modifiers as usual in PDS games :

From 0 to 100 with different factors adding reasons to like or dislike the planet. You could have as many factors included as you like and be transparent for the player.

Planet Gamma, Tropical Planet, habitability 65%
+20 Oxygen in atmosphere (species is breathing oxygen)
+10 Mineral rich (species is born engineers)
+20 Wet climate (species prefers wet planet)
+10 Temperate climate (species prefers hot planets)
+20 Teeming flora (all species enjoy planets rich in life)
- 5 Dangerous Wildlife
- 10 Acid Rains


Wouldn't be much hard than keeping track of which vassals dislike you the most in CK2

We already have several of those happening, as additional modifiers to the base planet habitability.

 

[Darkath]

I don't fully understand what you're saying here. What do you mean by "base habitability factors"?

The base habitability factors (habitability of a planet before anything else is applied) in game for now are :

100% Gaia and Homeworld
80% Prefered planet type
60% Close planet type
40% Far planet type (was 20% before)
0% Furthest planet type

In heinlein we'll have

100% Gaia and Homeworld
80% Prefered planet type
60% Same group
20% Different group

Therefore there might be more planet types, but from a gameplay perspective there is less choices especially considering the new threshold that cut off anything below 30%

 

[King Travis]

It seems like an alpine world is just a slightly less arctic world? What makes it different? More water below the surface?

 

[Long Dead Fingers]

Not to sound all negative here but I'd have preferred alliances, federations, pacts and such to be reworked so that they are all viable depending on the circumstances. No matter how sensible it all seems in a nuts and bolts sort of way, a grand strategy game in which a player can't create something called an alliance strikes me as a little odd.

 

[Summin Cool]

Didn't Wiz say that they don't want anything overly complicated, whether for colonization or otherwise?
Your formula includes square roots and whatnot - that, I'm sure, doesn't fit into Paradox's vision of "simple enough" formula. And the fact that you want to hide details somewhere (on the pop details) only makes your idea worse in that regard.

That said, while something like that will not make it into the default game (mods - maybe), it is something that is rather interesting...

To be honest this rather concerns me, I quite like a bit of complexity as it adds flavour not unlike adding taste to a meal. If a game Is too simple when it honestly lacks the action/entertainment to be interesting it's pretty much a bad game. Similar to having a potato (unmashed!) on your plate without the beans or gammon. While you can have too much food on your plate, Stellaris looks like a dinner meal for a child compared to (on release) Sins of a solar empire or Civilization 5.

Also Pythagoras's theorem (and through that square root) is absolutely fine and completely simple. It's literally finding the longest side of a right angle triangle you really can't get more simple than that in terms of geometric mathematics.

Not to mention the only details the user will certainly see is the habitability rating for a species (or several species) and the terraforming cost to make it optimal for a species. If they want to then they can click on the details tab or button and view how hot/cold and how watery a planet is, It wouldn't be a bad idea simply to have it on the main overview instead, it's literally 2 lines of text with 2 numbers.

If that's too complicated Think of the scale as a square, with one axis or side being Wetness and the joining side being temperature. Your species range of colonize-able planets is a circle in that square. I'm so angry I made a graph in .png

 

[TheGrinningMan]

It seems like an alpine world is just a slightly less arctic world? What makes it different? More water below the surface?

They ain't got graphics for it yet, but near as I can guess, arctic is mostly coastal Alaska, tundra is mostly inner Siberia, and Alpine is mostly the Himalayas.