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Stellaris Dev Diary #46 - Enclaves

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This development diary will cover Leviathans, the recently announced DLC that will be accompanying the 1.3 'Heinlein' update. As previously mentioned, Leviathans is not an expansion but rather something we call a 'Story Pack', a collection of mostly scripted content that is larger than an event pack but smaller than a full expansion. Originally, Heinlein was supposed to be an update accompanying a full-fledged expansion, but we chose instead to do a Story Pack so that the Stellaris programmers would be able to focus on bug fixing, UI improvements and improving/reworking features in the free update.

The Heinlein update has already been covered in several development diaries, but I still thought I should take the time to remind everyone of what it contains. Note that this is NOT an exhaustive list:
  • Awakened Fallen Empires
  • Fallen Empire quests, tasks and general improvements
  • Fleet Roles and new XL weapons
  • Weapon Balance rework
  • Federation Victory Condition
  • Strategic Resource Rework
  • Auto-Exploration
  • Rally Points
  • Expansion Planner
  • Habitability System Rework
  • Federation/Alliance Rework
  • Federation Association Status
  • Better control over sectors
  • 4 new portraits (NOT the 'cuties')
  • Major sound and graphics improvements
  • Space Creature rework, including new art and encounters
  • Loads of bug fixes, AI improvements and UI improvements
The Leviathans Story Pack, meanwhile, will contain the following. This IS an exhaustive list:
  • Guardians feature
  • Enclaves feature
  • War in Heaven feature
  • 5 new portraits ('cuties')
  • 20+ minutes of new music by Andreas Waldetoft

With that out of the way, on to today's topic! Today we'll be talking about Enclaves, one of the above listed paid features. Enclaves are a new type of precursors those with the Leviathans Story Pack will encounter while exploring the galaxy. Instead of living on planets and controlling an empire, they are neutral traders, artists and scholars who reside in ancient space stations and who will offer their services to anyone who is willing to pay.
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There are three types of Enclaves, each with their own range of interactions:
  • Traders allow you to exchange minerals for energy and vice versa.
  • Artists allow you to commission a piece of art that can be placed on one of your planets as a building, or become their patron to support more advanced works.
  • Curators allow you to purchase star charts, enlist their aid in furthering your research, or purchase information about the different Guardians and their weaknesses.
HBqDQn2.png


In addition to these basic interactions, each type of Enclave also has an 'advanced' interaction. This interaction is not immediately available, but must be earned by building up that Enclave's opinion of your empire. This is done by utilizing their basic interactions, so for example a Trader Enclave's opinion of you will increase every time you trade minerals and energy with them. An Enclave that is located inside of your borders will also have its opinion of you slowly increase over time. The advanced interactions are as follows:
  • Traders will sell you a unique strategic resource accessible only to them.
  • Artists can be asked to organize a festival across your worlds, improving happiness across your entire empire.
  • Curators will allow you to recruit one of their researchers, who provides access to unique technologies not otherwise researchable.
DFMb1sw.png


Of course, if your empire leans more towards the Fanatical Purifier type of thinking, you can also choose to simply attack an Enclave. Their space stations are powerful, but not invincible, and you may just find valuable salvage and technologies among the wreckage.

That's all for today! Next time we'll be talking about the headline feature of the Leviathans Story Pack, the Guardians, so stay tuned! In the meanwhile, here's a little teaser of what to expect...
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Philthy said:
God, I wish this were the case... So often they "Do not wish to trade more minerals" and they don't want to trade more then 50 or so.
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This depends on mineral availability. In mp you need to build up a client base before the others do. And rob every AI empire with your tricky deals ;)
 
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One option for anomalies would be letting us try again after failure - if a scientist dies investigating something, that shouldn't keep us from investigating that thing with another scientist. Same goes for a ship getting destroyed - we should be able to try to find out why, at the very least. There'd still be situations where we just didn't find anything, and that's fine, but it's always frustrating when you *do* find something and can't investigate it because your initial scientist died in the process.
 
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Silverfold said:
Do we have any idea what the release date is on this and how much the DLC part will cost?
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Since RoM is getting released on October 11th I'd assume a 7~10 days period before or after that date.
If it wasn't for the music and outside work I'd say less than 8$. It's not a full-on expansion so I'm betting on 10$ [but as always less would be nicer].
 
SolSys said:
Since RoM is getting released on October 11th I'd assume a 7~10 days period before or after that date.
If it wasn't for the music and outside work I'd say less than 8$. It's not a full-on expansion so I'm betting on 10$ [but as always less would be nicer].
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my money is on 12.99. I'd probably buy it for 15, but i'd be grumpy about it :p
 
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Wiz said:
I've answered this a few times but will do so again: More colony events and such will come, but as events really don't shake up the game that much the priority is instead of things that more substantively flesh out the midgame, such as awakening Fallen Empires.
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I buy this explanation. I like the IDEA of colony events but honestly after a few games, I recognize the event title and just click the button without reading further and getting any game play enjoyment out of them. Frankly, they end up becoming an interruption. On the other hand, mid-game FEATURES are a good way to fill the space and I think they are going in the right direction. Guardian creatures give us a mid term goal, Enclaves add some new 'geography' to the map to interact, and Awakened empires and the 'War in Heaven' serve as new late/end-game crisis. I rather have this than one-off colony tasks.
 
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Looking forward to this. Just wish I had the money to buy the game.
 
@Wiz
Wow, I love that you've got portrait re-use fixed, and apparently species uplift portraits too. AND jumpdrives are reworked to be more available to non-WH users? That's great, is there a post somewhere that goes into more detail on that change somewhere?

Two questions:
1. Is the allied fleets not using any AI behaviour and just sticking to your doomstack confirmed fixed in Heinlein?
2. Will there be a way to disable portraits from random usage? I really like the Leviathan content, but I'm not a huge fan of "cute" aliens.
 
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Daimonin said:
@Wiz
Wow, I love that you've got portrait re-use fixed, and apparently species uplift portraits too. AND jumpdrives are reworked to be more available to non-WH users? That's great, is there a post somewhere that goes into more detail on that change somewhere?

Two questions:
1. Is the allied fleets not using any AI behaviour and just sticking to your doomstack confirmed fixed in Heinlein?
2. Will there be a way to disable portraits from random usage? I really like the Leviathan content, but I'm not a huge fan of "cute" aliens.
Click to expand...

Jump Drives are now potentially attainable at any time after unlocking Zero Point Power, having high levels of your FTL tech and certain leader traits makes it more likely. It's really rare if you don't stack the odds for it, though.
 
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Daimonin said:
@Wiz
Wow, I love that you've got portrait re-use fixed, and apparently species uplift portraits too. AND jumpdrives are reworked to be more available to non-WH users? That's great, is there a post somewhere that goes into more detail on that change somewhere?

Two questions:
1. Is the allied fleets not using any AI behaviour and just sticking to your doomstack confirmed fixed in Heinlein?
2. Will there be a way to disable portraits from random usage? I really like the Leviathan content, but I'm not a huge fan of "cute" aliens.
Click to expand...

1) You can toggle your fleets so that the AI doesn't attach to them, they should also be smarter about who and when to attach to.
2) Yes, via modding.
 
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I'd probably buy the DLC just for Andreas' music.
 
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Darkath said:
@Wiz Since everyone can potentially produce infinite credits and infinite minerals, i can't see why i would bother trading with enclaves for them, except may be in early early game. Which is exactly the same short coming as the trading system between empires.

Again the limits of Stellaris resource system is showing here.
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You'd bother trading with them to build trust, and thus get access to the good stuff they have?
 
Kristover said:
I buy this explanation. I like the IDEA of colony events but honestly after a few games, I recognize the event title and just click the button without reading further and getting any game play enjoyment out of them. Frankly, they end up becoming an interruption. On the other hand, mid-game FEATURES are a good way to fill the space and I think they are going in the right direction. Guardian creatures give us a mid term goal, Enclaves add some new 'geography' to the map to interact, and Awakened empires and the 'War in Heaven' serve as new late/end-game crisis. I rather have this than one-off colony tasks.
Click to expand...
I like how events were made in Thea: the Awakening and I was never tired of them. In reference to Stellaris it could look loke that: 1) decision options depend on emperial specifics (partly, we already have this via ethos);
2) each event consists of several parts;
3) the outcome of decisions in each part of event is semi-randomized (a must-have feature for the sake of immersion/realism), semi-dependent on variables of your empire/colony/leader/ship/etc.
This way events become variable and give impetus to thinking before responding which grants them with replayability. And of course, quality of writing means a lot.

But you are right that events are not the major problem of the game.
And one really doesn't have time to read this all in mp.
 
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Would you suggest starting over a new game for this stuff after H and its release and update? I've had an old game I've been meaning to finish that im pretty far along on and would love to see some of this new content in it, but wanted to know if it would even work out. ex:

ex: If im far enough in the game that pretty much every star is most likely in someones territory, do these enclaves just suddenly pop into existence and are detected at that point?

Do new monsters spawn accordingly to having home territories, or would previous efforts to exterminate the annoying radar blips from your turf still have an effect? (ie - if you've aggrod the whales/cows do they remain hostile~ or is it new relations and they are reseeded accordingly? Also would we still have the related monster techs that we got for researching enough of their kills?

What happens if I already have two or all of the fallen empires as part of my conquered territory, in a vassal or generally as one of my mook followers with stuff like war in heavens?
 
Feels great and all, but with this new update, I'll feel like I'm missing a bunch out of the game. Not everyone has 20 or 30 bucks to throw at a game they already bought. I love the game, I seriously do, but all these paid DLCs are putting a hole in my pockets just so I can play my game with everyone else.
 
Like others, I may be the most excited about the new music. I'm a big fan of new age/space music, and not only is this one of the best game soundtracks ever, it's vaulted towards the top of my favorite space music albums.

And the other stuff looks great, too.
 
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