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

[Philthy]

What I'd really like to see is planet preference set in stone for species. It honestly doesn't make much sense to me that you can gene tailor planet preference. Strength? Sure, tailor them to have bigger muscles. Intelligence? How industrious a species is? Appearance? Sure, those all make sense. But what kind of humidity and temperature a species is comfortable in is a result of myriad physiological properties. It's not as simple as flipping a few genes. You'd have to fundamentally change what an organism is.

I would agree in principle, but I think it's much more likely that a tundra species could be adapted for life in the arctic than a tropical species. I think it should be possible, but a bit more expensive, and even then, only make it possible to go one step at a time, thus making it have to synch up with the terraforming process. Even better would be if it required a special resource, so if you have Eugetos Crystals in your systems, you could do more "radical" gene mods, vs the normal ones, and meanwhile for terraforming you need the terrforming resources.

 

[Netist]

I would agree in principle, but I think it's much more likely that a tundra species could be adapted for life in the arctic than a tropical species. I think it should be possible, but a bit more expensive, and even then, only make it possible to go one step at a time, thus making it have to synch up with the terraforming process. Even better would be if it required a special resource, so if you have Eugetos Crystals in your systems, you could do more "radical" gene mods, vs the normal ones, and meanwhile for terraforming you need the terrforming resources.

If the process was more time-consuming and expensive, on par with terraforming, it could be a reasonable alternative. It just seems like there's no reason to terraform right now, which is a shame imo because it's a much more interesting system that feels much less gamey.

It's just strange to me that it's so easy to tailor planet preference. It's qualitatively different than pretty much all the other gene tailoring options.

 

[grommile]

What I'd really like to see is planet preference set in stone for species. It honestly doesn't make much sense to me that you can gene tailor planet preference. Strength? Sure, tailor them to have bigger muscles.

And also thicker and/or stronger bones, and stronger tendons and ligaments, and more wear-resistant cartilage, so that they can make use of their superior muscular strength without shortening their productive working lives.

Intelligence?

The genetic basis of intelligence is a rather complicated matter.

How industrious a species is?

Arguably that's a question of sociology more than one of genetics.

Appearance? Sure, those all make sense. But what kind of humidity and temperature a species is comfortable in is a result of myriad physiological properties. It's not as simple as flipping a few genes. You'd have to fundamentally change what an organism is.

*looks at the vast diversity of Canis lupus subspecies familiaris - produced via mere breeding*

I'm sorry, I don't think your intended realism-based argument is valid, given the traits we can apply via the game's genetic engineering mechanics. Your gameplay argument, on the other hand, is at least worth thinking about.

 

[Netist]

And also thicker and/or stronger bones, and stronger tendons and ligaments, and more wear-resistant cartilage, so that they can make use of their superior muscular strength without shortening their productive working lives.

The genetic basis of intelligence is a rather complicated matter.

Arguably that's a question of sociology more than one of genetics.

*looks at the vast diversity of Canis lupus subspecies familiaris - produced via mere breeding*

I'm sorry, I don't think your intended realism-based argument is valid, given the traits we can apply via the game's genetic engineering mechanics. Your gameplay argument, on the other hand, is at least worth thinking about.

I guess what throws me is really that the portraits stay the same. I can believe that my species looks mostly the same, but strong, smarter, etc. But when you change their climate preference, they look exactly the same, except "trust us these aliens who used to live in an barren desert are just fine in the ocean now". It breaks my suspension of disbelief.

 

[Smiles_]

Overall, I like the sound of these updates, I look forward to finding some time to dash into things around x-mas.


Smiles

 

[Midn8t]

I'm not so sure about alliances being redundant. Even if all members can propose wars now, there are lots of scenarios I can imagine where two empires would agree to help each other in offensive or liberation wars without wanting all the commitment of things like a federation fleet or having to vote in all these ways. Xenophobic or militarist states might not want to give up any foreign policy control.

Yah i agree I never was a big fan of the federation stuff I liked alliance thing and being able to fight federations with just getting couple ally the main difference in a federation and alliance is this - federation is your in it you do what they want they do what they want all depending on vote and if leading government allows it your government no longer has its own sovereignty, but as allys you can still do what you want even if you ally wants to do something else for example, lets say federation wants to go to war every one votes yes but you. your still stuck in that war.

with if your just ally you can say no and not be at a war. or you could even just go to war with your ally maybe you just are in a war with someone because it is convenient at time but do not want to be tied to any one, so that latter on you can go to war with them also.

all games I have played I have never once really tried to do federation because idea just seemed to hamper my play style

it would be nice thought to have ability in war to force break up of federations as a war goal

 

[Midn8t]

Sweet changes. Only additional thing in galaxy setup I'd love to see would be pre-ftl civ prevalence/chance.

agree I also would like see ability to start a new game with no FTL allowing starting point to be pre space travel.. for players and other players including AI it be neat if every one could start before space flight so and have race to it and then allow you to research which every FTL you want during game.

 

[Midn8t]

Can you explain what changes will be made to the technology that was previously required to colonize planets? It sounds like these technologies will be removed.

I dont like idea of taking away technology for Terra forming planets, I do not really understand why the developers hate idea of governments in game empires holding a lot of planets. when you playing with mode your game to allow 50 empires and 1k or 2k planets you do not get a lot of space as it is between empires at the start of the game if you do same game and have less empires in it there will be more planets to colonize this idea of how many planets player should be able to colonize or not or find or not really is dependent soly on number of total players in the game vs how many planets are in the game and some players may want more and some players may want less.

if they wanted to make it harder to colonize planets how about adding gravity to the planets so that bigger planets have bigger gravity and some races able to handle higher gravity and some cant. that would make it more difficultly to colonize planets with out overly changing everything and it would automatically limited number of planets you can colonize at start of the game

but if they want less colonize planets give us weapons of mass destruction so we and computer players can blow up some of these planets.

 

[yuc]

wow, first time to reply, cool

 

[Miraklum]

The planet system is indeed more logical this way.

 

[Medicine Man]

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of less habitable planets and more things to do with burgeoning colonies. I also really hope they introduce a class of marginal planetoids that can be terraformed into something usable. An important niche for terraforming would be most welcome in game.

 

[pieman]

I could add an option to turn off Federation victory?

Oh! can we have a slider for federation victory but with a maximum number of members?

"hey, federation victory is turned on, but only for 3 people, guess your 6-man federation is gonna have some disagreements"

 

[KiwiNoob]

There is indeed an issue with the classification, but frozen wouldn't solve anything, since a tundra planet is not exactly frozen.

you can divide planets by temperature Hot, Warm and Cold, but it wouldn't work with the planet types above, since a jungle planet is usually hot and an arid planet not necessarily so.
or you can divide them by water availability which more close to the above, Dry, Humid and Wet.

But the classification above mix the 2 in a way that is not logical. You can't put temperature and water on the same axis. I think a double entry climate matrix would be the obvious solution

Trying to fit the existing types in the matrix does something like this :

               Hot            Warm            Cold
Dry           Desert          Arid            Alpine
Humid        Savanna       Continental       Tundra
Wet          Jungle          Oceanic         Arctic

Oceanic and Jungle could be switched btw i'm not sure wether you should consider an oceanic as more hot than a jungle.

@Wiz : the habitability could then depend on 2 factors but that would make contiental more ideal than others.

It's fine if some choices are more beneficial than others. It makes sense that a species adapted to moderate worlds would do alright on most planets while a species that likes cold & dry worlds would totally suck on hot & wet ones.

They just need to make sure the points cost in the species designer is balanced.

That said - it's not a massive advantage as in Stellaris it's very possible to just 'strongly encourage' a species with the right traits to 'join' your empire.

 

[KiwiNoob]

The issue with my climate matrix is the habitability : either you have something that doesn't make sense with 60% on all planets that share one characteristic with your home planet (alpine would be as habitable as a savannah for a desert species). Or have it based on proximity in the matrix but then planet affinity would be assymetrical (a desert species would have only 2 types as 60% habitability while continental would have 4 types at 60%). So i can understand that simply having 3 categories i simpler.

There is no problem with the matrix - it's pretty simple. There is temparature (hot, temperate, cold) and water availability (wet, moisty?, dry). If it's the one your species likes - great, if it's next to it - ok, if it's 2 away - stink.

I'd just make it 40% for each criteria that matches your species, 20% if it's 1 away from your species preferred and 10% if it's 2 away.

Anyway - not all species have to have identical habitation availability. Just make the points cost related to the overall habitability (such that continental species pay more points than extreme ones).

If I want to make a race of overlords that rule the galaxy from dessert planets then I would actually appreciate the extra species points I'll get from picking a preference with a smaller number of habitable worlds.

 

[KiwiNoob]

All habitable planets in stellaris have oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and all aliens eat the same food.

Therefore, all sentient species in Stellaris are carbon based and similar to life on Earth.

Hopefully this wont always be the case.

Still have very fond memories of my Silicoid empire rampaging across the galaxy cleansing it of the carbon based filth

 

[Mackus]

Hopefully this wont always be the case.

Still have very fond memories of my Silicoid empire rampaging across the galaxy cleansing it of the carbon based filth

I eagerly await silicon lifeforms / playable robots / stereotypical green space babes DLCs.

 

[KiwiNoob]

Stereotypical green space babes DLCs.

I'm a starcon guy so can they please be blue?

 

[Mackus]

I'm a starcon guy so can they please be blue?

Actually, I am starcon guy too, but tv tropes list the archetype as green.

 

[udkudk]

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.

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.

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.

I loved some changes.

But I'm curious. Can you see anytime in future, could the game change into an intergalactic, an multi galaxy game in a few years?

 

[Lost Northerner]

but if they want less colonize planets give us weapons of mass destruction so we and computer players can blow up some of these planets.

I agree on this part, wouldn't mind if it was tied to militaristic etho and full bombarding. Would actually use that etho on my race every now and then, now it doesn't really offer anything good, compared to Collectivist for example (purging freely). Unless really want +10 happiness from constant war.

Also would find it nice way to get rid of unwanted planets during the war. Cede ones I want, bombard small useless planets near my borders to oblivion. Genocidal negative relation modifier would start making more sense too. Wouldn't mind that abandon planet was made "peaceful" option, like I originally thought it to be. Forced resettlement of people to elsewhere, instead of being purged. (It's already conflicting, since you cede that planet, mass purge it yourself you don't get anything negative from it on relations, while abandon option give genocidal negative)

Overall would also like to be able to bombard planets to barren even if they aren't owned by anyone, so I could forcibly remove annoying planets off from the map (helps against scourge too in later game, since they tend to colony every planet).